This Simulator Shows the Devastating Consequences of Global Nuclear War
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“Today’s NDAA is far from our vision for a just, peaceful, and democratic foreign policy. Its failures not only underscore how critical it is that we continue building progressive grassroots movements for a better foreign policy — it calls into question the defense authorization process altogether.”
NDAA a Blank Check for Trump’s Reckless Foreign Policy
Over 35 organizations representing a diverse set of issue areas — strengthening diplomacy, protecting migrants and refugees, preventing wars of choice, reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe, combating corruption, promoting human rights and sound environmental policies, and standing up for democratic values — released the following statement regarding the fiscal year (FY) 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) conference report.
“With deep conviction I wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home. The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I already said two years ago. We will be judged on this. Future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth. How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?”
Pope Francis calls for a world free of nuclear weapons
Visiting Japan, Pope Francis has condemned atomic weapons, nuclear deterrence and the growing arms trade. He said the money spent on weapons should be used to eradicate poverty and protect the environment.
“As the budget for expanded production of nuclear weapons keeps going up and up, the effort to clean up past production continues to fail, threatening future generations.”
Already 12 years behind schedule, a project at the Hanford nuclear complex meant to transform millions of gallons of radioactive waste into benign glass faces yet another delay.
Feds aim to push back the opening of ‘glassification’ plants, while state officials say the Department of Energy has been underfunding the cleanup of America’s most poisoned site.
ARTICLE BY: JOHN STANG | crosscut.com
“All nations should declare—all nations—that nuclear weapons must be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.”
Mikhail Gorbachev tells the BBC: World in ‘colossal danger’
The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in “colossal danger” due to the threat from nuclear weapons. In an interview with the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, former President Gorbachev called for all countries to declare that nuclear weapons should be destroyed.
“The double standards applied by the Trump administration have been particularly damaging to international nonproliferation agreements…
Trump has pursued normalisation of relations with North Korea – a state that openly tested and detonated nuclear devices – while withdrawing from a nuclear deal with Iran, which was strictly abided by all provisions and was not working on developing a nuclear bomb.”
![Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shakes hands with US President Donald Trump, at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019 [Handout via Reuters]](https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/75630a33070b4c1fac591980c0650462_18.jpg)
Trump is laying the ground for a nuclear arms race in the Gulf
Trump’s mismanagement of the nuclear issue in the Middle East is damaging the international nonproliferation regime.
“Our participation in the Cold War has devastated our lands and our way of life as Navajo people,”
– Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.
“The impact is not only physical, but spiritual and emotional.”
Effects of radiation exposure on locals studied
On Monday, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., served as chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing in Albuquerque to examine radiation exposure effects in Indian Country. Udall was joined by U.S. Reps. Ben Ray Luján and Deb Haaland for the hearing at the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute. For much of the 20th century, New Mexicans were not warned about the health effects of working or living near uranium mines or nuclear test sites. Radiation exposure still affects residents today, including a disproportionate number of Native Americans.
“Nuclear weapons present an unacceptable danger to humanity. The only real way to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
— UN Secretary-General António Guterres
“Every nuclear weapon that is dismantled makes us a little bit safer…
These weapons threaten our society simply by existing, because there is always the risk of intentional use, unintentional use or accidents.”
— Lilly Adams
“The primary aim of our work is to reduce our nuclear weapons arsenal and spending on nuclear weapons, and working towards a world without nuclear weapons,”
Lilly Adams is the security program organizer for WPSR, as well as the co-chair of the group’s Nuclear Weapons Abolition Task Force. Adams coordinates WPSR’s statewide coalition, Washington Against Nuclear Weapons.
Physicians Work to Bring Back the Anti-Nuclear Movement – truthout.org
“As long as we allow these (nuclear) weapons to exist, we flirt with the catastrophe that they will be used, whether intentionally or accidentally.”
– David Krieger, founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, from his recent piece that calls for collective action for systemic change to end the possibility of nuclear war.
Nuclear Abolition: The Road from Armageddon to Transformation
“…given that France is a nuclear state, it would be ordinary citizens who would be committing a “crime”
if they were found to be “publicizing, spreading and reproducing false information intended to cause public disorder [while raising concerns about radioactive tritium in drinking water]”
— Linda Pentz Gunter
“Today, watching as the edifice of [nuclear weapons] strategic stability slowly but surely collapses, Washington and Moscow are acting as if time is on their side. It is not.”
