The limits of military power
SIPRI Fact Sheet: TRENDS IN WORLD MILITARY EXPENDITURE, 2013
Is overwhelming national military power a reliable source of influence in world affairs?
If so, the United States should certainly have plenty of influence today. For decades, it has been the world’s Number 1 military spender. And it continues in this role. According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $640 billion on the military in 2013, thus accounting for 37 percent of world military expenditures. The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively. Thus, last year, the United States spent more than three times as much as China and more than seven times as much as Russia on the military. Read more…
Alan Robock, professor of meteorology at Rutgers University and a science adviser to IPPNW on the climate effects of nuclear war, was interviewed yesterday (May 5) on the The Real News. In a segment called “Reality assert itself,” Prof. Robock told editor Paul Jay that “both [presidents] Reagan and Gorbachev learned about the nuclear winter results from scientists–and I have quotes of both of them saying that helped them decide to change the arms race. And it made people focus on these horrible direct effects of nuclear weapons.
From the interview:
There were two conferences in the last year on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, one in Oslo in March in 2013, and one in Mexico in February 2014. And 130 to 140 countries came, and came to this conference, including a couple of the nuclear nations–India and Pakistan were there. But the P5, they call them, the permanent members of the Security Council, boycotted it. But the rest of the world understands that a war between the nuclear powers threatens them because it would be a global climate effect. The smoke would go around the world, would last for many years, and it would affect everybody. It doesn’t matter where the bombs are dropped. And so they’re pressuring much more the countries that have nuclear weapons. And they claimed that we’re not going to come because this disrupts from the process that we’re going through to get rid of weapons, of course, which doesn’t exist. And so a third meeting’s going to be held in Vienna, Austria, this fall. And I think this pressure from the rest of the world is really building up pressure on the countries to pay attention to this.”
Watch the whole interview on TheRealNews.com.
Heat as from a thousand suns
Hiroshima survivor treated for burn injuries
When a nuclear weapon detonates incredible amounts of energy are released in the form of heat, blast, and ionizing radiation. The fireball that is created in the first minute after a nuclear detonation has temperatures as high as those on the sun, leading to intense thermal radiation that spreads in every direction with the speed of light. Therefore, everything that can be ignited within kilometers from the hypocenter ignites before the blast hits. Read more…
The contrast in mood and sense of accomplishment (not to mention purpose) between the Olso and Nayarit conferences and the NPT PrepCom could not be more obvious. Although the PrepCom is still in its first week and cannot be judged fairly yet, the statements in the general debate, with a few exceptions, have hardly broken any new ground. The Member States have danced more or less politely around the fact that there has been little or no progress in implementing the 2010 Action Plan, and the overall feeling of malaise has been hard to ignore. This does not bode well for the Review Conference itself, since a successful outcome depends upon a positive evaluation of the steps that have been taken to implement the Action Plan.
[I’ve hopped over to the ICAN website momentarily, so the rest of this article is there, along with the latest news about ICAN’s participation at the PrepCom.]
Pacific nation challenges nine nuclear-armed states in lawsuits before the world court
Republic of Marshall Islands’ historic lawsuits charge the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea with breaches of international law
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) today filed unprecedented lawsuits in the International Court of Justice to hold the nine nuclear-armed states accountable for flagrant violations of international law with respect to their nuclear disarmament obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law. Read more…
Japanese physicians demand better post-Fukushima monitoring and public health measures
Physicians Against Nuclear War in Japan has published a statement regarding the Fukushima nuclear disaster that deserves a wider international audience. It protests recent Japanese government pressures for return of displaced people to areas radioactively contaminated from the Fukushima nuclear disaster; continued tolerance of radiation exposures for the general public, which IPPNW has repeatedly condemned as unacceptably high; and transfer of the onus of protection to individuals.
PANW, which was founded in Tokyo in 1987 to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons, expanded its activities to include the health impact of nuclear power plants following the March 2011 nuclear reactor crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. “We protest the recent statements from Japan Nuclear Regulation Authority, Japan Atomic Energy Commission and Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, and protest moves by the government to accelerate the return of evacuees to the contaminated areas without sufficient participation of community members as stakeholders.”
The doctors group goes on to make a series of recommendations for more stringent and effective radiation monitoring, more complete and transparent public access to information, and comprehensive health care for those who continue to live in contaminated areas and for displaced populations.
