February 1, 2023 at 12:04 pm
If the dull hum of a nuclear warhead ever mutates to a deafening and life-ending roar of a nuclear explosion, humanity will be extinguished—Tom Unterrainer, END Info 30, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, March 2022 In 1935, retired US Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler (1880-1941), a veteran of AmericanRead More
January 11, 2023 at 11:49 am
Author’s Note: On 3 May 2019, a Thanksgiving Service was held in Westminster Abbey, attended by senior members of the Government and Royal Family, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD)—charmingly known as ‘Operation Relentless’—of the Royal Navy’s nuclear-armed submarines. As you read this, one ofRead More
January 11, 2023 at 11:47 am
Author’s Note: In December, I interviewed Robert Forsyth and Robert Green, who served for many years in the Belly of a Beast—the British naval nuclear war machine—they now devoutly wish to see dismantled. I’ve told their stories in a separate article and you can find my entire email exchange withRead More
December 7, 2022 at 1:49 pm
“War is not the only thing that, to occur, must be waged.” —Judith Lipton and David Barash, Strength Through Peace It now seems like a bygone age, but it was only on December 15 last year that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a draft Treaty on ‘SecurityRead More
November 2, 2022 at 12:17 pm
On September 24, the Canadian anti-war community suffered a grievous loss with the death, at the age of just 71, of Bill Blaikie, New Democrat MP for Winnipeg for nearly 30 years (1979-2008) and devout Christian believer in a peace on Earth secured not through the chimera of military ‘strength’Read More
October 12, 2022 at 12:08 pm
“The world really is impossible to manage as long as we have nuclear weapons. It really is a terrible way to have to live in this world.” President John F. Kennedy to British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, 21 October 1962 Over 200 blood-soaked days into Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,Read More
September 14, 2022 at 3:04 pm
Author’s Note This month’s ‘War & Peace’ column is dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022), the last leader of the Soviet Union, who grasped—as he told the United Nations in 1988—that in the nuclear age, “disarmament” is “the most important thing of all, without which no other issueRead More
August 10, 2022 at 12:21 pm
One hears the word and wants to know more, but one also wants to forget it. One has heard both too much and not enough about Hiroshima. For the city evokes our entire nuclear nightmare… Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) Return to Hiroshima on AugustRead More
July 13, 2022 at 11:34 am
1 Witch. When shall we three met again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Shakespeare, Macbeth Shakespeare’s Macbeth opens in the “fog and filthy air” of an “open place,” a no-man’s-land where three witches – theRead More
April 6, 2022 at 10:51 am
If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory inRead More