Historic Anti-Nuclear events 1st half of January

Historic Anti-Nuclear events 1st half of January

A friend just gave me a calendar with sweet pussy-cats on the cover. On the inside, every day commemorates a Peace and Justice event. January is Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Together, lets remember

January 1st, 1947, Atomic Energy Comm is created; 1863, President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.

January 2nd, 1992: UN establishes first Conventional Arms Registry.

January 3rd, 1993: Start II Treaty is signed.

January 6th, 1941: President Roosevelt delivers “Four Freedoms” speech. If you don’t know what this is (I didn’t), here’s the link. freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

January 10th, 1947: First Session of UN General Assembly with 51 nations; 1920: League of Nations is founded in Geneva.

January 11th, 1952: Peace Pledge Union organizes first British protest against nuclear weapons.

January 12th, 1993: UN Convention bans chemical weapons.

January 14th, 1994: Peace accord signed to dismantle Ukraine’s nuclear weapons and take U.S. and Russian missiles off target.

January 15th, 1986: Gorbachev proposes no nuclear weapons by year 2000.

Airforce personnel who helped clean up after 1966 accidental hydrogen bomb explosion in Spain is suffering from the after effect of plutonium poisoning.

January 16th, 1991: U.S. and allies begin air war on Iraq.

January 17th, 1966: U.S. bomber crashes while refueling, dropping four hydrogen bombs on Spain. What? You’ve got to be kidding. Here’s the wiki account: Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried,[2] three were found on land near the small fishing village of Palomares in the municipality of Cuevas del Almanzora, Almería, Spain. The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 0.77-square-mile (2 km2) area by plutonium. The fourth, which fell into the Mediterranean Sea, was recovered intact after a ​2 1⁄2-month-long search.[3

In June of 2016, the New York Times reported that that Airforce personnel who went to the site to clean it up are now asking for help. “Many men say they are suffering with the crippling effects of plutonium poisoning. Of 40 veterans who helped with the cleanup who The New York Times identified, 21 had cancer. Nine had died from it. It is impossible to connect individual cancers to a single exposure to radiation. And no formal mortality study has ever been done to determine whether there is an elevated incidence of disease. The only evidence the men have to rely on are anecdotes of friends they watched wither away. Interesting, don’t you think?

I’ll add more historic newsworthy items as the months roll by. How far have we come? Can you, dear Reader, find hope from the story of a small band of anti-war activists who traveled to Uzbekistan at the height of the Cold War? If you haven’t read my book yet, please do.