Nuclear Weapons – Page 19

May 29, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Prison Gang” Peace Delegation to Join International Call for Ouster of US Nuclear Weapons from Germany

For the first time in a long-standing campaign to remove US nuclear weapons from Germany, a delegation of US peace activists will participate in protests at the Büchel Air Base, July 12 to 18, demanding the withdrawal of the 20 remaining US H-bombs still deployed there. Notable among the 11-person delegation are seven participants who have served a combined total of 36 years in US jails and prisons for protest actions taken against nuclear weapons programs and the war system.

The delegation of eleven US activists* — from Wisconsin, California, Washington-DC, Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Maryland — has been brought together by Nukewatch and will join the coalition of 50 German peace and justice groups and organizations converging on the air base.

An international banner displayed at the Nukewatch office.

This past March 26, activists in Germany launched a 20-week-long series of nonviolent protests to rid Büchel of the US B61 nuclear-armed gravity bombs. The actions continue through August 9, the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. The US delegation will join the International Week, July 12 to 18, along with peace activists from Belgium, The Netherlands, and France, as well as Germany.

“The world wants nuclear weapons abolished,” said US delegate Bonnie Urfer, a long-time peace activist and former staffer with the nuclear watchdog group Nukewatch, in Wisconsin. “To waste billions of dollars replacing the B61s when they should be scrapped is criminal considering how many millions are in need famine relief, emergency shelter, and safe drinking water,” Urfer said. Urfer has spent 6 and 1/2 years incarcerated for a string of misdemeanor-level protests she calls “civil resistance” against war, nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

The US delegation and the German public is particularly concerned that the US is planning to produce 480 new hydrogen bombs — the so-called “B61-12”— to replace the 180 B61 bombs now deployed in five European NATO countries including the 20 at Büchel. Production is not expected to start before 2022.

“Our united resistance will stop the new, illegal nuclear bombs nobody needs,” said Marion Küpker, a disarmament campaigner and organizer with DFG-VK, Germany’s oldest peace organization, this year celebrating its 125th anniversary. “We want Germany to be nuclear weapons free,” Küpker said.

Under a scheme known as “nuclear sharing,” Germany, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, and The Netherlands still deploy and conduct NATO nuclear war maneuvers using the US H-bombs, although all six states are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Articles I and II of the NPT explicitly prohibit nuclear weapons from being either transferred to or accepted from other countries. The US is the only country in the world that arms other countries with its nuclear weapons. (China may lease a nuclear-powered submarine but not nuclear weapons from Russia.)

Although the planned B61 replacement bomb is a completely new weapon, the Pentagon calls the program “modernization” in order to skirt the NPT’s prohibitions. The new bomb is being touted as the first ever “smart” or precision nuclear weapon, built to be guided by satellites, and aimed with a new tailfin attachment, making it unprecedented. New nuclear weapons are unlawful under the NPT, and President Barak Obama’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review required that “upgrades” to the Pentagon’s current H-bombs must not have “new capabilities.” Overall cost of the new bomb, which is not yet in production, is estimated to be up to $12 billion.

German Parliament resolved to evict US H-bombs

The March 26 start date of “Twenty Weeks for Twenty Bombs” is significant for Germans. First, on March 26, 2010, Germany’s Bundestag voted overwhelmingly — across all parties — to have the government work to remove the US weapons from German territory. In 2008, US and NATO officials claim that “deterrence” makes retaining the B61 important in Europe, but the US European Command said that there would be “no military downside to the unilateral withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Europe.”

Second, on March 27 this year the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York launched formal negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The UNGA will convene a second session, June 15 to July 7, to produce a binding “convention” banning any production, possession, deployment, or use of nuclear weapons, in accordance with Article 6 of the NPT. (Similar treaty bans prohibit poison and gas weapons, land mines, and cluster bombs.) A formal Draft Treaty was unveiled May 22 in Geneva. Nuclear-armed countries led by the United States tried unsuccessfully to derail the negotiations and boycotted the first round. Germany’s government under Angela Merkel joined the boycott in spite of broad public support for nuclear disarmament.

A huge majority of the German public supports both the UN treaty ban and the ouster of US nuclear weapons from its territory. According to a poll commissioned by the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and published in March 2016, a staggering 93% want nuclear weapons banned. Some 85% agreed that the US weapons should be withdrawn from Germany, and 88% said they oppose US plans to replace the current H-bombs with the new B61-12.

