STABILIZING the CLIMATE _ NEWS
Preparing for RIO+20
Climate Change threat to National Security
New Warning from Think Tank
SECURING the OCEANS - NEWS
72 Hours to Save the Oceans - Avaaz petition to UN
Coral reefs vanish as waters warm - video
Farming the Seas - video
Law of the Sea - book
and Today's ACTIVIST HERO.....
Queen Noor warns "a trillion dollars" for nukes.
More on ACTIVIST HANDBOOK and OTHER ACTIVIST HEROES
NEWS
Divesting from Banks and corporations that make the Bomb - NEW ICAN REPORT
Watts and Plame present "Global Zero" call to congress
Doomsday Clock Moves Closer!
Obama to consider 80-percent cuts in nukes!
EDITORIAL COMMENT: Good - how about cuts to no more than a "few" or "several"?
(An early study on the "optimal" number of nuclear weapons for "deterrence" concluded "somewhere between one and ten - closer to one."
North Korea understands. And see premise for new ABC TV series LAST RESORT) - Kevin Sanders, editor
COMING EVENTS - Hiroshima Day TV Special - An annual World Opinion Forum production in association with CUNY TV students Previous program
COMMENTARY:
START: Changing Course without swerving
KEVIN SANDERS, War&Peace, NY & ALEXANDER PIKAYEV Carnegie Non-Proliferation. Moscow
Wikileaks cables reveal growing pressure for nuclear de-alert
Hiroshima Nagasaki remembered - Greg Mitchell, The Nation
Admiral Noel Gaylor- N-Disarmament advocate dies at 96 - see his NYTimes 1982 article: "The Way to Get Rid of the Bombs is to Get Rid of the Bombs"
Kansas City activists in unprecedented move to Ban the Bomb
"Global Zero" opens in UK
US Court rejects International law - jails anti-nuke priests and nuns
MORE NEWS
ACTIVIST HANDBOOK
You are able to read these words
because 20 minutes ago neither Obama nor Medvedev
decided to launch the thousands of nuclear bombs they still keep on hair-trigger alert - every one an accident waiting to happen.
You are drunk, and we are on the edge of the roof."
Rumi
This lunatic legacy from the Cold War remains the most imminent threat to life on earth.
Human ingenuity that created the bombs is now summoned to get rid of them.
Pathways to Nuclear Zero
Admiral Noel Gayler - Former Commander US Pacific Fleet and Director of the National Security Agency
New York Times - 1982
NEW BOOKS
"Getting to Zero" is an edited volume of chapters about the implications of total nuclear disarmament for international security and national security covering a range of perspectives.This book takes on the much-debated nuclear zero objectives--exploring the serious policy questions around them and delineating the best practical steps for the nuclear nations to take to achieve them. It raises the urgent questions that need to be addressed and proposes some of the answers that need to be sought in the years ahead by world leaders, politicians, NGOs, and scholars.
OTHER RECENT BOOKS
FILMS...DOCUMENTARIES...VIDEOS... LATEST NEWS... GLOBAL LINKS ...
HANS BLIX talks with Economist
UN NGO representative for the War&Peace Foundation and the World Federalists on nuclear disarmament.
He was ABC cultural affairs commentator, CNN science editor and Chairman of the UN Earth-Day Spring-Equinox Peace-Bell ceremony founded by Margaret Mead - an event he hosts each year. Longer bio
RECENT QUOTES
"More than a billion people around the world would face starvation following a limited regional nuclear weapons exchange (such as a clash between India and Pakistan) that would cause major worldwide climate disruption driving down food production in China, the U.S. and other nations. "
Report from International Physicians
"It seems to me that if the minds behind the Manhattan Project were clever enough to invent the nuclear bomb, then surely we are clever enough to get rid of it….We need to embrace 21st Century Statecraft. We have new digital tools to work with and we need to get on with it. In my view, the information revolution was a significant factor in the comparatively rapid pace of the New START negotiations--exactly one year from our first meeting to our last one, whereas START took 9 years to negotiate. With enhanced ways to communicate with our capitals, as well as between our delegations, we could make more rapid progress in the (nulcear disarmament) negotiations. … Talking of electronic revolutions, you can follow me on twitter @gottemoeller. If you would have told me two years ago, that over 1000 people would sign up to read my 140-character thoughts, I would have called you crazy … "
Susan Gottemoeller - US Under Secretary for Arms Control
" "The administration is absolutely correct to look at deep cuts like this. The United States does not rely on nuclear weapons as a central part of our security."
Stephen Young, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists on possible 80 per-cent cuts in nukes.
"Removing tactical nuclear weapons from European combat bases is something that the United States and Russia could start working on right away. It would get arms negotiations back on track and open the door to a next round of U.S.-Russian reductions."
Richard Burt on Nuclear Zero report warning progress on nuclear arms reductions has stalled and should be revived
“The United States is left with an overwhelmingly powerful arsenal of weapons for which there is no obvious target, and a deterrence strategy that lacks credibility.”
