Neighbors For Peace
Announcements:
Author and Activist David Swanson comes to Evanston
The activist and author David Swanson will discuss his book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a more perfect Union" at Northwestern University's Tech Institute, located at 2145 Sheridan Rd in Evanston IL. For more details, visit www.davidswanson.org.
Posted on 1/15/10 by Pallist3
Finance for the People !! Not for the Bankers !
What’s at the root of the economic crisis? What can we do?
7:30pm, Friday, Feb. 26, 2010
at The Unitarian Church of Evanston
1330 Ridge Avenue
(parking in lot off Greenwood St)
(4 blocks west of Dempster St. Purple Line Station)
There will be an informal introductory 1/2 hour with refreshments starting at 7:00pm.
Following the presentation, there will be a Question and Answer period.
This is a free event with donations encouraged to help support Neighbors for Peace continuing activities.
Cosponsored with The Department of Economics at Roosevelt University, we are pleased to bring you:
Gerald Epstein – Professor of Economics and a founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also a staff economist with the Center For Popular Economics (CPE), an educational group based in Amherst, Massachusetts, that teaches economics to political activists. Most recently, Epstein, along with Jane D'Arista, is the coordinator of SAFER, a loose network of economists and other analysts who are
doing analytical and educational work to help improve the financial system to better serve the needs of the society rather than a small financial elite. (SAFER is short for: Economists' Committee for "Stable, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Financial Reform" www.peri.umass.edu/safer ).
Epstein received his PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 1981. He has worked with numerous UN organizations, including the United Nations Development Program and the International Labor Organization in the areas of Pro-Poor Macroeconomic Policy and Human Development Impact Assessments of Trade Policies in Madagascar, South Africa, Ghana, Cambodia and Mongolia. Epstein's current research focuses on monetary and financial restructuring to revive
the U.S. and global economies. He is the author of numerous articles and editor or co-editor of several books, including Beyond Inflation Targeting, (E. Elgar 2009), Financialization and the World Economy (E. Elgar, 2005), Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Capital Flight and Capital Controls in Developing Countries, (E. Elgar, 2005), Transforming the U.S. Financial System (M.E. Sharpe, 1992) and he is the Co-Author of An Employment Targeted Macroeconomic Policy for South Africa. (E. Elgar, 2007).
Recommended Viewing in Advance of the Presentation:
Peri and the Real News Network Partnership
http://www.peri.umass.edu/?id=483#1004 (Start at the top)
Prof. Gerald Epstein on the Economic Recovery, Unemployment in the U.S., Feb 2, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x961deNHgsA
Optional Advanced Reading:
Introduction: Financialization and the World Economy. Gerald Epstein, ed. Northampton: Edward Elgar Press, 2005
Available online at: http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/programs/globalization/financialization/chapter1.pdf
Posted on 2/8/10 by Dave849
News
Laser Uranium Enrichment Undermines US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Efforts
WASHINGTON - October 8 - Experts last week warned that a proposed uranium enrichment nuclear facility in Wilmington, NC would undermine U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and materials in other countries.
In a letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the experts noted that the planned Global Laser Enrichment Commercial Facility would complicate diplomatic efforts to discourage the use of this technology in other countries. They explained that, "Should the United States be seen to embrace the use of laser isotope enrichment as a commercially viable technology, there can be little question that other states will be strongly encouraged to follow this lead and develop such technology for their own use," and that, "Given the great difficulty of detecting laser isotope enrichment facilities, their spread could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear-weapon states."
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a license request by General Electric-Hitachi for its planned Global Laser Enrichment Commercial Facility.
Laser technology would be used as an alternative to centrifuge or gaseous diffusion to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. The use of this uranium enrichment technology could detract from U.S. and international security efforts to detect and monitor nuclear programs worldwide as global interest in nuclear power grows. If enriched to a concentration of 20% uranium 235 or higher, enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.
A covert enrichment facility using laser technology would be harder to detect because it would use less energy and be of smaller size, and thereby be easier to hide.
A laser uranium research program in Iran escaped detection in 2002. Another laser enrichment research experiment was also detected in South Korea in 2004 after several years. The discovery of undeclared centrifuges enrichment facilities in Iran, at Natanz in 2002 and more recently at Qom,underscore the importance of being able to detect covert facilities that could be used to make nuclear weapons-usable material.