*The United States delegation includes: Steve Baggarly, Norfolk, VA; Kathy Boylan, Washington, DC; Zara Brown, Minneapolis, MN; Susan Crane, Redwood City, CA; Ralph Hutchison, and Carmella Cole, both of Knoxville, TN; Sr. Carol Gilbert and Sr. Ardeth Platte, both of Baltimore, MD; Leona Morgan, Albuquerque, NM; and Bonnie Urfer and John LaForge, both of Luck, WI.

For more information, contact John LaForge: nukewatch1@lakeland.ws; 715-472-4185; or Marion Küpker (Germany) mariongaaa@gmx.de +49 (0)172 771 32 66.

*Detailed information about the US delegation to Büchel:

https://buechel-atombombenfrei.jimdo.com/international/u-s-biographies-in-english-2017/

May 27, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Draft Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Unveiled

Seven square miles of Hiroshima, shown in August 1945, was smashed and burned by a US bomb 20 times smaller than the smallest H-bomb in today’s US nuclear arsenal.

Forty years ago I started reading legal arguments against nuclear weapons. With an atomic ignoramus in the White House asking “Why can’t we use ‘em?,” Bill Durland, Dave McReynolds, Peter Weiss, Jackie Cabasso, Francis Boyle, John Burroughs and others have been explaining why for decades.

Radiation is “analogous” to gas, and attacks that are analogous to gas warfare are banned by the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol. The 1907 Hague Regulations prohibit the use of poison or poisoned weapons, and radioactive fallout is poisonous to say the least. Indiscriminate destruction was forbidden by the 1945 Geneva Conventions. The 1945 Nuremberg Charter (written by US judges) outlaws planning and preparation of massacres — a monumental change in treaty law, since it implicates nuclear war planners before nuclear weapons cause massacres.

In 1961, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 1653, “Recalling that the use of weapons of mass destruction, causing unnecessary human suffering, was in the past prohibited, as being contrary to the laws of humanity and to the principles of international law, by international declarations and binding agreements …to which the majority of nations are still parties.”

UNGA resolution 1653 in part “Declares that:

a) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons is … a direct violation of the Charter of the United Nations;

b) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons would exceed even the scope of war and cause indiscriminate suffering and destruction to [hu]mankind and civilization and, as such, is contrary to the rules of international law and to the laws of humanity;

c) The use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons is a war directed not against an enemy or enemies alone but also against [hu]mankind in general, since the peoples of the world not involved in such a war will be subjected to all the evils generated by the use of such weapons;

d) Any State using nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons is to be considered as …acting contrary to the laws of humanity and as committing a crime against [hu]mankind and civilization; and

Requests that the Secretary-General to consult the Governments of Member States to ascertain their view on the possibility of convening a special conference for signing a convention on the prohibition of the use of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons for war purposes….”

Member states must have said, “Let’s wait,” as that was 56 years ago. In 1968, the Non-Proliferation Treaty obligated the US and the other signers to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Forty-nine years later, “at an early date” sort of sticks in the throat.

In 1996, a global movement pushed the International Court of Justice or World Court to hear arguments from UN Member States on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The Court concluded that “the threat of use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law…” The Court also reminded the world that the Nonproliferation Treaty requires not just good faith negotiations, but that the Members “bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

Finally, the “early date” has arrived, and last March at least 130 countries joined the long-sought-after negotiations for a treaty ban. Then, on May 22, 2017, the “Draft Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” was calmly delivered to the United Nations for consideration this July. Its language is clear, compelling, and a little awe-inspiring.

The preamble says in part:

Deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons and the consequent need to make every effort to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances,

Cognizant that the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and for the health of future generations, and of the disproportionate impact of ionizing radiation on maternal health and on girls, …

Affirming that there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control…

The Articles declare that “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to:

a) Develop, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

b) Transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly;

c) Receive the transfer or control over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices directly, or indirectly;

d) Use nuclear weapons;

e) Carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion…

There are lengthy sections about verifiable compliance and enforcement, all to be finalized this summer.

Beatrice Fihn, the Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, celebrated the news this way: “The release of a draft treaty to ban nuclear weapons is a milestone in the decades-long effort to ban these indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction because of their inhumane and catastrophic impacts. Once adopted, the treaty will constitute an important step toward their eventual elimination.”

How about a toast!

