Funding for a new "Uranium Processing Facility" for production of thermonuclear secondaries at the Y-12 production plant near Oak Park Ridge, TN, is proposed to increase to $160.2 million from $115 million in 2011.
The 2012 budget request also creates a new Life Extension Program for the B61 warhead funded at $223.6 million, even though that gravity bomb's original mission of forward deployment in Europe against a Soviet threat vanished at the end of the Cold War.
Life Extension Programs extend the service lives of existing nuclear weapons for three decades or more, in contradiction to our declared national security goal of a future world free of nuclear weapons, and it also endows them with new military capabilities. [2]
Life Extension Programs also undermine sound national security by introducing major changes to America's existing nuclear weapons stockpile that had been extensively tested and known to be most reliable weapons of mass destruction.
If
THAT DAY, we call 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that America's nuclear
arsenal cannot defeat 'terrorism' or provide security from the actions of a few
violent mad men who target and murder innocent ones.
American money is imprinted with "IN GOD WE TRUST" but reality is we
have become a nation of hypocrites, for by our foreign policy we expose that we
live by the sword.
America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on
hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War.
An estimated 150 -- 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO
countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons
deployed on foreign soil.
From
Ashkelon prison in 1987, Mordechai Vanunu asked:
"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of
all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their
government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger.
Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own
government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom
and threatened when governments develop nuclear weapons without the
consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating
the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant
threat of annihilation. Is any government qualified and authorized to
produce such weapons?"
On
April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage amongst thousands of
flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the
people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the
most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century
nuclear weapons:
"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them
that the world could not change. We're here today because of the courage of
those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all
people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they
look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of
liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms
to put down the will of a people.
"Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be
checked --- that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more
people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly
adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable,
then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons
is inevitable.
"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United
States has a moral responsibility to act"It will take patience and
persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world
cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."
"There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We
must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know
that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay
them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised
together.
"Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our
divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this
world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do
it.
"Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted
by standing together as free nations, as free people"[and] Human destiny
will be what we make of it."
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King Jr. said:
"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!" [3]
This Citizen of Conscience for US House of Representatives 2012, demands Medicare, Social Security and Veterans Benefits must all stand but ending the spending for nuclear weapons must end!
We can also build the economy by providing jobs for the refurbishing of every manufacturing plant in this nation that currently provides a "cog'* a "bolt'* or any component that goes to build Weapons of Mass Destruction and all things Nuclear to research and manufacture green energy. This will also change the paradigm of the " visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to obey the laws of life" to a society of compassionate people where all life and all things good will flourish.
1. Overcoming the Obama Doctrine: Joseph Gerson's speech at
afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/Hiroshima.2011.pdf
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