Department of Energy Calls for Public Comment on Complex Transformation SPEIS – Peace Action Responds with a call for Nuclear Abolition

(Washington, DC – 1/16/08) – The Department of Energy has dedicated a 90 day comment period to the Bush Administration’s proposed nuclear weapons production facility formally known as Complex 2030.  This comes despite Congressional action zeroing out funding for the reliable replacement warhead, a new nuclear weapon, associated with the $150 million nuclear complex.

Recent polls by World Public Opinion show 79% of the American people want to see the U.S. government do more to eliminate nuclear weapons.  Peace Action is among 68 other groups engaging the public to use this comment period to support nuclear abolition and U.S. compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Across the nation, Peace Action Affiliates will hold community meetings to discuss the project and collect comments for the DOE.  Peace Action supporters in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas will present their opinions at DOE hearings in those states.  The Peace Action online campaign is expected to reach over 100,000 nuclear abolition activists.

“Tens of thousands of Americans will write the Department of Energy in the next three months to tell them that they refuse to have nuclear weapons built in their backyard.  Instead it is time to dismantle nuclear weapons rather than build new ones,” claimed Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action’s political director.

The comment campaign will continue through the appointed 90 day period culminating in a final hearing in Washington, DC at which Peace Action’s national office will issue a statement on behalf of the network.  The statement will call for the U.S. government to: stop the Complex Transformation project, increase dedication to nuclear abolition, and invest resources into nuclear cleanup and renewable energy programs.

BACKGROUND

• The Nuclear Complex to be transformed is made up of facilities scattered across the country at 8 major locations with missions as diverse as laboratory work, explosives testing, and nuclear weapons component manufacturing. 
• Complex Transformation would include a major new facility—the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) at Los Alamos National Lab—to build 50-80 warhead cores (plutonium “pits”) per year, violating the spirit of U.S. commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Article 6 which encourages disarmament.
• The 2007 JASON pit lifetime study confirmed that existing pits could last 100 years or more making the Complex Transformation project an unnecessary expense for an indebted Federal Government.
• Legislative and Executive branches of the U.S. government have yet to complete mandated nuclear policy reviews necessary to assess how the U.S. should move into the future regarding nuclear weapons.
• Increased production of plutonium pits, through Complex Transformation, will lead to increased risk to national security, public health, and the environment.
• Expanding our current nuclear weapons program sends the wrong message to other Nations, like North Korea, with whom we are negotiating over nuclear disarmament.

 

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The Song plays on…from Vietnam to Iraq

Fighting Terrorism at Home & Abroad

When we talk about “Real Security through International Cooperation and the Funding of Human Needs” it is sometimes hard to understand what that means in terms of our daily lives. 

On my way home I often pass a family saying hello and usually exchanging brief pleasantries. Normally, the father and sometimes the mother sit on the front stoop watching the baby play.  Last night, however, as I rounded the corner something was very different.  All the contents of their house had been dumped haphazardly onto the sidewalk; they were not sitting on the porch but rather on the street near their clothes.  They had been “put out of their house.”  They could not make the rent for this month and so this family of three (with a toddler) was homeless, sitting in the dark and cold with no place to go.  They had left that morning for work and daycare with a small sense of security, only to arrive that night vulnerable and in genuine danger.  How is it, in the richest democracy in the world, we can put a family out?  

My neighborhood is known for gang activity.  I myself, have witnessed 3 shootings; none of which, thankfully, resulted in death or injury; but they were scary. I can’t imagine being a toddler on the street hearing those booming noises echo only feet away from me.  I have lots of Libertarian friends who don’t believe the government could solve these problems even if it did have a billion dollars.  I might agree if we ever had a chance to test the theory.  The money spent on militarism represents more than 70% of our Federal budget.  The money for social programs is less than 5%.  Where are our priorities?  Why have we, for decades, chosen bombs over people?

Again, I turn to my Libertarian friends who claim the ONLY function of a Federal government is the protection of national boarders from foreign invaders.  I would like to see a more comprehensive idea of ‘foreign invaders.’ I think hunger and frost bite should be counted among the terrorists affecting our world.

