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Against all odds, 122 countries agreed in July to ban nuclear weapons. At the heart of the United Nations treaty is an explicit ethical goal: to protect peoples of the world from the humanitarian catastrophe that would ensue if nuclear weapons were employed. Once 50 states ratify the treaty, it will enter into international law. The United States, the only country to use nuclear weapons, dropped the first atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 at Hiroshima, and Aug. 9 on Nagasaki.

Recently the Chair of an exciting UN initiative formally named the “United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination” released a draft treaty to ban and prohibit nuclear weapons just as the world has done for biological and chemical weapons. The Ban Treaty is to be negotiated at the UN from June 15 to July 7.

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Achieving disarmament will probably take more than volunteers sailing into town to host a potluck picnic for yachters and stand-up paddlers. It will probably take more than “people who have never thought about war and peace,” as Jaccard calls them, spotting a sailboat with a peace symbol and wondering what it’s all about. Sometimes it takes something brave and brazen to catch a nation’s attention.

On this 70th anniversary of the criminal US bombings against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we renew our commitment to abolish nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. In our anti-imperialist endeavor, we are certain that unity among us will defeat warmongering and militarist policies, since the peoples’ will is a just peace.

Iran's foreign minister has put forward three proposals: negotiations on a nuclear weapons elimination treaty; taking nuclear arsenals off high alert (for example, by removing warheads from missiles); and the creation of a zone in the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. This proposal represents a challenge to the members of the UN Security Council (all nuclear powers) as well as Israel, Pakistan and North Korea.

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Thousands of peace, social justice and environmental activists from around the world will gather in New York City from April 24-26 for the Peace and Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World - challenges articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King. Peace and Planet convenes prior to the April 27 - May 22 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations, bringing the voice of civil society to the governmental confab.