nuclear weapons

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/24/2022
  

  A History of Nuclear False Alarms

  As nuclear readiness is increased in response to North Korean tests and the territorial goals of China and Russia, it's time to revisit times when an accidental nuclear war came close to happening. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/25/2022
  

  Tularosa Downwinders: a 75 Year Wait for Justice

  Residents of New Mexico's Tularosa basin received no advance warning of the 1945 atomic bomb tests nor of the risks to their health. They've been excluded from relief legislation that has benefitted residents near the Nevada test sites and workers in uranium mines. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  1/18/2022
  

  Only Fools Replay Doomsday

  by William Astore

  The author worked at NORAD's headquarters under Cheyenne Mountain at the height of the Cold War and wonders why, having emerged the nominal victors of one round of military escalation toward armageddon, American policymakers seem willing to enter another. 

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  10/29/2021
  

  The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Nuclear Bomb

  by Alex Wellerstein

  Read a detailed account of the moment in the Cold War when the United States and Soviet Union contemplated, then developed and tested, nuclear weapons of horrifying power. 

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• SOURCE: Not Even Past
  10/19/2021
  

  In Memoriam: Robert Divine, 1929-2021

  by H.W. Brands and Mark Atwood Lawrence

  Two University of Texas colleagues pay tribute to the scholarly, teaching, and personal contributions of the late Robert Divine to the field of diplimatic history. 

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• 9/19/2021
  

  We are All Becoming Cassandras: Leaders Must Heed the People on Climate, Disarmament, and Pandemic

  by Lawrence Wittner

  In classical myth, Cassandra was a lone prophet whose accurate predictions were ignored. Today, a growing share of humanity are playing the Cassandra role against a political and economic elite standing in the way of solutions to the threats of climate change, pandemic disease and nuclear annihilation. 

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/15/2021
  

  On the Eve of Destruction: Breaking the Double-Bind of the Nuclear Arms Race

  by Richard Rhodes

  Politicians and defense contractors who wanted American nuclear supremacy won out over scientists seeking international effort to contain the extinction-level threat posed by thermonuclear weapons, even to the point of denying the planet-destroying power of the H-bomb. 

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• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  8/27/2021
  

  Researchers Work on Mystery Uranium Cubes to Better Understand Nazi Progress on Atomic Bomb

  New forensic research techniques could fill in missing details of the progress of Nazi nuclear weapons programs and improve contemporary efforts to enforce nuclear nonproliferation. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  8/26/2021
  

  75 Years Ago: Did Truman Read John Hersey's "Hiroshima"?

  by Greg Mitchell

  "My research yielded amazing letters between "New Yorker" editor and the White House following publication of one of the most heralded and important articles of the century."

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• 8/22/2021
  

  The View from the New York City Hiroshima Peace Vigil

  by Michael McQuillan

  The march featured the testimony of antinuclear activists and rekindled a demand for New York's city council to divest the city budget from contractors who make nuclear weapons, but too much of the public seems willing to ignore the nuclear threat.

• 
• 8/22/2021
  

  Can the Nuclear Genie Be Put Back In the Bottle? Must It?

  by David P. Barash and Ward Wilson

  We won't eliminate nuclear weapons by expunging the science behind their creation but by comprehending their uselessness and letting them join the ranks of abandoned technologies.

• 
• 8/15/2021
  

  Children's Teeth, Collected Decades Ago, Can Show the Damage of Nuclear Testing

  by Lawrence Wittner and Joseph Mangano

  The Radiation and Public Health Project will use thousands of baby teeth collected for a discontinued 1960s study of radiation exposure to assess the health toll of nuclear testing. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Black Reporter Exposed Official Lies about the Atomic Bomb

  Charles Loeb's reporting defied the official government line that radiation from the atomic bombs dropped on Japan was harmless, and resonated with Black readers who suspected a racist motive in dropping the new weapons on Japanese cities. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/9/2021
  

  A Star Times Reporter was Paid by Government Agencies He Covered

  Historian Alex Wellerstein's book is one of two that exposes the self-dealing of reporter William Laurence and his complicity with propaganda about the effects of nuclear weapons. 

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• SOURCE: Axios
  7/15/2021
  

  Latinos Forgotten Victims of US Nuclear Testing

  Hispanic and Native residents of New Mexico who were excluded from the first Radiation Exposure Compensation Act are likely to be included in a bill to reauthorize the legislation. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/29/2021
  

  Blackness and the Bomb

  by Erica X. Eisen

  "Throughout the atomic age, civil defense authorities demanded the active participation of Black citizens whom their measures failed to protect."

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• 6/13/2021
  

  It's Time for a "Don't Trust, Do Verify" US-Russia Cybersecurity Treaty

  by Glenn C. Altschuler and Justin Lifflander

  The Reagan-Gorbachev summit meetings that yielded the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and established mutual weapons monitoring weren't expected to succeed, but offer hope that negotiations between Biden and Putin could advance progress toward needed mutual cybersecurity action. 

• 
• 5/30/2021
  

  Review: Lesley Blume's “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World”

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Journalist Lesley Blume's book "Fallout" ably tells the story about how John Hersey and the New Yorker navigated government censorship and political opposition to publish Hersey's "Hiroshima," a foundational work in later movements to prevent nuclear war.

• 
• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  5/25/2021
  

  Missile Defense is Not a Substitute for Arms Control

  by John Tierney and Samuel M. Hickey

  A former Congressman and an arms control analyst argue that the key goal of upcoming meetings between Biden and Putin is nuclear arms control; the United States can afford to use its technological superiority in missile defense as a chip to ensure this greater goal. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/22/2021
  

  Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known

  Daniel Ellsberg disclosed a page from a 1966 study of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis that indicate many military leaders were anticipating the necessity of using nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan against the People's Republic of China.