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Showing posts from October 2, 2022

Releasing the Prisoner: Guantánamo Survivor's Fund & Special Envoy Appointed

 You might have seen this ongoing action by Mansoor Adayfi, author of Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo (Hachette 2021). On Day two, Biking around the country of Serbia, where he was sent from Guantanamo, he is raising money for the Guantanamo Survivor's Fund campaign through CAGE . ********************* This marks the second campaign for Survivors. Donations of $200 to the Guantánamo Survivors Fund received a signed copy of Dr. Maha Hilal's book Innocent Until Proven Muslim:Islamophobia, The War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience since 9/11  (Broadleaf Books 20221)  Guantanamo Survivors Fund  campaign through No More Gitmos. ********************* U.S. context shift: On this issue, since the quiet release of 5 men just before the 20th anniversary of Guantánamo's opening, this is the latest good news of President Biden (WSJ here ) : finally restoring a special envoy for Guantánamo within the State Department--Tina Kaidanow. The last to do this work...

A Death Observed

Published in Worcester Catholic Radical December 2022. 160 NGOs observed the 10th Review Conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty, August 1-26 and mourned the blocked outcomes. “We are witnessing the death of an international process” said Zia Mian of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. “That’s about right” said Charlie Johnson, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “The nuclear weapons possessing countries are giving the appearance of taking this seriously. They don’t want to see the NPT die and all there be left is the TPNW.” Unlike the TPNW, the NPT does not prohibit the threat of use of nuclear weapons. Ten US strategic bombers approached towards Russia from both the west and the east, coming within 20 kilometers of the Russian border during “Global Thunder’, an annual nuclear command and control exercise in November 2021. “Steadfast Noon’, in October 2021, US-led NATO forces likewise conducted rehearsals for use of nuclear weapo...

The Parable of Nonproliferation

In his spare time the UN delegate was generous. His education in the United States was a gift endowed by the head of the Crown family, who now was acquiring prospects for the Bulls, sportswashing his billions made from bombs in a game he had loved from his youth. The delegate entrance bypassed the exhibit of the Hibakusha (Bomb Survivors). Meanwhile, the representative of a nuclear-possessing state rehearsed what he would say in conference that day in the Dag Hammarskjöld UN Meditation room saying, “We fully accept negotiations in good faith and we are prepared to reaffirm it to this conference.” In walked three delegates. The first, from Nicaragua said, “Do you uphold the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals?” “Yes.” The second, from the European Union asked “Do you care for your neighbor?” “I support the peaceful uses of nuclear energy including sterile insect technique to combat Malaria and Dengue Fever--” the representative said, “but what more can I do?” “Would you allow democrati...