By Leonard Eiger March 1, 2023 March 1st is Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day (‘Bikini’ Day) which marks the anniversary of the infamous US ‘Bravo’ nuclear bomb detonation at Bikini Atoll in 1954. On that fateful day the United States tested the first deliverable hydrogen bomb, code named “Bravo”, at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. 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 well beyond the predicted yield of 6 megatons… OOOPS!). It blasted a crater 1.2 miles in diameter into […]
READ MORETag Archives: Nuclear Ban Treaty
President Biden: Sign the Nuclear Ban Treaty!
Peace campaigners were at the White House at 1:30pm on Sunday, January 22, 2023 to deliver a letter to President Biden on the 2nd anniversary of the Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW or “Nuclear Ban Treaty”). The Biden letter, signed by over one hundred national, state and local organizations, including Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, provides the President with six compelling reasons why he can – and should – sign this treaty now. National organizations signing the letter include Peace Action, Veterans for Peace, CodePink, World Beyond War, Pax Christi USA, […]
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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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MLK: Going to the Heart of Nonviolence
Every year Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action honors the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. around the anniversary of his birthday. Just what does an organization working to abolish nuclear weapons have in common with Dr. King? Perhaps this quote from Dr. King sums it up best: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men”. Dr. King speaks to the root – or what could be called the taproot – of violence in the hearts of human beings that spurs “scientific power” to “outrun moral power,” thereby holding all humanity under the […]
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Don’t Expect Rulers of Nuclear-Armed Nations to Accept Nuclear Disarmament―Unless They’re Pushed to Do So
Characteristically, all the nuclear powers have rejected the 2017 UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons By Lawrence Wittner At the beginning of February 2019, the two leading nuclear powers took an official step toward resumption of the nuclear arms race. On February 1, the U.S. government, charging Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, announced that it would pull out of the agreement and develop new intermediate-range missiles banned by it. The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his government’s observance of the treaty, claiming that this was done as a “symmetrical” response to the U.S. action and that Russia would develop nuclear weapons outlawed […]
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