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On December 4-5, Nancy Kranich and Taylor Willingham conducted a workshop on Deliberative Democracy for the Princeton Public Library and members of their community.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, jointly with the City of Mostar, is organising a Citizens’ Assembly as part of the first deliberative process of this kind in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the South East of Europe.
During four consecutive weekends, from 10 to 31 July 2021, the Citizens’ Assembly is bringing together a representative group of 47 randomly selected citizens to deliberate upon and make recommendations on the cleanliness of the city and maintenance of public spaces in Mostar. This topic was proposed by citizens of Mostar and chosen after consultations with civil society and the city authorities.
On December 4-5, Nancy Kranich and Taylor Willingham conducted a workshop on Deliberative Democracy for the Princeton Public Library and members of their community.
allthingsnuclear.org/syoung/bidens-nuclear-posture-review/
The Failures of Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review
October 27, 2022
Released today, the Biden administration’s unclassified Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is, at heart, a terrifying document. It not only keeps the world on a path of increasing nuclear risk, in many ways it increases that risk. Citing rising threats from Russia and China, it argues that the only viable U.S. response is to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, maintain an array of dangerous Cold War-era nuclear policies, and threaten the first use of nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios.
This NPR does not reflect the sensible steps President Biden proposed as a candidate to reduce the nuclear threat. Instead, the document says the United States has no choice but to build all-new nuclear weapons, despite science-based findings that the current warheads in the arsenal will be reliable for decades to come with only modest maintenance efforts. It abandons the pledge Biden made on the campaign trail to support a “no first use” policy and declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States and its allies. It endorses the new, lower-yield W76-2 warhead produced by the Trump administration that the 2020 Democratic Platform called “unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”
The NPR argues that sensors will detect incoming nuclear-armed missiles quickly enough to “ensure a deliberative process allowing the President sufficient time to gather information and consider courses of action.” And, to give the Biden administration some credit, the NPR does declare that U.S. nuclear forces “are postured to withstand an initial attack,” meaning the president could wait until after any incoming nuclear attack hits, rather than being required to launch before impact. That is good.
However, the entire nuclear force posture is set up so the president could have ten minutes to make decisions that would decide the fate of humanity, from when the first warning comes until incoming missiles explode. There would be no coming back from a launch based on faulty information or made by a president unhinged from reality.
indiscriminate destruction and immense radioactive fallout that would result from its detonation should make it unusable. Both of those are modest but positive steps, and the Biden administration should work hard to ensure Congress implements those decisions.
But the NPR misses the fundamental problem. Yes, the world is becoming a more dangerous place, but the only military threat to the survival of the United States is a nuclear war with Russia or China. Rather than recognizing that threat and seeking to find ways to end it, the Biden NPR doubles down on nuclear deterrence and the status quo approach to security that says we all must be prepared to die in less than an hour.
That is not a world any of us should want to live in. We need to find a new approach to security, one that can address tragedies like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but one that does not require humanity to live in constant peril. Such a world is possible, and the Biden administration should immediately begin strenuous efforts to create that outcome.
Daily theatre. Part of the set - ♀＆♂
The words were deliberative, but the body language was definitive.
Wonder if these two ever made it to a hotel?
On December 4-5, Nancy Kranich and Taylor Willingham conducted a workshop on Deliberative Democracy for the Princeton Public Library and members of their community.
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, jointly with the City of Mostar, is organising a Citizens’ Assembly as part of the first deliberative process of this kind in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the South East of Europe.
During four consecutive weekends, from 10 to 31 July 2021, the Citizens’ Assembly is bringing together a representative group of 47 randomly selected citizens to deliberate upon and make recommendations on the cleanliness of the city and maintenance of public spaces in Mostar. This topic was proposed by citizens of Mostar and chosen after consultations with civil society and the city authorities.