Speak Up, Speak Out! Interview on Current Nuclear Weapons Issues

Ginny Wolff, of Speak Up, Speak Out! on KSVR - FM, interviewed me last week about the work of Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action since 1977 to protest the Trident submarines based at the Bangor Naval Base in Silverdale, Washington. We discussed the history of Ground Zero, the bigger picture of U.S. foreign policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons, ongoing international tension, and the agreement between Congress and the Obama administration to spend a trillion dollars over 30 years to rebuild the entire U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The interview ends with a simple message listeners can deliver to President Obama. After listening, you can click here to send your message to President Obama. You can find additional action alerts at the right hand column (top of the page).

Thanks to KSVR and Speak Up, Speak Out! for covering important issues you won't hear in the mainstream/corporate media.

A Brief Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

By David Hall, MD*

Nuclear arsenals are a big deal again: extravagantly expensive, militarily unusable, environmentally devastating, morally reprehensible, and now being rebuilt for threatened, accidental, or intentional use to the next century.

Nuclear weapon states have reversed course. In 2010 the USA committed to modernizing its entire nuclear weapons complex as a condition for signing the New START treaty with Russia with its small reductions in both nuclear arsenals. India and Pakistan have been steadily enlarging their small arsenals for years. China and Russia are now building new ballistic missile submarines.

We are in a new global nuclear arms race as the nuclear weapon states continue to follow the US modernization initiative. The hostile or even accidental use of just one modern nuclear bomb would be globally catastrophic, many times the devastation and death toll of the 911 attacks on the US World Trade Center. If used they would violate every international humanitarian law and treaty, would constitute a crime against humanity, and so-called deterrence would have failed. Security through “deterrence” in a multilateral suicidal nuclear world is “specious and illusory.” (Pope Francis)

The trillion dollar modernization of the US arsenal does not meet basic standards for ethical, moral, or rational behavior. The driving force behind modernization is the military-industrial-Congressional complex protecting jobs building these weapons of mass murder.

“The truth is that the President only had a superficial understanding” of what would happen in a nuclear war, [Ex-Chief of Nuclear Forces General Lee ] Butler says. Congress knew even less because no lawmaker has ever had access to the war plan, and most academics could only make ill-informed guesses.”

In place of this specious and potentially suicidal policy, we must pursue cooperative global security initiatives that can address serious global threats to life on Earth - the root causes of a potential nuclear war - climate change, severe poverty, ethnic and religious intolerance - and access to loose fissile materials to make a bomb.

Continuing to upgrade and build new weapons of mass destruction invites a world like Johannesburg during apartheid with nuclear armed barriers between rich and poor.

We need a global Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bring us together before we blow ourselves back to the Dark Ages.

*Dr. David Hall is a child and family psychiatrist and a past president of local and national PSR. For over 20 years he has campaigned for the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction. He is active with Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and its work to abolish the Trident nuclear weapon system.

The Real Problem with Defense Contracting

Op-Ed by Glen Milner*

Representative Kilmer’s op-ed, “Fix broken defense contracting,” failed to address the real problem with defense acquisition (Seattle Times, April 23, 2015)

Kilmer stated that the defense sector is an economic driver in Washington State and that Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) and Naval Base Kitsap combine for more than $12 billion in economic impact per year. But this figure belies the fact that the two bases (not including 324,000 acres for JBLM at the Yakima Training Complex) take up 97,400 acres of prime real estate in Pierce and Kitsap Counties including valuable waterfront on Puget Sound. This is more acreage than the entire City of Seattle and would likely bring a greater economic gain if used by the private sector.

We are told that greater efficiency for defense acquisition will benefit our local economy. First on Kilmer’s list is to fully reverse automatic spending cuts known as sequestration for the military. However, no mention is made of the tax increases and/or cuts to social programs needed to end sequestration and increase funds for military programs.

Kilmer and other members of Congress are promoting a six-year process to streamline acquisition that will “maximize the capabilities and strengths of our military.”

The bigger problem with defense acquisition is the promotion and procurement of multiple weapons programs that become more expensive with each successive year. Nuclear weapons programs provide an example. The Air Force is currently planning for new long range nuclear bombers and replacement intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) while the Navy is building a replacement SSBN-X nuclear submarine.

These nuclear weapons delivery systems and other plans to upgrade our nuclear arsenal will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Many of these long range programs have already begun even though their combined costs are too expensive to complete.

 

Kilmer is a strong proponent of the Navy’s Trident nuclear submarine base in his 6th Congressional District. According to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report, the projected budget for the SSBN-X replacement submarine program for FY 2016 is $1.39 billion with the planned procurement of the first submarine in 2021. The 12 replacement submarines are expected to cost nearly $100 billion with the last submarine being placed into service in 2042.

The $100 billion for replacement submarines does not include the $1.2 billion the Navy is currently spending each year for upgrades to the existing Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. By 2042, the end of the service life of the D-5 missiles, new missiles will have to be designed, tested, and deployed. The Navy has not publicly discussed the cost for the replacement missiles for the new SSBN-X submarines.

Last year Congress created a new military account for the replacement submarines, called the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.” Congress has yet to allocate funds to the account.

Never mind if our nation actually needs more advanced weapon systems. As Kilmer and other members of Congress ponder ways to simplify and streamline the acquisition process for the military, costs will continue to spin out of control.

The way to fix defense acquisition is to start making cuts in defense spending, the sooner the better.

*Glen Milner lives in Lake Forest Park and is a researcher and activist with Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo. See www.gzcenter.org. Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is also on Facebook.

A partial list of references:

http://choosewashingtonstate.com/why-washington/our-key-sectors/military-defense

http://www.defenseone.com/management/2015/04/pentagon-we-cant-afford-replace-aging-icbms-bombers-subs/110134

http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/fix-broken-defense-contracting

http://kilmer.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/major-defense-bill-passes-house-with-kilmer-backed-initiatives

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/obamas-trillion-dollar-nuclear-weapons-gamble/104217

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/01/07/pentagon-ohio-replacement-funding-300-ship

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41129.pdf

http://www.armscontrol.org/blog/ArmsControlNow/2015-03-12/Nuclear-Weapons-Could-Require-10-percent-of-Defense-Budget

http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_acres_is_the_city_of_Seattle  Seattle is 91,200 acres compared to the 97,400 acres for the two military bases. I checked this figure with the 142.5 square miles at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle and other sources.

Abolish Nuclear Weapons: Choose Life

Dear Friends,

The following post is a reprint of an article I was invited to write for the social justice newsletter of Saint Patrick Catholic Church in Seattle.  This past Wednesday (on Martin Luther King Jr's birthday) I participated in a shared Eucharist at the Trident nuclear submarine base at Bangor, Washington.  The Eucharist was led by Fr. William "Bix" Bichsel, the wonderful and notorious nuclear abolitionist and Plowshares activist (among many other fine things) from the Tacoma Catholic Worker. It was intended to bring people together in witness against nuclear weapons as well as in solidarity with the people of Jeju Island, South Korea, who continue to struggle against the naval base under construction that threatens their "Island of Peace."  I thought this an appropriate time to share the article here.

In Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - You can see photos of Wednesday's shared Eucharist by clicking here.

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Abolish Nuclear Weapons: Choose Life 

“In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. The truth of peace requires that all - whether those governments which openly or secretly possess nuclear arms, or those planning to acquire them - agree to change their course by clear and firm decision and strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament. The resources which would be saved could then be employed in projects of development capable of benefiting all their people, especially the poor.” (Pope Benedict XVI, World Day of Peace, 2006)

Decades before, the Archbishop of the Seattle Archdiocese, Raymond Hunthausen, was active in resistance to the U.S. stockpiling of nuclear weapons and the new Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system, which included the Bangor Trident submarine base in Puget Sound just 20 miles west of Seattle. In 1981 Archbishop Hunthausen referred to the Trident submarines based there as "the Auschwitz of Puget Sound."

The Church’s condemnation of nuclear weapons is grounded in the Church’s respect for life and the dignity of the human person. People of faith have been active throughout the movement to abolish nuclear weapons, and the struggle to resist Trident mirrors this history. Even before the first Trident submarine sailed into Bangor, people were coming together to build a resistance to it.

The Pacific Life Community (PLC), a small intentional community, formed to resist the coming of Trident to the Pacific Northwest. Two years later, out of the initial PLC experience, Jim and Shelley Douglass co-founded Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (GZ). The GZ community purchased land adjacent to the Bangor base, laying the groundwork for the long work ahead.

As the submarines came and the base grew, so did the resistance. In the early years resisters handed out leaflets at the Bangor entrance gates. When the first Trident submarine arrived it was met by thousands of protestors on land in addition to a small flotilla of boats.

Next came rocket motors, and then nuclear warheads, transported by trains to Bangor for assembly to complete the Trident nuclear missiles. These trains were met by huge numbers of people, many of whom risked arrest blocking the tracks leading into the base. Archbishop Hunthausen was present at some of these actions in solidarity with the resistance.