It strikes me that these terrorists are potently killing people all over the world on a daily basis – and U.S. investment in militarism only compounds the problem.  I lived in Kosova for a time about a year ago.  The people there are so grateful to the U.S. for ending the genocide perpetuated by Milosevic.  They have a picture of Bill Clinton or Gen. Wesley Clark on nearly every street; including a giant mural on Bill Clinton bvld in downtown Prishtina.  Of course there is another side to this gratitude.  On Bill Clinton blvd there are still apartment buildings bombed out from U.S. strikes in 1999.  People are still living in homes exposed to the elements with no water or electricity.  The unemployment rate is staggering and the thousands of ‘missing’ are still unaccounted for.  The political status of Kosova is still in flux between a Serbian territory and an independent state.  Neither Europe nor the U.S. has invested enough money and time into the rebuilding of Kosova.  We saved them from genocide and then condemned them to poverty through our inaction. 

There is a similar story happening all over the world:  in Ethiopia & Eutria; in Pakistan & Afghanistan; in Burma & S. Korea; in Sudan, in Sri Lanka, in Palestine, in Columbia, in Morocco, in every continent.   Real security, internationally, means investing in the health and well being of all humans; knowing that persons whose security needs are met will never strap a bomb to their back and then board a train.

Terrorism, both the Islamic kind and the gang kind, can only be stopped by meeting our human needs as a global community.  The U.S. is in a unique position to take leadership in this endeavor, and we have historically.  Although now contentious, the IMF and World Bank served their original purpose after WWII.  The funding provided by these international organizations rebuilt Europe after the devastation and renewed the historic cities to their former glory.  We have lost the philanthropy which launched us into a global super power.  Now we face our challenges with bombs and empty promises.  Ours is a path of destruction and destitution.  We must regain our conscious and expand our sense of community if we are ever to realize a peaceful world.

SAY NO TO MILITARY DICTATORSHIPS HERE AND IN PAKISTAN!

I don’t have a lot of time to make a proper analysis of the situation in Pakistan today but I wanted to take some space here to reflect on Democracy.  How is it that our President claims to have invaded Iraq to unseat a military dictator who does not believe in Democracy AND YET will support Musharraf  in his bid to overrun democracy in Pakistan.

Now the unpopular Pakistani strongman has imposed a state of emergency, disbanding the Supreme Court, shutting down the media and basic freedoms, and imprisoning democratic opposition leaders and activists. The ‘Emergency” is a cover to buy the time for backroom deals to ensure Musharraf’s political survival.   All the while the populist former PM, Benazir Bhutto is blockaded into her home by the military and prevented from attending the opposition rally. 

Peace Action is asking you to join with other peace activists:

Call the Pakistan Embassy (202.243.6500) and tell them the international community is watching and expects the rule of law to be restored; 

Contact the State Department and say “Stop sending military and security funding to Pakistan until the constitution is restored and free, fair elections are ensured.” Call 202.647.6575 and press 1 to leave your comment.

Air Strikes Only Effective in Killing Civilians

Imagine you are a parent living in a war zone.  A happy life is hardly a reality but you are surviving by keeping your head low and cooperating with no one and everyone.  One day you venture out of your house for an hour to pick up flour for the next month.  When you return your house, and the family you left there, you find it has been completely destroyed.  Your children, your spouse, your life scattered around your land like rubble.  You, and your family, have become victims of air strikes.

Whether in Kosova in the 90’s, or Afghanistan & Iraq today – air strikes are deadly to civilians and they have devastating effects on infrastructure for years to come.  I’ve seen it.  I’ve walked, ten years after the war, through the streets in Prishtina, Kosova where bombed hospitals sit empty and unused in an area where a mammography machine would save lives from breast cancer.  I’ve lived in a house held up by makeshift beams and gutted on one side because a missal exploded 5 feet from the front door in 1999. 

This month we’ve had new insight into the multinational forces (MNF) responsibility for civilian causalities in Iraq and Afghanistan.  October was the deadliest month for civilians in Afghanistan and air strikes played a significant part.  Last Sunday 60 minutes did a report on this very issue.   They found a family who was suspected of harboring terrorists and bombed to death by multinational forces.  The family was never confronted or warned to get out.  The villagers claim those died never had anything to do with insurgents.  MNF bombed without proof – they just bombed.  President Karzai came out publicly in that program condemning air strikes.  Bush touts Afghanistan as a victory and an explanation of what we are doing in Iraq.  And yet, “while the enemy has killed hundreds of civilians this year, a similar number of civilians have been killed by American forces. With relatively few troops there, the U.S. and NATO rely on air power. The number of civilians killed in air strikes has doubled.”  Where is the victory in that?