The full text of the letter is below and available online. The attachments referred to in the letter are "Nuclear Power, Disarmament and Technological Restraint" by James Acton, Survival, Vol 51 No. 4, August-September 2009, pp.101-126, and "Laser Enrichment: Separation Anxiety," by Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 61, no. 2, March- April 2005, pp. 14-18, available online**
September 30, 2009
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC
Dear Members of the Commission:
We believe the potential demonstration effect on other states from licensing the General Electric-Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment Commercial Facility (Docket No. 70-7016) in Wilmington, North Carolina raises significant proliferation issues. Should the United States be seen to embrace the use of laser isotope enrichment as a commercially viable technology, there can be little question that other states will be strongly encouraged to follow this lead and develop such technology for their own use. Given the great difficulty of detecting laser isotope enrichment facilities, their spread could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear-weapon states. The rationale for such concerns is set forth in greater detail in the attached articles by two of the signers
Accordingly, we request (1) that the Commission makes the potential of this facility to contribute to the spread of laser isotope enrichment technology-and thus to the increased risk of nuclear proliferation-an explicit factor in its decision, and (2) that the Commission prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the licensing of laser isotope separation facilities that includes specific consideration of the demonstration effect of such U.S. action on international proliferation risks.**
###
The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan research organization dedicated to enhancing international peace and security in the 21st century. The Center is funded by grants from private foundations and the generosity of thousands of individual donors.
**The letter, with signatures, can be found at
www.cfr.org/content/thinktank/Ferguson_BAS_separation.pdf
The Force is Against Us
Editorial Page
The editorial policy of Neighbors Times is based on Neighbors for Peace’s mission statement (established in 2001) and printed on the bottom of page 4 and at www.neighborsforpeace.org.
The public is invited to participate at all levels of this newsletter project. To submit articles for consideration and for our newsletter meeting schedule, email pallist3-n4ptimes@yahoo.com - or mail to: Neighbors Times, PO Box 215, Evanston, IL 60204-0215
The public is also invited to join in all aspects of Neighbors for Peace: email pallist3-n4ptimes@yahoo.com for more info
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The Force is Against Us
In his brilliant essay, “Thinkability”(1), Martin Amis reported that nuclear war was “seven minutes away.” That was in 1987. Now, according to the Doomsday Clock, it’s “five minutes to midnight.” We are two minutes closer than we were twenty-two years ago.
What does this mean, precisely? Does it mean anything at all?
Writing in the year 2009 about the prospect of nuclear war is surprisingly difficult. Not because there is nothing to say but because so much has been said in the past. Amis’s own observations in 1987 had already been made, one way or another, ever since Hiroshima.
Between 1945 and 1987, as well as countless news reports on the subject—not to mention all the arguments “pro” and “con” the proliferation of nuclear weapons—there were many novels, films, and plays dramatizing the consequences of a nuclear holocaust. For those of us growing up during the Cold War era, the threat of annihilation was a basic fact of life. We read the novels and saw the movies and the TV dramas. Some of us learned (perhaps many years later) that, like “The Day After,(2) all the more “realistic” treatments seriously underestimated the effects of nuclear war. Nuclear scientists knew better, but either they weren’t talking or nobody was listening.
Science fiction, in a sense, has been more accurate. At least some stories, such as Planet of the Apes, have done justice to the scale of the event. Novelists like John Wyndham have written stories showing a few remnants of human society still affected by “fallout” resulting from a catastrophic war that took place generations, even centuries, in the past(3). It is always one terrible war. The archetype is Armageddon—though not the Armageddon spoken of by the Religious Right. There are no “chosen people,” no “elect.” There are just survivors, some of them desperate enough to resort to cannibalism. And there is certainly no God.
Instead of God, what we see is the human capacity for willful self-destruction. Freudians describe this as our “death wish” or “death drive.” The writers of Greek tragedy saw our chief weakness as a kind of arrogance they called hubris. Today, we don’t inhabit a world that fosters a tragic sense of life. Nietzsche observed that the creation of tragedy by the Greeks was a sign of health, but our society is too sick for tragedy. Instead, we prefer cynicism. A black comedy like Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove is something most of us can appreciate: “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb.”
