Tag Archives: Russia

On Nagasaki Anniversary, UN Chief Warns ‘Humanity Now Confronts a New Arms Race’

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“We will not sit idly by as nuclear-armed states race to create even more dangerous weapons,” he said, calling for abolishing such arms.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 8-9-2023 by Common Dreams

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Photo: UNclimatechange/flickr/CC

Nearly eight decades after the United States dropped an atomic bomb codenamed “Fat Man” on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday was among the voices around the world renewing calls for eliminating nuclear weapons.

In a message to the Nagasaki Peace Memorial on the 78th anniversary of the 1945 bombing, Guterres said that “this ceremony is an opportunity to remember a moment of unmatched horror for humanity.”

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On 78th Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing, Mayor Decries ‘Folly’ of Deterrence Theory

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“Believers of proactive nuclear deterrence, who say nuclear weapons are indispensable to maintain peace, are only delaying the progress toward nuclear disarmament,” Hiroshima’s governor added.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 8-6-2023 by Common Dreams

The Memorial Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Photo: UNESCO

Local, national, and global leaders warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons as they commemorated the 78th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima Sunday.

This year’s anniversary comes as the release of the film Oppenheimer has offered a high-profile reminder of the history of the atomic bomb and as nuclear tensions in the current day have heightened, in part due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the start of the year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their doomsday clock to 90 seconds to midnight.

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Military alliances like NATO won’t solve our greatest security threat

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Things may look rosy for NATO today, but climate breakdown, not wars, are the biggest threat to global security

By Paul Rogers. Published 7-14-2023 by openDemocracy

Finland accession to NATO ceremony. Photo: Estonian Foreign Ministry/flickr/CC

NATO really is on a roll thanks to Vladimir Putin, but even as its immediate prospects look good, the whole future of the alliance should be open to question.

For now, as Finland and Sweden join, Putin finds an enlarged alliance ranged against him. NATO’s reputation is so bound up with the fate of Ukraine that, in the unlikely event that Russia makes substantial military gains in the conflict, Kyiv cannot be allowed to lose. From Putin’s perspective, his warning early last year of the threat posed to Russia from NATO has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This does at least mean he can claim ‘I told you so’ – which is helping maintain some domestic support.

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Biden Administration Poised to Supply Ukraine With Banned Cluster Bombs

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An official announcement is expected very soon.

By Common Dreams. Published 7-1-2023

Allegedly out of date NATO CBU-87 cluster bomb used in bombing of Yugoslavia; in 1999. Photo: Petar Milošević/Wikimedia Commons/CC

The Biden administration is considering providing Ukraine with cluster bombs and may announce this decision in early July, NBC News reports.

“We have been thinking about DPICM for a long time,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday at the National Press Club. “Yes, of course, there’s a decision-making process ongoing.”

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Any incident at Ukraine nuclear plant ‘would be deliberate act by Russia’

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Ukrainian nuclear experts say an accident at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant would be “almost impossible”

By Kateryna Farbar. Published 6-28-2023 by openDemocracy

The IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhya (ISAMZ) arrives at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant i September 2022. Photo: IAEA Imagebank/flickr/CC

An accident at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would be “almost impossible” and any damage would be a deliberate act by Russian forces, Ukrainian nuclear personnel have told openDemocracy.

Russia has occupied the plant, in the city of Enerhodar, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Its forces are currently preparing to damage the occupied plant, Ukrainian officials claim, in order to stop Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the country’s southeast.

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Nuclear weapons on rise in a world where ‘peace through deterrence’ is a myth

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Powerful nations are prepared to use nuclear weapons first. This is why their proliferation is worrying analysts

By Paul Rogers. Published 6-16-2023 by openDemocracy

A B61 tactical nuclear weapon, probably an inert training version. U.S. AIR FORCE

The world is “drifting into one of the most dangerous periods in human history”, according to a leading security research centre, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). At the root of its concern is that, though the number of nuclear warheads is still far lower than during the Cold War years, nuclear modernisation and development programmes in the nine nuclear-armed states are leading to an expansion in the number of warheads held.

The numbers are small, according to the SIPRI Yearbook 2023: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, just 86 more warheads than in January last year in a global inventory of 12,512. So why the concern? Who has the warheads and why is the number increasing rather than decreasing?

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Hundreds of Thousands Rally Against Poland’s Authoritarian Right-Wing Government

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“We are now at a crossroads between being an authoritarian and a democratic country,” said one activist.

By Jake Johnson. Published 6-5-2023 by Common Dreams

People take part in a march against Poland’s right-wing government in Warsaw on June 4, 2023. Photo: Germany Today/Twitter

An estimated 500,000 people took to the streets of the capital Warsaw and other Polish cities on Sunday to protest the nation’s far-right government, which has assailed reproductive freedoms, attacked the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and cracked down on critical civil society groups and media outlets.

Sunday’s march against the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party—which has held power since 2015—was called by former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who is leading the Civic Platform opposition party into an expected October general election.

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Could Iran’s new nuclear bunker increase the risk of an Israeli attack?

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If Israel keeps its far-right government and Trump returns, chances of an attack on Iran will increase

By Paul Rogers. Published 5-26-2023 by openDemocracy

Former President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Reports that Iran is constructing a very large, deep bunker as part of its nuclear programme mean there is a renewed risk of an upsurge in tension, and the potential for conflict, most likely involving Israel but always with risk of it spreading much wider.

Context here is important.

During Barack Obama’s second term in the White House, countries including the UK, France and Germany, worked hard with the US to forge an agreement with the Iranian regime to avoid Iran developing nuclear weapons. A powerful motivation was the risk of Israel otherwise taking unilateral action.

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Chinese Immigrants Sue Florida Over DeSantis’s Discriminatory Law Banning Home Purchases

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“All Asian Americans will feel the stigma and the chilling effect created by this Florida law, just like the discriminatory laws did to our ancestors more than a hundred years ago.”

By Julia Conley. Published 5-22-2023 by Common Dreams

Governor Ron DeSantis speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

Accusing Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of enacting an unconstitutional law that would not have been out of place at the turn of the last century, a group of Chinese American immigrants on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state over S.B. 264, which restricts most Chinese citizens from purchasing homes in Florida.

The law is set to take effect on July 1, but the plaintiffs and the groups representing them—including the ACLU, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA), and the ACLU of Florida—hope to block the measure in the courts.

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‘A Death Sentence’: Green Groups Decry G7 Support for More Gas Investments

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“Energy security can only be achieved by rapidly and equitably phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy, not locking in deadly fossil fuels and lining the pockets of oil and gas executives,” said one critic.

By Jessica Corbett Published 5-21-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists with masks of Group of Seven leaders protest fossil fuels. (Photo: 350.org Japan/Friends of the Earth Japan/Oil Change International)

Since Group of Seven leaders on Saturday put out a wide-ranging communiqué from a Japan-hosted summit in Hiroshima, climate action advocates from G7 countries and beyond have blasted the statement’s support for future investments in planet-heating gas.

The statement comes after G7 climate, energy, and environment ministers were criticized for their communiqué from a meeting in Sapporo last month as well as protests around the world this week pressuring the summit’s attendees to ditch fossil fuels and “deliver a clear and just renewable energy agenda for a peaceful world.”

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