OMNI
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #26, 2021.
June 13, 2021
TOTAL ELIMINATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
UN Treatyon the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
(#25, April 2, 2021)
CONTENTS #26
Contact Abel Tomlinson
PEACE ACTION PANELS FOR LEGISLATION
Inside the ICBM Lobby
Biden’s New $100 Billion Nuclear Missile Plan
Celebrate Ellsberg
Demonstrate with Ground Zero and Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Russia’s Nuclear Weapons
Despite Treaty, US and Russia, and Now UK Increasing Weapons
Space Alert! (Winter-Spring 2021)
Galtung’s 10 Proposals for Ending Nuclear Arms: Will the World Listen Now?
PEACE ACTION
Virtual Lobby Days: agenda, speakers, & more!
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INSIDE THE ICBM LOBBY
THE NUCLEAR WEAPON DEPENDS UPON THE MISSILE
Have you asked, what can I do about nuclear weapons?
Well, most citizens, even most members of Congress know very little about how nuclear weapons could blow up the world. The weapons are composed of two parts: the bomb and the rocket to carry it to its target. This message is about the missile, the ICBM, the Intercontinental Ballistics Missile (ballistics, the science of projectiles; bm: a long-range missile propelled to high speed).
We can change ignorance. Knowledge is within our power.
The first step is to inform ourselves.
The second step is to inform our Senators and Representative.
The third step is to inform our friends.
And if you are not already a member, join OMNI, where you will find people who are informed or at least do not turn away from realities.
One STEP AT A TIME.
The method is a significant new report within the immediate reach of your computer.
The Report is called “Inside the ICBM Lobby.” Written by weapons expert William Hartung, the report provides substantial details about the profit power the multibillion-dollar weapons contractors have over U.S. policies.
Read the Report and tell your Senators and Representative to read it.
Summary of William Hartung’s “Inside the ICBM Lobby” report
>> William Hartung, Center for International Policy: “Inside the ICBM Lobby: Special Interests or the National Interest?”
Call your Senators and Representative directly. It’s easy: Phone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with Senator Bozeman, Senator Cotton, or Representative Womack. Give your name and address and say you are calling to request your representative to be informed about nuclear weapons and to read Hartung’s report. Express as you wish. Repeat the calls this week, make your voice heard!
The report should be required reading on Capitol Hill.
Former Pentagon Secretary William Perry knows that ICBMs are “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world.”
Why are those missiles so dangerous for all of humanity? Because [Hartung] “under current policies the president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, increasing the risks of an accidental nuclear war.”
But “despite this reality proposals for reducing this risk have routinely been blocked by a group of [profit power] Senators from states that host ICBM bases or ICBM maintenance and development activities, often referred to as the ICBM Coalition.” Thanks to RootsAction Educational Fund.
Of course, there’s a larger necessary STEP we must aim for: the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether, if we are to be protected from them. STEPS: The Treaty: End the Missiles: End the Bombs.NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #24, transition to
NUCLEAR ABOLITION TREATY ON THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, OMNI NEWSLETTER #1,JANUARY 22, 2021
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/nuclear-abolition-treaty-on-prohibition.html
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
WE KNOW WHAT TO DO AND HOW, STEP BY STEP. OUR NEXT STEP IS TO FIND ENOUGH PEOPLE TO MOVE OUR CIVIC LEADERS AND POLITICIANS TO OBEY THE LAW.
Dick Bennett, OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology
WHAT’S BEHIND THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S NEW $100 BILLION NUCLEAR MISSILE SYSTEM? (And more on the nuclear missile weapons Complex—D)
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine.
March 19, 2021
| EDUCATE!
https://popularresistance.org/whats-behind-the-biden-administrations-new-100-billion-nuclear-missile-system/
Massive Popular Pressure—Like That Organized By The 1980s Nuclear Freeze Movement—Is Needed To Stop More Waste, Fraud And Abuse.
One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake this year will be to review the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons budget and modernization strategy.
According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. is committed to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next decade, or about $50 billion per year. Over the next three decades, nuclear weapons modernization plans could cost as much as $1.5-$2 trillion.
This total includes investment in a $100 billion Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), a land-based nuclear missile, which is slated to replace the aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).
Manufactured by Northrop Grumman under a $13 billion contract—with assistance from other major defense contractors like Bechtel, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, and Textron—the GBSD is supposed to be made operational by 2029.