The Bomb. In a sense, there is only one. It is a new archetype. Born in 1945, it was built in the US and tested in the US and dropped on a city halfway round the world whose name became a symbol for a new era.
The Internet is overflowing with news about developments in nuclear-arms strategy and reactions to that news. Some articles have received thousands of comments and replies. The report on the push for NATO to maintain a preemptive nuclear strike policy as a form of deterring nuclear weapons proliferation is one such example.(4) The article drew responses that repeatedly referenced “Dr Strangelove”. The prevailing tone was one of cynicism and despair:
We’re at the point, I think, where people just have no faith in the Government, and are aware that the world has and always will be ruled by a group of conniving elitists, moblike in their methods—so to them any of these imperlialist adventures don’t matter, just so long as we keep our jobs, big screen TV’s, ipods, etc.
I’m still in a state of shock. I sit here at my desk and wonder what’s the point. Why work? Why pay bills? The only thing to do maybe is just stop working and try to enjoy our once beautiful Homeworld while it lasts.(5)
.
Ronald Reagan is also frequently referenced in relation to nuclear weapons. “Twenty-five years after Reagan’s Star Wars speech” and “It’s 5 minutes to midnight” are phrases that recur endlessly. Turning again to Martin Amis’s essay, we read the following:
If we look at the controversy over the Strategic Defense Initiative, we find this, for instance, is Ronald Reagan’s tone: “[SDI] isn’t about fear, it’s about hope, and in that struggle, if you will pardon my stealing a film line, the Force is with us.” No, we will not pardon his stealing a film line. And the Force is not with us. The Force is against us.
Amis is right. Such irresponsible frivolity on the part of a President is frightening. Some of us can still laugh at Dr Strangelove—but that was satire, and it was made back in 1964. Also, it seems a little dated; it belongs to a more optimistic era. Reagan is dead, but his legacy is part of today’s world. And he isn’t funny. Nor, in spite of the way he talks, is George W Bush. They have gone too far to warrant even the blackest humor.
President Obama has now paid lip service to the idea of reducing nuclear weapons. His speech in Prague was well received by the press. But as Joseph Gerson astutely points out,
His Prague speech provided a remarkable opportunity for him to reinforce his declared commitment to abolition by using his Commander in Chief authority to order the withdrawal of the estimated 400 Cold War nuclear weapons that are still based in Europe and targeted primarily against Russia. He could have announced a no first-strike policy. To satisfy the majority of people in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, he should have declared an end to U.S. plans to base first-strike related "missile defenses" in Central Europe, rather than reserving this possibility as a negotiating chip with Russia. And he should have offered to include the estimated 10,000 U.S. stockpiled nuclear in the disarmament negotiations with Russia.(6)
It appears that the plan for first-strike “missile defenses” will be abandoned for the time being – the U.S. will instead rely on a strong naval presence in Poland and the military bases in the Czech Republic. However there is no guarantee that this administration will maintain this policy. And other issues threaten the planet’s future. Climate change is progressing at a rate that surpasses the predictions of the scientific models published only five years ago. Dwindling energy resources fuel the U.S. buildup to more invasions in order to gain control over the planet’s oil and natural gas. Access to clean water as well as shrinking food supplies have become matters of life and death for increasing numbers of people living in Africa and Latin America.
The threat of Nuclear Weapons has not gone away. Now we are confronted with yet another version of the Bomb: the “bunker buster.” It’s a new and improved model: it’s smaller and said to be more “accurate.” Which means it is more likely to be used—and used in a “pre-emptive” way. Moreover, it may be used in space. This, perhaps, is why it’s now five minutes to midnight instead of only seven. The Force is against us.
1 Martin Amis, Einstein’s Monsters, 1987.
2 The Day After," much-publicized TV drama, 1983
3 John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, 1964.
4 Source for both the article and the responses: www.CommonDreams.org, 22/01/08
5 Amis, Einstein’s Monsters
6. Joseph Gerson, Obama, “Nuclear Weapons, and Abolition”, Common Dreams.org, May 21, 2009*
*Joseph Gerson plans organized resistance: Sunday, May 2, 2010 has been designated "International Action Day for a Nuclear Free World" and will feature a mass international demonstration and rally in New York City, including several thousand abolitionists from other countries.
