Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
Working for Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth since 1952
the 1939 Letter from Albert Einstein
Farm Hall: the Fall into Failure
Hitler's Uranium Club
https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2013/03/01/farm-hall/
Oppenheimer’s boss lied, repeatedly, about radiation poisoning.
Christopher Nolan and the Contradictions of J. Robert Oppenheimer
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/movies/christopher-nolan-oppenheimer.html
The time Oppenheimer met Ben-Gurion to discuss Israel’s nuclear quest
Amir Oren - Haaretz
"If Oppenheimer’s views, as told to and by Ben-Gurion, played any part in the Dimona decisions, then the Jewish physicist who helped change the world influenced not one but two nuclear projects."
Trinity test sent radiation to 46 states
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/science/trinity-nuclear-test-atomic-bomb-oppenheimer.html
'Fallout' Tells The Story Of The Journalist Who Exposed The 'Hiroshima Cover-Up'
Survivors of Trinity were not Warned or Compensated
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Mark Colville of New Haven, CT is out on bail after being imprisoned 15 months for damaging a plaque on a wall and hammering a model of a Trident armed sub. He was part of the Kings Bay Plowshare 7. (for more about that scroll down this page to "No More Tridents".) He was found guilty along with the others and will be sentenced Feb. 19, 2021. In view of the treaty banning possession of nuclear weapons we have set up a petition to ask the Georgia judge, Lisa Godbey, to make his sentence "time served", in other words no new jail time. Click here to see the petition.
And click here to see the article by Frida Berrigan and Joanne Sheehan in the New London Day published January 22, 2021.
As this is written the port of Beirut has been devastated by a series of explosions. No one knows if the blasts were deliberate or an accident, but apparently one factor as the New York Times reports was “2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical commonly used in fertilizer and bombs, which had been stored in a warehouse at the port since it was confiscated from a cargo ship in 2014”. This was 1400 times the amount of the chemical used by the bombers who blew up the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Whether this was an accident, terrorist bombing or act of war, the storing for years of this amount of incredibly dangerous material in one place was certainly an act of criminal negligence.
Writing a few days before the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima one is stirred to speak about a far greater act of criminal negligence, our possession of nuclear bombs. Back in 2013 Eric Schlosser wrote “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety” which in part detailed the many accidents and near catastrophes that are publicly known. The worst was the Damascus incident which happened 40 years ago. It took place in Arkansas not in Syria. During a routine maintenance procedure, a young worker accidentally dropped a nine-pound tool in the silo, piercing the missile’s skin and causing a major leak of flammable rocket fuel. Sitting on top of that Titan II was the most powerful thermonuclear warhead ever deployed on an American missile. The weapon was about 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Over nine hours airmen worked successfully to prevent an explosion that would have in the words of Schlosser “would have led to the destruction of the state of Arkansas".
He writes about many other accidents like the one in 1970 in South Carolina. A B-52 bomber broke apart over South Carolina. Centrifugal forces pulled the switches, so to speak, to arm a hydrogen bomb aboard, all but the last switch. A hydrogen bomb fell into the backyard of a family and its non-nuclear chemicals exploded causing injuries. The last switch (later found to be defective) was all that save South Carolina from a holocaust.
Schlosser on Democracy Now! said “The official list of nuclear weapons accidents that the Pentagon puts out lists 32, but the real number is many, many higher than that.” (DN! 9/18/13)
Over the years since the Cold War the number of ready to launch nuclear bombs has been sharply reduced, but there are still thousands on “hair-triggers” at U.S. and Russian bases. Unfortunately the Trump Administration is doing its best to end agreements with Russia and is joining with Russia in a race to build “hypersonic” missiles that would cut the time the generals had to decide whether to launch nuclear weapons. Hypersonic speed is 5 times the speed of sound.
Monstrous criminal negligence.
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August 6, 2020.
Announcing a Campaign Against the Columbia Ballistic Missile Submarine
Seventy-five years after the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the first use of nuclear weapons, the United States continues to construct new threats to all creation.
Machines age, and grow useless. The Trident ballistic missile submarines are no exception. First put into service in 1981, they are approaching the end of their expected operational life. But instead of allowing them to simply pass into obsolescence and remove the threat which they pose to all creation, our government is undertaking to replace them with a new weapon to assure that the threat continues without intermission. The Columbia class of submarines has been described as the Navy's top priority program, which will be funded even if that comes at the expense of other Navy programs. Each sub will carry sixteen missile tubes, eight fewer than the current Ohio-class Tridents, but will also have updated propulsion and stealth capabilities which will magnify their threat. They will initially carry the existing Trident II D-5 missile, but designs for both a new missile and warhead are now underway.
