Church Activities to Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery

(Originally published in April, 2019, as "News From St. John's" in the Madeline Island Gazette.)

Delegates from the 218 congregations of the Wisconsin Conference of the
 United Church of Christ (UCC) met in Wisconsin Dells on April 5-6, 2019.

Rev. Rachel Bauman and Joe Scarry recently attended the 57th Annual Meeting of the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ. On April 6, 2019, the Conference voted overwhelmingly in favor of "A Resolution of Witness: Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery."

The Doctrine of Discovery and its impact on Native Americans has been a central theme of this winter’s Soup Suppers at St. John’s. Many Christian denominations and faith organizations across the country have also been examining the Doctrine of Discovery and exploring the injustices and negative impact it continues to have on Native American lives.

What is the Doctrine of Discovery?

Pope Nicolas V issued several Papal Bulldums (Bulls) in the 1400’s authorizing and justifying the destruction, killing, and appropriation of lands of Native Americans. These Bulls served as the theological foundation for what became the tragic genocide of American Indians and were regarded as legal rationalization for invading America and debasing American Indians.

From the Resolution of Witness:

"In June of 2013, the 29th General Synod, supported and passed the resolution to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery. This Doctrine authorized the genocide of Native Peoples and the theft of Native Lands. The Indigenous Peoples were told that God has declared that the Pope rules all people, regardless of their law, sect or belief. This includes Christians, Moors, Jews, Gentiles, or any other sect. The Native Americans were to come forward of their own free will to convert to Catholicism or ... “with the help of God we shall use force against you, declaring war upon you from all sides and with all possible means, and we shall bind you to the yoke of the Church and Their Highnesses; we shall enslave your persons, wives, and sons, sell you or dispose of you as the King sees fit; we shall seize your possessions and harm you as much as we can as disobedient and resisting vassals."

The principle provisions of the resolution are that Wisconsin Conference of the UCC "upholds and affirms the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery" and "declares and confesses that the doctrine has been and continues to be a shameful part of the United States and our Church's history."

What happened at the Wisconsin Conference Annual Meeting?

First, it was reported that 91 out of 218 congregations in the Wisconsin Conference had, over the previous 12 months, engaged in exploration and discussion of the Doctrine of Discovery. This surpassed the required 30% threshold that had been established to bring the resolution before the Annual Meeting. [View UCC Wisconsin Conference Doctrine of Discovery study resources.]

Second, we watched a video from the previous annual meeting, in which a member of the sole Native American congregation in the Wisconsin Conference, Larry Littlegeorge of Hocak UCC, introduced the resolution.

Third, there was general discussion on the Resolution. Numerous people spoke out strongly in favor of the Resolution. There were several notable threads of concern voiced:

* that passing the Resolution might require the Wisconsin Conference to "give back" property -- e.g. congregational real estate and/or church camps

*that the Conference should only pass the Resolution if it takes seriously the significant work, over a long period of time, that will be required to honor it

Fourth, general discussion was followed by a vote overwhelmingly in favor of the Resolution.

What Comes Next?

The Resolution of Witness calls for the Wisconsin Conference to:

* "join with ecumenical partners to explore ways to compensate American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians for the lands and resources that were stolen and are still being stolen and which are now the United States of America"

* seek educational materials from UCC entities (Justice and Witness Ministries (JWM) and Council of American Indian Ministry (CAIM))

* encourage member congregation to use such materials and "to pursue actions that may arise from their studies"

* call upon the United States government to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.

What is St. John’s Doing?

St. John's is working to get connected with others in the Conference who will be carrying forward the work mandated in the resolution.

There will be a two-day immersion experience with the Ho-Chunk congregation (Hocak UCC) on June 7 and 8, 2019.

St. John’s continues conversations about ways to increase awareness about the ways the Doctrine of Discovery negatively impacts all indigenous people and encourage local, state and federal governments to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.

If you want more information and want to become involved in taking action, contact St. John's UCC on Madeline Island.

(Supplemental to the article above, the following information was published in May, 2019, as "Understanding History" in the newsletter of St. John's UCC on Madeline Island, The Lighthouse.)

The Resolution of Witness states that “the 29th General Synod, supported and passed the resolution to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.  This Doctrine authorized the genocide of Native Peoples and the theft of Native Lands. The Indigenous Peoples were told that God has declared that the Pope rules all people, regardless of their law, sect or belief. This includes Christians, Moors, Jews, Gentiles, or any other sect. The Native Americans were to come forward of their own free will to convert to Catholicism or ... with the help of God we shall use force against you, declaring war upon you from all sides and with all possible means, and we shall bind you to the yoke of the Church and Their Highnesses; we shall enslave your persons, wives, and sons, sell you or dispose of you as the King sees fit; we shall seize your possessions and harm you as much as we can as disobedient and resisting vassals."

The principle provisions of the resolution are that Wisconsin Conference of the UCC "upholds and affirms the repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery" and "declares and confesses that the doctrine has been and continues to be a shameful part of the United States and our Church's history."

If you would like to learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery, we warmly welcome you to join us  on the last three Tuesday mornings in June (June 11, 18, 25, 2019). Each session will include a short video followed by conversation about the Doctrine, its continuing impact for Native Americans and African Americans, and how we, at St. John's, might respond to what we are learning. All are welcome!

Resource list for  Doctrine of Discovery learning sessions held at St. John's UCC on Madeline Island.

Day by day, visitors to the Wisconsin Conference booth added the names
of their congregations to the poster sharing the news of the resolution
repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

(Supplemental to the article above, the following information was published in July, 2019, as "An Update from Milwaukee" in the newsletter of St. John's UCC on Madeline Island, The Lighthouse.)

The UCC General Synod 2019 was a great experience, and particularly fulfilling for me because of progress made on projects to which I am deeply committed.

I had the opportunity to work together with Larry Littlegeorge (Hocak UCC, Black River Falls) on follow-up to the resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery passed recently by the Wisconsin Conference.

