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:

The Washington Post has a very moving series of photos today highlighting the human suffering in Kazakhstan as a result of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons tests there from 1949 to 1989. With the Cold War long over, nuclear weapons can sometimes seem like a distant problem; I urge people to take a look at the photos to be reminded of just how dangerous these weapons are to human life and why banning nuclear testing makes sense.

Here are two of the captions for the photos:

The widespread contamination of soil and water prevents the land from being farmed, and most residents face unemployment because of the lack of opportunity….

Vice President Biden gave a major policy speech today on nuclear weapons (full text here), discussing the administration’s nuclear weapons agenda, their funding request for nuclear weapons, and key steps towards a nuclear weapons free world, like ratification of the New START agreement and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Much of the speech reaffirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to steps toward a nuclear weapons free world. Biden noted the bipartisan support for this nuclear security agenda:

Our goal of a world without nuclear weapons has been endorsed by leading voices in both parties. These include two former Secretaries of State from Republican administrations, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Bill Perry; and my former colleague Sam Nunn, for years the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Below is an alert we sent to some of our supporters on the nuclear pork in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Click on the following committee links to check if your representative is a member of a key committee that decides how much funding nuclear weapons will actually get. If your representative is on either the House Armed Services Committee or the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, please take action and email your representative.

Next year’s budget has just been released and while it has a spending freeze for most domestic programs, there’s plenty of nuclear weapons pork. The nukes budget comes in at roughly $7 billion, getting a ten percent increase.

It’s outrageous, unnecessary, and expensive.

Friends,

In May 2010 nations will gather in New York City for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.  This will be the year that the pressure will be on to set binding and enforceable targets for reducing and ultimately eliminating the signatories’ nuclear arsenals.  Of course, it will not be as simple as that since there are nations that are not signatories to the NPT that have developed nuclear weapons, the proverbial flies in the ointment.

No matter who currently has nuclear weapons, the entire world is at risk the longer nations maintain their arsenals.  Some arsenals, such as the United States’ and Russia’s, are so massive as to be ludicrous.  As of 2009, just the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile was estimated at 5,200 nuclear warheads, 2700 of those “operational” (in other words deployed and ready to go).  Do we really need that many nukes to “deter” another nation from attacking us???