Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

  • Issues
    • Weekly Column
    • Counterfeit Reactor Parts
    • Depleted Uranium
    • Direct Action
    • Lake Superior Barrels
    • Environmental Justice
    • Nuclear Power
      • Chernobyl
      • Fukushima
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • On The Bright Side
    • Radiation Exposure
    • Radioactive Waste
    • Renewable Energy
    • Uranium Mining
    • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Newsletter Archives
  • Resources
    • Nuclear Heartland Book
    • Fact Sheets
    • Reports, Studies & Publications
      • The New Nuclear Weapons: $1.74 Trillion for H-bomb Profiteers and Fake Cleanups
      • Nuclear Power: Dead In the Water It Poisoned
      • Thorium Fuel’s Advantages as Mythical as Thor
      • Greenpeace on Fukushima 2016
      • Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Wastes Haunt Lake Superior
    • Nukewatch in the News
    • Links
    • Videos
  • About
    • About Nukewatch
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Action Alerts!
    • Calendar
    • Workshops
  • Donate

July 24, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Deterrencelessness: Nuclear Threats Neither Credible Nor Viable

US plans to produce about 500 new tactical nuclear bombs - experts - ВПК.name

The United States intends to produce at least 500 of these new B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs, many of which are scheduled to be deploy at air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey.

by John LaForge, LA Progressive, July 26, 2020

Threatening to make attacks with nuclear weapons is known as “deterrence” when the United States does it, but it’s called madness, blackmail, or “terrorism” if Russia, China, or North Korea does.

U.S. Air Force thermonuclear weapons, about 100-to-150 of them known as B61s, are stationed at two NATO bases in Italy, and at one NATO base each in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Turkey. These 170-kiloton H-bombs — 11 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb — are always described euphemistically as “theater” nuclear weapons, defensive ones that are a “deterrent” to aggression.

Of course, Russian aggression in Ukraine has shown nuclear “deterrence” to be an expensive, destabilizing, terroristic fraud. That our high, holy, sacrosanct, and unquestionable arsenal of “deterrence” did not deter Russia on February 24, 2022 is dreadfully, painfully, catastrophically obvious. Yet the nakedness of the deterrent-less Emperor has hardly been acknowledged.

In the ghastly maw of ongoing war in Ukraine, the needless provocation of stationing U.S. thermonuclear B61 H-bombs at six NATO base’s facing Russia could hardly be more frightening. Then, as if to scream “fire” in the crowded auditorium, NATO’s ministers on June 30 issued their latest “Strategic Concept,” a public relations version of the alliance’s ongoing threat to wage indiscriminate, uncontrollable, and poisonous mass destruction using U.S., French and British nuclear warheads.

The Strategic Concept’s soothing, cotton candy version of NATO’s open embrace of nuclear terrorism is this: “NATO will take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission.”

At the moment however, the B61 hydrogen bombs stationed at Germany’s Büchel air base cannot credibly be a part of the “mission” since they can’t be attached to Germany’s Tornado fighter jets. This is because the base’s runway is being rebuilt. Until 2026, Büchel’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing of Tornado jets are based at the nearby Nörvenich air base.

For Kathrin Vogler, a Left Party member of the German Parliament in 2021, this is a chance to denuclearize Germany. The politician told the daily paper Rhein-Zeitung last year that “From June 2022 to February 2026, flight operations at Büchel Air Base will be largely discontinued and transferred to the Nörvenich military airfield…. This was confirmed to us by the German government in our minor inquiry. As far as we know, the 20 or so nuclear bombs stored at Büchel will remain there.”

“This means that German nuclear sharing will effectively not take place for four years from 2022,” Volger told the paper.

“This exposes the argumentation of the German government, which repeatedly claims that nuclear sharing is an important part of NATO’s deterrence strategy. In fact, maintaining it and thus also the Büchel nuclear weapons site is pure symbolic politics, albeit with high risks for the population. Therefore: The suspension of nuclear sharing must become a phase-out, [and] now would be a good opportunity to do so,” Volger said last year.

Proven useless, nuclear weapons can now be discarded

The June 30 NATO “concept” says, “The fundamental purpose of NATO’s nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression.”

