Nuclear

Doomsday 2020

At the start of 2020, the Doomsday Clock was moved to 100 Seconds to Midnight. This is the closest the clock has been to a nuclear catastrophe (midnight) since its inception in 1947 as a project of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. When the hands were moved in January, three reasons were cited: (1) decrease in regulation of nuclear weapons, (2) climate change, and (3) increase in cyber-based disinformation. It appears that concerns in these areas have only increased as the year has progressed.  It was 75 years ago at 8:15 in the morning on August 6th, when the U.S. warplane Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” the first atomic weapon, on the people of  Hiroshima. Three days later Nagaski was […]

Grounded…or flying by the seat of our pants?

In recent days, an increased number of military planes have been flying over the US and targeting cities often in clusters to show appreciation to ‘front line workers.’  The Pentagon cooked up the scheme of ‘Operation America Strong’ to mobilize the military in what some refer to as the ‘war on the corona virus.’  The operation was to honor the sacrifices of health care workers who have faced new challenges in their profession in caring for those with COVID-19.  The risks to their lives have increased as the availability of PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) has decreased.  It seems that the US government has passed the buck in its most basic responsibility to protect its citizens.  The federal government missed the […]

Opposing Trident with Faslane Peace Camp: 37 Years of Resistance

the cover of Faslane Peace Camp's 2000 publication, Faslania, featuring a spiral black and white design with Celtic designs and a peace sign in the middle

Recently I traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland to represent NWTRCC at the International Conference for War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns, hosted by Conscience: Taxes for Peace Not War. I’m working on a full conference report, but in the meantime, I wanted to highlight the longtime Scottish resistance campaign against the Trident nuclear submarine. ​A highlight of the weekend was the Sunday bus trip to HMNB Clyde, the military base at which the UK’s Trident-missile armed nuclear submarines are located. The Faslane Peace Camp has been resisting these nuclear weapons since 1982. One of the conference attendees, Willemien, has been living and resisting at Faslane for two years. ​ Faslane is a beautiful little area along the shores of Gare […]

Georgia on My Mind

Close the School of the Americas banner with woman and man on both sides

A rare event occurred in my life that I found myself traveling to Georgia for two important events in peacemaking recently. The first event was for the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 trial in Brunswick and the second was the 30th Anniversary Commemorative Gathering at Fort Benning with the School of the Americas Watch. Both events were heavily populated with War Tax Resisters as well as potential War Tax Resisters.  The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) action took place in the home of long time War Tax Resister (WTR) Robert Randall who helped organize many of the events around the trial as well as bringing attention to the Trident nuclear weapons for many decades. Like many WTRs, he had focused on […]

Know the Earth…Share the Way…Understand the World

Flag of International Atomic Energy Agency with blue background, atomic particle surrounded by oak leaf branches

Last week I joined with others who had participated in a tax day action earlier in the year to raise awareness about nuclear weapons on the UN designated day to eliminate the most potent weapon ever created.  We set out seeking midday crowds in a boldly painted vehicle with messages of nuclear disarmament and “armed” with materials including the Warheads to Windmills literature. The program provides a framework of how we could invest the $61 billion for nuclear weapons (in 2018) into programs that could counter climate catastrophe including the Green New Deal. While we traveled around the city I had to put some of my organizing instincts on hold and focus on what underlies all of this work, building […]

Building Positive Pillars for Peace

On July 30th, 2019 I had the great pleasure of participating in a live webinar featuring several think tanks and organizations around the world addressing the continued efforts to abolish nuclear weapons worldwide. The participants hailed from notable groups like Abolition 2000, the World Future Council, and the Institute for Economics and Peace. The presentations revolved around the audacity for peace and how peace is possible through combined international efforts to abolish nuclear weapons. The Institute for Economics and Peace proclaims two types of peace: positive and negative. Negative peace defined as the “absence of violence or fear of violence.” According to the Positive Peace Index Report 2019 written by the Institute for Economics and Peace, higher levels of negative […]

Nukes vs. Earth: Wake Up and Change

#1 polluter = war with Frances Crowe

“People tell me I should study to become a climate scientist so I can solve the climate crisis. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.” — Greta Thunberg It’s pretty easy to find great quotes from the surprising and powerful new voice of the climate change movement, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. I like that quote because often I feel like we are drowning in information and should spend more time out making more noise than listening to news (ok, I’m something of a news addict, but then my parents were journalists) or reading yet another book on how we ended up where we […]

Military Members Speak Out On Memorial Day

Image of a person with a gun on the left and a human head with a gas mask on and the word War Huh! What is it good for?

This year at Memorial day, Veterans were sharing their stories about war, their time in the military and how the military has impacted both physical and mental health. While Memorial Day has been a holiday commemorating those killed and  forever silenced by war, Veterans who survived wars were talking about their experiences over the weekend. Many people involved in the military and those close to them were speaking publicly about the horrific experiences of war after the Army asked how the military has influenced them on Twitter.  On Memorial Day, a story was released about Atomic Soldiers who, for many spoke about their exposure to atomic weapons after 50 years earlier.   The Atlantic shared a short documentary, The Atomic Soldiers […]

NWTRCC’s Adventures in DC with Code Pink and John Bolton’s War Making

When NWTRCC originally reached out to members of Code Pink to share a report back from their recent delegation for our May meeting in Washington DC, we could not have been fully aware of the timeliness of the situation in Iran and the rapidly changing US policy. Code Pink, co- founder Medea Benjamin shared her reflections of the 28 member delegation in March. She shared stories of some of the 80 million Iranian people who have been suffering under increasingly crippling sanctions as well as an increasing threat of war. As NWTRCC members were wrapping up our gathering in Washington DC and joining in support of some members of Code Pink at the Venezuelan embassy, the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier […]

King’s Bay Plowshares/ MLK Anniversary

7 activists hold a sign that reads "The ultimate logic of racism is genocide"

TODAY is April 4th, the 51st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.      It is also the first anniversary of the action of 7 Catholic peace activists to symbolically disarm nuclear weapons at the Trident Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia.  Most, if not all, of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, as Catholic Workers, are also by default war tax resisters, since they live below a taxable income.  Not paying taxes for war is a baseline value for the movement founded by Dorothy Day.  One of the KBP7, Martha Hennessy, is Dorothy Day’s granddaughter.      The seven activists chose April 4th, 2018, as the day for their action at Kings Bay precisely because it […]

The Continual Crossroads of Nuclear Weapons

People of Bikini Atoll carry their possessions to ships as part of forced relocation

History of the Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands After World War II the United States seized the Marshall Islands, a 1,800 mile chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Prior to that the Japanese had occupied the territory as an outpost for their military interventions. One Sunday in February 1946, the island’s US military governor asked the locals if they would be willing to temporarily relocate for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.”  Operation Crossroads began on July 1, 1946 to determine how nuclear detonations would impact warships. The operation was terminated after many ships were destroyed and a 94 foot tsunami coated everything with radioactive water.  Many of the veterans who were ordered into […]

Gambling with our Future

Image of nuclear weapons explosion on horizon with orange glow

A recent headline, Cost to taxpayers to clean up nuke waste jumps $100 billion in a year brought home the tragedy of the nuclear weapons legacy. NBC reported that 80% of the increase was related to the Hanford site in Washington state where the plutonium was processed for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. David Trimble, director of the Government Accountability Office’s Natural Resources and Environmental team stated “We believe the number is growing and is understated.”  The projected timeline for clean up at this site is at least 50 years. Hanford is one of 75 sites in 35 states contaminated with nuclear weapons waste throughout the country. It was just a few days before that the Bulletin of Atomic […]