Top Anti-Nuclear Authorities to Convene in New York City

by Sherwood Ross, Veterans Today, December 12, 2014

The growing threat of planet-wide nuclear extinction will bring some of the world’s leading scholars and activists to New York City for a two-day symposium Feb. 28-March 1, 2015.

This conference will be held at the New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave., N.Y., NY, sponsored by The Helen Caldicott Foundation For a Nuclear Free Future. The press is invited.

Dr. Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, and nuclear weapons. She has been awarded 21 honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.

This symposium will be unique, linking the existential threat of Artificial Super Intelligence(ASI) with the current existential threat of nuclear war. It will examine a future in which intelligent machines could launch a nuclear war with no human input.

This threat is compounded as the escalating crisis in the Ukraine has significantly increased nuclear risk. According to Dr. Caldicott: “As the Cold War heats up again, the U.S. and Russia each maintain over one thousand nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert to be launched with a press of a button, increasing the risk of a global conflagration.”

“Between them,” she goes on to day, “the U.S. and Russia possess 93% of the world’s 16,400 nuclear weapons arsenal, a situation which is made worse by outdated equipment, negligence, poor maintenance, viruses, and hacking within the arsenals of both countries.”

Far from his past disarmament promises, “President Obama plans to earmark $1 trillion over the next 30 years to replace every nuclear weapon, missile, ship, submarine and plane.”

helen-caldicott-nuke

Among the Conference discussion topics are:

  • How many times have we come close to nuclear war with Russia? What are the precipitating human and technological factors?
  • What are the medical and environmental consequences of a limited or major nuclear war?
  • How can we cure the present political pathology leading the world to the brink of nuclear war?

February 28, 2015

Session One

  • Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of “Command and Control,” who will discuss multiple nuclear accidents and near misses.
  • Seth Baum, co-founder of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, will discuss the catastrophic risk of nuclear war.
  • Max Tegmark, professor of physics at MIT, a Swedish-American cosmologist, will discuss the threat of artificial intelligence and of computers launching a nuclear war with no human input.

Session Two

  • Hans Kristensen, of Silver Spring, Md., Director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, will address the current size of nuclear arsenals.
  • Bill Hartung, Center for International Policy of Washington, D.C., will discuss the inordinate power of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
  • Greg Mello, Secretary and Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group, Albuquerque, N.M., will discuss the role and funding of the nuclear weapons laboratories.
  • John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute of Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., will compare military expenditures with global warming outlays.
  • Bruce Gagnon, co-ordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, will speak on the dangerous, ongoing militarization of space.

Session Three

  • Bob Alvarez, Senior Scholar for Nuclear Policy at the Institute of Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., will discuss lateral proliferation and describe how a small nuclear exchange could trigger a global holocaust.

March 1, 2015

Session Four

  • Dr. Alex Rosen, of Dusseldorf, Germany, vice-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, will describe the horrific medical implications of same.
  • Holly Barker, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, will discuss teratogenic and genetic pathology (congenital malformations) from U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.
  • Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., will outline his pioneering work on Nuclear Autumn and Nuclear Winter.
  • Lynn Eden, author of “Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Devastation” (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs), will discuss an issue the Pentagon has ignored: the holocaust of firestorms in the aftermath of nuclear war.

Session Five

  • Janne Nolan, Research Professor, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., will discuss the underlying psychological pathology of nuclear warriors.
  • Mike Lofgren, former chief analyst for military spending at the Senate Budget Committee, will describe U.S. capitalism as it relates to tenuous nuclear situation.
  • Susi Snyder, Nuclear Disarmament Programme Leader for IKV Pax Christi, Utrecht, The Netherlands, will discuss 2014 report “Don’t Bank on The Bomb.”

Session Six

  • Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., will describe his research after spending one year at the Los Alamos Labs.
  • Robert Sheer, author of “Star Warriors” and Clinical Professor of Communications at the University of Southern California, will describe his research on the young men who do the research on nuclear weapons development at Lawrence Livermore Labs.

Session Seven

  • Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Cambridge, Mass., will present the pathology within the present political system that could induce extinction.

Session Eight

  • Tim Wright, Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Geneva, Switzerland, will suggest some potential and exciting solutions.
  • David Krieger, Founder and President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Ca., about the law suit brought on behalf of the Marshall Islands.
  • Helen Caldicott, President of The Helen Caldicott Foundation, will discuss an urgent prescription for survival.

The conference will begin at 9 a.m. sharp both days; check-in at 8 a.m. Press must register in advance with the Media Coordinator and must have current press credentials to be admitted.

