With survival at stake, can weapons makers change course?

 AUGUST 6, 2020

by Kathy Kelly
Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace

Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection. I recall a summer morning following the U.S. 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq when the segment of the Chicago River flowing past the headquarters of the world’s second largest defense contractor, Boeing, turned the rich, red color of blood. At the water’s edge, Chicago activists, long accustomed to the river being dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day turned the river red to symbolize the bloodshed caused by Boeing products. On the bridge outside of Boeing’s entrance, activists held placards urging Boeing to stop making weapons.

This summer, orders for Boeing’s commercial jets have cratered during the pandemic, but the company’s revenue from weapon-making contracts remains steady. David Calhoun, Boeing’s CEO, recently expressed confidence the U.S. government will support defense industries no matter who occupies the Oval Office. Both presidential candidates appear “globally oriented,” he said, “and interested in the defense of our country.”

Investors should ask how Boeing’s contract to deliver 1,000 SLAM- ER weapons (Standoff Land Attack Missiles-Expanded Response) to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia “defends” the United States.

Here are excerpts from Jeffrey Stern’s account of a missile’s impact on the town of Arhab in a remote area of Yemen. In this case, the missile was manufactured by Raytheon:

Now, as Fahd walked into the hut, a weapon about the length of a compact car was wobbling gracelessly down through the air toward him, losing altitude and unspooling an arming wire that connected it to the jet until, once it had extended a few feet, the wire ran out and ripped from the bomb.

Then it was as if the weapon woke up. A thermal battery was activated. Three fins on the rear extended all the way and locked in place. The bomb stabilized in the air. A guidance-control unit on the nose locked onto a laser reflection — invisible to the naked eye but meaningful to the bomb — sparkling on the rocks Fahd walked over.

At the well, at the moment of impact, a series of events happened almost instantaneously. The nose of the weapon hit rock, tripping a fuse in its tail section that detonated the equivalent of 200 pounds of TNT. When a bomb like this explodes, the shell fractures into several thousand pieces, becoming a jigsaw puzzle of steel shards flying through the air at up to eight times the speed of sound. Steel moving that fast doesn’t just kill people; it rearranges them. It removes appendages from torsos; it disassembles bodies and redistributes their parts.

Fahd had just stepped into the stone shelter and registered only a sudden brightness. He heard nothing. He was picked up, pierced with shrapnel, spun around and then slammed into the back wall, both of his arms shattering — the explosion so forceful that it excised seconds from his memory. Metal had bit into leg, trunk, jaw, eye; one piece entered his back and exited his chest, leaving a hole that air and liquid began to fill, collapsing his lungs. By the time he woke up, crumpled against stone, he was suffocating. Somehow he had survived, but he was killing himself with every breath, and he was bleeding badly. But he wasn’t even aware of any of these things, because his brain had been taken over by pain that seemed to come from another world.

In 2019, the UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen observed “the continued supply of weapons to parties involved in Yemen perpetuates the conflict and the suffering of the population.”

These experts say “the conduct of hostilities by the parties to the conflict, including by airstrikes and shelling, may amount to serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

A year and a half ago, were it not for a presidential veto, both houses of the U.S. Congress would have enacted a law banning weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

Another end-user of Boeing’s weapons is the Israeli Defense Force.

The company has provided Israel with AH-64 Apache helicopters, F-15 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles (produced with Lockheed Martin), MK-84 2000-lb bombs, MK-82 500-lb bombs, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits that turn bombs into “smart” GPS-equipped guided bombs. Boeing’s Harpoon sea-to-sea missile system is installed on the upgraded 4.5 Sa’ar missile ships of the Israeli Navy.

Apache helicopters, Hellfire and Harpoon missiles, JDAM guiding systems, and Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) munitions have been used repeatedly in Israeli attacks on densely populated civilian areas, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. The human rights community, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and United Nations commissions, ruled these attacks to be human rights violations and at times war crimes.

I lived with a family, in Gaza, during the final days of the 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” bombing. Abu Yusuf, Umm Yusuf, and their two small children, Yusuf and Shahid, welcomed Audrey Stewart and me to stay with them. Once every 11 minutes from 11 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. and again from 3:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m., we heard an ear-splitting blast. Normally, I wouldn’t have known the difference between the sound of a Hellfire Missile exploding and that of a 500 lb. bomb dropped from an F-15, but soon I could tell the difference. Little Yusuf and Shahid taught us to distinguish one gut-wrenching sound from the other. They had been cringing under the bombs for 18 days and nights.

