Sailing for peace

 

By Reginald Johnson

               

   From Hawaii to San Francisco, to cities along the Great Lakes and now to Connecticut and New England, the "Golden Rule"  is spreading the message that the world needs to abolish nuclear weapons.

     The 30-foot sailboat, named after the ethical principle of treating others as you would like to be treated, has logged more than 22,000 miles in recent years as part of an educational campaign by Veterans for Peace aimed at bringing about nuclear disarmament.

    With red sails emblazoned with the peace symbol and the Veterans for Peace logo, the boat also has a black banner on its side which reads, "Ban Nuclear Weapons. Sign the Treaty."

   "We're trying to stop the possibility of nuclear war by educating people about what they can do, " said Helen Jaccard, project manager for the VFP's "Golden Rule Project"  during a stopover by the boat in New Haven last weekend.

  "We talk about the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and passing 'Back from the Brink' measures, which includes, in addition to the treaty, taking away the President's sole authority to launch a nuclear first strike; taking away the $2 trillion nuclear modernization program; and taking nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert."

        

The Golden Rule sail boat at the Long Wharf pier in New Haven. The vessel has traveled 22,000 miles and visited cities and towns throughout the continental US and Hawaii as crew members and others with Veterans for Peace spread the message that nuclear weapons must be abolished. (Photo by Reginald Johnson)

                               

 In New Haven, there were several days of events in connection with the boat's arrival, including a tour of the New Haven Peace Garden, a presentation at the Sound School Festival and a public welcome by city officials and comments by Jaccard, local peace activists and others at Long Wharf Park, where the Golden Rule was docked.

   Over the Memorial Day weekend, the peace boat was in Norwalk.

  Later this week, the Golden Rule will sail up to New London and then it's onto Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine.

   Jaccard said the mission to bring about nuclear disarmament is more urgent than ever, as the United States keeps pumping Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid to wage a proxy war against Russia. As the war grows more intense, the chances rise of a confrontation between nuclear-armed United States and nuclear-armed Russia.

  Veterans for Peace nationally has criticized the Biden administration's military support for Ukraine and called for a cease-fire and negotiated peace.

   Jaccard said the danger of a nuclear war is as great now as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when a nuclear war between the US and the then Soviet Union was narrowly avoided.

  Commenting on Ukraine, Jaccard said, "Both Russia and the United States have said all options are on the table. You know what that means? Threatening nuclear war."

  The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons bans the production, testing, use and transfer of weapons under international law. The treaty has 42 countries signing on, but not the nuclear-armed countries including the United States, Russia, Britain, France, India and Pakistan.

  Jaccard said some progress is being made to move the needle and get the treaty signed by the US and approve other related measures. She said 5 states have now passed resolutions calling on Congress and the President to sign the treaty.

  "I do see nuclear weapons more at the table of conversation," she said.

  The history of the Golden Rule actually goes back to 1958, when Quaker peace activists (including Albert Bigelow of Cos Cob) sailed the craft to the Marshall Islands in the Pacific to protest US atomic bomb testing. The Coast Guard stopped the vessel and the crew was arrested, prompting an international outcry.

  According to a brochure on the Golden Rule, "rising public awareness of the dangers of radiation led to worldwide demands to stop nuclear testing." Later the US under President Kennedy signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Russia and the United Kingdom in 1963.

  The boat was used for a number of more years and then fell into disuse in northern California. The boat later sank in a storm in Humboldt Bay. But in 2010, veterans and others decided to salvage the boat and restore it. By 2015, work was completed and and the Golden Rule began making tours.

 One of the speakers at the Long Wharf event gave first-hand testimony about the dangers of atomic bomb testing. Hank Bolden of Cheshire said he was a teen-ager in the Army in 1955 when he and others in his unit were exposed to nuclear fallout during bomb testing in Nevada. Bolden said the Army never warned them in advance that they were going on a mission where atomic bombs were being tested.

                   

Hank Bolden, a Korean War vet and atomic testing survivor, speaks about his experiences. Bolden has endured multiple cancers since he was exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb test in 1955. (Photo by Reginald Johnson)

  "They put soldiers in the path (of the explosion). They wanted to find out how soldiers would react in a nuclear environment," he said. "I was exposed to ionizing radiation so badly that when the bomb dropped, when you held your hands up, you could see the bones in your hand," he said.

  Over the years, Bolden, 86, has endured multiple cancers. He is one of two surviving veterans who were exposed to atomic testing. A number of articles have been written about Bolden and others in the military who were exposed to testing.