Larry and his colleagues have plans to launch an entity to work on legal issues that stem from the Doctrine of Discovery, working in covenant with a range of UCC bodies.

A fascinating profile of Larry Littlegeorge and his work on the Doctrine of Discovery was published during the synod.

Full Archive of Video Presentations at 2017 Harvard Conference: "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons"

Below are links to resources from the November 4, 2017, conference at Harvard, "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?"

Six-minute summary video of "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?"

Full text of "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?" presentations on Public Books website.

Event summary: Nuclear weapons strategy in the United States is designed around “presidential first use,” an arrangement that enables one man, the president, to kill and maim many millions of people in a single afternoon. What legal or philosophical principle differentiates the moral harm or moral wrong that would be attributed to a terrorist, non-state actor or hacker who delivered a nuclear weapon from a presidential launch of a nuclear weapon? The conference will bring together international and constitutional scholars and statesmen to examine the nature of presidential first use in the United States, as well as parallel arrangements in the other eight nuclear states.


Videos of full proceedings

(Links to video of full panels and individual presentations.)

Elaine Scarry, “Introduction: Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons”

Panel One: Presidential First Use: An Overview

Chair: Jonathan King
Bruce Blair, “The Nuclear Doomsday Machines”
William Perry, “Can the President’s Cabinet Act as a Constraint on Presidential First Use?
Sissela Bok, “The Use and Misuse of the Language of Self-Defense”
Audience questions and comments

Panel Two: Presidential First Use vs. the U.S. Constitution

Chair: Richard Fallon
Bruce Ackerman, “Presidential Lawlessness: The Case for Fundamental Reform”
Rosa Brooks, “Nuclear Weapons and the Deep State: Can Bureaucracy Constrain Nuclear Weapons?”
John Burroughs, “International Law and First Use of Nuclear Weapons”
Audience comments and questions

Senator Ed Markey: Comments 

Panel Three: Presidential First Use vs. Congress and the Citizenry

Chair: Elaine Scarry
Congressman Jim McGovern, “Presidential First Use vs. Congress”
Kennette Benedict, “Congress and the Citizenry”
Hugh Gusterson, “Democracy, Hypocrisy, First Use”
Audience comments and questions

Panel Four: Parallel Executive Arrangements in the Other Nuclear States

Chair: Joseph Gerson
Zia Mian, “Nuclear Weapons Use in South Asia”
William Perry, “Nuclear North Korea: 1999 and 2017”
Bruce Blair, “The Protocol for Nuclear First Use by the United States, Russia, and China”
Audience comments and questions

Speaker profiles:

Bruce Ackerman, named one of the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy in 2010, is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale and author of We the People.

Kennette Benedict is former executive director of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, senior advisor to Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and lecturer at University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

Bruce Blair is a former missile launch officer, the co-founder of Global Zero, and a professor at Princeton.

Sissela Bok is senior visiting fellow at Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and author of A Strategy for Peace (1989) and Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life (1978).

Rosa Brooks is Georgetown University Law Center professor and author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything.

John Burroughs is executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and director of the UN office of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. He is the author of the Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice (1998).

Richard Fallon is Rhodes Scholar and Story Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of The Federal Courts and the Federal System, as well as The Dynamic Constitution.

Joseph Gerson is disarmament coordinator of American Friends Service Committee, director of Peace and Economic Security Program, author of Empire and the Bomb, and founder of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security.

Hugh Gusterson is professor of international affairs and anthropologist at George Washington University, president of American Ethnological Society, and author of works on executive weapons, Nuclear Rites and Drone: Remote Control Warfare.

Jonathan King is emeritus professor of molecular biology at MIT, past president of the national Biophysical Society, chair of the Nuclear Disarmament Working Group at Mass Peace Action, and co-chair of this conference on Presidential First Use.

Ed Markey has served in Congress for four decades, first as US Representative of Massachusetts 7th District (1976-2013), then as Senator from Massachusetts (2013-present). Throughout that time, he has been a leading voice on the nuclear peril and is currently co-author of the Markey-Lieu bill (S200, HR669), the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act.”

Jim McGovern is US Representative of Massachusetts 2nd District, first co-sponsor of the Markey-Lieu bill restricting presidential launch of a nuclear weapon, and a leading advocate in Congress for peace.

Zia Mian is physicist and co-director of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, co-chair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, and co-author of Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation.

William Perry, senior fellow at Stanford University, is Former US Secretary of Defense, author of My Journey at the Nuclear Brink (2015), and co-founder of the Nuclear Security Project.

Elaine Scarry is Cabot Professor of Aesthetics at Harvard and the author of Thermonuclear Monarchy. She is co-organizer of the “Presidential First Use” conference

Jonathan King
Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This event was cosponsored by Harvard Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard’s Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities, Mass Peace Action, Mass Peace Action Education Fund, American Friends Service Committee, Council for A Livable World, Future of Life Institute, World beyond War, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Boston Review.

The Multimedia Church: Movie Night

Poster for screening of The Interrupters
at St. Luke's Logan Square, Chicago.

A friend brought up the idea the other night of having movie night at church.

It reminded me that we did quite a few screenings at the church I attended in Chicago, St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Logan Square. It occurs to me that the list of St. Luke's film screenings is not yet assembled in a single place, so here it is:

From Art to Action: The St. Luke’s Social Justice Film Series Continues [The Interrupters]

Screening: The House I Live In
(also: "A Gigantic Prison Enterprise" … As Seen By a Chaplain in Prison and Family Ministry)

Community Dinner and Screening of A Place at the Table

Bonhoeffer Movie Screening

Screening of The Response on Sunday, December 11th after worship

Call Me Kuchu Screening and Discussion

(We also screened Gasland, Love Free or Die, Encounter Point, and 9500 Liberty.)

The recent conversation reminded me that there were a few things we learned from our "Social Justice Film Series" at St. Luke's:

* Purpose - It's important to know what you are trying to do. We thought of ourselves as trying to encourage conversation on issues of concern to people in the congregation, and in the larger community.

