OMNI
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #24, FEBRUARY 17, 2021.
STRUGGLE FOR THE TOTAL ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Post-UN
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace,
Justice, and Ecology
CONTENTS of ABOLITION
PUBLICATIONS AFTER JANUARY 22, 2021
History from the Inside:
Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine.
Organizing to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons
United Nations
United Nations' Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Anticipating the Treaty
September 26: United Nations International Day
for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
Hopes for NEW START Treaty
Non-Governmental
Organizations
New: Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security
Sr. Ardeth Platte and Plowshares
Feminist Critique of
Patriarchy
TEXTS
History from the Inside:
Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine.
Daniel
Ellsberg. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in
Nonfiction
From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon
Papers, an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America’s Top Secret,
seventy-year-long nuclear policy that continues to this day.
Here, for the first time, former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking
firsthand account of America’s nuclear program in the 1960s. From the
remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the
authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the
secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed,
would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup
in the history of civilization--and its proposed renewal under the Trump
administration--threatens our very
survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of
the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and
nothing has fundamentally changed since that era.
Framed as a memoir--a
chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating--this
gripping exposé reads like a thriller and offers feasible steps we can take to
dismantle the existing “doomsday machine” and avoid nuclear catastrophe,
returning Ellsberg to his role as whistle-blower. The Doomsday Machine is thus a real-life Dr. Strangelove story and
an ultimately hopeful--and powerfully important--book about not just our country,
but the future of the world.
Reviews
“The Doomsday Machine is being published at an alarmingly
relevant moment, as North Korea is seeking the capability to target the United
States with nuclear missiles, and an unpredictable president, Donald Trump, has
countered with threats of ‘fire and fury.’” –
New York Magazine
“A groundbreaking and nightmare-inducing account of how the
whole mad system works.” – Esquire
“One of the best books ever written on the subject--certainly
the most honest and revealing account by an insider who plunged deep into the
nuclear rabbit hole’s mad logic and came out the other side.” – Fred Kaplan, Slate
“Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine (Bloomsbury) unpacks the
power of our atomic arsenal.” – Vanity
Fair
“Ellsberg, the dauntless whistle-blower, has written a timely
plea for a reassessment of a weapons program that he describes as
‘institutionalized madness.’” – Best
Books of the Year 2017, The San Francisco Chronicle
“A passionate call for reducing the risk of total destruction .
. . Ellsberg’s effort to make vivid the genuine madness of the ‘doomsday
machine,’ and the foolishness of betting our survival on mutually assured
destruction, is both commendable and important.” – Editor’s Choice, New York Times Book Review
“Brilliantly and readably tackles an issue even more crucial
than decision-making in the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which is policy on
the handling of nuclear weapons.” – 10
Excellent December Books, Huffington Post
“Gripping and unnerving . . . A must-read of the highest order,
Ellsberg’s profoundly awakening chronicle is essential to our future.” – starred review, Booklist (“High Demand
Backstory”)
“Ellsberg’s brilliant and unnerving account makes a convincing
case for disarmament and shows that the mere existence of nuclear weapons is a
serious threat to humanity.” – starred
review, Publishers Weekly
“Noted gadfly Ellsberg returns with a sobering look at our
nuclear capabilities . . . When the author hurriedly copied the contents of his
RAND Corporation safe to reveal, in time, what would become known as the
Pentagon Papers, that was just the start of it. He had other documents, even
more jarring . . . Especially timely given the recent saber-rattling not from
Russia but North Korea and given the apparent proliferation of nuclear
abilities among other small powers.” –
Kirkus Reviews
“His point is simple: We and our political leaders must stop
thinking of nuclear war as a manageable risk. We must stop thinking of the
possibility of nuclear war as normal.” –
St Louis Post-Dispatch, “Our Favorite Books of 2017”
“The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
blends personal recollections and historical analysis with a set of considered
proposals for reducing the threat of apocalyptic war. Many years in the making,
it’s a book that arrives at an opportune moment.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Ellsberg’s book, perhaps the most personal memoir yet from a
Cold Warrior, fills an important void by providing firsthand testimony about
the nuclear insanity that gripped a generation of policymakers . . . The
Doomsday Machine is strongest as a portrait of the slow corruption of America’s
national security state by layer upon layer of secrecy. He relates how the Cold
War, the nuclear build-up and trillions of dollars of defense spending were
compromised by information purposely withheld from the policymakers and
politicians who debated and shaped our path” –
Washington Post
“History may remember Ellsberg as the whistleblower who leaked
the Pentagon Papers and helped end the Vietnam War, but his alarmingly relevant
new book should also assure his legacy as a prescient and authoritative
anti-nuclear activist. The Doomsday Machine, which takes its title from Dr.
