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February 28, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear-weapons treaty the right way forward: The treaty has already strengthened peace and safety in 50 countries.

Note: A model of public engagement, Nukewatch volunteer Joel Bransky had this excellent letter published in his local paper, the Duluth News Tribune:

Fifty nations just outlawed nuclear weapons forever. The international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW, came into force on Jan. 22 after the 50th country, Honduras, ratified it. The people of these countries will never have to worry about cancer-causing weapons tests or pay for the secretive governmental nonsense required to manufacture and store nuclear warheads.

The treaty’s entry into force comes at a critical time. Just three years ago, while living in South Korea, I watched our president joke about the size of his launch button and challenge a volatile dictator to a game of nuclear chicken. Congress held hearings on how a nuclear strike would be carried out. The world was one miscalculation away from nuclear war, it seemed — yet many people have already forgotten. The enormity of the problem makes it seem unsolvable.

But we can solve this problem, and TPNW maps the path to nuclear disarmament. The treaty has already strengthened peace and safety in 50 countries. This is remarkable, given the opposition to the treaty from the U.S. government and weapons manufacturers. It shows that a nuclear-free future is coming. In fact, for the citizens of those 50 countries, it is already here.

I am tired of our government wasting taxpayer money on weapons that are never used and that, if used, would kill us through incineration, radiation poisoning, or starvation. We must tell our government that this is absurd and outdated. Now is the time. Please call or email your U.S. senators and representative and tell them you support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

— Joel Bransky, Duluth, Minnesota, Feb. 25, 2021

January 15, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Treaty Seeks End to Nuclear Madness

The US delegation standing just outside the Büchel Air Base, and in front of inflatable mock B61 nuclear bombs, included from left, Brian Terrell, Andrew Lanier, Susan Crane, Cee’Cee’ Anderson, Ralph Hutchison, Richard Bishop, Cindy Collins, Kevin Collins, and John LaForge. Not pictured, Fred Galluccio and Dennis DuVall.

By Ralph Hutchison, John LaForge, 15 Jan. 2021

On January 22, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force. The treaty bans the development, production, possession, deployment, testing, use and just about anything else you can imagine related to nuclear weapons.

Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

Approved at the United Nations by 122 countries in 2017, and subsequently signed by 86 and ratified by 51 nations, the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction. These earlier agreements include the Geneva Gas Protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Ottawa Treaty or Mine Ban Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is no magic wand. Nine nuclear-armed states claim that the treaty doesn’t apply to them, and it’s true that only governments that are “states parties” to the treaty are subject to its prohibitions and obligations. However, the treaty can be a kind of a lever and a beacon for achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal every government on earth claims to desire.

“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

Decades of refusal to conclude “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament “at an early date,” which the United States and four other nuclear nations agreed to in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, have left the rest of the world fed up. Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

As with bans on other weapons of mass destruction, scofflaw states that continue to produce and use nuclear weapons will increasingly be condemned and shunned as outliers and rogue actors. And nuclear-armed states have already been stung by the treaty’s imminent entry into force. Last October, the Trump White House urged those governments that had ratified the treaty to withdraw their ratifications. Happily, none did.

For more than a decade, public support for the elimination of nuclear weapons remains consistently strong. Current polls — Belgium, 64%; Germany, 68%; Italy, 70%; Netherlands, 62% — show strong majorities in countries that now host U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. The treaty heralds a new global, civil, diplomatic and economic environment in which nuclear weapons are banned. In Belgium, one of five NATO countries that currently station U.S. nuclear weapons inside their territories, the parliament in January 2020 nearly expelled the U.S. weapons in a close vote. When the first NATO country still hosting the U.S. nuclear bombs demands their removal, others are expected to follow suit.

Elsewhere, financial divestment campaigns in Europe are succeeding, pressing hundreds of institutions to get out of the business of genocidal atomic violence. The Dutch pension fund APB, the fifth largest of its kind in the world, has announced it will exclude companies involved in production of nuclear weapons. It joins more than seventy other European banks, pension funds, and insurance companies that have already adopted divestment policies.

January 22 marks the culmination of the effort led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, civil society, and non-nuclear-armed states to create the treaty. It is also the beginning of a new movement that will, in the end, see the elimination of the existential nuclear threat.

Given the need to stop the Biden administration from continuing the $2 trillion commitment to “modernize” U.S. nuclear weapons, build new bomb plants, and invest in new nuclear weapons, the treaty and its message could not be timelier or more compelling.

As supporters the world over have noted, this treaty is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

Ralph Hutchison is coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

John LaForge.JPG John LaForge is a co-director of Nukewatch in Wisconsin.

