Those of you in the Bay Area should check out one of the follow talks on nuclear weapons being given by Tad Daley, author and Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the 1985 Nobel Peace Laureate organization. He will serve as “Scholar/Activist in Residence” at the UC Berkeley International House March 9-16. Here are the events accompanying his visit:

Thursday, March 11, 2010, 7:30pm
University of California, Berkeley, International House
2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, California, 94720-2320
Tad Daley, author of APOCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers, Spring 2010, www.apocalypsenever.org),  will be speaking at the University of California at Berkeley International House regarding how we might actually bring about nuclear weapons abolition. Free and open to the public. For more information, contact lkoziol@berkeley.edu.

We want to remind the president that there is widespread support for strong leadership to eliminate nuclear weapons. That’s why the Campaign is launching a new sign-on letter to President Obama. Will your organization sign on?

The letter will call on the president to announce at the upcoming Global Security Summit that he will host a disarmament summit next year. It will be delivered on April 5 to coincide with the anniversary of President Obama’s Prague speech.

This is not a petition for individual members of the public to sign. It is intended for faith, community, environmental, peace, labor, and other groups to approve and sign on to. Organizations can view the letter here and sign on to the letter by the April 1st deadline.

The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), already postponed until today, has been delayed again as the Obama administration works to come to a final position on key issues. Now expected at the end of March or later, the NPR will be a critical document outlining US nuclear weapons policy for the next 5-10 years, and could put us on a path toward the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons or serve to stifle progress and maintain an unsustainable status quo.

An excellent New York Times editorial lays out the major decisions being made:

Friends,

Here’s one from the Infamous Moments in Nuclear History files:

At 6:45 AM (local time) on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands the United States detonated its first dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device in the test code named Castle Bravo. It was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the U.S. with an explosive yield of 15 megatons (scientists expected a yield of 4 to 6 megatons), roughly 1,200 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Friends,

On this day in peacemaking history twelve years ago an international Citizens’ Weapons Inspection Team from Vancouver, British Columbia, organized by the Canadian peace group End the Arms Race, and accompanied by members of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Poulsbo, Washington attempted to enter Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, then known as Submarine Base Bangor, to document the presence of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles.

The Canadian team was led by Canadian Member of Parliament Libby Davies (NDP – Vancouver East) and was composed of nine Canadian community and religious leaders and peace activists. Ther group wrote to the base commander a few days prior to the inspection to request access to the base, announcing their intention to conduct: