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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
17, 2003
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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June
17, 2003
A Path Forward
The
Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
By NUCLEAR AGE PEACE
FOUNDATION
The peoples and governments of the world face
an urgent challenge relating to weaponry of mass destruction
and particularly to nuclear weaponry.
At the crossroads of technology, terrorism,
geopolitical ambition, and policies of preemption are new and
potent dangers for humanity. Despite ending the nuclear standoff
of the Cold War era, nuclear weaponry is again menacing the peoples
of the world with catastrophic possibilities.
We recognize the need for any government
to pursue its security interests in accordance with international
law; and further, we recognize that distinctive threats to these
interests now exist as a result of an active international terrorist
network having declared war on the United States and its allies.
Nonetheless, we reject the assessment of the current US administration
that upgrading a reliance on nuclear weapons is in any sense
justified as a response. We find it unacceptable to assign any
security role to nuclear weapons. More specifically, nuclear
weapons are totally irrelevant and ineffective in relation to
the struggle against terrorism.
Nuclear weapons, combined with policies
that lower barriers to their use, pose unprecedented dangers
of massive destruction, recalling to us the horrors of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Any major use of such weapons could doom humanity's
future and risk the extinction of most life on the planet.
The international regime preventing proliferation
of nuclear weapons has badly eroded in recent years, and is in
danger of unraveling altogether. This is due in large part to
the refusal of the nuclear weapons states to fulfill their long-standing
obligations set forth in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith. Other states,
taking note of this underlying refusal to renounce these weapons
over a period of more than five decades, have seen growing benefits
for themselves in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Back in 1998, India and Pakistan, responding
at least in part to the failure of the declared nuclear weapons
states to achieve nuclear disarmament, decided to cross the nuclear
weapons threshold. These two countries, both having always remained
outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, have a long history
of conflict and war with each other. They are a flashpoint for
potential nuclear war in South Asia.
Another flashpoint is Israel's undeclared,
yet well-established, nuclear weapons arsenal, which introduces
the risk that nuclear weapons will be used in some future crisis
in the Middle East. Israel's nuclear arsenal and the implicit
threat of its use has encouraged other Middle Eastern countries
to seek or acquire weapons of mass destruction, including the
establishment of nuclear weapons programs.
A third flashpoint exists on the Korean
Peninsula in Northeast Asia, where North Korea has withdrawn
from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other agreements
restricting its nuclear program. The North Korean government
has announced that it will expand its nuclear weapons program
unless the US agrees to negotiations to establish a mutual security
pact.
US government policies are moving dangerously
in the direction of making nuclear weapons an integral component
of its normal force structure, and terrorists are becoming increasingly
unscrupulous in challenging the established order. Terrorist
organizations have been boldly seeking access to weaponry of
mass destruction. Beyond this, the recent Iraq War, supposedly
undertaken to remove a threat posed by Iraqi possession of these
weapons, seems to have sent the ironic message to North Korea
and others that the most effective way to deter the United States
is by proceeding covertly and with urgency to develop a national
arsenal of nuclear weapons.
US official policies to develop smaller
and more usable nuclear weapons, to research a nuclear earth-penetrating
weapon for use as a "bunker buster," and to lessen
the timeframe for returning to underground nuclear testing, along
with the doctrine and practice of preemptive war, have dramatically
increased the prospect of future nuclear wars. The nuclear policies
and actions of the US government have proved to be clearly provocative
to countries that have been named by the US president as members
of "the axis of evil" or that have been otherwise designated
by the present US administration to constitute potential threats
to the United States. Several of these countries now seem strongly
inclined to go all out to acquire a deterrent in the face of
American intimidation and threats.
There is no circumstance, even retaliation,
in which the use of nuclear weapons would be prudent, moral or
legal under international law. The only morally, legally and
politically acceptable policy with regard to nuclear weapons
is to move rapidly to achieve their universal and total elimination,
as called for by the world's leading religious figures, the International
Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and many other governments
and respected representatives of civil society. Achieving such
goals would also dramatically reduce the possibilities of nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of terrorist organizations.
Given the existence of treaty regimes
that already ban chemical and biological weapons, the outlawing
and disarmament of nuclear weapons would complete the commitment
of the governments and peoples of the world to the prohibition
and elimination of all weaponry of mass destruction. Such a prohibition,
and accompanying regimes of verification and enforcement, could
lead over time to a greater confidence by world leaders in the
rule of law, as well as encourage an increased reliance on non-violent
means of resolving conflicts and satisfying grievances.
It is the US insistence on retaining
a nuclear weapons option that sets the tone for the world as
a whole, reinforcing the unwillingness of other nuclear weapons
states to push for nuclear disarmament and inducing threatened
or ambitious states to take whatever steps are necessary, even
at the risk of confrontation and war with the United States,
to develop their own stockpile of nuclear weaponry. In this post-September
11th climate, the United States has suddenly become for other
governments a country to be deterred rather than, as in the Cold
War, a country practicing deterrence to discourage aggression
by others.
For these reasons, we call upon the United
States government to:
* Abandon its dangerous and provocative
nuclear policies, in particular, researching, developing and
making plans to shorten the time needed to resume testing of
new and more usable nuclear weapons;
* Take its nuclear arsenal off the high
alert status of the Cold War;
* Meet its disarmament obligations under
Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Treaty's
Review Conferences, including making arms reduction agreements
irreversible;
* Renounce first use of or threat to
use nuclear weapons under all circumstances;
* Enter into negotiations with North
Korea on a mutual security pact; and
* Assert global leadership toward convening
at the earliest possible date a Nuclear Disarmament Conference
in order to move rapidly toward the creation and bringing into
force of a verifiable Nuclear Weapons Convention to eliminate
all nuclear weapons and control all nuclear materials capable
of being converted to weapons.
We also call on other nuclear weapons
states to accept their responsibilities to work toward a world
without weapons of mass destruction as a matter of highest priority.
These steps leading to the negotiation
and ratification of a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons should
then be coordinated with existing arrangements of prohibition
associated with biological and chemical weapons to establish
an overall regime dedicated to the elimination of all weaponry
of mass destruction. It would be beneficial at that stage to
also create an international institution with responsibility
for safeguarding the world against such diabolical weaponry,
including additional concerns associated with frontier technologies,
such as space weaponization and surveillance technology, radiological
weapons, cyber warfare, advanced robotics, genetic engineering
and nanotechnology.
Finally, we recommend that an international
commission of experts and moral authority figures be appointed
by the Secretary General of the United Nations to issue a report
on existing and emerging weaponry of mass destruction and to
propose international arrangements and policy recommendations
that would enhance the prospects for global peace and security
in the years ahead and, above all, the avoidance of any use of
weapons of mass destruction.
Humanity stands at a critical crossroads,
and the future depends upon our actions now.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan international organization
dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons
of mass destruction, the strengthening of international law and
the education of a new generation of peace leaders. Further information
may be found at the Foundation's web site: www.wagingpeace.org.
Weekend Edition Features
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
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Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
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