2022 March 14 « nuclear-news

UK’s Ministry of Defence called out for lobbying MPs on nuclear weapons

MoD under fire for lobbying MPs on nuclear weapons, The Ferret, Rob Edwards. March 13, 2022

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is facing criticism for lobbying up to 27 Westminster politicians on the “benefits” of nuclear weapons for “UK industry, economy and the union”

Four lords and 23 MPs were invited to two briefings by senior MoD officials at the Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde in 2021. According to the MoD, the aim was to “educate” them on the “continued relevance” of the Trident nuclear weapons system, and how replacing it was “value for money”.

According to experts, it is “highly unusual” for a government department to lobby politicians in this way. Campaigners questioned whether it was an “appropriate” use of public money and accused the MoD of acting as an “influencer” for nuclear vested interests………………………

One lobbying expert disputed the MoD’s suggestion it was not trying to influence politicians. “This is clearly a lobbying and influencing strategy, thinly disguised as a briefing to promote dialogue about defence policy,” said Dr Will Dinan, a senior lecturer in political communications at the University of Stirling.

“It is highly unusual for a government department to lobby UK politicians in this way. While the rationale offered is that these briefings are simply educational, it is clear that the overall strategic aim is to increase support among parliamentarians for maintaining nuclear capability.”

Dinan maintained that the nuclear briefings were “hardly neutral, informational or apolitical”. The need for nuclear weapons was “highly political” and MoD officials appeared to have “strayed some way from offering neutral and balanced advice to inform decision makers”, he said.

The Nuclear Information Service, which researches nuclear weapons, was also critical of the MoD. “These documents make it clear that the purpose of this exercise is to bolster support for the UK’s nuclear weapons programme,” said the group’s director, David Cullen.

“Lobbying in this fashion is not an appropriate use of public funds and diminishes the prospects for meaningful parliamentary oversight.”

The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament pointed out that retired military commanders had spoken out against nuclear weapons. “The MoD is acting as an influencer for the nuclear-military-industrial complex with vested interests in them being constantly modernised and never given up,” said the campaign’s chair, Lynn Jamieson.

“If the MoD had a genuinely educational agenda it would include consideration of how to move towards signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. But then their job isn’t education, it’s defence and security — and Scottish CND’s view is that nuclear weapons put that at risk

The SNP MSP, Bill Kidd, is co-president of the international group of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He pointed out that MSPs from the Scottish Parliament had not been invited to MoD nuclear briefings.

He said: “Will this be because we, at Holyrood, have voted time and again against the maintenance of these weapons of mass murder being stationed in our midst and looking for their removal? Or could it be that it’s Westminster that votes on the budget and long-term future of nuclear weapons and therefore it’s MPs who need to be influenced?”

Kidd also criticised the House of Commons and Lords for voting through upgrades and increases in nuclear warheads. This breached article six of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty committing countries to nuclear disarmament, he claimed…………….. https://theferret.scot/mod-lobbying-mps-nuclear-weapons/

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Former Yugoslav FM: U.S., NATO expansion root cause of Ukraine war

Former Yugoslav FM: U.S., NATO expansion root cause of Ukraine war https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/113283937/posts/3885959839 Xinhua News Agency
March 12, 2022 U.S., NATO expansion root cause of Ukraine crisis, says Serbian expert

U.S. and NATO military expansion in Eastern Europe is the root cause of the current Ukraine crisis, Zivadin Jovanovic, former minister of foreign affairs of Yugoslavia, has said.

In an interview with Xinhua, Jovanovic who currently presides over the think-tank Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, said that the crisis resulted from “the U.S.-NATO strategy of military expansion to the Russian borders, rejection of the principle of equal and indivisible security.”

Serbia was the first victim of NATO’s expansion strategy, Jovanovic recalled.

In 1999, NATO troops led by the United States blatantly set the UN Security Council aside and carried out a 78-day continuous bombing of Yugoslavia under the guise of “preventing humanitarian disasters,” killing and injuring over 8,000 innocent civilians and uprooting nearly 1 million.

Jovanovic called for a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine, “taking into account legitimate security concerns of all countries and peoples involved.”

Jovanovic said that the Ukrainian conflict and all that had preceded it, “calls to end the policy of military expansion, for recognition of legitimate rights of all countries to equal security without undermining the security of others,” as well as for the “global recognition of the new multi-polar world order.”

“We hope that the Ukrainian conflict will be resolved as soon as possible peacefully, through dialogue, taking into account the need for equal security of all countries and peoples. Sanctions, threats, double standards, one-sided approaches…are undermining peace efforts and therefore should cease,” he added.

