By Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action Originally published February 8, 2023 (Updated/Revised February 10, 2023) The US Air Force conducted a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) late Thursday night (February 9th) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. There has not been any international outcry over the launch of the missile that, under normal operational deployment, would carry a thermonuclear warhead. There will be little or no discussion anywhere by the news media about the test and its implications regarding international efforts to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons and move […]
READ MORETag Archives: Nuclear Weapons
Death by Nationalism
By Robert C. Koehler (originally published in Common Wonders on Wednesday, October 12th, 2022) The game may be almost over. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies put it this way: “The irresolvable dilemma facing Western leaders is that this is a no-win situation. How can they militarily defeat Russia, when it possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads and its military doctrine explicitly states that it will use them before it will accept an existential military defeat?” Neither side is willing to let go of its commitment: to protect, to expand, a piece of the whole planet, no matter what the cost. The […]
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From nuclear sub commander to nuclear weapons abolitionist
Only way to prevent their use, says Tom Rogers – Get rid of them By Patrick Mazza; Originally published in The Raven; October 7, 2022; https://theraven.substack.com/p/from-nuclear-sub-commander-to-nuclear From handling nuclear weapons to protesting them Tom Rogers knows his way around a nuclear weapon. At various points of his career as a U.S. Navy submarine officer, he oversaw safety and security of nuclear weapons on board, conducted disaster drills, and was part of the team that would authenticate orders to use them. Rising to captain a sub, he was responsible for the whole picture. Later in his career, Rogers began to raise […]
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Still Blessing the Bombs: An Unholy Trinity
By Leonard Eiger (on the 77th anniversary of the Trinity Test) Trinity, understood by most of Christianity as the union of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one God, was co-opted on July 16, 1945 when the United States government exploded the first nuclear weapon over the desert sands of New Mexico in what scientists called the Trinity test. Thus (officially) began the atomic age, and this unholy Trinity was its ungodly offspring. It was 5:29:45 AM at the Alamogordo Test Range, on the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) desert, in the test named Trinity, in which the […]
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The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the World’s Future
By Lawrence S. Wittner [Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).] Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of […]
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