May 9, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

H-Bomb Production Site, Long Closed, Still Causing Nuclear Nightmares

Hundreds of radiation clean-up workers were running for their lives Tuesday, May 9, when a “highly contaminated” waste storage tunnel collapsed at the Hanford Reservation in Southeastern Washington State.

The US Energy Department ordered workers to “take cover” after what it called a “cave-in” of a tunnel used to store highly radioactive nuclear weapons wastes, some of it 72-years old and still ferociously carcinogenic. The earthen tunnels, near the so-called Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) area, were like berms and built above ground as a sort of radiation shielding system.

The Washington Post reported May 9: “Energy Department officials said there was ‘no indication of a release of contamination at this point’ but that crews were still testing the area.”

This is a typically vague assurance, the sort that follows radiation accidents of all kinds. Before emergency teams are even finished looking, officials make a soothing, highly nuanced statement. “No indication … at this point” should be read to mean: “We checked upwind of the dust cloud, so our meters would not register any radiation.”

As the renowned explorer Jacque Cousteau said in 1989: “A common denominator, in every single nuclear accident — a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine — is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, ‘There’s no danger to the public.’ They do this before they themselves know what has happened….”

The Hanford workers who ran for cover might have been panicked with memories of the Oct. 18, 2015 explosion and fire at a radioactive waste dump Beatty, Nevada. In that case buried, unknown sorts of radioactive waste reacted with rainwater that had seeped through both the waste trench’s earth covering, and through waste containers, causing five explosions and a plume of smoke and debris. The nuclear fireworks were actually caught on cellphone video. They may remember when 24 onsite workers inhaled the poison when a drum of weapons waste with plutonium exploded underground in Carlsbad, New Mexico on Valentine’s Day 2014.

DOE officials at Hanford asked the Federal Aviation Administration to put a temporary flight restriction over the area, the Post reported, most likely because of fears of a similar radioactive plume drifting from the cave-in. Former Energy Department official Robert Alvarez told the Post, “the tunnels now store contaminated train cars and a considerable amount of highly radioactive, ignitable wastes including possible organic vapors.”

A “very high-hazard operation”

Alvarez was understated when he told the Post the Hanford site is “a very high-hazard operation.”

Like the waste in Nevada, much of the toxic and radioactive junk at Hanford is “uncharacterized” and unlabeled, meaning cleanup workers can’t know either what sorts of deadly isotopes are in the wastes, or what radiation hazards might be present. Left over from the nuclear arms race with the former USSR, much of the radioactive waste material at Hanford is so radioactively and thermally hot that it’s a misnomer to call that period a cold war.

Nine plutonium production reactors ran onsite for 50 years. The last was shut down in 1988, and Hanford’s been a stop-and-start clean-up operation since 1989. Projected cost estimates for final abandonment and “good enough” declarations (no one suggests that the area can be reclaimed to the point that it can be inhabited) were once around $80 billion, but now run to $350 billion.

Over three billion gallons of groundwater beneath the 580 square-mile site have been poisoned with plutonium, uranium, americium, neptunium and dozens of other “trans-uranic” (worse than uranium) wastes. The groundwater drains to the nearby Columbia River, a drinking water source for tens of thousands in Oregon and Washington.

Hanford hosts 177 giant underground liquid waste storage tanks, which contain some 2.5 million gallons of radioactive sludge, stuck at the bottom. The tanks were filled with 56 million gallons of high-level or plutonium-contaminated wastes from the PUREX plant near where the “cave-in” took place. Most reports say the tanks “hold” 56M gallons” but as early as 1990 the DOE has acknowledged that 66 of them were leaking.

The PUREX facility was used for decades to produce plutonium for bombs from hot uranium fuel rods taken from the nine “production” reactors. Plutonium — the most toxic material currently known to science — was extracted using a gigantic “chemical bath” system involving harsh acids and chemicals, miles of piping and conduit inside cavernous buildings employing tens of thousands of workers — thousands of whom were exposed to deadly amounts of radiation. McClatchy Newspapers reported in 2015 that at least 33,000 such workers died of cancers caused by their workplace radiation doses. The actual number is probably much higher.

May 3, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Saying ‘No’ to a Treaty Ban, ‘Yes’ to Nuclear Weapons Tests

Can you find the seven countries the United States is bombing? US attacks often hit civilians with Reaper and Predator drones, Cruise missiles, depleted uranium munitions, and even a 21,600-pound “Massive Ordnance Air Blast”device, a version of fuel-air explosive or “thermobaric” bomb, that was tested on Afghanistan April 13.