Philip Taubman - "THE PARTNERSHIP: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb"
"Nuclear weapons mean never having to clean-up after yourself.
..Workers at PANTEX have dismantled the last B53 nuclear gravity bomb, a nine-megaton behemoth affectionately known as the “Crowd Pleaser.” Its sheer size and unfathomable explosive power — 600 Hiroshimas! — are so difficult to comprehend that one can’t help think about the Cold War and ask: What the hell were they thinking? That’s not what interests me, though. What really interests me is not that the US weaponeers built the B53 during the Cold War, but they put so little thought into the day when, sooner or later, someone would have to take it apart... it is sort of crazy that we don’t really know how much it costs to dismantle a warhead. (And if we do, that’s a recent phenomenon.) Second, it is really crazy that the costs associated with dismantlement aren’t part of the original funding. It turns out that the nuclear weapons complex simply doesn’t do “full cost accounting.”
Jeffry Lewis - James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies - Arms Control Wonk blog
“The political will to ban nuclear weapons is gathering. The long love affair will finally end when enough people really do start worrying about what will happen when every middle-sized country gets the bomb”
How We Stopped Loving The Bomb: An insider's account of the world on the brink of banning nuclear arms.
Senator Douglas Roche - Nobel Peace Prize nominee - (Video)
"The women's peace camp at Greenham Common has rightly achieved iconic status nationally and internationally over the last three decades … the women demonstrated a determination for disarmament that even the brutality of the security services could not deter. … In December 1982 I was one of over 30,000 women who held hands around the base at Greenham. One of my earliest experiences of the peace movement, it transformed my approach to politics and action - as it did for countless others. It is just and fitting to pay tribute to the Greenham women at this time: cruise missiles were eventually removed from Britain - and their protest played no small part in creating the conditions for that victory."
Kate Hudson, UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - Commemorating 30th Anniverary of Greenhan Commons
“The intractability of such long-running conflicts as the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir and the perception by Israel that it is under existential threat make a difficult context for advancing the disarmament case, and many question whether the zero target is utopian. But dramatic advances in the technology and practice of verification, key to persuading states that regard themselves as threatened to relinquish weapons, and the possibility of extending international security guarantees to the vulnerable, can lay the basis for incremental steps towards a safer world. ”
Report on Global Zero London conference - Irish Times
“Because of new weapons spending, it seems unlikely there will be any real nuclear weapon disarmament within the foreseeable future…. Highly touted efforts at nuclear disarmament are being canceled out by parallel investments in new nuclear weapons systems….more than 5,000 nuclear weapons are deployed and ready for use around the world, including 2,000 kept in a state of high alert.”
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – New Report
"Hints of a shockingly perverse response to a nuclear threat from political fanaticism or religious fundamentalism have been surfacing sporadically over the last few years. In January, 2008 the Guardian's Ian Traynor reported on a "radical manifesto" for a pre-emptive nuclear attack put forward by NATO's most senior military officers to "halt the 'imminent' spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction." The manifesto called for the "first use" of nuclear weapons by NATO to prevent their potential use by terrorists or a rogue state"
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould authors of "Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story"article in Huffington Post
"Despite New START there are more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. They must be abolished and the law has a pivotal role to play in their elimination. In 1996 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) spoke of “the nascent opinio juris” of “a customary rule specifically prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons.” Fifteen years later, following the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the achievement of treaty bans on landmines and cluster munitions, the legal imperative for non-use and elimination of nuclear weapons is more evident than ever...."
Vancouver Declaration to outlaw nuclear weapons
"It is one of the great achievements of humankind that we can split the atom. The nuclear energy released, however is inherently dangerous--whether in a power plant or a bomb. And not just dangerous like skydiving or gasoline tanks may be dangerous, but dangerous on an immense scale and duration."
Joseph Cirincione - "Hiroshima to Fukushima - The Illusion of Control" - MUST READ
“The United States is log jammed due to partisan political distortions and an extremely powerful military industrial media complex. Russia's leadership in many ways still feels threatened by the West. One can expect little substantial progress on nuclear disarmament arising from any of the P5 [countries]”
World Academy of Art and Science - Appeal to India to lead nuclear disarmament
“A 2008 poll by World Public Opinion.org found that in five nations with large nuclear arsenals and advanced delivery systems, large majorities favor the elimination of nuclear weapons - the U.S (77%); Russia (69%); China (83%); and Great Britain (81%). (To view the poll, Google: World Public Opinion 2008 Poll on Nuclear Weapons) The bad news is, that despite such favorable opinion for nuclear disarmament, there is no substantial evidence that personal action on behalf of nuclear disarmament is high on anybody's list of things to do, except of course for nuclear disarmament activists … For many, the threats of nuclear deterrence ended with the Cold War. Without question, this perception, along with the other aforementioned obstacles, has to be addressed if there is any real chance for U.S. and worldwide mobilization to end the myth of nuclear deterrence
MUST READ report by Bill Wickersham from Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
"Nuclear disarmament has gone viral. It is now mainstream – a fitting subject for even die-hard realists to consider and no longer a cause promoted by peace groups alone".
THE ULTIMATE NUCLEAR TEST by Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and Tibor Tóth, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO)
"Let me look into the role which non-nuclear-weapon States like Switzerland and civil society organizations could play in the disarmament arena. We are all stakeholders in our planet’s survival. We have the right – and the obligation – to get involved. We cannot leave disarmament to the nuclear-weapon States. We cannot leave health policy to the smokers. What can we do in concrete terms?"
Proposal by Federal Councillor M. Calmy-Rey, Swiss Foreign Minister on the occasion of the 19th IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) World Congress 27 August 2010, Basel, Switzerland.
"The challenges facing the transition to a nuclear-free world include the nature of the disarmament process, the issue of reversibility, the management and elimination of stockpiles of fissile materials, and the risks of nuclear weapon reconstruction and proliferation using materials and capabilities in civilian nuclear energy programs....
The path to a nuclear-weapon-free world may be slow. In his 2009 Prague speech, President Obama explained that while he wanted "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," he believed that "this goal will not be reached quickly -- perhaps not in my lifetime" (White House, 2009b). General Kevin Chilton, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, has offered a more specific horizon, claiming "When looking into the future a basic question is … will we still need nuclear weapons 40 years from now? I believe the answer to that question is yes." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed this goal further back, arguing, "our goal [is] of a world someday, in some century, free of nuclear weapons"
"ZIA MIAN Charting the path toward eliminating nuclear-weapons by (MUST READ)"
"A group of like-minded countries, in partnership with NGOs and international organizations, could begin a process that would begin the drive for global nuclear disarmament. The group would begin with developing the terms and elements of a convention to outlaw the possession and use of nuclear weapons.... It is time to place the burden of proof on those that would retain nuclear weapons. International security for many countries has been built around the concept of nuclear deterrence for over sixty years. The evidence for its reality is weak, whereas the risks are enormous....It is time to set about getting rid of nuclear weapons while we still have the opportunity."
DELEGITIMIZING NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence
The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Monterey Institute of International Studies
Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov and Ward Wilson
"We do not seek a vision of a nuclear-free world; we seek a nuclear free world."
Boniface Chidayausiku, UN Representative of Zimbabwe, and 2010 NPT Chair
"The policy of nuclear ambiguity, by which we fool only ourselves and nobody else, is not good for us any more. It was good, effective and successful for close to 40 years, but over 40 years many things changed and now I am telling you clearly, this policy is no longer in our interest."
Uzi Eilam, Israeli scientist, Former member of Israeli parliament, and head of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. Blog: May 10, 2010
"We need a nuclear arsenal. But we certainly don’t need one that is as big, expensive and unnecessarily threatening to much of the world as the one we have now... We have calculated that the country could address its conceivable national defense and military concerns with only 311 strategic nuclear weapons."
Gary Schaub Jr, Air War College and James Forsyth Jr, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in NY Times Op-Ed
“It would be possible for the two major powers to dismantle their arsenals in the time it took to build them up – about ten years.”
Kennedy Graham, Green Party leader, New Zealand Parliamentary call to lead N-Disarmament
VOICES PAST
"I welcomed the chance to tell Mr. Gorbachev that we are a nation that defends, rather than attacks; that our alliances are defensive, not offensive. We don’t seek nuclear superiority. We do not seek a first-strike advantage over the Soviet Union. Indeed, one of my fundamental arms control objectives is to get rid of first-strike weapons altogether. This is why we’ve proposed a 50-percent reduction in the most threatening nuclear weapons, especially those that could carry out a first strike.”
Ronald Reagan -Address before a joint session of the Congress following the Soviet-United States Summit Meeting in Geneva
November 21, 1985
Additional RECENT QUOTES
With the advent of the blogosphere's viral creativity, "we the people", now united as a self-selecting, leaderless global community of concerned citizens - "The Smart Mob" - may now be smarter than our leaders and their advisers.
Empowered by the unique and ever-evolving social, political and intellectual outreach and networking of the blogosphere - the emerging central nervous system of all humankind - "THE LAST BOMB" - a new YouTube Channel - will encourage, invite, explore, monitor, report, question and develop original proposals to overcome and obviate institutional inertia, political resistance and obsolete thinking, to open new vistas of thought and action.and to help hasten the return - with all deliberate speed - to a world without nuclear weapons.
For example, see blogs on:
Earlier Proposals to Zero Nukes.
Ten reasons nuclear weapons can now be abolished.
UNESCO's Power and Peace Network project
The Nuclear Abolitionist
NPT TV
NPT - Occasional Brief Comments Blog
CHEATER'S RISK - Videogame for a world without nukes
Everything you wanted to know and lots you didn't
Your ideas, comments, suggestions invited
Watch here for launch of our new experimental blog now in development: "Problem Box/Solution Box - NUCLEAR ZERO" modeled on the emerging new activist social network services such as Avaaz and citizen think-tank groups like The Well
Disarmament Organizations Worldwide
WHAT TO DO NOW ...