Campaign - Nuclear Non-proliferation
Foreign policy expert visits OCC.by Web Staff
Time Warner Cable News 10 Now.
 ONONDAGA COUNTY, N.Y. -- A foreign policy expert visits students at Onondaga Community College. Paul Kawika Martin discussed nuclear weapons, international relations and U.S. Foreign policy. Martin said spreading the word about the dangers of nuclear warheads is important because most students have never faced a nuclear threat.
"A lot of folks in this room weren't around during the days of 'duck and cover'...There's a whole generation of folks who were around to think about that every day, facing nuclear annihilation,” said Paul Kawika Martin, Foreign Policy Expert. Martin also told students the risk of a terrorist attack on the United States is low, but the cost of keeping us safe is high. Martin is the political director of Peace Action, the largest grassroots peace organization in the United States. See Video WMD Free At Last.by Olaf Egeberg
This article was adapted from the last pages of the book: “COMING HOME: A Crossover Bible for Christians, Muslims, Jews And Members Of Other Religious Faiths As Well As For Thoroughly Non-Religious Persons.”.
The intensifying WMD problem
We live with the increasing threat that someone is going to use a nuclear weapon. These weapons are proliferating. Information on how to build them is out now (on the Internet, of course) and stolen materials are available. On top of that some nuclear weapons (“suitcase bombs”) have gone missing since the dismantling of the Soviet Union . And now we have suicide bombers who can take a small nuclear bomb wherever around our globe they are directed to go. So more of these super-lethal bombs are out there now. And with this increase in nuclear weapons, I believe we’re also getting an increase in governments, terrorist groups and crazed individuals who are willing to use them. Along with nuclear weapons there is also the terrible threat of biological weapons and other “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs). It’s, therefore, all WMDs that we need to address now. Because a single use of any one of these weapons could create theworst horror for millions of us in just a few seconds time. In that terrible moment countless unsuspecting and innocent persons, possibly you and/or I, would meet a violent death (or a drawn-out death from a biological agent). And for those who are exposed but not killed by the weapon, life would continue on from that moment as suffering, bone deep, physical and mental, suffering. Full Article NAPF Launches Appeal to the Next President of the United States.by David Krieger
President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
 Dear Friend of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Nobel Peace Laureates the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are among many people around the world who have signed the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's new Appeal to the Next President, which calls for US leadership for a nuclear weapons-free world. • De-alert all nuclear weapons; • Commit to No First Use; • No new nuclear weapons; • Ban nuclear testing forever; • Control nuclear material worldwide; • Nuclear weapons convention; • Reallocate resources for peace. In recognition of the vital role the US must play in initiating and verifiably completing these steps, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has created an Appeal calling for the next President to take leadership on this issue. The Appeal, which anyone can sign, will be sent to the next President of the United States when he or she takes office on January 20, 2009. I invite you to join the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, actor Jeff Bridges, singer Jackson Browne, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and thousands of others in signing the Appeal. You can print out a copy (in color or black and white) and gather signatures from family, friends, neighbors and workmates. Then drop it in the mail to us. Or better yet, gather your friends and family around the computer and sign on electronically. It only takes a minute. Either way, the next President will know that you and many others like you do not want to live under the shadow of nuclear weapons any longer. I encourage you, and everyone you know, to sign this Appeal A Nuclear-Free World? Policymaking Elites and the Public Agree.by Lawrence S. Wittner
Peace Action member and Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His most recent book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).
 On January 15, 2008, in an Op-Ed column entitled "Toward a Nuclear-Free World," four concerned American citizens called upon U.S. government and other governments to set "the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons" and to take substantial action toward this goal. No, these Americans weren't leaders of Peace Action, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, or other major peace organizations. Instead, they were George Shultz (secretary of state under Ronald Reagan), William Perry (secretary of defense under Bill Clinton), Henry Kissinger (secretary of state under Richard Nixon), and Sam Nunn (a former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee). And the newspaper where their column appeared was the Wall Street Journal.