Plans are for the production of twelve boats at a projected cost that is presently estimated at $103 to $109 billion. Initial construction has already begun at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, with final assembly to take place at Electric Boat in Groton, CT, beginning this year, ahead of schedule. A new facility for that exclusive purpose is now being built in the Groton shipyard.
At a time when the consequences of global warming and pandemic are being experienced in the lives of all humanity on a daily basis, we condemn the reckless and immoral commitment of human creativity and treasure to these weapons which threaten to erase all creation, and by their mere existence deny fundamental rights to human freedom and community. It is obviously clear that they would constitute a crime against both humanity and the environment.
The NO New Tridents campaign proposes to undertake programs of public education, lobbying and nonviolent civil disobedience calling for the immediate abandonment of the Columbia submarine, and the diversion of funds set aside for its construction to policies which will realize the rights of all the world's people to healthcare, housing, education, income equity and racial justice.
The Norfolk Catholic Worker will be the primary organizer around the Newport News Shipyard, while the Hartford Catholic Worker will coordinate the witness at Electric Boat.
For further information, contact stephen.kobasa@gmail.com
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David Lindorff has a provocative article up on Counterpunch. He says that if the Soviets hadn’t developed their own atomic bombs there would have been a nuclear war in the early 1950’s. The U.S. would have utterly obliterated the Soviet Union.
He cites the 1987 book by Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod “To Win a Nuclear War” which he says explains that “the US was planning to launch a devastating nuclear first strike blitz on the Soviet Union as soon as it could build and deliver the 300 nuclear bombs that Pentagon strategists believed would be needed to destroy the Soviet Union as an industrial society and its Red Army as well”. Lindorff says the only reason it didn’t happen was that the Soviet Union was able to use its spies to get the technical knowledge to make a bomb. The Soviet generals tested an atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 and then Truman and his generals knew that the chance for a nuclear blitzkrieg was gone. Now both countries had nuclear weapons and there was a "balance of terror". Later when both sides had enough nukes to wipe each other out wits called the balance M.A.D., Mutual Assured Destruction.
Curiously Lindroff doesn’t mention the shocking revelations of Daniel Ellsberg in his book “The Doomsday Machine” (2017). Ellsberg is widely famed for releasing the Pentagon Papers revealing truths about the origins of the Vietnam War, but in the Doomsday Machine he talked about his years as a top nuclear war planner in the early Kennedy years. He found out then (to his horror) that Eisenhower had only one plan for war with the Soviet Union. If there was a direct war the U.S. would use every type of nuclear weapon against Soviet cities and military bases all at once. Ellsberg asked for estimates of deaths in the USSR (and Eastern Europe and Western Europe) of such an attack and was given the figure of 600 million deaths.
Lindorff says that the fact that the there has not been a direct war between the superpowers is “miraculous” and is chiefly due to the terror of both sides have for mutual annihilation. So should we be glad for MAD? What about those who demand unilateral nuclear disarmament as a way of stopping the mad arms race. Are they naïve? Dangerous?
Clearly the current U.S. policy of tearing up all nuclear arms limitation agreements is reckless in the extreme. So is the policy of the Russian and U.S. militaries to develop hypersonic weapons that shorten the time needed to whether incoming radar blips are nuclear missiles or just flocks of birds.
There is now a treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, that bans possession of nuclear weapons war crimes. It was signed by 122 nations. Unfortunately none of the nuclear powers that actually have atomic weapons have signed the treaty.
What should the people demand? More transparency to maintain the balance of terror? Treaties to limit and gradually eliminate nuclear weapons? Unilateral disarmament? Gradual unilateral disarmament to force one's own side to seriously negotiate treaties? Something else?
These are the thoughts on the question of Promoting Enduring Peace President Paul Hodel:
"As persons around the world observe the 75th year since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should demand that nations of the world take specific actions to reduce and eliminate the threat of nuclear war. As the leader of the nuclear weapons race, the United States needs to negotiate with other nuclear weapons states stop the rapid drift to nuclear war. This can be achieved by:
1. Taking all nuclear weapons systems off launch on warning, hair trigger alert.
2. Stopping the production and delivery of first strike nuclear weapons on land, sea, air, and outer space.
3. Renewing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
4. Hold direct negotiations with Russia and other nuclear-armed nation to create a road towards nuclear abolition
5. Rather than military confrontations, sponsor direct citizen exchanges and diplomacy.
As nations military programs and spending are reduced, funding can be redirected to civilian programs. Nations can develop peace conversion efforts. They can support Green New Deal solar energy programs."