In Iraq we have less information because the MNF refuse to be open about the civilian causalities.  The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq recently released a report which deals with civilian causalities.  I’ll simply quote the highlights of page 9.  “UNAMI recorded a number of incidents in which 88 civilians were reportedly killed during air strikes conducted by MNF forces.12 They included the following: nine civilians killed in five villages in the al-Anbakiya area near Ba’quba on 11 March; two civilians killed in Dulu’iya in Salahuddin Governorate on 15 March; 16 civilians killed in Sadr City in Baghdad on 30 March; 27 civilians killed in Khaldiya, Ramadi, on 3 April…..:”  the list goes on for another 30 or so lines.

If we cannot stop this war let us at least stand up for the people who suffer from it on a daily basis.  I urge you to contact your representatives and tell them to work with the UN to report these atrocities.  We must bring the crimes of this war to light.  The only weapon we have now is shame and the best way to shame our own government is to align ourselves with an international power.

Promoting REAL Security through International Cooperation and Democracy Building

This week we have all seen the horrors unfold the territory formerly known as Burma. It was renamed Myanmar in recent years by the ruling military junta.  Up until 2 weeks ago Myanmar was the internationally recognized and used name for this state much to the dismay of Democracy activists and Buddhist Monks.   Now, since the pictures of a dead Monk floating in the Inle Lake and the truth of the military dictatorship have immerged in mainstream media the international community has jumped on the ‘democracy for Burma’ bandwagon.

Isn’t it a little late to support these Democracy activists?  Would it not have been more productive to address this issue back in 1990 when a general election voted agianst the militaristic government and these results were thrown out by then State Peace and Development Council Chairman Than Shwe?  This is the man who responsible for the atrocities of recent weeks and for the renaming of this once democratic country. 

Pres. Bush, at the UN meeting declared that we must support democracy in Burma.  After our invasion he declared we must support democracy in Iraq, and after 9/11 he declared the Afghans ‘hated us for our freedom’.  Why, after we supplied AK47’s and rocket launchers to the Taliban to support our proxy war with the Soviets did they have such a change of heart against the U.S.? 

Surely, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism was a significant factor.  But how did this rise occur?  The Taliban, like the SPDC did in Bruma, took over Afghanistan with military might.  They terrorized Afghan citizens, created a huge refugee crisis, and institutionalized Madrasah educational systems to teach Islamic fundamentalism to the oppressed and disenfranchised population.  It is apparent to me that if we had supported a democratic movement and given non-military aid (in the way of education and basic necessities) to citizens in those early years we could have avoided the tragic events of 9/11.  Subsequently, we could have avoided the current international quagmire we find ourselves in today.  No one straps a bomb to their body if they are leading a fulfilling and secure life.

The only way to combat terrorism and promote grassroots democratic systems is to engage the population BEFORE the violence comes to a head.  We have the largest military in the world and yet we have no Peacekeepers.  We allocate 90% of our security budget to our own military and a fraction of it to international cooperation.  It is time we switched our priorities to secure a future for our children and children all over the world.

It’s Time to Bring Democracy Back Home

I have held my opinion on this blog from some months now regarding the Jena 6 but I cannot any longer.  I felt, at first, that this was not part of our mission at Peace Action.  Then I received a press release from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.  The release condemns the Islamophobic comments of Rep. Peter King (R-NY).  This got me thinking.  The media and Congress shake their fingers at the Iraqi government for not overcoming ‘ethic tension’ and not ‘moving forward with the democracy’ – how can we ‘promote democracy’ abroad while we do not uphold it here at home? 

The charges brought against these 6 teenagers for fighting at an off-campus party includes attempted murder and theft.   

The theft charge stems from one white kid bringing a gun into the house party and threatening the black kids.  The black child being charged with theft took that gun away from the fight to eliminate the threat. 

The potential murder weapon was not the gun, it was a shoe.  A black kid threatened a white kid with a shoe after taking the white kid’s gun – and now that black kid is in jail. 

None of the white children have been charged with anything.  They were never punished for hanging nooses from a tree to spark the fighting in the first place.  They have never been punished for fighting.  The town believes everyone in the country is ‘blowing this out of proportion.”  This is the most disgusting breech of our justice system since Alberto’s political firings came to light.  It’s particularly disturbing how closely these two are chronologically – tells you something about the state of our own ‘democratic’ justice system. 