"The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material has brought us to a nuclear tipping point," warned these former top power-wielders. "The steps we are taking . . . are not adequate to the danger," and, consequently, "deterrence is decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous." Having issued a similar warning in early 2007, Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, and Nunn had received support for their anti-nuclear stance from numerous former U.S. national security officials. And when they convened veterans of the past six administrations, along with other experts on nuclear issues, for a conference at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, "there was general agreement about the importance of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons as a guide to our thinking about nuclear policies, and about the importance of a series of steps that will pull us back from the nuclear precipice." Naturally, as the United States and Russia possess "close to 95% of the world's nuclear warheads," they "have a special responsibility, obligation and experience to demonstrate leadership" in the process of nuclear disarmament. Full Article Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament letter.by Alyn Ware
Dear George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn,
Thank you for your commentary in the Wall Street Journal January 15, 2008 reaffirming the call you made a year ago for a nuclear-weapons-free world, reporting on the growing support for this call and expanding on some of the steps towards that goal. At the conclusion of your article you said: “In some respects, the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can't even see the top of the mountain, and it is tempting and easy to say we can't get there from here. But the risks from continuing to go down the mountain or standing pat are too real to ignore. We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible.” You are quite correct that a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. However, we have charted a rough course to the top “ the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention “and I don’t think we are as far from the top as you might believe. Already over half the world has been formally established as free-from-nuclear-weapons by Nuclear Weapon Free Zone treaties” and more are in the pipeline. And in the Nuclear Weapon Countries, we already have cross-party support and the majority of citizens supporting the abolition of nuclear weapons. Yes the journey to the top is difficult and to some people it looks virtually impossible just as the journey to the top of Mt Everest did in 1953. Sir , one of the two who completed that historic climb, passed away last week. His pioneering spirit, and his words “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” have inspired us New Zealanders and others around the world to aim high and persevere through difficulties to achieve these aims. With a bit more determination and confidence, it might not take too long to reach the summit of a nuclear-weapons-free world. Once we get there, please excuse if some of us celebrate with that more colloquial Hillary saying “Well we knocked that bastard off.” Alyn Ware Director, Aotearoa Lawyers for Peace Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament PO Box 24-429, Manners Street Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand alyn@cnp.org, www.pnnd.org The Old and New Shapes of Nuclear Danger.by Jonathan Schell
 "After I became an American citizen, the thing that stands out so clearly in my mind is the Reagan/Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik," California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "The leaders of the two most powerful nations on earth were actually discussing the elimination of nuclear weapons. Such a breathtaking possibility. I still remember the thrill of it."
The occasion was a conference at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, led by the four authors of an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last January. It called for "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons," as championed by Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik, and its authors were George Shultz, Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan (Shultz was present at Reykjavik); William Perry, Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton; Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon; and former Senator Sam Nunn--four archbishops of the cold war nuclear priesthood, most of whom until now have dismissed the idea of nuclear abolition as undiscussably utopian and naïve. The four cited proliferation and the terrorist danger, and warned that the world is entering "a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically costly than Cold War deterrence." Significantly, they invoked moral as well as practical reasons for their proposal, approvingly quoting Reagan's opinion that nuclear weapons are "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization." The conference at Hoover was the second in a series convened to explore concrete pathways to the goal of abolition. The group will eventually publish a book and hold an international conference to present their findings. Full Article Draft Complex Transformation SPEIS Summary - December 2007.from Susan Gordon - Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
 INTRODUCTION
This Complex Transformation1 Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (SPEIS) analyzes the potential environmental impacts of alternatives to make the U.S. nuclear weapons complex (Complex) smaller, and more responsive, efficient, and secure. These changes would build upon decisions made in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War and the cessation of U.S. nuclear weapons testing. National security policies require the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), to maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile,2 as well as core competencies in nuclear weapons.3 Since completion in 1996 of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Stockpile Stewardship and Management (SSM PEIS) and associated Record of Decision (ROD) DOE has implemented these policies through the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP).4 The SSP emphasizes development and application of greatly improved scientific and technical capabilities to assess the safety, security, and reliability of existing nuclear warheads without the use of nuclear testing. Throughout the 1990s, DOE also took steps to consolidate the Complex from twelve sites in the late 1980s to its current configuration of three national laboratories (plus an associated flight test range), four industrial plants, and a nuclear test site... Full Article Public Hearings Foiled Again: The Defeat of the Latest Bush Administration Plan for New Nuclear Weapons.by Lawrence S. Wittner
Peace Action member and Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His most recent book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).
