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                      ground zero
                                                            Articles of Incorporation^*

                                                                             III

     The purpose for which this corporation is being organized is as follows:

     To establish a Center for Nonviolent Action which seeks the goal of a world free from nuclear destruction and unjust
     divisions in humanity;

     To hold the land on which the Center is located in an environmentally sensitive and responsible manner;

     To develop at the Center for Nonviolent Action specific means toward a nuclear-free world which are based on the
     principle of truth in thought, word and action, the principle of unity of all beings, and the principle of transforming love, in
     resistance to war and injustice;

     To explore at the Center strategies and tactics for nonviolent campaigns incorporating the end-means vision;

     To use the Center as a training site for participants in nonviolent action;

     To encourage and foster at the Center a continual reflection on, and deepening in, nonviolence as a way of life.

       *As retrieved from the April 2005 house fire

Nuclear Weapons in a Global Economy, or
Where does the Ground Zero Community fit into the global peace movement?

The United States emerged from World War II with the strongest economy and military in the world. The Cold War settled in when the USSR built the Iron Curtain in 1947 and it then escalated through dozens of improvements in nuclear weapons technologies over the following 44 years. The US initiated over two-thirds of the major advances and has used threats of using nuclear weapons in conflicts from Korea to Iraq.

Military policy and military spending is a major piece of US power projection across the globe. Military power is often invoked to establish and protect US economic markets. The cost is over half of the US government discretionary budget and involves funding over 700 military bases inside the US and another 700 plus bases distributed around the world.

Nuclear weapons have become the centerpiece of US power projection, although new military planning is moving toward “Full Spectrum Dominance” over land, sea, air, and space and the place of nuclear weapons may eventually diminish as other technologies give the US mastery over global decision-making.

In 1996 the International Court of Justice, the world court of the United Nations, ruled unanimously that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” is illegal under international humanitarian law. Given that the US is a signatory member of the United Nations, this ruling is legally binding under Article II of the US Constitution.

Shock and Awe, a military strategy published in 1996 from the Defense University of the US and arguing the success of the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945, was most recently unleashed by the US on Baghdad in 2003 and by Israel on Gaza in 2008-2009.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action focuses on our local deployment of nuclear weapons on Hood Canal. The largest accumulation of actively deployed nuclear weapons anywhere outside of Russia is based here. We have more ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction here that almost anywhere else in the world.

What is missing is local public awareness of the size and catastrophic destructiveness of these weapons. A recent Scientific American article outlines the possibility that a nuclear weapons exchange between India and Pakistan could eventuate in a billion deaths from immediate bomb effects and follow on devastation of the economies and agriculture in South Asia. Similar information developed by Carl Sagan and colleagues describes the possibility that a threshold exists at about 100 megatons of nuclear weapons detonated over cities whereby the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere could be blacked out by soot for weeks to months essentially destroying civilized living in the hemisphere.

Global consequences for these policies when seen through the lens of multinational corporate power and national security governments has institutionalized stratified wealth and widespread poverty, ecological devastation, and the failure of civil resistance at a national or global level since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For now GZ will maintain its focus on publicizing the presence of Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor’s weapons of mass destruction and the consequences of their deployment and potential use. We hope to work in concert with like-minded groups who cover related pieces of the peace puzzle.