The U.S. Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.
Elizabeth Eaves characterized the GBSD in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a “new weapon of mass destruction the length of a bowling lane, which will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
The $100 billion, that the GBSD will cost, could alternatively “pay 1.24 million elementary school teachers’ salaries for a year, provide 2.84 million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital stays for Covid-19 patients.”
The human tragedy associated with the development of the GBSD is compounded by the fact that military experts believe it will not actually enhance U.S. national security.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2015 that getting rid of America’s land-based nuclear missiles would “reduce the false alarm danger.”
Like its predecessor the Minuteman III, the GBSD is designed to be activated in the face of a Russian nuclear attack.
The computer systems that warn of such incoming fire may be vulnerable to hacking and false alarms.
During the Cold War, military computer glitches caused numerous close calls.
President Biden has in the past supported arms control and nuclear weapons reduction treaties.
In 1988, he helped negotiate ratification of the Inter-Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed between Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan, which required the U.S. and USSR to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
More recently, though, Biden has taken a hard line against both Russia and China, whose supposed existential threats to U.S. interests has provided a basis for the massive government investment in nuclear weapons.
In an op-ed published during the presidential campaign, Biden supported a no first-use policy for nuclear weapons, and wrote in Foreign Affairs that the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterrence—and if necessary retaliating against attack.
The Democratic Party’s platform, adopted at the July 2020 convention, called Donald Trump’s proposal for new nuclear weapons “unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”
So far, however, Biden’s top Pentagon nominees have publicly backed all three legs of the nuclear triad—including the land-based missiles.
A major factor inhibiting the prospects for disarmament is the clout of defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, which spent more than $12 million in lobbying in 2020, and provided Biden with $403,072 during the 2020 election campaign.
Last July, when Ro Khanna (D-CA) proposed an amendment that would transfer $1 billion or one percent of the GBSD’s projected cost into a pandemic preparedness fund, the amendment was voted down and Khanna was accused by Liz Cheney (R-WY) of playing into the hands of China, which according to Cheney, had caused the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cheney represents the district encompassing Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is home to the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, where the GBSD will be based.
The city and surrounding region anticipate a major economic windfall from the GBSD.
In 2018, Cheney received $12,000 from Northrop Grumman-affiliated Political Action Committees (PACs) and $10,000 in 2020.[1]
Northrop donated money to congressional candidates in all the six states—Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota—which would be beneficiaries of the new missile.
Polling data indicates that public support for developing nuclear weapons is lukewarm at best.
However, it will take a large-scale social movement, equivalent to the nuclear-freeze movement of the 1980s, to pressure the Biden administration into doing the right thing.
The freeze movement was a large-scale grassroots movement that promoted a reduction and ultimately elimination of nuclear weapons.
Placing a strong emphasis on grass-roots education, it helped lay the groundwork for the INF Treaty, which the Trump administration repealed in 2019.
At a zoom conference on Wednesday, February 24, sponsored by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Katrina Vanden Heuval, publisher of The Nation Magazine, suggested that disarmament advocates should link up with the climate change movement, which has generated a lot of enthusiasm.
The twin threats of nuclear war and climate change demand a “boldness among grassroots political activists” that will be necessary to save ourselves and our planet.
[1]Cheney also in the 2020 election cycle received $11,515 from Raytheon Technologies while supporting an amendment in Congress to promote the development of low-yield nuclear weapons which were to be placed on cruise missiles developed by Raytheon.
March 10, 2021. Article updated to reflect the correct number of elementary school teachers whose annual salary could be covered: 1.24 million, not 124 million.
CELEBRATE ELLSBERG
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DEMONSTRATE
Full GZ article & newsletter: https://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/January-19-newsletter-for-website-FINAL.pdf
Continued: https://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/January-19-newsletter-for-website-FINAL.pdf
Yes, you can help save the world. In the next couple of minutes. 3-31-21 |
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END US-UK NUCLEAR COLLUSION
By Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center.
https://popularresistance.org/end-us-uk-nuclear-collusion/
March 28, 2021
| EDUCATE!
On March 16, the United Kingdom announced (in its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Foreign Policy and Development titled Global Britain in a Competitive Age) that it will increase the limit on its nuclear arsenal for the first time in decades. Instead of maintaining a cap of 180 warheads (as it had previously stated), the UK will increase its stockpile cap to 260 warheads – a 40% increase. The review also broadens the role of nuclear weapons to include the possible use of nuclear weapons to address emerging technologies (cyber attacks). This is shocking and unacceptable! Indeed, it seems the British Empire is flexing its imperial muscles as it breaks away from the rest of Europe.
