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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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CAll the National Nuclear Security Administration

April 17, 2020 By Bob Kinsey

Across the country, cities, counties, and states are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. in light of the failure of his magical powers to wish it away, even the President has declared a national emergency and has recognized a state of emergency in all 50 states.

NEVERTHELESS, THE BOMB MAKERS ARE PUSHING FORWARD.

in oak ridge, where a number of workers at the UPF construction project have reportedly tested positive and been sent home, the NNSA has not suspended work; more than 800 workers amass there every day to continue building the bomb plant and sharing whatever germs they may have.

but that’s not the worst of it. across the weapons complex, NNSA is pushing forward with its environmental impact statements, requiring comments within thirty-day periods and holding public meetings (albeit “virtual”)—in short, business as usual.

this despite the fact that the chairpersons of 14 House committees wrote to the Administration on April 1 calling for an indefinite extension of all public comment periods and the rescheduling of public hearings and meetings until after the COVID-19 national emergency has expired. on April 8, twenty-four members of the Senate sent a similar letter.

WE HAVE TO CALL THE NNSA OUT AND DEMAND THEY RECOGNIZE THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY AND GRANT RELIEF IMMEDIATELY.
PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TODAY.

below is language we are suggesting. you may use any or all of it. please send your email to the following people (who are responsible for the NEPA program at Savannah River, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge).

<< NEPA-SRS@srs.gov >>
<< Brian.Costner@hq.doe.gov >>
<< Bruce.Diamond@nnsa.doe.gov >>
<< NEPA.comments@npo.doe.gov >>
<< lanlsweissa@nnsa.doe.gov >>

THANK YOU. We want to create a wave of comments, so every email helps!

peace,
ralph hutchison
Dear Ms. Nelson, Ms. Slack, Mr. Diamond, and Mr. Costner, et al,
Leaders in both houses of Congress have called for all public comment periods to be extended indefinitely during the national COVID-19 emergency, and for public hearings to be scheduled after the national emergency is lifted.
I agree with the twenty-four Senators who wrote:
“the American public is not only legally entitled to a meaningful opportunity to participate in these important proceedings; their participation is crucial to ensuring that agencies’ work is carried out effectively. The public is an invaluable source of expertise for agency decision-makers, and their ability to weigh in on agency decisions advances the good government goals of accountability. Yet, such meaningful participation is an impossibility for tens of millions of Americans during this pandemic emergency period. We cannot reasonably expect the public to redirect attention from protecting themselves and families to comment on federal agency rules and proceedings that while important, are not related to the crisis at hand or its response.”
In light of the COVID-19 national emergency, we demand that the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration immediate institute and indefinite extension of all public comment periods and the rescheduling of all public hearings and meetings until such time as the national emergency is lifted and the public is able to devote its attention to these issues. Please note that “virtual” public hearings and meetings are not acceptable to us; in these COVID-19 times, they inevitable exlude low-income and unemployed people who no longer have access to public internet or can not afford cell phone cards.
The issues dealt with in the current NEPA analyses at Los Alamos, Savannah River and Oak Ridge are of great importance not only to the residents living near those facilities but to the nation as a whole. In this time of national emergency, though, people are necessarily more concerned with basic issues of health and safety—paying bills, putting food on the table, the health and safety of family members and neighbors. We are putting on masks to go to the grocery store and worrying when we come home about whether we have been infected. We are making choices about which bills to pay and which to defer. We have no idea when we will be able to return to work, draw our next paycheck, or attend religious services. Some of us have been required to say our last good-byes to loved ones via phone or Face Time or not at all. We have seen our retirement funds decimated. This is what a national emergency looks and feels like where we live.
It is imperative that DOE and NNSA recognize this and hit the pause button on these elective NEPA processes until such time as we are able to resume a normal life without the looming uncertainty of this national emergency.

Thank you for your consideration of our request.
Sincerely,

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Disarmament Quotes

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

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

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

"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 Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

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 Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

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

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

“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 McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

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