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Bombs away!

12 Apr 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The reading from the Letter to the Colossians, one of the Easter lectionary options, encourages us to "think of what is above, not of what is on earth." With a North Korean missile launch in mind last Sunday, President Obama announced in a speech in Prague that the U.S. will embark on an ambitious plan to markedly reduce the number of nuclear weapons around the world. If he succeeds, words from the Acts of the Apostles read this Sunday-"he went about doing good"-will certainly apply. Obama told a cheering crowd estimated at 20,000 or more that the United States is ready to lead an international effort to reduce atomic arsenals and the threat they pose. Speaking hours after the North Korean missile launch, which drew international concern and condemnation, Obama outlined a plan toward a goal he admitted was decades away. "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act," he told the crowd gathered in Prague's historic Hradcany Square. Obama laid out a process to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, ban nuclear testing, and put loose fissile material out of the reach of terrorists. Until weapons and the material to make them are fully secured, Obama said, the U.S. will maintain its nuclear arsenal to deter adversaries. Obama promised to negotiate a strategic arms-reduction treaty with Russia by the end of the year that would dramatically reduce the number of nuclear warheads. A few days earlier, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed during meetings in London to produce a new arms-control treaty to replace the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December. Obama's plan also called for peaceful uses of nuclear power through an international fuel bank that would be available to every nation that renounces nuclear weapons. He said he supported Iran's right to pursue nuclear energy, providing the regime agrees to regular and thorough inspections. Finally, Obama said he hoped to host a world summit on nuclear weapons within the year. Source: An article by Christi Parsons and Tom Hamburger for the Chicago Tribune

barack obama russia strategic arms reduction treaty dmitry medvedev united states nuclear weapons missiles prague north korea

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Unequivocal condemnation

31 May 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples began to speak in different tongues, we hear in the Acts of the Apostles. Though they speak different tongues, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council denounced with one voice North Korea's underground detonation of a nuclear device Monday. Tensions rose through the week as North Korea tested short-range missiles and appeared to restart production at its main nuclear facility. On Tuesday North Korea decried a South Korean decision to join a U.S.-led initiative to search ships carrying suspicious cargoes to prevent trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea said that as a result of the South's action, which it considered tantamount to a declaration of war, it was abandoning the truce that ended the Korean War. It pledged to attack if its ships were stopped. Meanwhile, South Korean news reports say that steam has been seen coming from a plant at the North's main nuclear facility, a sign that it may have made good on its threat to restart efforts to make weapons-grade plutonium. Antagonisms had already risen significantly across the Korean peninsula in recent weeks. Last month North Korea launched a long-range rocket over Japanese airspace, angering the international community. Pyongyang said the rocket carried a satellite, but several nations viewed it as a cover for a missile test. The Security Council is working on a stronger resolution condemning North Korea's actions, including possible punitive measures. Washington is calling for a quick and unified response that will make it clear to Pyongyang that there are consequences for its actions. But U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the door was still open to resume long-running six-party talks and that the U.S. was looking at a "whole range of options." "We are thinking through complicated issues that require very careful consideration," said Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Source: An article by the BBC

nuclear weapons missiles north korea united nations security council south korea pyongyang

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Putting bombs away

12 Jul 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the vision of the psalmist this Sunday, "Justice and peace shall kiss." While President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev didn't kiss this week, they did sign a preliminary agreement to reduce the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles by as much as one third. Two days of meetings resulted in the signing of other important documents as well, including a deal to let U.S. troops cross Russia en route to Afghanistan. The two leaders agreed their countries would work closely together to study new missile security threats the United States says are at the core of its rationale for planning new missile defenses in Europe, and they called for renewed efforts to develop greater commercial and economic ties. "I can't think of a summit that was so comprehensive in what we are trying to do as a government," said Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs. "There is an emphasis on style, on tone," however, rather than action in Obama's efforts thus far to build a new relationship with Russia, said Sam Greene, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a U.S.-based political research institute. "But that is also important. If this process is going to keep up momentum, it needs to be clear to politicians in both capitals that the presidents are putting a lot of their own political capital into the process." "Even a symbolic detente is not bad," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Moscow foreign policy review Russia in Global Affairs. "The style has changed utterly by comparison with last autumn" when tensions between the United States and Russia soared to levels not seen since Ronald Reagan entered the White House in the early 1980s, he said. Source: Articles by Christopher Boian for Agence France Presse and Michael A. Fletcher and Philip P. Pan for the Washington Post

barack obama russia in global affairs fyodor lukyanov carnegie moscow center sam greene michael mcfaul europe arms control missiles nuclear weapons united states dmitry medvedev afghanistan russia ronald reagan

