Current Law requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons...[we] demand this Government adhere to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law.
These rules and principles require that civilians never be the object of attack. Consequently we must never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.
Whereas it is a basic human right to be free of threat or violence, and it is our duty to protect children and future generations we call on this government to use our tax dollars that are now being used to wage permanent war unequivocally demand they be used to pursue a nuclear free world and clean up all chemical and radioactive contamination.
[Learn More: The Y-12 Thirteen and Letters to the Honorable H. Bruce Guyton ]
On 20 September, I participated in a Global conference call initiated by URI: United Religions Initiative, http://www.uri.org which seeks collaboration and action for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The first to speak was Jonathan Granoff, the current President of the Global Security Institute , and a Senior Advisor of the American Bar Association's Committee on Arms Control and National Security, who has also served as Vice President of the NGO Committee on Disarmament at the United Nations.
Granoff said: "Nuclear weapons are illegal and immoral. They are going to spread or we are going to work together to eliminate them. What is lacking is the political will and it should be based on moral grounds."
Next up was Rev. Tyler Wigg Stevenson who stated: "I work at the intersection of faith and public policy. Theology brings truth; the highest goal alongside love, faith and humility. It is a spiritual challenge that we cannot run away from"[It is a] fallacy that we must live with Nuclear Weapons. [It requires] vitality to overcome this paralysis -- most people don't worry about changing global realities-the minutia of life presses in on people, but the freedom of vocation --that sense of calling by God to do something"[He] made us smart enough to create nuclear weapons may we be smart enough to dismantle them."
Next Sidney Drell, a Jewish man and Professor of Theoretical Physics (Emeritus) at SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory and Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Hoover
Institution said:
"Scientific progress has enabled us to create the greatest threat to civilization. These weapons are so destructive they cannot be justified on any ethical ground. The hardest part in making Nuclear Weapons is getting your hands on the fuel. The USA and Russia posses 90% [of all nuclear weapons] and they must lead. No matter how difficult this is a moral obligation."
Playing clean up was the Irish Catholic and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire , who was also awarded the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's "Distinguished Peace Leadership Award" in 1996.
Maguire reminded us of Sir Joseph Rotblat, who received the Nobel in 1995 for his efforts towards nuclear disarmament and whose work on nuclear fallout was a major contribution to the agreement of the Partial Test Ban Treaty.
Mairead said:
"Rotblat called for a nuclear free world and an end to all war. In Conscience he worked for nuclear disarmament. [We must ask ourselves] What is my life about? What are my values?
"You cannot read the gospel and not know that Jesus was totally nonviolent"we have lost sight of importance of every human being.
"We really have to stand up for human life. We spend $100 Billion building nuclear weapons a year --how many children could be fed with that?"
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