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cumbria remembers Fukushima

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima disaster.
Members of Radiation Free Lakeland met up with Kazuhiko Kobayashi in 2018
to show him the Sellafield area and he told us that there is money for
climate research but not so much for research into the impacts of radiation
on our food and health. He is a kind gentle man and he was visibly shocked
to see the scale of Sellafield. Kazuhiko broke down in tears within the
shadow of Sellafield, at the impacts the nuclear industry is having on our
children’s health. His passionate opposition to nuclear power and nuclear
weapons, his work for change and to help those impacted, is an inspiration.
Kazuhiko has organised respite for children and families who have been
impacted by the ongoing Fukushima disaster.

Radiation Free Lakeland 12th March 2022

https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2022/03/12/cumbria-remembers-fukushima/

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

«We forget and we consider ourselves superior… But we are after all a mere part of Creation.» – We all must revise our relationship with Nature and reorient our association with consumerism! — Barbara Crane Navarro,

« I do not see a delegation for the Four Footed. I see no seat for the Eagles. We forget & we consider ourselves superior. But we are after all a mere part of Creation. We stand somewhere between the mountain & the Ant. » Chief Oren Lyons, Seneca Nation, in an address to the Non-Governmental […]
«We forget and we consider ourselves superior… But we are after all a mere part of Creation.» – We all must revise our relationship with Nature and reorient our association with consumerism! — Barbara Crane Navarro

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

March 13 Energy News — geoharvey

Opinion: ¶ “Will Russia’s Attack On Ukraine Help Thaw US-Venezuela Relations?” • These are desperate times, and desperate measures are needed. Oil helps make the world go round and Venezuela has a lot of it – and when the world is in crisis, such as with the ban on Russian oil exports causing prices to […]
March 13 Energy News — geoharvey

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear threat: Faslane, home to Trident, symbol of humanity’s power and folly

Nuclear weapons are often described as a deterrent. But do they really deter? That they have “kept the peace” is just a story, “a myth”, not backed by evidence of cause and effect, as New York Times writer Ward Wilson has put it. He observed, “We don’t accept proof by absence in any circumstance where there is real risk.”

Nuclear threat: Faslane, home to Trident, symbol of humanity’s power and folly, https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-threat-faslane-home-trident-110835394.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAG3X514QPdgktFOrKbKPrnzoSz6joD3PVpI6uSj2DBv3oIZTOIzUDZWnifcsw_SXXPYtt3h1orA3QYlShoI_rlgBn5o675_PqDys5-xmgpGOEFmBJ1ooQWfTzK9RMofsPeZk-CfshnVXybppn5h7kGhpqKtNAaeAVwv0YCeavNKnVicky Allan
Sun, 13 March 2022, On the northern shore of Gare Loch, washed by salt waters that merge into the Firth of Clyde, is the naval base, Faslane, home to Vanguard-class submarines. The UK has four such Trident-carrying submarines, each armed with eight missiles, each of which carries three warheads. All together, currently, the UK holds a stockpile of 225 such warheads. This sea loch, and the wildlife it sustains, knows little of the destructive capacity contained within it.

Each warhead is said to be eight times as destructive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed over 140,000 civilians. They are dark pearls of latent horror; symbols of humanity’s power and folly.

This stretch of shoreline has, for this reason, been one of the most controversial sites in Britain since the 1960s – first home to Polaris, more recently Trident. Concern over the threat of nuclear weaponry, has waxed and waned with the changes in global politics.

The SNP’s calls to scrap it were a key message of the Independence referendum, and one still repeated now. 2016 saw debate around whether the programme should be renewed at an enormous cost of £31 million for just the replacement submarines – CND estimated the overall cost would be more like £205 million. The House of Commons backed it, though only one Scottish MP voted in favour. Then, just last year, Boris Johnson announced a lift on the cap on the the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40 percent by the middle of this decade. This ended thirty years of gradual disarmament.

UN Elder Mary Robinson’s view on this was clear, “While the UK cites increased security threats as justification for this move, the appropriate response to these challenges should be to work multilaterally to strengthen international arms control agreements and to reduce – not increase – the number of nuclear weapons in existence.”

We are now in another chilling moment. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his threats of “consequences you have never seen”, have meant that the word nuclear is on our lips again. The threat, which not long ago had seemed half-forgotten, a childhood nightmare demoted down the current list of existential threats, was there again: “the nuclear option”. Might the Russian leader be mad and power-hungry enough to use it?

Ian Blackford recently confirmed the continuing support of SNP for getting rid of Trident, saying, “The idea that having nuclear weapons provides a deterrence that removes that threat is far-fetched, to say the least.”

Above all Faslane is a reminder of the ridiculous nuclear arsenal the world has built. We may have already clambered down from the global peak stockpile of nuclear weapons which existed in 1986, but there is a long way to go. Approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads exist worldwide and almost 90 percent of them belong to two countries: the United States and Russia. There are more than enough, if such maths made any sense, to kill every human on the planet, one hundred times over.

That fact, and Putin’s terrifying recent posturings, should be a reminder that global nuclear disarmament must remain a key goal of our times.

March 14, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment