How the US Nuclear Weapons Modernization Program Is Increasing the Chances of Accidental Nuclear War with Russia
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When: Thursday, February 25, 2016, 4:00 pm to 5:30
pm
Where: Harvard University, CGIS South • 1730 Cambridge St
• Belfer Room • Cambridge
Speaker: Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of
Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Postol worked in the Pentagon as the Scientific Adviser to the
Chief of Naval Operations.
The US nuclear force
modernization program has been misrepresented to the American public as a
program aimed at increasing the reliability of US nuclear forces. In fact, the
program is relentlessly aimed at increasing the firepower of current US nuclear
forces. These activities have not been missed by Russian military analysts and
their political leaders, who have interpreted these unremitting activities as US
preparations to fight and win a nuclear war with Russia.
At the same time,
political tensions between the US and Russia are rising and threaten to get more
dangerous. There are also very serious shortfalls in Russia’s early warning
system, and in the morale of US personnel who man US nuclear forces. These
circumstances have almost certainly led Russian political leaders to streamline
decision-making so Russian nuclear forces could be launched in the event of an
American nuclear attack against Russia.
These circumstances
greatly increased the danger of a world nuclear catastrophe.
The status of the
current situation will be discussed in this talk, as well as the global
consequences of such an event.
Co-sponsors: Harvard
College Peace Action, Harvard Russian Speakers Association, Massachusetts Peace
Action, United for Justice with
Peace
Elaine Scarry: Democracy and Nuclear Weapons Cannot Co-Exist
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When: Thursday, February 25, 2016, 7:00 pm to 9:00
pm
Where: Central Square Library • 45 Pearl Street • Central
T • Cambridge
This will be the final talk
in the series accompanying the Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Working for a
Nuclear Weapons-Free World exhibit. Her talk will build from her recent book
Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom and from her recent
speaking engagements in Hiroshima.
Elaine Scarry is Cabot
Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value of Harvard University.
Her book The Body in Pain was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. She
is an active committee member of Massachusetts Peace Action and the American
Friends Service Committee.
Sponsored by American Friends
Service Committee and Massachusetts Peace Action.
During the entire month of
February, the Central Square branch of the Cambridge Public Library will display
photographs and paintings that convey the devastation and human consequences of
the first atomic bombings and the Hibakusha’s (witness/ survivors’) commitments
to create a nuclear weapons-free world. See
the schedule of talks associated with the exhbit.
Parking is only $2 an hour in
the parking garage next to the library.
Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the nation's
largest grassroots peace organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA
02138
617-354-2169 w
617-466-9274 m
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