I don’t see how the sale of weapons to governments which use them against civilian populations, against people like Fahad, in Arhab or Abu Yusuf and his family in Gaza, defends people in the U.S.

Boeing’s vast resources for scientific know-how, skillful engineering, and creative innovation could, however, help defend the U.S. against the greatest threat we  now face, environmental climate catastrophe. Writing for The New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben predicts “a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through right now.” The main question, he says, is whether human beings can hold the alarming rise in temperature “to a point where we can at great expense and suffering, deal with those crises coherently, or whether they will overwhelm the coping abilities of our civilization.”

“A rise of one degree doesn’t sound like an extraordinary change,” McKibben writes, “but it is: each second, the carbon and methane we’ve emitted trap heat equivalent to the explosion of three Hiroshima-sized bombs.”

Boeing’s engineers, scientists, designers and marketers could help turn  the tide of human actions destroying our earth. Their expertise could truly “defend” people.

There’s a lesson to be learned from the river flowing outside of Boeing’s headquarters. It actually flows backwards. Long ago, brilliant engineers designed a way for the river to reverse its course. In doing so, they saved Chicago from sewage contamination of its drinking water supply – Lake Michigan. This action was hailed as one of the great engineering wonders of the world.

The City’s sewers discharged human and industrial wastes directly to its rivers, which in turn flowed into the lake. A particularly heavy rainstorm in 1885 caused sewage to be flushed into the lake beyond the clean water intakes. The resulting typhoid, cholera, and dysentery epidemics killed an estimated 12 percent of Chicago’s 750,000 residents, and raised a public outcry to find a permanent solution to the city’s water supply and sewage disposal crisis.”

The Sanitary and Ship Canal was constructed at an estimated cost of over $70,000,000. After its completion, in 1900, waterborne disease rates quickly and dramatically improved, and its water supply system was soon regarded as being one of the safest in the world. With its water source made safe and dependable by the canals, Chicago and the region grew and prospered rapidly.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to dye the Chicago River, red or green. We need to protect the river and all wildlife dependent on it. But, we must continually confront Boeing and other weapon manufacturers, and insist they not destroy lives, homes and infrastructures in other lands. We must urge Boeing, like the river, to reverse course and participate, with dignity and humility, in the pursuit of human survival.

____________

POSTER CREDIT: ANOTHER MOTHER FOR PEACE, LORRAINE SCHNEIDER, 1966

Joint interfaith statement on the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

 AUGUST 6, 2020

NOTE: Pax Christi USA has joined nearly 200 other organizations in signing onto this statement to commemorate the 75th anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As a wide coalition of faith-based communities from around the world, we have committed to speaking with one voice that rejects the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons pose. We reaffirm that the presence of even one nuclear weapon violates the core principles of our different faith traditions and threatens the unimaginable destruction of everything we hold dear. Nuclear weapons are not only a future risk, their presence here and now undermines the ethical and moral foundations of the common good. We call for your commitment to a world that is more peaceful, safe, and just—a world only possible with the elimination of nuclear weapons.

August 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—attacks which devastated these cities causing up to 213,000 deaths by the end of 1945 and many more in the following years. The attacks inflicted excruciating pain and suffering on both humans and the environment.

We are grateful for the global hibakusha, survivors, who have courageously borne witness, often in the face of intimidation and the recurring tragedy of loss and illness. We must meet the courage of the survivors with our own. We must abolish nuclear weapons forever.

We lament the racism and colonialism that drove the nuclear-weapon States to test their weapons on the communities that they deemed expendable, lives far away from their own, lives that mattered less, lives that were taken in pursuit of destructive power for a few. We acknowledge the immense suffering, oppression and exploitation faced by the Indigenous communities around the world whose bodies, lands, waters and air have served as the testing grounds for the ambitions of those who dominate with force.

Few who believe in the disingenuous notion of nuclear deterrence have witnessed or experienced the devastation of these weapons in their own communities. After seventy-five years we can see that nuclear weapons have not brought an end to war. Nuclear weapons do not create peace, rather they intensify the scourge and threat of war in our world, lives and communities. Because they are designed to cause massive and indiscriminate destruction, because they siphon precious resources that are needed to meet human needs and protect our shared planet, and because they enforce and sustain a global system based on domination and unending violence, the existence of nuclear weapons fundamentally contradicts the principles of any moral, religious and ethical system that values life.

Whilst many of our lives and imaginations might be far removed from memories of “hell on earth” and the legacies of environmental impacts, shattering health conditions and trauma wrought in a nuclear explosion, the impacts of the current global health crisis have given us all a glimpse into how life would change in the event of a nuclear explosion. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, environmental and economic consequences would not be contained in space or time. Nuclear tests and accidents have revealed that radiation spreads through the atmosphere, oceans, plants, animals, and whole human populations. Our economies, production chains and ability to grow food would be severely disrupted.

Many have consigned the stories of the horrors of this time to our distant past—stories only to be revisited when certain leaders deem it necessary to remind their citizens what others might do to them if they give up their own nuclear capacities. But we will not forget or ignore the powerful witness of those affected by developing, testing and using nuclear weapons. We are committed to ending nuclear weapons forever to honor the global hibakusha and to save our children, grandchildren, and future generations from experiencing what they suffered. As we build a world where equality, peace and justice are abundant for all, there is no place for nuclear weapons in our shared future.

Despite commitments made—including under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—nuclear-weapon States have continued to maintain and develop their nuclear arsenals, while other States have worked to acquire them.

Despite our clear-eyed awareness of the dangers of the present moment, we are united in our irrepressible belief that change for the good is possible—in individual lives and in our world. We know that in the most dangerous and threatening times, human beings are capable of cooperation, creative problem-solving and mutual trust. Indeed, the existence of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) itself reaffirms that hopefulness. The NPT was born out of a moment when fears about nuclear war and distrust were at a peak, and it acted as a beacon to remind nations that international collaboration was possible and that each nation’s security does not demand the insecurity of others, but rather is contingent upon the security of all. We find ourselves again in such a moment in which the reaffirmation of international norms and the embrace of the NPT’s ultimate promise—abolition—must be realized.

In 2017, this goal of abolition moved closer to becoming reality when the UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, calling for the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons. Once 50 States have ratified it, it will enter into force. We urge our governments to use the opportunity of the 75th anniversary of the only occasion that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict, to ensure that they are never used again in any circumstances. We call upon all States to join the growing community of States which have rejected nuclear weapons entirely. We appeal to you to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  

Click here to see a list of signatories.

Add your name to the demands from Pittsburgh Jewish leaders to Trump

https://www.bendthearc.us/pittsburgh_demands 

Add your name to the demands from Pittsburgh Jewish leaders to Trump

The massacre of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue comes at a time when the Trump administration, the Republican Party and their enablers — at all levels — have fomented hate, fear, and white nationalism in our country.

They have targeted the Muslim community, immigrants and refugees, people of color, and LGBTQ people, and in recent weeks we have seen a marked escalation in their use of antisemitic images, rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

The Trump administration, the Republican Party and their enablers have provoked violence against our communities. Our blood is on their hands.

It is time to rise up together to demand our safety. We refuse to be divided. We refuse to be isolated from each other. We will outlive their hatred.

Now, we're asking Jews and allies across the country to add your names to the demands of Jewish leaders in Pittsburgh who are rising up to demand the White House renounce white nationalism so we can all be safe.

I humbly ask you, to do an important part of being in the MPD family. Sign this petition, ask your friends to sign, have their friends also sign. We must as a movement stand up to fascism. Please sign this petition tonight! 

Fourth Canada – United States – Mexico Trilateral Peace Conference

Fourth Canada – United States – Mexico
Trilateral Peace Conference

September 13, 2018 – Moca, Dominican Republic

Final Declaration

 
The Canadian Peace Congress (CPCon), the U.S. Peace Council (USPC) and the Mexican Movement for Peace and Development (MOMPADE) held their fourth Trilateral Meeting on September 13, 2018 in Moca, Dominican Republic in conjunction with the Hemispheric Peace Conference of the World Peace Council and its affiliates on this continent. Upon the conclusion of their meeting, the delegations of the three organizations issued the following statement:
 
Our Trilateral Meeting takes place at a time of a serious deterioration of the international situation, marked by the increasingly aggressive actions of U.S. imperialism, with the active support of Canada and its other NATO allies, to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states, to use economic blackmail and threats of aggression, to conspire with regional actors and local oligarchies to carry out ‘regime change’ operations against governments unwilling to submit to imperialist demands, and in some cases to resort to direct military intervention. This aggressive behavior comes together with, and is closely related to, the deepening systemic crisis of capitalism and the ever-worsening effects of climate change and the general degradation of the global environment.