This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

August 1, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch June 2020 Letter to Supporters

Summer 2020
Dear Friend of Nukewatch,

Nukewatch is back on track. This tenacious organization will not stop, even as the world continues to become a stranger and scarier place. War profiteers have not stopped the building of new nuclear bombs. Corporations have not stopped construction of new nuclear power reactors. Radioactive waste has not stopped piling up without a safe disposal solution. Since nothing has yet stopped these deadly nuclear industries, nothing is stopping Nukewatch: not cancer surgery, from which Co-Director John LaForge is recovering remarkably, and not coronavirus. We have a job to do and so do you. Do your part by making a contribution today.

Disturbing nuclear problems are cropping up globally faster than we can report on them. This just in: on May 13th a convoy carrying nuclear weapons and involving 50 personnel traveled from the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield, England, through Glasgow’s city center, then on to England’s nuclear sub base at Coulport. “It is never right to possess and deploy nuclear weapons and transport them on public roads. Doing it right now is completely irresponsible,” says Jane Talents with Nukewatch UK. More info is in your recent Quarterly.

So far, seven U.S. nuclear reactor sites have reported Covid-19 cases among staff members. Germany continues to demolish nuclear power with plans to shut off the last of its reactors in 2022. The Department of Energy is rolling out yet another scheme: this time for small, mobile nuclear reactors to power remote U.S. military installations with an initial investment of $160 million in taxpayer funds. Taiwan demands that Japan stop polluting the ocean with 200 tons of radioactive water every day, as it has been for the past nine years. Nukewatch has been reporting on it from the beginning. This is the kind of news that the public needs to know, and Nukewatch delivers it. Send a donation to keep the information flowing.

In the face of the pandemic, Nukewatch and its sister organizations had to cancel our much-anticipated Stop the New Nuclear Weapons Race conference scheduled for May. Despite the threat of the virus, there were already 70 paid participants, 30 sponsors and a dozen internationally and nationally renowned presenters committed to this event. We had so eagerly anticipated seeing your faces and making our plans together for nuclear abolition. Nukewatch is now in its forty-first year. We missed our 40th birthday party at the conference and we missed seeing you there, but we are committed to keeping this momentum going.

The peace camp in opposition to U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany has also been taken off the calendar. While we work to limit the spread of Covid-19 and keep activists safe, the military, bomb makers and nuclear energy waste producers carry on as usual.

As a Nukewatch supporter you have been a part of a long list of campaigns, from the early days of missile silo hunting, to truck watches and peace camps, to closing Project ELF. Nukewatch is a veteran nuclear watchdog group, as are many of our supporters who have sustained this movement and created these successes.

One way our seasoned members can help is by considering a bequest to Nukewatch. Email nukewatch1@lakeland.ws or call us for more information on how to leave the kind of legacy you want for the future.

We are working to bring in younger supporters. There’s another thing you can do for Nukewatch, and that is to discuss it and nuclear issues with others. Help us build our list of supporters. Having you to count on keeps us going, so having many more of you would ensure that Nukewatch, now middle aged, grows old. Have that conversation with friends and family and when interested send us a name and address. You can be part of our future.

While the Pentagon gets more and more taxpayer money, organizations working for peace receive no guaranteed government endowments. Nukewatch’s grassroots work depends solely on you to get us through year after year.

You help pay for printing the Nukewatch Quarterly: you make the difference between someone answering the phone and blowing the whistle, and no one listening. Researching and writing articles takes time as does filing taxes, responding to mail, ordering supplies, updating the website, stamping envelopes—we do all of this on a shoestring budget, but it all takes dollars.
Please give so that Nukewatch can continue our critical work.

This organization has worked hard to move forward without the physical, mental and dynamic presence of Co-Director John LaForge. He will be returning soon from Germany, on leave following cancer treatment. The good news is that Kelly Lundeen, our new master coordinator, developed a team of volunteers to help in the office. Your enclosed newsletter is evidence of Kelly’s expertise. Now the need is a gift from you.

We all have a job to do. Since my own retirement after 28 years in the Nukewatch office, I still volunteer and do what I can to keep this organization going. Please do the same.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Urfer
Nukewatch Volunteer, Board of Director, Retired Staff

P.S. Your tax deductible donation can be sent by mail or online at nukewatchinfo.org.

Email us at nukewatch1@lakeland.ws or call (715)472-4185.

Nuclear-weapons treaty the right way forward: The treaty has already strengthened peace and safety in 50 countries.

Treaty Seeks End to Nuclear Madness

“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

Nukewatch June 2020 Letter to Supporters

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“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2020

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