UK Court Gives Biden Chance to Dodge Assange Appeal by “Assuring” His Rights
The WikiLeaks publisher could be extradited if the US gives “satisfactory assurances” of rights and no death penalty.
By Marjorie Cohn , TRUTHOUT 29 Mar 24, https://truthout.org/articles/uk-gives-biden-opportunity-to-dodge-assange-appeal-by-assuring-his-rights/
WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is closer than ever to being extradited to the United States for trial on 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion over WikiLeaks’s 2010-2011 revelation of evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. He faces 175 years in prison.
“This is a signal to all of you that if you expose the interests that are driving war they will come after you, they will put you in prison and they will try to kill you,” said Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, of his prosecution.
On March 26, the United Kingdom Divisional Court denied Assange the opportunity to make most of his appellate arguments. But the two-judge panel of Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp left open the possibility that Assange could appeal on three grounds. They found that Assange “has a real prospect of success” on the following issues: If extradited to the U.S., he will be denied the right to freedom of expression, will suffer discrimination because he’s not a U.S. citizen and could be sentenced to death.
Rather than simply allowing Assange to argue the three issues on appeal, however, the panel gave the Biden administration an out. If the U.S. provides the court with “satisfactory assurances” that Assange won’t be denied any of these rights, his extradition to the U.S. can proceed without an appeals hearing.
Stella Assange called the decision “astounding,” adding, “The court’s recognized that Julian has been exposed to flagrant denial of his freedom of expression rights, that he is being discriminated against on the basis of his nationality and that he remains exposed to the death penalty.”
At an earlier stage in this case, the U.S. gave the U.K. High Court “assurances” that Assange would be treated humanely if extradited. That caused the court to reverse the magistrate judge’s denial of extradition (which was based on the likelihood of suicide if Assange is held in harsh conditions of confinement in the U.S.). The High Court accepted those assurances at face value in spite of the U.S.’s history of reneging on similar assurances.
The current ruling, however, requires U.S. assurances to be “satisfactory” and the defense will have an opportunity to challenge them at a hearing.
“Mr. Assange will not, therefore, be extradited immediately,” the panel wrote, implying that if they had denied his appeal outright, the U.K. authorities would put him on a plane to the U.S. forthwith. They gave the U.S. three weeks to come forward with satisfactory assurances.
If the U.S. fails to provide any assurances, Assange will be granted a hearing on the three grounds. If the U.S. does give assurances, a hearing to decide whether they are satisfactory will occur on May 20.
“The Biden administration should not offer assurances. They should drop this shameful case that should never have been brought,” Stella Assange said.
These are the grounds the High Court will review if the U.S. fails to provide “satisfactory assurances”:
1. Extradition Would Violate Freedom of Expression Guaranteed by Article 10 of European Convention on Human Rights
Assange would argue at trial that his actions were protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence,” the panel concluded.
The First Amendment provides “strong protection” to freedom of expression, similar to that provided by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the panel noted. Article 10 (1) of the convention says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
Gordon Kromberg, assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Assange’s trial would be held, said the prosecution might argue at trial that “foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment,” the panel noted. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that Assange “has no First Amendment freedoms” because “he is not a U.S. citizen.”
In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2020 case of Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International that “it is long settled as a matter of American constitutional law that foreign citizens outside United States territory do not possess rights under the US Constitution.”
The panel wrote that if Assange “is not permitted to rely on the First Amendment, then it is arguable that his extradition would be incompatible with article 10 of the Convention.”
But even if the U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors give “satisfactory assurances” that Assange’s First Amendment rights would be protected, that is no guarantee. Prosecutors are part of the executive branch, which cannot bind the judicial branch due to the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
“The ruling reveals that the High Court does not understand the American system of government,” Stephen Rohde, who practiced First Amendment law for almost 50 years and writes extensively about the Assange case, told Truthout. “It only has before it the executive branch of the U.S. government. Whatever ‘satisfactory assurances’ the Department of Justice may give the High Court, they are not binding on the judicial branch.”
Moreover, Rohde said, “The High Court is obligated to uphold Assange’s rights to ‘freedom of expression’ under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects Assange even if the U.S. courts refuse to do so. The only way to do that is to deny extradition.”
