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Former Brazilian President Michel Temer indicted on corruption charges Involving nuclear plant bribes

Former Brazilian President Michel Temer was indicted on Tuesday on corruption charges brought by prosecutors who said he took part in a bribery scheme related to the Angra 3 nuclear power plant complex on the coast near Rio de Janeiro.

The case is part of Operation Car Wash, Brazil’s largest corruption investigation, which has put dozens of businessmen and politicians in jail since 2014.

Federal Judge Marcelo Bretas accepted charges of corruption and money laundering against Temer, his former energy minister, Wellington Moreira Franco, and six other close aides.

Temer, who left the presidency just three months ago, was arrested with the others on March 21 and released four days later. They all deny any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors said the graft at Angra was one action of a “criminal organization” that Temer had run during his four decades in public life, which they alleged received or arranged upward of 1.8 billion reais ($462.5 million) in bribes.

The investigation into kickbacks on the nuclear plant’s construction contract involves the Brazilian subsidiary of Swedish consulting firm AF Poyry, along with Brazilian engineering firms Engevix and Argeplan.

The Swedish company declined to comment on an ongoing investigation. Engevix and Argeplan did not reply to requests for comment……. https://www.voanews.com/a/brazil-ex-president-temer-indicted-on-charges-involving-nuclear-plant-bribes/4859686.html

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April 4, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Brazil’s former president Michel Temer arrested on charges of corruption relating to Angra 3 nuclear plant.

Guardian 21st March 2019 Brazil’s former president Michel Temer – who played a key role in the 2016 impeachment of his rival Dilma Rousseff – has been arrested by federal police while driving in São Paulo.

Judge Marcelo Breitas issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Temer and nine others in “Operation Radioactivity” – part of Operation Car Wash, the country’s largest ever corruption investigation, which has led to the convictions of numerous
members of Brazil’s political elite.

Federal prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro said Temer had led “a criminal organization”, which was involved in the construction of Brazil’s Angra 3 nuclear plant. According to prosecutors, Temer received a R$1m bribe in exchange for awarding three
companies a construction contract for the nuclear facility.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/21/brazils-former-president-michel-temer-arrested-in-corruption-investigation

March 25, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Nuclear convoy in Brazil attacked by armed men

A convoy carrying uranium to a Brazilian nuclear plant was attacked by armed men, Task and Purpose, March 21, 2019  RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Armed men shot at members of a convoy transporting uranium to one of Brazil’s two working nuclear power plants on a coastal road in Rio de Janeiro state on Tuesday, police and the company managing the plant said.

They said the truck carrying the nuclear fuel and its police escort came under attack when it was passing by the town of Frade, about 30 km (19 miles) from Angra dos Reis, where the reactor is located.

Policemen guarding the convoy returned the attackers’ fire, police said. They said there were no injuries or arrests and the armed men fled……..

police escorting the truck fanned out alongside the road as a precautionary measure after hearing nearby gunshots. The armed men then started firing on some of the heavily armed “shock battalion” accompanying the shipment, Eletronuclear said.

The nuclear fuel used in the two reactors in Brazil, Angra 1 and Angra 2, is produced in a government installation in Resende, a city in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state located 130 km (80.78 miles) from Angra dos Reis……. https://taskandpurpose.com/a-convoy-carrying-uranium-to-a-brazilian-nuclear-plant-was-attacked-by-armed-men

March 25, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, civil liberties | Leave a comment

Nuclear transport trucks in the thick of gang gunfire in Brazil

Brazilian drug gang opens fire on convoy of trucks carrying nuclear fuel, Guardian Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro 20 Mar 2019 Latest incident raises concerns about Brazil’s nuclear security in a state struggling with violent crime A convoy of trucks carrying nuclear fuel came under armed attack on a highway in Rio de Janeiro state on Tuesday as it drove past a community controlled by a drug gang. Gang members armed with rifles opened fire on the convoy, Rio’s O Globo newspaper said.

Armed police escorting the convoy exchanged fire with armed gang members as the trucks carrying uranium continued to a nearby nuclear plant. The attack is the latest of several violent incidents in the area where Brazil has two nuclear reactors and has raised concerns about its nuclear security in a state struggling with high levels of violent crime.

The attack happened as the convoy passed the Frade community around noon near the tourist town of Angra dos Reis in the Green Coast (Costa Verde), around 200km from Rio de Janeiro. It reached the Angra 2 nuclear plant less than half an hour later, Brazil’s nuclear agency said……

Typically, such convoys have around five or six trucks and are escorted by regular police and motorbike outriders from Brazil’s Federal Highway police, the Eletronuclear spokesman Marco Antonio Alves told the Guardian. It was carrying uranium fuel to supply the Angra 2 nuclear power plant, which began operating in 2001. ……. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/20/brazilian-drug-gang-opens-fire-on-convoy-of-trucks-carrying-nuclear-fuel?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3RPlZ7l2eqbDbUKOavFnccBnocR5AjCpeedTMeCQT7686-HKxuii8rfwE

Comment by  Raymond John Cockram I‘m figuring the probability that it was refined into fuel rods is closer to the truth given it was on its way to the reactor site, what you need to remember is that the Brazilian President is a self confessed fascist so media manipulation MUST be expected.

March 21, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, incidents | Leave a comment

Brazil Seeks Nuclear Pact With U.S. During Bolsonaro’s Visit

Bloomberg, By  Sabrina Valle  March 15, 2019, 
  •  Minister says he wants Brazil open to uranium mining companies
  •  Government also supports construction of new nuclear plants

Brazil’s energy minister said the country plans to sign an accord next week with President Donald J. Trump that could pave the way for U.S. companies to explore the Latin American country for uranium and invest in new nuclear-power plants.

Bento Albuquerque, a former admiral who once ran the Brazilian Navy’s atomic program, met with U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Houston this week and discussed creating a bilateral forum on energy cooperation that would include nuclear projects. That’s expected to be part of a memorandum signed by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on his first trip to the White House next week, Albuquerque said Thursday in an interview.

The proposed collaboration is another element of the Bolsonaro administration’s push to align with Trump……https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-14/brazil-seeks-nuclear-pact-with-u-s-during-bolsonaro-s-visit

March 16, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, marketing, USA | Leave a comment

Brazil moving towards nuclear-powered submarine

February 9, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Brazil prosecutor calls for emergency safety measures at tailings dam at former Poços de Caldas uranium mine

Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office calls for emergency measures to prevent failure of tailings dam at former Poços de Caldas uranium mine

Decommissioning Projects – South/Central America  8 Feb 2019

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF)  has recommended to the President of the Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil (INB)  and to the President of the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN)  that, by March 30, all necessary steps be taken to fully implement the Emergency Action Plan for Dams (Paemb) on the tailings dam of the Mineral Treatment Unit (UTM), located in the municipality of Caldas, south of the state.
This dam contains radioactive material resulting from the first uranium mine operated in Brazil.
The exploration lasted from 1982 to 1995, when it was closed, on the grounds that the activities were economically unfeasible. Even after the end of the mine, the mine pit containing mud with radioactive waste, a decontaminated ore processing plant, dozens of equipment, and the dam with thousands of tons of uranium, thorium and radium waste remains in the mine.

In September of last year, INB noted that an “unusual event” occurred at the UTM-Caldas dam, which was immediately communicated to CNEN and the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (IBAMA) . Such an event consisted of turbidity and reduction of water flow at the outlet of the overflow pipe system of the structure. Also, actions were immediately initiated to investigate the causes of the event, by collecting special samples and intensifying the field inspections and reading the dam instrumentation.
A technical report produced by an emergency contractor at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP)  concluded that the overflow pipe system of the tailings dam is seriously compromised and that the infiltrations found on its walls favor the occurrence of so-called piping.
Piping is a process of internal erosion that damages the structure of the dam, increasing the probability of rupture, which requires immediate measures of correction and intervention [view here].

