Resistance is Not Futile!

Friends,

In my December 7th post I not only asked you to push your Senators to ratify New START, but told you about the Disarm Now Plowshares trial that was starting that day.

Well, the trial is now history, and the government got what it wanted; it reduced the conversation to one primarily about trespassing, destruction of government property and conspiracy, rather than one about the real issues of illegal weapons of mass destruction with which our nation continues to threaten the world and around which it builds its foreign policy.

Disarm Now Plowshares represents part of a greater movement that seeks to resist the immoral and often illegal actions of our government. Those who engage in acts of nonviolent civil resistance, whether at a nuclear weapons storage depot, at School of the Americas or at The White House (as on December 16, 2010) are engaged in a great conspiracy of hope.

Chris Hedges, who participated in and spoke at last Thursday's White House action, stated it directly and eloquently, as did Daniel Ellsberg. Essentially, we choose to become enemies of the state or we are enemies of hope. As we move into a new year may we engage ever greater numbers of citizens in acts of nonviolent resistance until our elected officials can no longer ignore us. That is our hope.

Resistance is not futile. It is, in fact, necessary in order to save the soul of this spiritually impoverished and warring nation. Let us resolve in the coming year to resist with all our hearts and souls, lighting the way and creating a path for others to follow.

Peace,

Leonard

DISARM NOW!!! Pass New START!

Friends,

I woke up this morning at Jean's House of Prayer in Tacoma, Washington where I am helping prepare for the trial of the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 that begins today in U.S. District Court. As I looked out the window around 6:00AM I saw the bright lights of the Port of Tacoma, and wondered what it must have been like just before dawn on November 2, 2009 as the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 topped the hill overlooking the Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific (SWFPAC), bathed in bright light, looking like the mythical Mordor in J.R. Tolkein's stories.

Mordor was a terrible, dark place, as is SWFPAC, which (along with the Trident nuclear submarines based at Bangor) contains enough nuclear weapons to end life as we know it on our small planet. Every step taken, whether by Plowshares activists like the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 or by our elected leaders to ratify treaties like New START are IMPORTANT.

Here is an important letter from past presidents of Physicians for Social Responsibility stressing the need to ratify the New START. Please read this and then take action to push the U.S. Senate to ratify New START now! And please hold the Disarm Now Plowshares 5 in your thoughts and prayers as they go on trial for attempting to do what all citizens are called to do - abolish these immoral and illegal nuclear weapons.

There will regular updates each day this week at the Disarm Now Plowshares Website and Blog.

Peace,

Leonard

The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks this past week show a dangerously escalating nuclear confrontation in South Asia. This growing danger is one more reason why the US Senate should ratify new START without further delay.

Both US and British intelligence experts believe that Pakistan is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, which now numbers 70 to 90 bombs, despite increasing economic and political instability. India has 60-80 warheads in its nuclear arsenal. According to the leaked reports, Pakistan fears that it would be overwhelmed in a conventional war, and looks to establish nuclear superiority to offset India’s advantage in conventional weapons.

The leaked cables also describe an Indian contingency plan, code named Cold Start, to launch just the kind of conventional invasion the Pakistanis fear. While Cold Start is meant to be a purely non-nuclear attack, the Pakistani nuclear build up suggests that it is likely that any future conflict in South Asia would escalate to nuclear war.

A regional nuclear war in South Asia would be catastrophic for the whole world.

Recent climate studies have shown that if only 100 warheads were directed at urban areas, the resulting fire storms would inject upwards of five terragrams ( 5 million tons) of soot into the upper atmosphere. In a matter of days temperatures across the globe would drop an average of 1.3 degrees C., more than twice the warming that has occurred in the last 130 years. There would also be a major decline in rainfall worldwide. These changes would persist for nearly a decade.

While there are no detailed studies of the decline in food production that would result from these climate changes, there is reason to believe that it would be very significant. A cooling event caused by the Pinatubo volcano eruption in 1815 dropped global temperatures only .7 degrees, and the fall in temperature lasted only 1 year, but that was enough to cause widespread famine in Europe and Asia, and the “Year Without a Summer” here in New England when killing frosts throughout the summer devastated crops.