2. The U.K. Extradition Act Forbids Discrimination Based on Nationality
Julian Assange is an Australian citizen who would be tried in the U.S. if the Biden administration’s pursuit of extradition is successful.
Section 81(b) of the U.K. Extradition Act says that extradition is barred for an individual who “might be prejudiced at his trial or punished, detained or restricted in his personal liberty by reason of his … nationality.”
Due to the centrality of the First Amendment to Assange’s defense, the panel noted, “If he is not permitted to rely on the First Amendment because of his status as a foreign national, he will thereby be prejudiced (potentially very greatly prejudiced) by reason of his nationality.”
3. Extradition Is Barred by Inadequate Death Penalty Protection Required by the Extradition Act
Section 94 of the U.K. Extradition Act says, “The Secretary of State must not order a person’s extradition … if he could be, will be or has been sentenced to death for the offence” in the receiving state. That limitation does not apply if a written “assurance” that is “adequate” says “that a sentence of death- (a) will not be imposed, or (b) will not be carried out (if imposed).”
None of the charges that Assange is currently facing carry the death penalty. But if extradited to the U.S., he could be charged with aiding and abetting treason or espionage, both of which are capital offenses.
Ben Watson KC, secretary of state for the Home Department, admitted that:
a.) The facts alleged against [Assange] could sustain a charge of aiding or abetting treason, or espionage.
b.) If [Assange] is extradited, there is nothing to prevent a charge of aiding or abetting treason, or a charge of espionage, from being added to the indictment.
c.) The death penalty is available on conviction for aiding or abetting treason, or espionage.
d.) There are no arrangements in place to prevent the imposition of the death penalty.
e.) The existing assurance does not explicitly prevent the imposition of the death.
The panel noted that when former President Donald Trump was asked about WikiLeaks publishing the leaked documents, he said, “I think it was disgraceful…. I think there should be like a death penalty or something.” If Trump is reelected, he may seek to ensure that his Justice Department adds capital charges to the indictment.
In concluding that Assange could raise this issue on appeal subject to “satisfactory assurances,” the panel cited “the potential, on the facts, for capital charges to be laid; the calls for the imposition of the death penalty by leading politicians and other public figures; the fact that the Treaty does not preclude extradition for death penalty charges, and the fact that the existing assurance does not explicitly cover the death penalty.”
Appeal Grounds Denied by Panel
Remaining grounds for appeal that Assange requested were denied by the panel. They include prosecution for a political offense, prosecution based on political opinion; violation of right to a fair trial; violation of right to life; and violation of right to be free from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In addition, since no publisher has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing government secrets, Assange could not have known it was a crime.
The panel also ruled that Assange could not introduce new evidence adduced after the magistrate judge’s ruling. This includes a Yahoo News report detailing the CIA’s plan to kidnap and kill Assange when he was living under a grant of asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
If the U.S. offers “satisfactory assurances” and extradition is ordered, Assange could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and raise these additional issues as well.
Meanwhile, there is a possibility that instead of filing “assurances,” the Biden administration will opt to avoid the political pitfalls of Assange’s extradition to the U.S. and offer a plea bargain to end the case.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
Senior Western Australia Liberal calls for Australia to become nuclear weapons power
Brisbane Times, Hamish Hastie, March 11, 2024
A two-time WA Liberal candidate and party office bearer says Australia should have nuclear weapons.
Jim Seth made the argument at a Liberal Party state council meeting this month, saying nuclear weapons had made North Korea untouchable and suggested Australia should follow suit.
At the party’s March 2 meeting, details of which were leaked to WAtoday, Seth asked the question-and-answer panel:
“North Korea, a small country, has got nuclear fire, right? Nobody can do a mimicry [sic] on them, no neighbour can touch them, why we as first world country not nuclear react?”
Seth, who was a WA Liberals candidate for Bassendean in 2017 and for Morley in 2021 and is now the marketing committee chair and state executive member, furthered his point in a follow-up question about the Australian Navy’s capabilities to counter drone attacks…………………..
Seth claimed $90 million was being paid every day to Canberra public servants to create federal policies and suggested this money could be better spent on making Australia a nuclear power.
“We could have spent that money into making Australia a nuclear power, so nobody can come and do mimicry [sic] on us,” he said………………………….
WAtoday contacted Seth to clarify whether he was talking about nuclear energy or weapons, and he said “as a patriotic Australian” he believed Australia should have nuclear weapons.
He did not respond to follow-up requests for comment.
Australia has since 1970 been a signatory to the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which binds the country to an agreement not to acquire nuclear weapons.
According to the Department of Foreign Trade and Affairs Australia has been one of the treaty’s strongest supporters and was a key player in ensuring the treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995.
Seth’s comments alarmed Nuclear Free WA co-convener Mia Pepper who said nuclear weapons would make Australia a target, not safer.
“Nuclear weapons have no strategic utility and would not enhance Australia’s defence or security,” she said.
“In a time of growing conflict and uncertainty, Australia should be proliferating peace and diplomacy, not fuelling nuclear tensions and threat.”………………… https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/western-australia/senior-wa-liberal-calls-for-australia-to-become-nuclear-weapons-power-20240308-p5fazr.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
The UK and US could send nuclear waste to Australia under our AUKUS deal
https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/04/02/misbehaving-mps-pay-aukus-nuclear-waste/
The UK and US could send nuclear waste to Australia under our AUKUS deal, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Dave Sweeney told a parliamentary inquiry.
It’s exploring Labor’s draft Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill, as Guardian Australia reports, which proposed facilities that could store or dispose of radioactive waste from AUKUS submarines — defined as either an Australian or a UK/US one, the Defence Department’s domestic nuclear policy branch assistant director general Kim Moy confirmed.
Basically, we’d be in prime position to become a poison portal, Sweeney claimed, though Defence Minister Richard Marles has before vowed it won’t happen. In any case, one expert told the inquiry we need a plan to store the nuclear waste from the subs for as long as 100,000 years — and so far, no-one in AUKUS has quite worked it out.
‘Like a radioactive cloud’: elegance and horror combine in powerful Yhonnie Scarce exhibition
Australia’s forgotten nuclear history and its dehumanisation of Aboriginal people come together in First Nations glass artist’s fiercely intellectual work.
Guardian, by Rosamund Brennan, 2 Apr 24
Yhonnie Scarce grew up in the grim aftermath of nuclear weapons testing in South Australia in the 50s and 60s, not far from her birthplace of Woomera. From the tender age of ten, she heard stories from elders about a cataclysmic roar, the sky turning red and a poisonous black mist hovering over the desert, like an apparition.
Born in 1973, the Kothakha and Nukunu glass artist has spent much of her career researching the British government’s testing of nuclear weapons in Maralinga and Emu Field, which she says “lit a fire in my heart that hasn’t been extinguished”.
The blasts wreaked havoc on generations of Aboriginal people, as well as military personnel and non-Aboriginal civilians – sending radioactive clouds thousands of kilometres, causing burns, blindness, birth defects and premature death.
When the toxic plumes reached Ceduna, where Scarce’s family lived, radioactive slag rained down from the sky, singeing their skin. Their concerns about the burns were rebuffed by doctors, who spuriously claimed there was a measles outbreak. But today, according to Scarce, cancer is prevalent in the town.
“I call this a mass genocide,” Scarce says. “I don’t know if we’ll ever find out how many Aboriginal people died over that 10-year period. But I can imagine it’s thousands.”………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The series is revelatory of Scarce’s practice: at once fiercely intellectual, deeply felt and elegant in its materiality. As a glass-blower, Scarce quite literally breathes life into her work, animating its delicate, molten surface, giving form to invisible pain and loss.
Glass holds special significance for Scarce: crafted from silica, or sand, it emerges from the very essence of the landscape. As Australia’s only professional Indigenous glass-blower, she veered away from working with traditional forms like decorative vases or bowls, instead drawing from what she calls the “bush supermarket”: depicting yams, plums and bush bananas to convey the history of her people.
Conceived by Wardandi and Badimaya curator Clothilde Bullen, the career-spanning exhibition at AGWA also features works which examine the dehumanisation and exploitation of Aboriginal people through displacement, indentured labour and institutionalised racism. One such work is In The Dead House, which features glass bush bananas laid out on a mortuary trolley, their bodies split wide open.
