If “war made the state and the state made war,” then the state, as currently perceived, at least by those besotted with military power, is the problem. By Robert C. Koehler An enormous flash, a mushroom cloud, multi-thousands of human beings dead. We win! Nuclear weapons won’t go away, the cynics—the souls in despair—tell us. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You can’t, as Gen. James E. Cartwright, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, once put it, “un-invent nuclear weapons.” So apparently we’re stuck with them until the “big oops” happens and humanity becomes extinct. Until then: […]
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Learn About Washington’s Nuclear Waste at the International Uranium Film Festival
‘Richland’ delves into Hanford’s lasting legacy: an overwhelming radioactive cleanup challenge. by Glen Milner The International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) — dedicated to nuclear issues worldwide — runs from Friday, April 12, to Sunday, April 14, at the Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) at 1515 12th Ave. The festival’s 2024 U.S. tour began on March 7 in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo (Diné) Nation, with respect for the Native American Peoples who are suffering most from the consequences of uranium mining and nuclear testing. The IUFF is showing films in over 10 U.S. cities and in Vancouver, B.C. The selection […]
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“Resistance or…. ” – a poem
Editor’s Note:The following poem was written by Larry Kerschner, a member of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and Veterans for Peace Rachel Corrie Chapter 109. You can read his work at larrywrites. His books are available at peacepoetpoetry. The banner photo is of Larry reading his poetry at the Vietnam Full Disclosure Teach-in: An Honest Commemoration of the American War in Vietnam on November 5, 2015. Larry’s poetry is also featured in the April 2024 Ground Zero Newsletter. **************** Resistance or… “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time […]
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EINSTEIN’S POSTWAR CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION
The scientist’s efforts helped create the movement for arms control and disarmament. By Lawrence S. Wittner Although the popular new Netflix film, Einstein and the Bomb, purports to tell the story of the great physicist’s relationship to nuclear weapons, it ignores his vital role in rallying the world against nuclear catastrophe. Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to obliterate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein threw himself into efforts to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation. In September, responding to a letter from Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, about nuclear weapons, Einstein contended that, […]
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Nuclear Colonialism: Hearing Indigenous Voices
Seventy years ago, on March 1, 1954, the United States tested the first deliverable hydrogen bomb, code named “Bravo”, at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, home to the Marshallese people. Bravo was the largest U.S. nuclear test ever exploded, with a yield of 15 megatons, 1000 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (and way beyond the predicted yield of 6 megatons). It blasted a crater 1.2 miles in diameter into the atoll. The nearby islands’ inhabitants as well as U.S. military personnel stationed there for the test were exposed to the radioactive fallout, and subsequently evacuated. All […]
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