Wednesday, March 17, 2021

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #13

 

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #13

3 ITEMS IN THIS WWW

Nuclear Bombs Factory at Rocky Flats

NUKES OUTLAWED JANUARY 22, 2021
  On this day The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons became international law. 

President Biden and Pentagon Budget

 

From Auschwitz to Rocky Flats

WE DIDN’T KNOW (Germans who lived nearby Auschwitz, US citizens who lived near Rocky Flats, CO)

   Almost the final words of The Doomsday Machine were written by Robert Ellsberg, Daniel’s eldest son.   He and his father sat on railroad tracks at Rocky Flats, trying “to stop the production of plutonium triggers there, ”trying to show that we the people have “the power to change ourselves and history” by “accepting the risks of peacemaking.”

  “Rocky Flats is the Auschwitz of our time.  Behind that barbed wire…intelligent, decent family men in their white suits and their security badges” are preparing “for the Final solution to the Human Problem.  In each bomb prepared at Rocky Flats is another Holocaust—perhaps for the children of Moscow, Peking, Hanoi—those who build them don’t know.

   At one of the German concentration camps. . .the American troops who liberated it forced the townspeople  to tour the camp. . .the piles of corpses, the ovens that had disposed of the dead.  And of course they were numbed and shocked and they said, ‘We didn’t know—we didn’t know what was in those boxcars—we didn’t know what came out of those chimneys.”   

   So son and father and friends stood on the railroad tracks at Rocky Flats on May 12, 1978, outside Arvada, CO, not far from Denver, where plutonium detonators, used in nuclear bombs from 1952 until 1989, were produced by the plant's operator, Rockwell International Corporation, the protesters “trying to warn the people” what kind of cargo” travelled over those tracks in those boxcars, even if it meant arrest.
Based upon the final 2 pp. of The Doomsday Machine pp. 337-9.
--Dick

 

NUKES OUTLAWED JANUARY 22, 2021
    On this day
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons became international law.  (It had been approved 122-1 by the UN General Assembly in July 2017.)  Nuclear weapons are now illegal under international law.  Earlier, nuclear weapons were the only weapons of mass destruction not banned under international law, despite their catastrophic consequences. The US and the other nuclear weapons nations have not signed the Treaty, and the US is working to undermine it
Now they are prohibited weapons of mass destruction, and the Treaty provides a legal framework for lasting nuclear disarmament. 

    The nine nuclear-armed countries are also still violating the 50 year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires them to negotiate to eventually eliminate all Nuclear weapons.  Instead, the nuclear powers are developing new generations of nuclear weapons.  The US plans to spend $494 billion over the next ten years, and over 1.7 trillion in the next 30 years to “upgrade” its arsenal.  The military-industrial complex driving the expenditures, will make billions of dollars, part of which they give to politicians in Congress and White House, who are part of the complex, to sustain the nuclear regime.


ACTION
What Can We Do?
Demand that the US and all the nuclear powers sign the Treaty and begin the de-nuclearization of the planet.  How do we DEMAND?
Internationally:
Support ICAN The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Nobel Peace Prize winner), a coalition of non-governmental organizations in a hundred countries promoting the Treaty.  Icanw.org .  The easiest and most effective action against nuclear danger is to support established abolition organizations.  See WWW on Global Zero, 3-10-21.
Locally:
Join OMNI’s demonstrations at Martin Luther King, Jr., and Razorback Road, where we also protest UAF’s participation in the complex.  King called for ending the nuclear arms race in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Dec. 1964: “we must shift the arms race into a ‘peace race.’”  In this particular, King speaks against Razorback UAF, which should divest itself from armaments research..
Be ready to reply to people, who complain we can’t afford the best education and health care: the money is available from the nuclear weapons industry, and join us abolish nuclear weapons.
Dick

BIDEN’S PENTAGON BUDGET

PRESIDENT BIDEN (and try warmaker Rep. Womack again) needs to hear from you on the Pentagon budget

Erica Fein   WIN WITHOUT WAR    3-13-21

11:17 AM (3 hours ago)

Dick — 2020 blew the lid off one of the greatest lies told by lawmakers for generations: that astronomical amounts of Pentagon spending keep us safe.

The reality is that the threats that are killing us — a poor public health system, white supremacy, climate change — cannot be fixed with another multi-billion dollar fighter jet, multi-million dollar missiles, or multi-trillion dollar nuclear weapon systems.

President Biden could rein in Pentagon spending, but reports indicate he is set to recommend the SAME level of Pentagon spending as last year — the same amounts as Trump’s last budget request.

This is the polar opposite of where we need to be heading, so we’re working with progressive Representatives like Barbara Lee, Mark Pocan, and Jake Auchincloss for an all-out push to build support in Congress and pressure Biden’s team to STOP overfilling the Pentagon’s coffers.

Add your name and tell your Representatives to join the Lee-Pocan-Auchincloss letter and support cutting the Pentagon budget!

Did you know? We could cut the Pentagon budget by more than ten percent and still spend more than the next ten largest militaries — combined! Imagine the generational impact those hundreds of billions of dollars in savings would have: if instead of weapons, arms dealers, and war, we invested them in diplomacy, humanitarian aid, global public health, sustainability initiatives, and basic research. 

The pandemic surfaced injustices that have long needed correcting, and the voters who elected President Biden and a Democratic majority in Congress made clear that we want to see our priorities put back in order and our communities put first. 

One of the most impactful ways President Biden and Congress can do that is by proposing a budget that reflects our priorities — and that means a decrease to the Pentagon budget topline. 

We’re working with Rep. Barbara Lee and other allies to make sure Biden’s team doesn’t fall short. They’re circulating a letter around the House now to build the coalition necessary to make this urgent demand a reality. Dick — can you help us create the huge pressure we need in order to stop constantly plowing trillions of dollars into the Pentagon’s already stuffed coffers?

Add your name and tell your Representatives: It is TIME to cut the Pentagon budget!

Thank you for working for peace,

Erica, Amisha, Annika, and the Win Without War team

© Win Without War 2020
1 Thomas Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005
(202) 656-4999 | 
info@winwithoutwar.org 

TAKE ACTION, turn talk into action
Join OMNI  (http://omnicenter.org/donate/ ) and other anti-war organizations.
Tell the President to start converting the Pentagon budget to human needs.

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