* Connection to congregational activities - Often we were able to make a direct connection to one or more of the missions or activities of the congregation.

* Spread the word! - As the links above suggest, we did a number of things to tell people about each screening -- before and after each event. 

* Guest panelists - We were fortunate to be able to find one or two (or sometimes more!) knowledgeable guests to help with discussion following each film. Chicago has a wealth of community organizers and social justice activists.

* Discussion time - We learned that we needed to plan in order for there to be adequate time for discussion. Often we used Sunday afternoons for the film screenings/discussions (because after an evening film screening many people don't have the energy for discussion), and we tried to select films that were not too long.

* Steering - We had quite a robust social justice committee, and the process of programming the "Social Justice Film Series" was itself quite rewarding to the participants.

* Food - Last but not least: we always had a more lively participation and discussion if we provided ample refreshments.

Of course, this is not to say that we had all the answers. But we did start to understand some of the questions!

Now . . . I'm curious to learn about what other churches are doing with their movie nights!


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FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: Kurosawa's "I Live in Fear" (Nuclear Danger: Three Ways of Talking About the Unmentionable)

Unable to get nuclear weapons out of his mind: unreasonable?
(from I Live in Fear by Akira Kurosawa)

How do we talk about something that has been branded "impossible to talk about"?

After profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I've begun to think this is the fundamental problem of nuclear danger. Akira Kurosawa tackled the problem in his film, I Live in Fear (1955).


Courtroom drama

People love crime shows, police procedurals, and courtroom dramas. Wouldn't it be great if we could put nuclear weapons on trial?

Kurosawa does the next best thing in I Live in Fear: he sets up a court case pitting a family against a father, Nakajima, who is so terrified of the possibility of another nuclear blast that he is acting in ways they fear will tear the family apart. They bring a case in family court to have him declared incompetent so they can get control of the family finances.

The court is thus required to answer the question: Is the man's fear of nuclear weapons rational or irrational?

Nested within the court proceedings -- i.e. the activities of the three people acting as family court mediators and the family members who are parties to the suit -- we see several (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to talk about nuclear danger, the failure of diverse forms of discourse.

The first form of discourse to crumble before nuclear danger is family deliberation. After decades of looking to the ever-practical father -- factory owner, business man, always planning, always weighing the risks, literally wearing belt and suspenders -- the family members become unable to understand what he is thinking. They singly and collectively just can't wrap their heads around his concern about the risk stemming from nuclear weapons, fallout, and radiation.

Family council in I Live in Fear.

And so the matter goes to court. As the court mediators carry out their careful, logical deliberations, it's clear they all consider Nakajima's concerns valid . . . up to a point. But ultimately they conclude "he's grappling with a problem far too big for any individual," and rule against him.

One of the mediators, the dentist, remains troubled, and goes in search of facts. (He is, after all, a scientist.) He reads the book, Ashes of Death, about nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout, and is so stunned by what he learns that he tells his son, "If the birds and beasts could read it, they'd all flee Japan." And yet . . . he goes along with the decision to declare Nakajima incompetent.

Conflict escalates and Najakima collapses. Near the end of the film, a doctor in a psychiatric hospital reviews the records of the case and the condition of the patient and muses, "I feel anxious. Is he crazy? Or are we, who can remain unperturbed in an insane world, the crazy ones?" Significantly, it is Nakajima who ends up locked in a cell.


Religion ("Hell")

Kurosawa offers an alternate tool for communication in I Live in Fear. At many junctures he reminds us that we have in "hell" a ready metaphor for what nuclear weapons threaten.

As you watch I Live in Fear, you can practically feel the heat as everyone in the film wipes the perspiration induced by the summer weather from their brows, and Nakajima frenetically rattles his fan. Nakajima's complexion is oddly dark, as if his skin has ashes rubbed into it. The family business is, it turns out, a foundry -- a scorching site of molten metal and noxious fumes -- and one that, in fact, finally goes up in flames near the end of the film. In a confrontation with the dentist in the street, Nakajima says, "I'm out of my mind with fear. I keep thinking about the H-bomb, but there's nothing I can do. It's a living hell." Nakajima describes the man who offers to provide land in Brazil as a safe haven for the family as "a Buddha come to save us from hell." In the film's penultimate scene, a now maniacal Nakajima cringes before a blazing summer sun and warns, "The Earth is burning!"

"The Earth is burning!"
(from I Live in Fear)

Suggestions of fire and heat aside, I wonder if the real hell Kurosawa wants us to remember from  I Live in Fear is Nakajima's inability to communicate with his family about nuclear danger. His frustration is palpable as he calls a family meeting and throws himself on the floor, begging that they join him in leaving Japan.

The film ends with the dentist descending a ramp towards indistinct lower levels of the psychiatric hospital . . . while Nakajima's mistress walks up the opposite ramp, cradling their infant child in her arms, toward the light-filled upper stories.

It is perhaps a sign of the authenticity of this film that it doesn't suggest the solution is easy. As reported by Donald Richie,

Kurosawa himself finds confusion in the film. "When we made it, the entire staff sensed our confusion. No one said very much and everyone worked hard and it was very hard work indeed." He kept remembering, he says, [collaborator Fumio Hayasaka's] words: "The world has come to such a state that we don't really know what is in store for us tomorrow. I wouldn't even know how to go on living -- I'm that uncertain. Uncertainties, nothing but uncertainties. Every day there are fewer and fewer places that are safe. Soon there will be no place at all." (Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, p. 112)

Which brings us to Fumio Hayasaka . . . .


Friend-to-friend

The part of the story of I Live in Fear that I find most interesting is the way it came to be made, and the interaction of the actual people involved.