Rep. King believes Muslims are “an enemy living amongst us.”  In an interview with The Politico, Rep. King said, “Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country. There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how we can infiltrate.”  Go to our website to see the full press release.

As the Bush Administration beats the war drum toward Iran telling us they hate freedom, they practice state sponsored discrimination, and we must save the innocent Iranians from their dictator I say, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. 

We have systemic racism that wasn’t discussed until Katrina hit and with the Jena 6 is still a controversial issue.  In an interview with USA Today one local resident called the protest a “knee jerk reaction.”  We have justice system that is far form blind – more like politically motivated.  We have a dictator who shuns the democratic system by ‘staying HIS course.’  More than ever, I am dedicated to eliminating our military presence around the world and focused on cleaning our own house.  I demand justice in Jena, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Columbia, Venezuela, Washington, all over the U.S. and the world.  I am reminded of a bumper sticker that speaks closely to my heart:  “Know Justice, Know Peace.  No Justice, No Peace.”

Creating a Digital Movement

“As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.”
Marshall McLuhan

In The Medium is the Massage McLuhan suggests that our world is moving into a digital age.  Written in 1967 he made predictions of a ‘global village’ a place where people can come together, across geographical & cultural borders, to share ideas and experience media simultaneously.  He believed this would bring our world closer together and prelude a more harmonious existence on this earth.  Forty years later we are still embroiled in wars which, at their core, speak to the inability of the global village to overcome greed and hate.

We who believe in peace are the global majority.  And yet, our President is unresponsive and mainstream media  continue to trumpet his call to war.  How, without satellites and TV stations, can we make our voices heard above the gatekeepers?  The lessons from Media still apply:  we are in the age of automation, we must ‘do it ourselves’. 

The genius of the internet is the decentralization of power and information.  In other words, YOU have the power to share the information.  Every time you pass on an action alert to your network, every time you research a subject, every time you publish your opinion - you are unseating the status quo.  You are saying NO to watered down information ‘from the ground’ in Iraq.  You are saying NO to the lies perpetrated by the Bush administration. 

Instead, you are saying YES to the peace movement.  We will never have a satellite (or the money to rent one) so we depend on you to broadcast our message of peace to the global village.  I urge you to take on this challenge.  Go to our website, do your research and remember that every moment is a teaching moment.  Take action, online or otherwise, and tell people what you did encouraging them to join the movement.

You are frustrated by the lack of movement in a progressive direction – I understand.  We long for peace and justice while our world seems to become less and less oriented towards those goals.  There is no alternative than to ‘sound my (our) barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world.’ (Walt Whitman) demanding we be heard.  The Internet is the best way to unite our voices so they cannot ignore us. We have the power share our goals with the world and expand our knowledge of that world - use it.

Debunking RRW

The U.S. and Russia spent decades and billions of dollars building arsenals and fighting proxy wars to become THE hegemonic power of the world during the “Cold War”.   Finding Russia’s old and in many cases missing nuclear material is a top priority for our Representatives but it seems some in the Senate are still unsure what to do with our nuclear weapons.

If you read this blog you’ve heard of the reliable replacement warhead (RRW).  You know that Congress zeroed out funding.  That the Senate still needs to vote and there are some shaky suckers on the Senate who need a reality check.  Bush is touting RRW as a ‘security measure’ (like his friend Regan) saying we cannot have old nuclear weapons sitting around our country.  Bennett Ramberg, who served in the State Dept under George H. W. Bush, disagrees. 

In an article in the Baltimore Sin Bennett deconstructs Bush’s argument while outlining the hazardous consequences of this program.  Here’s a sampling.

