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The Universal Declaration at Fifty: David Krieger interviews with Richard Falk
DK: As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights how do you assess the progress in implementing its important standards? RF: The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 50 years ago was an achievement that has produced results far in excess of anything that could reasonably have been anticipated at the time it was adopted. It was originally viewed as an awkward response to vague [...]
1997 Nobel Lecture
Your Majesties, Honorable Members of the Nobel Committee, Excellencies and Honored Guests: It is a privilege to be here today, together with other representatives of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, to receive jointly the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Our appreciation goes to those who nominated us and to the Nobel Committee for chosing this year to recognize, from among so many other nominees who have worked diligently for peace, the work [...]
The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence
Part II of II Chapter I PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES Article I The Purposes of the United Nations are: 1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of [...]
We Owe an Allegiance to Humanity
This interview was held with Joseph Rotblat, the 1995 Nobel Peace Laureate, when he visited Santa Barbara to receive the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Peace Leadership. Professor Rotblat was interviewed on October 29, 1997 by Foundation President David Krieger. Krieger: Having worked for more than 50 years for the elimination of nuclear weapons, how would you assess the progress that’s been made toward achieving a nuclear [...]
From Arms Control to Abolition: Global Action for a Nuclear Weapons Free World
During the Cold War, nuclear arsenals were rationalized on the basis of deterrence, and the nuclear weapons states developed military strategies of mutual assured destruction (MAD). Since it was recognized that attacks and counter-attacks with nuclear arsenals would be without precedent in their destructiveness, even to the point of destroying human civilization and most life on Earth, the acronym MAD seemed particularly appropriate. During the Cold War period, leaders tried to bring [...]
Peace Declaration
It was 52 years ago today that a single atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. The skies flashed brighter than a thousand suns and a huge mushroom cloud rose above the city. Untold numbers perished in the sea of flames that followed, and the survivors still suffer from radiation's debilitating aftereffects. This event engendered profound distrust of the scientific civilization that has made such dramatic progress over the last hundred years. Science and [...]
Sowing Seeds of Peace
We are in the season of Hiroshima, having just passed the 52nd anniversary of the bombing of that city by a single nuclear weapon. On the day the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, there was a tear in the fabric of the world. It became clear that a chasm had opened between our technological capabilities for destruction and our spiritual/moral precepts of respect for the dignity and sacredness of human life. [...]
Captain Cousteau’s Legacy: Rising to Our Full Stature as Human Beings
Jacques Cousteau was larger than life. He was a man who lived fully. He was a resistance fighter during the Second World War, the inventor of the Aqua-Lung, a world famous explorer of the oceans, filmmaker, and writer. Captain Cousteau was at home in the water, and he brought the wonder and mystery of the oceans and its creatures into the lives of people everywhere. He took to calling our Earth the [...]
Dangers of Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism
The greatest nuclear danger that I am concerned with is not the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states, though that is a grave danger. Of even greater concern is the invidious belief of policy makers in a small number of states that they have a right to maintain nuclear weapons indefinitely, and that in their hands nuclear weapons do not constitute a threat either to their own citizens or to the [...]
Ending the Nuclear Weapons Era
The Nuclear Age The Nuclear Age began on a quiet stretch of desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Robert Oppenheimer, a principal scientist in the effort to create the atomic bomb, is reported to have recalled this line from the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds." Just three weeks after the first test, a second atomic bomb was exploded, this time over the city of [...]
Schlaining Manifesto
Introduction Since the end of the Cold War, public debate on security issues, and in particular on nuclear weapons, has receded and become overshadowed by other more apparently pressing problems. Despite this fact, opinion polls in many countries show an overwhelming majority in favour of the abolition of nuclear weapons. For this reason, NGOs working in the peace and security fields see a necessity to propose a political programme of action to [...]
McKinney-Rochrabacher Amendment
Amendment offered by Ms. McKinney Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is the amendment one of those specifically listed in the order of the House of June 5, 1997? Ms. McKINNEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman, it is. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The Clerk will report the amendment. The Clerk read as follows: Amendment offered by Ms. McKinney: At the end of the bill add the following (and [...]
Nuclearism and Its Spread to Asia
Introduction At its core, nuclearism is the belief that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are essential forms of progress that in the right hands will protect the peace and further the human condition. Nuclearism is a dangerous ideology -- as dangerous as the technologies it has unabashedly and unreservedly promoted. In this belief system, "the right hands" have generally been synonymous with one's own country, and "to further the human condition" has [...]
Betrayal
It's as safe as mother's milk, they'll say When wanting to assure you that it's all O.K. But mother's milk can be a deadly dish If mom, a downwinder, eats Columbia River's fish, Or consumes white snow - garden salads on the spot Then mother's milk can become a deadly lot. So I fed poison to my nursing son With radioactive iodine-131. Just because we lived in the wrong place I maimed [...]
The Illegality of NATO’s Nuclear Weapons
The following notes summarise what we in the World Court Project (UK) believe are the strongest arguments flowing from the Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which can be used in exposing the illegality of NATO's nuclear policy. It is important to recognise that none of our arguments will guarantee success in court. However, we are convinced that what we have to say is plausible [...]
Letter to Heads of State of the European Union
The following letter to Heads of State of the European Union, calling for the creation of a European Cultural Assembly, was sent by Lord Yehudi Menuhin, the great violinist, conductor, and humanitarian who received the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's 1997 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award. In my opinion there is one element missing in the general concept of the European Union -- It is the representation of the rich diversity of European Cultures. [...]
The Human Right to Peace Declaration
Lasting peace is a prerequisite for the exercise of all human rights and duties. It is not the peace of silence, of men and women who by choice or constraint remain silent. It is the peace of freedom - and therefore of just laws - of happiness, equality, and solidarity, in which all citizens count, live together and share. Peace, development and democracy form an interactive triangle. They are mutually reinforcing. [...]
Chaining the Nuclear Beast
When I became a private citizen and a businessman two and one-half years ago, it was my intention to close the journal of my military career and never to reopen it.... My decision to step back into public life is prompted by an inner voice I cannot still, a concern I cannot quiet. I am compelled by a growing alarm, born of my former responsibilities, and a deepening dismay as a citizen [...]
Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste
More than a half century after the beginning of the Nuclear Age, there is no satisfactory answer to the serious dilemma of how to dispose of the large quantities of radioactive wastes created by military and civilian uses of nuclear energy. This paper examines technological options for waste disposal, and concludes by favoring Multibarrier Monitored Retrievable Storage (MMRS). The authors point out, however, that this form of storage (it is not really [...]
Towards Sustainable Societies
Sustainability Sustainability is a value-based aim and process with environmental, technological, political, social, economic and institutional implications. Sustainability requires that we organise our societies so that they evolve in harmony with nature; dominance over nature is a failed option. Sustainability calls for a significant reduction in use of global natural resources and a sharing of these resources between individuals, societies and generations so that a maximum of well-being and dignity is achieved [...]
First Annual Sadako Peace Day
Mayor Harriet Miller declared August 6, 1996 as "The First Annual Sadako Peace Day." In making this proclamation, she called "for efforts in our community and throughout the world to abolish nuclear weapons and to prevent people everywhere, particularly children, from suffering the horrors of war." Sadako Sasaki was a two-year old girl in Hiroshima, who was exposed to radiation when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city on August 6, [...]
First Annual Sadako Peace Day City of Santa Barbara Proclamation
Whereas, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is dedicated to creating a nuclear weapons free world under international law; Whereas, the Sadako Peace Garden, located at La Casa de Maria, was created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and La Casa de Maria, and was dedicated on August 6, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb in warfare; and Whereas, Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the [...]
Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons
Introduction The two nuclear fission bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki each released nearly 4,000 times as much explosive energy as chemical high explosive bombs of the same weight. Together they killed more than 200,000 people. The energy released by the splitting of the atomic nuclei in the cores of these bombs was more than 10 million times the energy released by rearrangements of the outer electrons of atoms, which are responsible [...]
Article 26
In considering the need to reform and strengthen the United Nations to better meet its obligations to provide for international peace and security, special attention should be given to Article 26 of the U.N. Charter. There are probably very few people in the world today familiar with this article. Consequently, the Security Council has been able to ignore one of its most important responsibilities for more than 50 years. Article 26 states: [...]
Denuclearization of the Oceans: Linking Our Common Heritage with Our Common Future
Introduction The oceans were nuclearized shortly after the era of nuclear weapons began in 1945. On July 1, 1946, while still negotiating the internationalization of atomic energy at the United Nations, the United States began testing nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific continued through January 1996, when French President Jacques Chirac announced an end to French testing in the region. In the 1950s, the [...]