The idea for the film came out of conversation between Kurosawa and his long-time collaborator, the composer Fumio Hayasaka. Kurosawa describes a visit to Hayasaka:

[Hayasaka] was quite ill . . . and just before we had had word of the Bikini [H-bomb] experiments. When he said to me that a dying person could not work, I thought he meant himself. But he didn't, it turned out. He meant everyone. All of us. The next time I went to see him, he suggested we do a film on just this subject. He was quite taken with the idea and that is how the film began. (Richie, p. 109)

In other words, I Live in Fear was the result of two close friends who asked the question, "How can we create something that really matters, considering the danger nuclear weapons pose to the world?"

Hayasaka and Kurosawa

The film's lead is the frequent star of Kurosawa films, Toshiro Mifune. When I see him in this film playing against type -- i.e. not playing a strutting samurai as in Yojimbo or Seven Samurai, but a stooped and scared old man -- I imagine him putting everything he has into the mission set forth by Hayasaka, and taken up by Kurosawa.

Similarly, every time I see the film's dentist character, played by Takashi Shimura, I can't help thinking of the role played by Shimura in Ikiru [To Live] -- an ordinary bureaucrat who learns he will soon die and so determines to do one small thing to make a difference.

And so, one by one, a wider and wider circle of friends and colleagues took up the problem. After production, another cast member said: "Well we worked hard, didn't we? But from now on living our parts will be the more difficult." (as reported by Kurosawa Richie, p. 112)

And so here, as in my previous post, I propose that "We need powerful stories . . . and conversations!"

Which way?
(from I Live in Fear)

See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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"Madam Secretary" and the Power of TV to Illuminate Nuclear Danger

I had chatted with almost everyone after the church service on Sunday when friends came up to me and said, "We thought of you when we watched the latest episode of Madam Secretary the other night. It's all about the US president ordering a nuclear strike!"

I'm not a regular watcher of Madam Secretary, but, by coincidence, the show had come up at dinner at the home of other friends a few days earlier. Now . . . it had my complete attention . . . .

Madam Secretary: What's your decision, Mr. President?

Sunday evening we sat watching Season 4, Episode 22, of Madam Secretary, "Night Watch": "Elizabeth and cabinet members brace for the fallout at home and abroad as President Dalton prepares for a retaliatory nuclear attack on a country that has reportedly just launched missiles bound for the U.S."

I was stunned to see the many ways in which this episode precisely conveyed the very real predicament we are in with the thousands of real nuclear weapons poised for quick use:

* the rush by the president to make a decision - a matter of seconds

* the role of dumb luck in averting disastrous use of nuclear weapons

* the fact that the government insiders know all about similar close calls in the past

* the fact that the government insiders know all about species-threatening nature of a nuclear exchange and subsequent nuclear winter

* overkill - the refusal of the defense establishment to reduce the most risky threats despite massive redundancy in the ability to kill with nuclear weapons (e.g. nuclear-weapon-armed submarines each capable of destroying an entire country)

* the fact that the current decision makers are all on a list to be whisked away to safe bunkers in the event of impending nuclear strike

* the importance of telling the truth to the public, and getting citizens demanding and supporting change

The show evidenced not just a command of detail. It represented a grasp of the overarching story -- and a talent in telling it -- that made me feel enormous respect and gratitude.


The Power of Story

Ever since I read a book about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the effect of her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, I have been on the lookout for the medium that will communicate the story we are trying to convey about the danger of nuclear weapons and related concerns. (See Creative Resistance 101: Uncle Tom's Cabin.)

That's why, for instance, I am so focused on the story of Hiroshima, and the efforts of many writers and artists and filmmakers to tell that story. (See On Tanabe's "Message from Hiroshima.")

That's why I am so grateful every time activists stand up to explain the threat these weapons pose right now, like the event at Harvard a few months ago and the people who worked to bring it to a wider public via all kinds of media. (See Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons.)

That's why I applauded the Senate Foreign Relations committee for focusing on this very issue in a public hearing in November. (See the November 14, 2017, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on "Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons.")

And that's why I am especially excited about what has been accomplished by Madam Secretary.

To reiterate what I wrote about earlier in my post about Stowe, the lesson for me in Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America, is that change can be catalyzed by popular entertainment, because it reaches a lot of people and engages their attention.

(For Madam Secretary, "a lot" means something like 6 million people.)

Having had a few years to digest that message, I would now also add: (a) the forms of popular entertainment are changing rapidly, so we need to be open to a wider and wider range of possible formats; and (b) we don't get to know in advance which version will succeed in really reaching people, so we need to try lots of them.


A warning

What's not to like about 6 million people?

I think a very good thing happened with Season 4, Episode 22 of Madam Secretary. But it also contained within itself a warning. When the Secretary of State is informed that the nuclear exchange is imminent and that she should hasten to the bunker, she chooses instead to remain with her family. As it happens, they are at an entertainment arcade. Apparently she reasons that it is all over anyway; they may as well enjoy what pleasure remains to them in the moments available. And she surrenders to the blinking lights and artificial sounds of the video games . . . .

Madam Secretary: Take one last look.

We are in a race against time. Our proliferation of entertainments lulls us into anesthesia.

Which brings me back to that conversation after church. I wouldn't have known about this show unless my friends had told me. And they wouldn't have told me if it hadn't been for an earlier dinner conversation about my work on nuclear disarmament. And I wouldn't have told other people about the episode -- much less written this post -- if my friends hadn't shared it with me so enthusiastically. All of which leads me to think, "We need powerful stories . . . and conversations!"

So: who will tell the story? and where are the conversations happening?


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"Frankenstein" -- Did Mary Shelley Predict Nuclear Weapons?

Mary Shelley

There are many voices contributing, in many ways, to the effort to extract us from nuclear peril.

Some voices come from the past.

For the past several weeks, I have been reading the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. It is marvelous and prescient. It was first published in 1818. I became interested in Frankenstein after it was singled out by Paul Johnson as a watershed cultural event in his book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.

For me, as for most people, Frankenstein means the "monster" portrayed by Boris Karloff in the movies. But of course "Frankenstein" is the scientist, the one who imparts life to an assemblage of inanimate parts; indeed, the novel's full title is Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and the story is really about this man.

Frankenstein is about a man who is so carried away with what he finds himself able to do that he is heedless of the consequences. It is, indeed, a fable for the modern era; as someone concerned particularly about nuclear weapons, I find over and over that the words of the novel bring to mind the dilemma that human civilization finds itself in because of the activities of some among us who are most brilliant and privileged.

This morning I read a portion in which Frankenstein sees in himself one

whose selfishness,
had not hesitated
to buy its own peace
at the price,
perhaps,
of the existence of the whole human race.
                 (Frankenstein, Chapter 20)

Can there be any more precise description of the nuclear weapons states?

Who is this Mary Shelley, who two hundred years ago could have so brilliantly summed up the predicament that we would face in 2018?

Just a few chapters of this wonderful book remain - I find myself rushing forward to the conclusion, while simultaneously jamming on the brakes so that I can relish every word.

How will I satisfy myself when I reach the end?

Two possibilities suggest themselves: The Last Man, another Shelley novel, about what happens when human society brings itself to the brink of extinction; and the great account of the Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer: American Prometheus.


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The Marukis' Antiwar Paintings: A Lesson in Collaboration

Toshi and Iri Maruki

Yesterday I began profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Today I'm continuing with thoughts on one of those films: Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima (Michael Camerini, 1986).

Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima is a beautiful portrait, above all, of collaboration. In it, we meet the husband-and-wife team, Iri Maruki (1901-1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912-2000). I have long been an admirer of their Hiroshima panels, and of Toshi Maruki's book for children, Hiroshima no Pika (The Flash of Hiroshima). But I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was by the story of how these two artists work together.

One of the reasons I loved Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima is that it features long sequences of Iri and Toshi Maruki sharing a studio, working to complete their wall-sized artworks. Iri works standing, tracing figures onto the paper spread across the floor, using a brush with a long extension handle. Iri kneels, adding ink washes with a broad sweep.

The Marukis were trained in different styles -- traditional, expressionist, water-based ink vs. modern, realist, oil -- and in the film we get to see some of the ways they learned to synthesize their gifts and complement each other, and to do so without working at cross-purposes. We learn in the film that their shared vision sustained the Marukis, and that they concluded that, "If two people are alike, even oil and water will mix." What makes the film particularly interesting, however, is that in it the Marukis also tell us, very candidly, that they had to do a lot of hard experimentation, painting and re-painting over each other's work, before they found the right blend. Their successful collaboration came about despite a fair dose of "selfishness . . . stubbornness . . . dissatisfaction . . . ."

The film also describes another aspect of the Marukis' collaboration that I found instructive: their annual rhythm of devoting three seasons of the year to their respective art, and one season of the year (e.g. winter) to work together on a collaborative project.

from the Marukis' Hiroshima panels

The Marukis spent decades creating and promoting their panels documenting the terrors of war - Hiroshima, the Rape of Nanking, the Holocaust, and the atrocities on Okinawa. They did a lot of thinking about war and other types of violence, like the violence we do to our environment. "At a deep level, the violence we do in war and the violence we do in peace are the same," they say in the film.

Near the end of the film, speaking about their series of Hell panels, Toshi says that she and Iri came to understand that hell is not just a place for the great evildoers of history, like Hitler, but includes a very wide circle of people indeed. Ultimately, she concludes:

We are in hell
because we have been unable
to prevent war.

If all life on earth perishes
in a nuclear war,
no one will be saved;
we will all be responsible.

This brief film and the example of the Marukis is a powerful tool for all of us seeking inspiration for our collaboration with like-minded people to become able to prevent war, and to make sure life on earth doesn't perish in a nuclear war.


The story of the Marukis is also told in a book by one of the film's producers, the scholar John Dower: Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki.

An animated video version of Hiroshima no Pika is available for viewing on Kanopy.


See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


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FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: On Tanabe's "Message from Hiroshima"

Film series on Hiroshima on Filmstruck

There are five films related to Hiroshima featured on Filmstruck right now:

Children of Hiroshima (Kaneto Shindo, 1952)

Hiroshima (Hideo Sekigawa, 1953)

Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)

Hellfire - Journey from Hiroshima (Michael Camerini, 1986)

Message from Hiroshima (Masaaki Tanabe, 2015)

I've raised the importance of lifting up the experience of Hiroshima (see list of links below) and it's worth emphasizing it again. I've decided to post some brief notes on each of these films (plus one additional film, I Live in Fear (Akira Kurosawa, 1955), also available on Filmstruck) to my blog. Today I'm starting with Message from Hiroshima.

Filmmaker Masaaki Tanabe as a little boy.
(Image from "Remembering Hiroshima Through Cinema".)

Message from Hiroshima

Having recently visited Hiroshima, and walked around the exact ground featured in Masaaki Tanabe's Message from Hiroshima, I was deeply impressed by his film concept and how Tanabe carried it out.

Tanabe's concept is to encourage the viewer to connect to the people living in the neighborhood around the epicenter of the bomb -- as people. To do this, he combines testimony of survivors, old family photographs, footage of the places as they appear today, and computer simulations of the neighborhoods before the bomb struck.

What Tanabe has done here is so important -- getting beyond the well-known photographs of the destroyed buildings of Hiroshima, and the statistics, and enabling us to think of the individual victims as they lived their lives.

A shoe store . . . a temple . . . people playing and fishing in the river . . . games of hide-and-seek around the big ginkgo tree . . . women shopping for kimonos . . . and wigs . . .

I thought of having a meal with people in Hiroshima at an oyster boat restaurant on the river . . .

I imagined myself weaving through alleys full of children playing marbles and menko cards . . .

 . . . past the barber shop . . . the movie theater . . . the seafood store selling clams and seaweed and dried bonito . . . the public bath that stayed open until midnight so the shop owners could visit after they closed for the night . . . the mom-and-pop candy store (the one that sold the model airplanes).