The Douglasses later moved to Birmingham, Alabama to start a Catholic Worker House, and GZ's work continued. Today that work is as strong as ever. A new Center House has risen from the ashes of earlier structures on the grounds. Three annual actions ground our continuing resistance to Trident - Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Mother's Day weekend and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration.

This continuing resistance, deeply rooted in nonviolence, is absolutely necessary in this time of renewed pursuit of nuclear weapons as a foreign policy tool. Besides the US Government's buildup of its nuclear weapons research, development and production infrastructure, it is pursuing new nuclear weapons systems - among them a new generation of Trident submarines.

The new submarines, currently in research and development, are intended to replace the aging Trident nuclear weapons system, a relic of the Cold War. Twelve submarines will cost $100 billion just to build, in addition to hundreds of billions in operational costs.

Beyond the costs - For people of faith, killing is simply wrong; and nuclear weapons, which are omnicidal by design, are an abomination in the eyes of God. His Holiness was clear in his 2006 statement - Nuclear weapons must never again be used; they must be eradicated, and we must dedicate ourselves to life-affirming ends.

May we choose life.

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Note: This article was originally published in the Summer 2013 edition of Roots of Justice: A Social Justice Newsletter of Saint Patrick Catholic Church in Seattle, Washington.

Yes, NUKES are bad... very bad!!! Will someone listen now???

Friends,

Ira Helfand, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility has just published an updated report on the effects of a limited nuclear war.

In the updated study reported in Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk?, researchers report that the climatic effects of a "limited" nuclear war between Pakistan and India would cut crop production worldwide, putting up to 2 billion people at risk of starvation.

The previous report (Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk, published in 2012) estimated one billion at risk of starvation under these circumstances.  The findings of the study conducted since then "suggest that the original report may have seriously underestimated the consequences of a limited nuclear war."

The updated report concludes (among other things) that there is an "urgent need to move with all possible speed to the negotiation of a global agreement to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons and the danger of nuclear war."

Some news outlets are paying serious attention to the updated report, and one of today's headlines read Nuclear War Could Mean 'Extinction of the Human Race' (in CommonDreams.org).

Although Dr. Helfand's report is of great importance we should be very clear - This is not news! The human race has been living under the threat of extinction by nuclear weapons since the early days of the Cold War when the United States and Soviet Union amassed arsenals capable of destroying life on Earth (as we know it).  Even today, decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. and Russia (along with the declared and undeclared nuclear powers) have enough deployed nuclear warheads (ready to launch on warning) to destroy civilization and leave the Earth uninhabitable for generations.

My point is that as important as Helfand's report is to our efforts at the global abolition of nuclear weapons, scientists have been studying climatic effects of nuclear weapons for decades.  Independent scientists have nearly all concluded that the effects of nuclear weapons on climate would be severe and long-lasting.  Steven Starr has written extensively on climatic effects of nuclear weapons.  So far, governments have mostly either ignored their findings or done their best to discredit them.

In the case of large-scale nuclear war, beyond the climatic effects are the direct blast and radiation effects, as well as the long-term exposure of surviving populations to radioisotopes resulting from the detonation of nuclear weapons.  Aside from the millions (or more) of immediate deaths, countless more people would die in the days, weeks and months that follow from exposure to radiation, and the effects would carry on in the form of blood dyscrasias and cancers.  Of course, the destruction of infrastructure, agricultural production and just every aspect of civilization as we know it, would likely cause a near total breakdown of society.

The bottom line is that nuclear weapons are the most vile creation of humankind, and absolutely threaten humanity with extinction so long as they exist. 124 states recognized this, and delivered a joint statement to the United Nations General Assembly in October: "It is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances." The only viable course is to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all.

The US government is engaged in research and development toward the goal of building 12 new ballistic missile submarines, known as the SSBN(X), to replace the current OHIO Class "Trident" submarines.  They are known as Tridents because of the Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles they carry.  Each Trident sub carries 24 Trident missiles, each missile currently armed with approximately four warheads (maximum capacity of 8 warheads per missile).

Each warhead has an explosive yield of either 100 (W76 Warhead) or 475 kilotons (W88 Warhead). The Hiroshima bomb, for comparison, was approximately 15 kilotons.  The nuclear firepower carried on a single Trident submarine is capable of destroying an entire continent.