Strangelove, reads like a thriller as Ellsberg figures out that America’s
pledge never to attack first was fiction and that the so called ‘fail-safe’
systems are prone to disaster.” – Los
Angeles Times
“Ellsberg writes briskly in the service of opinions formed by
long and sober study. What he means is never in doubt and it is always
interesting . . . He is a vigorous writer with a gift for dramatic tension and
the unfolding of events as they cascade toward disaster.” – Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books
“Ellsberg presents his thoughts on how best to dismantle a
program that could lead to global annihilation, while once again proving how
deeply disturbing and radically ignorant our country’s leaders are when it
comes to thermonuclear warfare.” – SF
Weekly
“The Doomsday Machine is chilling, compelling and certain to be
controversial.” – Minneapolis Star
Tribune
“Is it really necessary to declare that a knowledgeable,
detailed and passionate book about the odds-on danger of cataclysmically
destroying all human life on earth is important? Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday
Machine demands to be widely read. Its claims should be examined by experts,
corroborated, rebutted, taken up by Congressional committees (alas, unlikely)
and generally forced into public consciousness . . . The Doomsday Machine is engrossing
and frightening.” – Peter Steinfels,
America Magazine
“In the era of barbed insults regarded as precursors to nuclear
threat, the warnings yielded by The Doomsday Machine have become required
reading. . . . Daniel Ellsberg’s title evokes Kubrick’s film on purpose, a
metaphor that culminates in his definition of the ‘Strangelove Paradox.’ The
United States has thousands of ‘Doomdsay Machine’ weapons and hundreds of
‘fingers on the button.’ The question the reader must ask, now mortified by the
necessary horrors of Ellsberg’s masterpiece, is how to save the world” – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
“The Doomsday Machine is, in fact, a Bildungsroman, a tale of
one intellectual’s disillusionment with the country in which Ellsberg had
placed so much trust. It reveals how the horrors of US nuclear war planning
transformed a man of the establishment into a left-wing firebrand.” – Los Angeles Times
“[The Doomsday Machine is] an important tome that’s as
optimistic as it sounds. It’s vital reading that reminds people that both poor
planning--such as the US under Dwight Eisenhower having no contingency in place
for only bombing the USSR into dust, but it being a package deal with China,
something that confirmed the rigidity of these planners as well as their blithely
democidal tendencies--and the potential for simple mistakes still run rampant
in US nuclear policy.” – antiwar.com
“gripping . . . The
Doomsday Machine is essential reading--both a terrifying ‘Doctor
Strangelove’ saga and a hopeful consideration of future scenarios.” – Mercury News
“Ellsberg’s book is essential for facilitating a national
discussion about a vital topic.” –
starred review, Library Journal
“Alarming, galvanizing, and brilliantly written.” – Barnes & Noble Review
“Given the current crises, both domestic and international, the
timeliness of Ellsberg’s exposures-and warnings-is unnerving... The Doomsday
Machine is not for the faint of heart, but its sense of urgency should make it
required reading, and-more importantly-a call to action.” – BookPage
“Shocking . . . The Doomsday Machine is full of deeply
disturbing revelations. The book sometimes reads like a thriller, as Ellsberg
describes his mounting horror and revulsion over the discoveries he made over
the years.” – Five out of Five,
Berkleyside
“An absolutely imperative read in this day and age of Trump,
Putin, Kim Jong Un, and global instability.” –
Helen Caldicott, Founding President, Physicians for Social
Responsibility,
“This
long-awaited chronicle from the father of American whistle-blowing is both an
urgent warning and a call to arms to a public that has grown dangerously
habituated to the idea that the means of our extinction will forever be on
hair-trigger alert.” – Edward Snowden,
“Nobody could have told this horrifying story better than Daniel
Ellsberg. He introduces us to the men who have coldly and with a God-like sense
of righteous entitlement, put in place a plan that can, on a whim--not
virtually, but literally--annihilate life on Earth. What a book.” – Arundhati Roy, anti-nuclear activist and
author of THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS and the Pulitzer Prize-winner THE
GOD OF SMALL THINGS,
“A fascinating and terrifying account of nuclear war planning by
a consultant from the RAND Corporation at the highest levels of government in
the Kennedy administration. Ellsberg tells us of the close calls with nuclear
war and of the policies developed then that still threaten the planet with
annihilation. I couldn’t put the book down.” –
Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FIRE IN THE LAKE,
ORGANIZING FOR THE
ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons – UNODA
https://www.un.org › wmd › nuclear › tpnw
The Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the Conference (by a vote of 122 States in
favour, with one vote against and one abstention) at the United Nations on 7 July 2017, and opened for signature
by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on 20 September 2017.
