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ICAN — Peace Train, Boulder Camera

October 10, 2017 By The Colorado Coalition

By Judith Mohling

On October 6, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Around the globe thousands of nuclear activists, young and old, all skin colors, were jumping and weeping and dancing for joy and amazement. ICAN received the prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

Two of the three Dominican nuns who broke into the compound surrounding MX missile silo N8 east of Fort Collins,Colorado, swung a hammer at the silo and spread their blood on it in the shape of a cross, in 2002, were here in Colorado last week. Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert spoke to a small crowd in Alfalfa’s Community Room and accompanied a group of 47 activists who re-visited missile silo N8 on a blazingly beautiful Saturday afternoon. N8 houses one of 49 MX missiles in Colorado.

The third nun, Jackie Hudson, died while the three of them were serving prison sentences for the break-in. Recently, Ardeth and Carol have been part of the large group of ambassadors and activists from around the world who crafted and agreed upon the language of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations: including 53 ambassadors from Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria, Cuba, Indonesia, New Zealand, and 47 other countries. South Africa and Kazakhstan both of which formerly possessed nuclear weapons and gave them up voluntarily, signed the Treaty. Now, fifty-three ambassadors have gone home to secure agreements from their governments to ratify the treaty and when there are 50 or more signed and ratified, the treaty against nukes will be international law.

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN remarked as she accepted the award, “This has not been an easy process; the treaty has been called ‘divisive’ by those that still ascribe value to nuclear weapons and many of them will try to work against this. But over time, this treaty will stand strong – because it is based on strong foundations. It is morally right, and it is coherent with the framework of international law.”She also said that what we are seeing, today, is international law standing against weapons of mass destruction, prohibiting the use, possession and development of nuclear weapons.”

The biggest prize of all, eventually, will be a nuclear weapon free world.

Filed Under: Perspective

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Disarmament Quotes

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director Manhatten Project

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight EisenhowerUS President 1953-1961

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford"The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee ButlerFormer Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

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