Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: David Krieger

  • Tiempo de Transición

    Traducción de Ruben Arvizu.

    Después de servir durante 37 años como presidente fundador de la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, estaré haciendo la transición a un nuevo rol, el de presidente emérito, a fines de 2019. Rick Wayman, con quien he trabajado estrechamente durante los últimos 12 años. años, asumirá el cargo de nuevo CEO de la Fundación. Rick aportará a la posición un conocimiento profundo sobre temas nucleares y un fuerte compromiso para abolir las armas nucleares, junto con una gran energía, habilidades de liderazgo y una conexión con la generación más joven de hoy. Estoy seguro de que dejaré la Fundación en muy buenas manos.

    Cuando fundamos la Nuclear Age Peace Foundation hace casi cuatro décadas, lo hicimos con una esperanza y un sueño. Sabíamos que la Fundación era necesaria, pero no sabíamos si podría sobrevivir en una atmósfera de ignorancia y apatía. Sin embargo, aquí estamos, aún luchando por un futuro ético y pacífico.

    Considero que la Fundación es una institución rara y muy preciosa. Como esta institución hay muy pocas, si alguna, en el mundo. Su misión es: “Educar, defender e inspirar acciones para un mundo justo y pacífico, libre de armas nucleares”. Ese es nuestro propósito: trabajar por la paz y abolir las armas más peligrosas jamás creadas por la humanidad. Si tenemos éxito, estamos dando un gran regalo al ser humano y a todas las generaciones futuras. Hasta que eso ocurra, somos, como mínimo, una voz de la razón en un mundo lleno de peligros.

    Además de Rick, el personal de la Fundación está compuesto por Paul Chappell, nuestro Director de Alfabetización para la Paz; Sandy Jones, nuestra directora de comunicaciones; Sarah Witmer, nuestra directora de desarrollo; Sharon Rossol, nuestra gerente de oficina; y Carol Warner, asistente del presidente.

    La Fundación también cuenta con el apoyo de nuestro dedicado Consejo de Administración, así como con miembros de nuestro muy respetado consejo asesor y asociados académicos. Además, la Fundación está fortalecida por nuestros voluntarios, incluida nuestra representante de la ONU, Alice Slater, y nuestro Director para América Latina, Rubén D. Arvizu. Se puede obtener más información sobre todas las personas que son instrumentales en el trabajo de la Fundación, así como información sobre nuestros programas, en nuestro sitio web www.wagingpeace.org.

    Nos complace que somos más de 80,000 miembros en la Fundación. Espero que Usted continúe apoyando el trabajo de la Fundación leyendo y compartiendo nuestro boletín electrónico mensual Sunflower; participando en nuestra Red de Alerta de Acción; y donando generosamente para ayudar a la Fundación a ser más efectiva en aumentar su alcance e influencia en todo el país y todo el mundo.

  • New Modes of Thinking

    New Modes of Thinking

    “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” ~Albert Einstein

    This is a prescient warning to humanity from the greatest scientist of the 20th century, the individual who conceived of the enormous power that could be released from the atom.

    What did Einstein mean?

    It may seem like a simple statement, but it is an extraordinarily formidable challenge.

    Nuclear weapons require us to awaken to the possibility of human extinction.

    They require us to put away our old ways of thinking, rooted in selfishness, greed, injustice, nationalism and violence.

    They require us to see everyone as a member of the human family, and to treat them accordingly.

    They require us to value life and to refuse to kill.

    They require us to consign war to the dustbin of history.

    They require us to seek justice and human rights for all.

    They require us to recognize we share one rare and precious planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.

    They require us to place humanity above country or tribe.

    They require us to stretch for higher moral purpose and values to deal effectively with our technological prowess, not only as it applies to nuclear technologies, but also to artificial intelligence, climate chaos and other forms of environmental degradation.

    They require us to politically engage on behalf of humanity and our children’s future.

    They require us, as difficult as it may be, to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle and to keep it there.

