Portside

Nuclear weapons spending is soaring, arms-control treaties are collapsing and national leaders are once again threatening mass destruction. Last month Trump promised nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia, and today is threatening nuclear war against Iran.

Hiroshima is a reminder that nuclear weapons have one purpose, and one purpose only: to cause death and destruction on a colossal scale.

These weapons buy deterrence. Beyond that: nothing. A new Congress can start examining some of the Pentagon’s requests that involve nuclear weapons—and start canceling them.

The U.S.’s short, very general, poorly proofread statement on the conference outcome reflected a lack of interest in or familiarity with the NPT and the institutions surrounding it.

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Duck and Cover (1952), Long Fight for School Integration (1951), U.S. Out of Vietnam! (1971), Springsteen Channels Seeger (2006), Take Your Blacklist and Shove It! (1951), Building US Prison Camps (1951), No Job’s Worth Dying For (1971)

This contradicts everything the president has said about the war. Recent reporting from the Financial Times reveals it was President Trump, not the Iranian government, who was begging for a ceasefire.

HANDS OFF IRAN Mr. TRUMP, said Yanis Varoufakis. “And to the rest of us: Let’s do whatever it takes to oppose another war crime—this time against the Iranian people.” An adviser to Donald Trump told Axios, “there is 90% chance we see kinetic action"

The big picture