The following op-ed was published in The Lancet on June 12, 2020.
by James E. Muller and David G. Nathan
The COVID-19 pandemic teaches lessons we must embrace to overcome two additional existential threats: nuclear war and global warming. Health professionals need to send a message to those whose lives we have vowed to protect: all three threats result from forces of nature made dangerous by triumphs of human intelligence, and all three can be solved by human intelligence.
By Dr. Arun Mitra
The world is seized with tackling COVID-19, which is being perceived as biggest health threat to the humanity today. True, this virus is more lethal than other Corona viruses. There is an all out effort by the scientists around the world to develop vaccines to boost immunity in the body to enable it to fight back the infection. Research is going on to develop antiviral drugs. The world is hoping that soon we shall develop herd immunity so that the impact of COVID-19 gets reduced. Our scientists have made great achievements in getting rid of plague, which was a highly deadly disease at one time. Likewise an equally dangerous smallpox has been eliminated through vaccination long time back. We have already achieved substantial success in polio eradication.
Scientists and medical professionals have warned from time to time about various diseases and cautioned about the imminent health emergencies. They have also guided about the steps to be taken to prevent such happenings. IPPNW has warned the global community about a highly grave threat to humanity for which we have no remedy. This is from the nuclear weapons. The use of nuclear weapons would be the final epidemic. Prevention is the only way out as we do not have any remedy to offer in such an eventuality. Read more…
by Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulou
Memorial to Grigoris Lambrakis in Greece.
On 27 May every year, the Greek Affiliate of IPPNW and the Peace movement in Greece commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis in Thessaloniki in 1963.
The life and death of Lambrakis inspired the author Vassilis Vassilikos to write the political novel “Z.” The title stands for the first letter of the Greek word “Zi” which means “[He] Lives!”In 1969, the Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras made the film Z, which found international acclaim. “Z” appeared in graffiti all over Athens and became an international symbol for peace and democracy. Unfortunately, the younger generation of peace activists today know little of the life and death of Lambrakis which could serve as an example to us all. Read more…
COVID-19 and nuclear weapons
This coronavirus can teach us a lot if we are willing to learn.
It shows where the real threats to our security lie, for which massive military arsenals and the most powerful WMD are not only useless, but get in the way.
It shows our interconnected vulnerabilities and capacities, that globalized problems respect no borders, are shared and demand cooperative solutions.
Read the full article at Croakey Health Media.
By Dr. Lars Pohlmeier
View of destroyed buildings on a city street in Germany at the end of World War II; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This year we commemorate 75 years since the end of World War II. I was born 24 years after the end of it, in the city of Bremen in Germany. When I was young I thought: “The war? What a long time ago.” Now, at the age of 51, I realize how little time had passed. Of course I have no personal memories or experiences of wartime, but my life was influenced by those who had suffered. It is important to keep the memories and the debate alive, so that history will not repeat itself. This is why I wrote this text.
“Don’t make new socks for me.” This sentence comes from a letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother in the winter of 1944 to 1945. My grandfather was a Wehrmacht soldier at the eastern front “defending” Nazi Germany somewhere near what today is part of Poland. Read more…
An online international conference sponsored by the Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung NYC on April 25 provided a unique opportunity for the world’s nuclear disarmament campaigns, allied movements and organizations, and diplomats committed to banning and eliminating nuclear weapons to amplify nuclear abolition demands and to show how the nuclear dangers interconnect with the threats posed by climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the injustices of our world.Will the Coronavirus pandemic help curb war and militarism?
Decades ago, when I began teaching international history, I used to ask students if they thought it was possible for nations to end their fighting of wars against one another. Their responses varied. But the more pessimistic conclusions were sometimes tempered by the contention that, if the world’s nations faced a common foe, such as an invasion from another planet, this would finally pull them together.
I was reminded of this on March 23, when the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, called for “an immediate global ceasefire.” The time had come, he said, to “end the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world.” A UN summary noted that the Secretary-General had “urged warring parties across the world to lay down their weapons in support of the bigger battle against COVID-19: the common enemy that is now threatening all of humankind.” Read more…
The coronavirus pandemic, like other global catastrophes, reveals the limitations of nationalism
We live with a profound paradox. Our lives are powerfully affected by worldwide economic, communications, transportation, food supply, and entertainment systems. Yet we continue an outdated faith in the nation-state, with all the divisiveness, competition, and helplessness that faith produces when dealing with planetary problems. Read more…
We can’t afford another global health crisis
The year is 2025. The entire world is in disarray. In some parts of the world, medical facilities are overwhelmed; doctors and nurses are exhausted, and the rest of the world is struggling to help. The economy is crashing. No one knows how long it will last because no one has lived through something like this before. It happened in a couple of countries but it didn’t take long before the effects spread to every country on earth.
No, we’re not talking about another pandemic. We’re describing the aftermath of a very limited nuclear war. A full scale nuclear war would kill hundreds of millions the first day and plunge the world into a human-made nuclear ice age within a week, ending the world as we know it. Read more…
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