Nuclear Weapons - Back from the Brink ~ Critical Analysis, Resources, Updates

Nuclear Weapons – The Ultimate Evil

Back from the Brink

Critical Analysis, Resources, Updates

Last Updated: 12 September 2018

360 degree view span Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Photo by H.J. Peterson - K-HJP001-K-HJP013

Herein are assembled an expanding catalog/archive of materials involving the Back From The Brink campaign, chronicling its development and growth as well as providing historical analysis and resources to provoke and educate. The Campaign’s purpose is to pursue The Call for the U.S. to lead negotiations with the other nuclear weapon armed states to eliminate nuclear weapons. This campaign is modeled on the Freeze movement and seeks to leverage a moment similar to the early 1980’s when Ronald Reagan’s hawkish plans for nuclear war fighting scared people to death and made them open to the idea that they needed to take action. The Freeze was organized around a simple call to stop the arms race in a form that people could take to any organization they worked with, providing a vehicle for engagement and action.

“We [the family of hibakusha] have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with long-forgotten names, like Mururoa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga, Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted. We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.”

—Setsuko Thurlow, Hiroshima survivor, speaking 10 Dec 2017

on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,
recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

The Call Materials/Updates

A RESOLUTION Calling for the United States to “Pull Back from the Brink” and Prevent Nuclear War
Instance of The Call passed by the Northampton City Council on 16 Nov 2017 that can be used as a model for approaching other municipalities
MS Word and PDF formats
GET INVOLVED: Sign On to participate in The Call To Prevent Nuclear War:
• Endorse The Call As An Organization
• Join The Call As An Individual
Organizations Endorsing “Back from the Brink” resolution
California Leads the Way in Support of Nuclear Disarmament
State Legislature Passes Pro-Nuclear Disarmament Resolution
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 29 Aug 2018

“Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

—General Omar Bradley, speaking 31 May 1948

First Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1949-1953
Memorial Day address at Long Meadow, Massachusetts

Critical Analysis

What are coastal nuclear power plants doing to address climate threats?
As shorelines creep inland and storms worsen, nuclear reactors around the world face new challenges.
by John Vidal, ensia, 8 Aug 2018
“The Hiroshima anniversary: 5 things you should know about nuclear weapons today, Seventy-three years after the first use of the atomic bomb in wartime, commitment to arms control is fading,” by Michael Krepon, Vox, 6 Aug 2018
“War Department’s Addiction Crisis: Merchants of Death Peddling Reaching Endemic Proportions,” by Eli Martin Schotz, M.D., 20 Feb 2018
“DigBoston Joins Movement To Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” by Jason Pramas, 30 Jan 2018
“U.S. Nuclear Posture: Bringing Us Closer to the Brink,” Leonard Elger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, 21 Jan 2018
“Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon — U.S. Leaders Reject Nuclear Winter Studies,” by Steven Starr, Federation of American Scientists / Global Research, 9 January 2017
Nagaski & Hiroshima: When Nuclear Weapons Were Used On People
Nuclear Weapons - The Death Star of Life on Earth
Life on Earth Hinges on Removing the Nuclear Sword of Damocles
Expanding the lens – explore a wider field-of-view:
- The American Committee for East-West Accord
  From its Mission Statement:
  The Committee is new but not without a distinguished predecessor. Its name derives from The American Committee on East-West Accord, a pro-detente organization founded in 1974 by illustrious Americans – among them, CEOs of multinational corporations, political figures, educational leaders, and policy thinkers such as George F. Kennan. That Committee, believing cold war had ended, closed its doors in 1992, though not before being credited with having contributed to the historic agreements reached by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985-1991. Today’s need for something akin to a new detente is no less imperative. And the new Committee for East-West Accord, which expects to be joined soon by an affiliated European branch in Brussels, strives for even more: A conclusive end to cold war and its attendant dangers.
- Johnson’s Russian List
  “the JRL,” has been a favored source of Russia-related information since it was founded by Editor-in-Chief David Johnson in 1996. The JRL is a project of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
- Center for Citizen Initiatives
  Our world has never faced a more challenging era than today. At CCI, we experienced one other such dangerous period in 1980. We flew in between the two enemy nations and dared to try to understand the challenges on both sides. Our citizen-to-citizen programs began to soften the environment between the two Superpowers of that era. Other American groups also got involved. War was averted and good relations began to grow in the 1990s. Our vision is: When real people in large numbers get involved, amazing changes begin to happen! If it happened in the 1980s, it can happen again. Join us! Let’s help reduce the tensions existing today between the two Superpowers. We begin our new mission armed with the knowledge that our original efforts in 1983 produced magic and miracles beyond anything we could have imagined—and with the belief that 99% of Americans and Russians genuinely yearn for good relations between our two nations. There is no problem between the peoples of our countries. We only need to overcome our distrust and fears, and rebuild the proper relationships to guarantee security for both nations.

“[Nuclear deterrence] was our shield, and by extension our sword. The nuclear priesthood extolled its virtues and bowed to its demands... Appropriated from the lexicon of conventional warfare, this simple prescription for adequate military preparedness became in the nuclear age a formula for unmitigated catastrophe. It was premised on a litany of unwanted assumptions, unprovable assertions and logical contradictions.”

—General George Lee Butler, speaking 2 February 1998

commander in chief, US Strategic Command, 1992-94
Address at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.

Resources

From Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, New York Academy of Medicine, 28 Feb - 1 Mar 2015:
“Atomic Energy: Origins Of The Fallacy In A Risk-Free Radiation Dose,” David Ratcliffe, rat haus reality press, 8 Aug 2016
“A Century from Now Concrete Will be Nothing But Rubble,” by Alice Friedemann, energyskeptic.com, 19 Jan 2014
“The problem is the iron and steel rebar reinforcement inside [concrete]. Cracks in cement can be fixed, but when air, moisture, and chemicals seep into reinforced concrete, the rebar rusts, expanding in diameter up to seven-fold, which destroys the surrounding concrete. This will eventually destroy nuclear reactors, spent nuclear fuel pools, and nearby waste containers.”