About two weeks ago, representatives of the Brazilian Nuclear Industries presented to the MPF the measures that are being implemented as a matter of urgency to change the mechanism of the overflow pipe dam system, preceded by a provisional auxiliary system, as well as the Paemb and the schedule of its Implementation. Regarding the Paemb, no concrete action has been taken so far.
For the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the relevance and complexity of the facts, already worrying about the possibility of rupture of the structure, are more serious when the tailings are considered to consist of radioactive material.
The closure of uranium exploration activities occurred in 1995, without concrete measures being taken to decommission UTM-Caldas and environmental recovery for the damages caused. The omission of INB led the Federal Public Prosecutor to file a Public Civil Action No. 4106-80.2015.4.01.3826 , in the year 2015, to demand the full environmental recovery in the area of the project. “The longer this situation lasts, the lack of concrete measures for decommissioning and environmental recovery, the greater the exposure of the environment (fauna and flora) and the population to the risk of serious and harmful events,” warns MPF.

Transparency – Another point addressed in the recommendation concerns the need and the right of the populations neighboring the project, which can be affected in the event of a possible rupture, to receive information about the dam situation in clear and accessible language.
Therefore, the MPF recommended that in five days, INB and CNEN should be widely disseminated to civil society, especially to communities that may be directly affected by a possible incident, about the risks they are exposed to.
The information should cover both the “unusual event” occurred on Sep. 25, 2018, indicating the characteristics and causes of the occurrence, as well as the potential risks arising from the situation in which the dam structure is located, the measures taken by the entrepreneur to stabilization of the enterprise and the content of the Emergency Action Plan (SAP). (MPF Feb. 7, 2019)

The latest Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office action in this case apparently was triggered by the Brumadinho tailings dam disaster on Jan. 25, 2019 (see details). http://wise-uranium.org/udsam.html#POCOSDEC http://wise-uranium.org/udsam.html#POCOSDEC

February 9, 2019 Posted by | Brazil, safety | Leave a comment

New danger for Julian Assange as Ecuador toes the USA line (and Australia won’t help him, though he’s their citizen)

More troubles for Julian Assange as Ecuador bows to pressure to extradite him following this letter, http://thewikidaily.com/more-troubles-for-julian-asange-as-ecuador-bows-to-pressure-to-extradite-him-following-this-letter/  We have been monitoring Julian asange’s asylum in Ecuadorian embassy in britain to outline the dangers the computer proggrammer and  wikileaks founder face in coming future and it seems alot have been happening lately than the mainstream media’s  are reporting.

Ecuador has begun a “Special Examination” of Julian Assange’s asylum and citizenship as it looks to the IMF for a bailout, the whistleblowing site reports, with conditions including handing over the WikiLeaks founder.

Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa tweeted an image of the letter he received from the State Comptroller General on December 19, which outlines the upcoming examination by the Direction National de Auditoria.

The audit will “determine whether the procedures for granting  asylum and naturalization to Julian Assange were carried out in accordance with national and international law,” and will cover the period between January 1, 2012 and September 20, 2018.

Assange has been in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since he sought asylum there in 2012. He was granted Ecuadorian citizenship last December in a bid to protect him from being extradited to the US where he fears he faces secret charges for publishing US government cables and documents.

WikiLeaks tweeted the news on Wednesday, joining the dots between the audit and Ecuador’s consideration of an International Monetary Fund bailout. The country owes China more than $6.5 billion in debt and falling oil prices have affected its repayment abilities.

According to WikiLeaks, Ecuador is considering a $10 billion bailout which would allegedly come with conditions such as “the US government demanded handing over Assange and dropping environmental claims against Chevron,” for its role in polluting the Amazon rainforest.