  • Imagination and Nuclear Weapons

    Imagination and Nuclear Weapons

    Einstein believed that knowledge is limited, but imagination is infinite.

    Imagine the soul-crushing reality of a nuclear war, with billions of humans dead; in essence, a global Hiroshima, with soot from the destruction of cities blocking warming sunlight. There would be darkness everywhere, temperatures falling into a new ice age, with crop failures and mass starvation.

    With nuclear weapons poised on hair-trigger alert and justified by the ever-shaky hypothesis that nuclear deterrence will be effective indefinitely, this should not be difficult to imagine.

    In this sense, our imaginations can be great engines for change.

    In our current world, bristling with nuclear weapons and continuous nuclear threat, we stand at the brink of the nuclear precipice. The best case scenario from the precipice, short of beginning a process of abolishing nuclear arms, is that we have the great good fortune to avoid crossing the line into nuclear war and blindly continue to pour obscene amounts of money into modernizing nuclear arsenals, while failing to meet the basic human needs of a large portion of the world’s population.

    The only way out of this dilemma is for the leaders of the world to come to their senses and agree that nuclear weapons must be abolished in order to assure that these weapons will never again be used. Given the state of the world we live in, this is more difficult to imagine.

    What steps would need to be taken to realize the goal of nuclear abolition?

    First, we would need a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Such a treaty was agreed to in 2017 by a majority of countries in the United Nations, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The treaty is now in the process of being ratified and will enter into force when ratified by 50 countries. Unfortunately and predictably, none of the nine nuclear-armed countries have supported the TPNW, and many have been overtly hostile to the treaty.

    Second, negotiations would need to commence on nuclear disarmament by the nations of the world, including all nine of the nuclear-armed countries. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) already obliges its parties to undertake such negotiations in good faith. Specifically, it calls for negotiations to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and to achieve complete nuclear disarmament. The nuclear-armed states parties to the NPT have failed to fulfill these obligations since 1970 when the treaty entered into force.

    Third, the negotiations would need to be expanded to encompass issues of general and complete disarmament, in order not to allow nuclear abolition to lead to conventional arms races and wars. Again, the states parties to the NPT are obligated to undertake such negotiations in good faith, but have not even begun to fulfill this obligation.

    If we can use our imaginations to foresee the horrors of nuclear war, we should be able to take the necessary steps to assure that such a tragedy doesn’t occur. Those steps have been set forth in the two treaties mentioned above.

    What remains missing is the political will to implement the treaties. Without this political will, our imaginations notwithstanding, we will stay stuck in this place of potential nuclear catastrophe, where nuclear war can ensue due to malice, madness, miscalculation, mistake or manipulation (hacking). Imagination is necessary, but not sufficient, to overcome political will. Even treaties are not sufficient unless there is the political will to assure their provisions are implemented. To do this, imagination must be linked to action to demand a change in political will.

    The time is short, the task is great, and terrible consequences are foreseeable if we continue to be stuck at the nuclear precipice.

    To do nothing is simply unimaginable.

    This article was originally published by Counterpunch.

    David Krieger is a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).  His most recent book is In the Shadow of the Bomb.

  • Blase Bonpane Presente!

    Blase Bonpane Presente!

    I wish to take a moment to remember a great man, Blase Bonpane, who passed on April 8, 2019.  Despite his nearly 90 years on the planet, he left us too soon.  Yet his presence is still palpable.

    He lived a life of meaning and decency.  He couldn’t abide injustice anywhere.  Where there was injustice, he was there to protest.  He always stood with the poor and downtrodden, using his powerful voice on their behalf, through his writing, his radio show, his organization (Office of the Americas), his speeches and his presence.

    In 2006, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation honored Blase with its Distinguished Peace Leadership Award.  In reality, he honored us by his presence.  From that time forward, he honored us further by serving on the Foundation’s Advisory Council.

    Here are a few of his many powerful insights:

    War: “It must be abolished if the planet is to have a future.”

    Peace: “Children are the greatest argument for peace.”

    Nuclear weapons: “Any individuals, groups or nations involved in plotting, planning or conspiring to conduct nuclear war must be declared the enemy of life on this planet.”

    Lessons of history: “Empire does not learn; it just self-destructs.”

    Thank you, Blase, for being an example for us all by your many efforts for a better, more decent and just humanity.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • Humanity Is Flirting with Extinction

    Humanity Is Flirting with Extinction

    The most stunning and frightening truth about the nuclear age is this: Nuclear weapons are capable of destroying civilization and most complex life on the planet, yet next to nothing is being done about it. Humanity is flirting with extinction and is experiencing the “frog’s malaise.” It is as though the human species has been placed into a pot of tepid water — metaphorically with regard to nuclear dangers and literally with regard to climate change — and appears to be calmly treading water while the temperature rises toward the boiling point. In this piece, I focus on the metaphorical pot of heating water, heading toward a boil, representing the increasing nuclear dangers confronting all humanity.

    Disconcertingly, there is virtually no political will on the part of nations in possession of nuclear arsenals to alter this dangerous situation; and, despite legal obligations to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament, there is no major effort among the nuclear-armed and umbrella countries to achieve nuclear zero. While the non-nuclear-armed countries have negotiated a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and are working to bring this treaty into force, those countries that possess the weapons and those sheltering under their nuclear umbrella have not supported the new treaty.

    All nine nuclear-armed countries boycotted international negotiations on banning and eliminating nuclear weapons. In addition, each of these countries is in the process of modernizing its nuclear arsenal, thereby wasting valuable resources on weapons that must never be used, and doing so while basic human needs for billions of people globally go unmet and unattended. Despite this unjust and deplorable situation, most of the 7 billion people on the planet are complacent about nuclear weapons. This only adds fuel to the fire under the frogs.

    In the nuclear age, humanity is challenged as never before. Our technology, and particularly our nuclear weapons, can destroy us and all that we hold dear. But before we can respond to the profound dangers, we must first awaken to these dangers. Complacency is rooted in apathy, conformity, ignorance and denial — a recipe for disaster. If we want to prevail over our technologies, we must move from apathy to empathy; from conformity to critical thinking; from ignorance to wisdom; and from denial to recognition of the danger. But how are we to do this?

    The key is education — education that promotes engagement; education that forces individuals and nations to face the truth about the dangers of the nuclear age. We need education that leads to action that will allow humanity to get out of the metaphorical pot of heating water before it is too late.

    Education can take many forms, but it must begin with solid analysis of current dangers and critiques of the lack of progress in stemming the dangers of the nuclear age. We need education that is rooted in the common good. We need education that provides a platform for the voices of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We need education that makes clear the instability and dangerous nature of nuclear deterrence. We need education that challenges the extreme hubris of leaders who believe the global nuclear status quo can survive indefinitely in the face of human fallibility and malevolence.

    We need education that can break through the bonds of nuclear insanity and move the world to action. We need the public to speak out and demand far more of their leaders if we are to leap from the pot of heating water, avert disaster and reach the safe haven of nuclear zero.

    This article was originally published by The Hill on March 5, 2019.

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and has served as its president since 1982. He is the author and editor of many books on nuclear dangers, including “ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.”

  • 10 Lessons You Should Learn About Nuclear Weapons

    10 Lessons You Should Learn About Nuclear Weapons

    Here are 10 lessons that I learned about nuclear weapons in the process of working for their abolition for the past four decades. I wish I could share these lessons with every citizen of the planet, all of whom are endangered by these weapons.

    The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in space or time. Radiation from a nuclear detonation is carried by the wind and cannot be stopped at national borders, with or without border checkpoints. Radioactive materials also have long lives. Plutonium-239, for example, has a half-life of 24,000 years and will remain deadly if inhaled for the next 240,000 years.

    1. The effects of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in space or time. Radiation from a nuclear detonation is carried by the wind and cannot be stopped at national borders, with or without border checkpoints. Radioactive materials also have long lives. Plutonium-239, for example, has a half-life of 24,000 years and will remain deadly if inhaled for the next 240,000 years.
    2. Nuclear weapons have made possible omnicide, the death of all. Omnicide is a 20th-century concept created by philosopher John Somerville. It is the logical extension of suicide, homicide, genocide. Although it is a concept too final to even imagine, it must be taken seriously.
    3. The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the ambassadors of the nuclear age, having witnessed first-hand the horror of nuclear weapons use and not wanting their past to become anyone else’s future.  Many survivors, known as hibakusha, have made it their life’s work to speak out to educate others and to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
    4. Nuclear deterrence does not provide physical protection against nuclear weapons — it provides only a false sense of security and the possibility of retaliation and vengeance. Reliance on nuclear deterrence opens the door to omnicide.
    5. Nine countries with nuclear weapons are playing Nuclear roulette with the human future. Nuclear weapons are like having grenades pointed at the heart of humanity, putting everything we love and treasure at risk. With Nuclear roulette the odds are not with humanity.
    6. Einstein warned: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” For ourselves, our countries and our planet, we must change our modes of thinking and end the widespread ignorance and apathy surrounding nuclear weapons. We must rid the world of nuclear weapons before they rid the world of us.
    7. Nuclear weapons are an absolute and ultimate evil. Their only purpose is to kill indiscriminately — women, men and children, as well as other forms of complex life.
    8. There are many ways a nuclear war could begin: by malice, madness, mistake, miscalculation or manipulation (hacking). That we have not yet had a nuclear war is more from good fortune than good planning. We have come chillingly close on numerous occasions.
    9. Nuclear weapons make us all reliant for our lives and futures on the sanity and wisdom of a small number of national leaders. It is far too much power to put in the hands of any leader. We must speak out, join together and demand that these weapons be abolished before they abolish us.
    10. The choice between two memes of the 20th century will determine whether humankind survives the 21st: the image of the mushroom cloud, and the image of the earth from outer space. The first is an image of death and destruction, while the second is an image of the fragility of our planetary home, the only place we know of in the universe where life exists. The choice should be clear, and it calls out to us to choose peace, not war; survival, not devastation; hope, not despair; and engagement to save our planet and the precious gift of life it harbors.

    This article was originally published by The Hill on February 15, 2019.

  • I Am Skeptical

    I Am Skeptical

    I am skeptical about the degree of optimism some people are expressing about nuclear weapons.  To take just one example: Between the mid-1980s and the present, the number of nuclear weapons has been reduced from over 70,000 to approximately 14,500. This is a reduction of more than 55,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Some analysts see this as a sign that the world is out of nuclear danger. However, while the number of nuclear weapons has come way down, one nuclear war with only a tiny percentage of the nuclear weapons that still exist could end civilization and possibly the human species. Reductions in the size of nuclear arsenals are a positive sign, but they do not indicate that humanity is secure from nuclear threat.

    At the same time that these reductions in arsenals have taken place, nuclear weapons have proliferated to three new countries (India, Pakistan and North Korea), in addition to the six initial nuclear weapons states (US, Russia, UK, France, China and Israel). The more nuclear weapon states, the greater the nuclear danger. In addition, nuclear-armed states have withdrawn from existing arms control agreements, such as the US unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, Trump withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran Nuclear Agreement) in 2018 and his administration’s recent announcement of suspension of obligations and intention to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in February 2019. These unilateral steps on the part of the US are undermining nuclear stability and leading to new qualitative nuclear arms races.

