STARK NUCLEAR WARNING

California Governor Jerry Brown has just authored a review of one of our recommended titles in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books: the recently published My Journey at the Nuclear Brink by former Secretary of Defense William Perry (SEE Blog Bibliography Post below: Reading the Bomb, June 13, 2016)


                                                 

  

The Nuclear Weapons threat continues to garner headlines and attention. But what is needed is Citizen Involvement. Perry's book gives us the back story, the dangerous scope of the problem and cause for hope.

Gov. Brown accurately describes the former Secretary of Defense, who had worked in the Nuclear Weapons industry from the age of 26, as an "insider", "a keeper of secrets", "a man of unquestioned experience and intelligence." In this BLOG he has been quoted several times. Here is another:

"Even a single detonation...could destroy our way of life." (Italics ours)

Brown notes that: 
"Perry is on an urgent mission to alert us to the dangerous nuclear road we are traveling." Perry was one of the first "insiders" to conclude that there could be and is no defense in a full scale Nuclear War. He's been joined over the years by former Nuclear Weapons stalwarts Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn, Drell, Lugar. (as noted in earlier posts here)
                                           

                                                  

After the Cold War he was very involved in securing the many "loose Nukes" in the former Soviet Republics such as Ukraine and Belarus.

In his review of the book, Brown discusses our "new age of nuclear danger" and that, unfortunately, since publication of the book "the dangers have only intensified" - spurred by the Nuclear Weapons spending spree called euphemistically by its proponents "Modernization".
Brown informs us that includes "the complete update of our nuclear triad, including new (nuclear) cruise missiles, nuclear submarines, ICBMs and bombers."(See previous and up-coming Blog Posts on our "Triad") As Sen. John McCain has stated: "Very, very, very expensive."

Brown writes of Bill Perry: "Few have his wisdom and integrity and expertise and experience. So why isn't anyone paying attention to him?"

The book reveals that Perry's great fear is that "the poised nuclear doom" is out of sight and out of mind. As this Blog has posted before, there are no more spectacularly deadly explosive atmospheric tests of these weapons, no fretting about clouds of poisonous radiation circling the globe, no "civil defense duck and cover drills."


                                                

                                



Perry believes that most of us are in Denial. Deeply afraid of "thinking the unthinkable." Nuclear Weapons Amnesia.

But think of it, remember it, we must. That is a crucial first step on the road to Abolition In Our Time. Perry warns of the "great urgency" here. He is hopeful that the movement for abolition is beginning, but advises that it must grow - quickly! The former Defense Secretary is fearful that "governments are not getting sufficient pressure from their constituents to act." That is where we MUST come in. All of Us!

We have noted here the Central Park Rally for the Nuclear Freeze in the 80's and its eventual effectiveness. We need a like movement Now - before this inane, insane "modernization program" gets off the ground!

Perry, at the end, addresses the "millennial generation". He believes that they have the power to abolish these Armageddon Weapons in their lifetimes.

"I have dedicated my own efforts to increasing the awareness of our younger generation - the millennial generation, now in their teens and twenties. The problem will ultimately need to be solved by today's youth." BUT he adds a dire caveat:

"I BELIEVE THAT TIME IS NOT ON OUR SIDE."

Governor Brown concludes his review by referring to the leaders and citizens of Europe who were "sleepwalking" their way into the catastrophe of World War I. 
"Fortunately, Bill Perry is not sleepwalking and he is telling us to wake up before it is too late. Anyone can begin by reading this book." Indeed!

READ. WRITE. TWEET. POST. USE SOCIAL MEDIA. SIGN PETITIONS - THERE ARE MANY ON LINE. CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS- THEY DO LISTEN. THEY DO RESPOND.

FIND THE  TIME. MAKE THE TIME. Because all of us, our kids, grand kids and all future generations ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. ACT NOW!


                                                   

         

The review appears in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books: CLICK HERE 


William Perry's Website CLICK HERE

BEYOND HIROSHIMA: THE ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN OUR TIME

USSR 50 Megaton Nuclear Bomb 1961

OBAMA'S VISIT:                                                                                                                                  

This much we know. That President Obama will visit Hiroshima on May 27. He will say a few words. Then he will leave.                                                                                                                          
But we know, too, that the nightmare of Nuclear Weapons will follow him home like his shadow, in the shape of the "nuclear football" of codes, a shadow no President of the United States can ever shake. Computer codes that empower this one individual, and soon his successor, to set in motion a concatenation of nuclear weapons detonations that would annihilate humanity and our world as we know it - killing us, our children, grandchildren and generations yet unborn who will never have the chance to be born. An Abortion of all future generations.
The Fate of Billions in the Hands of One Person.                               Hiroshima is about the past. Burned in stone it cannot be undone. Contentious disputes about military necessity and morality are arguments without end. Time to move past it. Time to secure our future. BEYOND HIROSHIMA.
One day, hopefully soon, we will be able to look our children and grandchildren in their smiling, trusting faces knowing that the Nuclear Sword of Damocles no longer hangs by a thin, hair-trigger thread over their lives and their future.
The Crisis, and it is a Crisis, in terms of destruction, death and doomsday and in terms of Time. Urgency.
The ULTIMATE 911 CALL.     
Picture sand running through an hourglass. Since Hiroshima each generation has, with much luck, been able to turn the hour glass upside down to let the sand start running again. Giving us more time to rid ourselves of this threat of final annihilation. The Crisis is that this generation's turn of the hourglass could well be the last. Out of Time!
Know the enemy. The Weapons Themselves. Today nine nations possess an estimated 15,695 Nuclear Weapons with over 90% held by Russia and the United States.
Ignorance is not an option here. The stakes are too high. We have a civic duty and a moral responsibility to, at the least, be informed. Talk about it. Write about it. Tweet. Post. Take a position. For generations this danger has been out of sight and out of mind. But suddenly, now, there is an opening. Prompted by our presidential election cycle and by world events-Nuclear Weapons Are In The News.
Long buried in the deep waters prowled by submarines stocked with nuclear missiles designed to obliterate entire cities. Buried in the silos of our plains and in Russian Siberia. Buried deep in our consciousness like a traumatic memory or a terrible nightmare. Long dormant in the public's consciousness, now surfacing again.    

"Millennials" this is your time, your life, your future. You have no memory of the nuclear bombing of Japan. No memory of fall-out shelters, of gigantic radioactive mushroom clouds in our atmosphere, of the USSR's 50 Megaton blast, the biggest in history, over the Arctic Circle (1500 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined), of "duck and cover drills" in classrooms. You don't want to be the last generation with its hands on that hourglass when the sands of time run out.You have gathered huge crowds to demonstrate and protest on issues of importance to you. You need to do that here but on a much larger scale. Take heart! There is precedent.



                                                      

In a world without social media, a Million Americans gathered in New York's Central Park in June, 1982, (above) in the largest political demonstration in American history to protest an out of control Nuclear Weapons arms race driving the world to the abyss of Nuclear War. 2,300,000 Americans signed the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Petition presented to both the U.S. and Soviet governments. This spurred ballot initiatives on "The Freeze" in ten states involving one-third of the electorate. The proposal passed in nine of the ten states. Followed in 1986 by President Reagan's meeting in Reykjavik with Russian Premier Gorbachev to find a solution to the Nuclear Weapons dilemma. At the last moment, they blinked at the possibility of complete and total abolition. A lost opportunity of historic proportions. Yet, the meeting did open the door to major Nuclear arsenal reductions by both sides even during the height of the Cold War.
Now is the time for thinking "outside the box." Radical new thinking required to end this scourge of humanity.

ABOLITION IN OUR TIME.

"They" will tell us that it cannot be done. As President John Kennedy said - "We made the weapons and we can do away with them."
Time to face down this global, imminent threat to the Future. Apathy has no place here. We are at our Nuclear Rubicon. Why?
Because our nation and other nuclear nations are embarking upon a new, even more dangerous Nuclear Arms Race. They call it "modernization." 
We have the opportunity now to let these aging weapons systems die at last a natural death. Instead, our governments are not just keeping them on life support, but are injecting trillions of dollars into a new generation of these Killer Weapons. Sleek, stealthy, tempting to actually use! Even "AI" versions of our current Nuclear Warhead delivery systems are in the works.

Does it seem overwhelming? Well, you can just turn away. Be in Denial. Close your eyes and your minds. Sit back and relax. Play with your phones, watch your screens. Detach from it all. Remain willfully, immorally ignorant. And pretend that nothing at all is going to happen to us...Forever.

"Today the danger of some sort of nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the cold war and MOST PEOPLE ARE BLISSFULLY UNAWARE OF THIS DANGER." William J. Perry, former Secretary of Defense

We must choose now. You, we, have an amazing power. The power to refuse. The power to say HELL, NO! to modernization of these weapons. HELL, NO! to crossing that Rubicon into the abyss of Nuclear Annihilation which would be sure to come for us. Decide Now That You Will Not Be Silenced! That You Will Be Heard! ABOLITION IN OUR TIME! There May Be No Other.

This Blog will post at least once per week. Info on books, websites, news, opinions, films concerning this Imminent Nuclear Threat to Us All. Thoughtful comments are certainly welcome.