The announcement comes at a precarious time. A new nuclear arms race is brewing. The US and Russia, the two largest nuclear powers (with some 93 percent of global nuclear warheads) are failing to lead the world away from reliance on nuclear weapons, and other nations are following their lead. At a time when most nations are calling for an end to nuclear weapons (UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons), rather than setting a positive example and supporting the treaty, the UK is instead fanning the flames of proliferation. And, it is getting loads of help along the way.
Just prior to the announcement a spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence reiterated the longstanding claim that the “UK is committed to maintaining its independent nuclear deterrent, which exists to deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life.” The British have been claiming their nuclear weapons systems to be “independent” for so long that the world seems to have accepted this fraudulent claim. In fact, the UK’s nuclear forces are anything but independent, and there is ample evidence to disprove the government’s claim. To more fully understand the situation, we need to study a bit of history. MORE https://popularresistance.org/end-us-uk-nuclear-collusion/ (This is a well-researched and supported article. –D)
sPACE aLERT!is published by Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org; globalnet@mindspring.com )., edited by Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of GN.
wINTER/SPRING 2021
“Elon Musk (Space X) Has Gone Nuts” by Bruce Gagnon
Musk’s call to “occupy and nuke Mars” is measured and denounced on the basis of science and the UN “Outer Space Treaty,” ratified 1967.
“Challenge the Global Space Control Doctrine” by Bruce Gagnon
Opposes plans for thousands of mini-satellites, the “corporate lockdown” of Congress, the new “Space Force,” “preparation for war with Russia and China” via NATO, and “the deadly connections between climate crisis, economic depression, and the costs of endless war preparation.”
“Esrange Launch Expansion in Sweden” by Agneta Norberg.
Esrange in the North of Sweden near Russia, “the world’s biggest downloading station from satellites,” is run by the Swedish Space Corporation in alliance with the US corporation Universal Space Net and Vandenberg Air Force Base.
What are mini-satellites for? “…to destroy and damage military opponent’s satellites.” “Sweden has become…a servile obedient vassal state to the U.S.”
“Global Ban on ‘Missile Defense’ Needed” by Subrata Ghoshroy. “Defense gives rise to more offense” is the key to the empty hope of missile “defense.” The only defense is a total ban on nuclear bombs and their missiles. One of the several persuasive reasons the author gives is that the US is led by the War Party—the Democrats and Republican bipartisan support for war. “It is high time to end this bipartisan consensus. We should demand that the MD program be drastically cut back, if not canceled altogether. Instead, U.S. should take the lead in proposing a global ban on MD systems.”
“MD Radar in Hawaii Back on Track” by Lynda Williams.
“Rocket Lab: New Zealand Dragged into US Militarization of Space” by Murray Horton.
”Russia’s Hypersonic Missile Tested” by Brian Berletic.”
“UK Spaceports: Supporting the Militarization of Space” by Dr. Dave Webb.
“Nukes in Space: What Will Biden Do?” by Karl Grossman.
“Odds and Ends.” 24 short reports.
“Goodbye Moon: Fly Me to the Moon, But Don’t Put Reactors There” by Linda Pentz Gunter.
“Asia-Pacific ‘Missile Defense’:Focused on Korea & China” by Choi, Sung-hee.
“Multi-Domain Integration: The New Full-Spectrum Dominance” by Will Griffin.
“Launch Impacts: Ozone Depletion & Crowded Orbits.”
“China Completes Its Satellite Network” by Gunnar Ulson.
An cartoons on back cover.
Brave opposition against US imperial expansion into outer space. Send Gagnon a contribution. --Dick
HANS M. KRISTENSEN AND MATT KORDA
Nuclear Notebook: How many nuclear weapons does Russia have, 2021. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists(3-17-21)
Russia’s nuclear modernization programs, combined with an increase in the number and size of military exercises and occasional explicit nuclear threats against other countries, contribute to uncertainty about Russia’s long-term intentions and growing international debate about the nature of its nuclear strategy. Read free in our subscription magazine.
