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The Times of London was at it again this week. “Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead”, the paper said, “and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb”.
A great deal of information, but which is the provenance of all these ‘facts’?

On August 9, at a widely attended annual commemoration ceremony held to honor the victims of the atomic bombings of 1945, the Mayor of Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, issued an invitation urging leaders of all countries currently possessing or developing nuclear weapons to visit Nagasaki, a city which has suffered nuclear destruction.

Speaking in a public forum in Nairobi, Hillary Clinton signaled a potential shift in US opposition to the International Criminal Court. Clinton said she feels “great regret” the US is not a signatory. A number of states, including China, Russia, India and the United States, have not joined the present 108 member states. Chile to be 109th as of September.

In Budapest, a joint delegation from the Humanist Movement, Greenpeace Hungary, and ATTAC Hungary visited the embassies of countries with nuclear weapons. Later that day, 150 people staged a die-in demonstration in front of the Hungarian parliament building, to commemorate the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.

Rafael de la Rubia exposed the World March proposals during an event gathering some of the main representatives from NGOs for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The conference took place yesterday, August 6, in Hiroshima. The central issue was the role of organizations in the revision of the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of atomic weapons.

In Budapest, a joint delegation from the Humanist Movement, Greenpeace Hungary, and ATTAC Hungary visited the embassies of countries with nuclear weapons. Later that day, 150 people staged a die-in demonstration in front of the Hungarian parliament building, to commemorate the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.

The Montreal’s Nature Museums invited pacifists to gather in the Japanese Garden of the Botanical Garden at 7 p.m. on August 5 for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. The Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and the Japanese Consul in Montreal, Mr. Hiroaki Isobe, took part in this event to commemorate the tragedy that struck Hiroshima 64 years ago.

It’s encouraging that U.S. and Russia leaders have once again put nuclear disarmament on the negotiating table, but we cannot forget that we live in a highly dangerous moment. The danger stems also from the madness of violent groups with possible access to nuclear material and the real risk of accident that could set off a devastating conflict.

On the anniversary of the nuclear bomb attack on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an expedition of Spaniards and Turks has reached the summit of legendary Mount Ararat to “pay homage to the memory of the victims of that disaster and strengthen an open and diverse global movement that rejects all forms of violence and affirms the human being as the highest value.”

Read the complete address “Peace Declaration, 2009” of Tadatoshi Akiba at Hiroshima’s bomb ceremony on 6th August. The mayor of Hiroshima and president of the NGO Mayors for Peace declare that “we support President Obama when he said in Prague in April of this year ‘the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished’.