……………………………………………………………………………………………… In a seemingly fated moment, when those monstrous atomic bombs exploded at Maralinga almost 70 years ago, the red desert sand melted into thousands of green shards of glass that still litter the site today. Across Scarce’s 20-year career, it’s as if she’s been slowly collecting the disaster’s shattered remains and, piece by piece, crystallising a dark, hidden chapter of Australia’s history. Like a radioactive cloud, her astonishing body of work engulfs you in its sheer power and potency.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/02/yhonnie-scarce-light-of-day-art-gallery-western-australia
- Yhonnie Scarce: Light of Day is showing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia until 19 May 2024
UK govt lawyers conclude Israel in breach of humanitarian law – media
A view of damaged buildings at Maghazi refugee camp after Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 29, 2024.
Sun, 31 Mar 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/490269-UK-govt-lawyers-conclude-Israel-in-breach-of-humanitarian-law-media
British authorities, however, have apparently opted to keep the findings out of the public domain.
Lawyers for the UK government have established Israel has been breaking humanitarian law amid its ongoing conflict in Gaza with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a senior Tory is claiming, according to leaked audio revealed by the Observer newspaper on Saturday.
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Alicia Kearns, made the remarks earlier this month during a Conservative Party fundraising event. “The Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law but the government has not announced it,” Kearns, a former official with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, who has been pressing the government on the matter, said during the event.
The legal experts’ assessment effectively makes the UK complicit in the Israeli military’s violations, and defense cooperation should have been severed by London immediately after they produced their evaluation of the situation in Gaza.
“They have not said it, they haven’t stopped arms exports. They have done a few very small sanctions on Israeli settlers and everyone internationally agrees that settlers are illegal, that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, and the ways in which they have continued and the money that’s been put in,” Kearns stated.
During the event, Kearns insisted that she, like the UK Foreign Secretary James Cameron, strongly believes in Israel’s right to “self defense,” noting however that there were legal boundaries for exercising it.
“The right to self defense has a limit in law. It is not limitless,” she explained, warning that Israel’s approach to handling the escalation may end up putting its own – and Britain’s – long-term security at risk.
The authenticity of the recordings obtained by the Observer appears beyond question, given that Kearns has been rather vocal about her position on the matter. On Saturday, she produced similar remarks as well, once again urging the government to make public its legal assessment of the Israeli actions.
“I remain convinced the government has completed its updated assessment on whether Israel is demonstrating a commitment to international humanitarian law, and that it has concluded that Israel is not demonstrating this commitment, which is the legal determination it has to make,” she stated, arguing that “transparency” was absolutely needed to “uphold the international rules-based order.”
Israel launched the operation in Gaza following an incursion by Hamas militants into the southern part of the country last October. During the attack, over 1,200 people were killed and scores of hostages were taken into Gaza. The Israeli campaign inflicted heavy damage on the Palestinian enclave, causing widespread destruction and leaving at least 32,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Comment: Suppressing findings which are inconvenient is nothing new for Western governments so it’s no real surprise that the findings have not been made public. Whether anything changes now that the findings are public remains to be seen (don’t hold your breath).
Is Nuclear Fusion Really The Ultimate Solution to AI’s Crazy Power Use?
By Alex Kimani – Mar 29, 2024, https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Nuclear-Fusion-Really-The-Ultimate-Solution-to-AIs-Crazy-Power-Use.html
- A Boston Consulting Group analysis has predicted that data center electricity consumption will triple by 2030.
- Past trends in technology advances suggest that AI cons are very likely to outweigh the pros as far as power demand is concerned.
- OpenAI’s Altman: nuclear fusion is the ultimate solution to the AI energy puzzle
Two weeks ago, we reported how Artificial Intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency mining and clean energy manufacturing are powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or simply 4R, and driving disruptive trends including the rise of data and connectivity, analytics, human-machine interaction, and improvements in robotics. Unfortunately, these secular megatrends are pushing the U.S. power grid to its limits.
According to Sreedhar Sistu, vice president of artificial intelligence at Schneider Electric (OTCPK:SBGSF), excluding China, AI represents 4.3 GW of global power demand, and could grow almost five-fold by 2028. Another analysis has predicted that demand from AI will grow exponentially, increasing at least 10x between 2023 and 2026.
AI tasks typically demand more powerful hardware than traditional computing tasks. Meanwhile, bitcoin mining shows no signs of slowing down, with mining rates hitting 565 exahashes per second (EH/s) currently, a five-fold increase from three years ago.
Bitcoin mining consumes 148.63 TWh of electricity per year and emits 82.90 Mt CO2 per year, comparable to the power consumption of Malaysia. And, data center demand is not helping matters at all. Data center storage capacity is expected to grow from 10.1 zettabytes (ZB) in 2023 to 21.0 ZB in 2027, good for a 18.5% CAGR.
A Boston Consulting Group analysis has predicted that data center electricity consumption will triple by 2030, enough electricity to power 40 million U.S. homes.
The situation is already getting out of hand: U.S. power demand has started rising for the first time ever in 15 years. “We as a country are running out of energy,” Michael Khoo, climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth and co-author of a report on AI and climate, has told CNN.
To be fair, AI has been touted as one of the key technologies that will help tackle climate change. The revolutionary technology is already being used to track pollution, predict weather, monitor melting ice and map deforestation. A recent report commissioned by Google and published by the Boston Consulting Group claimed AI could help mitigate up to 10% of planet-heating pollution.
Unfortunately, past trends in technology advances suggest that AI cons are very likely to outweigh the pros as far as power demand is concerned.
“Efficiency gains have never reduced the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining. When we make certain goods and services more efficient, we see increases in demand,” Alex de Vries, a data scientist and researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, has pointed out.
At this point, nearly everybody agrees that we are incapable of developing renewable energy plants fast enough to meet this skyrocketing power demand. So, what other recourse do we have, short of saying let’s just build more natural gas and fossil fuel power plants?
Enter nuclear fusion, long regarded by scientists as the Holy Grail of clean and almost limitless energy. Sam Altman, head of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, says nuclear fusion is the ultimate solution to the AI energy puzzle, “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough, we need fusion,” Altman said in a January interview. Altman reiterated this view a few weeks ago when podcaster and computer scientist Lex Fridman asked him about the AI energy conundrum.
Blue Sky Thinking
Unfortunately, Altman’s proposal is likely another case of overly optimistic blue-sky thinking, and we might not be any closer to building a commercial nuclear fusion reactor than we are to harvesting energy from blackholes.
For decades, nuclear fusion has been considered the “Holy Grail” of clean energy. If we were able to harness its power it would mean endless clean and sustainable energy. It’s what powers stars, and the theory is that it could be successfully applied to nuclear reactors–without the risk of a catastrophic meltdown disaster.
Scientists have been working on a viable nuclear fusion reactor since the 1950s–ever hopeful that a breakthrough is just around the corner. Unfortunately, the running joke has become that a practical nuclear fusion power plant could be decades or even centuries away, with milestone after milestone having fallen time and again
To be fair again, there’s been some promising glimpses into the possibilities here. Last year, a nuclear fusion reactor in California produced 3.15 megajoules of energy using only 2.05 megajoules of energy input, a rare instance where a fusion experiment produced more energy than it consumed. The vast majority of fusion experiments are energy negative, taking in more energy than they generate thus making them useless as a form of electricity generation. Despite growing hopes that fusion could soon play a part in climate change mitigation by providing vast amounts of clean power for energy-hungry technologies like AI, the world is “still a way off commercial fusion and it cannot help us with the climate crisis now”, Aneeqa Khan, research fellow in nuclear fusion at Manchester University, told the Guardian just after the initial December breakthrough.
You don’t have to look very far to get a healthy dose of reality check.
For decades, 35 countries have collaborated on the largest and most ambitious scientific experiments ever conceived: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the biggest-ever fusion power machine. ITER plans to generate plasma at temperatures 10x higher than that of the sun’s core, and generate net energy for seconds at a time. As is usually the case with many nuclear power projects, ITER is already facing massive cost overruns that puts its future viability in question. W
When the ITER project formally commenced operations in 2006, its international partners agreed to fund an estimated €5 billion (then $6.3 billion) for a 10-year plan that would have seen the reactor come online in 2016. Charles Seife, director of the Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism at New York University, has sued ITER for lack of transparency on cost and incessant delays. According to him, the project’s latest official cost estimate now stands at more than €20 billion ($22 billion), with the project nowhere near achieving its key objectives. To make matters worse, none of ITER’s key players, including the U.S. Department of Energy, has been able to provide concrete answers of whether the team can overcome the technical challenges or estimates of the additional delays, much less the extra expenses.
