UFPJ Briefing Call: The Imperative of Nuclear Disarmament and New Priorities in an Increasingly Dangerous World

Start: 2016-07-20 21:00:00 UTC Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

End: 2016-07-20 22:30:00 UTC Eastern Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

This is a virtual event

RSVP for Our UFPJ Briefing Call:

The Imperative of Nuclear Disarmament and New Priorities in an Increasingly Dangerous World

Wednesday, July 20, 2016; 6 pm PDT/9 pm EDT
Call-in number: (712) 775-7035; Participants code: 495518

Our presenters will be:

Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation; North American Coordinator, Mayors for Peace; Abolition 2000 “founding mother”, and National Co-convener, United for Peace and Justice.

Dr. Joseph Gerson, Director of Programs for the American Friends Service Committee’s Northeast Region and Director of AFSC’s Peace & Economic Security Program. Dr. Gerson attended the recent No to NATO, No to War! Counter-Summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Dr. John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy. Dr. Burroughs is member of the international legal team representing the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the International Court of Justice in its cases against the nuclear-armed nations for their failure to disarm.


August is Nuclear Free Future Month and Nuclear Dangers are Growing

Nuclear weapons have again taken center stage in confrontations between the United States, its NATO allies, and Russia. The tensions engendered by this confrontation have been intensified vastly—potentially catastrophically—by the brandishing of nuclear arms by both sides. And the confrontation in Europe is but one of several potential nuclear flashpoints, with new tensions and arms-racing from the Western Pacific to South Asia. In Syria, the U.S. and Russia are bombing side-by-side and on different sides. An accidental or intentional military incident, could send the world spiraling into a disastrous nuclear confrontation.

Yet as the Democratic and Republican party conventions get underway in one of the most consequential Presidential elections ever, nuclear weapons are barely being mentioned.

15,000 nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity. The possibility of conflicts escalating into nuclear war is real. In a world where elites contemplate continual rivalry for increasingly scarce resources, military planners and corporations are preparing for endless competition in conventional and high-tech weaponry. All the nuclear-armed nations are modernizing their arsenals. This briefing call will address the growing dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states, U.S. plans to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize its nuclear arsenal, and the need for new priorities and strategies to abolish nuclear weapons, end war and redirect military spending to meet human needs and defend the environment, at home and abroad.