As of February 24, 2022, NATO’s nuclear weapons arsenal’s “fundamental purpose” has been utterly delegitimized, politically pulverized, and militarily reduced to ashes. The alliance’s nuclear arsenal can finally be removed without any loss of face, much less any loss of security.

NATO’s latest “concept” accidentally acknowledges the uselessness of retaining nuclear weapons in its recognition that, “The strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance.”

This is the terrible farce of nuclearism. If nuclear weapon threats guaranteed any security at all, none of the tens of billions of Euro-dollars’ worth of military training, weapons, mercenaries, cyber warfare, or intelligence assistance that NATO partners and Russia are now pouring into Ukraine would be necessary.

Nuclear-armed alliances are a thing of the past which must be and now can be abolished. Under the auspices of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, along with the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, international law provides a pathway, training wheels, guide rails and a motorcade — courtesy of the great majority of the world’s governments — to a world where conflict and even wars don’t endanger whole civilizations and the biological integrity of life on earth. ###

— John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.

 

 

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Military Spending, Nuclear Weapons, US Bombs Out of Germany, War, Weekly Column

June 26, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Hypocrisies and Successes at Meeting of Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

German Representative Rüdiger Bohn (center) speaking as an “observer” June 22nd at the First Meeting os States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of NuclearWeapons, Vienna, Austria.  Photo by John LaForge, for Nukewatch

By John LaForge

VIENNA, Austria — The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 65 governments, known in diplomatic circles as States Parties. The treaty’s first Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) concluded here June 23, after painstakingly working out — in the words of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons — “a blueprint for the end of nuclear weapons.” The new Treaty is the extraordinary, crowning achievement of ICAN, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts.

At 1MSP, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany — all three of whom use U.S. nuclear weapons on their air force bases — participated as Observer States. The three have not ratified the TPNW, having acquiesced with a string of U.S. administrations — Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s — that conspired at every opportunity to derail, prevent, delay, weaken, and boycott the new ban — in spite of broad public support for nuclear disarmament. Mr. Trump demanded that States Parties withdraw their ratifications. None did. Biden’s White House reportedly urged Japan not to attend the 1MSP as an Observer, and they stayed away.

German and Dutch representatives took their turn and spoke to the MSP on June 22, but both NATO members used exactly the same words to note their government’s explicit disapproval of the TPNW, and to voice their supposed support for the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both representatives said their governments “will not accede to” the nuclear ban treaty “because the TPNW is inconsistent with NATO doctrine.”

The hypocrisy in German and Dutch opposition is that their “sharing” of U.S. nuclear weapons, while consistent with “NATO doctrine” is totally inconsistent with their hallowed Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In fact, their 50-year-long dismissal of the NPT’s binding (Art. VI) obligation to begin negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament “at an early date” is also completely inconsistent with their feigned support for the NPT.

As German Representative Rüdiger Bohn said June 22, NATO “doctrine” includes the doleful edict, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear Alliance.” This embrace of genocidal atomic violence is not an Article of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty or NATO Charter. It was manufactured entirely by its nuclear-armed members, and there is no legal obligation for NATO to remain a nuclear-armed terrorist organization.

NATO “doctrine” is fluid, strictly advisory, and accepted voluntarily by its members. Even the NATO Charter’s famous Article 5, regarding collective response to a military attack on a member state, declares only that the NATO membership “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking … such action as it deems necessary.”

In comparison, the Non-Proliferation Treaty is binding international law and includes explicit, unambiguous prohibitions and clear, binding obligations. NATO’s ongoing planning, preparations and ever-present threat to launch nuclear attacks (known as “deterrence”), is simply a ritualized practice which can be ended at any time — say by complying with the NPT’s Articles I and II which prohibit any transfer or reception of nuclear weapons between states, or its Article VI pledge to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Indeed, it is the 50-year-long postponement, or rejection of Art. VI that has prompted and propelled the overwhelming success of the new TPNW.

What might have been a week-long celebration of the TPNW’s progress in seeking a world free of nuclear threats, was dimmed by Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. It was the war’s spoken and unspoken reminders of ready nuclear arsenals in Russia and NATO that moved the MSP to say, in its final Declaration, that it “condemn[s] unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances.”

