Now that fall is here, the Alaska Peace Center will resume sponsoring in-person “potluck and presentation” nights on the last Friday of each month. The first one is coming up this Friday, August 29, at 7:15 pm in our office in Room 203, College Mall Building. Radio Station KWRK (90.9 FM) is broadcasting a local show (Electric Avenue, with DJ Kelly Green) from 6:00 to 7:00 in the same office complex, so we will not be able to enter the office until after 7:00. We will have to wait quietly in the hall if we get there early. The office is in room 203 in the College Mall building, 3535 College Road, upstairs above the Fuji Steakhouse. Use Fuji’s external door, then turn right to go up the stairs.
This will be a hybrid event. Everyone is highly encouraged to come in-person to the office at 7:15 and to bring some food to share. There are plenty of plates, cups, and silverware at the office. Although Covid is still a concern, after the isolation of the past few years many of us are looking forward to seeing each other in-person again. There will also be an online option via Zoom, with details below. We will try to open the Zoom link around 7:30.
Here is the Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89515216442?pwd=Qdu5xN5LyRvK1MbtroEXGtIYhsgXBT.1
Meeting ID: 895 1521 6442
Passcode: 023930
We will be viewing “The Strangest Dream,” Eric Bednarski’s compelling 2008 documentary on Joseph Rotblat. Rotblat was a Polish physicist who resigned in protest from the group developing the atomic bomb during World War II after it became clear that Nazi Germany had ended its nuclear weapons research program and after learning that the real purpose of the U.S. atomic bomb project was to intimidate Russia.
We’ve all been hearing about the Oppenheimer film that has been sweeping the country and probably a number of us have watched it. Oppenheimer, of course, was the man in charge of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II, and who famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita upon witnessing the first atomic explosion (“Now I have become Death, destroyer of worlds”). The movie presents him as a brilliant physicist, a polymath, a charismatic organizer, and a man eventually tormented as he comes to realize the horror that he has been instrumental in releasing. Whatever one may think of this complicated man, the movie has certainly done a lot to raise awareness that nuclear weapons are still very much with us, and to remind us of their horrifying power. Many of the Manhattan Project scientists had grave misgivings about the eventual result of their work and protested against American policy, but Joseph Rotblat was the only one to resign in protest during the time the bomb was being developed. Here is a summary from Counterpunch:
“Forget going to see Christopher Nolan’s bloated exercise in sanitized nuclear hagiography and instead watch The Strangest Dream, Eric Bednarski’s compelling 2008 documentary on Joseph Rotblat, the Polish physicist, who resigned from the Manhattan Project in protest after it became clear that Nazi Germany had ended its nuclear weapons research program. Rotblat was a driving force behind the 1955 Albert Einstein-Bertrand Russell Manifesto, which called for nuclear disarmament and a negotiated end to the escalating Cold War. Rotblat went on to co-found the anti-nuclear Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, with whom he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 ‘for efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international affairs and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.’ Rotblat, along with Leo Szilard and Joseph Franck, was a consistent voice of sanity amid a throng of mad scientists. The film can be viewed here online courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.”
The title of the film references Ed McCurdy‘s iconic song from the 60’s, and we get to hear a lovely rendition of it by Jenn Grant at the end.
Nuclear weapons are still very much with us, and the danger of a nuclear holocaust followed by nuclear winter is greater now than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Nuclear war and climate change are the two existential threats the world is facing today, and militarism exacerbates both. It is encouraging to see the progress made by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), of which the Alaska Peace Center is a partner organization. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has been ratified by 69 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. The ICAN Cities Appeal is a tool by which cities and states can pass resolutions encouraging their national governments to ratify the TPNW. Over seventy U.S. cities (including Anchorage) and five states have passed resolutions in support of the TPNW.
Nuclear Weapons Free Zones are another tool by which large areas of the world have eliminated nuclear weapons from within their boundaries. Canadian Pugwash, co-founded by Rotblat, has been actively working along with others toward development of an Arctic Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone. Thanks to the work of many Fairbanksans and other Alaskans in the early 1980’s, Alaska already has a nuclear freeze policy enacted by the State Legislature (Alaska Statutes Sec. 44.99.120 and 44.99.125). It states, among other things, that “it is the policy of the State of Alaska to promote a mutual and verifiable freeze followed by reductions in nuclear warheads, missiles, and other delivery systems in order to halt the nuclear arms race and to reduce the risk of nuclear war.” This statute could be a building block toward eliminating nuclear weapons from our part of the Arctic and building momentum for an Arctic NWFZ.
For an in depth review of the “Oppenheimer” movie and much information and commentary on the whole Manhattan project including Rotblat, see the review by Eric Mann in Counterpunch. It’s a long read, but highly recommended.
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