Bending the Arc references a quote by Rev. Dr. King who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This digital newsletter from the CSA Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation office showcases the work of changemakers, opportunities to learn, and opportunities for you to help “bend the arc” toward justice. Full contents of the newsletter are published on this page.
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It Is Immoral and “Illegal” to Possess Nukes
September 06, 2024
Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security. By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift from deterrence to employment, there will be a scenario where the U.S. will use nuclear weapons.
Successive U.S. administrations have eschewed arms control in favor of maintaining American strategic advantage over real and/or imagined adversaries.
This is accomplished by embracing nuclear weapons employment strategies that deviate from simple deterrence into war-fighting at every level of conflict, including scenarios that don’t involve a nuclear threat.
At a time when the U.S. advocates policies exacerbating already high levels of tension with nuclear-armed adversaries Russia and China, the Biden administration has signed off on a new nuclear employment plan that increases, rather than decreases, the probability of nuclear conflict.
Left unchecked, this policy can have only one possible outcome — total nuclear annihilation of humanity and the world we live in.
Read more in this recent article by writer, Scott Ritter, in Consortium News - an independent investigative journalism and political review.
According to a 2021 petition by Change.org, “The threat of nuclear annihilation is greater than it has ever been… A nuclear war must never be fought, because everyone will lose," said several presidents, including Joe Biden. The leaders of every major religion call for abolishing nuclear weapons. Pope Francis says it's immoral to possess them.
It's not only immoral. It's illegal to possess nukes, since the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed and ratified by the majority of world nations and became law in January 2021.
Yet the U.S. possesses thousands of nuclear bombs. About 1,750 of them are deployed on missiles (aimed and on hair trigger alert), and another 3,500 are in reserve. Consider the horror of the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in 1945. Today’s nukes are, on average, 20 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb. In other words, the US has enough nukes to incinerate 100,000 Hiroshimas and let the remaining living beings die a slow death from radiation poisoning.”
Learn more and Speak Up here: https://www.change.org/p/stop-making-nukes
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Peace & Nonviolence