Nukewatch – Page 55

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Medical Journals Call for Disarmament

Photo Credit: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

By Lindsay Potter

Over 100 medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, published a joint statement on August 1, warning of the ongoing threat nuclear weapons pose to human and environmental health and safety, and calling for urgent action to abolish nuclear weapons. The joint statement warns that ongoing modernization of nuclear arsenals needlessly heightens the risk of nuclear attacks “by design, error, or miscalculation,” risks that are created by nuclear weapons readiness or “deterrence.”

The letter, “Reducing the risks of nuclear war,” declares: “Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic for humanity. Even a ‘limited’ nuclear war involving only 250 of the 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world could kill 120 million people outright and cause global climate disruption leading to a nuclear famine, putting two billion people at risk. A nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia could kill 200 million people and cause a global ‘nuclear winter’ that could kill five to six billion people.”

The warning was drafted by editors from 11 journals together with the World Association of Medical Editors and leaders of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in 2007 and helped produce the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It disparages current arms control efforts, calling on nuclear-armed states to immediately adopt a no-first-use policy, take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, pledge not to use nuclear weapons in current conflicts, and negotiate the verifiable and time-bound elimination of nuclear arsenals in preparation to adopting the TPNW.

— The British Medical Journal, Aug. 1; and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Aug. 7, 2023

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Democracy Now! Interviews Nukewatch

By John LaForge

Democracy Now! put Nukewatch on the air for the first time on August 10, tying together protest stories from the Netherlands and Germany, with host Amy Goodman announcing: “Ten peace activists were arrested on the runway of [a Dutch] air base in the Netherlands, where 15 U.S. nuclear bombs are stockpiled for NATO’s so-called ‘nuclear sharing’ program. The action came on the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ll speak with John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, who just served a 50-day sentence in Germany for protesting U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at an air base there.” In a prompt for the report, LaForge said, “We take the Pentagon’s threatened use of nuclear weapons, known as ‘deterrence,’ very seriously, because, under law, this ongoing, credible, and well-rehearsed readiness to attack people with hydrogen bombs is an international criminal conspiracy to commit massacres using radiation and firestorms.”

Goodman interviewed Susan Crane, the Plowshares activist and Catholic Worker from California, and then asked LaForge to explain the protests.

He said in part, “We argued in trial that the stationing or the transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons to Germany is an unlawful act, a violation of Articles I and II of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. … We argued the case that nuclear weapons, their components and their delivery systems, in Germany and everywhere, are principally just instruments of international criminal activity, repudiated and prohibited, by international law, including and especially the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg judgment and the Nuremberg principles.”

— Democracy Now! online at: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/10/nuclear_protests_netherlands

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

Before Hiroshima & Nagasaki there was Shinkolobwe

A worker in the Shinkolobwe mine the source of the uranium for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. AP Schalk Van Zuydam 2004.

By Kelly Lundeen

On August 6…, people around the world commemorated … the first atomic bombs … dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. People gathered with flags and flowers to remember the effects and destruction caused by the thermal and nuclear radiation from the bombs. No such ceremony took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
— Dr. Jean Bele, Congolese Nuclear Physicist at the MIT Laboratories

Before that uranium could destroy life in Japan, it first started by destroying life in Shinkolobwe.
— Joe-Yves Salankang Sa Ngol, Vice-Chairperson, Congolese Civil Society in South Africa

Roughly 80 percent of the uranium used for the world’s first atomic bombs came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo, now known as Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As the name implies, the Belgian Congo was a colony. Forced labor was the norm for colonizers to exploit the rich natural resources, leaving the indigenous Congolese workers impoverished, sick, or dead from radiation exposure, working conditions, or murder.

One of the original stories of nuclear colonialism began in DRC after nuclear fission was discovered in 1938. Suddenly the high-grade Congolese uranium acquired new economic value. The Belgian company that managed the Shinkolobwe mine sold its first 4,200 metric tons of uranium to the U.S. to supply the Manhattan Project, and U.S. Army engineers were deployed to Shinkolobwe to deplete the uranium from the land.

Ironically, mine director Belgian Edgar Sengier, whose brutal working conditions led to the murder and irradiation of the Congolese, was rewarded: He was given the U.S. president’s Medal for Merit, despite a U.S. intelligence finding that he sold 1.5 million pounds of Congolese uranium to the Nazis.

While no records were kept of radiation-induced diseases or workers dying in the mines, some stories have been passed on — of genetically inherited malformations, and cancer. A deceased uranium miner’s granddaughter, Sylvie Bambemba Mwela, spoke of her grandfather at one of the Missing Link events. He died with his brain coming out of his mouth.

Overcoming inhumane conditions, miners at Shinkolobwe organized for an increase in wages, then equivalent to 20 cents a day. Around 1,000 workers went on strike in 1941 and won an agreement with management. Instead of signing the contract as strike leader Léonard Mpoyi demanded, the colonial governor shot and killed him. After that, 70 more workers were killed by soldiers. Resistance was met with the most severe repression, but the strike succeeded in a 40% raise.

In the eyes of Western colonizers, the lives of the Congolese workers were considered completely expendable, and they have never been recognized, much less compensated for their suffering. — Wired, Aug. 21, 2023; BBC, Aug. 3, 2020; Talking Humanities, Aug. 18, 2016; Tom Zoellner, Uranium, 2009.

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