As previewed in last month’s column, on January 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – popularly known as ‘The Ban Treaty’ – became international law. Hailed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as “a major step toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” itRead More

Editor’s Note: The Spectator’s Sean Howard will be back next week with his regular, monthly column, but he sent along a press release from Peace Quest Cape Breton about an important development in the progress of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW):   On October 24Read More

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve…” Shakespeare, The Tempest   “That’s a dark thinking that I have a hard time understanding…” Marshall Billingslea, President Donald J. Trump’s Special Envoy for Arms Control   On May 15,Read More

The Spectator, Tree!Umphant I found Albert Barbusci! He’s in Kissimmee, Florida where “the Lemieux and Barbusci families” own and operate the Tree Trek Adventure Park! Okay, he may not actually be there right now (although why not be in Florida in December?) but he could be. When I stepped backRead More

On November 22, US President Donald Trump, asked who should be held accountable for the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pinned the blame on an unlikely suspect: “Maybe the world should be held accountable. Because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very viciousRead More

In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear William Blake   Was the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a breakthrough or a let-down, a successRead More

In a speech at the University of Geneva on May 24, UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres launched a new ‘Agenda for Disarmament’ – Securing Our Common Future – designed to revitalize and refocus efforts to achieve the core objective the UN Charter to “save succeeding generations from the scourge ofRead More

“The road to hell,” the saying goes, is “paved with good intentions.” If a path to peace in Korea, however long and winding, emerges from the currently scheduled June 12 Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un, it will have been paved by the best and worstRead More

In 1729, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift made “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” There was, Swift’s imperialist Protestant persona reasoned, a “fair, cheap and easy method”Read More

As was noted in Fast and Curious on October 6, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized for its “work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts toRead More