The continuing threat of nuclear weapons
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Out of sight. Out of mind.
Nine countries, mainly the United States and Russia, possess 17,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago. An attack and counterattack in which fewer than 1% of these nuclear weapons were detonated could cause tens of millions of deaths and could disrupt climate globally, leading to crop failures and widespread famine. A greater conflagration could cause a “nuclear winter” and threaten the future of life on earth.
– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/threat-of-nuclear-weapons-public-health/#sthash.aOgFacBS.dpuf
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Out of sight. Out of mind.
Nine countries, mainly the United States and Russia, possess 17,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago. An attack and counterattack in which fewer than 1% of these nuclear weapons were detonated could cause tens of millions of deaths and could disrupt climate globally, leading to crop failures and widespread famine. A greater conflagration could cause a “nuclear winter” and threaten the future of life on earth.
– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/threat-of-nuclear-weapons-public-health/#sthash.aOgFacBS.dpuf
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Out of sight. Out of mind.
Nine countries, mainly the United States and Russia, possess 17,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago. An attack and counterattack in which fewer than 1% of these nuclear weapons were detonated could cause tens of millions of deaths and could disrupt climate globally, leading to crop failures and widespread famine. A greater conflagration could cause a “nuclear winter” and threaten the future of life on earth.
Dr. Levy is an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Sidel is Distinguished University Professor of Social Medicine Emeritus at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein Medical College, and is a former co-president of IPPNW. Both are past presidents of the American Public Health Association.Â
Read more at the Oxford University Press’s OUPblog
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
Out of sight. Out of mind.
Nine countries, mainly the United States and Russia, possess 17,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago. An attack and counterattack in which fewer than 1% of these nuclear weapons were detonated could cause tens of millions of deaths and could disrupt climate globally, leading to crop failures and widespread famine. A greater conflagration could cause a “nuclear winter” and threaten the future of life on earth.
– See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/threat-of-nuclear-weapons-public-health/#sthash.aOgFacBS.dpuf
Your doctors are worried
Your doctors are worried about your health―in fact, about your very survival.
No, they’re not necessarily your own personal physicians, but, rather, medical doctors around the world, represented by groups like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). As you might recall, that organization, composed of many thousands of medical professionals from all across the globe, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for exposing the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons.
Well, what seems to be the problem today? Read more…
The humanitarian initiative and the NPT
The third and final preparatory committee meeting for the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference will convene at the end of April at the United Nations in New York. Central to this Review will be an assessment of progress on the NPT Action Plan adopted in 2010. Sadly, barring some dramatic development, there won’t be much to assess.
The final document of the 2010 NPT Review Conference expressed “deep concern at the continued risk for humanity represented by the possibility that these weapons could be used and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons.”
The recognition that these consequences are the basis of the disarmament obligations of NPT Member States and, in fact, make the elimination of nuclear weapons an urgent priority, has given rise to a series of joint statements by NPT and UN Member States on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and to two international conferences—one in Oslo in March 2013, and a second in Nayarit, Mexico in February of this year. A third conference will take place in Vienna later this year. Read more…
Humanitarian message is the key to nuclear abolition
Ira Helfand (right) and Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball, who moderated the panel discussion.
[On March 31, IPPNW co-president Ira Helfand participated in a roundtable discussion on the NPT and the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, co-sponsored by the Arms Control Association and IPPNW’s US affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility. The following article is adapted from Dr. Helfand’s remarks. A complete transcript, including presentations by Ambassador Desra Percaya, Mission of Indonesia to the United Nations; Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies; and George Perkovich, Director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is available at the Arms Control Association website.]
By Ira Helfand
Back in the 1980s there was a very, very widespread understanding of what was going to happen if there were a nuclear war. We’ve lost that understanding, by and large. Certainly, in the general population, there is very little understanding about what nuclear weapons can do or even how many there are in the world. Read more…
Bimal Khadka
Bjorn Hilt
Charles K. Johnson
Gunnar Westberg
IPPNW
John Loretz
Lawrence Wittner
Maria Valenti
mollymcgint
Sue Wareham
Tilman Ruff
Tim Wright
Xanthe Hall
IPPNW peace and health blog 