The END is the beginning
By Mikael on Sunday 28 December 2008, 00:52 - Permalink
Is Sarkozy pursuing a strategy of power balance vis-à-vis the USA,
when he goes on with the production of the M51, the new "Oceanic" thermonuclear
warheads, and the exports of nuclear technology, including
the nuclear submarine to Brazil?
The Brazilian diplomat Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, put his finger on a very sensitive point at the conference of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, 9 December 2008, when he said:
Millions of people already understand that
- our world is heading towards more violence and war;
- the economic depression deepens;
- the talking about ecology and global warming is just talk;
- inequality, crime and terrorism are growing.
European Nuclear Disarmament (END) is not the remedy to all these problems. But it it is the first goal that has to be achieved before those problems can even begin to be solved. The END can be the beginning:
- of general nuclear disarmament including the dismantling of the costly and dangerous "missile defense";
- of a green economic new deal;
- of using science and technology in an ecological way in Europe;
- nuclear weapons and democracy are incompatible, but END makes people power possible, which helps to fight inequality, crime and terrorism.
It is not enough to say NO to the Lisbon treaty. We need to say YES to the European Union. Without the END, however, there will only be a society of sovereign European states with nuclear arms, but without democracy, and the above-mentioned negative megatrends will continue as before. (to be contd)
The Brazilian diplomat Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, put his finger on a very sensitive point at the conference of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, 9 December 2008, when he said:
States and governments always act for their reasons of state. So when they speak about disarmament, it means they want to gain some special advantage for themselves. This is why they always fail to reach agreement on disarmament. The Saintes Appeal may not contain the word unilateral, yet unilateral nuclear disarmament is what it is calls for.Among the many dangers ahead, one must surely include an ever-growing proliferation of separate disarmament agendas, which all too often reflect the parochial interests of specific countries or groups of countries, rather than the common good or the collective international interest.
Millions of people already understand that
- our world is heading towards more violence and war;
- the economic depression deepens;
- the talking about ecology and global warming is just talk;
- inequality, crime and terrorism are growing.
European Nuclear Disarmament (END) is not the remedy to all these problems. But it it is the first goal that has to be achieved before those problems can even begin to be solved. The END can be the beginning:
- of general nuclear disarmament including the dismantling of the costly and dangerous "missile defense";
- of a green economic new deal;
- of using science and technology in an ecological way in Europe;
- nuclear weapons and democracy are incompatible, but END makes people power possible, which helps to fight inequality, crime and terrorism.
It is not enough to say NO to the Lisbon treaty. We need to say YES to the European Union. Without the END, however, there will only be a society of sovereign European states with nuclear arms, but without democracy, and the above-mentioned negative megatrends will continue as before. (to be contd)
Comments
I have posted this at the forum of the Hellenic American Democratic Association in Athens.
Some correspondence with the Global Security Institute.
----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne Hall
To: Jonathan Granoff
Cc: Mikael Book ; acdn.france ; anapolitanos ; 'Tanay Sidki Uyar' ;
bbearden@
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 6:26 AM
Subject: Re: A New Year Message
Dear Jonathan,
I will donate fifty euros to your campaign if you personally, and
preferably also others from your institute, become signatories to the
Saintes Appeal for a Nuclear Free Europe.
[ http://acdn.france.free.fr/spip/art... ]
Signing will mean being available for association with initiatives
taken for the purpose of securing European nuclear disarmament,
independently of appeals to other states.
Best wishes,
Wayne Hall
----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Granoff
To: halva1@...
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 3:14 AM
Subject: A New Year Message
This message is sent in HTML format. If you have problems reading
this email, please visit our website at www.gsinstitute.org or
contact us at general@....
Dear Wayne,
We sit before a moment of extraordinary opportunity for change. The
Global Security Institute is positioned through its international
parliamentary network, initiatives with middle power countries, and
Washington DC-oriented bipartisan programs to help make our common
aspirations to achieve a nuclear weapon-free world a reality. Your
help now is critical.
Please consider a generous year-end or year commencement gift to
express your needed support for this work. Visit our website to
donate safely and securely.
All of us at GSI recognize the unique privilege and responsibility to
be able to convene governments to work on nuclear disarmament in such
a focused and high level manner. I hope you have a moment to review
our past several newsletters, linked below, as they express our
strategic integration of international and national efforts. I find
inspiration in the results of such professional and passionate
teamwork.
As Senator Cranston, GSI's visionary founder, often said, "Nuclear
weapons are unworthy of civilization." With your help, we can amplify
this message at the highest levels of governments, in parliaments, at
the United Nations and, in the coming year, to the general public.
From all of us at the Global Security Institute, I wish you all a
happy, safe and peaceful new year. We should end this year and begin
the new one with a sense of gratitude for what the spirit of hope has
brought us, a moment of extraordinary opportunity for change.
Best,
Jonathan Granoff
President
P.S. If you would like to discuss any of our needs and programs in
greater depth, please do not hesitate to call me at our Philadelphia
office: +1 (610) 668-5470
Afterword: Re:Nuclear Free World
What Jonathan Granoff asks when he seeks my support for a petition to the new US president to move towards the achievement of a nuclear-weapons-free world is that I should intervene in what is, among other things, an INTERNAL American political debate. There is another faction in US politics, the faction that supports the Republicans, that regards US possession of nuclear weapons, or any other weapon, as a question with a bearing on NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, on which the opinion of any non-American is absolutely irrelevant and the seeking-out of the opinions of non-Americans possibly even treasonous.
It may be that I don't WANT to get involved in this internal American debate, because it is by no means automatically evident to me that I would be making the right decision to support the "globalist" rather
than the "patriotic" American position on the subject of nuclear weapons.
After all, if I take the position that possession or non-possession of nuclear weapons is NOT a question that concerns only Americans, but also concerns me, a non-American, what grounds could I have for arguing that possession or non-possession of nuclear weapons by the European Union countries is a question that concerns only Europeans?
What grounds could I have for arguing that, for example, European sovereignty is more important than the solidarity of NATO?
Rejection of the "patriotic" viewpoint has two sides to it. If I want to be a "Europatriot" it is in no way evident that Jonathan Granoff is going to be a better ally than an American anti-globalist patriot.
Of course, right-wingers do not make good allies. It would be preferable to have Jonathan Granoff as an ally. This is why I judge that it is best to put the ball in his court. If he is willing to
support independent European nuclear disarmament, in this way "interfering" in my scene, then I will agree to interfere in his scene, and support anti-nuclear politics in the United States.
This issue has, in its way, come up in e-mail discussion with the "geoengineering" advocate Ken Caldeira, a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientist of liberal political views who has said in the
course of debate that he favours nuclear disarmament, even unilateral American nuclear disarmament.
When I asked him if he was prepared to sign the Saintes Appeal for a Nuclear-Free Europe, he said that he did not want to "interfere" in European politics. His support for unilateral American nuclear disarmament thus remains a dead letter, a debating point to be brought up in other contexts. usually for the purpose of intellectually
disarming "chemtrails" activists.
But Caldeira, unlike Jonathan Granoff, had never asked me to "interfere" in American internal politics by taking a position on whether the US should or should not possess nuclear weapons.
Wayne Hall