Advocates of a U.S. nuclear weapons buildup received a significant setback on December 16, when Congressional negotiators agreed on an omnibus spending bill that omitted funding for development of a new nuclear weapon championed by the Bush administration: the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Coming on the heels of Congressional action in recent years that stymied administration schemes for the nuclear "bunker buster" and the "mini-nuke," it was the third--and perhaps final--defeat of George W. Bush and his hawkish allies in their attempt to upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.
The administration's case for building the RRW--a newly-designed hydrogen bomb--pivoted around the contention that the current U.S. nuclear stockpile is deteriorating and needs to be replaced by new weaponry. But studies by scientific experts revealed that this stockpile would remain reliable for at least another fifty years. In addition, critics of the RRW scheme pointed to the fact that building new nuclear weapons violates the U.S. commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue nuclear disarmament and that such a violation would encourage other nations to flout their NPT commitments. Naturally, peace and disarmament organizations were among the fiercest opponents of the RRW, arguing that it was both unnecessary and provocative. Groups like the Council for a Livable World, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Peace Action, and Physicians for Social Responsibility published critiques of the administration plan, mobilized their members against it, and lobbied in Congress to secure its defeat. Activists staged anti-RRW demonstrations and, despite the nation's focus on the war in Iraq, managed to draw headlines with protests at the University of California and elsewhere. Full Article 'Blueprint for Destruction'.by Frank Munger
 The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance says the NNSA's latest plan for transforming the nuclear weapons complex is "a blueprint for destruction of the earth."
Here is the peace group's submitted response on the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement:
The National Nuclear Security Administration released on January 7, 2008, the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the Transformation of the Nuclear Weapons Complex.
The Draft EIS lays the groundwork for DOE’s preferred action—rebuilding the entire nuclear weapons complex with new facilities for maintaining an enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons through Stockpile Life Extension and for designing, producing and testing thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction. The Complex Transformation PEIS represent a blueprint for the destruction of the earth. A new nuclear weapons complex, with a pricetag of more than $100 billion over the life of the complex, is the fuse which will ignite a new global nuclear arms race. It directly contradicts the United States’ obligation to pursue disarmament under the Nonproliferation Treaty. Under Complex Transformation, the Department of Energy proposes to continue producing weapons components for the Stockpile Life Extension Program and re-tool its facilities to design, produce and test new nuclear weapons. Full Article Empire and Nuclear Weapons.by Joseph Gerson
 Over the past six decades, the United States has used its nuclear arsenal in five often inter-related ways.
The first was, obviously, battlefield use, with the "battlefield" writ large to include the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The long -held consensus among scholars has been that these first atomic bombings were not necessary to end the war against Japan, and that they were designed to serve a second function of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: dictating the parameters of the global (dis)order by implicitly terrorizing U.S. enemies and allies ("vassal states" in the words of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.) The third function, first practiced by Harry Truman during the 1946 crisis over Azerbaijan in northern Iran and relied on repeatedly in U.S. wars in Asia and the Middle East, as well as during crises over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis, has been to threaten opponents with first strike nuclear attacks in order to terrorize them into negotiating on terms acceptable to the United States or, as in the Bush wars against Iraq, to ensure that desperate governments do not defend themselves with chemical or biological weapons. Once the Soviet Union joined the nuclear club, the U.S. arsenal began to play a fourth role, making U.S. conventional forces, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, "meaningful instruments of military and political power." As Noam Chomsky explains, Brown was saying that implicit and explicit U.S. nuclear threats were repeatedly used to intimidate those who might consider intervening militarily to assist those we are determined to attack. Full Article American and Russian Publics Strongly Support Steps to Reduce and Eliminate Nuclear Weapons. A new poll, conducted in the United States and Russia, finds robust support for a series of cooperative steps to reduce nuclear dangers and move toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
Large majorities of Americans and Russians favor taking nuclear weapons off high alert, sharply cutting the numbers of nuclear weapons, banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material, and—once advanced methods of international verification are established—undertaking the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
These steps correspond to key elements of a plan for “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” developed by a bipartisan group that includes two former secretaries of state (George Schultz and Henry Kissinger), a former defense secretary (William Perry) and the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Sam Nunn)—sometimes called the “Reykjavik Revisited” plan. Some have been included in recent legislation, such as a bill introduced by Senators Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama (S.1977). A systematic, global endeavor to eliminate nuclear weapons has also been endorsed by former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, and US Presidential candidates. The WorldPublicOpinion.org poll was developed in conjunction with the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) and fielded by Knowledge Networks in the United States and the Levada Center in Russia. Full Article The fate of the Earth, the Bush years.by Tom Engelhardt, Salon.com
This interview with Jonathan Schell was conducted prior to the NIE report on Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities.
 Dec. 5, 2007 | Enter Jonathan Schell's small office at the Nation Institute only if you don't mind experiencing a slightly vertiginous feeling. Books are everywhere -- in boxes on the floor, on every surface, in, along and perilously stacked above shelves. If you took a wrong step, you could at least imagine disappearing in a tsunami of tumbling books. "That's my Hannah Arendt pile up there," he says, gesturing toward a shelf I'm examining. He's sitting at his desk, his legs up and an iMac perched on his knees. Even here, he wears a jacket -- black corduroy in this case -- a blue button-down shirt, grey slacks, and on his feet the leather shoes of a man who has yet to enter the all-comfort Age of Nike. Glasses are perched on his nose, and his face, when he looks up, is welcoming and well lived in.
Only the titles of the books scattered everywhere hint at the less than mild-mannered reality of his life: "Living With the Bomb," "Empire," "The Next War," "Savage Dreams," "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy," "The United States and the Legacy of the Vietnam War," and -- all in Japanese characters but for a single word in English -- "Hiroshima." It's hard to believe that this modest-looking man once rode in a forward air controller's small plane in Vietnam, surveying the wholesale destruction of two provinces for what became his 1968 book, "The Military Half," or that his 1982 bestselling book on the nuclear conundrum, "The Fate of the Earth," was one of the sparks for the greatest anti-nuclear movement of our -- or any other -- lifetime. In one way or another in those days, he jostled with millions of demonstrators and activists; most of the time since, while writing for the New Yorker, then Newsday, and now the Nation, he has remained a largely one-man campaign against nuclear annihilation and nuclear "forgetfulness," as well as for the abolition of such weapons from the fateful face of our Earth. Several days after the publication of his latest nuclear book, "The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger," at a moment when the Bush administration, long focused on nuclear weapons, fictional and real, was up to its ears in a potential nuclear crisis involving Pakistan, we sit down in the conference room of the Nation Institute, where he is a fellow (as am I). With two cheap tape recorders rolling and Tam Turse, the official photographer of TomDispatch, snapping photos, we begin to explore the mysteries of the nuclear crisis -- and conundrum -- that has occupied much of his life and threatened the planet for the last 62 years. He speaks with emphasis, but in a measured way, stopping from time to time to carefully consider his answers. Full Article Seven critical questions on national security issuesby Council for a Livable World In its ongoing efforts to reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and promote international peace and security, Council for a Livable World submitted seven critical questions on national security issues to all declared presidential candidates from both parties. Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson responded to the Council’s questionnaire. Their responses exhibited noteworthy unity while differing on some important details.
