NO-NUKES QUOTES Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 (Click on * for 8.5 X 11 PDF to print)
It is now almost
40 years since the invention of nuclear weapons. We have not yet experienced a
global thermonuclear war -- although on more than one occasion we have come tremulously
close. I do not think our luck can hold forever. Men and machines are fallible,
as recent events remind us. Fools and madmen do exist, and sometimes rise to power.
Concentrating always on the near future, we have ignored the long-term consequences
of our actions. We have placed our civilization and our species in jeopardy. Fortunately,
it is not yet too late. We can safeguard the planetary civilization and the human
family if we so choose. There is no more important or more urgent issue.
[A]
new generation, innocent of the divisions of the Cold War, this coming-of-age.
... If its members do not feel the urgency to escape the nuclear danger that some
of its parents felt, neither has it developed the deep attachment to nuclear arms
also often found among their parents, including most of the governing class. ...
The call for abolition should therefore be, among other things, a call from an
older generation to younger one. Of
course, some will say the goal [of abolition] is a utopian dream of human perfection.
We needn't worry. There will be more than enough sins left for everyone to commit
after we have taken nuclear bombs away from ourselves.
The
last major childhood disease remains and it's the worst of them all:
nuclear war.
"Now
we have something that could really extinguish life on our planet. Mankind has
not found itself in a similar situation since the end of the palaeolithic age….
In fact, the threat to mankind's survival has been much greater since 1945 than
it was during the first million years of history." “As long as
the two nuclear superpowers maintain arsenals in the tens of thousands of nuclear
warheads, there is no way they can with any consistency urge that other nations
not be allowed to acquire theses weapons.” "I
have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of
nuclear weapons which threatens this whole region. I
acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity." "More and more
states are realizing the deficit in possessing nuclear weapons and that nuclear
weapons do not promote economic development in most of the undeveloped states.
These countries are ready to back and support any initiative that will bring the
end of nuclear weapons in the entire world. They know that the abolition of nuclear
weapons in Europe, the US and the entire world will only bring help and encouragement
to global economic activities, including globalization. So anti-nuclear activists
should work in this new field to use economic reasons and alliances to defeat
nuclear weapons. This could be done especially at economic summits like the G-8
and WTO meetings where decisions or declarations could be issued to abolish nuclear
weapons. Rather than fighting the WTO like anarchist environmentalists, we can
recreate the WTO and G-8 to begin working toward zero nuclear weapons."
The
world was shaken twice in the last decade: once when the USSR dissolved, and once
when terrorists attacked the US on September 11. In the Gorbachev era, we actually
lost our way to change the world for the better. We lost some wonderful possibilities
to begin a process for deep reductions of the stockpile, and to eliminate nuclear
weapons once and for all. Now one of the main obstacles to achieving a nuclear-free
world is the new US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). What can we do? Leaders are
still sure that peace is possible because their countries have nuclear weapons.
I am sure nuclear threats and nuclear weapons are the last argument of weak, stressed
and irresponsible politicians. People must act very quicky to stop the movement
to nuclear war. But Russian people do not wish to spend money for new weapons
of mass destruction; Russian people wish to build a new peaceful life after years
of the Communists? totalitarian regime and many years of transition-period chaos.
Russia today wishes to build its civil economy, not military industry. But the
US NPR and the US deployment of space-based national missile defense (NMD) will
provoke Russia to build new nuclear armaments. Combined with NATO expansion (to
the Russian border), these US initiatives will break down the whole world order,
and every nation will pay their own political and economic price for that nuclear
apartheid. A
convention on the comprehensive ban of nuclear weapons should be negotiated. Since
biological and chemical weapons have been prohibited, there is no reason why nuclear
weapons, which are more destructive, should not be comprehensively banned and
thoroughly destroyed. All it takes to reach this objective is strong political
will.
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