BREAKING: Global Zero Condemns UK Plans to Increase Stockpile Cap
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FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER, 16 October 2017
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/after-nuclear-disarmament-what/
Prof. Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
Speech given at the reception for the Peace March 6 Aug 1981, UNESCO, Paris; and for the Perugia-Assisi Peace March 24-27 Sep 1981
Ten Proposals for Concrete Peace Politics
You who have now concluded your march for peace through Europe, you people are the conscience of Europe. If our governments, East and West, had pursued a rational, sensible policy of peace your heroic march would not have been necessary. But our governments, East and West, are pursuing an arms race for two reasons:
· Because they have an enormous scientific, bureaucratic and industrial capacity all the time making the arms more destructive, more precise, more difficult to defend oneself against, and
· Because they get frightened when the other side does the same.
To the East the SS20s are modernizations of the SS4s and the SS5s of earlier years, and reactions, for instance, to the Polaris system of the West; to the West the Cruise and Pershing II missiles are “modernizations” of present systems and reactions to the SS20s. The West, including–unfortunately–the government of this country, are now pursuing a policy, after the historical and disastrous NATO decision of December 12, 1979, of stepping up the arms level by trying to deploy 572 of Cruise and Pershing II – the idea being that this will make the Russians reconsider their deployment of SS20s, and then the two sides will together agree to lower the levels of nuclear overkill, and destruction of nature and civilization at the same time. Of course this will not work out. The Russians will do just the opposite: they will “modernize” their weapons further for the two reasons mentioned. It is all a part of an arms race with increasing tension and fear, there are no examples at all that one party is pressed to stop and enter an agreement in such a race, there is no compelling reason why he should. Our governments are pursuing something which does not exist: what they do is metaphysics; they are the true “idealists” in the sense of being truly unrealistic.
But that does not mean unilateral disarmament is realistic: as an isolated approach it can lead to attack from the other side, and it can lead to even more armament if the mood changes again. What seems to be realistic is a process of mutual unilateralism where one party stops and makes one step down the spiral, giving the other side a chance to follow – for instance with a nuclear-free zone starting in the Nordic countries and extended to include Soviet territory. Or: a no-first-use pledge for ABC weapons. Historical examples point to this as the only realistic possibility. But the condition is that initiatives are made and that responses in a positive direction, from the other side, are taken seriously – not just brushed aside as propaganda. Moreover, disarmament alone is never enough – it has to be combined with not only a sense of balance as just indicated, but also with efforts to solve the conflicts underlying the whole situation, and efforts to develop alternatives to the nuclear arms both parties are relying on – with the potentials of a mega-Hiroshima/Nagasaki built into them.
The following are ten proposals – short-term, entirely feasible given political will – along these lines with a very brief justification of each of them.
· The best defense a country can have is to be as invulnerable economically as possible, and have only defensive means of defense.
This is the basis of the Swiss defense system: to be so self-sufficient in times of war in such basic fields as food and energy that there will be no temptation to pursue aggressive policies with intervention in neighbouring countries and rapid deployment forces for action all around world. At the same time Switzerland has a defense system which is not based on trying to export the war and fight it on other people’s territory – which is what the Soviet Union tries to do with her system of buffer states and the US tries to do with her “modernization” of the European theater – a theater where the superpowers are supposed to be spectators, pushing buttons and we the victims of their failed politics.
· A non-aggressive defense is fully possible: it probably consists of a combination of conventional military, para-military and non-military defense.
Both Switzerland and Yugoslavia have come far in this direction, and they are probably both among the safest countries in Europe today because their defense systems do not threaten anybody at the same time as any possible aggressor knows the population would go on fighting long after a possible military capitulation. They are incapable of nuclear retaliation, that is true – but precisely for that reason does not make any other country so desperately afraid of them that they might try a first strike to eliminate that threat.
· Military blocs can hardly be abolished all of a sudden, but more countries members of the bloc could become more independent and become protest countries rather than client countries.
Both France and Romania are good examples of countries that are not automatic followers of the superpower line. They both played historical roles in the 1960s in bringing about détente and may play such roles again. But we need more countries. They do not have to declare themselves non-members, but it is quite clear that Poland and the Netherlands de facto are protest countries rather than client countries. New models should be found for membership in the pacts, with special relations to the superpowers. Thus, the four countries mentioned are for all practical purposes nuclear-free zones even though France has the force de frappe – it is the degree to which a country is willing to play the role given to it by the superpower and to be host to superpower bombs that counts.