The participants express grave concern that the accelerated drive to militarization, aggression and war threatens the very future of humanity, and call for urgent measures to stop and reverse the arms race, to sharply reduce bloated military budgets and to redirect these funds to peaceful and socially useful purposes to raise wages and living standards, improve social programs and protect our environment. Urgent efforts are required to prevent the modernization of nuclear arsenals, to ban the militarization of outer space, and to move in the direction of general and comprehensive disarmament, including the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Our organizations condemn the further expansion of NATO, including the recent addition of Colombia as a “global partner” and its intention to recruit other states in our hemisphere to the NATO camp, which is totally controlled by U.S. imperialism and serves its economic and political interests. The cause of peace can only be advanced through the dissolution of this aggressive military alliance, not through its expansion.
The Trilateral Meeting agrees that the firm foundations of peace must be based on the principles of non-intervention and full respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination and independence of all states, as stipulated in the UN Charter and covenants of international law enacted since the end the World War II.

The participants note that the web of U.S. foreign military bases around the world – including an archipelago of almost 80 foreign bases throughout the Americas – is a direct threat to world peace and undermines the sovereignty of individual states, and we call for the closure of these bases. Our three organizations commit to helping build the Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases, and pledge to help mobilize the largest possible contingents of peace forces from our countries to participate in the International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases to be held in Dublin, Ireland on November 16-18, 2018.

Our organizations pledge to strengthen our solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, both of which are under sharp attack by U.S. imperialism, and with Socialist Cuba which continues to endure and advance despite a revitalized blockade by the United States. These are not isolated issues or events, but rather part of a coordinated campaign to undermine progressive governments and movements throughout Latin America, particularly those striving to resist imperialist hegemony, and to defend their national sovereignty and independent path of development. This subversive campaign increasingly relies on judicial and parliamentary maneuvers to remove elected leaders and oust progressive governments from power.

In this regard, our Meeting welcomes the progressive changes in Mexico arising from the recent election results, but warns that the new government could well become the next target of such anti-democratic attacks by imperialism and domestic reactionary forces.

The participants note that the re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between our three countries has reached a critical stage as the Trump Administration, acting in the interests of U.S. finance capital, seeks to extract concessions from both its northern and southern neighbors. Our organizations consider that the economic relations between our neighboring countries – and related treaties and agreements – must be mutually beneficial for the peoples and economies of our three countries, must serve to improve the wages, working conditions and overall living standards of our peoples, and must protect and enhance our shared natural environment.

Our organizations also express alarm at the rapid growth of racist, anti-immigration tendencies and state policies in our countries, especially marked by the plans of the Trump Administration to step up the deportation of undocumented workers and the completion of a wall along the entire US/Mexican frontier. In our view such positions and policies pander to and help to promote the further rise of xenophobia, national chauvinism, racism and fascism in our societies, backward and dangerous trends which are antithetical and hostile to the cause of peace. We should be building bridges to unite us, not walls to divide us.

While working on all of these related issues over the coming period, our Meeting proposes that our organizations consider three specific campaign initiatives flowing out of this trilateral session:

1. Against Arms Production, the Arms Trade and the Militarization of our Societies – this to include opposition to the military-industrial complexes in our three countries, the export of weapons and military-related goods internationally (including the illicit cross-border traffic of weapons), and the hypocritical “War on Drugs” and militarization of police forces domestically, all of which serve to breed a poisonous ‘cult of militarism’ in our societies. No to Wars at Home or Abroad!

2. Against the Reactionary Wave of Intolerance, Xenophobia and Anti-Immigrant Ideas and State Policies which criminalizes migrant workers, national minorities and racialized communities, and promotes the spread of racism and fascism in our societies. Instead, we must build unity and solidarity among all those who stand for the protection and enhancement of the economic, social and political rights of the people, including the fundamental and inherent rights of the indigenous peoples of our countries.

3. Against Imperialist Interventionism and ‘Regime Change’ and in solidarity with all those peoples and States which are victimized by, or targeted for such imperialist interference and aggression within our hemisphere and around the world.

Finally, the Trilateral Meeting agrees to establish a permanent “continuation” committee, composed of one representative from each of our three organizations, to develop concrete proposals with regard to the three campaign initiatives (outlined above), and to maintain ongoing lines of communication and dialogue among our organizations on all matters of mutual concern and interest.

Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Base

Dear Friends of Peace Around the World,

We are deeply concerned, and frightened, by the threat of war that permeates the present Global atmosphere.

