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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

January 14, 2021 By Bob Kinsey

Several “bannerings” will be held in Colorado,   joining with many others around the US and the World celebrating this event.

In Colorado Springs this bannering will be held in front of City Hall 22 January, from 11:30 to 1 PM and will include handouts to passers by.  Be masked and keep social distance at 6 feet please.

In North Boulder, Friday, January 22nd from 12:00pm – 4:00pm at the  Courtyard East of Lucky’s Market at 3960 Broadway #104, Boulder, CO 80304.    We come together to celebrate the Nuclear Ban Treaty taking effect internationally! We will have banners, signs, music, art, and more information on the ban treaty, as well as opportunities to get involved. 

In Denver a group of individuals affiliated with Quakers and the Loretto Community are asking City Council to adopt a resolution/proclamation in support of the Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons at their meeting on Jan. 25. People who live in Denver are urged to contact their council person. On the day of EIF, Friday Jan. 22 at noon we will banner in front of the State Capitol on the 1400 block of Lincoln from noon-1. Anyone is welcome to bring a sign if they wear a mask and practice social distancing. We note that metro Denver hosts thousands of workers at Lockheed Martin, Buckley Air Force base, Raytheon, Northrup-Grummon, and Jacobs Engineering Group (THANK YOU to https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/ !) Colorado also has as many as 49 land-based Minuteman III missiles on alert, planted in the earth just south of the Wyoming border.


The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Naropa are sponsoring an
 online screening of the ICAN documentary “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons,” which explains the history and importance of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. The film screening  6:30 to 8:30  on  January 22 via Zoom will be followed by a presentation on nuclear issues occurring locally, as well as how you can get involved.  Check the RMPJC web site for Zoom details.

“Today, 22 January, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) enters into force as binding, international law for its first 50 states parties. The entry into force of the Treaty is a milestone in the global community’s efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. The TPNW codifies the norms and actions that are needed to create and maintain a world without nuclear weapons. The impact of the Treaty will be built gradually and will depend on how its provisions are accepted and applied by each and every state. At the First Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, which will take place in Austria within a year after entry into force, the states parties will start taking important decisions that will shape the long-term implementation, institutionalisation, and universalisation of the Treaty.
—From Nuclear Ban Monitor (tnpwmonitor.org)

For more information check out www.tnpwmonitor.org,” and MEDIA PACKET: Nuclear Ban Treaty EIF – Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (orepa.org)

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Disarmament Quotes

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

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

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

[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

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

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.

"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

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