Opinions

“I have a dream”. Ask anyone where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. first proclaimed those words, and the response will most likely be at the March on Washington in August 1963. But in fact, he delivered them two months earlier, on June 23, in Detroit, leading a march down Woodward Avenue.
King said: “I have a dream that one day, …

Alice Slater from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation reacts to 38 million dollars of US funding for new nuclear research projects. “It’s just so 20th century!… It’s time to invest in a clean energy future that will create millions of jobs and enable the US to earn an honest dollar by developing desirable new technology to offer to the world.”

The results of the Global Peace Index for 2010 suggest that the world has become slightly less peaceful. The Index, which gauges ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society and militarization in 149 countries, registered overall increases in several indicators, including the likelihood of violent demonstrations and perceptions of criminality.

From the time when the human being was first able to produce fire and could count on this source of energy to cook food, defend the entrances of the caves where they lived, warm themselves and illuminate the night, and then raise the temperature in ovens and kilns that allowed the making of pottery, melting of metals, working with glass… up to the creation of life.

This Saturday is Nuclear Abolition Day — a global day of action to abolish nuclear weapons, and the opportunity to respond to the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference outcome. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today sent a video message of encouragement, which can be seen at [www.nuclearabolition.org](www.nuclearabolition.org)

The moment so feared, so desired, so imagined, has arrived; the moment when the human being – by creating life – is transformed into God. The Science Journal of May 20 gives the news of the first synthetic cell, a cell completely controlled by artificial DNA. “A cell that changes the definition of what is meant by ‘life’.”

As the NPT conference comes to an end with no hope on the horizon for a speedy disarmament, Hillel Schenker, from the Jerusalem-based Palestine-Israel Journal talks about the often talked about Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the Middle East. “One thing is clear—asking Israel to sign the NPT is a futile exercise, because it will not unilaterally disarm.”

The Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference is in its fourth and final week. Parallel to the official meetings with delegates of states parties to the NPT, active members of NGOs are in New York to represent the interests of civil society. Diane Perlman of Psychologists for Social Responsibility puts the case for a change of consciousness regarding nuclear power.

In this article renewable energy activist, Alice Slater, points out the dangers of the world advancing in the proliferation of nuclear energy and calls on all countries to join the International Renewable Energy Agency as a way to make redundant article IV of the Non-proliferation Treaty “inalienable right” to nuclear energy.

The tired old mantra of arms control and incremental steps is still dominating discussions at the NPT Review Conference, despite the growing push for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Calls by Nuclear Weapons States, for the most part, lack any sense of real urgency — even though it is clear that meaningful action for abolition is needed now, and cannot continue to be postponed.