Obama's Trillion-Dollar Nuclear-Arms Train Wreck
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_trillion-dollar_nuclear-arms_trai
n_wreck_20160414/
Posted on Apr 14, 2016
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
The atomic cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. (Wikimedia
Commons)
STANFORD, Calif.-"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." These
were the words from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad-Gita, that
flashed through the mind of the man credited with creating the first atomic
bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as the first nuclear explosion in history lit
up the dark desert sky at the Trinity blast site in New Mexico on July 16,
1945.
Weeks after that, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, killed
hundreds of thousands of civilians, and thrust the world into the atomic
age. Since then, humanity has lived with the terrible prospect of nuclear
war and mass annihilation. Conventional wisdom holds that the likelihood
that these unconventional weapons will be used has decreased since the end
of the so-called Cold War. That perception has been challenged lately,
especially since President Barack Obama announced a 30-year, $1 trillion
program to modernize the U.S. nuclear-weapon arsenal.
Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on
Monday, the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to visit the site. Kerry
was in Japan for a meeting of the G-7 nations. In his public remarks at the
memorial, Kerry offered no apology for the nuclear attacks. He did say,
though, that the museum "was a reminder of the depth of obligation that
every single one of us in public life carries-in fact, every person in
position of responsibility carries-to work for peace ... to create and
pursue a world free from nuclear weapons."
Despite the lofty rhetoric, President Obama has launched what the Alliance
for Nuclear Accountability calls the "Trillion Dollar Trainwreck." That is
the title of a new report on Obama's massive plan to modernize the U.S.
nuclear-weapons arsenal, to be released next Monday. Marylia Kelley is one
of the report's authors. She serves as executive director of Tri-Valley
CAREs, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a partner
organization with the Alliance. Of Kerry's visit to Hiroshima, Kelley said,
on the "Democracy Now!" news hour, "Kerry went empty-handed. The United
States needs to go with a concrete plan to roll back its own nuclear-weapons
program. You cannot preach abstinence, in terms of nuclear weapons, from the
biggest bar stool in the room."
READ: "The Terror America Wrought" by Robert Scheer
"The United States is initiating a new nuclear arms race, because the other
nuclear-armed states, of course, when they look at our 'modernization
program,' are now beginning their own," she told us. "We need this to be
rolled back." Kelley lives in Livermore, California, home to one of the U.S.
government's national laboratories dedicated to developing and manufacturing
nuclear bombs.
President Obama delivered his first address on the U.S. nuclear arsenal on
April 5, 2009, in Prague: "Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands
of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of
global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone
up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued.
Black-market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound," he
said.
As with his pledge to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, his pledge to
move the U.S. toward nuclear disarmament seems to have been abandoned.
Grass-roots groups in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability would like to
see Obama make an historic trip to Hiroshima, as the first sitting U.S.
president to do so. "If Obama goes to Hiroshima," Marylia Kelley said, "he
needs to use that as an opportunity, not to speak empty promises and
rhetoric about an eventual world free of nuclear weapons, but to make
concrete proposals about how the United States is going to take steps in
that direction and how we're going to change course, because right now we're
taking giant steps in the opposite direction."
The U.S. nuclear arsenal, and all the expense, nuclear waste and immense
danger it continuously poses, has received almost no attention in the U.S.
presidential debates. The day after he launched his campaign in late May
2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked about the trillion-dollar
nuclear-arsenal upgrade at a town hall in New Hampshire. "What all of this
is about is our national priorities," he replied. "Who are we as a people?
Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex, who has never seen
a war that they didn't like? Or do we listen to the people of this country
who are hurting?"
In 1946, the year after Trinity, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert
Einstein, whose theory of relativity gave birth to the atomic bomb, offered
a warning to the world that remains starkly relevant today: "The unleashed
power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we
thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on more than 1,300 stations. She is the co-author, with
Denis Moynihan, of "The Silenced Majority," a New York Times best-seller.
(c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Obama's Trillion-Dollar Nuclear-Arms Train Wreck
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_trillion-dollar_nuclear-arms_trai
n_wreck_20160414/
Posted on Apr 14, 2016
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
The atomic cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. (Wikimedia Commons)
STANFORD, Calif.-"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." These
were the words from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad-Gita, that
flashed through the mind of the man credited with creating the first atomic
bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as the first nuclear explosion in history lit
up the dark desert sky at the Trinity blast site in New Mexico on July 16,
1945.
Weeks after that, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, killed
hundreds of thousands of civilians, and thrust the world into the atomic
age. Since then, humanity has lived with the terrible prospect of nuclear
war and mass annihilation. Conventional wisdom holds that the likelihood
that these unconventional weapons will be used has decreased since the end
of the so-called Cold War. That perception has been challenged lately,
especially since President Barack Obama announced a 30-year, $1 trillion
program to modernize the U.S. nuclear-weapon arsenal.
Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on
Monday, the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to visit the site. Kerry
was in Japan for a meeting of the G-7 nations. In his public remarks at the
memorial, Kerry offered no apology for the nuclear attacks. He did say,
though, that the museum "was a reminder of the depth of obligation that
every single one of us in public life carries-in fact, every person in
position of responsibility carries-to work for peace ... to create and
pursue a world free from nuclear weapons."
Despite the lofty rhetoric, President Obama has launched what the Alliance
for Nuclear Accountability calls the "Trillion Dollar Trainwreck." That is
the title of a new report on Obama's massive plan to modernize the U.S.
nuclear-weapons arsenal, to be released next Monday. Marylia Kelley is one
of the report's authors. She serves as executive director of Tri-Valley
CAREs, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a partner
organization with the Alliance. Of Kerry's visit to Hiroshima, Kelley said,
on the "Democracy Now!" news hour, "Kerry went empty-handed. The United
States needs to go with a concrete plan to roll back its own nuclear-weapons
program. You cannot preach abstinence, in terms of nuclear weapons, from the
biggest bar stool in the room."
READ: "The Terror America Wrought" by Robert Scheer
"The United States is initiating a new nuclear arms race, because the other
nuclear-armed states, of course, when they look at our 'modernization
program,' are now beginning their own," she told us. "We need this to be
rolled back." Kelley lives in Livermore, California, home to one of the U.S.
government's national laboratories dedicated to developing and manufacturing
nuclear bombs.
President Obama delivered his first address on the U.S. nuclear arsenal on
April 5, 2009, in Prague: "Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands
of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of
global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone
up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued.
Black-market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound," he
said.
As with his pledge to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, his pledge to
move the U.S. toward nuclear disarmament seems to have been abandoned.
Grass-roots groups in the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability would like to
see Obama make an historic trip to Hiroshima, as the first sitting U.S.
president to do so. "If Obama goes to Hiroshima," Marylia Kelley said, "he
needs to use that as an opportunity, not to speak empty promises and
rhetoric about an eventual world free of nuclear weapons, but to make
concrete proposals about how the United States is going to take steps in
that direction and how we're going to change course, because right now we're
taking giant steps in the opposite direction."
The U.S. nuclear arsenal, and all the expense, nuclear waste and immense
danger it continuously poses, has received almost no attention in the U.S.
presidential debates. The day after he launched his campaign in late May
2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked about the trillion-dollar
nuclear-arsenal upgrade at a town hall in New Hampshire. "What all of this
is about is our national priorities," he replied. "Who are we as a people?
Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex, who has never seen
a war that they didn't like? Or do we listen to the people of this country
who are hurting?"
In 1946, the year after Trinity, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert
Einstein, whose theory of relativity gave birth to the atomic bomb, offered
a warning to the world that remains starkly relevant today: "The unleashed
power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we
thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on more than 1,300 stations. She is the co-author, with
Denis Moynihan, of "The Silenced Majority," a New York Times best-seller.
(c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/democracy_spring_activists_take_
capitol_rotunda_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/democracy_spring_activists_take_
capitol_rotunda_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/democracy_spring_activists_take_
capitol_rotunda_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/bankers_for_bernie_wall_streeter
s_fight_for_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/bankers_for_bernie_wall_streeter
s_fight_for_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/bankers_for_bernie_wall_streeter
s_fight_for_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/this_is_an_uprising_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/this_is_an_uprising_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/this_is_an_uprising_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_trump_great_again_taking_the_donald
_to_toddler_town_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_trump_great_again_taking_the_donald
_to_toddler_town_20160415/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_trump_great_again_taking_the_donald
_to_toddler_town_20160415/ http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
http://www.truthdig.com/about/http://www.truthdig.com/contact/http://www.tru
thdig.com/about/advertising/http://www.truthdig.com/user_agreement/http://ww
w.truthdig.com/privacy_policy/http://www.truthdig.com/about/comment_policy/
C 2016 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
http://www.hopstudios.com/
http://support.truthdig.com/signup_page/subscribe
http://support.truthdig.com/signup_page/subscribe
http://www.facebook.com/truthdig
http://www.facebook.com/truthdighttp://twitter.com/intent/follow?source=foll
owbutton&variant=1.0&screen_name=truthdig
http://twitter.com/intent/follow?source=followbutton&variant=1.0&screen_name
=truthdighttps://plus.google.com/+truthdighttps://plus.google.com/+truthdigh
ttp://www.linkedin.com/company/truthdighttp://www.linkedin.com/company/truth
dighttp://truthdig.tumblr.com/
http://truthdig.tumblr.com/http://www.truthdig.com/connect
http://www.truthdig.com/connect