· Neutral countries in Europe should play a much more active role in the non-aligned movement, also in development questions to bridge the gaps.
The non-aligned movement consists mainly of countries trying to get out of the pattern of underdevelopment. They are offered only two models of development: capitalist and socialist, or private capitalist and state capitalist to be more precise. The superpowers are jealously watching that a country sticks to the correct model. What is desperately needed in the world today would be countries capable of developing a third or a fourth, a fifth development model so as to be not only non-aligned in a military sense, but also in development politics in general. Only by teaching the superpowers that there are alternatives to their policies can they possibly start giving up their interference in internal affairs. But if the Western bloc helps for instance Poland in developing a new strategy of development, more democratic, possibly more socialist, then this will be seen as an effort by the other side to subvert. Hence, the neutral countries have a great role to play, and some of them are also themselves in search of development alternatives.
· Organize peace-building and war-avoidance conferences without superpower or with superpowers as observers only.
To entrust the peace process to superpowers is not only totally unrealistic, it is catastrophic – like entrusting the control of the traffic in narcotics to the major narcotics dealers. To the contrary, the neutral countries in Europe, and the protest countries, should take initiatives to organizing new types of conferences not dominated by superpower objectives and superpower thinking, for instance with all this superficial rocket counting that goes on. With superpowers even as co-presidents of such conferences no new ideas will ever be permitted to emerge. The superpowers should be less in the center of the process, more on the margin.
· As an example of peace-building measure: new forms of cooperation.
A number of cooperative measures emerged in the former period of détente, the late 1960s. But they were flawed in an important way: there was little or no understanding of the danger of economically unbalanced cooperation. Countries, like Poland, importing increasingly expensive and exporting less valuable goods will become dependent and increasingly in debt; this, in turn, may increase the likelihood of superpower intervention. More symmetric forms have to be found, what they are is not so easily seen. The search is important and must continue.
· Example of war-avoiding measure: a UN surveillance satellite.
Crimes are being committed every day against the people of Europe and other countries as well as by superpowers and some of their allies who target their missiles on human beings anywhere, like fascists preparing genocide. These crimes should not pass unmasked. Each side knows through its system of spies and spy satellites more or less where the other side has its weapons of mass death. We, the possible victims, are entitled to share in this knowledge, to reveal it, to unmask it. The excellent French proposal in the last UN special session on disarmament went far in this direction and should be supported.
· Example of war-avoiding measure: UN troops between East and West.
We all know that UN peace-keeping forces represent no guarantee. But they would, stationed in buffer zones between NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization countries in Europe, be important symbols of a world society present and watching, and at least trying to help by being in-between.
· Local, municipal councils represent a new force in the peace movement and could build up the support for nuclear-free zones and also for alternative forms of defense.
A number of them already exist in Britain – much more work could be done along these lines as it is quite clear that the old form of leaving it all to the national governments and parliaments, which then leaves it to an alliance and/or a superpower government, leads to defense policies much too far removed from the people who supposedly are to be defended and might have very different opinions from their leaders who will be protected in their underground bankers.
· Eventually, the action by people themselves is indispensable as a peace factor, and the most solid factor on which to build.
The peace movement in Europe, but so far mainly in the West and mainly in the North, is now a political factor nobody can afford to neglect. This means that people have power. In a democracy the peoples should also have the right of more than demonstrations, marches and other excellent consciousness-raising measures. They should also have the right to demand a popular vote over military policies that imply the transformation of European countries into guaranteed targets of nuclear rockets from the other side, in a desperate effort to eliminate missiles before they are fired. They should have the right to have such votes also on a local basis so that the communities with a population in favor of such disastrous policies can bear the risks themselves, and perhaps understand better what they favor. And they should, eventually, have the right to veto, with all nonviolent means, the introduction of any nuclear capability in their local community. There are risks in this. But the risks of yet another turn on the spiral of armament are infinitely higher: they spell the end of all of us.
So, let us liberate our politicians from their thought prisons, they are prisoners of their own much-too-simple logic. The situation is dangerous, difficult, but not yet hopeless. What has been mentioned above is completely possible – and so are many other peace policies. There are so many things that could be done; and, I think, more realistic than what we read from our politicians every day. Time to start doing them is now. If the politicians do not want or are unable to do so from the top level of the countries and the alliances, then others have to show the way.
As you people have!
END NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #26