Nuclear disarmament

 
 
On 7 July 2017 122 countries at the UN voted to approve the text of a proposed international treaty entitled ‘Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.’ The treaty is formally open for signature in September, but it only become a binding legal instrument according to its own provisions 90 days after the 50th country deposits with the UN Secretary General its certification that the treaty has been ratified in accordance with their various constitutional processes.
 

Israel’s Sorek nuclear reactor center near the central Israeli town of Yavne.
After protracted international talks, an estimated 129 nations are prepared to sign a global ban on nuclear weapons, the first ever such treaty and the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty in more than 20 years. Unfortunately, it won’t involve any actual disarmament.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, center, speaks to reporters outside the General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Monday, March 27, 2017. (AP/Seth Wenig)
UNITED NATIONS  — U.N. talks aimed at banning nuclear weapons began Monday, but the United States, Russia, China and other nuclear-armed nations are sitting out a discussion they see as impractical.

Many people sent me this transcription of a recent speech by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to the Military Academy of the Russian…
The post FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEI LAVROV: WESTPHALIA, SOFT POWER, AND NEW ... appeared first on Giza Death Star.

[Prefatory Note: The text below is an Open Letter to the next American president urging complete nuclear disarmament as an urgent priority. The letter was prepared under the auspices of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and its current list of signatories are listed below. It is hoped that concerns with nuclear weapons policy will rise to the top of the global policy agenda and will engage people everywhere. It is our view that the elimination of nuclear weaponry is a matter of upholding the human interest of all peoples, as well as promoting the national interest of each country.]

As the illicit trade in nuclear weapons escalates alongside the risk of geopolitical conflict, it’s high time governments decisively prioritised nuclear disarmament – and that means scrapping Trident, the UK’s inordinately expensive nuclear deterrent, which would also facilitate the redistribution of scarce public resources to fund essential services.

By John Loretz | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | May 11, 2015 Can you name the “official” NPT nuclear-weapons states? If you said the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China…you’re wrong. No, this wasn’t a trick question having something to do with North Korea. The fact is the NPT doesn’t […]

By John Loretz | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | March 13, 2015 President François Hollande of France has explained to the world why nuclear weapons must be banned and eliminated. Not intentionally, of course. Not because he made the fallacious argument that nuclear weapons make France more secure in a dangerous […]