Category: political writing

  • Time for nuclear sharing to end

    It is a little known fact: Germany (and four other European countries) host nuclear weapons as part of NATO “nuclear sharing”. This means that in a nuclear attack the US can load its bombs onto German (or Belgian, Italian, Turkish and Dutch) aircraft and the pilots of those countries will drop them on an enemy…

  • Been there, done that…

    Looking through my old scraps from the eighties before going to the blockade at Büchel, I came across this newspaper cutting of me handing a letter to the duty officer at RAF Cottesmore. Not sure of the date of this action, but I also – digging deeper into my boxes – found a flyer for…

  • Pushing the States to the Negotiating Table

    In Helsinki at this time of year, the sun rises just after 9am and sets again at 3pm. Our Finnish hosts told us that we were lucky that the snow had come already, to lighten up the all-pervading darkness by reflecting what little light there is. Already, after only a short time, the snow was…

  • Destroyed Islands

    50th anniversary of last atmospheric nuclear test “Tightrope” Fifty years ago today, “Tightrope” the last of 215 US atmospheric nuclear tests took place. This was the final blast in one of the worst chapters in nuclear history that began sixty years ago, on November 1st 1952, when the first hydrogen bomb was tested on an…

  • The Nuclear Chain – Splitting Atoms, Hairs and Personalities

    It is no coincidence that one speaks of the civilian and military use of nuclear energy. There is nuclear energy on the one hand and on the other there is the way it is used. It can create a nuclear explosion or it can be harnessed to make electricity, but intrinsically, it is the same…

  • On Worms and Firewalls

    In a previous post, I made fun of the latest news about alleged alien intervention, cyberwar and men who stare at goats. But behind the mockery, there is an emerging problem that we need to address: The technological “fix”. The tendency to search for technological solutions to what are often ethical or even moral questions…

  • Aliens, Cyberwar and other curiosities

    At last I feel mitigated in my avid viewing of „The Next Generation“ and „Doctor Who“, for it seems that I am psychologically equipped for the reports of aliens tampering with the nuclear deterrent. I am not in the least phased by this, in fact I welcome our green friends to join “Global Zero” along…

  • The Bigger Picture

    Yesterday I did a press conference on behalf of the Congress organisers on the subject of nuclear disarmament. Christian Schönenberger from the Swiss Foreign Office joined us, as did Rebecca Johnson, Vice-Chair of ICAN. Christian Schönenberger referred not only to the excellent speech by Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss Foreign Minister in the plenary that morning,…

  • Cutting the Gordian Knot

    “Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter” (Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. 45–47) Before you all physically or mentally traipse off to New York – volcanic ash allowing – I’d like to say something. Nuclear weapons do have a purpose. What…

  • The Truth about Qom

    It was revealed to the press by Presidents Obama and Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown on Friday, September 25th – incidentally the day after the US resolution on non-proliferation was unanimously passed in the Security Council – that Iran had a second uranium enrichment facility near Qom, a Shi’ite holy city in Central Iran. Actually…