The increasingly aggressive and expansionist actions of US/NATO forces in violation of international law and the sovereign rights of all nations, the raging wars in the Middle East, the expansive militarization of the African continent via AFRICOM, the burgeoning arms race devastating the national treasuries, the bellicose language replacing diplomatic negotiations, the economic crises facing country after country, and the destruction of the global environment through war and unfettered exploitation, and their impact on public health, have all created crises that, unless checked by popular opposition, can lead to unimaginable catastrophe and war.

None of us can stop this madness alone from within our national borders. The global peace forces must come together, mobilizing the millions in our countries, and around the world, for peace. We cannot, and should not, allow our possible differences on other issues to separate us. WE MUST UNITE FOR PEACE!

On the basis of our shared understanding, we have initiated a Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases, and are inviting you and your organization, recognized as a voice of your people for peace and national sovereignty, to join this new Global Campaign by signing our Global Unity Statement. It is our sincere hope that you will accept this invitation and join in our global effort to oppose all forms of war and aggression against sovereign nations.

To join the Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases, please sign our Global Unity Statement by clicking HERE.

As the first step toward launching our Global Campaign, we will be holding our first International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases on November 16-18, 2018, in Dublin, Ireland, hosted by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA). It is our sincere hope that you will help us in mobilizing the maximum level of participation in this International Conference.

Additional details for the Conference, including registration and the Conference program, will be announced shortly.

As you are well aware, organizing such a broad-based International Conference requires a great amount of human and financial resources, especially since we are trying to invite experts from across the globe to make presentations. It is our sincere hope that you and your organization, based on your sense of solidarity with our common cause for peace, will make a generous donation toward covering the costs of this very important and historic Conference.

For updated information on the Conference, or to make a financial contribution, please visit our web site at: NoUSNATOBases.org.

You can also contact us via email at: contact@NoUSNATOBases.org.

Looking forward to your support and participation.

Yours in Peace,

Founding Organizations:

Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), Ireland

Roger Cole, President • Ed Horgan, International Secretary • John Lannon, Member of the National Executive

Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases, USA

Coordinating Committee: Bahman Azad (Coordinator), U.S. Peace Council • Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace • Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK • Leah Bolger, World BEYOND War • Bernadette Ellorin, BAYAN-USA • Sara Flounders, International Action Center • Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space • Tarak Kauff, Veterans For Peace • Joe Lombardo, United National Antiwar Coalition • Alfred L. Marder, U.S. Peace Council • Kevin Martin, Peace Action • Nancy Price, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom — US Section • Alice Slater, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation • David Swanson, World BEYOND War • Ann Wright, Veterans For Peace, CODEPINK • Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance

Sponsoring Organizations:

• World Peace Council (WPC) • Movimiento Cubano por la Paz y la Soberania de los Pueblos (MOVPAZ) — (Cuba) • Centro Brasileiro de Solidariedade aos Povos e Luta pela Paz (CEBRAPAZ) — (Brazil) • Stop the War Coalition — (UK) • Okinawa Peace Action Center — (Japan) • Japan Peace Committee — (Japan) • Gangjeong International Team — (Jeju, South Korea) • Conselho Português para a Paz e Cooperação — (Potugal) • Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals — (Serbia) • Peace Committee of Turkey — (Turkey) • Cyprus Peace Council — (Cyprus) • Greek Committee for International Detente and Peace (EEDYE) — (Greece) • Philippine Peace & Solidarity Council (PPSC) — (Philippines) • Foro Contra la Guerra Imperialista y la OTAN — (Spain) • Palestinian Committee for Peace and Solidarity — (Palestine) • Canadian Peace Congress — (Canada) • Lebanese Peace Council — (Lebanon) • Peace and Solidarity Committee in Israel — (Israel) • Czech Peace Movement — (Czech Republic) • South African Peace Initiative — (South Africa) • German Peace Council — (Germany) • All India Peace and Solidarity Organization — (India) • Nepal Peace & Solidarity Council — (Nepal) • Swiss Peace Movement — (Switzerland) • British Peace Assembly — (Britain) • International Action for Liberation (INTAL) — (Belgium) • International League of Peoples Struggle — (Netherlands) • Comitato Contro La Guerra Milano (CCLGM) — (Italy) • Jamaica Peace Council — (Jamaica) • Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — (UK) • Independent and Peaceful Australia Network — (Australia) • Escuela de Paz Colombia — (Colombia)