There are over one billion people in the world today who live on the brink of starvation, and global food stockpiles are perilously low. A study that we presented at the Royal Academy of Medicine in 2007 concludes that we have reason to fear that all of these people might starve to death in the event of a nuclear war in South Asia.

What has this to do with New START? Everything.

US efforts to limit nuclear proliferation have been hobbled by our own continued reliance on nuclear weapons despite our having the strongest conventional forces in the world.

New START does not eliminate our arsenal. The 1550 warheads we still retain are enough to destroy India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, China and Russia—and to kill most of the people on Earth in the process. But New START is an important next step in limiting the US and Russian arsenals, and it is essential to the improved relations with Russia necessary for us to work with the Russians to limit nuclear proliferation. Further it restores our ability to monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal, an ability we lost when the original START expired just one year ago.

The treaty is seen as vital to US security by our entire military leadership and a veritable “Who’s Who” of Republican defense experts. The original START treaty received overwhelming bi-partisan support in 1992, passing 93-6. But today’s Senate Republicans are threatening to block this replacement treaty unless the Senate agrees to extend the Bush era tax cuts for people making more than $1 million a year.

Republicans, including Senator Gregg, need to stop playing partisan politics with our national security and support this treaty NOW.

John Pastore, MD

Ira Helfand, MD

The authors are past Presidents of Physicians for Social Responsibility, US Affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize

Contact: Ira Helfand, MD at ihelfand@igc.org or 413 320 7829

Drinking and Driving (NUKES) Don't Mix!

Friends,

In a previous post (Nuclear 18 Wheelers; Yee Haw!!! , Sept. 6, 2009) I wrote about the government's "Safeguards Transporters", those big rigs that travel the nation's highways and byways, delivering nukes to naval and air force bases, and who knows where else.

As an Occupational and Environmental Health professional I spent a great deal of time dealing with risk assessment and risk management. Bottom line: Everything entails some level of risk, no matter how small. Of course we have to look at not only the probability that something might happen (accident), but what would be the severity of the outcome(s).

We all know that the outcomes from messing around with (let alone using) nuclear weapons are not pretty. Whether it be an accident involving the handling or a warhead, or losing track of one, we're dealing with potentially serious outcomes. Of course we should expect that the folks transporting nuclear weapons are the best of the best, right???

Think again!!! Read the beginning of the November 22, 2010 Associated Press article, Report: Nuclear weapon drivers sometimes got drunk.

Federal agents hired to transport nuclear weapons and components sometimes got drunk while on convoy missions, a government watchdog said Monday. In an incident last year, police detained two agents who went to a bar during an assignment.

The Energy Department's assistant inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, said her office reviewed 16 alcohol-related incidents involving agents, candidate-agents and others from the government's Office of Secure Transportation between 2007 through 2009. Nearly 600 federal agents ship nuclear weapons, weapon components and special nuclear material across the U.S.

Two incidents in particular raised red flags, the report said, because they happened during secure transportation missions while agents checked into local hotels while on extended missions. In these cases, the vehicles were placed in "safe harbor," meaning they were moved to secure locations.

In one case, in 2007, an agent was arrested for public intoxication. The other occurred last year, when police handcuffed and temporarily detained two agents after an incident at a bar.

"Alcohol incidents such as these, as infrequent as they may be, indicate a potential
vulnerability in OST's critical national security mission," the report warns.

So much for the government's Office of [IN]Secure Transportation!!!
You can read the whole report yourself, but when taken along with other documented incidents in the overall care and handling of nuclear weapons - whether it be loading nuclear armed Cruise missiles on a bomber by "mistake", putting a ladder through a Trident missile nose cone or transporting nuclear weapons while drunk - it should make us ask the question, "Is all this worth the risk for weapons that can never be used unless we want to commit mass murder (or omnicide)?"

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Damien LaVera responded to the report: "NNSA's Office of Secure Transportation maintains a highly trained, highly professional force that has safely and securely transported nuclear materials more than 100 million miles without a single fatal accident or any release of radiation."

That should give us all great comfort, right? Wrong. It only takes one accident, and there is no such thing as absolute safety. And in this case the stakes are too high. It's just a matter of time. And speaking of time, it is most definitely time for our government to take its disarmament responsibility seriously.

Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - The Office of Secure Transportation is currently accepting applications (according to their Website. I certainly hope they are tightening up their hiring practices.

Also - A related (and well researched) article in the Kitsap Sun, Navy's Trident Nuclear Warheads Hit the Highway, Bound for Texas, from November 27, 2010.

START: The Winter of Our Disconnect

Friends,

I can feel Winter settling in here in Washington's Cascade Mountains as the snow falls this evening; there is a definite chill in the air. While the changing seasons are something to which we adjust, it is critical for continued progress in the control and ultimately the abolition of nuclear weapons that we avoid any "chilling" of relations between the U.S. and Russia.

Right now the Senate must ratify the New START Treaty in order for the Superpowers to get back on track to inspecting each other's arsenals and exchanging information. This connection is necessary to secure ongoing cooperation and produce real security. Without the agreement we can forget about any reduction in the existing nuclear weapons stockpiles.

While ratification of New START is of such importance, there is a very real disconnect in Washington, DC., and not just among a few rogue senators who are trying to scuttle the treaty. Some senators, such as Jim Demint (S. Carolina), James Inhofe (Oklahoma) and Jon Kyle (Arizona) are holding New START hostage in exchange for increased funding of the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

One of their claims is that the Obama administration isn't doing enough to "modernize" the nations nuclear weapons. Judging by the current "modernization" of the nuclear weapons infrastructure along with the ongoing nuclear weapons work that includes the "stockpile stewardship program" (read "rebuilt warheads") I'm not sure how much more they expect the administration to do.

As for the broad scope of this nuclear disconnect, the numbers speak for themselves; the administration had already pledged $80 billion over 10 years to maintain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex. As if this was not enough, Kyl has demanded an additional $4 billion over 5 years, and it appears that Obama is giving in. Even with this offer, it is not looking good for passage of New START by this Congress. Even though we have the 67 votes needed to ratify the treaty, Kyl is trying to prevent a vote until the next Congress!!!

It is inexcusable that these politicians who are supposed to represent "the people" are playing games with the nation's (and the world's) security. First of all, passage of New START is of the utmost importance. Secondly, increasing funding to modernize the nuclear weapons complex and build new weapons neutralizes any previous efforts to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons (and send a message of hope to other nations).

Non-ratification of New START is NOT an option! Neither is building up an essentially NEW nuclear weapons infrastructure. Both indicate a disconnect between the people's desire to abolish nuclear weapons and the special interests of those who claim to represent us, but who are far too heavily invested (literally and figuratively) in the Military-Industrial Complex and its parent, the National Security State.

We must not cut anyone even an inch of slack on an issue of such critical importance as New START. Although many senators have shown their support for New START (and we should thank them for that) we now need to demand that they apply some serious pressure to those who hold it hostage.

Click here to send a message to your Senators now! Then click here to download the Phone Bank Tool Kit from the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World, and you and your organization can help mobilize grassroots support for New START! This is our last chance on this one folks!

And just think how far $84 billion would go towards programs of social uplift!!!

Peace,

Leonard

Wadioactive Wabbits ah no waughing matter!

Dear Friends,

No, I haven't lost my mind (contrary to popular opinion); I was just channeling Elmer Fud for a brief moment in response to recent radioactive reports about pesky wadioactive wabbits.

In south central Washington state, tucked away behind barbed wire fences, lies an accumulation of radioactive substances that are byproducts of decades of the U.S. nuclear weapons program; some legacy indeed. The U.S. Government is spending vast sums of money in an attempt to clean up the radioactive contamination; a daunting task considering the extent of contamination of soil, groundwater (seeping into the Columbia River), and the bizarre mix of highly radioactive and reactive substances in the aging underground storage tanks.

Yesterday's headline in the Tri-City Herald, Radioactive rabbit trapped near Richland, is a sobering reminder that radioactive substances, once released into the environment, are difficult, and sometimes impossible) to remove or render "safe". And while the government pays people to keep contaminated animals from escaping the boundaries of one of the planets significantly contaminated places, there is another place where it is more than the occasional radioactive rabbit that is of concern.

The Chernobyl disaster, which for most people is no more than a historical footnote, is still just that - a disaster - for the people living in areas where they continue to be exposed to the residual radiation from the catastrophic events of April 26, 1986. The radioactive Cesium found in that cute, little Hanford bunny (assuming it was Cesium 137) has a half-life of roughly 30 years, and if one ingested rabbit stew made from the little critter one would end up distributing Cesium 137 around the body where it would continually (and fairly intensely) irradiate (from within) muscle cells and organs; think CANCER!

The Cesium 137 released from the Chernobyl accident has most likely affected millions of people downwind of the accident as it was deposited (along with a variety of other radioactive substances) in various concentrations, and silently and invisibly irradiated its victims and increased the risk of radiation-related genetic damage and subsequent cancers and birth defects.

As bad as Chernobyl was, one or more modern thermonuclear weapons detonated anywhere on Earth would unleash an even worse, horrific mixture of deadly radioisotopes that would, beyond the immediate effects in areas of high radioactivity, leave a legacy of chronic health effects affecting countless generations. Any measure that brings stability to the relationship between the nuclear powers and reduces the numbers of nuclear arms reduces the probability of this unthinkable event.

Now that the U.S. elections are over it is high time that the Senate get to work once again on ratifying the New START Treaty. Although the treaty contains only modest reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stocks, more importantly it improves and extends the verification and monitoring measures of the original START Treaty, which have been important in maintaining nuclear stability after the end of the Cold War.

With U.S. military leaders supporting ratification there is no reason for Republicans to stonewall. It has been nearly a year since the original treaty lapsed, and the clock is ticking; if the Senate doesn't ratify the treaty before year's end the ratification process has to start all over, casting a shadow over its fate, and thus a shadow over the planet.

Even if you previously wrote your Senators in support of the New START Treaty, DO IT AGAIN! Click here to urge them to ratify the New START Treaty now! Keep the heat on; the time for New START is NOW!

Peace,

Leonard

30 Years of Plowshares Disarmament!

Friends,

September 9, 2010 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Plowshares movement!!!

30 Years ago on September 9, 1980, a small group of peacemakers - Elmer Mass, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Carl Kabat, Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt - entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile Re-entry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where the nose cones for Mark 12-A nuclear warheads were being manufactured. They carried hammers and their own blood with which they symbolically enacted the biblical prophecies of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to “beat their swords into plowshares” by hammering on nose cones, pouring blood onto documents and offering prayers for peace.

The Plowshares Eight

It was a deeply spiritual act intended to symbolically (and literally) disarm these horrific weapons the government was building in huge numbers in preparation for the ultimate omnicidal act. Of course all eight waited to be arrested, were tried and convicted in Federal court (the government frowns on people messing with their nuclear weapons), and sentenced to prison terms from 1 ½ to 10 years (they also like to make an example). Ten years later, after lengthy appeals, they were re sentenced.

That first group of citizen disarmers became known as the Plowshares Eight, and had started a movement, known as Plowshares, that continues to do its subversive work of turning swords to plowshares (or ploughshares as our friends across the sea refer to it). One thing unique to the Plowshares movement is that it has no formal organization per se, no storefront, no non-profit status, no licensed merchandise. It is an organic movement in which peacemakers act individually and in community, entering military bases and weapons facilities, symbolically (and in many cases literally) disarming weapons of war (with a particular emphasis on those of mass destruction).

These are no crackpot peaceniks mind you! “Parents, grandparents, veterans, former lawyers, teachers, artists, musicians, poets, priests, sisters, house-painters, carpenters, writers, health-care workers, students, gardeners, advocates of the poor and homeless” have all participated in Plowshares actions, and they take their task seriously, routinely going through an intensive process of discernment, spiritual preparation and nonviolence training. They are also very clear on the risks involved, accept full responsibility for their actions, and are prepared for the consequences.

There have around 100 Plowshares actions around the world since the Plowshares Eight wielded their hammers in 1980; Trident II Plowshares, Thames River Plowshares, Gods of Metal Plowshares, Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares II, and Waihopi ANZAC Ploughshares to name just a few. Plowshares activists have “disarmed” all kinds of armaments, including components of missiles, submarines, surface ships, aircraft, radar and satellites. And yet, Plowshares actions rarely, if ever, show up on even the innermost pages of any newspaper (and the government likes it that way; "out of sight, out of mind").

Nearly 30 years since that first Plowshares action, on September 2, 2010, a Federal grand jury in Tacoma, Washington handed down indictments against the five members of Disarm Now Plowshares. Anne Montgomery, Bill “Bix” Bichsel, Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald, and Steve Kelly, each face up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on the government’s charges of “conspiracy, trespass, destruction of property on a naval installation, and depredation of government property,” associated with their November 2, 2009 Plowshares action. Oooh, "depredation"; now that's a scary word!

Disarm Now Plowshares

Montgomery, who was one of the Plowshares Eight in 1980 recently said that, “It is distressing that 30 years later the nuclear weapons are still here, and the reason that I’m acting is that they’re still here. As citizens of a nation ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ we must take our responsibility to use every nonviolent means necessary to eliminate these illegal weapons of mass destruction.” At 83, Montgomery is the oldest of the Disarm Now senior citizen disarmers, the youngest of whom is 61.

These hearty souls entered the Trident nuclear submarine base at Bangor, Washington through the perimeter fence in the early morning hours of November 2nd, walked for 4 hours across the base carrying a banner, “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident: Illegal + Immoral”, left a trail of blood, hammered on the roadway and fences around Strategic Weapons Facility – Pacific (SWFPAC) and scattered sunflower seeds throughout the base. They cut the last two fences to enter the secure nuclear weapons storage area where they were detained (with hoods over their heads, laying on the ground for about 4 hours)), and after extensive questioning by base security, FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), cited for trespass and destruction of government property, given ban and bar letters and released. All in a day’s work!

Finally, after ten months of waiting for the wheels of “justice” to grind along, the Disarm Now Plowshares defendants are ready to face trial and, in the words of Fr. Bill “Bix” Bichsel, “We hope to expose the fact that these weapons create absolutely no security. They bring nothing but fear and further proliferation of weapons and war.” These Plowshares activists hope to "expose" and shine a bright light on a very dark subject.

As Daniel Berrigan once said, “Plowshares began disarmament in 1980, doing what the government refused to do for 35 years. With equal concern, Plowshares appealed to the hearts, minds and spirits of the American people—‘You must share disarmament!’ The twin goals of Plowshares—symbolic yet real disarmament and sharing disarmament—have reciprocity. The weapons exist because our fear, violence and hatred built them. Plowshares must address these realities…”

And now, even after 65 years the government still builds the weapons of humankind's destruction, even while it engages in the rhetoric of disarmament.

When they get their day in court the Disarm Now Plowshares defendants hope to break through the government’s veil of secrecy and fear, and make their case to hold the government accountable to abolish nuclear weapons. They seek to disarm not only the weapons, but at the heart of it the "violence and hatred" that simmers deep within our hearts. Let’s hope their voices are heard, and may we all be listening.

Read more about Disarm Now Plowshares (including statements by all the members) at the Disarm Now Plowshares Blog. While there add your name to the list of the many individuals and organizations who have signed on in support of the Disarm Now Plowshares.

And then keep speaking out for disarmament; tell your Senators to speak out publicly in favor of and vote for ratification of the New START Treaty!

Peace,

Leonard

END NOTES:

The Trident submarine base at Bangor, just 20 miles west of Seattle, Washington, is home to the largest single stockpile of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal, housing more than 2,000 nuclear warheads. In November 2006, the Natural Resources Defense Council declared that the 2,364 nuclear warheads at Bangor are approximately 24 percent of the entire U.S. arsenal. The Bangor base houses more nuclear warheads than China, France, Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan combined.

The base has been rebuilt for the deployment of the larger and more accurate Trident D-5 missile system. Each of the 24 D-5 missiles on a Trident submarine is capable of carrying eight of the larger 455 kiloton W-88 warheads (each warhead is about 30 times the explosive force as the Hiroshima bomb) and costs approximately $60 million. The D-5 missile can also be armed with the 100 kiloton W-76 warhead. The Trident fleet at Bangor deploys both the 455 kiloton W-88 warhead and the 100 kiloton W-76 warhead.