United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons
https://treaties.un.org › Pages
› ViewDetails › src=TRE...
478.2020. TREATIES-XXVI-9
of 26 October 2020 (Entry into Force). The Treaty was adopted on 7 July 2017 by the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally
binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, held in New York from
27 to 31 March and 15 June to 7 July 2017.
|
September 26: United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of
Nuclear Weapons
On
September 26, the UN International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear
Weapons, as a member of the #WeThePeoples2020 coalition,
UFPJ took part in a 10 hour Nuclear-Weapon-Free World global civil society
program, including a plenary session and a workshop on using the law to advance
the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. A Global Appeal to
end the nuclear threat, abolish nuclear weapons and shift the weapons budgets
and investments to support public health, COVID-19 recovery, the climate and
sustainable development was also launched. READ MORE UFPJ (10-26-20)
Hopes rise of extension of New START arms control treaty as Russia offers to
freeze arsenal. Mronline.org
(10-25-20)
Russia
on Tuesday offered to freeze its current arsenal, and proposed an extension of
the treaty by one year. The treaty signed in 2010 capped the number of nuclear
warheads by the two countries and its deployment. | more…
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security Launches
As
the American Friends Service Committee ends its Peace & Economic Security
program, Joseph Gerson, the former
director, is taking on a new position as president of the Campaign for Peace,
Disarmament and Common Security. The Campaign will work to reduce great power
tensions, promote the abolition of nuclear weapons, and protect U.S. democracy
from authoritarianism. READ MORE UFPJ
(10-26-20)
Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
Reaches 50 Ratifications and Nears Entry-Into-Force. UFPJ (10-26-20)
On United Nations Day,
October 24, Honduras became the 50th country to ratify the
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, bringing the total number of
ratifications to 50. Having met this threshold, in 90 days the Treaty will
enter-into-force for those countries, strengthening the norm against the
possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear
weapons. Read
the statement issued by UFPJ member groups, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
and Western States Legal Foundation. READ
MORE….
UFPJ Notes with Sorrow the Passing of Sr. Ardeth Platte
Read a tribute to the long-time nuclear disarmament
advocate, plowshares activist, and inspiration for a character on the Netflix
show “Orange Is the New Black” by Patrick O’Neill of the Kings Bay Plowshares. The New York Times, which did not take note
of Sr. Platte during her lifetime as an activist published an obituary celebrating
her activism and commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. UFPJ. (10-26-20)
FEMINIST CRITIQUE of PATRIARCHY
Google Search 2-17-21
A feminist analysis can help us understand
how nuclear weapons are a masculinity and patriarchal tool,
and how it benefits the patriarchy to advocate for their continued existence in
the arsenals of a select few governments.
What
Do Feminists Think of Nuclear Weapons? – WILPF
https://www.wilpf.org › what-do-feminists-think-of-nuc...
Dec 7, 2020 — Why are Nuclear
Weapons a Patriarchal
Tool? As many feminist scholars and activists have revealed,
patriarchy conflates masculinity with ...
What Does Feminism Have to Do With Nuclear Policy? |
Outrider
https://outrider.org › nuclear-weapons
› articles › what-...
Only a handful of nations currently possess nuclear weapons. The Non-Proliferation Treaty grants China,
Russia, France, the U.K., and the U.S. the right to ...
A Feminist
Analysis of Nuclear Weapons: Part 1 - Hegemonic ...
https://centreforfeministforeignpolicy.org › 2016/12/30
Dec 30, 2016 — Nuclear weapons represent more than just weaponry in international
discourse; they are a symbolic pawn in a game of global politics. They
serve ...
A Feminist
Nuclear Policy | Ploughshares Fund
https://ploughshares.org › issues-analysis
› article › fem...
Apr 3, 2019 — There are several themes woven throughout US nuclear policy,
stemming largely from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
(PDF) A Feminist
Perspective on the Nuclear Weapon ...
https://www.researchgate.net › ...
› Discourse
Jan 6, 2019 — nuclear weapons discourse and the gendered consequences of the discourse.
It examines the way in which. the nuclear weapons discourse ...
Feminism and
Nuclear Weapons - Research - Politics and ...
http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk › gender_and_politics
› news
Feminism and Nuclear Weapons. Claire Duncanson organised a panel on feminism and nuclear weapons at the PSA 60th Annual International
Conference.
A feminist
critique of the atomic bomb - Global Campaign for ...
https://www.peace-ed-campaign.org › a-feminist-critiqu...
Jun 27, 2019 — A feminist analysis can help us understand
how nuclear weapons are a patriarchal tool, and how it
benefits the patriarchy to advocate for their ...
Five Reasons
Nuclear Weapons are a Feminist Issue – WILPF ...
https://www.wilpf.org.uk › five-reasons-nuclear-weapo...
Aug 26, 2018 — 'Banning nuclear weapons can be an act of challenging the patriarchy and building
space for a new alternative approach to politics, including ...
CONTENTS: NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION
NEWSLETTER, #23, January 15, 2018
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2018/01/omni-nuclear-weapons-abolition.html
Two Books on Nagasaki Nuclear Bombing
Stelson, Sachiko
Southard, Nagasaki
World War III
Michel Chossudovsky. Towards
a World War III Scenario. The Dangers of Nuclear War.
2 012. US and Israel v. Iran
Trump’s
“Usable” Nucs
Anti-Nucs
Movement 2017
Greenwood, UN Ban Treaty
UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons and Nobel Peace Prize
Awarded to ICAN
Lieu/Markey Bill Barring U.S. president from starting a nuclear war without a
declaration of war by Congress.
Eiger. Film. The Nuns, the Priests, and the
Bombs. Pacific
Life Community,
Disarm Now Plowshares v. Trident
Submarines at Strategic Weapons
Facility, Pacific, Bangor, Wash.
Symposium at University of
New Mexico
Organizations
Against Nuclear Weapons
Harvey, American Anti-Nuclear Activism,
1975-1990
Zac, Almighty, Three Catholics break into the uranium-enrichment facility at Oak
Ridge
Analyses: Letters, Articles, Books
Lichterman:
Trump, Destroyer
Wittner, Why So Little
Public Protest
Krieger, Letter to Trump and Putin
Sprey and Spinney, US MICC Drumming Up
anti-Russian
hysterics.
Special Focus:
Accidents
Nuclear Weapons Mishaps
Near Nuclear Disaster at Damascus,
AR, Film and Book:
Command and Control
Nuclear War, the
Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric
Schlosser
US/SU Nuclear Subs Collide,
Nukewatch Quarterly (pub. by the Progressive
Foundation).
Spring
2017.
Special Feature of MICC we don’t hear often
Graff, Raven Rock, Save the Leaders
OMNI Opposition to Nuclear War
October 14, 2017, Celebrated UN
Nuclear Ban Treaty and ICAN’s Nobel Peace Prize
OMNI’s Long Opposition to Nuclear
Weapons
Annual Remembrance each August
Newsletters
Related: Marshallese
Education Initiative (MEI) 3-4-17.
No comments:
Post a Comment