The recent Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference, current Senate hearings on ratification of the START Treaty, the four year fissile control effort, and a world-wide missile defense race (today’s arms race by another name) all combine to remind us of End-Time’s looming shadow.
Nuclear missile targeting of cities around the world remains in place, both ancient Cold War targeting of U.S., Russian, French, and British cities, as well as, presumably, more recent and ongoing targeting by China, Israel, India, and Pakistan. All operational with a pushed button or two. Perhaps North Korea. Iran soon. The targeted populations, which is most of us, ought to make common cause to pressure nations to do what they have failed to do over the 65 years since Hiroshima - achieve verified arms control and prevent war. Here are ten local, doable assignments for those who would discard victimhood and practice survival skills:
1. Ask your municipal elected body to hold a public hearing on how your city (or town!) might help our national government assure that nuclear and other WMD weapons will not proliferate to additional nations or to terrorists, and motivate nations that possess them to verifiably discard them. A simple first step would be for your municipality to lobby for Senate ratification of the START Treaty.
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2. Get local media to acknowledge the security risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and to publicize why targeted populations should pressure their nations to achieve verified, enforced, arms control.
3. Signal local office holders and political candidates that you think security is part of their job in view of national failure to achieve verified, enforced arms control and to prevent war.
4. Make common cause with like minded people across state and national borders by putting a slot on the municipal ballot to elect a local representative to a global municipal security congress..
5. Generate dialogue through local media, neighborhood organizations, and local elected officials about the risks of WMD targeting, both in war and by terrorists,
6. Collect information from the media, arms control organizations, and books about the influence over national security policies that is exercised by economic and ideological interests, that influence and even determine what weapons are manufactured, the content of arms control treaties, what wars are fought, and the degree of effort (or lack of effort) that is devoted to security through enforced law rather than arms races and wars.
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7. Willingly engage in a perpetual power struggle with private economic and ideological interests that have a stake in weapons and war.
8. Identify local residents who are first, second, and third generation immigrants who maintain connections with the countries of their forbears, through family ties, travel, or politics. Recruit them to help make common cause with municipalities in the old countries to achieve global law enforcement and arms control and prevent war.
9. Inject these issues into politics and elections at all levels in order to force a national dialogue through local dialogues, and in order to elect office holders (that is, power holders) who will put the security of targeted populations ahead of every other issue.
10. Self-select yourself to take on these tasks and expand the ranks of those determined that humanity and its civilization will not bow to the ultimate destruction of centuries of human progress.
Showing posts with label U.S.S.R.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S.S.R.. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Jeb Brugmann
An old friend has written a book for which my City, Save Thyself! might serve as a companion volume. In Welcome to the Urban Revolution - How Cities Are Changing the World (N.Y.: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), Jeb Brugmann asserts that nations are “losing their centrality in the economic, ecological, and political end games that will play out in this century. The momentum of development has steadily shifted to the city, a territory still poorly understood by most nations.” (p. 274)
Brugmann provides fascinating case studies from cities in Brazil, Spain, Canada, India, and the United States, of urban growth and change, in some cases immensely productive, in some destructive, all in continuous flux. He describes the roles played by national and city governments, neighborhood associations, politicians, corporations, and city planners. Success for city residents as the world grows more urbanized, hinges on many factors. What city dwellers most have going for themselves is population density. Their power of association can be leveraged to overcome the destructive results of economic, technological, and individual mistakes made at the national level and in corporate offices.
I would add that, just as national and corporate planners create misery when they manipulate the economy for narrow, short term profit aims, exploit natural resources, relocate populations without regard for the necessities of association and community, and build infrastructure in disregard for human scale and use, so they perpetuate the war system. They fail to control and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and spawn terrorists, because they make populations targets for fighting war instead of links to overcome grounds for conflict and to prevent war.
City, Save Thyself! argues that the worst national mistake is to prepare for war while neglecting globally enforced law that could prevent war. The target populations, leveraging their numbers in the manner that Brugmann describes, but adding direct elections to a global municipal security congress, could force the nations to remedy that neglect.
Jeb Brugmann and I were together in 1986 in Cambridge’s first sister city delegation to Yerevan, capital of Armenia, then still part of the U.S.S.R. Twenty U.S.-Soviet sister city pairings did as much to end the Cold War as Reagan’s arms race escalations, and without the ruinous economic and terrorist side effects of the nuclear arms race. Both Jeb’s book and mine describe these city initiatives.
Jeb made further trips to the Soviet Union and describes how powerless the Soviet government was to repress citizen initiatives, try as they often did. It is interesting to reflect that both the Gorbachev and Reagan governments encouraged the U.S.-U.S.S.R. sister city movement, and that, when it comes to security, Soviet cities may have freed themselves from national constraints better than our American cities that now, because of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons, may be more in danger from weapons of mass destruction than cities in any country.
Brugmann provides fascinating case studies from cities in Brazil, Spain, Canada, India, and the United States, of urban growth and change, in some cases immensely productive, in some destructive, all in continuous flux. He describes the roles played by national and city governments, neighborhood associations, politicians, corporations, and city planners. Success for city residents as the world grows more urbanized, hinges on many factors. What city dwellers most have going for themselves is population density. Their power of association can be leveraged to overcome the destructive results of economic, technological, and individual mistakes made at the national level and in corporate offices.
I would add that, just as national and corporate planners create misery when they manipulate the economy for narrow, short term profit aims, exploit natural resources, relocate populations without regard for the necessities of association and community, and build infrastructure in disregard for human scale and use, so they perpetuate the war system. They fail to control and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and spawn terrorists, because they make populations targets for fighting war instead of links to overcome grounds for conflict and to prevent war.
City, Save Thyself! argues that the worst national mistake is to prepare for war while neglecting globally enforced law that could prevent war. The target populations, leveraging their numbers in the manner that Brugmann describes, but adding direct elections to a global municipal security congress, could force the nations to remedy that neglect.
Jeb Brugmann and I were together in 1986 in Cambridge’s first sister city delegation to Yerevan, capital of Armenia, then still part of the U.S.S.R. Twenty U.S.-Soviet sister city pairings did as much to end the Cold War as Reagan’s arms race escalations, and without the ruinous economic and terrorist side effects of the nuclear arms race. Both Jeb’s book and mine describe these city initiatives.
Jeb made further trips to the Soviet Union and describes how powerless the Soviet government was to repress citizen initiatives, try as they often did. It is interesting to reflect that both the Gorbachev and Reagan governments encouraged the U.S.-U.S.S.R. sister city movement, and that, when it comes to security, Soviet cities may have freed themselves from national constraints better than our American cities that now, because of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons, may be more in danger from weapons of mass destruction than cities in any country.
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