    With Trump as the US president, the world remains in a precarious situation, close to the ultimate brink, and even with a more truthful and rational president, we would still be close to the brink. That is the reason that I see peace as an imperative of the nuclear age, and why I think the only reasonable number of nuclear weapons in the world is zero. Instead of negotiating to achieve that goal, the nuclear weapon states are all planning to modernize and improve their nuclear arsenals. This is occurring in an environment in which leaders of the nuclear weapon states and their allies are giving magical and unrealistic powers and efficacy to nuclear deterrence. In part, we learned far too little from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we may not be so fortunate on the next nuclear standoff, which could occur at any time. The large reduction in nuclear arsenals that has taken place in recent decades is not sufficient to assure human survival, and we should not be celebrating our success until the world is out of danger of nuclear holocaust.

    I would prefer to be more optimistic about our nuclear-armed world, but I am concerned that optimism can breed inaction and a lack of engagement on the issue. What we need now is healthy skepticism about nuclear weapons and the policies which guide their use, and strong citizen engagement in pressuring the nuclear-armed countries to participate in good faith negotiations for total nuclear disarmament, as they are obligated to do under international law.

    Nuclear deterrence can fail and does not provide protection, especially to citizens of nuclear-armed countries. Rather, it paints a target on their backs. Arms reductions, which still leave all of us vulnerable, are not enough. What we need is commitment to nuclear abolition and widespread citizen engagement, leading their leaders, to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Thus, I remain skeptical about nuclear security, but hopeful that humanity will awaken to the challenge.

    This article was originally published by The Hill under the title “Yes, there are fewer nuclear weapons – but they can still wipe us out.”

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and has served as its president since 1982. His latest book is In the Shadow of the Bomb: Poems of Survival.

  • The President

    The President

    Not the first American president
    to govern by lies and misdirection,
    he is cunningly adept at it.

    Brazenly focused on himself,
    he feeds his ego and stuffs his pockets
    with emoluments.

    He makes the world safe for bigots,
    opening wide the spigots
    of prejudice.

    Creating violent waves
    that crash against the poor, he strips
    lady liberty of her honor.

    He shouts “fake news”
    and stands to gain at the public trough
    like no previous president.

    Each day brings new disgrace,
    yet somehow he has managed
    to hold on.

    Like all tyrants, he will fall.
    Question is: when he does, will we
    still have a country and a world?

    Vaya aquí para la versión española

  • Martin Luther King and the Bomb

    Martin Luther King and the Bomb

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    David KriegerMartin Luther King, Jr. was one of the world’s great peace leaders.  Like Gandhi before him, he was a firm advocate of nonviolence.  In 1955, at the age of 26, he became the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott and two years later he was elected the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Within a decade he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35.  It came two years after he witnessed the terrifying prospects of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

    King’s Nobel Lecture, delivered in December 1964, is worth reviewing.  He compared mankind’s technological advancement with our spiritual progress and found us failing to keep pace spiritually.  He said, “There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.  The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.  We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple act of living together as brothers.”

    The yawning gap between mankind’s technological advancement and spiritual poverty led King to draw this conclusion: “If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual ‘lag’ must be eliminated.  Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul.  When the ‘without’ of man’s nature subjugates the ‘within,’ dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.”  He found that mankind’s spiritual “lag” expressed itself in three interrelated problems: racial injustice, poverty and war.

    When King elaborated on war, he spoke of “the ever-present threat of annihilation,” clearly referring to the dangers of nuclear weapons.  Recognizing the dangers of denial, or “rejection” of the truth about the nuclear predicament, he went on, “A world war – God forbid! – will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death.  So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine.”

    King came to the following realization: “Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.  In short, we must shift the arms race into a ‘peace race.’  If we have the will and determination to mount such a  peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment.”

    One year to the day prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968, King gave a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City that was highly critical of the war in Vietnam.  Many of his close advisors urged him not to speak out and to instead keep his focus on the civil rights movement, but he felt the time had come when silence is betrayal and chose to state his position.  He put the Vietnam War squarely within his moral vision and spoke against it to the great displeasure of Lyndon Johnson and many other American political leaders. In addition to speaking his mind on the war, he also said that nuclear weapons would never defeat communism and called for reordering our priorities to pursue peace rather than war.  He argued, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

    Were he still with us, there can be little doubt that King would be highly critical of America’s continuing wars since Vietnam, and its plan to spend $1 trillion on modernizing its nuclear arsenal.  Since his death, the gap between our technological prowess and our spiritual/moral values has continued to widen.   We would do well to listen to King’s insights and follow his vision if we are to have any chance of pulling out of the descending spiral leading to the nation’s “spiritual death.”

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org), and has served as its president since 1982.

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  • In the Shadow of the Bomb: Poems of Survival, by David Krieger

    In the Shadow of the Bomb: Poems of Survival, by David Krieger

    This article was originally published by Global Poetry.

    This is the third book of poetry by David Krieger I am reviewing. The first, Wake Up, was a warning call; the second, Portraits: Peacemakers, Warmongers and People Between, etched the personalities of doers and their deeds; and in the latest, In the Shadow of the Bomb, Krieger confronts us with the naked reality of The Bomb. The questions he raises are: What is the value of poetry in the face of weapons of mass annihilation? Can poems awaken us to the dangers of the Nuclear Age?

    In fact, with each poetry collection, Krieger has been bringing us closer to the question of nuclear war and our survival. American President Trump, in fact, now pronounces America’s preparedness for an armed Space force. Krieger’s latest collection is about our hubris when a missile loaded with nuclear weapons is pointed at the collective head of humanity. Can we avert our eyes and pretend not to see? In the poem, ‘In Our Hubris’, Krieger asks: Have we given up on our common future? He wants the reader to react, resist, and awaken before it’s too late. Krieger’s work is unabashedly polemical, a nonkilling manifesto about the future, conscious of the contemporary history of the Western world.

    His poem ‘When the Bomb Became Our God’ tells us how close we have come to meeting the fate we have been shaping for ourselves:

    “When the Bomb became our God
    We loved it far too much,
    Worshipping no other gods before it.
    When the bomb became our god
    We lived in a constant state of war
    That we called peace.”

    In another poem, ‘People of the Bomb’, he observes:

    “The bomb may have ended the war,
    but only if history is read
    like a distant star. If only the sky
    had not turned white and aged.
    If only time had not bolted to change course,
    If only the white flags had flown before
    the strange storm.”

    In the section entitled, “What Shall We Call the Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima?” the poet asks:

    “Shall we call it
    The Beginning of the End or
    The End of the Beginning?”

    Of those two dreadful August mornings when the Atomic Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he recalls the words of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with those awful things.” In that August 1945 history lesson, his insight doesn’t miss the evident racism of that dastardly act. On August 6th and August 9th, the two atomic bombs were dropped on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Ironically, between the dropping of those two atomic bombs, the U.S. signed the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, agreeing to hold Nazi leaders accountable for crimes against  peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

    ‘Where did the victims (of nuclear attacks) go?’ The poet demands, and then answers:

    “Where else would the victims go but first
    into the air, then into the water, then into the grasses,
    and eventually into our food?
    What does this mean?
    It means that we breathe our victims,
    that we drink them and eat them, without tasting
    the bitterness, in our daily meals.

    In another poem, entitled, ‘Among the Ashes’, amidst the charred bodies in Hiroshima, a daughter recognizes the gold tooth of her mother:

    “As the girl reached out
    to touch the burnt body,
    her mother crumbled to ashes
    Her mother, vivid
    in the girl’s memory, sifted
    through her fingers, floated away.”

    The poet’s hurt challenges our humanity: “How dared we do all that?”

    “We are mighty. We take what we want
    when we want, believing there is no accounting.”

    In 1948, George Orwell wrote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” In his poem, ‘Warning to Americans’, Krieger writes:

    “Don’t look into the mirror, You may be frightened
    by the raw redness of your jingoism. You may find
    a flag tattooed on your forehead or on your chest.