Trident was initially designed, manufactured and deployed during the Cold War.  It was intended as a "deterrent" to the nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union.  The Cold War is over, and the US is planning to spend $100 billion just to build the 12 new subs.  Essentially, the US is building an archaic, Cold War nuclear weapons system, and seems to have done so without adequately justifying its future mission.

These submarines are intended for one thing only - launching thermonuclear-armed missiles at another nation.  Such a strike, however limited it might be, would have devastating consequences on those targeted (and that would include civilians) as well as those in surrounding areas as the effects of nuclear weapons cannot be controlled in space or time. They are weapons of mass murder.

While nations wring their hands with concern over Iran this week (next week it will likely be North Korea once again), the very real danger exists right now with the major nuclear-armed nations. The US and Russia still lead the way (toward omnicide) with the largest nuclear arsenals.  It is, therefore, these two nations that must lead the way toward disarmament.

So long as we hold on to Cold War thinking and outmoded concepts like "deterrence", we will continue to sleepwalk toward oblivion.  In the US, that involves the continuing rebuilding of the nuclear weapons research, development and production complex, as well as the refurbishing of existing weapons systems and the development of new ones.  Meanwhile, we lecture Iran and North Korea to NOT build nuclear weapons.

Will we lead the world (as we do now) toward a continued buildup of nuclear weapons, or will we summon the courage to lead the way toward a nuclear weapons-free future? I firmly believe that our elected leaders will not listen to logic and reason until there is a significant groundswell - led by the people.

Cindy Sheehan recently said that "The power of the people is stronger than the people in power." If that is true and history is any indicator, we need to put together a huge constituency calling on our government to lead the way toward disarmament, beginning with the scrapping of counterproductive and destabilizing programs like the SSBN(X).

Join Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in saying NO To NEW TRIDENT.  Right after we ring in the New Year, we will be moving full speed ahead to stop this wasteful $100 billion dollar project and refocusing that money on human needs. Check out our Blog at notnt.org and sign up to be notified of updates and opportunities to get involved.

While you're at it, please join PSR's Humanitarian Threats of Nuclear Weapons Campaign.  Please also tell President Obama to send a US delegation to the upcoming (February!!!) conference in Mexico on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

This is a watershed moment in terms of opportunity to move the world towards nuclear disarmament. The majority of nations in the UN are calling for abolition, while the few nuclear armed powers do everything to hold on to their precious nuclear weapons.  It is time for a paradigm shift, and it is up to We the People of the World to demand change.  Each of us can and must play a role in creating this change.

Let this be the legacy we leave to future generations - a world free from the fear of nuclear omnicide.

Toward a Nuclear Weapons-Free World,

Leonard

The Butterfly and the Submarine

Editor's Introduction: Shelley Douglass and her husband Jim Douglass were among the co-founders of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which purchased 3.8 acres bordering Bangor’s Trident nuclear submarine base in 1977. As members of the Pacific Life Community, founded in 1975, they began a campaign of nonviolently resisting the Trident nuclear weapons system. They were inspired by Robert Aldridge’s resignation as a missile designer for Lockheed-Martin (the manufacturer of the Trident submarine launched ballistic missile) following a crisis of conscience as he recognized the first-strike capability and accuracy of the Trident missiles. The Douglasses currently live at Mary’s House Catholic Worker in Birmingham, Alabama, offering hospitality to homeless families and acting for nonviolence and peace.

As we approach the Fourth of July holiday, Shelley offers us a reflection inviting us to nurture our nonviolent heart, and discover (and celebrate) our interdependence.  Happy Interdependence Day to all.

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The Butterfly and the Submarine

By Shelley Douglass

This morning I’ve been remembering the beginning of the campaign against Trident submarines in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.  Can it really be almost 40 years ago?  Such a raggedy band we were, twenty or so activists, burned out after our work against the war in Vietnam, not wanting another issue to address – and challenged by Bob Aldridge, who had helped to design the Trident missile.  Bob had left his job because he could no longer in conscience help build Trident.  It was his analysis of the arms race that informed us, but it was his moral action that inspired us.

By the July 4^th weekend in 1976, we had done months of research, self-education, and public speaking.  We had formed a small community, which we called Pacific Life Community.  Our commitment was to learn how to live nonviolently, with the campaign against Trident as the political arm of that commitment.  We had all suffered from the personal violence of our own activism – our marriages had suffered, our frantic activity had drained us.  We had all been inspired by some of the people who were on the other side of the issue – like the Air Force men who asked us to raise the issue of targeting civilians during the bombing in Vietnam.  We wanted to struggle against our own complicity in violence at all levels, and to emphasize that everyone is part of the problem and part of the solution – that we can only live, or perish, as one.