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Iran no longer balks at talks

20 Sep 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In Sunday's reading from the Book of Wisdom the just one is put to the test through a trial of patience. World powers who believe Iran has been unjustly testing their patience through its refusal to talk about its nuclear program were pleased this week that the nation had agreed to sit down to negotiations next month, the first such discussions in more than a year. The United States for the first time will join the talks. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said talks between world powers and Iran will "very likely" be held October 1 in Turkey. Turkey is seen as an ideal host, said Paul Ingram, co-executive director of the British-American Information Security Council, because not only is it a member of NATO but it has economic and energy ties to Iran. The U.S. State Department announced Monday that it would send its third-ranking diplomat, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, to the gathering. Representatives of Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia would also be present for the talks. U.S. officials said the six nations would present a "united front" against Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. "We have made clear to the Iranians that any talks we participate in must address the nuclear issue head on," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "Iran says it has a number of issues it wishes to discuss with us but what we are concerned about is discussing with them the questions surrounding their nuclear program and ambitions. We will wait to see how Iran responds in that face-to-face venue," Clinton said. While accepting the proposal for talks, Tehran insisted that it will not entertain the idea of stopping its nuclear enrichment program, which it contends is part of a civilian power program to which it is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ingram said disputes over Iran's nuclear sovereignty should not dissuade hopes of progress between the two sides. "The fact that Iran resists direct talks over its nuclear program is to be regretted but nevertheless I think the timing is good," he said. "I think it is very positive that Iran is engaging in talks and that the West is treating seriously this desire for Iran to talk . . . ." Source: Articles by Jessica Desvarieux and David Gollust for VOANews.com, BBC NEWS, and Agence France Presse

united states william burns british-american information security council paul ingram turkey javier solana iran hillary clinton nuclear weapons nuclear non-proliferation treaty

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No new nukes, announces Obama

11 Apr 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the Sunday reading from the Book of Revelation, “a voice as loud as a trumpet” says to John, “I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.” Expressing grave concern over the potential for nuclear proliferation and “nuclear terrorism,” President Barack Obama Tuesday announced a fundamental shift in the nation’s nuclear strategy. Arguing that the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists represents a worse threat than the nuclear Armageddon feared during the Cold War, Obama said his administration would narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. might launch a nuclear strike, forgo the development of new nuclear warheads, and seek even deeper reductions in U.S. and Russian arsenals. "The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no longer a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states," Obama said. The announcement set the stage for his trip to Prague Thursday to sign a new arms reduction agreement with Russia to cut stockpiles of long-range nuclear warheads by a third, as well as for a "nuclear summit" of 40 world leaders Obama will host next Monday in Washington. Those gathered will discuss improving safeguards against terrorists acquiring nuclear bombs. From the start of his term in office Obama has put halting the spread of atomic arms near the top of his defense priorities. But during his first year he failed to achieve a significant breakthrough on arguably the two biggest threats: Iran and North Korea. "Given al-Qaeda's continued quest for nuclear weapons, Iran's ongoing nuclear efforts, and North Korea's proliferation, this focus is appropriate and, indeed, an essential change from previous" policy, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. While the new policy rules out new nuclear weapons or testing, it calls for setting aside billions of dollars to "modernize" existing U.S. weaponry. The new strategy, though a major shift, isn't as far-reaching as liberals had hoped nor as radical as conservatives had feared, said analysts. It contains initiatives sought by both sides, including those of Republican senators whose votes Obama will need in order for the new arms reduction treaty with Russia to be ratified. Articles by Dan De Luce for Agence France Presse, Jonathan S. Landay and Margaret Talev for McClatchy Newspapers, and Robert Burns and Anne Flaherty for Associated Press

barack obama al qaeda nuclear weapons north korea iran nuclear strategy robert gates

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Arms treaty receives thumbs-up in Senate

26 Dec 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Christians await the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace at week’s end. One of the main legislative questions awaiting an answer before the U.S. Senate adjourned for the holidays was whether it would approve a new arms control treaty with Russia to significantly reduce the two country's nuclear arsenals. Although ratification appeared in jeopardy only days ago, the Senate voted Wednesday to approve the New START treaty 71-26, exceeding the two-thirds majority required. Senators spent much of this week working on side deals aimed at building support among wavering Republicans, including securing promises to continue missile-defense development and modernize the nation's nuclear arsenal. The final treaty provisions set a limit of 1,550 strategic (long-range) nuclear warheads and limits to 700 the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles such as long-range launchers and heavy bombers. The accord also provides for what the Obama administration calls strong verification measures, provisions that ensure each side complies with its treaty obligations. While critics remained unconvinced, arms control advocates welcomed the Senate vote. Richard Burt, head of the antinuclear advocacy group called Global Zero, said the vote “was imperative for national security” and “will strengthen U.S.-Russian relations.” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, called the vote “remarkable in this time of hyper-partisanship” and called on the Obama administration to move to bring down nuclear stockpiles even further. Source: Articles by David Alexander and Thomas Ferraro for Reuters, Peter Baker for the New York Times, Andrew Miga for the Associated Press, Juliane E. Barnes and Naftali Bendavid for the Wall Street Journal, and VOANews.com

russia senate nuclear weapons arms control new start richard burt daryl g kimball

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Keep the bombs away, Obama urges Israel

11 Mar 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Jesus “was calling people to faith in him, ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,’ not merely in his reputation or his deeds,” commentator Joel Schorn points out in PrepareTheWord’s “Notes on the text” for this Sunday's readings. Hoping to avert a premature strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear development facilities, President Barack Obama has been working hard to get that country's leadership to have faith that the U.S. “will always have Israel’s back.” With Israel warning of a possible attack, Obama urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday to give diplomacy and economic sanctions a chance to work before resorting to military action. The meeting, held in a charged atmosphere of election-year politics and a deepening confrontation with Tehran, was nevertheless “friendly, straightforward, and serious,” a White House official said. But it did not resolve basic differences between the two leaders over how to deal with the Iranian threat. The president also prodded Republicans, especially those on the campaign trail, to tone down their rhetoric on Iran. During a press conference Tuesday Obama criticized Republican critics for “beating the drums of war.” He said it is his belief that there is still a "window of opportunity" to use diplomacy instead of military force to resolve the dispute the over Iran's nuclear program in the Middle East. Obama said his critics are forgetting the "cost of war" in their rush to punish Iran and defend Israel, which sees a nuclear Iran as a mortal threat in its Mideast neighborhood. Rhetoric on the right is "more about politics than about trying to solve a difficult problem," Obama said. He said he is focused on "crippling sanctions" already imposed on Iran and on international pressure to keep that nation from developing a nuclear weapon. For his part Netanyahu had an unusual gift for the president: a copy of the biblical Book of Esther. Aides to the Israeli politician referred to it as “background reading” on Iran. The book is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim, which began Wednesday. It tells the story of a plot by Persia (modern-day Iran) to exterminate the Jewish people. Sources: Articles by Jake Tapper and Alexander Marquart for ABC News, NBC News, and Mark Landler for the New York Times

barack obama israel nuclear weapons benjamin netanyahu iran esther

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When poetry gets political

22 Apr 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"Everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled," Jesus tells his disciples in the gospel, while the writer of the First Letter of John says “the love of God is truly perfected” in Jesus. The attitudes toward Judaism of non-Jews can be an explosive issue now as it was then, as can be seen in the recent controversy over the newspaper publication by German author Günter Grass of a poem critical of the state of Israel's foreign policy. The nine-stanza, 69-line poem, What Must Be Said, appeared April 4 on the front of the culture section of the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mixing turns of phrase with discussions of the need for international supervision of both Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear programs, it bluntly called Israel a threat to world peace for its warnings that it might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. By supplying weapons to Israel, including submarines, Germany risked being complicit in a "foreseeable crime,” Grass wrote. Grass acknowledged that he could be accused of anti-Semitism but said he had to speak out to prevent Israel from committing a monstrous offense. In response he earned a personal rebuke from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, who barred Grass from visiting Israel, while Iranians praised him and German newspapers devoted pages to pillorying him. Some have called Grass, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, a hypocrite after he admitted that he had been a member of the Hitler Youth as a boy and at the time believed in the group’s aims. He also claimed that he had been drafted into an antiaircraft unit, but in 2006, when he was 78, he revealed for the first time that he had also served in the Waffen-SS at the end of World War II. In the wake of the Jewish Holocaust (Holocaust Memorial Day is today, April 19), Germany has shown strong support for Israel, but the experience of the war has also made many Germans strongly pacifist and thus uncomfortable with the hawkish tone and threatening language emanating from the Netanyahu government. “He wrote this poem knowing from the way he wrote it that there would be condemnation,” said Frank Schirrmacher, copublisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, who was interviewing Grass when he made his revelation about his Waffen-SS membership. “He needs the condemnation to move on to the next step, which is to say that it is [not] impossible in Germany to criticize Israel.” Sources: Articles by Nicholas Kulish and Ethan Bronner for the New York Timesand Luke Harding and Harriet Sherwood for the Guardian (U.K.)

