International Day For The Total Elimination Of Nuclear Weapons
By John Scales Avery
20 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org
In the follow-up to the 2013 high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in which it declared 26 September the International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com13/resolutions/L6Rev1.pdf
The first ever event will take place a month from now on 26 September, 2014.
http://www.unfoldzero.org/index.php?p=action_sep26
What can you, as an individual, do? You can plan an action to commemorate the day. You can write to your Prime Minister/President and/or Foreign Minister, to ask what your government plans to do to commemorate the day. You can ask your local parliamentarian, mayor and city council the same question. You can tell www.unfoldzero.org about your activities.
The Interparliamentary Union, with 167 members, passed a resolution in March, 2014, calling on its members to support the total elimination nof nuclear weapons:
http://www.ipu.org/conf-e/130/Res-1.htm
Why is the total elimination of nuclear weapons so urgent? Although somewhat reduced in numbers from the insane heights of the Cold War, the power of today's nuclear weapons is more than sufficient to destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere. Many of the weapons are on hair-trigger alert, meaning that those in charge of them have only minutes to decide whether a radar signal is a true or false report of an attack. Most of us alive today owe our existence to Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who correctly reported such a warning as a computer error:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6WvXxMkBWg
The system of mutal deterrence has been described as “an accident waiting to happen”: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/whos-minding-the-nuclear-weapons/
In the long run, the small yearly chance that a catastrophic accident will occur will build up into a certainty of disaster. For example, even if the yearly chance of an accident occurring were as small 1 percent (and it is certainly larger than that), over several centuries the probability accidental thermonuclear war will become a near certainty. We have been extremely lucky so far, but in the long run civilization and nuclear weapons cannot co-exist.
Just as the generals and politicians who started World War I seem not to have comprehended what a war with machine guns and long-range artillery would be like, so our leaders today seem not to have an imaginative idea of what a thermonuclear war would be like. Promising to defend their populations, they do no such thing, but instead they put us at risk of total annihilation.
Today, it is up to each individual to work with courage and dedication to put an end to nuclear insanity.
John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at [email protected]
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