Wednesday, September 12, 2007

NEXT GENERATION OF TRIDENT IN THE UK

Here is an edited piece I submitted to the Ground Zero Center For Nonviolent Action newsletter. It is important due to info about the Trident, Faslane 365 Campaign and our Walk.

“Toward A Nuclear Free World” was the theme of the Foot Prints for Peace walk from Dublin to London from March 12th to August 6th, 2007 that I joined in Glasgow. We intended to contribute to efforts by locals’ to stimulate more awareness and action to eliminate both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Most significant for me was the Faslane 365 Campaign in Scotland to convince the United Kingdom not to engage with the United State in developing the next generation of Trident warheads nor submarines. Since the walk ended, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has revealed secret efforts by the UK at Aldermaston to create the next generation.

I was arrested at Aldermaston on July 27th (See my blog entry on July 28th, “Aldermaston arrest". ) to protest the Atomic Weapons Establishment’s (AWE) participation in the UK weapons program. Now we know more about what is happening there. At the protest we witnessed the building being constructed for a laser named Orion. The laser will be programmed to approximate the basic formation of a planned nuclear bomb explosion. The laser data will be entered into a new supercomputer which will create a simulation of the actual explosion for this particular bomb. Named Larch, the computer can calculate what it would take the six billion earth’s human inhabitants 7000 calculations per second to do. This new generation of nuclear weapons is a counterpart to the work the United States is doing. The UK program is called High Surety Warhead. The United States names its program, Reliable Replacement Warhead. All this reliable sureness is to circumvent the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTP) and the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). AWE spokespersons deny that the UK has made a decision to make a new Trident bomb. (The secret nuclear weapon development was reported in The Herald on September 4th, 2007, www.theherald.co.uk/print.php?artid=1661681)

I had heard neither about the Aldermaston weapon production site nor the Atomic Weapons Establishment until reviewing Foot Prints for Peace website while researching the proposed walk. I joined the Walk at Faslane because it interfaced with the Faslane 365 Campaign at that point. I fully intended to participate in the direct action to block the gate at Faslane before the trip. By the time we reached Aldermaston two months later, I was more than ready to block the entrance to the AWE facility.

My 700 plus miles participation in the Walk taught me not only much about the nuclear weapons system in the UK, but also nuclear power and radiation. As one of the CND analysts named it, the “Terrible Twins”. Radiation effects from the bomb and nuclear power amount to the same lethal effect. The lethal effects are horrible enough. (I kept the images of the hibakusha from the world before me. We met world representative hibakusha at the World Peace Forum.) Perhaps, one of the most insightful and humanly disconcerting realizations is the sociology and psychology of life under nuclear radiation. People are not only shamed and numbed into silence. Their fears are manipulated into job and future “insecurity.”


The journey toured us through US intelligence bases, missile defense installations, depleted uranium impacts on the environment, and much more. . Walking through beautiful hills and dales, villages and towns, cities gives views and insights, time for thinking and fathoming.

I heard about the Walk at the World Peace Forum, June 2006 in Vancouver B.C., while taking part in the Workshop about Faslane 365 Campaign representing Ground Zero. During the year I ended up deciding to join the Walk. I fully supported the theme of the Walk, “nuclear free world”, and hoped to join the efforts of Scottish and English citizens to persuade the UK not to join the US in the next Trident generation. But, Tony Blair and his cabinet, later the Parliament, blemished that aspiration when the decision was made to move ahead with Trident even before the Walk began. There is still some hope that Scotland will reject its participation, as it seeks independence. The people and the new Scottish parliament leadership have expressed their common disagreement with the Trident system. A new economy will need to be developed to ally local’s apprehensions about jobs.

But, my Walk concerns were also related to climate change, the effects of peak oil on industrial society and the poor around the world. In a word or two, I am most uneasy about viability of life on earth. I walked the entire 75 days as Gandhi to symbolize that the 1.8 billion poorest people, along with creatures like the polar bears, will get the initial brunt of human created abuse. For me the Walk was almost a last ditch effort to say to all of us: “We must change our ways now.” Decades are needed to turn these realities around.

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