The Declaration castigates nuclear weapons and echoes Daniel Ellsberg’s 1959 essay “The Threat and Practice of Blackmail,” noting that the Bomb is used to coerce, intimidate, plague, curse, and terrify. “This highlights, now more than ever, the fallacy of nuclear deterrence doctrines, which are based and rely on the threat of the actual use of nuclear weapons and, hence, the risks of the destruction of countless lives, of societies, of nations, and of inflicting global catastrophic consequences.”

The Parties agreed to push ahead with resolve to eventually see the nuclear weapons states sign on, saying “In the face of the catastrophic risks posed by nuclear weapons and in the interest of the very survival of humanity, we cannot do otherwise.” ###

— This column ran June 26 at Commondreams, and June 27 at Counterpunch

Filed Under: B61 Bombs in Europe, Military Spending, Nuclear Weapons, US Bombs Out of Germany, Weekly Column

June 21, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

We Need an International Antiwar Movement, and Not Cheerleaders for the Weapons Industry

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2022
By Ron Jacobs

A ceasefire between the warring parties, a Russian withdrawal, a halt to arms shipments, a negotiated peace, and an end to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is what the international left should be organizing around in regard to the Russia-Ukraine war. It shouldn’t be calling for stepped up arms shipments to Ukraine’s military or defending Moscow’s invasion. When this war is stopped, the most likely situation for the vast majority of Ukrainian working people will be one where their greatest enemy could well be the Ukrainian government. Likewise, if the war goes on long enough, the greatest enemy of the vast majority of Russian working people could well be their government. The oligarchs in both nations will still be oligarchs, while the Russian and Ukrainian people will bear the human, financial and other costs of the war.

If the reader thinks the current conflict will somehow end with a different outcome, they need to revisit the history of war, especially war of the modern kind. You know, where civilian populations are bombed, conscripts are forced to kill and die in the thousands; where international bankers make loans to all sides until the battle begins. All the while generals and politicians talk nonsense about the principles being defended as if most of them had any principles that couldn’t be purchased.

It’s becoming clearer to more and more people that this war is truly a proxy war and that Ukrainians are being sacrificed by Washington and its clients (including the government in Kyiv) while Russians are being sacrificed by their government. Neither position — Ukrainian or Russian — is one to be envied. As an acquaintance and Vietnam Veteran Against the War member pointed out on Facebook, this is the perfect war for the U.S.-dominated military-industrial complex. There are no body bags coming home, no anti-war demonstrations, and virtually no pressure to negotiate. Indeed, a substantial part of what usually constitutes the U.S. antiwar movement is actually cheering on the Ukrainian military in this conflict. In short, this is a dream situation and Washington and its minions will fight to the last Ukrainian to keep the war industry’s profits rolling in.

The fears that the war will continue to escalate are genuine. Once again, the rulers of the capitalist world prove that the only thing they can really do effectively is make war. By effectively, I mean these rulers are masters at wreaking havoc, destruction and death. Furthermore, they are once again proving they can convince the bulk of their populations that this is not only a good thing, but also moral and honorable. In this narrative, it is those of us who refuse to accept their wars and their rationales for those wars who are accused of being wrong. Since my first piece published after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, emails have arrived in my mailbox stating that my antiwar stance is criminal. My response is simple — it is not criminal to oppose the crime of war. This isn’t the first war where such accusations have been hurled at those opposed to wars. I consider myself fortunate that this isn’t World War One or Two. Many U.S. opponents of those wars were locked up. Of course, given the censorship of antiwar views by public and private entities across the west and in Russia, who’s to say that won’t occur in the future? Indeed, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (an Orwellian presence already) recently announced that it was creating a new division called the Disinformation Governance Board. The head of this board will be Nina Jankowicz, who (I quote the DHS press release) “advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications.” (https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/dhs/dhs-standing-up-disinformation-governance-board-led-by-information-warfare-expert/) In other words, Jankowicz advised them on how to write and spread propaganda. She is now taking her scriptwriting to the U.S. public. One assumes she will be working with various manipulators of public opinion in the broadcast, print and social media fields. One can be certain that she will maintain and intensify the stories about Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and NATO already saturating the U.S. and much of Europe. In recent days, I have been accused (along with what one so-called socialist writer dismisses as the “peace and justice” crowd) of supporting war because I am against the escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and think the politital Left should be organizing a non-aligned international antiwar movement, not joining the cheerleading squad for NATO and its arms shipments.

