NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND GENOCIDE NEWSLETTER # 12, June 27, 2012. OMNI Building a Culture of PEACE, Compiled by Dick Bennett. (See #1, June 14, 2007; #2, January 8, 2008; #3 May 16, 2008; #4 June 10; 2009, #5 July 23, 2009, ; #6 Sept. 21, 2009; #7 August 29, 2010; #8 April 11, 2011; #9 August 4, 2011; #10 Feb. 27, 2012; #11 April 4, 2012.) Embrace a world free of nuclear weapons
See: International Day against Nuclear Tests (29 August). OMNI NUCLEAR FREE AND INDEPENDENT PACIFIC DAY AND MARSHALL ISLANDS NUCLEAR VICTIMS DAY, MARCH 1. NEWSLETTER #1. March 1, 2012. Expressions of OMNI’s NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT.
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ The dozens of newsletters provide OMNI and the peace and justice movement with subject-focused information and criticism. Editors are wanted for these Newsletter who can devote adequate attention to the subjects.
Contents of #9
Weapons Budgets Compared: Obama, Ryan, People
Book: Nuclear WWIII
Facts about Nuclear Weapons
Cost Study Project
Countdown to Zero Film
El Baradei’s The Age of Deception
Nonproliferation Funding
Health Effects of Nuclear Weapons Production and Testing
Contents of #10
Nuke Spending Increased
O’Hanlon’s Book on Disarmament
Weinstein, Nuclear Weapons Locations in US
Mitchell, Atomic Cover-up
Wittner, Scrapping Two Nuclear Plans
Banerjee, A Victory in New Mexico
Contents of #11
Norton, Bill to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
The Nuclear Resister
End Missile Tests at Vandenberg
International Campaign to Abolish
Pres. Obama’s Contradictions
Contents of #12
The SANE Act
Schell, Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Uranium Double Standards
Wittner, Deterrence?
Falk and Krieger Dialogue
Dear James,
In February, U.S. Representative Ed Markey introduced the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act – the SANE Act – designed to slash U.S. nuclear weapons expenditures by $100 billion over the next decade. Peace Action is working to recruit co-sponsors for the SANE Act, HR 3974, and I need your help. Right now, there are 45 co-sponsors and the list is growing.
Please write you Representative today and ask them to co-sponsor the SANE Act.
The SANE Act is so-named in honor of SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), one of the two peace groups that merged in 1987 to form Peace Action.
Representative Markey was one of a number of Members of Congress who joined us in honoring Peace Action at our 50th anniversary in 2007. When it was his turn to speak, he saw on his way to the podium a poster of an ad SANE ran in the 1960’s featuring the renowned pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock, He picked up the poster and told us the story of how he first became aware of the threat nuclear weapons pose to life on earth. He had seen the ad in his local paper and decided to use the issue of radioactive fall-out from weapons tests as the subject of a middle school science project. As I recall, he won the science prize and from there, began his life-long commitment to a world free from mass destruction.
His latest initiative, the SANE Act, would leave the U.S. with a nuclear arsenal second to none, but curtail plans for a new generation of nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
Will you help us recruit co-sponsors for this important legislation?
President Obama will be meeting with President-elect Valdimir Putin in May and a strong showing on the SANE Act would encourage our President to move more quickly and boldly to reduce the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals beyond the limits set in the New START Treaty signed in 2010.
The New START Treaty would limit the U.S. nuclear arsenal to just over 1,500 warheads. Yet, imagine what would happen if nuclear warheads exploded over just two U.S cities. Our nation would be ruined. The same holds true for any enemy. So why the overkill?
In 2010, three Air Force analysts wrote in the Strategic Studies Quartery, an Air Force publication, that just 311 deployed nuclear weapons would provide a sufficient deterrence for the U.S. regardless of how many nuclear weapons Russia possessed.
A paper written for the Pentagon by Paul Davis of the RAND National Defense Project Institute last October reached a similar conclusion. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear overkill is just plain inSANE.
That’s why we need a Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act. Help Representative Markey and Peace Action restore some sanity to US nuclear policy.
Humbly for Peace,
Kevin Martin
Executive Director
Peace Action
P.S. Before one penny is cut from Social Security and Medicare, Congress needs to stop wasting our tax-dollars on nuclear overkill. You can help! Please write your Representative today and ask her or him to co-sponsor HR3974 , the SANE Act. Thank you.
Schell, No Double Standards: All Abolish
Jonathan Schell, “Thinking the Unthinkable on Iran”
Common Dreams, April 7, 2012
Excerpt: "Nothing would be more effectual in healing the division than a believable commitment - not a vision but a plan - by the nuclear powers to surrender their own arsenals. The double standard, a leftover from the bipolar disguise that the nuclear dilemma wore during the cold war, is an anachronism."
READ MORE http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/290-139/10837-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-iran
US URANIUM DOUBLE STANDARD: IRAN AND KAZAKHSTAN
BY Ruff and Horn, Thursday 12 April 2012, NationofChange
“Iran hasn’t always been deemed a ‘nuclear threat’ by U.S. policymakers.”
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Iran’s alleged "nuclear threat" has taken center stage among diplomats, military men, and politicians in Washington, Tel Aviv, and the West at-large.
Despite the fact that investigative journalists Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have meticulously documented the fact that Iran, in fact, poses no nuclear threat at all, the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress have laid down multiple rounds of harsh sanctions as a means to "deter" Iran from reaching its "nuclear capacity."
The most recent round featured a call to boycott Iran’s oil industry by President Obama.
While rhetorical attention remains focused on Iran’s "threat", there is an "elephant in the room": Kazakhstan’s booming uranium mining and expanding nuclear industry -- a massive effort involving U.S. multinational corporations and an authoritarian regime increasingly tied to Washington.
Double standards have long reigned supreme in U.S. foreign policy. Few examples illustrate that better than the contrast between Washington’s stance toward the nuclear ambitions of Iran and Kazakhstan.
MORE:
http://www.nationofchange.org/uranium-double-standard-us-kazakhstan-and-iran-1334236438
"Do Nuclear Weapons Really Deter Aggression?"
http://hnn.us/articles/do-nuclear-weapons-really-deter-aggression
By Lawrence S. Wittner, History News Network, posted June 4
The author is a professor of history emeritus at SUNY Albany
FALK AND KRIEGER DIALOGUE
The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers
• Richard Falk
• David Krieger
Description
Nuclear weapons are not a subject of intense public discussion and debate, but they should be. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only the beginning; in recent times, nuclear annihilation at the hands of rogues and terrorists has become an even greater concern than the specter of nuclear war between superpowers. In a series of clear, calm, well-reasoned dialogues, longtime scholars and practitioners of peace Richard Falk and David Krieger probe key questions about our nuclear reality and dig beneath the surreal surface tranquility that has largely surrounded its existence.
Although the authors agree on much, there are many areas where their thoughts diverge, including their assessment of the value of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and of President Obama’s level of commitment to nuclear issues. They put forward new proposals and explore in the dialogues different ways to move ahead. They contend that a nuclear-free future is not a subject to be left only to experts—for the so-called experts have brought us to the brink of the nuclear precipice over and over again. Falk and Krieger believe that although none of us has the power to bring about global change alone, together we are immensely powerful—powerful enough to overcome the threats of the Nuclear Age and move us appreciably along “the path to zero.”
Covers questions about living in the Nuclear Age including:
• • How have we responded (or failed to respond) to these immensely powerful weapons?
• Are we capable of escaping their threat?
• Can civilization make the leap to survival in a world with thousands of nuclear weapons?
• Will humankind become the victim of its own cleverness?
• Will we recognize the nuclear dilemma that confronts us in the 21st century?
• Will we be able also to recognize our power, when acting together, to be a force for change?
• Will we act soon enough and forcefully enough to assure civilization’s survival?
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