The sessions will be livestreamed globally and broadcast by TUC radio, London.

The mission of the The Helen Caldicott Foundation For a Nuclear Free Future  is to educate the public, the media, and public officials about the grave medical and environmental dangers inherent in nuclear power and the nuclear fuel chain, the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and climate change.

CONTACT INFO

  • The Foundation is located at 131 Forest Hill Drive, Ashville, NC 28803.
  • Mali Lightfoot is Executive Director
  • EMAIL:   malilightfoot@gmail.com
  • TEL: (617) 650-5048
  • Dr. Caldicott EMAIL:  hcaldic@bigpound.com

6 thoughts on “Top Anti-Nuclear Authorities to Convene in New York City”

  1. HELEN! IF YOU HADN’T BEEN BRAVE ENOUGH TO TELL US THE REAL RAMIFICATIONS @ FUKUSHIMA++, THEN THE ENTIRE WORLD WOULD BE CLUELESS !!! WITH THE BLOCKED NEWS +INTERNET BLACKOUT, NO ONE WOULD BE ABLE TO KNOW AND ATTEMPT TO AVOID THE HAZARDS, SICKNESS, AND POISONED FOOD SOURCES… HOW SAD FOR MOTHER EARTH, AND ALL OF THE INNOCENTS, CREATURES, AND US… THIS REALLY IS AN ONGOING “MASS EXTINCTION EVENT” (!) AND TOO FEW OF US KNOW THE EXTENT OF THIS OUTRAGEOUS AND OUT OF CONTROL DISASTER!!! KEEP ME POSTED! YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE TELLING THE ENTIRE TRUTH! BLESS YOU…MY TEARS FOR HUMANITY, AND THIS MARVELOUS PLANET…. NOW REDUCED TO PACIFIC MARINE AND MOST ALL WILDLIFE… And Mankind… LINDA LAUER. THANK YOU!

  2. I’d also like to point out that electrical grid proliferation is a fairly inefficient system to be using anyway. Due to distance (degredation of signal over line- referred to as voltage drop) and all the inverting of current which occurs, power is lost every time its converted, which makes electric grid systems a rather low in terms of efficiency. Its better to deliver electricity closer to where its used, and so in the example of a hospital, after putting renewables on the job (Germany, where its foggy is very close to being totally renewable, and obviously has hospitals which run at night), one could use the backup generators (gasoline) to fill in the blanks where necessary if necessary, especially considering that emergency generator back up is required for such facilities by code anyway!! I don’t even see the requirement for nuclear in the design. Personally, I fee this was one of the most intriguing aspects of Nicola Tesla’s work – kinetic energy.

  3. Re: John D’s comment – its obvious that this man doesn’t understand basic principles of electrical grid systems and engineering. ANY power generation mechanism (solar, coal, wind, nuclear, etc…) feeds power after its inverted into the grid where its STORED and then transferred. His comment makes no sense. Most power companies will regulate exactly the type of current which must be received. Its very specific. There is always some type of voltage conversion that must take place because power is generated in large quantities, i.e. megawatts, and consumed at 120V 60HzAC if you’d like to use the US as the standard. Most LED lighting is manufactured to run on 12vDC – there is always some type of conversion which occurs, and it occurs multiple times for many different reasons depending on where and far its going, what’s its powering, etc… all the way down to multiple times inside 1 building. The comment demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding regarding electrical principles – design and distribution. And furthermore, as a lighting designer, you may have a point that obviously the sun doesn’t shine at night, but the wind certainly blows.

  4. “Thank you Dr. Caldicott for your unrelenting, instrumental efforts to expose the harm caused by this catastrophic industry.”

    This industry happens to cause less deaths per energy produced than does any other electricity source, including solar. That’s right, solar killed more people than nuclear ever did and will. Solar and wind is comically ineefficient, and produces more chemical waste than any nuclear plant does. This “catastrophic industry” is the reason you can turn on electricity at night and have hopsitals running. Solar, and wind, will never, ever be able to do that.

    1. Have you actually missed the Fukushima event and it’s environmental impact? Please inform yourself of Japan’s death rate (body count) in five year’s time when you may revisit your comment with some humility.

  5. This symposium is a sight for sore eyes. We need this kind of information be gathered and shared in a public setting like this.

    Time to draw the curtain back from the nuclear industry and find solutions.

    Thank you Dr. Caldicott for your unrelenting, instrumental efforts to expose the harm caused by this catastrophic industry.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *