An Exclusive Interview with Helen Caldicott
It’s been 40 years since If You Love This Planet won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
The film is comprised of a lecture given to students by outspoken nuclear critic Dr. Helen Caldicott, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility in the USA. Her message is clear: disarmament cannot be postponed. Archival footage of the bombing of Hiroshima and images of its survivors seven months after the attack heighten the urgency of her message.
Since it was released, the film has only grown more relevant and authoritative and, on its anniversary, Dr. Caldicott has given an exclusive interview on its context and continued relevance.
... read moreThe Oppenheimer imperative: Normalising atomic terror
By Binoy Kampmark, Independent Australia, 22 August 2023
The atomic bomb created the conditions of contingent catastrophe, forever placing the world on the precipice of existential doom. But in doing so, it created a philosophy of acceptable cruelty, worthy extinction and legitimate extermination.
The scenarios for such programs of existential realisation proved endless. Entire departments, schools of thought and think tanks were dedicated to the absurdly criminal notion that atomic warfare could be tenable for the mere reason that someone (or some people) might survive. Despite the relentless march of civil society against nuclear weapons, such insidious thinking persists with a certain obstinate... read more
The Existential and Imminent Threat of Nuclear War
YouTube, 9 August 2023
Scott Ritter warns that America’s stated, strategic plan to destroy Russia will spell the end of life on the planet. Why? The US has unilaterally withdrawn for all nuclear arms treaties that have kept us safe since Reagan signed the first treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. It was “Trust but Verify” back then.
On top of this, the US has declared its “first strike” nuclear policy. Russia will not adopt such a policy, but has declared that any threat on its existence or territory will result in Russia unleashing its entire nuclear arsenal…and we are all dead. Nobody wins in a nuclear war, not even a “limited” nuclear war.
Ritter elaborates on how the US uses soft power, color revolutions to put... read more
Why Men Kill and Why Women Let Them
By Helen Caldicott
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of... read more
Vanuatu MP, veteran filmmaker, and Dr. Helen Caldicott fight Japan's plan to dump radioactive wastewater into our Pacific Ocean
The Honorable Andrew Napuat and award-winning filmmaker Philippe Carillo (The Fukushima Disaster, the Hidden Side of the Story) are speaking out against Japan’s government and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) attempts to silence the voices of the people of the Pacific Island Nations by censuring critical data recognized as valid by a growing number of scientists.
The Japanese government repeatedly downplays that “treated water” (1.3 million tons of stored unfiltered radioactive wastewater from the 2011 triple nuclear meltdowns which contains at least... read more
Oppenheimer: From Trinity to Doomsday
Robert Dodge, Common Dreams, 24 July 2023
The service that the new Christopher Nolan film has brought forth, providing public awareness about nuclear weapons, demands that we cannot remain silent.
I attended this weekend’s Los Angeles opening of Christopher Nolan’s epic film, Oppenheimer. This must-see film provides a critical opening for an essential conversation about nuclear weapons and their role in our security and the fate of the planet. The film, notably released 78 years to the week after the Trinity test, chronicles Robert J. Oppenheimer’s life, both personal and scientific, from his vetting to direct the Los Alamos laboratory for the Manhattan Project, to the development of the first atomic bomb and through the difficult subsequent years and the active campaign to smear him.
The Film
The... read more