On May 12, 2013, Nathan Blanc was sentenced to a tenth term, of 28 days in prison. He had been released from military prison on Sunday, May 5, 2013, after serving a 20-day term for refusing to serve in the Israeli Army.  So far he has been sentenced to a total of 178 days in prison (including the current sentence). The time has come for a national and international campaign to FREE NATHAN BLANC! We call gro ...

Throwing Gas on the Fire in North Korea     The U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis is not over. While tensions seem to have eased in the past few weeks, the situation remains dangerous and potentially volatile. It is in this context that later this month the U.S. plans to launch a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Kwajalein Atoll in t ...

“When can we go back?” This plaintive question of refugees since time immemorial was asked again of Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees intake center in Zahleh, Lebanon, overlooking the vast Beqaa valley, now dotted with refugee camps wherever we look.  The Mussalaha Delegation [International Peace Delegation] is spending longer than expected in Lebanon bec ...

By Baher Kamal* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint CAIRO (IDN) - Not that nuclear issues are an actual source of concern to Egyptian citizens. They are deeply worried about their present and immediate future now that inter-religious violence is on the rise, triggering a dangerous, growing insecurity amidst an overwhelming popular discontent with President Mohamed Morsi's regime. Simply put, there is too much frust ...

By J C Suresh | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis Russia is in the midst of a comprehensive modernization of its nuclear forces that began more than a decade ago. The upgrade, which involves replacing all Soviet-era ballistic missiles with fewer improved missiles, is now approaching a point at which the number of modern weapons will shortly exceed the number of old ones, In a decade, virtually all of the Soviet-era ...

Supporters from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) turned out in force to shame arms giant BAE Systems at their Annual General Meeting AGM), accusing it of supporting repressive regimes through arms sales and unethical business practices. Acute questioning combined with high farce during the two hour meeting culminated in the attempted presentation of "Whitewasher of the year award to BAE Chairman, Dick Olv ...

On Friday last week, the NPT PrepCom finished in Geneva to reconvene in New York in 2014.  Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will gives a final review of the outcomes. The scene of the final day of the second NPT PrepCom provided a snapshot of the NPT process itself. Marked by long waits and dissatisfied states parties (especially the non-nuclear weapon states), the final Friday was an anticlimactic finish t ...

Doctrines, deployments, and the political value attached to "nuclear deterrence" are being challenged at the NPT conference.  As 78 nations co-sponsor a growing "humanitarian initiative", the five NPT nuclear-armed states and some of their "nuclear umbrella" allies like Japan, Australia and Germany are in denial. Rebecca Johnson reports As 96 states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) meet ...

As the NPT prepcom enters its second week of work, Pressenza republishes today's editorial from the daily news bulletin of Reaching Critical Will, prepared by Ray Acheson. “Treaty violations are not to be tolerated as inconvenient facts,” declared the US delegation on Friday. “We should recognize them for what they are: challenges to the integrity of an international regime that has served us so well over m ...

On April 18, 2013, DC's Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton re-introduced HR-1650, the "Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act" for the 11th time WASHINGTON, DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today introduced the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act of 2013 [HR 1650], to require the United States to negotiate an international agreement to dis ...