The Return of Doomsday
Sputnik / Alexei Nikolsky / Kremlin via Reuters
The New Nuclear Arms Race—and How Washington and Moscow Can Stop It
“These materials are ounce-for-ounce the most dangerous materials known to man,”
— Stuart Smith
Smith is with Cooper Law Firm out of New Orleans. His firm filed a lawsuit in May alleging Ohio residents near a former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon were exposed to radioactive contaminants that spread to other properties but were never informed.
Last week in Piketon, Ohio, hundreds of people stood in line for hours to participate in a town hall on alleged radioactive contamination, wanting to make sure they and their families were safe.
“New Mexico residents were neither warned before the 1945 Trinity blast, informed of health hazards afterward, nor evacuated before, during, or after the test. Exposure rates in public areas from the world’s first nuclear explosion were measured at levels 10,000- times higher than currently allowed.”
— From the Final Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document and Retrieval and Assessment Project, Prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 2010, pp. ES-34-35. VIEW REPORT HERE
“Don’t imagine we are going to keep everything quiet, say nothing and then at the last minute go ta-da! and surprise everyone. No. This is a process of continual negotiation and talking.”
— Joan Girling, member of Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), an environmental group protesting against the French energy company EDF.
“The managers of the weapon program now seem to believe that their mission is to increase the weapon program budget and protect payroll.”
An observation from the late Robert L. Peurifoy (1928-2017)
A tribute to the nuclear weapons and arms control expert was recently posted on Google here
Bob Peurifoy managed design and development of nuclear weapons at the Sandia Corporation for 39 years and devoted all his retired years to independent consulting on nuclear weapons and arms control issues with several scientific organizations. The “Tribute” contains excerpts from his 2011-2016 e-mail archive.
“At a time of rising nuclear tensions, casually postulating about the potential upsides of a nuclear attack is obtuse in the extreme.”
Senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Alexandra Bell – commenting on the Nuclear Operations document that was taken down from the Pentagon online site after a week, and is now only available through a restricted access electronic library. The Pentagon believes using nuclear weapons could “create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability”, according to a new nuclear doctrine adopted by the US joint chiefs of staff last week.
“Posting a document about nuclear operations and then promptly deleting it shows a lack of messaging discipline and a lack of strategy. Further, at a time of rising nuclear tensions, casually postulating about the potential upsides of a nuclear attack is obtuse in the extreme.”
Nuclear weapons: experts alarmed by new Pentagon ‘war-fighting’ doctrine theguardian.com
“If you start crying, I’ll kick you out right away,”
— Lyudmilla Ignatenko, remembering the 1986 Chernobyl disaster
businessinsider.com | In the wake of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident, which forced the city of Pripyat in what was then part of the Soviet Union to evacuate after being exposed to toxic levels of radiation, Soviet officials publicly downplayed the incident. To this day, scientists are still working to understand the effects of the fatal explosion.
A firefighter named Vasily Ignatenko and his wife, Lyudmilla, were scheduled to leave for Belarus the morning of the explosion, but their plans were curtailed when Vasily rushed to the power plant at about 1:30 a.m. He promised to wake his wife when he got home, but his severe radiation poisoning forced him to be taken to the hospital.
When Lyudmilla visited her husband, she was ordered not to touch him. “If you start crying, I’ll kick you out right away,” she recalled being told in the book “Voices from Chernobyl.”
Lyudmilla was pregnant at the time but lied to the radiologist to see her husband. Vasily died 14 days after the accident and was buried, as the series shows, in a zinc coffin. Lyudmilla eventually gave birth to her baby, who died after four hours.
Unlike a dinner buffet where it’s “all you can eat at a fixed price,” the nuclear buffet table requires you to pay for everything. With the current spending plan, that is right now estimated to be $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years by the Congressional Budget Office. If you add on all the other capabilities this administration apparently wants to add on, you’re talking about an even bigger price tag.”
Unlike a dinner buffet where it’s “all you can eat at a fixed price,” the nuclear buffet table requires you to pay for everything. With the current spending plan, that is right now estimated to be $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years by the Congressional Budget Office. If you add on all the other capabilities this administration apparently wants to add on, you’re talking about an even bigger price tag.” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Appropriations Committee”
| armscontrol.org – May 2019