2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humanity

2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humanity

Postby Oscar » Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:00 am

2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humanity

[ https://peaceandhealthblog.com/2017/10/ ... l-to-ican/ ]

by IPPNW October 6, 2017

tags: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Nobel Peace Prize, nuclear ban treaty

Breaking news

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Announcement and explanation of award at nobelpeaceprize.org [ https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/ ]

In honoring the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) as this year’s Nobel Peace Laureate, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has reaffirmed that prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons is the most urgent security priority of our time.

ICAN was launched in 2007 by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the 1985 Nobel Peace Laureate, and now comprises 468 civil society organizations and thousands of campaigners in 101 countries.

ICAN mounted an extraordinarily effective and diverse global campaign that helped secure the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by 122 UN member states on July 7, 2017. The landmark agreement declares nuclear weapons illegal because of their catastrophic consequences and based on the principles of international humanitarian law. The Treaty was achieved through the collective effort of civil society, international organizations, and non-nuclear-weapon states.

“The Hibakusha, who have borne constant witness to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons since the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, played a pivotal role in ICAN’s work to support the negotiations for the Ban Treaty,” noted IPPNW co-president and ICAN’s founding co-chair Tilman Ruff. “Their voices—and those of the victims of nuclear testing—can be heard clearly in the Treaty’s preamble, which cites ‘the unacceptable suffering of and harm caused to the victims of the use of nuclear weapons.'”

“This year’s Nobel Peace Prize does more than recognize the Ban Treaty as a major step forward in nuclear disarmament,” said IPPNW co-president Ira Helfand. “It reminds us that we remain hostage to what can only be considered suicide bombs. Now that nuclear weapons have been stigmatized and prohibited, it’s up to all of us to increase the legal, moral and political pressure on the nuclear-armed and nuclear-dependent states. Our task will not be finished until the last nuclear weapon has been eliminated from the last arsenal on Earth.”
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Re: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humani

Postby Oscar » Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:06 am

Nobel Peace Prize acknowledges anti-nuclear movement

[ http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/10/06/nobe ... -movement/ ]

By Carmel Kilkenny | english@rcinet.ca Friday 6 October, 2017

LISTEN: Scroll down to Interview - 8 mins.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today, to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, (ICAN).

It is a grassroots movement operating in over 100 counties, that helped lobby for the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“They’re not really weapons, they’re mechanisms for annihilating most higher forms of life on earth”

The Nobel committee chair said the group “has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world’s nations to pledge to co-operate … in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons,”

Gordon Edwards, head of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says the award to ICAN is “wonderful news”.

“For the first time in the 71-year history of the nuclear arms race we really have hammered out an international treaty on the prevention and abolition of nuclear weapons.” Edwards says.

More than 50 countries have signed the treaty, while 122 nations have approved the text, the Netherlands was the one nation voted against the treaty.

” A global suicide machine”

Edwards says it’s “the first step in a long road that is long overdue to achieve a world free of the nightmare of nuclear annihilation.”

Edwards may sound optimistic, even as the 69 other countries that did not vote include all the nuclear weaponized states, and the members of NATO except for the Netherlands.

But Edwards is well aware of the consequences of nuclear warfare. He says the language is inadequate.

“We call them nuclear weapons, but in fact they’re not really weapons, they’re mechanisms for annihilating most higher forms of life on earth.”

Edwards says an “all-out nuclear war” would bring global starvation as the resulting smoke would block the sunlight in what’s known as a ‘nuclear winter’ for several years.

He says “people do not realize what we’re talking about here; we’re talking about a global suicide machine”.

“The calm before the storm”

When asked about the disconcerting coincidence of today’s other news, that U.S. President Donald Trump made an off-the-cuff remark last night, during a photo-op with the country’s top military leaders and their wives, describing it as being “the calm before the storm”, Edwards is frank:

“Many people regard this whole situation that we’re in, with regard to the nuclear threat, as the culmination of four billion years of evolution of life on this planet.” he says.

After four billion years of evolution one species, out of all the species on earth, has developed the capability to undue four billion years of evolution, and that’s the humans,

And the humans are using primal instincts of aggression and warfare and hostility, which have got to the point, because of these weapons, of being a threat not just to the enemy, but a threat to all life.”

Edwards says Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea don’t grasp the basic facts of the potential destruction, “they think that they’re brandishing these weapons as if they were just crossbows and spears and swords from days gone by: they’re totally out of touch with reality.”

Edwards challenges Canadians to speak up on these issues. He says the country, as a member of the NATO alliance, is part of the problem.

He reminds people of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. addressing these issues back in 1978 at the U.N. General Assembly.

Edwards paraphrases Trudeau senior as saying at the time, “If we want to have a world without nuclear weapons, we have to invoke a strategy of suffocation, we have to choke off the vital oxygen on which these weapons feed.”
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Re: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humani

Postby Oscar » Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:13 pm

Canadian Hiroshima survivor to jointly accept ICAN Nobel Peace Prize

[ https://www.ceasefire.ca/?p=25509 ]

October 27, 2017 Ceasefire.ca

Today we learned the amazing news that Canadian citizen Setsuko Thurlow [ http://hibakushastories.org/meet-the-hi ... o-thurlow/ ], a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, will jointly accept this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Here is an excerpt from the ICAN press release:

Thurlow was 13 years old when the United States attacked her city, killing more than 140,000 people. She will receive the prize together with ICAN’s executive director, Beatrice Fihn, at a ceremony in Oslo on 10 December.

Thurlow has been a leading figure in ICAN since its launch in 2007. She played a pivotal role in the United Nations negotiations that led to the adoption of a landmark treaty on 7 July that outlaws nuclear weapons categorically. [ https://www.ceasefire.ca/?cat=14 ]

She and other Canadian ICAN campaigners are appealing to the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to sign this historic accord. At the behest of the United States, Canada boycotted the negotiating process earlier this year.

““I was dismayed and heartbroken when the Prime Minister dismissed the new treaty as ‘sort of useless’,” said Thurlow, referring to a statement that he made in the Canadian parliament on 7 June.

“Such callous language to describe the prohibition of the most horrific weapons humankind has ever known. The Prime Minister seems to wilfully ignore the fact that the majority of Canadians want a world without nuclear weapons.”

A former social worker, Thurlow has lived in Toronto since 1955. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2006.

“As a living witness to Hiroshima, I beseech Justin Trudeau to change course,” she said.

Click here for the full ICAN press release.

The NDP Critic for Foreign Affairs, Hélène Laverdière, made the following statement:

“Perhaps now that a Canadian is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Trudeau government will wake up to the reality of this global threat to humanity, and join the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

The Liberals cannot continue to pretend they believe in nuclear disarmament so long as they stay outside of this treaty, and they cannot pretend to celebrate Canadian achievement on the international stage so long as they do not congratulate ICAN on their Nobel Peace Prize.”

Click here for the entire statement: ????

Further reading:

Laura Stone, “Canadian woman who survived Hiroshima bombing urges change of heart from Trudeau,” Globe and Mail, 26 October 2017.

[ https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/n ... e36725770/ ]
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Re: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humani

Postby Oscar » Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:49 am

Nuclear weapons ban campaigners accept Nobel Peace Prize at time of atomic strife

[ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/ ... i6GN6brvbI ]

Kyodo Dec 11, 2017

OSLO – A group campaigning for a total ban on nuclear weapons received its Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday, the recognition coming at a time of stalled disarmament talks and major global concern over North Korea’s provocative weapons tests.

Members of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, led by Executive Director Beatrice Fihn, received the prize at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo for efforts leading to the adoption in July of the U.N. treaty outlawing nuclear weapons.

The treaty “provides the pathway forward at a moment of great global crisis. It is a light in a dark time,” Fihn said in a speech as she accepted the award with Setsuko Thurlow, 85, who witnessed the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima at age 13 and now lives in Canada.

Thurlow has often spoken out at the United Nations about her experiences as a hibakusha, urging governments to ratify the nuclear weapons ban treaty.

“These (nuclear) weapons are not a necessary evil, they are the ultimate evil,” Thurlow said. “We hibakusha had been waiting for the ban for 72 years. Let this be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.”

The Geneva-based nongovernmental organization worked with survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including Thurlow, in a campaign to create the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The treaty was adopted with the support of 122 U.N. members but came without backing from the five major nuclear powers and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Japan and other countries relying on nuclear deterrence for protection also failed to endorse the treaty.

MORE:

[ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/ ... i6GN6brvbI ]
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Re: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humani

Postby Oscar » Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:51 am

Toronto woman who survived Hiroshima nuclear bombing to accept Nobel Peace Prize

[ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/201 ... prize.html ]

Setsuko Thurlow, 85, was 13 years old during the attack and has become a leading figure in the fight against nuclear weapons.

By The Canadian Press Thu., Oct. 26, 2017

A Canadian who survived the Second World War nuclear bomb attack on Hiroshima will accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Setsuko Thurlow, 85, was 13 years old and living in Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the first of two nuclear weapons on Japan.

Thurlow, who married a Canadian and moved to Toronto in the 1950s, will accept the awards with the executive director of ICAN, Beatrice Fihn, in Oslo, Norway in December.

ICAN says Thurlow has been a leading figure in its movement since its launch in 2007.

ICAN says she played a key role in efforts at the United Nations to adapt a landmark treaty outlawing nuclear weapons.

Thurlow has campaigned against nuclear weapons for her entire life and said in a release on Thursday that she is “deeply humbled” to be invited to the Nobel Prize ceremony.

“It has been such a privilege to work with so many passionate and inspirational ICAN campaigners around the world over the past decade. The Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful tool that we can now use to advance our cause,” she said.

Nobel said earlier this year that it was recognizing ICAN for its work in drawing attention to the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”
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Re: 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN is wake up call to humani

Postby Oscar » Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:56 am

Why Canada should sign the treaty banning nuclear arms

[ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... e35827028/ ]

DOUGLAS ROCHE Contributed to The Globe and Mail Published July 29, 2017

Douglas Roche is a former senator and a former Canadian ambassador for disarmament and honourary citizen of Hiroshima.

- - - SNIP - - -

It is dismaying that the Government of Canada, the first country in the world to declare it would not develop nuclear weapons, took a stand in Parliament opposing the new treaty as "premature." How can it be "premature" to ban nuclear weapons after seven decades of their existence?

The real reason for Canada's opposition is because the U.S. government instructed its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to resist on the grounds that the treaty "delegitimizes the concept of nuclear deterrence." That is exactly the aim of the treaty advocates, who maintain that the measure is a head-on rejection of nuclear hegemony.

The new treaty also shores up the non-proliferation treaty, which is continually being weakened by the major powers' refusal to abide by its obligation to negotiate the elimination of nuclear arsenals. Prohibiting nuclear weapons is an essential step toward their elimination. Thus, the Government of Canada should sign and ratify the new prohibition treaty as a concrete step toward the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

- - - SNIP - - -
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