Author: Brian Terrell

Four months ago, two days before the civilized world celebrated one year since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force on January 22, officials here at the Kansas City National Security Campus hosted a virtual celebration of a different milestone with partners from across the National Nuclear Security Administration and U.S. Air Force. "With great pride and excitement," they recognized the completion of the B61-12 bomb’s Life Extension Program’s first production unit. This plant is responsible for producing 39 major non-nuclear component assemblies of the B61-12.

The trillion-dollar program of extending the lives of nuclear weapons is at odds with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified into law by the United States, flouting Article VI of the treaty, which requires "all Parties undertake to pursue good-faith negotiations on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race, to nuclear disarmament, and to general and complete disarmament." In the nine years since the B61-12 Life Extension Program was put into action, the life expectancy of humans in this country has plummeted. Undaunted, the NNSA boasts that it has extended the life expectancy of the B61-12 by at least 20 years!

Continue reading “‘An Unspeakable Crime’”

On Wednesday, October 20, I joined "Vrede Scheppen," "Create Peace," about 25 peace activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Austria at the airbase at Volkel, Netherlands, making a plea for an end to nuclear weapons. This base is home to two Dutch F16 fighter wings and the United States Air Force 703rd Munitions Support Squadron. In violation of international and Dutch law and part of a "sharing agreement," the U.S. Air Force maintains 15-20 B61 nuclear bombs there and in violation of the same laws, the Dutch military stands ready for the order to deliver those bombs.

Besides our small multinational protest, on that same day the Dutch and U.S. militaries at Volkel were participating in another international collaboration, this one for a different purpose than ours, the annual NATO exercise "Steadfast Noon," literally a rehearsal for the extinction of humanity.

As we gathered at a wayside near the base with F16 fighters roaring over us, a few of the local police watched from a distance. We greeted old and new friends, sang, prayed, shared food and distributed pink shovels and conspired to dig our way into the base, onto the runway and disrupt the practice. Hardly a clandestine plot, this "digging for peace" was organized openly and local authorities were informed. Our purpose was get into the base, “to advocate that the old nuclear bombs be removed and the CO2 emissions of the armed forces be counted in the climate targets and to protest against the arrival of new nuclear bombs,” but our expectation was to be stopped while trying.

Continue reading “Digging for Peace – Resisting Nuclear Weapons”

The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis. There is much discussion in today’s news about who is responsible for the shortcomings. Did Trump find the shelves empty or full when he took office after President Obama? Is the stockpile meant to support local governments in dealing with shortages in such a crisis, as the DHHS website said until last Friday, or is it specifically meant for use by the federal government, "our stockpile… not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use," as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner insists, a view supported by the newly amended DHHS website?

The United States maintains other strategic stockpiles, more carefully and at a far greater expense. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a stockpile of oil and gasoline and in 2009, President Obama announced the "Stockpile Stewardship Program," pledging more than a trillion dollars to ensure the "safety, security, and reliability" and the "life extension" of the deteriorating nuclear weapons stockpile. A common dictionary definition of the word "stewardship" is an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources for the future, but in 2009, President Obama was not speaking of stewardship over the fragile environment, nor over the crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges and tunnels, nor hospitals or schools, nor even stewardship for our national parks and forests, but stewardship for a stockpile of nuclear weapons. The "life extension" he called for was not for the world’s elderly increasingly at risk, but for the aging arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threaten the obliteration of all life.

President Trump’s determination to purge his predecessor’s legacy does not apply to Obama’s Stockpile Stewardship Program. With unique bipartisan support, the life extension of nuclear weapons has been kept safe from Trump’s budget cuts that decimated the United States’ ability to respond to a pandemic.

On this day in 1967 (April 4), one year before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech at New York’s Riverside Church titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," that speaks to the present situation where weapons of mass destruction have priority over instruments of healing. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift," Dr. King declared, "is approaching spiritual death." In this speech Dr. King labeled the "triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism" and he lamented that "adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube" while human needs, especially those of the poor, went unmet.

Continue reading “A Tale of Two Stockpiles: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Anniversary of his Murder in a Pandemic Year”

“Whether nuclear weapons are actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in this case,” so ruled Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, late on Friday October 18. This last-minute order, restricting the defense of seven antinuclear activists at a trial that began Monday morning the 21st, made a short trial a foregone conclusion. It also, more than any evidence that the yet to be impaneled jury would eventually hear, made their convictions all but certain.

On trial were seven Catholics, who on April 4, 2018 -the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination- cut through a fence and entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia, homeport for six Trident nuclear submarines, where in an act of symbolic disarmament, they poured bottles of their own blood onto military plaques and hammered statues of nuclear missiles. In a previous August 26 ruling on the activists claim that their actions were protected under the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act (RFRA) Judge Wood agreed that the “Defendants’ actions at Kings Bay were exercises of their sincerely held religious beliefs that they should take action in opposition to the presence of nuclear weapons at Kings Bay,” and that their actions were “‘religious exercises’ within the meaning of RFRA.”

Continue reading “A Doubtful Proposition: A Reflection on the Trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7”

On Thursday, January 11, the sixteenth anniversary of the opening of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was marked by a coalition of 15 human rights organizations gathered in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in Washington, DC. An interfaith prayer service was followed by a rally featuring song and poetry and addresses by activists from the sponsoring organizations, including attorneys for some of those detained at Guantanamo, few of these charged with any crime and some cleared for release years ago. Despite his declaration that “In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantanamo, we have compromised our most precious values,” President Obama failed to fulfill his promise to close the prison and days before his inauguration last year, Donald Trump tweeted, “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

I participated in the day’s events as part of the Witness Against Torture community. This was our fourth day of fasting, reflection and action together and many of us wore orange jump suits and black hoods representing the 41 Muslim men still held there. After the rally, WAT performed a simple ritual, serving 41 cups of tea one at a time to “detainees” who each lifted their hood to accept their cup and take a sip before laying it down in a row on the sidewalk. The names of the men were spoken aloud and had been written on each of the styrofoam cups, remembering that drawing and writing on such cups has been one of few outlets for expression for many detainees.

Continue reading “Solidarity from Central Cellblock to Guantanamo”

On December 11, in response to the growing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, more than 50 concerned people including representatives of various peace, justice and human rights organizations and communities, gathered in New York City’s Ralph Bunche Park, across First Avenue from the United Nations. Our message, which was communicated on signs and banners and by speakers addressing the rally, was simple and direct: end the war crimes being committed by the military of the United States along with Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners abetted by the US and end the blockade of Yemeni ports.

For more than two years, Saudi/US bombing has targeted civilian infrastructure: Hospitals, schools, factories, markets, funerals, sea ports, electrical power stations and water treatment facilities. US drones strikes and incursions by US Special Forces into Yemen have killed civilians as well. Armed conflict has directly taken the lives of some 12,000 people, but that tragic number is greatly exceeded by the number of those who are dying from a combination of malnutrition and otherwise easily preventable ailments and diseases like respiratory infections, measles, and cholera, including more than 1,000 children each week. 20 million of Yemen’s population of 28 million people are food insecure and few have access to clean drinking water. More than half of the hospitals in the country are not functioning.

Continue reading “A Story of Two Blockades: New York City and Yemen”