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Iowa: India

November 20, 2009 - 06:00 am
NEWS FEED: Blog for Iowa

On Nuclear Disarmament for Iowa

By paul deaton

On Nuclear Disarmament for Iowa

by Paul Deaton

When Dr. Helen Caldicott moved from Australia to the United States, she became what Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy called, “the First Lady of the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s.” Less well known is that Dr. Caldicott traveled around Iowa with Tom Harkin during his first campaign for election to the United States Senate in 1984, so she has an Iowa connection. When speaking in Iowa and elsewhere, her tactic was to scare the daylights out of her audience with a graphic description of the medical consequences of nuclear war. At times, she would leave the audience in tears and then recruit them to the cause.

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November 6, 2009 - 06:00 am
NEWS FEED: Blog for Iowa

Iowans Can Take Action on Nuclear Disarmament

By paul deaton

Iowans Can Take Action on Nuclear Disarmament

by Paul Deaton

Nuclear disarmament is an Iowa issue for a lot of reasons. So why do so many Iowans seem unaware or unconcerned about the importance of nuclear disarmament?

The President continues to keep the “nuclear football” nearby; enabling the rapid and mutually assured destruction of the planet should Russia launch an attack against the United States. Mutually assured destruction would directly affect Iowans, killing most, if not all of us. That concern does not appear to be sufficient reason to engage Iowans to take political action on nuclear disarmament.

With all of the “loose” nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, terrorists could obtain enough enriched uranium to create a bomb, or steal an existing bomb, and detonate it in an Iowa city.

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October 2, 2009 - 05:00 am
NEWS FEED: Blog for Iowa

An Iowa Nuclear Disarmament Primer, Part 2

By paul deaton

An Iowa Nuclear Disarmament Primer, Part 2

by Paul Deaton

We don’t talk much about the legacy of the “greatest generation” when it comes to their creation and deployment of nuclear weapons. We grew up in an environment of “duck and cover” exercises at school, neighbors building bomb shelters and the worry of mutually assured destruction between the former Soviet Union and the United States. Thanks a lot folks! Neither does the threatening nature of this inheritance come through in Tom Brokaw’s sepia toned version of the citizens who grew up in the depression and fought and won World War II. In dropping the only two nuclear weapons ever deployed, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States created a horror that, to many, was unthinkable.

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September 25, 2009 - 05:00 am
NEWS FEED: Blog for Iowa

An Iowa Nuclear Disarmament Primer, Part 1

By paul deaton

An Iowa Nuclear Disarmament Primer, Part 1

by Paul Deaton

Many of us were sleeping when President Obama addressed nuclear disarmament to a crowd in Prague on April 5, 2009. It seems the whole United States has been asleep regarding nuclear disarmament. Whatever your politics, we should be ready to say that our nuclear weapons are no longer on high alert and that we have backed away from being an hour away from launching an attack that would end life as we know it on earth. President Obama has taken to this idea and the Prague speech is where he articulated his policy. It is time to wake up and smell the plutonium! In a series of posts on Blog for Iowa, I will address the history and legislative aspects of implementation of the Obama nuclear disarmament policy.

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