Nuclear abolition

  TFF PressInfo # 470 Lund, Sweden – July 27, 2018 Forgive us for saying it but the coverage of the Putin-Trump meeting in the mainstream press has been painful to witness – the US media in particular. Navel-gazing in the extreme and turning the Presidential Summit meeting about their relations and international affairs into a US domestic policy affair. The Western media questions -also the so-called respected media – matched the rest in their narrow-minded tabloid attitude – one super fool believing he could get Putin to talk about what he “has” on Trump concerning alleged prostitute hiring in Moscow years ago – prestitutes about prostitutes! Write to tff@transnational.live and get TFF PressInfo from now on – it’s free because TFF is free And – which your free press has hardly mentioned – one journalist, Sam Husseini, who intended to ask about nuclear disarmament was forcefully ejected from the...

  By Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev June 16, 2018 • Russia and the United States are not condemned to confrontation. We must now make up for lost time! Mikhail Gorbachev’s Address to Participants in the Conference Marking the 30th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s Visit and the Moscow Summit. Originally published at the homepage of the Gorbachev Foundation on June 4, 2018 I welcome all who have gathered to mark the thirtieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Moscow and the US-Soviet summit. I think it was a truly historic event. It was a kind of summing up of the work we had done, starting in Geneva and then going through Reykjavik and Washington to Moscow. It was not an easy path. Its first major milestone was the Joint US-Soviet Statement which declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and that “the two sides will...

Image credit below   Introduction TFF believes it is of utmost importance to abolish nuclear weapons. While some may maintain that the risk that nuclear weapons will be used is small, others will argue that the consequences – no matter the risk – would be catastrophic beyond imagination and morally unacceptable and that no political goal can legitimate their use. Therefore, its an imperative to educate ourselves about these things – the media in generally having abdicated their responsibility to provide public education about this and other controversial themes. No matter what knowledge and opinion each of us has, there is no doubt that the risk of nuclear weapons use has increased in 2017-2018 due to a series of developments and political statements that must be judged to be grossly irresponsible and could, whether intended or not, lead to catastrophic misinterpretations, fear and panic reactions. If you use the Search...

  By Jan Oberg Commenting on PressTV – also on how the Western mainstream press that publishes any piece of hysteria about Russia and China keep virtually silent about this and also the equally dangerous US National Defence Strategy that appeared a few days before this. Photo collage above © Jan Oberg 2018        

His first Nuclear Posture Review: more nukes, more posturing. By Ashley Feinberg Photo: Jim Watson via Getty Images President Donald Trump at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo on Nov. 5.   In his first year in office, President Barack Obama gave a landmark address in Prague in which he famously affirmed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The commitment to total nuclear disarmament was a major departure from the George W. Bush administration — the first time, in fact, that the United States had declared a nuclear-free world a major policy goal.   The original is published at Huffington Post on January 11th, 2018 – and there you will also be able to read the whole Nuclear Posture Review   Now, eight years later, it’s the Trump administration’s turn to lay out its nuclear weapons policy. And according to a pre-decisional draft of...

  By Manlio Dinucci • Not a single nuclear power has agreed to sign the new Treaty banning nuclear weapons. We all appreciate that unilateral disarmament would be a genuine concern for such states. However, Nato, which violates the NPT (the treaty aiming at containing the proliferation of nuclear arms) every day, has gone much further. Last week, it issued a declaration stating (para 7) that atomic bombs are a factor contributing to peace; and there is no way it would contemplate relinquishing these arms, if other states retained them. Furthermore, the wording of the final paragraph is a pre-emptive strike, aimed at destroying the potential of the new Treaty from slipping into the class of treaties that create norms for inter-state relations. On 20 September, the day after President Trump presents a scenario of nuclear war in the United Nations, threatening to “totally destroy North Korea”, the “Treaty on...

  By ICAN • In a document from October 17, the United States warned other NATO members that efforts to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons or to delegitimise nuclear deterrence “are fundamentally at odds with NATO’s basic policies on deterrence”. In the letter, the US government strongly urges allies and partners to vote no to the resolution, and “not to merely abstain.” and continues to argue that “if negotiations do commence, we ask allies and partners to refrain from joining them.” Via icanw.org Despite claiming that a ban treaty without the nuclear armed states would be meaningless, the US letter outline what they believe would be clear military implications of a ban treaty and for NATO. The document shows that the United States believe a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, even without the participation of nuclear-armed states, would indeed have a significant impact. The document was circulated the week before governments...