After an hour watching the film and listening to George Takei's narration, I have a much more powerful sense of what one of the speakers means when he says, "Many souls of the dead call out, "I'm here!'"

(Watch trailer for Message from Hiroshima.)

(Read more about Message from Hiroshima: "Remembering Hiroshima Through Cinema" on the Golden Globes website.)


Additional posts in this series

The Marukis' Antiwar Paintings: A Lesson in Collaboration

Are We All "Children of Hiroshima"?

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" and the Horror of Forgetting

Nuclear Danger: Three Ways of Talking About the Unmentionable


Additional links to related posts

The Fire and Blast of Hiroshima: Why Are We Still Hiding It?

Can We Confront the Fire and Blast of Nuclear War and Still Remain Human? (Watching "Grave of the Fireflies")

"People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury"

An extensive list of resources on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on this AFSC event page.


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Doomsday Machine: Same As It Ever Was . . . .

Dr. Strangelove . . . Strangelove . . . Strangelove . . .

We've got to try a thousand different ways of getting people to wake up to the danger posed by nuclear weapons, and to do something about it.

I was reminded of the fact that no one is in possession of the one solution today while reading Joan Didion's essays in the collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I come across a long riff on Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

Didion is loaded for bear on the perceived presumptuousness of auteurs ("Ask what [filmmakers] plan to do with their absolute freedom, with their chance to make a personal statement, and they will pick an 'issue,' a 'problem.' The 'issues' they pick are generally no longer real issues . . . . ") and films that failed to hold her attention ("Dr. Strangelove was essentially a one-line gag, having to do with the difference between all other wars and nuclear war"), and in this essay dated 1964 I can't help suspecting that she wrote it fresh from a screening of Kubrick's film, which was released that year.

By the time George Scott had said "I think I'll mosey on over to the War Room" and Sterling Hayden had said "Looks like we got ourselves a shootin' war" and the SAC bomber had begun heading for its Soviet targets to the tune of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again," Kubrick had already developed a full fugue upon the theme, and should have started counting the minutes until it would begin to pall. (Picador edition, p. 226-7)

The essay in which this review appears is called, "I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind," and it is notable that the "monster" Didion is referring to is the Hollywood establishment, the alleged-by-some-to-be-inhibiting studio system. In other words: maybe she's not giving Kubrick's art a chance because she's not really focused on how challenging the issue of nuclear weapons really is.

And maybe I'm just touchy because I watched Dr. Strangelove again a few weeks ago, and thought, "My God, what more could we have asked for? Why, in 2018, do we still need to have a "Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons," why does the Senate Foreign Relations Committee still need to hold hearings on the nuclear weapon command structure? Kubrick laid it all out for us in 1964!"

And don't just take my word for it: Daniel Ellsberg describes seeing Dr. Strangelove with a colleague when it first came out in 1964:

We came out into the afternoon sunlight, dazed by the light and the film, both agreeing that what we had just seen was, essentially, a documentary. (We didn't yet know -- nor did SAC -- that existing strategic operational plans, whether for first strike or retaliation, constituted a literal Doomsday Machine, as in the film.) (The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, p. 65))

This was written at a time when Ellsberg was investigating in minute detail exactly the kind of command issues for nuclear bomb delivery that are the material of Dr. Strangelove.

We couldn't ask for it to be much more explicit or obvious.

So: what's it gonna take? What next? What is to be done?

Obviously, we need to try the thousand-and-first way of getting people to wake up to the danger posed by nuclear weapons, and to do something about it.

For my part, I'm working on a screenplay about a guy working on a screenplay about the dangers of nuclear weapons and he goes to see a retired nuclear planner and is told that the story has already been told with perfect precision by Dr. Strangelove and then . . . .


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The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret

The New Yorker, September 18, 2017

In light of the sobering news that John Bolton will become National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, I'm continuing with my analysis of an article about North Korea by zeroing in on some points that I hope people take away from that article.

Now more than ever we need lots and lots of people to participate in the process of reading, thinking, and speaking critically.

As in previous posts, I'll continue to use the up/down/level scoring approach as I discuss how this information was presented in "Letter from Pyongyang: On the Brink," by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker, September 18, 2017 (online: "The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea").


Suspense: Will the US go to war?

I'm particularly interested in war powers, and whether "we, the People," have the ability to constrain the president. I mentioned in my post two days ago that I sat up and took notice when I read the part of "Letter from Pyongyang" about the North Korean official asking "who decides?" (article paragraph 25). I was also struck by the following paragraph, which appeared a few pages later:

Occasionally Pak misread something that was hard to discern from far away. He told me, "The United States is a divided country. It has no appetite for war." On some level, that was true -- the United States is a divided country, and it is tired of fighting wars in the Middle East, in South Asia -- but he would be wrong to assume that these facts would, with absolute assurance, prevent the Trump Administration from launching a strike on North Korea. (article paragraph 64)

That, my friends, is called "burying the lede." In my opinion, it is the most important paragraph in the entire article, and trumps (no pun intended) anything else written there, even (or especially) the most lurid anecdotes or rumors about North Korea.

Evan Osnos is confronting us with the fact that the US has lost control of war-making authority.

Not coincidentally, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on this very subject in November.

Nonetheless, I rated this paragraph "level," i.e. because it was focused on the US, I couldn't feel it impacting the notion that North Korea is "bad" one way or the other.

By the way, paragraph 5 of the article describes Osnos' plan for his reporting trip: "Before my arrival in North Korea, I spent time in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing; many people in those places, it turned out, are asking the same things about the United States." In this paragraph, "the same things" means "the kind of violence that their country so often threatens" and "[w]ere the threats serious, or mere posturing?" . . . and would those threats result in war. Unfortunately, the structure of the paragraph is so front-loaded with focus on North Korea doing "those things" that the reader is unlikely to give equal weight to the role of the US in all this, much less the heavy weight it (in my opinion) deserves. As a result, I rated that paragraph a "down," i.e. it tended to reinforce the impression that North Korea is "bad."

In paragraph 48, a school child asks Osnos, "Why is America trying to provoke a war with us? And what right do they have to block us from building our own nuclear weapon?" Osnos writes that "[t]his did not seem the occasion for rigorous analysis or debate. I mumbled some bromides about hoping that things would get better. The boy seemed unimpressed." I rated this paragraph a "down," because I think the main impression that the average reader gets is, "What is a ten-year-old doing thinking about this? They've been brainwashed! War-crazed North Koreans . . . . " (Personally, I think the paragraph is brilliantly . . . really "meta." To those who have ears to hear, Osnos is asking, "Well, what is the time and place to start analyzing this whole thing rigorously? Hello? Readers? Anyone awake out there?")


Discomfort: when war and weaponry are visible

One reason I rated many elements of the Osnos article a "down" is because they involved described talk of war and weaponry in North Korea. The irony, of course, is that this is liable to strike the average US reader as "war-obsessed." US people are in the curious situation of living in a state that is has the world's highest level of military spending, and is the world's largest weapons export, and is involved in armed conflicts all over the world . . .  and/but does a phenomenal job of keeping all of that out of sight, and out of the minds of the populace.

Paragraphs 65-78 of the article (down, down, down, down, level, level, level, down, down, down, down, down, down) describe frequent mentions of war and weaponry, and the apparent belief on the part of the North Koreans that they can endure the suffering of war. On this last point, Osnos challenges his host:

     But, to state the obvious, I said, risking a premature end to a friendly meal, a nuclear exchange would not be comparable.
    "A few thousand would survive," Pak said. "And the military would say, 'Who cares? As long as the United States is destroyed, then we are all starting from the same line again.'" He added, "A lot of people would die. But not everyone would die." (article paragraphs 77-78)

"A lot of people would die. But not everyone would die." I think that sounds to the average reader like, "The North Koreans are crazy. They've been brainwashed into thinking they can survive a nuclear war."

This might be an opportune moment to pause and look at a graphic of global nuclear weapons holdings:

So many exist, ready to be used . . . .
The world's nuclear weapon count (August, 2014):
16,400
(Source: peaceandplanet.org)

So: who's crazy? The people thinking about how many people will survive nuclear war? Or the people living in the country with 7,000+ nuclear warheads (2014 total) who never even think about it?


Regret: things could've been different

Osnos does a good job of providing the recent diplomatic history. I just wish it weren't buried so deep in the article.

Paragraph 82 gives an account of Kim Jong Un's Father, Kim Jong Il, as someone who came close to "forging peace with the United States" c. 2000. (Four "ups" in a single paragraph.)

Paragraph 83 describes how the US dropped the ball as the Clinton Administration ended and the Bush Administration began. (I bet US readers gloss over the significance of this: level.)

Paragraph 84 reminds us of Bush's inclusion of North Korea in an "axis of evil." (Level, at best. The word "evil" tends to poison the well of this particular paragraph.)


Which brings us back to John Bolton. (See the "Beyond the Axis of Evil" speech. Given the sudden turn Bolton's appointment represents, it is now more than ever incumbent on every US citizen to take personal responsibility for a truth-based approach to understanding the US, understanding North Korea, and understanding the US-North Korea situation.

Your own close reading of the Osnos article is a good place to start.


(To be continued.)


Additional posts in this series:

A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea.

North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?


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A Checklist for Critically Reading (and Writing) About North Korea

cover, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
January - June 2000

I recently began doing something I wish I'd done forty years ago when I was a college student: reading and thinking about the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (now Critical Asian Studies) - the publication of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars.

You can read this publication free online:

Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (1968-2000)
Critical Asian Studies (2001 onward)

I plan to talk in a more general way about this important publication in a future post. Here I will begin with a relevant example of its important work.

In a 1994 issue of the Bulletin, there is a group of articles about North Korea and nuclear weapons: "Notes from the Field: The Korean Nuclear Crisis." The articles are:

* Robert Perkinson - "Introduction"

* Bruce Cummings - "Old and New Korean Wars"

* Minn Chung - "'Seoul Will Become a Sea of Fire . . .'"

* Reunification Committee of National Council of Churches in Korea - "Statement on Peace and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula"

* Catherine B. Wrenn - "The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Retrospect: The Case of North Korea"

* Tom Clements - "Nuclear-Free Korean Peninsula: Visit of "MV Greenpeace" Spotlights South Korean Nukes"

* Minn Chung - "Chronology of Crisis: Important Developments for Peace, Reconciliation, and Denuclearization in Korea"

(You can read all these articles in pdf form In the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Volume 26 (No. 1 and 2).)

Robert Perkinson's introductory article calls our attention to the need to read critically -- in general, and as we comment on places and cultures that are not our own, and especially in charged contexts like the relationship between the United States and North Korea.

I jotted down some words from Robert Perkinson's article:

Western media spin . . .

monolithic ideological line  . . .

portraying . . .

condemning . . .

demonizing . . .

target the North Korean people as well . . .

overt racism . . .

mocking . . .

demeaning anecdotes . . .

"hysteria" . . .

epithets . . .

jingoistic . .

anti-Asian racial stereotypes . . .

denigrating . . . 

All of these are examples of behaviors that we who write about countries and cultures not our own must be on guard against. At a minimum, our unending effort to produce "colorful writing" -- stuff that people actually feel compelled to read -- is filled with the risk of leading readers by the nose instead of giving them the material to think for themselves. At a deeper level, the power we wield as observers and interpreters and writers generally needs much, much, much more acknowledgement, not to mention careful, measured, respectful, peaceful application.

I decided it would be valuable to spend some time examining how my own writing might be improved by paying attention to these behaviors.

I also decided to examine some specific examples of recent writing (by others) about the US, about North Korea, and about the US-North Korea situation, and try to highlight the ways in which these (and other) behaviors play a role in forming the impression that might be formed by readers.