The Trident issue made obvious what is deeply true:  none of us are actually independent.  Trident is home ported at Bangor Washington. To cruise the oceans it needs to leave the Strait of Juan de Fuca through Canadian waters, returning on the US side of the border.  The Trident system is a product of years of research and effort that escaped our notice as peace people living within miles of the proposed base.  It was a Trident missile designer who raised the issue for us all.  Trident cruises the Pacific, the same ocean used for testing of nuclear weapons by the US and the French – testing which prompted a movement for a Nuclear Free Pacific.  Deploying Trident is an international project; stopping it is also.  (Since those early years of the Trident campaign, Scotland has become a center of opposition as well, to the British Trident.)

A very early demonstration against Trident saw an international community gathered at Peace Arch Park, the border crossing between the US and Canada just above Blaine, WA.  We gathered from the US and the Canadian sides of the border to celebrate INTERdependence Day during the 4^th of July weekend. Citizens of the US and Canada and perhaps other countries began by affirming interdependence at the border, and continued by going to the site of the base itself and reclaiming the land for all people.  Of course, there were arrests and trials and some jail time, which further raised the issue.

Interdependence:  a good thing to celebrate, especially at this time of fracture and hostility.  During the years that have passed since the Trident campaign began, it has only become clearer that the issues are not national but global.  Corporations and governments think globally; more and more often, movements do, too.  In this sense we’re living into Dr. King’s vision.  King’s hope for the Poor People’s Campaign was that as poor people tied up DC calling for legislation to end poverty, the peace movement would encircle the Pentagon calling for peace, and then that peoples around the globe would join in similar nonviolent blockages until global peace and justice became a possibility. 

I was having a good time at morning prayer this morning remembering those early actions of ours, and thinking that our commitment to nonviolence as a way of life and our understanding of interdependence are both as valid now as they were then.  The ubiquitous butterfly fluttered into my mind – you know, the one that changes the weather in Bali by fluttering its wings in England?  Interdependence is a scientific fact now too.  Life is a mystery, and so is our linkage to each other, yet that linkage is there, strong as life.

It occurred to me that the linkage symbolized by the butterfly, or more grossly by the Trident navigating global waters, is the basis for the hard sayings of Jesus that we’ve been reading in church over the last few weeks.  What if not only my actions but my thoughts affect the world, just as the butterfly’s wings do?  What if my hatred or impatience or fear affects the “weather” in other people’s psyches?  I have certainly experienced those effects in a local way – when someone in the house is grouchy or touchy, for example, everyone’s spirits are affected badly.  What if that’s just as true on a larger, less visible level?

As I sit thinking, it becomes obvious – ill will generates ill will, distrust generates distrust.  Lack of respect calls forth an answering lack of respect.  I see it in our political arena all the time, as civility and reason fly out the window.  I feel it in my own heart, where I battle cynicism and hostility daily as I read the paper or watch the news.  All too often my interior response to hostility is a mental “back atcha” or  “so’s your mama”.  It doesn’t get said, but it has an interior effect, a kind of gunk of the soul, that stays with me for hours.  What if the hostility that I harbor affects not only the people here in the house, but the web of life in the world?  What if my ill will helps impel a Syrian soldier to pull a trigger?

All of which brings me back to the spiritual disciplines represented by morning prayer or scripture reading or examination of conscience.  Jesus wasn’t telling us to love our enemy so that we would be nice people, or even so that our enemies would be nice people.  He was setting out for us the very difficult way to change in the world.  Those examinations of conscience that require us to list our lies, or lack of charity, our hateful actions – perhaps they aren’t so much intended to guide us to personal perfection as to point out to us the ways in which we ourselves foment war and injustice.  Perhaps it isn’t so much that my anomie or my resentment hurts me (although it does), but that it hurts us all.  It fosters disturbance in the delicate balance that would be peace in the world, peace in our minds.

Gandhi told people to BE the change they wanted to see in the world; Peter Maurin observed that if everyone would be what they wanted the other person to be, the world would be a better place.  What if we took an examination of conscience seriously, not as a litany of our sins, not to be perfect in following rules, but as a guideline to the ways in which we ourselves are responsible for the evil in the world?  What if we took our own sin seriously?

The butterfly’s wing, the hateful thought, the submarine, the hands across a border – all signs of our interdependence, which could be our salvation.

Shelley & Jim (at right) with friends at the Y-12 Complex in July 2010