• Myth:  stockpiles from the Cold War are aging and hazardous.
  • Both are true, nuclear weapons are hazardous and these particular weapons are aged but still deadly.  In 1993 the Clinton administration put forth the stockpile stewardship program to “ensure the preservation of the core intellectual competencies of the U.S. in nuclear weapons, including weapons design, system integration, manufacturing, security, use control reliability assessment in certification.”  Part of this program includes a lab that virtually replicates tests on the current stockpile and suggests fixes in the event problems emerge.
• Myth:  These weapons are ‘unreliable’
  • “In 2006, government scientists concluded that the stockpile’s plutonium cores will last at least 100 years.”  Those found to be deteriorating were found and replaced.
• Myth:  These RRW is based on weapons from the 1980’s so will not need to be tested.  The U.S. will remain in compliance with the Test Ban Treaty.
  • The RRW is not an exact replica of this older weapon therefore it WILL need to be tested somewhere.  We discovered back in the 1950’s how hazardous nuclear testing is to our planet.  Ask anyone from the Marshall Islands how they feel about nuclear testing and you’ll get a full idea of the human cost.

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) have introduced S.1914, a bill which stops funding the RRW until a new nuclear policy and posture review are completed.  This is the more sensible way to proceed than RRW.   Tell your Senator TODAY!

There Is No Light at the End of This Tunnel Either

From Our Affiliate:
The Rev. Robert Moore
Executive Director
Coalition for Peace Action

 

The recent testimony of General David Patreaus has strong parallels to the deceptions used to justify continued US troop deployments 40 years ago in Vietnam. The mantra then was “There is light at the end of this tunnel.”

 

History showed that there was no possibility of a democratic, pro-US government standing on its own in Vietnam, as is the case currently in Iraq. This is because the Vietnamese people themselves didn’t support the puppet governments in South Vietnam, as the current Iraqi government is also not supported by a huge majority of citizens there.

 

Yet, throughout the tragic history of the Vietnam War, the American people were urged to keep supporting massive US troop deployments. We now know, through the Pentagon Papers and other documents, that this amounted to intentional deception at the highest levels of government, which knew that military escalation was failing.

 

US public opinion turned against the Vietnam War by 1969. As in today’s Congress, there were efforts starting with the bipartisan Hatfield-McGovern bill in 1970 to stop the war and force withdrawal of US troops. Tragically, that effort failed, and more than half of the total 58,000 US soldiers and 2 million Southeast Asians who died in that war were killed subsequently.

 

By June 1974, Congress finally passed a binding cut-off of funding for the war that mandated a complete US withdrawal by August 1975. The last US personnel were actually withdrawn by April. The war advocates said there would be a blood bath and that the other nations in the region would fall to communism in a domino effect. While there was inevitable turmoil after the US withdrew, these apocalyptic predictions didn’t come true.

 

Given that General Patreaus wrote an op-ed six weeks before the 2004 elections saying that the Iraqi military and police were making “good progress” toward standing up on their own, I wonder if the deceptions are intentional or just myopic. It’s hard to say if it’s intentional, or simply the stubborn denial of facts.

 

What is clear to everyone by now is that the American people were neo-conned into the Iraq war in the first place, through deception and manipulation. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no connection between Iraq’s government and the attacks of September 11, 2001, no cakewalk to a stable and democratic post-invasion Iraq.

 

The Bush Administration is now trying to neo-con us into continuing to tolerate and support continuing US troop deployment to another civil war and quagmire. Much of the deception, as before, uses two means: cherry picking and manipulating the facts, and moving the goal posts.

 

An example of the first is the assertion that Iraqi casualties from sectarian violence are declining. That is only the case if large numbers of casualties are not counted, which the Bush Administration does by excluding victims shot in the front of the head instead of the back; and by excluding people killed in car bombings not considered to have sectarian motives. The most reliable independent count, by the Associated Press, shows the number of Iraqi casualties this summer to be the highest since the US invaded over four years ago.

 

In terms of moving the goal posts, Congress and the Bush Administration agreed that the “surge” (which should have truthfully been called the escalation) would be evaluated in mid-September by mutually agreed objective benchmarks. Independent analyses show that almost none of those benchmarks have been met, especially in terms of creating a viable unified national government or Iraqi troops and police replacing US troops to provide basic security.

 

So the Bush Administration has simply changed the goal to “local security,” which it “achieves” by making Faustian alliances with local insurgents against Al Qaida in Iraq. The only thing that is certain about this temporary “success” is that these militias will eventually use the weapons the US is supplying to them against our troops and the Iraqi government forces.

 

The truth is that there is no light at the end of the Iraq tunnel, as there was none at the end of Vietnam. The only moral and sensible steps to take are to withdraw US troops, renounce permanent US military bases in Iraq, and undertake a surge of diplomacy and Iraqi-controlled, internationally supervised rebuilding.