israel nuclear weapons benjamin netanyahu iran germany gunter grass

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Israel sees red over Iran’s nuclear ambitions

23 Sep 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The author of the Letter of James rhetorically asks the listener where wars and conflicts come from and, answering the question, points to passions such as the desire to obtain what we do not possess. Claiming that Iran desires nothing so much as to obtain a nuclear weapon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unusual step of appearing on Sunday morning news programs in the U.S. last weekend to warn that the only way to stop Iran was for the United States to draw a distinct “red line” for Iran and declare that crossing it would trigger military intervention.While the U.S. has resisted pressure to go public in issuing such an ultimatum, evidence suggests U.S. Special Forces may be at work inside Iran in an attempt to sabotage the country’s nuclear program covertly. Fereydoun Abbasi, the chief of Iran’s nuclear program, disclosed Monday that power lines to the nation’s nuclear facilities had been blown up.U.S. Special Forces have trained for operations inside Iran for years, and some observers suggest this latest disclosure suggests they are already on the ground. Such activity might be designed to reassure Israel that while the U.S. is reluctant to engage in saber rattling in public, it is working behind the scenes to undermine Iran’s presumed ambitions.Patrick Clawson, the director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, “Covert American operations against the Iranian program is a good way to persuade the Israelis that the United States will back up its words with deeds.” Sources: Articles by Steven Lee Myers for the New York Times and Eli Lake for The Daily Beast

israel united states nuclear weapons benjamin netanyahu iran patrick clawson fereydoun abbasi special forces

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Recalling a crisis that nearly blew up

21 Oct 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday’s reading from Letter to the Hebrews points out that Jesus is sympathetic to human weaknesses because he has “similarly been tested in every way.” On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, newly released papers of Robert F. Kennedy reveal the true extent to which the crisis tested his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and how near the world may have been to a catastrophic nuclear war.Papers from Robert F. Kennedy’s personal files made public last week at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library reveal how close the president came to announcing what could have been the start of World War III. A draft speech penned in October, 1962 contained this language: “My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered—and the United States Air Force has now carried out—military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of Cuba.”Robert Kennedy had no doubt that his brother would have chosen an air strike against the missile sites, followed by an invasion, if need be. As he wrote in his notes while discussing this option, “If we go in, we go in hard.”Had the United States launched an airstrike and invaded Cuba, the Soviet commander on the scene would almost certainly have responded with about 100 tactical nuclear weapons under his control. The U.S. would have felt compelled to respond in kind, triggering an escalation to nuclear Armageddon, some analysts say.That was the moment when U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, by his own account, uttered the most memorable line of the missile crisis: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” But researcher Michael Dobbs called “the eyeball to eyeball” image a myth, pointing out that ships from the Soviet Union had already turned around and were at least 750 miles from the island when a U.S. naval blockade went into effect. The skillful give and take of negotiations, not brinksmanship, won the day during the crisis, he argued.Homily hint: The threat of nuclear war has not disappeared in the past 50 years, even if the bomb shelters and air-raid drills of the Cold-War era have. Tensions over Iran’s nuclear program remind us that praying for peace is always essential as is backing our prayers with concerted action for mutual disarmament and peaceful resolution of international disagreements. Preaching on peace is never outdated. Sources: Articles by Graham Allison for Christian Science Monitor and Michael Dobbs for the New York Times

nuclear weapons michael dobbs dean rusk soviet union cuban missile crisis robert f kennedy john f kennedy

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