Call to Wear the White Poppy on Remembrance DayThe Quebec anti-war coalition Échec à la guerre published the following open letter in the pages of Le Devoir on November 7.
As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advances its "Doomsday Clock" to "100 seconds before midnight" to illustrate the "most dangerous situation mankind has ever faced" ... ...the warheads held by the nine nuclear-weapon states in the world are hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that took the lives of more than 200,000 people; ...Today's nuclear arsenals alone have the potential to wipe out humanity and much of the world's animal and plant life; nevertheless, Canada boycotted the process of developing and adopting the Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NWT), adopted in 2017 by 122 of 192 countries; ...The United States and Russia have not renewed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; furthermore, the U.S. has indicated that it will not agree to extend the New START Strategic Nuclear Reductions Treaty, which expires in February 2021. For civilian populations, the danger does not end there.... ...Military bases and training sites around the world generate tons of toxic waste that contaminate soil and groundwater. Military operations have a significant impact on global warming, for example, the U.S. military alone is the largest single producer of greenhouse gases in the world; ...The Government of Canada has just resumed the sale of armoured vehicles and weapons to Saudi Arabia -- military equipment that could be used in the war in Yemen, which has killed more than 100,000 people, many of them civilians, despite criticism from a UN panel of experts; ...The U.S. is increasingly playing the card of interference, intimidation and military aggression. The threat of new and even more destructive wars is growing, and with it the risk of a nuclear conflagration. In this
time of danger, we invite you to wear the White Poppy to remember the
thousands of civilian casualties of war and to prevent hundreds of
thousands more! (Translated from original French by TML.)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
These are grave
times!
