Cambridge, MA City Council Unanimous Vote to Divest Pension Funds from Nuclear Weapons Production

As the US and other nuclear nations move to modernize their nuclear weapons at a cost of $4 million/hour over the next 30 years (instead of fulfilling treaty obligations to disarm under Article VI of the NPT) a new international campaign is being waged called Don't Bank on the Bomb.

With prominent scientists including Stephen Hawking saying: "If you want to slow the nuclear arms race, then put your money where your mouth is and don't bank on the bomb!" this campaign has already taken off in Europe with more than 50 large institutions limiting their investments in companies involved in manufacturing nuclear weapons.

With the Cambridge City Council unanimous vote, peace activists hope that the campaign will take off across the US  to let the corporations know that people do not want these weapons developed and modernized, as Mayor Denise Simmons said, when announcing the vote: "Not in our name!"

Read more about the campaign:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/hawking-says-dont-bank-on_b_9606926.html

Another kind of Nuclear Security Summit: The Marshall Islands vs. the Nuclear-Armed States

09.04.2016 - The Hague, The Netherlands - Pressenza Budapest

A 21 kiloton underwater nuclear weapons effects test, known as Operation CROSSROADS (Event Baker), conducted at Bikini Atoll (1946). (Image by U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps)

By Jacqueline Cabasso

The recent Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Obama in Washington, DC generated a goodly amount of hype, including some well-deserved criticism of its narrow focus on securing civilian highly enriched uranium (HEU) and other modest, voluntary steps aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons-useable nuclear and radiological materials. The Summit was silent on the huge stocks of HEU and plutonium in military programs and the more than 15,000 existing nuclear weapons possessed by States, including the Summit’s host – the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war.

Another kind of nuclear security summit took place last month in The Hague, as the tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands took on three nuclear-armed giants before the highest court in the world. Hubris and hypocrisy on one side, courage and vision on the other were on global display.

In April 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) initiated proceedings in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against all nine nuclear-armed nations, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, contending that each of them is in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and/or customary international law to end the nuclear arms race and to engage in negotiations on nuclear disarmament.