Assange’s position has increasingly been under threat under Correa’s successor, President Lenin Moreno, with Ecuadorian authorities restricting his internet access and visitors.“I believe they are going to turn over Assange to the US government,

January 14, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, SOUTH AMERICA, UK | 1 Comment

White House fury as Russian nuclear planes visit Venezuela 

December 13, 2018 Posted by | Religion and ethics, Russia, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

Russia sends 2 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela 

Canberra Times, 10 Dec 18 Moscow: Two Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers arrived in Venezuela on Monday, a deployment that comes amid soaring Russia-US tensions.Russia’s Defence Ministry said a pair Tu-160 bombers landed at Maiquetia airport outside Caracas on Monday following a 10,000-kilometre flight. It didn’t say if the bombers were carrying any weapons and didn’t say how long they will stay in Venezuela……..

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at last week’s meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Vladimir Padrino Lopez that Russia would continue to send its military aircraft and warships to visit Venezuela as part of bilateral military cooperation. ….

Russia-US relations are currently at post-Cold War lows over Ukraine, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. Russia has bristled at US and other NATO allies deploying their troops and weapons near its borders. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/south-america/russia-sends-2-nuclear-capable-bombers-to-venezuela-20181211-p50lea.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

December 11, 2018 Posted by | Russia, SOUTH AMERICA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia renews nuclear energy ties with Argentina as pressure over Khashoggi rises 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/saudi-arabia-renews-nuclear-energy-ties-with-argentina-as-pressure-over-khashoggi-rises

by John Siciliano
 | December 05, 2018 Saudi Arabia held discussions with Argentina on nuclear energy development Wednesday, a sign the kingdom is moving closer to other countries on energy cooperation as ties with the U.S. grow strained over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The president of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, Dr. Khalid bin Saleh Al-Sultan, met in Saudi Arabia with Argentina’s ambassador, Marcelo Gilardoni, to review “joint cooperation between the two countries in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy,” the government-run Saudi Press Agency reported on Wednesday. The meeting took place just days after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in Buenos Aires for the G-20 meeting.

“They also discussed the National Atomic Energy Project in Saudi Arabia,” the Saudi agency reported. Argentina, which generates one-tenth of its energy from nuclear power, has a cooperation agreement with the oil-rich country and established a joint venture with Saudi Arabia in 2015 to leverage the South American country’s expertise.

The U.S. administration has been pressing hard for Saudi Arabia to choose U.S. firms to build the first nuclear power plant in the country, but experts in recent months have said those talks are likely on hold amid the controversy surrounding the murder of Khashoggi.

CIA Director Gina Haspel gave a closed briefing to senators on the killing on Tuesday, where it was conveyed to U.S. lawmakers that the crown prince was behind Khashoggi’s October murder in Turkey.

Argentina’s legal authorities also requested more information on a complaint filed ahead of the G-20 meeting by Human Rights Watch, asking that the country look into possible war crimes by the crown prince in the war in Yemen.

Meanwhile, Argentina moved closer to Russia on nuclear energy development during the meeting.

Argentina entered into a joint agreement with Russia to work on nuclear power projects. The signing of the agreement was witnessed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Argentine President Mauricio Macri, according to news reports.

While on the sidelines of the meeting, a bold handshake between Crown Prince Mohammed and Putin at the meeting went viral on social media, while public displays between the crown prince and President Trump were not readily apparent.

December 6, 2018 Posted by | politics international, Saudi Arabia, SOUTH AMERICA | 1 Comment

China and USA competing to market technology to Argentina

China, vying with U.S. in Latin America, eyes Argentina nuclear deal, Cassandra Garrison, Matt Spetalnick, BUENOS AIRES/WASHINGTON (Reuters) 29 Nov 18 – Argentina and China are aiming to close a deal within days for the construction of the South American nation’s fourth nuclear power plant, a multi-billion dollar project that would cement Beijing’s deepening influence in a key regional U.S. ally.

Argentina hopes to announce an agreement on the Chinese-financed construction of the Atucha III nuclear power plant during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit on Sunday following the summit of leaders of G20 industrialized nations in Buenos Aires, Juan Pablo Tripodi, head of Argentina’s national investment agency, told Reuters in an interview.

