Comments on: A Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

By: Gail Watt

Gail Watt — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:10:10 +0000

Think Gunnar is quite right in his assesment of the US (and even many western european countries) problem of the past 2-3 (or maybe more) decades.

What many of us are now hoping for is success with Web 2.0 + to act as real check and balance of the comercial and state influenced media. The ease of getting a vast variety of “ordinary citizen” comments, videos etc via our among other tools, our blog world should aid us greatly in finding the truth and establishing our own positions on virtually all issues of concern.

By: Gunnar Westberg

Gunnar Westberg — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:31:49 +0000

Maybe the problem is less that the public opinion in the US is not informed, more that it is wrongly informed. How come the US public believes what the gov’t says, what the news channels broadcast, when all the times since the Vietnam war we know that they are lying? Many Americans believed there were nuclear weapons in Iraq, altough that was so clearly a lie. Does noone remember the Tonkin Gulf incident? All the lies from the gov’t to justify interventions in Latin America?

This is a problem in democracies. We believe the “Free Press” is by nature and by definition reliable, credible, independent, while in many cases the journalists are as “Embedded” in the gov’t as they are in the US Forces in Iraq.

It is an interesting paradox that the Public Media in e.g. Canada and Britain are more independent of the gov’t , more critical, better informed, than the privately owned media in the US.

By: Lawrence Wittner

Lawrence Wittner — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:23:09 +0000

I agree with the writers that Americans need to be educated to the fact that their nation is not always “in the right” and that consumerism interferes with that education, as well as with clear thinking. Nevertheless, it is striking that, despite these impediments, so many Americans have turned against nuclear weapons and have joined organizations promoting nuclear disarmament. Indeed, polls have shown repeatedly that overwhelming majorities of Americans favor the creation of a nuclear-free world. This might well account for the fact that John McCain, although a longtime hawk and opponent of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, has suddenly (now that he is campaigning for President) started to call for cuts in nuclear arsenals and reconsideration of that treaty.

By: ippnweupdate

ippnweupdate — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:07:31 +0000

Good Comment Robert!

Harks back to the early work of Robert Lifton, Jerome Frank and J. Bryan Hehir. Ever read “The Long Darkness”?

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:45:49 +0000

How can any education campaign (especially one about nuclear abolition) compete with the trappings of consumerism in today’s world? Nobody is scared about nuclear annihilation. Nobody cares about global health. How can we expect them to look our way for even a second when their vision is endlessly blurred by useless consumer messages.

By: Robert Shorin

Robert Shorin — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:25:52 +0000

Unfortunately, the American people think of themselves and their (our) country as unassailable, and always “in the right.” To preserve and perpetuate that illusion, the power of atomic weaponry and military might are necessary ingredients upon which we have come to depend. In that psychological environment, negotiation and diplomacy are considered signs of weakness, to be avoided at all cost. To put down our arms is considered suicidal. It is the accepted philosophical appeal of the Bush era, our legacy from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To counteract this falsehood, the public must be educated — about the atrocities of war, about the deceptions foisted upon us by the military-industrial complex — so that our voices can be heard in the formulation of government policies that dare to wage peace instead of war.