Seife notes that whereas the Notre Dame took a century to complete, it eventually was used for its intended purpose less than a generation after construction began. However, he concludes by saying that the same can hardly be said about ITER, which looks less and less like a cathedral–and more like a mausoleum.
Einstein’s vision for peace
By Lawrence S. Wittner https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/31/einsteins-vision-for-peace/
Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons, he threw himself into efforts to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation
Although the popular new Netflix film, Einstein and the Bomb, purports to tell the story of the great physicist’s relationship to nuclear weapons, it ignores his vital role in rallying the world against nuclear catastrophe.
Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to obliterate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein threw himself into efforts to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation. In September, responding to a letter from Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, about nuclear weapons, Einstein contended that, “as long as nations demand unrestricted sovereignty, we shall undoubtedly be faced with still bigger wars, fought with bigger and technologically more advanced weapons.” Thus, “the most important task of intellectuals is to make this clear to the general public and to emphasize over and over again the need to establish a well-organized world government.”
Four days later, he made the same point to an interviewer, insisting that “the only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law.”
Determined to prevent nuclear war, Einstein repeatedly hammered away at the need to replace international anarchy with a federation of nations operating under international law. In October 1945, together with other prominent Americans (among them Senator J. William Fulbright, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, and novelist Thomas Mann), Einstein called for a “Federal Constitution of the World.”
That November, he returned to this theme in an interview published in the Atlantic Monthly. “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem,” he said. “It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. . . . As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.” And war, sooner or later, would become nuclear war.
Given Einstein’s fame and his well-publicized efforts to avert a nuclear holocaust, in May 1946 he became chair of the newly-formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, a fundraising and policymaking arm for the atomic scientists’ movement. In the Committee’s first fund appeal, Einstein warned that “the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Even so, despite the fact that Einstein, like most members of the early atomic scientists’ movement, saw world government as the best recipe for survival in the nuclear age, there seemed good reason to consider shorter-range objectives. After all, the Cold War was emerging and nations were beginning to formulate nuclear policies. An early Atomic Scientists of Chicago statement, prepared by Eugene Rabinowitch, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, underscored practical considerations.
“Since world government is unlikely to be achieved within the short time available before the atomic armaments race will lead to an acute danger of armed conflict,” it noted, “the establishment of international controls must be considered as a problem of immediate urgency.” Consequently, the movement increasingly worked in support of specific nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.
In the context of the heightening Cold War, however, taking even limited steps forward proved impossible. The Russian government sharply rejected the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy and, instead, developed its own atomic arsenal. In turn, U.S. President Harry Truman, in February 1950, announced his decision to develop a hydrogen bomb―a weapon a thousand times as powerful as its predecessor.
Naturally, the atomic scientists were deeply disturbed by this lurch toward disaster. Appearing on television, Einstein called once more for the creation of a “supra-national” government as the only “way out of the impasse.” Until then, he declared, “annihilation beckons.”
Despite the dashing of his hopes for postwar action to end the nuclear menace, Einstein lent his support over the following years to peace, nuclear disarmament, and world government projects.
The most important of these ventures occurred in 1955, when Bertrand Russell, like Einstein, a proponent of world federation, conceived the idea of issuing a public statement by a small group of the world’s most eminent scientists about the existential peril nuclear weapons brought to modern war. Asked by Russell for his support, Einstein was delighted to sign the statement and did so in one of his last actions before his death that April.
In July, Russell presented the statement to a large meeting in London, packed with representatives of the mass communications media. In the shadow of the Bomb, it read, “we have to learn to think in a new way. . . . Shall we . . . choose death because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
This Russell-Einstein Manifesto, as it became known, helped trigger a remarkable worldwide uprising against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in the world’s first significant nuclear arms control measures. Furthermore, in later years, it inspired legions of activists and world leaders. Among them was the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, whose “new thinking,” modeled on the Manifesto, brought a dramatic end to the Cold War and fostered substantial nuclear disarmament.
The Manifesto thus provided an appropriate conclusion to Einstein’s unremitting campaign to save the world from nuclear destruction.
Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 