ICAN at Independence Stone Church

Matthew Bolton and Emily Welty with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) spoke last Saturday, April 28, at the Community of Christ Stone Church in Independence, MO.  ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for their work in securing the passage in the United Nations of the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons. This treaty will officially become effective when it has been ratified by 50 countries.

This episode of “World Possibilities” features their main presentation followed by part of the question and answer session, ending with a brief discussion by Jim Hannah of supportive activities being organized locally by PeaceWorksKC.

Bolton and Welty focused primarily on the moral dimension of nuclear weapons:  These weapons of necessity primarily kill civilians, non-combatants. People not killed instantly from the blast and radiation tend to die moderately slow, extremely painful deaths from excessive burns as their skin sags off their bodies.  Survivors who are not sterile are substantially more likely to have children with various kinds of serious birth defects that are often transmitted to future generations.

Pope Francis said that Catholic doctrine had held that nuclear weapons were acceptable as long as nuclear powers were working to eliminate them.  It is now clear that existing nuclear powers will not do that without explicit condemnation. Accordingly, he said that the continued possession of nuclear weapons is morally unacceptable. Emily further noted that nuclear weapons violate the morality and scriptures of all the world’s major religions.

This is well understood by leaders of the 122 nations that passed the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons last year.  Many of the people who do NOT understand this are in nations like the US with nuclear weapons, whose media are controlled by elites intent on using their nuclear power to threaten other nations.   

An alternative perspective on this issue is provided by Daniel Ellsberg’s new book “The Doomsday Machine:  Confessions of a nuclear war planner“. Ellsberg said that the US military told President Kennedy in 1961 that a nuclear war would likely kill a third of humanity, and more recent research strongly suggests that even a relatively minor nuclear war between India and Pakistan, as almost occurred in 1999 and again 2001, would likely result in a nuclear winter with massive crop failures leading to the starvation of 98 percent of the survivors from the war itself worldwide.  Bolton and Welty prefer to focus on the slow, agonizing deaths from extreme radiation burns, because too many people simply refuse to consider the implications of Ellsberg’s message.

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