April action in Oak Ridge: The Folly of Icarus (Nuclear Weapons and the Pursuit of Security)

The Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance has put out the following call to action:

"Join us on April 21 in Oak Ridge [Tennessee] as we explore the folly of using nuclear weapons to pursue security. The day will feature a march from Alvin K Bissell Park in Oak Ridge to the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex where we will have a rally, a drama, music and action.

We will gather at 12:30pm at Bissell Park and, after a stop by the Friendship Bell, we will walk to Y12. There we will be joined by the Emancipators for music, and the OREPA puppetistas for a dramatic adaptation of the Daedalus/Icarus myth with an action for disarmament to follow.

OREPA actions are nonviolent in tone as well as action. Everyone is welcome. No drugs or alcohol."

See the OREPA website for more information.

Beyond Nuclear debates Russian nuclear power establishment proponent on Voice of Russia Radio

Last Thursday, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear debated Victor Murogov, the Head of the International Nuclear Education Center and Professor at the National Research Nuclear University in Moscow. The debate was aired on the Voice of Russia Radio. The discussion revolved around the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, which President Obama recently attended.

Nuclear Darkness, Global Climate Change, & Nuclear Famine

This website, created by Steven Starr, a senior scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility, is available in four languages: English, Russian, Hebrew, and Chinese. The site describes the deadly long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war that threaten continued human survival.  Virtually any nuclear war, even one fought with less than 1% of the deployed and operational nuclear arsenals, will cause catastrophic disruptions of global climate and massive destruction of Earth's protective ozone layer, resulting in global nuclear famine.  The site also includes a photo gallery from Hiroshima, Japan, the first city in the world to be annihilated by an atomic bomb in 1945; there is also a nuclear firestorm simulator, which allows you to type in any address or city, select a weapon size, and then illustrate the size of the resulting nuclear firestorm caused by the detonation of the weapon.

NBC News quotes U.S. government officials confirming Israel's Mossad has joined with Iranian dissident "terrorists" to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists

In a comprehensive article, NBC News quotes U.S. government officials as confirming that Israeli secret service agents have teamed up with Iranian dissidents from the MEK -- designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1997 -- to carry out targeted assassinatoins of Iranian nuclear scientists, as well as a deadly sabotage attack on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard missile R&D base. In the past 5 years, 5 Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated. Most ironically, Israel has a clandestine nuclear arsenal comprising hundreds of weapons, while Iran claims its nuclear pursuits are for electricity generation only.

IAEA's Amano helps beat war drums against Iran

Who, really, is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, and why is he so supportive of the U.S. and Israeli governments' accusations that Iran's nuclear program is aiming for the bomb? Amano's position is in marked contrast to the previous IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei. ElBaradei was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for confronting false U.S. and U.K. claims that Iraq had a covert nuclear weapons development program in the lead up to the 2003 invasion, as well as his skepticism toward U.S. and Israeli claims of nuclear proliferation in Iran. A Wikileaks cable revealed coordination between the U.S. government and Amano on Iran policy. Robert Parry, an investigative journalist who broke many of the Iran-Contra scandal stories of the 1980s, now warns we may be "Slip-Sliding to War with Iran," despite the lessons that should have been learned from our recent debacle in Iraq -- a very deadly and expensive war that was based on false accusations about secret WMD (weapons of mass destruction) development, including nuclear weaponry.

In a Christmas Eve article entitled "America's Debt to Bradley Manning," Robert Parry reports that the Wikileaks revelations about Amano's close ties to U.S. and even Israeli schemes towards Iran may be just the information needed to avert another false war over non-existent WMDs.