The good news is that much is being written and shared today about North Korea.

The bad news is that we -- readers, writers, all of us -- have a lot of unexamined biases.

Let the critical reading begin . . . . 


Follow-up posts:

North Korea: Who Am I To Look At You?

When Writing About North Korea Is a "Downer"

Can You Judge a Nuclear Confrontation by Its Cover?

The US and North Korea: Suspense, Discomfort, Regret


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Time to Call the Question: Is Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons Constitutional?

"CNN BREAKING NEWS . . . .
Trump: If N Korea keeps threatening, will be met with 'fire'."

Adam Liptak wrote in the New York Times several days ago that law schools are preparing to delve into numerous Constitutional questions that have been brought to a head by the Trump presidency, not the least of which is:

"Must Congress authorize a nuclear strike against North Korea?"

(See "New on This Fall’s Law School Syllabus: Trump.")

Case in point: a conference taking place in Cambridge on November 4 will address the question, "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons:  Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?"  The affiliations of the speakers -- including Yale Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT -- tend to affirm Liptak's suggestion that this is a question that is being taken up in law schools and on campuses nationwide.

Also speaking at the Cambridge conference will be Massachusetts member of Congress Jim McGovern, a co-sponsor of HR669 "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017." Central to HR669 are the principles that . . .

"The Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war";

"By any definition of war, a first-use nuclear strike from the United States would constitute a major act of war"; and

"A first-use nuclear strike conducted absent a declaration of war by Congress would violate the Constitution."

Of course, breathing life into HR669's steely logic requires the participation of actual members of Congress, and in turn by the life-and-blood people they represent. It is worth noting that HR 669 now has forty-seven (47) co-sponsors in the House, including representatives from . . .

Arizona
California
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Texas
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin

Food for thought: how many law schools and universities will avail themselves of the opportunity to invite their member of Congress to participate in a discussion of this vital question? As the list above indicates, "Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons:  Is it Legal? Is it Constitutional? Is it Just?" has now become the question people are asking everywhere.


Related posts:

Nuclear Weapons: People Power Over Trump Power

"Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom" by Elaine Scarry


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A Modest Proposal: UNAs and #Nuclearban Education

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has issued a challenge:
" . . . show the people reasons to support the UN . . . "
Exhibit #1 is #nuclearban
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One hundred and twenty-two (122) countries have agreed on a global nuclear weapons ban treaty text, and the treaty is in line to be adopted and enter into force in the months ahead.

A global network of United Nations Associations (UNAs) exists to engage in public education about the work of the UN, and encourage public support of the UN.

The #nuclearban is an issue the UNAs on which the UNAs can really roll up their sleeves and make a difference -- by using their convening power to bring together members of the public to learn about, discuss, and organize for action in support of this most important of UN initiatives. In doing so, they will foster a better understanding of the UN overall, and form the basis for more and better public involvement with their UNA chapters in the years ahead.

This work is especially important in the US and other countries whose governments are not currently supporting the #nuclearban. The public needs to become much, much more engaged.

It's worth remembering that the United Nations was created at the very moment that nuclear weapons were introduced. The UN's work for peace during all the ensuing decades has been done under the shadow of the nuclear threat.

In my opinion, the future of the UN very much hinges on the #nuclearban. Isn't it time for UNAs everywhere to answer the call and bring this development before the larger public?


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Related links

"Response to UNA-UK call for UK to attend nuclear ban treaty negotiations"

Global Network of Bloggers for #Nuclearban

We Can Blog It!

Part of the global network of activism in support of a treaty banning nuclear weapons (#nuclearban) are articles and blog posts on platforms large and small -- like this one -- getting the news out.

The network consists of thousands of individuals contributing in myriad ways. (What are you prepared to do?)

I'll start with a small list of articles and blog posts below, and expand it in the days and weeks ahead.


The mother blog

The website of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) features a blog with frequent updates by ICAN's campaigners.


Australia

"Answering deceptive arguments against a nuclear weapons ban" by Cesar Jaramillo. "A majority of nuclear-armed states and their allies — including the United States and most other NATO members, such as Germany and Canada — have actively opposed this effort and have openly tried to undermine its rationale. . . . And while it is hardly surprising that the very states that rely on nuclear deterrence would oppose a legal prohibition of nuclear weapons, the primary arguments used to oppose the ban cannot withstand close scrutiny. They are either misleading, based on a dead-end logic, or outright wrong."


India

"Can unarmed states prohibit nuclear weapons?" by W.P.S. Sidhu @wpssidhu (visiting professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy) "[D]espite the growing disconnect between the emerging nuclear disorder and the evolving world order, the nuclear weapon states (also permanent UN security council members) failed to accommodate aspirant powers and establish a new world order that was not based on nuclear weapons."


UK

"Britain Should Be At the UN Talks to Ban Nukes" by Kate Hudson @kate4peace2017. (Kate Hudson is general secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - CND.) "[I]n spite of successive British governments’ supposed commitment to multilateral disarmament — a pledge repeated just last summer in Parliament’s debate on replacing Trident — Britain opposed the negotiations taking place and is boycotting the talks."

"THE WORLD – NAE PLACE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS" by Janet Fenton @Janetfenton. "The non participating states ‘protest’ stunt outside on the first day, saw the UK right up there outside the room, misrepresenting Scotland with even more insouciance than they demonstrated over Brexit."


USA

"As a mother, I fight for nuclear abolition. . . ."
(Please share this message on Twitter.)

"An Open Letter to Nikki Haley" by Anna Ikeda @anna_ikeda. "I know that, when my son grows up, he will be proud of me for being part of this movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He will understand that there is no better way to make this world safe, than removing the very causes of danger."

"#NuclearBan: the US Government Must Disarm" by Jared Labell @libertarianinst "Until the nuclear arsenals of governments around the world are abolished, the continuation of civilization as we know it forever rests on the integrity of politicians, bureaucrats, and chance – a frightening thought, indeed."


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