My response to the charge is simple. To claim that escalating the war will prevent a longer war is just nonsense. It can already be argued that the escalation has already extended it. Very few actual wars end when a war escalates. In fact, escalation usually extends the conflict and the horror that involves. It seems to me that the people who really care about the people under fire are those calling for a ceasefire and negotiations, not those cheering the arms shipments. By rejecting the call that begins this piece, one is rejecting the only internationalist response to this conflict. In rejecting this response, they are accepting a binary choice that means more war, no matter which side one chooses. That choice is one defined by the militaries doing the fighting and the rulers pulling their strings. Making that choice is not making a choice for peace or even the consideration of peace. Plain and simple, it is choosing more war.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled “Capitalism: Is the Problem.” He lives in Vermont and wrote this piece for CounterPunch.

-CounterPunch, May 3, 2022

 

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter

June 21, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Shorts

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2022
Shorts compiled by Lindsay Potter, Bonnie Urfer, Kelly Lundeen, and John LaForge.
On Earth Day, April 22, a coalition coordinated by the Japan Council Against A and H Bombs submitted petitions to Japan’s Foreign Ministry with 960,538 signatures urging the government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Several prominent members of the campaign used the petition delivery ceremony, pictured, to condemn Japan’s recent promotion of “nuclear sharing” and “enemy base attack capability.”
Ultra-fast Missile Tested by U.S. Air Force

The U.S. Air Force reported its first successful “hypersonic” missile test, overseen by Edwards Air Force Base in northern California on May 14th. After the potentially nuclear-armed missile, dubbed “Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon” (ARRW), was launched from a B-52 bomber, its “booster ignited … achieving a speed five times the speed of sound” [about 3,835 mph], according to the Air Force. Russia and China have reportedly tested similar ultra-fast weapons. “U.S. defense officials have said that Russia has used hypersonic weapons an estimated 10 to 12 times in its invasion of Ukraine,” according to CBS News, and Democracy Now reported that Russian President Putin confirmed the report. Because of its speed and maneuverability, the ARRW is hard to follow or obstruct. But in a statement to Congress, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, couldn’t identify any other benefits that the weapon offers. “We are not seeing really significant or game-changing effects to date with the delivery of the small number of hypersonics that the Russians have used,” Milley said, according to CBS. — Reuters, CBS News, May 16, 2022 and Democracy Now, May 19, 2022

Accident at Deep Military Waste Dump

Troubles continue to plague the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a deep burial site carved out of an ancient salt formation half a mile beneath Carlsbad, New Mexico. Workers had to hastily leave the above-ground facilities April 9, 2022, when radioactive liquid was found inside an outer shipping container. WIPP officials announced before an investigation had even begun that there was “no risk of radiological release and there is no risk to the public or the environment.” The 2,000-foot deep waste dump scheme has been excavated for burial of plutonium-contaminated radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production. The Energy Department (DOE) says the waste is “mostly clothing, gloves, lab coats, tools and other debris” from the Cold War, raising questions about the presence of liquid involved in the contamination accident.

The site hasn’t fully recovered from a February 2014 accident — when a waste barrel burst and spewed contamination throughout the whole complex — and now the dump must contend with yet another accident. WIPP was closed for several years after the 2014 barrel explosion in which a drum “self-heated” to almost 1,600 degrees, ripped open and scattered uranium, plutonium, and americium throughout the underground burial rooms, the whole ventilation shaft, and the above-ground buildings. At the surface, 22 workers were internally contaminated after inhaling the radioactive poisons, and independent monitors recorded radiation a half-mile away. Construction of a new ventilation system, three years behind schedule, and costing up to $486 million, still prevents employees from fully utilizing the site. The (DOE) investigation of the April contamination is ongoing. — Carlsbad Current-Argus, Apr 14;  Cortez, Colo. Journal, Apr 11, 2022; AP, April 11 & March 15, 2022; New Mexican, Apr. 23, 2015; Albuquerque Journal, Aug. 23, 2015; New York Times, May 31, & Oct. 30, 2014

Ohio Rad Waste Handler Spreading Contamination

Austin Master Services (AMS) is a radioactive waste management firm with offices in Martins Ferry, Ohio. The grassroots group Concerned Ohio River Residents (CORR) sent soil samples from around the firm’s site to a laboratory for tests that found radium-226 over ten times normal background levels. Radium-226 persists in the environment for 16,000 years. Results for lead-214 and bismuth-214 showed radioactivity also “approaching or exceeding regulatory limits,” said Beverly Reed of CORR. The lab analysis showed the hottest radioactivity near the firm’s entrance. AMS, with operations in ten states, handles and transports materials largely from oil and gas industry projects like fracking. While AMS operates without regulation by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), the agency insists some of its waste must be shipped to Utah because it’s too radioactive for regular state landfills. The AMS site, about 2,500 feet from a school stadium and a regional hospital, and several hundred feet from a water plant and homes, sits above the public drinking water aquifer and within a flood plain. In 2014, AMS relocated to Martins Ferry from Youngstown, Ohio after Fire Chief Silverio Caggiano opened an investigation into its facility. When approached by news station WTRF in April, Martins Ferry Mayor John Davies said, “I believe [CORR is] spreading mistruths… I drink the water every day. My kids drink it. My grandkids drink it.” CORR stands by its scientific findings and warns of the contamination’s threat to groundwater. The group hopes the ODNR will halt AMS’s operations and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will name the area as a Superfund site to encourage clean-up. — CORR Original Documents; WTRF-TV, Apr. 6; The Times Leader, May 19, 2022; and AustinMasterServices.com

U.K. Activists See Return of U.S. Nuclear Bombs

The Guardian reports that bunkers at Britain’s Lakenheath Air Base, operated by the United States, are being refurbished “to be used again after 14 years to house U.S. nuclear weapons,” according to Pentagon defense documents unearthed by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. U.S. nuclear weapons like the B61 gravity H-bombs in five European NATO states were withdrawn from Britain in 2008 after massive protests. “At the time of the withdrawal, gravity bombs were widely considered militarily obsolete, and hopes of further disarmament by the nuclear-armed powers were high,” the Guardian reported. With the new B61-model 12 now in production, the United States plans to replace over 100 B61-3 and -4 models now in Europe. The 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty prohibits any such sharing of nuclear weapons. Peace activists protested the reported return of U.S. nuclear weapons May 21 at Lakenheath, and the group Stop the War’s Chris Nineham “reminded the crowd that it was people power that forced nuclear missiles to be removed from Lakenheath in 2008” Popular Resistance reported. “It is because of what ordinary people did — what you did — and we can do it all again,” Nineham said.
— Popular Resistance, May 22; The Guardian, Apr. 12; and Federation of American Scientists, April 11, 2022

Poland “Might be open” to Hosting U.S. Bombs

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party, said April 3 that he “might be open” to the stationing of U.S. nuclear weapons in Poland, in spite of prohibitions enshrined in the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that explicitly forbid it. “If the Americans asked us to store American nuclear weapons in Poland, we would be open to it,” Kaczynski told the German Sunday paper Welt Am Sonntag. “The initiative would have to come from the Americans. In principle, however, it makes sense to extend nuclear weapons sharing to the eastern flank,” Kaczynski said, according to Newsweek. Both Poland and the United States are signatories to the NPT. — New York Post, April 4; and Newsweek, April 3, 2022

Protest and Resistance Continues in Germany

This year’s International Week gathering, focused on the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Büchel air base in southeast Germany, is set for July 11 to 17. Peace activists from Germany, the U.S., Holland, and elswhere will also travel north to Nörvenich Air Base where Tornado jet fighters from Büchel will temporarily be stationed while their home base runway is refurbished. The Büchel base’s bunkers that hold U.S. nuclear gravity bombs are also being rebuilt to handle the delivery of the new B61-model 12 bombs now in production.

Meanwhile, nuclear weapons abolitionists continue to appear in court for go-in actions resulting in trespass charges. Susan Crane of the Redwood City California Catholic Worker will appear for an appeal hearing in Koblenz Regional Court September 20, as she is contesting her earlier conviction in Cochem District Court. Frits ter Kuile of the Amsterdam Catholic Worker has been ordered to self-report to jail in Germany after the authorities failed to coerce his payment of the civil penalty for a go-in trespass conviction. In a case that stems from the same July 15, 2018 go-in action as Frits and Susan — when eighteen resisters got through the fence at Büchel in broad daylight — Nukewatch’s John LaForge has formally appealed lower court convictions for trespass to Germany’s highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Attorney Anna Busl in Bonn submitted a 36-page appeal brief to Germany’s “Supreme Court” on April 24. The appeal centers on the lower courts’ refusal to hear testimony from expert witnesses, arguing that the courts erred by denying LaForge his right to present a defense. Like many other resisters, LaForge argues that because planning nuclear attacks is an international criminal conspiracy to commit massacres, the defense of “crime prevention” excuses the trespass. The court won’t rule before August.

Filed Under: Environment, Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

March 2, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

 “End war, build peace” by Ray Acheson

RAY ACHESON, 1 MARCH 2022

Ray Acheson is an activist for peace, justice and abolition, director of the Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom disarmament program in New York City, WILPF representative on the steering committee of ICAN, and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Roman and Littlefield 2021).

Russia’s war in Ukraine is intensifying, with cities and civilians being targeted with missiles and rockets and a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. The threat of nuclear war, the billions of dollars being promised to militarism, racist border crossing restrictions and ideas about conflict, and the ongoing climate crisis are intertwined with the already horrific violence in Ukraine. To confront these compounding crises, war and war profiteering must end, nuclear weapons must be abolished, and we must confront the world of war that has been deliberately constructed at the expense of peace, justice, and survival.

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, finding that human-induced climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of an IPCC working group.

The IPCC report was released five days after Russia launched an imperial war of aggression against Ukraine—a war that itself is fossil-fueled and wrapped up with energy and economic interests, and that will contribute further to carbon emissions. Furthermore, this report comes one day after the Russian president ordered his country’s nuclear forces to be put on “combat duty,” escalating the risk of nuclear war and threatening climate catastrophe.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, including Russian forces using banned weapons such as cluster munitions and using explosive weapons in populated areas, hitting hospitals, homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. The conflict has also already involved severe environmental impacts, including pollution from military sites and material, as well as from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, radiation risks from fighting at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, groundwater contamination, and more.

Now, it risks becoming nuclear, putting the entire world at risk. The use of even a single nuclear bomb would be absolutely devastating. It would kill hundreds of thousands of people, it would destroy critical infrastructure, [and] it would unleash radiation that will damage human bodies, animals, plants, land, water, and air for generations. If it turns into a nuclear exchange with NATO or the United States, we will be facing an unprecedented catastrophe. Millions of people could die. Our health care systems, already overwhelmed by two years of a global pandemic, will collapse. The climate crisis will be exponentially exacerbated; there could be a disastrous decline in food production and a global famine that might kill most of humanity.

In this moment, everyone must condemn the threat to use nuclear weapons, as well as the ongoing bombing of civilians, the war in general, and the Russian government’s act of imperial aggression. Providing humanitarian relief, ending the war, and preventing it from turning nuclear are top priorities. But we must also recognize what led us here. This crisis is the inevitable result of building a world order based on militarism, just as the nuclear dimension is an inevitable result of the possessing nuclear weapons and claiming they are a legitimate tool of “security”.

READ THE FULL POST HERE:

End war, build peace

 

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Military Spending, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation Exposure, Renewable Energy, War

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 13
  • Next Page »

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Subscribe

Donate

Facebook

Categories

  • B61 Bombs in Europe
  • Chernobyl
  • Counterfeit Reactor Parts
  • Depleted Uranium
  • Direct Action
  • Environment
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fukushima
  • Lake Superior Barrels
  • Military Spending
  • Newsletter Archives
  • North Korea
  • Nuclear Power
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Office News
  • On The Bright Side
  • Photo Gallery
  • Quarterly Newsletter
  • Radiation Exposure
  • Radioactive Waste
  • Renewable Energy
  • Sulfide Mining
  • Through the Prism of Nonviolence
  • Uncategorized
  • Uranium Mining
  • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • War
  • Weekly Column

Contact Us

(715) 472-4185
nukewatch1@lakeland.ws

Address:
740A Round Lake Road
Luck, Wisconsin 54853
USA

Donate To Nukewatch

News & Information on Nuclear Weapons,
Power, Waste & Nonviolent Resistance

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

© 2022 · Nukewatch