By John LaForge

Last week the Air Force shot a Minuteman rocket off California toward the Martial Islands, but the government refused to join in treaty negotiations for a ban on nuclear weapons. Using a blizzard of hypocrisy and self-contradiction, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley explained March 27 why the US would boycott the “treaty ban” negotiations.

Amb. Haley said about US nuclear weapons, “[W]e can’t honestly say that we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them, and those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety not to have them.” North Korea’s president could have said the same thing about his six or seven nuclear warheads, especially in view of the US “trying to keep peace and safety” using bombs and missiles against seven countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya — and the joint US/S. Korea war exercises off the Korean peninsula.

Ambassador Haley managed to avoid being two-faced on one level. Joining the ban treaty talks would have been tactless and seamy while her colleagues in the war department were preparing a series of nuclear weapons tests. An April 13 test, at the Tonopah bombing range in Nevada, was of the so-called “B61-12,” a new H-bomb still in development and scheduled to go into production after 2022.

Jackie Cabasso, of the Western States Legal Foundation, explained April 20 , “In 1997… President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Directive-60, reaffirming the threatened first use of nuclear weapons as the ‘cornerstone’ of US national security.… President Obama left office with the US poised to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads…. Over the past couple of years, the US has conducted a series of drop tests of the newly modified B61-12 gravity bomb…. Each new bomb will cost more than twice its weight in solid gold.” Of the 480 B61s slated to become B61-12s, about 180 are scheduled to be placed at six NATO bases in Europe.

Another test, April 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif., launched a modernized Minuteman-3 long-range ballistic missile. (Nukewatch co-directors Arianne Peterson, Bonnie Urfer and I recently finished NUCLEAR HEARTLAND, a book about these very rockets.) This was to be followed by another Minuteman-3 test fired at the Martial Islands May 3.

US: “We are prepared to use nuclear weapons”

As on Feb. 21 and Feb. 25, 2016, Vandenberg regularly tests Minuteman-3s. Deputy Pentagon Chief Robert Work said then the US had conducted “at least” 15 since January 2011. Before the Feb. 25 test Mr. Work said, “And that is a signal … that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary.” This is the Big Lie, since using nuclear weapons only produces massacres, and massacres are never defensive.

Jason Ditz put the rocket tests in context April 26 at antiwar.com: “Everywhere and (mostly) without exception, the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) would be angrily condemned by the United States as a dangerous provocation, and the firing of a nuclear-capable rocket would be treated as tantamount to an act of war. Not today [April 26], of course, when the missile in question was test-fired from California by the United States flying some 4,000 miles before hitting a test target near the Marshall Islands. The missile was identified as a Minuteman III, a nuclear-capable weapon of which the US has 450 in service.”

The two times Amb. Haley flubbed her March 27 “peace and safety” speech were alarming. Haley stumbled once saying: “We would love to have a ban on nuclear treat… nuclear weapons.” A ban on nuclear treaties is more like what Amb. Haley’s bosses do want, so she didn’t mis-speak later (and did not correct herself) when she said: “One day we will hope that we are standing here saying, ‘We no longer need nuclear weapons.’” But today she doesn’t even hope to be saying such a thing. A trillion dollars is very big business.

Instead, the United States is relentlessly bombing and rocketing, hitting civilians with drones, Cruise missiles, depleted uranium munitions, and even a 21,600-pound “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” or MOAB bomb, also tested April 13 but against caves Afghanistan,. This ghastly “thermobaric” fuel-air-explosive (FAE) has the mass of five Lincoln Continentals, and reportedly killed 95 people including a teacher and his son. One Defense Intelligence Agency report uncovered by Human Rights Watch said that because “shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue…it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate.” Such is the peace and safety from those of us that are good.

On March 29, two days after her UN performance, Amb. Haley spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations and cleared up any confusion our globalized bombings might be causing. Haley declared, “The United States is the moral conscience of the world.” Yes Ms. Parker, “And I am Marie of Romania.”

March 16, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Citizens to Join Protests of US Nuclear Weapons Deployed in Germany

By John LaForge

Marion20140805_081507

Blockaders cover the Front Gate at the Luftwaffe’s Buchel Air Base in Germany, which deploys and trains to use up to 20 U.S. B61 hydrogen bombs on Germany’s Tornado jet fighters.

On March 26, nuclear disarmament activists in Germany will launch a 20-week-long series of nonviolent protests at the Luftwaffe’s Büchel Air Base, Germany, demanding the withdrawal of 20 U.S. nuclear weapons still deployed there. The actions will continue through August 9, the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

For the first time in the 20-year-long campaign to rid Büchel of the U.S. bombs, a delegation of U.S. peace activists will take part. During the campaign’s “international week” July 12 to 18, disarmament workers from Wisconsin, California, Washington, DC, Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico and Maryland will join the coalition of 50 German peace and justice groups converging on the base. Activists from The Netherlands, France and Belgium also plan to join the international gathering.

The U.S. citizens are particularly shocked that the U.S. government is pursuing production of a totally new H-bomb intended to replace the 20 so-called “B61” gravity bombs now at Büchel, and the 160 others that are deployed in a total of five NATO countries.

Under a NATO scheme called “nuclear sharing,” Germany, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, and The Netherlands still deploy the U.S. B61s, and these governments all claim the deployment does not violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Articles I and II of the treaty prohibit nuclear weapons from being transferred to, or accepted from, other countries.

“The world wants nuclear disarmament,” said US delegate Bonnie Urfer, a long-time peace activist and former staffer with the nuclear watchdog group Nukewatch, in Wisconsin. “To waste billions of dollars replacing the B61s when they should be eliminated is criminal — like sentencing innocent people to death — considering how many millions need immediate famine relief, emergency shelter, and safe drinking water,” Urfer said.

Although the B61’s planned replacement is actually a completely new bomb — the B61-12 — the Pentagon calls the program “modernization” — in order to skirt the NPT’s prohibitions. However, it’s being touted as the first ever “smart” nuclear bomb, made to be guided by satellites, making it completely unprecedented. New nuclear weapons are unlawful under the NPT, and even President Barak Obama’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review required that “upgrades” to the Pentagon’s current H-bombs must not have “new capabilities.” Overall cost of the new bomb, which is not yet in production, is estimated to be up to $12 billion.

Historic German Resolution to Evict US H-bombs

The March 26 start date of “Twenty Weeks for Twenty Bombs” is doubly significant for Germans and others eager to see the bombs retired. First, on March 26, 2010, massive public support pushed Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, to vote overwhelmingly — across all parties — to have the government remove the U.S. weapons from German territory.

Second, beginning March 27 in New York, the United Nations General Assembly will launch formal negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The UNGA will convene two sessions — March 27 to 31, and June 15 to July 7 — to produce a legally binding “convention” banning any possession or use of the bomb, in accordance with Article 6 of the NPT. (Similar treaty bans already forbid poison and gas weapons, land mines, cluster bombs, and biological weapons.) Individual governments can later ratify or reject the treaty. Several nuclear-armed states including the US government worked unsuccessfully to derail the negotiations; and Germany’s current government under Angela Merkel has said it will boycott the negotiations in spite of broad public support for nuclear disarmament.

“We want Germany to be nuclear weapons free,” said Marion Küpker, a disarmament campaigner and organizer with DFG-VK, an affiliate of War Resisters International and Germany’s oldest peace organization, this year celebrating its 125^th anniversary. “The government must abide by the 2010 resolution, throw out the B61s, and not replace them with new ones,” Küpker said.

A huge majority in Germany supports both the UN treaty ban and the removal of US nuclear weapons. A staggering 93 percent want nuclear weapons banned, according to a poll commissioned by the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War published in March last year. Some 85 percent agreed that the US weapons should be withdrawn from the country, and 88 percent said they oppose US plans to replace current bombs with the new B61-12.

U.S. and NATO officials claim that “deterrence” of makes the B61 important in Europe. But as by Xanthe Hall reports for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, “Nuclear deterrence is the archetypal security dilemma. You have to keep threatening to use nuclear weapons to make it work. And the more you threaten, the more likely it is that they will be used.”

For more information and to sign a “Declaration of Solidarity.”

Additional information about the B61 and NATO’s “nuclear sharing” at CounterPunch:

“Wild Turkey with H-Bombs: Failed Coup Brings Calls for Denuclearization,” July 28, 2016.

“Undeterred: Amid Terror Attacks in Europe, US H-bombs Still Deployed There,” June 17, 2016.

“Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Made in the USA,” May 27, 2015.

“US Defies Conference on Nuclear Weapons Effects & Abolition,” Dec. 15, 2014.

“German ‘Bomb Sharing’ Confronted with Defiant ‘Instruments of Disarmament”, Aug. 9, 2013.