  "I invite you to go on the internet and see what you may or may not believe about what the federal government will do to you," Bolden said.

    One of the crew members on the Golden Rule spoke about why he decided to take part in the Veterans for Peace project. Bill Good of Ohio said, "I think this an opportunity to at least bring some awareness, get people thinking of how we can get rid of these nuclear weapons and point out how much of our money and taxes go to fund these weapons and how we can take that money and use it for much better purposes, like education, housing and health care and make a better society."

  

                              

Crew members Captain Kiko Johnston-Kitazawa of Hawaii and Bill Good of Ohio stand next to the Golden Rule.

 (Photo by Reginald Johnson)

     (For more information about the Golden Rule, go to www.VFPGoldenRule.org)

  

 

  

  

Fukushima -- A Global Threat

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 By Reginald Johnson

  This week, an event will take place at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan that could have grave consequences for the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

  Engineers from the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation, which owns the plant, will attempt to remove more than 1500 highly-radioactive spent fuel rods from a damaged containment building at the plant’s reactor number 4. It is critical to remove the rods and put them in a safe building, given the possibility that another earthquake could strike the area of the plant and bring the existing building down, which could lead to a massive explosion and fire, setting off waves of lethal radiation.

  A powerful earthquake and tsunami already struck the plant in March 2011, creating widespread damage to the complex.

  The problem is that a number of nuclear experts and observers are skeptical of TEPCO’s technical capabilities to perform the removal operation safely. Many of the rods at the reactor 4 building are bent and in a brittle condition, and there is doubt that the company  on its own will be able to extract each one (they’ll be using a 273-foot crane for the operation) without one or several rods breaking. The rods could explode or catch on fire, setting off large doses of radiation, depending on how many rods are involved.

  The amount of radioactivity in the fuel rods at unit 4 is staggering. According to long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, the amount of cesium 137 in the fuel rods in reactor 4 is equal to 14,000 times the amount released by the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

  Making the situation even more worrisome is that another 6,000 spent fuel rods sit in a cooling pool only 50 meters away from reactor 4. Should those rods somehow get involved during an accident, the consequences are unthinkable, say Wasserman and others.

 “The potential radiation releases in this situation can only be described as apocalyptic,” Wasserman commented in an article in Common Dreams on October 24 (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/24-3).

 Despite the difficulty of the task and the dangers involved, TEPCO is planning on going ahead with the removal operation sometime later this week. The Japanese government has reportedly raised no objections to the plan

  But Wasserman and others, such as nuclear engineer and activist Arnie Gundersen, are trying desperately to get the UN and leading countries like the U.S. to intervene and not allow the operation to go ahead until a team of the world’s best nuclear engineers are assembled and sent to Japan to assist in this project.

  “The bring-down of the fuel rods from Fukushima Unit 4 may be the most dangerous engineering task ever undertaken. Every indication is that TEPCO is completely incapable of doing it safely, or of reliably informing the global community as to what’s actually happening,” said Wasserman. “This is a job that should only be undertaken by a dedicated team of the world’s very best scientists and engineers, with access to all the funding that could be needed.”

  On Thursday, activists will go to UN headquarters in New York City to present a petition with the names of more than 100,000 people asking UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to initiate a global takeover of the Fukushima operation. Prior to the presentation, people will gather at 1 p.m. at Dag Hammerskjold Plaza outside the UN.

  (Just as this blog was being written, TEPCO reportedly announced on its website that U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz had met with company officials about Fukushima and offered Washington’s assistance in the fuel rod removal operation and decommissioning of the plant. The nature of the assistance was not described.)

 It is urgently important that the UN get involved in the Fukushima crisis, as this clearly has world-wide implications. A massive release of radiation into the air, in the event of an accident, affects not only Japan, but everywhere --- just as radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine in 1986 spread around the world. By all estimates, there is real danger of a radiation accident far worse than Chernobyl taking place at Fukushima.

 The problems at Fukushima’s unit 4 are by no means the only serious issues at the plant. Some reactors at other units have apparently sunk into the earth, due to the earthquake, posing incalculable health and environmental dangers. Hundreds of tons of water contaminated with radioactive elements, are continuing to leak into the Pacific Ocean, affecting fish and seafood. Bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California have been found to contain radioactive elements, most likely picked up when the migratory fish were in waters close to Japan.

   To Wasserman, the situation at Fukushima is beyond dire.  “This is a question that transcends being anti-nuclear. The fate of the earth is at stake here and the whole world must be watching every move at that site from now on. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, as a ceaseless flow of contaminated water poisons our oceans, our very survival is at stake.”