The seven questions were on reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, new nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Iraq, space weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, and negotiating with Iran and North Korea. Dodd endorsed all of the Council’s positions with one word responses, choosing neither to explain nor equivocate. The other candidates offered detailed explanations, leaving numerous shades of gray that offer valuable insight into the priorities they may choose to pursue if elected. Democratic candidates Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, along with all of the Republican candidates, chose not to participate and did not return the Council’s questionnaire. Full Article Energy Bill Aids Expansion of Atomic Powerby Edmund L. Andrews and Matthew L. Wald A one-sentence provision buried in the Senate’s recently passed energy bill, inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees.
Lobbyists have told lawmakers and administration officials in recent weeks that the nuclear industry needs as much as $50 billion in loan guarantees over the next two years to finance a major expansion. The biggest champion of the loan guarantees is Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee and one of the nuclear industry’s strongest supporters in Congress. Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico and the energy bill’s author, has long argued that nuclear power plants do not need federal loan guarantees. Mr. Bingaman said that the industry was over-interpreting the provision and that it would provide loan guarantees for only the most innovative power plants. Full Article Depleted Uranium: What are the effects of Depleted Uranium? Depleted uranium munitions are extremely dense, toxic, and mildly radioactive.
The findings of the US Department of Defense research — are now in the public domain: depleted uranium is genotoxic — it chemically alters DNA and could be a precursor to tumor growth. Since 2001, there have been numerous studies supporting the findings. The U.S. weaponry • The US is the largest single user of depleted uranium (DU) in weaponry. • It is also the largest seller and exporter of depleted uranium weapon technology. • DU is used in smart bombs, bunker busters, anti-tank weapons, and the tow missiles. How it spreads • One example: In the mechanics of DU tipped weapons when the device explodes, the force of the blast breaks the DU tip into a cloud of dust that coats everything within the target,— this includes the dust from the DU. • As the dust settles, the contaminated material also settles to earth or becomes airborne and drifts to other parts of that country. • Now we have radioactive material spreading over a large area. Effects of DU • "Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer." • Serious Long-Term Effects Include: Compromised immune system, metabolic, respiratory and renal diseases, tumors, leukemia, and cancer. DEPLETED URANIUM ALERT! Invisible War,
DEPLETED URANIUM ALERT! Invisible War,
There It Goes Again: The Bush Administration's Latest Plan to Build New Nuclear Weapons.by Lawrence S. WittnerDr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).
The Bush administration's stubborn determination to prevail, whatever the costs, is evident not only in its reckless military venture in Iraq, but in its single-minded pursuit of new nuclear weapons. The U.S. government, of course, is supposed to be divesting itself of its nuclear weapons under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it signed in 1968. As recently as the NPT review conference of 2000, the U.S. government joined other signers of the NPT in promising an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals." Furthermore, when the Bush administration ignored these commitments and pressed Congress hard for funding to build new nuclear weapons—nuclear "bunker busters" and "mini-nukes"—Congress dug in and rejected them as totally unnecessary. With some 10,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, members of Congress, both Democrats and some Republicans, seemed to feel that enough was enough. However, from the standpoint of the Bush administration, there are never enough nuclear weapons—at least in its arsenal. And so, administration officials are now back with another U.S. nuclear weapons proposal: to build the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). "They've been running with RRW like you wouldn't believe," observed U.S. Representative David Hobson (Republican-Ohio). Hobson ought to know for, until this January, he chaired the House subcommittee on water and energy appropriations, which oversees spending on nuclear weapons. The alleged reason for building this newly designed hydrogen bomb is to maintain the reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, which, according to administration proponents of the RRW, is deteriorating and needs to be replaced. But independent studies by scientific experts have shown that the stockpile will remain reliable for at least another fifty years. Complex 2030: The Bush administration is proposing to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, recreating the type of design, development, and production capability for nuclear weapons used in the United States during the Cold War. Fortunately, a mandatory environmental impact review of the Bush administration's so-called "Complex 2030" proposal allows you to submit comments on this dangerous plan. The process initiated late October 2006 will provide the public the first chance to give its views on the Bush nuclear program. To carry out the rebuilding of the complex, the agency must prepare updated environmental impact statements for the eight sites, including public comments, and hold hearings at each location.
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