    ….

    Don’t mourn the loss of your freedoms. Remember,
    Orwell warned this would come.
    Your freedoms were not meant to last forever.

    David Krieger, a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, is so familiar with the history of his country, government and people that with poems about warring America, in the section, ‘Reflections of a Tragic History’, his poetry describes with a sense of irony how atomic weapons obliterated cities for the wrong reasons, carpet bombing and massacre of civilians done in the name of freedom and demonstrating technology might, sacrifice of children and slaughter of  peasants for presidential lies. Searching for a silver lining, the poet concludes: “Is there no possibility that our hearts, like sad continents, / may reattach themselves to life?” Krieger coaxes his reader to, “Think, and Think Again” about the implications of looking at fellow humans as hajjis, gooks, savages…, they are humans not ‘the other’.

    In ‘Rules of Engagement’, the poet points to how wars have continued to dehumanize American soldiers, reminding us of an incident in the Afghan war when three Afghans lay dead on their backs in the dirt, and the four young U.S. Marines in battle gear took to celebrate their victory urinating on them.  That act, Krieger notes, was like holding up a mirror proclaiming – “this is who we are.”

    “When we teach our children to kill, we turn them
    Into something we don’t understand: ourselves.
    Their lack of humanity is not different from ours.
    We have not taught these young men to value life.
    They teach us how little we do.
    Why should they hold back when we have
    taught them and sent them to kill other men —
    men whose names they will never know?
    If we are shocked by their disrespect for the dead,
    we should consider our own for the living.”

    In the section, ‘Oh War’, Krieger provides a narrative on archeology of war given by politicians, generals, and businessmen starting with distant beating of the drums exhorting the need for sacrifice from ‘Soldiers Fall’ to the deaths of ‘Children of War’, to singing of ‘War Crime Blues’:

    “Have you heard the terrible news?
    U.S. forces bombed a hospital in Kunduz.
    It gives me a case of the wartime blues,
    makes me shake with the war crime blues.
    You can’t win a war, you can only lose.”

    In another poem, the poet continues:

    “War spreads
    its sad red wings.

     Soldiers fall
    like white flowers
    on a winter field.
    They sink
    in burning snow.”

    The final part of the collection has about a dozen poems of hope and inspiration, challenging the reader to stand up and be counted — giving us reasons to end war. These are deeply moving poems of positivity. Some snippets:

    Standing with Pablo

    (“I have a higher duty to my conscience”. –Pablo Paredes)

    “Like the three tenors, like three pillars,
    there are three Pablos for peace:
    Picasso, Neruda and Paredes.

    ….

    The first painted Guernica, the second
    wrote poems as an act of peace.
    The third refused to fight in Iraq.

    ….

    Pable Picasso painted the horrors of war.
    Pablo Neruda wrote poems of love and decency.
    Pablo Peredes refused to kill or be killed.”

    I refuse

    for Camilo Mejia

    “I refuse to be used as a tool
    of war, to kill on order,
    to give my life for a lie.
    I refuse to be indoctrinated
    or subordinated, to allow the military
    to define all I can be.”

    David Krieger believes we have to elevate our moral and spiritual level to take control of our most dangerous technologies and abolish them before they abolish us. A great story teller, his poetry of survival asks us to awaken our passion to end the nuclear era, trying to ignite in us a love for life, encouraging us to pass the world on intact to new generation(s). Celebrating the possibility of a living planet, in his poem, ‘A Conspiracy of Decency’, his optimism shines:

    “We will conspire to find new ways to say people matter.
    This conspiracy will be bold.
    Everyone will dance at wholly inappropriate times.
    They will burst out singing non-patriotic songs.
    And the not-so-secret password will be Peace.”

    Like the Nobel Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote in 1913: “The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence”, Krieger believes that “Within the awful shattering chaos of war, lives a still and silent seed of peace.” The seed of our existence and essence.  —  A powerful collection of poems.