Activist Stephen Vincent Kobasa wrote:
"Some years ago, the Quaker activist John Stoner wrote that 'A country which has dangled the sword of nuclear holocaust over the world for half a century and claims that someone else invented terrorism is a country out of touch with reality.' The current pandemic is a reminder of that time in our history when
children were sent to school prepared to cower under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack. We never succeeded in eliminating the threat, but we did turn the fear into an acceptable cliché that one could learn to live with. I suspect that, in the end, that will be society's plan for dealing with the enduring reality of Covid-19. As to those who would argue that MAD was an efficient limit on nuclear warmaking, it is unsurprising that they always neglect to note the other consequences of having the capacity for absolute destruction, one of the most significant being that it makes every other kind of violence relatively lesser in degree, as long as we are the only ones practicing it. And so we are shocked at the potential
for a country such as Iran to construct a nuclear weapon, when it is we who have made the possession of such weapons the sine qua non of state power. This is called irony."
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This week -- August 6 and 9 -- will mark the 75th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To observe these important anniversaries, NAPF's Sadako Peace Day event will be livestreaming on our Facebook page at 9:00 pm Eastern / 6:00 pm Pacific on Thursday, August 6. Our keynote speaker is Toshiharu Kano, who is perhaps the youngest survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The event will include music, poetry, and reflection. Tune in live at 9:00 pm Eastern on the NAPF Facebook page! A recording will also be available to watch at a later time. More information on this year's speakers is here.
A new film, "The Vow From Hiroshima," featuring Hiroshima survivor and NAPF Advisory Council member Setsuko Thurlow, will be available to stream online for free for 24 hours on August 9th. To view this film on August 9th, click on this link.
I am also excited to announce that Mary Becker, a filmmaker, long-time supporter of NAPF, and dedicated nuclear weapons abolition activist, has made her film "Original Child Bomb" available to stream for free on YouTube. The film takes a meditative approach and aims to touch the viewer’s heart by focusing on the devastating human cost of the atomic bombings. Becker's film is free to stream any time on YouTube at this link. You can also read this short article where Mary explains why she chose to re-issue the film at this moment in history.
Rick Wayman
CEO
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sponsored by CT Groups
ZOOM Event - REGISTRATION REQUIRED: Click here => Registration
Please Register now at http://nonukes-nowar.org/ or www.hopeoutloud.org
75th Anniversary of the start of the nuclear age
August 6, 2020
6:30 to 7:30 pm EST.
Due to personal safety concerns from the Covid-19 pandemic the 2020 Remembrance will be a multimedia Zoom event.
ZOOM Event - REGISTRATION REQUIRED: Click here => Registration
“Zoom-in” and join the annual Hartford area Hiroshima/Nagasaki Remembrance A Shared Call for Nuclear Weapon Abolition
Thousands of nuclear weapons kept on hair trigger alert are targeting civilian populations. Rather than moving to eliminate this threat, a new nuclear arms race has begun and the number of nuclear armed nations threatens to rise.
Seventy-five years later – do you feel more secure?
Sponsors:
CT Peace and Solidarity Coalition, Hope Out Loud, No Nukes/No W., United Nations Association of Connecticut, Veterans for Peace CT Chapter 42
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The Federation of American Scientists revealed in late January the U.S. Navy had for the first time deployed a submarine armed with a low-yield Trident nuclear warhead. Low-yield is nuclear speak. One of these bombs would obliterate 20 blocks of people and buildings in New York City. These new nuclear bombs were put on the USS Tennessee whose base is in Georgia at Kings Bay.
Speaking on Democracy Now reporter William Arkin said he thought the sub was being equipped with the new bomb not to scare Russia, but to warn Iran and North Korea. It would make a nuclear attack more possible since the weapons were ONLY "low-yield". Arkin was very concerned given Donald Trump's personality and how in the range of measures to take against Iran the most extreme, assassination of Soleimani, was the one he chose.
If Kings Bay rings a bell in your memory that's the base where the Kings Bay Plowshares did a non-violent action a couple of years ago and are now awaiting their prison sentences.
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We have an archive of articles opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Some 20 important pieces written over the years. Click here to get to them.
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