Neighbors Times, P.O. Box 215, Evanston, IL 60204-0215, is published seasonally by The Old Corner Press, 2204 Green Bay Road, Evanston, IL 60201 TheOldCornerPress@voyager.net
Managing Editor - Karen Pallist - email: pallist3-n4ptimes@yahoo.com
Contributing Editors and Reporters - M. L. Finn, Terry Pope, Rosalie Riegle, Grace Richardson, Dave Trippel
Arts Page and Reviews Editor - Grace Richardson
Graphics and Production Manager - Dave Trippel
Toward True Security
Ten Steps the Next President Should Take to Transform U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
February 2008
Statement from The Union of Concerned Scientists
website at www.ucsusa.org
To prevent more nations—and eventually terrorists—from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States should drastically reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in its security policies. Toward True Security outlines 10 unilateral steps the next president should take to transform U.S. nuclear policy, which would strengthen national security and put the world on a path to eventually banning nuclear weapons. By taking this leadership role, the United States would also demonstrate to the rest of the world that it is serious about addressing what remains one of the gravest threats to human civilization.
The United States need not wait for bilateral or multilateral agreements; it should take unilateral steps to begin the process. These steps would make the United States safer, whether or not the eventual goal of a worldwide ban is ever achieved.
The greatest nuclear dangers to the United States are an accidental, unauthorized or mistaken Russian nuclear attack, the spread of nuclear weapons to more nations, and the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorists. U.S. nuclear weapons policy, the report concludes, fails to adequately address these risks and too often exacerbates them.
By taking these 10 unilateral steps, the next president would bring U.S. nuclear weapons policy into line with today’s political realities, and demonstrate to the rest of the world that the United States is serious about addressing what remains one of the gravest threats to human civilization:
1. Declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter and, if necessary, respond to the use of nuclear weapons by another country. Making it clear that the United States will not use nuclear weapons first would reduce the incentive for other nations to acquire these weapons to deter a potential U.S. first strike.
2. Reject rapid-launch options by changing U.S. deployment practices to allow the launch of nuclear forces within days instead of minutes. Increasing the amount of time required to launch U.S. weapons would ease Russian concerns about the vulnerability of its nuclear weapons and in turn give it the incentive to take its weapons off alert, reducing the risk of an accidental or unauthorized Russian launch on the United States.
3. Eliminate preset targeting plans, and replace them with the capability to promptly develop a response tailored to the situation if nuclear weapons are used against the United States, its armed forces, or its allies.
4. Promptly and unilaterally reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 1,000 warheads, including deployed and reserve warheads. There is no plausible threat that justifies maintaining more than a few hundred survivable nuclear weapons, and no reason to link the size of U.S. nuclear forces to those of any other country. The United States would declare all warheads above this level to be in excess of its military needs, move them into storage, begin dismantling them in a manner transparent to the international community, and begin disposing—under international safeguards—of all plutonium and highly enriched uranium beyond that required to maintain these 1,000 warheads. By making the end point of this dismantlement process dependent on Russia’s response, the United States would encourage Russia to reciprocate.
5. Halt all programs for developing and deploying new nuclear weapons, including the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead.
6. Promptly and unilaterally retire all U.S. nonstrategic nuclear weapons, dismantling them in a transparent manner, and take steps to induce Russia to do the same.
7. Announce a U.S. commitment to reducing its number of nuclear weapons further, on a negotiated and verified bilateral or multilateral basis.
8. Commit to not resume nuclear testing, and work with the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
9. Halt further deployment of the Ground-Based Missile Defense system, and drop any plans for space-based missile defense. The deployment of a U.S. missile defense system that Russia or China believed could intercept a significant portion of its survivable long-range missile forces would be an obstacle to deep nuclear cuts. A U.S. missile defense system could also trigger reactions by these nations that would result in a net decrease in U.S. security.
10. Reaffirm the U.S. commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament, and present a specific plan for moving toward that goal, in recognition of the fact that a universal and verifiable prohibition on nuclear weapons would enhance both national and international security.
***
The report was authored by analysts from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and independent experts with long experience in nuclear weapons policy issues.
Fall 2009 Newsletter is out!
It's Five Minutes to Midnight
The newsletter is out! You can find it here at our site or pick one up at various sites around Evanston or Rogers Park.
Robert Fisk on Obama(nia)
Home
» Obama Has To Pay For Eight Years Of Bush's Delusions
Obama has to pay for eight years of Bush's delusions
by Robert Fisk (source: The Independent)
Saturday, November 8, 2008
American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about US intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of "raw" reports from American spies and their "assets" around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a US navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no US Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a US military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a US military base in east Asia.
That this nonsense was disseminated around the world by those tasked to defend the United States in the "war on terror" shows the fantasy environment in which the Bush regime has existed these past eight years. If you can believe that bin Laden drops by a shopping mall on an American military base, then you can believe that everyone you arrest is a "terrorist", that Arabs are "terrorists", that they can be executed, that living "terrorists" must be tortured, that everything a tortured man says can be believed, that it is legitimate to invade sovereign states, to grab the telephone records of everyone in America. As Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times a couple of years ago, the Bush administration wanted these records "which contain crucial documentation of calls for a Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Indiana, and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Alabama, to help in the search for Osama bin Laden". There was no stopping Bush when it came to trampling on the US Constitution. All that was new was that he was now applying the same disrespect for liberty in America that he had shown in the rest of the world.
But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the US itself? John F Kennedy once said that "the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war". After Bush's fear-mongering and Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown's enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair's sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new US legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more?
Obama has got to close Guantanamo. He's got to find a way of apologising to the world for the crimes of his predecessor, not an easy task for a man who must show pride in his country; but saying sorry is what – internationally – he will have to do if the "change" he has been promoting at home is to have any meaning outside America's borders. He will have to re-think – and deconstruct – the whole "war on terror". He will have to get out of Iraq. He will have to call a halt to America's massive airbases in Iraq, its $600m embassy. He will have to end the blood-caked air strikes we are perpetrating in southern Afghanistan – why, oh, why do we keep slaughtering wedding parties? – and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths: that America can no longer remain uncritical in the face of Israeli army brutality and the colonisation for Jews and Jews only on Arab land. Obama will have to stand up at last to the Israeli lobby (it is, in fact, an Israeli Likud party lobby) and withdraw Bush's 2004 acceptance of Israel's claim to a significant portion of the West Bank. US officials will have to talk to Iranian officials – and Hamas officials, for that matter. Obama will have to end US strikes into Pakistan – and Syria.
Indeed, there's a growing concern among America's allies in the Middle East that the US military has to be brought back under control – indeed, that the real reason for General David Petraeus' original appointment in Iraq was less to organise the "surge" than it was to bring discipline back to the 150,000 soldiers and marines whose mission – and morals – had become so warped by Bush's policies. There is some evidence, for example, that the four-helicopter strike into Syria last month, which killed eight people, was – if not a rogue operation – certainly not sanctioned by Washington or indeed by US commanders in Baghdad.
But Obama's not going to be able to make the break. He wants to draw down in Iraq in order to concentrate more firepower in Afghanistan. He's not going to take on the lobby in Washington and he's not going to stop further Jewish colonisation of the occupied territories or talk to Israel's enemies. With AIPAC supporter Rahm Emanuel as his new chief of staff – "our man in the White House", as the Israeli daily Maariv called him this week – Obama will toe the line. And of course, there's the terrible thought that bin Laden – when he's not shopping at US military post offices – may be planning another atrocity to welcome the Obama presidency.
There is just one little problem, though, and that's the "missing" prisoners. Not the victims who have been (still are being?) tortured in Guantanamo, but the thousands who have simply disappeared into US custody abroad or – with American help – into the prisons of US allies. Some reports speak of 20,000 missing men, most of them Arabs, all of them Muslims. Where are they? Can they be freed now? Or are they dead? If Obama finds that he is inheriting mass graves from George W Bush, there will be a lot of apologising to do.
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