nuclear weapons

Watch video of “Nuclear Weapons, War & Environment” forum held at UA

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ARIZONA LEADERS WARN OF CLIMATE DESTRUCTION AND GLOBAL DISASTER

IF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT ELIMINATED (press release)

 (Tucson, AZ) — “Amidst growing tensions of global nuclear weapons and attack, including North Korea’s recent barrage of missile tests, keynote speaker Dr. Ira Helfand and Congressman Raul Grijalva joined local leaders convened today to raise awareness about the catastrophic impacts of a nuclear weapons exchange, risks of war and potential environmental impacts of a nuclear attack.

 A video of the forum can be found here.

 In a forum hosted by Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter, speakers discussed the important connection between climate change and nuclear war, and the grave threats they pose to human survival. There is evidence that use of even relatively small nuclear arsenals could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems.

 They also addressed important approaches to preventing nuclear war, nuclear disarmament and the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

 “The crises in Korea and Iran underline the extraordinary danger of nuclear war that confronts the world today. The U.S. needs to fundamentally change its nuclear policy and accept that nuclear weapons are not agents of national security but rather an existential threat to our survival,” said Dr. Ira Helfand, Co-Director of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “We need to urgently pursue negotiations with the other nuclear armed states for a verifiable, enforceable agreement to eliminate these weapons before they are used.”

 Climate change will place increased stress on human populations and may lead to global crop failure and massive migrations and conflict between states which are armed with nuclear weapons.  Nuclear war would cause massive and abrupt additional climate disruption. Speakers at the forum urged the reduced reliance on nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states to create a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation.

 “I urge ever Arizonan to take immediate action, as we all have a stake in the issue and are directly impacted by the threats of nuclear war,” said Dr. David Spence, Member, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Arizona Chapter. “Contact our Arizona U.S. Congress members and tell them to support the Markey/Lieu (S 200/ HR 669) legislation that would allow only Congress (not the President) to authorize a first-use nuclear strike.”

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(Update) The madness of King Donald – a ‘containment policy’ will not work

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Last Thursday, President Trump told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his top generals in a White House meeting that he wanted military options for North Korea at a “much faster pace.” Mattis urges military ‘to be ready’ with options on North Korea.

On Thursday evening, Trump with a group of military families and made a cryptic comment that this was “the calm before the storm.” What Did President Trump Mean by ‘Calm Before the Storm’?

President Trump was clearly looking to make some kind of news, but about what, exactly, was not clear.

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Mr. Trump summoned reporters who were still at work to the State Dining Room, where he was throwing a dinner for military commanders and their spouses.

Gesturing to his guests, he said, “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”

“What’s the storm?” asked one reporter.

“Could be the calm before the storm,” Mr. Trump repeated, stretching out the phrase, a sly smile playing across his face.

“From Iran?” ventured another reporter. “On ISIS? On what?”

“What storm, Mr. President?” asked a third journalist, a hint of impatience creeping into her voice.

When pressed to explain what he meant, Trump said: “You’ll find out.”

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How to stumble into a nuclear war in North Korea

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Senior aides to President Trump repeatedly warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Korea’s leader at the United Nations last week, saying insulting the young despot could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis. Aides warned Trump not to attack North Korea’s leader personally before his fiery U.N. address. But did our inexperienced infantile man-child listen? Nooo.

Trump’s derisive description of Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” on “a suicide mission” and his threat to “totally destroy” North Korea were not in a speech draft that several senior officials reviewed and vetted on Monday, the day before Trump gave his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, two U.S. officials said.

Some of Trump’s top aides, including national security advisor H.R. McMaster, had argued for months against making the attacks on North Korea’s leader personal, warning it could backfire.

But Trump, who relishes belittling his rivals and enemies with crude nicknames, felt compelled to make a dramatic splash in the global forum.

Some advisors now worry that the escalating war of words has pushed the impasse with North Korea into a new and dangerous phase that threatens to derail the months-long effort to squeeze Pyongyang’s economy through sanctions to force Kim to the negotiating table.

A detailed CIA psychological profile of Kim, who is in his early 30s and took power in late 2011, assesses that Kim has a massive ego and reacts harshly and sometimes lethally to insults and perceived slights.

This same profile applies with equal accuracy to Donald Trump.

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Donald Trump beats the drums of war at the United Nations

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Remember when Trump supporters believed that his “America First” rhetoric meant retreating from America’s role as the world’s policeman engaging in endless wars to a non-interventionist foreign policy and withdrawing behind the walls of a “fortress America”? Suckers, that’s not what Trump meant at all. America First Foreign Policy. This is an aggressive “nationalism” policy litte different from the policy Russia ad China pursue.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the U.N. Security Council has run out of options on containing North Korea’s nuclear program and the United States may have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon. U.S. Ambassador Haley: U.N. has exhausted options on North Korea:

“We have pretty much exhausted all the things that we can do at the Security Council at this point,” Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that she was perfectly happy to hand the North Korea problem over to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

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China has urged the United States to refrain from making threats to North Korea. Asked about President Donald Trump’s warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States will be met with “fire and fury,” Haley said, “It was not an empty threat.”

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed. And we all know that. And none of us want that. None of us want war,” she said on CNN.

“We’re trying every other possibility that we have, but there’s a whole lot of military options on the table,” she said.

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(Update) One step closer to a renewed war with North Korea

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“Kim Jong-un, I respect the fact that I believe he is starting to respect us” –President Donald Trump at his recent Phoenix campaign rally.

This is how much North Korea respects the belicose paper tiger of Donald Trump. In latest test, North Korea detonates its most powerful nuclear device yet:

North Korea sharply raised the stakes in its stand-off with the rest of the world Sunday, detonating a powerful nuclear device that it claimed was hydrogen bomb that could be attached to a missile capable of reaching the mainland United States.

Even if Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its feats, scientific evidence showed that North Korea had crossed an important threshold and had detonated a nuclear device that was exponentially more powerful than its last — and almost seven times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Tensions had already been running high, with Kim repeatedly defying international condemnation and increasingly blunt warnings by President Trump and continuing to launch ballistic missiles.

But Sunday’s blast — North Korea’s sixth nuclear test but the first since Trump took office — could escalate those tensions to a new level.

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