We’re still at 100 seconds to midnight – as close to ‘civilisation-ending apocalypse’ as we’ve ever been. That’s the view of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which, on 20 January, set its Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight for the third year running.
The board concluded that a positive change in US leadership was not enough ‘to reverse negative international security trends that had been long in developing and continued across the threat…
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has forced the great powers to hand over a present in time for its first birthday (it ‘entered into force’ on 22 January 2021).
The crappy birthday present was a joint statement of five declared nuclear-weapon states on 3 January.
Britain, China, France, Russia and the US used language first adopted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan in November 1985: ‘We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be…
The number of financial institutions refusing to invest in the nuclear weapons industry has increased by a third over the last year.
That’s the finding of the 2022 ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb’ report, Rejecting Risk.
One year on from the effective date of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), there are now 101 financial institutions restricting investments in companies involved in the manufacture, development, deployment, stockpiling, testing or use of…
On 10 December, the Nikos Nikiforidis (Non Nuclear) Peace Award for 2020 was given to Turkish peace activist Bülent Tanık, formerly mayor of the Çankaya district of Ankara and president of the Association for Peace and Communication in Aegean (APCA). The ceremony at Athens City Hall had been delayed because of the pandemic. The award, given by PADOP (the Greek Observatory of International Organisations and Globalisation), was made to honour Bülent Tanık’s ‘special efforts in the defence of…
With this book, Ray Acheson guides us through the collaborative processes that brought about the 2016 UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the first legally-binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons. Acheson is director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament programme of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Drawing on their own observations and feminist analysis, Acheson recounts how the parties…
This year marks the 40th birthday of CND Cymru. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was founded in 1957 and the Welsh Council for Nuclear Disarmament was established in 1958. However, the need for an autonomous national Welsh branch of CND was brought on by the intensification of the Cold War at the end of the 1970s.
That’s when the Soviet Union began deploying intermediate-range SS-20 nuclear missiles and NATO announced its decision to locate cruise and Pershing II land-based…
In October, a new Labour government committed Norway to attending the first meeting of the signatories (‘states parties’) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), 22 – 24 March in Vienna.
Norway, not a signatory, will be attending as an observer, the first NATO country to do so.
On 22 January, one year after the 2017 TPNW came ‘into force’, CND will be launching a campaign to press the UK government to also attend the Vienna meeting as an observer.
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The Peace & Justice (Scotland) ‘Peace Cranes’ project will come to a climax in April – May with an exhibition and a series of events in Edinburgh including a screening of a documentary about Setsuko Thurlow: The Vow from Hiroshima.
The exhibition will feature photography and film by art activists including Dawn Cole, Su Grierson, Madelon Hooykaas, Keiko Sato, Pam Skelton, Edward Thompson, Mare Trall and Miranda Whall.Their work will explore the humanitarian and…
‘Greenham 40th: Feminist Peace – opposing violence, militarism and war’ was one of the many events organised by Greenham Women Everywhere this autumn to mark the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in 1981. These events included an online series of ‘Weaving the Web/inar’ meetings organised by Greenham campaigners.
The ‘feminist peace’ webinar included local and international speakers involved in Women in Black (WiB) in conversation about the…
Why exactly was there a Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago?
When the US signed an agreement in 1959 to put Jupiter nuclear missiles into a non-nuclear weapon state neighbouring the Soviet Union, there wasn’t a ‘Turkish Missile Crisis’.
From their Turkish base, the Jupiters could easily reach Moscow – and deliver warheads 100 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Despite this provocation, the USSR didn’t start a military confrontation with US forces…
Nine years ago, we wrote about a Russian naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov who saved the world.
We’ve learned since then that the story of Arkhipov’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis was a little more complicated than we thought. Even so, it is clear that Arkhipov played a key role in preventing a confrontation at sea turning into global nuclear war.
On 27 October 1962, 12 US warships surrounded a submerged Soviet submarine, the B-59, a began dropping hand grenades…
On 16 September, two Faslane Peace Campers had the case against them thrown out of Dunbarton justice of the peace court. One of them had spent nearly six weeks in prison on remand, waiting for the trial.
Willemien Hoogendoorn and Jon had been arrested for ‘breach of the peace’ on Hiroshima Day, 6 August, after blockading the North Gate of Faslane nuclear submarine base from 6.30am till around 12 noon.
According to the Helensburgh Advertiser, ‘tailbacks were reported in…
Climate change could flood Faslane naval base, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear missile submarine force. That’s one conclusion of Climate Impact – UK Nuclear Military, a report released in September by the independent research institute, the Nuclear Consulting Group (NCG).
Climate Impact says that; ‘Present UK coastal military nuclear infrastructure is profoundly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise, storm intensity and storm surge – with inland nuclear…
The Button is terrifying – and very mainstream, reinforcing lots of US propaganda. However, it should be just the ticket for shaking the confidence of even the most deterrence-minded relative.
One of the authors, William Perry, was undersecretary of defence under US president Jimmy Carter.
Perry tells the story of how he was called at 3am on 3 June 1980 and told the US air defence system (NORAD) had detected 2,200 Soviet missiles on their way to the US.
He was…
Maddie is on a street stall in her town centre on Hiroshima Day, 6 August, wearing a placard and handing out leaflets about the atomic bombings. Every so often, someone stops to argue. Sometimes Maddie can’t get a word in edgeways ...
Passerby: You should be ashamed of yourself.
Maddie: Excuse me?
Passerby: My granddad would have died if we’d listened to people like you.
Maddie: Was he a …