The potential deal, reportedly worth up to $8 billion, is emblematic of China’s strengthening of economic, diplomatic and cultural ties with Argentina. It is part of a wider push by Beijing into Latin America that has alarmed the United States, which views the region as its backyard and is suspicious of China’s motives.

………. The negotiations on Chinese financing of the Atucha III nuclear power plant are a key cause for concern for the U.S. government, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters.

Atucha III would be one of the biggest projects financed by China in Argentina, according to the Reuters review of Chinese state funding data…….. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-china-insight/china-vying-with-u-s-in-latin-america-eyes-argentina-nuclear-deal-idUSKCN1NX0FE

December 1, 2018 Posted by | China, marketing, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

Brazil’s new President – a danger to environment and to action against climate change

October 29, 2018 Posted by | Brazil, climate change | Leave a comment

Argentina’s nuclear power industry in trouble

FT 24th Sept 2018 , Argentina’s long-established nuclear power industry is facing financial
difficulties as the government seeks to balance the budget. This could
delay important projects, not least as Argentina aims to be a player in
what may well develop into a growing global market for small-scale
reactors. The national industry began much thanks to a German scientist
described by some as a fantasist and a scammer. In the late 1940s, Ronald
Richter convinced Argentina’s President Juan Domingo Perón to underwrite
research, at a secret lab in Patagonia, into building what he called a
Thermotron. After three years and spending about $410m in today’s money,
the project proved a failure that eventually landed Richter in jail for
fraud.
https://www.ft.com/content/d138b4a8-95b4-11e8-95f8-8640db9060a7

September 26, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, SOUTH AMERICA | Leave a comment

Latin American and Caribbean nations lead the way towards nuclear disarmament

Disarmament over deterrence: Nuclear lessons from Latin America, https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/disarmament-over-deterrence-nuclear-lessons-from-latin-america/  By Christopher Dunlap, August 1, 2018

In late May, the National Security Archive released newly declassified US documents from more than 50 years ago showing Mexico’s support for nuclear disarmament far beyond the boundaries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The documents reveal that Mexico’s ambassador to United Nations negotiations in Geneva sought to contribute unambiguous language on disarmament, peaceful nuclear use, and nuclear-weapon-free zones to the text of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), finalized in 1968. The NPT bears many of the same philosophical and legal imprints as the Treaty of Tlatelolco finalized the previous year, which banned nuclear weapons development, storage, or deployment south of the Rio Grande and in the Caribbean basin.

Today the world is closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1960s. The deterioration of United States relations with at least three nuclear hotspots across the world – North Korea, Russia, and Iran – explains a great deal of the grave assessment that “major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race.”

The vast majority of the world’s nations, however, have renounced nuclear weapons. In 2017, 122 of the United Nations’ 193 member countries voted to approve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which calls for complete global nuclear disarmament on humanitarian grounds. These countries believe that nuclear weapons, no matter which nations possess them, pose an unacceptable threat to human life and to an increasingly fragile planet. For them, security is disarmament. For political and military leaders in nuclear-armed countries, on the other hand, security is deterrence, in which the threat of destruction by nuclear weapons keeps the world’s strongest militaries from initiating war.

If these mutually exclusive languages of disarmament and deterrence can be translated into some common vocabulary, and if the politics of fear dissipate, a complete global ban on nuclear weapons has a chance to succeed. A half-century ago, a similarly ambitious plan faced long odds and a bumpy road from idea to reality.

Success story. The Treaty of Tlatelolco, finalized in February 1967, created a regional microcosm of a nuclear-weapon-free world. In addition to banning nuclear weapons, Latin American and Caribbean diplomats and heads of state obtained guarantees from the world’s nuclear-armed nations (and its lingering overseas empires, among them, Britain, France, and the Netherlands) to abide by the same rules. Remarkably, almost all of these guarantees in the treaty’s additional protocols – including those made by the United States and the Soviet Union – were ratified within 15 years, lightning speed in the world of nuclear diplomacy, and long before the treaty itself entered into force with Cuba’s accession in 2002.

It is no wonder, then, that Latin American and Caribbean nations dominate the list of the 58 early signatories of last year’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The region’s percentage of signatory nations (33 percent) is roughly double that of its share of total member countries of the United Nations (17 percent). The most likely explanation for such disarmament enthusiasm almost certainly centers on what happened at Tlatelolco. After Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev removed nuclear missiles from Cuba in 1962, Mexican diplomat Alfonso García Robles led a long and contentious negotiation process, concluding in 1967 with an agreement that stands today as both a landmark of nuclear nonproliferation and a model for global disarmament.

The Treaty of Tlatelolco served as both a call and a blueprint to create four additional nuclear-weapon-free zones in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa. Nearly three-fifths of the world’s countries now belong to these zones.

Different priorities. Disarmament ranked well above nonproliferation as the motive force for creating the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the world’s first nuclear weapons ban in a populated area. Appearing before any other specific legal provision in the treaty’s text, “general and complete disarmament under effective international control” stood as Tlatelolco’s ultimate goal. Secondarily, the treaty aimed to check the spread of nuclear weapons to countries not already possessing them. Lastly, the agreement’s preamble sought to preserve the uninhibited use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, defending Latin American and Caribbean nations’ “right to the greatest and most equitable possible access” to the atom’s immense potential for economic and social development.

The NPT’s Article VI, which calls for all parties “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” traces back to a more specifically worded draft proposal from Mexico, requiring nations with nuclear weapons to prohibit their testing, manufacturing, and storage “with all speed and perseverance,” and to work toward “the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles.” (Last year’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is in fact the fulfillment of the last clause of Article VI of the NPT, an agreement to pursue a “treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”)

But nuclear weapon states sought a role for continued deterrence in the NPT by inserting a division that the architects of Tlatelolco had rejected, parting the world into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” with separate and unequal sets of rights and responsibilities. In the view of Argentine diplomat Julio César Carasales, the NPT represented the “disarmament of the disarmed,” conferring almost unlimited privileges on nuclear-armed powers while subjecting the rest of the world to onerous restrictions, even on peaceful technology. And while the NPT vaguely promised general and complete disarmament through Article VI, it did not mandate any timeline or procedure by which nuclear-armed countries would actually dismantle their weapons. From 1975, when the first NPT Review Conference took place among the treaty’s parties, until 2010, when the preparatory committee for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons began meeting, non-nuclear weapon states had only one shot every five years to try to hold weapon nations accountable to their promises of disarmament.

A 50-year-old road map. With the adoption of last year’s ban treaty, the 184 UN member countries and two observer states that do not possess nuclear weapons now have an agreement with the potential to gradually discredit nuclear weapons (and their role in deterrence) as illegitimate tools of global security. By following the lead of international treaties prohibiting other classes of weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical, land mines, and cluster munitions – the proponents of the 2017 agreement are hoping that, someday, the leaders of nuclear-armed states might agree that global security lies in disarmament instead of deterrence.

It certainly won’t be easy. Like the architects of the Tlatelolco agreement that entered into force 35 years after it was finalized, the UN diplomats and civil society organizations that hashed out the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons crafted an ambitious, audacious document that they may not live to see made into law. At least two prominent American nuclear policy and disarmament experts view the UN treaty as a series of lost opportunities to educate citizens of nuclear-armed nations about the threats posed by those arms of mass destruction. Worse, three historical allies among the world’s small club of nuclear-armed countries—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—immediately rejected the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons for failing to “address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary.”

Indeed, there is no reason to think that nine nuclear-armed nations will be persuaded anytime soon to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction that they rely on for deterrence. But a path to disarmament-based security is viable. Latin American and Caribbean visionaries gave us the road map at Tlatelolco a half-century ago. They were correct on at least two points: A world free of nuclear weapons is not only possible; it is fundamental to our long-term survival.

August 4, 2018 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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