project pacem
TRANSCRIPT
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Roger Williams University
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“Finally, we are confronted in this modern age with a
form of society which is evolving on entirely new social
and political lines. Since all peoples have either at-
tained political independence or are on the way to at-taining it, soon no nation will rule over another and
none will be subject to an alien power.”
NUCLEAR
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons | Flickr
—Pope John XXIII
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FATAL PEACEMAKERS
It’s midday in Manhattan. The skies are clear and a light breeze is
sweeping across the city. The morning traffic rush creeps along,
each car vying for more space on the pavement. Every one of the
125,000 people packed into each square mile of the city is unsus-
pectingly going about their daily routine.
A man sits in his car, anxiously checking his watch as it ticks its way
closer and closer to 11:00, a race between man and time. A boy
skips along, hand in hand with his mother, licking the excess cream
cheese from his bagel off his fingers. A woman clicks along in her
heels, determinedly heading into the office to present her business
proposal.
In a fraction of a second, the world is eternally altered for the worse.
A 150-ton highly enriched uranium (HEU) bomb, ten times the size
of the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima during World War II, deto-
nates in the center of Times Square.
In less than one second, 100,000 people are dead, killed instantly
by the blast. They will never know what happened to them, having
had no time to realize that a nuclear bomb just exploded in their
neighborhood. The Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden,
Penn Station, the New York Public Library—all flattened into unrecog-
nizable rubble.
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In another 15 seconds, a shock wave swells outward for an addi-
tional 30 miles from ground zero, the point of detonation. Every per-
son in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey City is, by now, ei-
ther dead or severely injured. All the cities caught in this ring are
devastated.
The government may just be learning that a catastrophe has oc-curred in the city, but there is nothing they can do. All forms of com-
munication are compromised, leaving no avenue for survivors to
reach out or for rescue groups to call in. All roads connecting Man-
hattan and the outer boroughs to the rest of the country are demol-
ished or severely compromised. The radioactivity caused by the
bomb is so severe that it will kill any person who attempts a rescue
mission.
By the end of the day, a total of 1.5 million people will have diedfrom the blast, flying debris, or radioactivity. Another 1.5 million will
be seriously injured. Only an estimated 25 percent of those injured
will survive their injuries.
In a modern-day nuclear world, it is this hypothetical, though poten-
tial, scenario that all senior government officials must face every day
as they go about their duty protecting the American people.
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen is no exception. Havingserved under President Bill Clinton during both of his terms, these
were the images that kept Cohen awake at night.
“My biggest fear as Secretary of Defense was a nuclear bomb ex-
ploding in the United States,” he said. “Once that happens, the
questions the President of the United States will have to ask is: Who
did it? Why they did it? And what should we do?”
The international fallout from a nuclear attack of this scale would be
paramount, with every leader mobilizing their military, preparing
their nuclear weapons, and determining in which direction to launch
those nuclear warheads. How each country responds could be the
difference between their survival and their destruction as the world
is launched into its first-ever nuclear war.
With 16,000 known nuclear warheads in existence among nine coun-
tries, world leaders, including Secretary Cohen, are forced to look
for a solution that ensures global peace and provides total protec-
tion from a nuclear attack.
Their paradoxical solution lies in the concept of deterrence.
DETERRENCE
A strategic defense strategy, nuclear deterrence was—and still is—
the game played by the United States and every other nation in pos-
session of nuclear weapons. It began as a two-player game, with
the United States facing the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World
War II. Today, there are nine players, all racing one another to en-
sure their own survival.
To win, one country has to have enough nuclear weapons that an-other country would not launch a nuclear attack. So long as the
United States has enough weapons to not only absorb a Russian at-
tack but to also launch a retaliatory campaign that would effectively
bomb the country into a parking lot, Russian President Vladimir
Putin will not threaten nor launch a single nuclear weapon in the
United States’ direction. This is the theory that has been keeping
every citizen safe since the 1950s.
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Deterrence employs the strategy of building up a formidable nuclear
arsenal, which has the singular purpose of standing dormant but at
the ready; the strategy here is to press other countries to consider
the consequences of a nuclear attack. Right now, the United States
has an estimated 7,100 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, second only
to Russia, which has 7,700 nuclear weapons.
“The United States is spending billions of dollars on weapons and
technology that it will, hopefully, never have to use,” said Secretary
Cohen.
So why, then, do we maintain this fatal arsenal? Well, for starters, it
works.
NO TURNING BACK
On August 6 and again on August 9, 1945, the United States
dropped two atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Na-
gasaki in Japan with the purpose of ending World War II. In that
same moment, the United States changed the course of history, giv-
ing birth to the nuclear
age and launching a
global struggle that con-
tinues to plague human-ity, even today.
At the time, the United
States hoped to monopo-
lize its nuclear technol-
ogy, but its efforts to re-
main the only nuclear na-
tion were futile. Immedi-
ately, other countries be-
gan to thirst for the
power associated with
possessing nuclear
weapons, and the tech-
nology spread through-out the globe.
Just four years later, in
1949, the Soviet Union
tested its own nuclear
weapon, effectively starting the nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Both countries vying for the title
of super power, their nuclear arsenals suddenly grew so that each
nation owned upwards of 30,000 nuclear weapons.
Threatened by the vertical rise of nuclear technology by two super-
powers, other powerful countries joined in the race, creating their
own nuclear technology to ward off the increasing danger posed by
the United States and Soviet Union. By 1964, the United Kingdom,
France, and China had all developed nuclear technologies of their
own. Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea would join in by 2003,
much to the reluctance of the United States and other nuclear pow-
ers.
Realizing that the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons
could lead to dire scenarios in which rogue states or terror groups
obtained this lethal technology, the World’s nuclear powers joined
forces to create the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. On its
face, the treaty aimed to prevent any new nations from gaining nu-
clear capabilities. However, many nations, like India, Israel, and Paki-
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stan, didn’t sign the treaty. Still others, like Iraq, Iran, and Libya,
signed the treaty only to go back and defy it by pursuing their own
secret nuclear programs. North Korea completely rescinded their
signature in a quest to possess their own nuclear arsenal.
Since then, any attempts to stop the international proliferation of nu-
clear weapons have been limited at best. The United States and the
Soviet Union, now Russia, have worked to decrease the number ofnuclear weapons in their respective arsenals with a litany of agree-
ments including the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) I and
SALT II as well with START I, START II and New START.
As each attempt to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons ei-
ther failed or proved inept, the world turned to deterrence in an ef-
fort to discourage non-nuclear nations from initiating nuclear pro-
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Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
Agreement between the US, USSR, and the UK prohibiting nu-clear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and under-water.
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968)Initiated by the US, USSR, the UK, France, and China with the pur-pose of limiting the spread of military nuclear technology to non-nuclear nations wishing to build or acquire their own nuclearweapons.
SALT I (1972)
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the US and USSR beganin 1969 and ended in 1972. Resulted in the creation of the Anti-
Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the Interim Agreement on theLimitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. The Interim Agreementwould last for five years, during which both countries froze thenumber of strategic ballistic missiles, stopped the construction ofICBM silos, and allowed for the increase of SLBM launcher levelsso long as reductions were made in older ICBM or SLBM launch-ers.
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972)
Treaty between the US and USSR that limited each country’s anti-ballistic missile systems. It prohibits the development, testing, anddeployment of space-, sea-, and air-based, as well as mobile land-based, systems.
SALT II (1979)
Bilateral agreement between the US and the USSR that set equallimitations on both country’s strategic offensive weapon systems.
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grams. Each country began to rely heavily on the defense strategy,
effectively securing the presence of nuclear weapons in the global
system so that the world can no longer function without them.
In a cyclical relationship, deterrence shaped the global nuclear strat-
egy in the same way that nuclear weapons had birthed the strategy
of deterrence.
John Park, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Ken-
nedy School of Government with extensive experience in interna-
tional nuclear affairs, says that con-
versations took a final turn away
from the goal of total elimination of
nuclear weapons following the Cold
War. It was this shift that repre-
sented a final change in perspec-tive where the world fully acknowl-
edged that it could no longer func-
tion without the presence of nuclear
weapons.
“At the end of the Cold War there
was an opportunity [for disarma-
ment],” said Park. “Since then
we’ve seen strategic arms reduc-tion, but there still is a view for the
large countries in the large international system that nuclear weap-
ons are an important in their overall defense posture.”
Since that shift, the international nuclear community has not looked
back, and maybe with good reason. Contrary to their fatal nature, nu-
clear weapons have cemented their place in the globe as forceful
peacemakers.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROMOTE PEACE
Since the day of their inception, nuclear weapons have held theworld to a certain standard of peace. With the threat of a more ad-
vanced retaliatory attack ever present, countries have resigned
themselves to the prospect that their
deadly arsenals may, and should,
never be used.
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Global Security Affairs, Joseph
Benkert, believes that nuclear weaponsare here to stay, so entrenched in na-
tional and global security that the world
cannot afford to give up their arsenals.
“I think it’s probably an uncomfortable
truth and maybe an inconvenient truth
but the security of the United States is
underpinned by nuclear weapons and
global security and the relations amongthe great powers is underpinned by nu-
clear weapons. I don’t think that’s likely to change soon,” said
Benkert.
With this recognition, the world was faced with the challenge of what
to do with the technology it had created. Impossible to unlearn how
to create nuclear weapons, the international nuclear community
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chose to focus instead on how the technology was to be used,
rather than attempt to ignore that the technology exists altogether.
“The of knowledge how to build a nuclear weapon is now wide-
spread. In a world where no one has nuclear weapons, there’s al-
ways the problem of cheating and how long it takes to develop and
build a weapon,” said Benkert. “Every crisis would become a nu-
clear crisis in the sense that how fast can I produce a nuclear
weapon so that I can dominate the
opponent.”
While this doesn’t discount any
movement towards a world without
nuclear weapons, many experts
and government officials believe
that nuclear weapons are too impor-tant for the United States’ security to
disarm at this time.
Former Ambassador Marc Gross-
man, who has extensive experience
in the Middle East as United States
Ambassador to Turkey, United
States Special Representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in in-ternational affairs, likes to think of a world without nuclear weapons.
However, he too has concluded that this illusion is nearly impossible.
“I think in a perfect world it would be great to not have any nuclear
weapons. Sometimes we go back and think, gosh, what if they had
never been invented,” he says. “But I’m sorry to say that for the mo-
ment, I think the United States needs to keep a certain number of nu-
clear weapons.”
Ambassador Grossman believes that nuclear weapons are too em-
bedded in the national defense security system to be removed.
When even just one country has nuclear weapons, it is extremely dif-
ficult, if not impossible, for the United States to run an effective for-
eign policy campaign without having a nuclear arsenal of its own.
“I find it hard to conceive of how you’d
run your foreign military, international
diplomatic policies today if we didn’t
have them and others continued to
have nuclear weapons,” he said.
The optimist that he is, Secretary Cohen
dreams of the day when there are no
nuclear weapons anywhere in the
world, but even he recognizes that nu-
clear weapons hold a certain stabilizing
power over the globe. To ensure domes-
tic and international safety, countries
must maintain their nuclear arsenals to
some degree to implement an effective
deterrence defense policy.
Deterrence not only dissuades a nuclear attack, but it also helps to
calm the fears of non-nuclear countries whose neighbors may have
nuclear capabilities. The United States, and other nuclear states, is
able to expand its nuclear umbrella of protection over its allies in ar-
eas of constant insecurity, thus alleviating some of the tension and
lessening the likelihood of a nuclear attack.
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“At a strategic level the fact that the United States has nuclear weap-
ons, as does Russia and China, produces a measure of strategic sta-
bility that would not be there if there were
no nuclear weapons,” says Benkert. “The
chance of a major war among these pow-
ers would be greater if there were not the
restraint induced by the nuclear weaponsand the stability at a strategic level that
those weapons produce.”
President Barack Obama, in a 2009 ad-
dress in Prague, played out the vision of a
world without nuclear weapons. However,
even he expressed the fact that as long as
nuclear weapons exist, the United States
would maintain its arsenal so that it pro-vides the country with a safe deterrence.
Putting it simply, Benkert explains the need for nuclear weapons. “I
think that deterrence is essential to our posture and that nuclear
weapons are essential for deterrence.”
As is the nature of deterrence, the use of nuclear weapons is solely
for defense, which aids in their peace-making ability. So long as
every country follows this philosophy of defensive nuclear weapons,no first-strike will ever be initiated and thus no nuclear weapon will
ever be launched. This stance places the world on a sensitive nu-
clear equilibrium, in which rational players tread lightly and the pres-
ence of nuclear weapons provides peace.
It also greatly escalates the fallout should one nuclear weapon fall
into the wrong hands or one irrational player enters the game, disre-
garding all the rules. In a game where one wrong move equates cer-
tain worldwide destruction, nuclear nations must now focus all their
attention on controlling the game and the
players within it.
CHANGING THE GAME
The rise of non-nation states and terrorist
organizations, including Al Qaeda and the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),
have lead to an increased threat of nuclear
weapons being transferred into the wrong
hands, and, in turn, an increased threat of
a nuclear attack somewhere in the globe.
President Barack Obama and leaders across the globe have begun
to pay strict attention to these terrorist groups, as well as rogue
states that have presented evidence of illegitimately pursuing a nu-
clear program.
Most recently, the United States was able to secure a nuclear arms
agreement with Iran, effectively eliminating a potential threat in one
of the most unstable regions on the globe. In concluding this deal,
the United States was able to decrease the possibility of terrorist or-ganizations centered in this region from obtaining unaccounted for
nuclear weapons. Ambassador Grossman supports the Iran deal,
saying: “There are a number of reasons to be in favor of the Iran
agreement, among the most important is that it forestalls, at least for
the time being, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
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The Iran deal was paramount, as it induced stability in the region. It
assured other nations that nuclear weapons would not creep up in
Iran, thus ensuring their safety so the need to pursue their own nu-
clear weapons was vanquished.
“Think of if we were facing a world in which there was no agreement
with Iran. If you were in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, you would
have to be thinking, ‘Well how am I going to protect myself? The Ira-
nians are going to have a nuclear bomb and we have to do some-
thing about that.’ Maybe they would make the decision not to pursue
a nuclear weapon but you can’t count on that,” said Ambassador
Grossman.
North Korea poses a different threat to the nuclear peace balance.
A developed country in its own right, the nation has distanced itself
from rational players and struck out on its own to play the nucleargame by its own rules.
Ignoring all international treaties and agreements, Supreme Leader
of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kim Jong Un has ef-
fectively conceptualized, implemented, and finalized North Korea’s
nuclear program. Located in the southeast corner of the Asian conti-
nent, the threat of a nuclear attack coming from North Korea could
induce other countries in this region to either pursue or use their own
nuclear weapons.
Ambassador Grossman recognizes this threat. “The impact both in-
ternationally and domestically of states like North Korea and Iran
having nuclear weapons are enormous, and of course they are
much more central to those countries that are in the neighborhoods
of both North Korea and Iran,” he said.
An unprecedented situation in itself, North Korea has presented the
world with a challenging scenario it has been unable to deal with to
date. Park offers that the United States must thoughtfully consider
how it goes about managing the North Korean dilemma. Tradition-
ally, the United States has relied on financial and economic sanc-
tions to prevent North Korea from further advancing its nuclear pro-
gram. However, each time the United States enhances its sanctions,North Korea has amplified its nuclear program.
“With respect to North Korea, sanctions are something that has pre-
sented a puzzle. If you look at it during the periods where the United
States and the International community were applying sanctions with
a great deal of intensity, we saw North Korea increase its nuclear
weapons capabilities, and that’s a very inconvenient fact and some-
thing that policy makers are grappling with right now,” said Park.The
presence of nuclear weapons in the region has induced anxiety, anissue the United States must deal with simultaneously. The presence
of United States allies who reside under the nation’s nuclear um-
brella has helped to induce stability in the region, similar to the Mid-
dle East.By flexing its nuclear arsenal, the United States may be
able to help maintain peace in the region according to Benkert. The
United States has to convince North Korea that they have nothing to
gain in obtaining nuclear weapons. To realize this, the state must not
feel threatened in any form from any nation, or they must feel thatany effort to initiate a nuclear attack is futile. The United States has
to create a situation in which North Korea does not benefit from hav-
ing nuclear weapons, whether than means convincing them that the
United States can intercept their weapons or that it has the ability to
aggressively respond to an attack.
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“I think that the United States needs nuclear weapons for deterrence
of its potential adversaries who have nuclear weapons or who might
seek to have nuclear weapons. And, just as, importantly to assure its
allies who otherwise would intimidated or coerced by their neighbors
who have nuclear weapons and who could use their nuclear weap-
ons to intimidate them or coerce them into,” said Benkert.
When putting it all in perspective, had the United States never un-
leashed the atomic bomb, and had the Soviet Union and the United
States never built up their arsenals to
awesome proportions, and had the
threat of nuclear weapons never en-
tered the global stage, the world may
not be faced with this dilemma. But
such is the case with any lethal tech-
nology, and now it is simply anotheritem on a long list of international is-
sues. The difference is this issue can
wipe out entire populations if not han-
dled with care or given the proper at-
tention.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
In his Prague Address, President Barack Obama announced that
the United States would begin working towards reducing its nuclear
arsenal, reviving the spirit of America and the world by proposing
that nuclear weapons may one day make their final exit from the
global stage, even as nuclear tensions intensify.
By 2010, he had signed the New START Treaty with Russia to further
decrease United States reliance on its nuclear weapons and to bring
down the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Americans and
global citizens alike celebrated at the idea of security without the
threat of nuclear weapons.
However, countries have proven that they are not willing to give up
their ultimate and safest weapons, ensuring that nuclear weapons
will have a home in the global system for as long as anyone can
see.
Experts and global leaders agree that,
while it is a formidable goal, nuclear
global zero is not going to happen. In fact,
most agree that the world is safer with nu-
clear weapons than without them.
Benkert says, “The world is likely to be
safer with some nuclear weapons under a
proper regime of arms control than a
world with no nuclear weapons.”
Ambassador Grossman seconds this
idea: “I think the idea, today, that you
could come all the way down to zero in any reasonable time frame
doesn’t seem very realistic to me.”
Even Secretary Cohen, whose goal is to eliminate all nuclear weap-
ons, recognizes that this goal is going to take time and must be
done in a very delicate and transparent manner.
“The United States must first reduce its number of nuclear weapons
in a transparent manner, which would ease the anxiety of other coun-
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tries. If a country feels threatened, it has
the ability to initiate a first strike. With the
United States in a vulnerable position, a
first strike could have devastating conse-
quences,” Secretary Cohen said.
The threat of a nuclear attack is not elimi-
nated simply because the globe has insti-
tuted a system of deterrence. Terrorist
threats and nuclear threats from North Ko-
rea continue to plague the globe, and the
United States must respond to these
threats in an effective manner. One wrong
move by any nuclear country is the differ-
ence between peace and a radioactive
world blown apart city by city.
“As long as nuclear technology exists, a
dilemma every United States President will
have to face is how they will use the nu-
clear technology of the time and how they
will respond to a nuclear attack,” said Sec-
retary Cohen.
Now retired from public service after 31years, Secretary Cohen chooses to spend
his free time writing fictional books. Feeling
that he can say and accomplish more in
fiction than he ever could in nonfiction, writ-
ing novels has become a form of relief for
him, a way to get his biggest worries and
fears off his chest.
His most recent novel, Blink of an Eye,
tackles the dilemma of what the United
States President would do should a nu-
clear bomb destroy a major American city.
As is obvious by the subject of his book,
this devastating scenario is never far from
his mind. After all, one wrong move in a
system that relies solely on the contradic-
tory equilibrium of deterrence could mean
the obliteration of Manhattan in the blink of
an eye.
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MAKING NUCLEAR PROGRESS
In its November 1979 issue, The Progressive published an article re-
vealing the recipe for the H-bomb.
Nearly two years prior, in January 1978, Howard Morland was invited
to give a seminar for a class on nuclear weapons at the University ofAlabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. During his talk, he said that he
hoped to figure out what made the H-bomb work. Morland asked the
class, without expecting a response, “Does anyone know the secret
of the H-bomb?”
One student had an answer. The kid told Morland that he had grown
up in Oak Ridge, Alabama and that the major component of nuclear
weapons was made there. When Morland was driving up to New
England after he left Alabama, he decided to check it out for him-
self. He found different buildings, plants, and laboratories.
“I went over to Y-12 plant and it was bigger than anything, it was likea city full of industrial buildings; it filled up this valley,” said Morland,
73, a journalist, author and anti-nuclear activist of Arlington, Virginia.
“And I said holy shit, this is where they make the H-bomb.”
Morland found that the “secret of the H-bomb” wasn’t a secret at all.
The information was already out there through public records. He
came across The Progressive, a monthly magazine on politics,
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culture and opinion based in Madison, Wisconsin, and was hired
that same year as a freelance writer to research and write on govern-
ment secrecy and nuclear weapons. Although Morland claimed that
he obtained all of his research through unrestricted records and did
not receive any “classified” tips, the United States government and
others were quick to discredit and stop The Progressive before the
article went to print.
MORLAND GAINS AN INTEREST IN NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Howard Morland was a C-141 jet transport pilot in the Air Force, at
Lubbock, Texas, when he first came into contact with nuclear weap-
ons. He had never handled nuclear weapons, but he was trained to
carry them as cargo.
“I kept looking and thinking, this is the size of a kitchen garbage can
and if this was a real bomb and it blew up, the San Bernardino moun-
tains to the North would be a firestorm and nothing left of San Ber-
nardino,” said Morland.
In 1976, Morland became a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance, an
anti-nuclear organization that protested in New England. In May
1977, after over 1,000 of 2,000 Clamshell protesters got arrested at
the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire,
Morland and other activists spent two weeks in jails and National
Guard armories. There were five different armories being occupied
by peace activists, and when they got out they tried to call attention
to the nuclear problem.
“We had the Civil Right’s Movement in the 1950s, anti-war movement
in the 1960s and early 1970s, and then all of a sudden all these hip-
pie types with their blue jeans, and combat boots, long hair and
beads all popped out of the woodwork to join the environmentalmovement,” Morland said.
When Morland was at a Seabrook demonstration, he came across
The Progressive, a magazine serving as the newsletter for the new
environmental movement.
He noticed that every month there was an article by Harvey Wasser-
man, a co-founder and media spokesperson for the Clamshell Alli-
ance, in The Progressive. Morland thought that if knew more about
the design of nuclear weapons, then maybe they could get The Pro-
gressive magazine involved.
Morland explained that he did not go to journalism school and was
never a real journalist in the sense that he had a job with journalism.
He was always a freelancer and activist first. The idea of writing arti-
cles for The Progressive magazine fell into his lap and he took ad-
vantage of it.
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“I thought if I could figure out the secret and tell everybody the se-
cret, then maybe this would kind of deputise people to go ahead
and speak out on nuclear weapons,” said Morland. “There’s no point
in having these security clearances because the information is out
there.”
A JOURNALIST ON AN
ASSIGNMENT
When he was given the
assignment, Morland,
along with editor Erwin
Knoll and managing edi-
tor Samuel Day Jr. of The
Progressive, thought thatif they laid out the design
of nuclear weapons in a
simple way to understand, then it would benefit the United States
and it would create a base to promote a public debate on nuclear
weapons without secrecy.
“Public discussion is essential to any kind of democracy, especially
in times of war,” said Morland.
Sam Day made it possible for Morland to have access to all of seven
component factories. At the factories, Morland was told that he
could ask any questions he had. Also, he was given information and
brochures on the materials and role of each factory in producing the
final product of an H-bomb. He was given a $500 advance, which
only was enough to cover one factory.
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“I realized I could ask questions that would reveal information no
matter how they answered them,” said Morland. “If it was not classi-
fied they would tell me and if it was classified they would say it was
classified and I got a good idea of what
things they could and couldn’t talk about.”
After looking through encyclopedias, Mor-
land noticed that there were two models that
contradicted one another.
In his quest to find what basic model worked
best, he noticed that the answers he was get-
ting from factory workers would hint at which
one wouldn’t work. Morland used additional
experts on nuclear weapons to check what
he believed was the basic model that wouldwork.
PUBLISHING THE SECRET
Before the article was published, Sam Day
sent the article over to George Rathjens, a
political science professor at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, who challenged hisstudents to figure out the secret to make a
workable H-bomb, and Rathjens sent it to
the Department of Energy (DOE) and the
DOE declared that the article contained clas-
sified information.
“And I said you did this without asking me? You knew that if I got it
right they would declare it classified,” said Morland. “Why did you
give it to someone who worked for the government?”
Morland had been careful not to give Rathjens
anything he could turn in, but Rathjens called up
the magazine and said, “I understand you got a
reporter here who’s about to blow the H-bomb
secret. Can I look at your manuscript?” And the
magazine sent it to him. Morland said that Sam
Day always said that “well, we just didn’t trust
you.” The scientists that looked at the article
said that it was plausible it was the real deal, but
they weren’t positive. By sending it to Rathjens,
they could get a confirmation from someone
who knew the answer if Morland was right orwrong.
“I think, at least in Erwin’s part, that he sent it to
Rathjens hoping that Rathjens would send it to
the government and we’d end up in court,” Mor-
land said.
The DOE saw the article as a giant threat if it
were distributed to the public. After seeing thearticle, the DOE called the magazine over the
phone and went to the publication’s headquar-
ters to tell them not to publish it because it con-
tained what was defined as restricted informa-
tion under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The Progressive editors
still planned on moving forward to publish the article because they
felt that it was information that everyone should be aware of.
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On March 8, 1979, the DOE moved to suppress the arti-
cle by asking the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee to issue an
injunction and restrain publication of Morland’s article.
The government claimed that it would reveal secret infor-
mation defined by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and
could cause irreparable harm if given to the public. Thenext day the Federal District Judge Robert W. Warren
issued a temporary restraining order on publishing the
article. At first the press and government questioned
why The Progressive would do such a thing and want to
arm people with this kind of information. Over the next
following months, the magazine started to win over the
support of the press and convinced the government
that the information was already in the public domain.
Morland claimed in court had no specialized access to
classified documents or information during his re-
search. Over six months, under the permission of the
DOE, Morland interviewed government and DOE offi-
cials, visited nuclear weapon production plants, read
anything he could on the subject, and fired out ques-
tions left and right to anyone. Also, since he had little
scientific background, besides what he learned in a fewundergraduate physics courses at Emory University in
Atlanta, Georgia, Morland had experts in the scientific
field help guide his research and confirm that his writing
was accurate.
He eventually pieced together the mechanics behind
the H-Bomb using this combined research, all of which
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he found with any special access that the average citizen would not
get. Using all his research, Morland crafted “The H-Bomb Secret:
How We Got It, Why We're Telling It,” which was originally scheduled
to go to print in the magazine’s April 1979 issue. The article itself ex-
plained the three stages to the detonation of a hydrogen weapon,
which included diagrams and descriptions of each stage.
The magazine said to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that
Judge Warren made a mistake in imposing a prior restraint, which is
censorship before something is expressed, on grounds of a threat to
national security. The government gave The Progressive the opportu-
nity back in March to rewrite the article to exclude details (about 20
percent of content) that the DOE deemed would cause harm if re-
leased to the public. The magazine refused to comply with prior re-
straint on Morland’s article. The Progressive believed that censor-
ship would have deprived citizens from forming their own opinionsand making judgment on what is just and unjust when it comes to
use and production of nuclear weapons.
It wasn’t until Sept. 28, 1979, more than six months after the case’s
first court appearance, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
dismissed the case and ruled in favor of Progressive Inc. The final
article was distributed was in its original form, free from government
censorship, in the magazine's November 1979 issue. The Progres-
sive had to pay $250,000 in the end for legal expenses.
“The fact that we won the case meant that what we were saying was
true and that the information that we shared was no longer classi-
fied,” said Morland.
17
“It [the media] plays a very important role in bringing to the
public information to inform debates on important issues,” said
David Logan, a professor of law at Roger Williams University.
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UNIVERSITY OF NIKE
A little boy sits in the backseat of his family’s black Chevrolet Sta-
tion Wagon, listening to the low rumble of the car as it makes its
way over the Mount Hope Bridge, into Bristol, and past the fledg-
ling university encroaching on the bay. Across a field to his right
there is movement at Nike Missile Base PR-38. The launch baydoors are opening and in seconds a MIM-3 Ajax Missile is
cocked skyward under the blue suburban sky. The boy’s mother
reaches for the dial and turns on the car’s radio.
“It’s only a drill,” says his father.
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By Harrison Connery
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Music is playing and the tension drops; an emergency government
civil defense broadcast would have been a death sentence. The boy
is Earl Gladue, the year is 1959, and the United States appears to
be on its way to the brink of
nuclear annihilation.
Earl Gladue is now a 62-
year-old mathematics profes-
sor at Roger Williams Univer-
sity (RWU), located in Bristol,
Rhode Island, where Gladue
was raised. His office sits no
more than 1,500 feet from
the former site of base PR-
38, which has been replaced
by a dormitory and parkinggarage for the school. The
university briefly considered
using the pumped out mis-
sile silos as science labs.
“You see the doors open and
the missiles coming up and
you’re wondering if its a drill
or if it’s World War III,” he says, explaining why the memory hasstayed with him his entire life. “Our neighbor built a bomb shelter in
his backyard.”
The Bristol base, like all Nike bases, was comprised of two separate
locations. The radar installation, built on a hill two miles north of
RWU, tracked incoming enemy targets and provided missile guid-
ance. The site built on what is now RWU was the assembly and
launch site. The missiles stationed at the Bristol site did not carry nu-
clear warheads; instead, their purpose was to shoot down an enemy
plane carrying a nuclear bomb.
The base, which opened un-
der the command of First Lt.
Nelson Legette in 1956, was
constructed in cohesion with
16 homes to house the battal-
ion of 90 men. It cost the mili-
tary $900,000 to build and
included three underground
missile bays that held seven
missiles each. Each missile
was worth $20,000 apiece.
THE FAIL SAFE
Gladue’s memory of the Nike
base dates back to the last
years of the United States’
nuclear superiority over the
Soviet Union. The Nike Pro-
ject, named after the Greek Goddess of victory, went mainstream in
1949 when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The So-
viets had already created bomber planes that could reach targets
within the continental United States and there were fears of a mas-
sive Soviet fleet destroying the country. Nike’s objective was to serve
as a fail safe against a Soviet air campaign if the Air Force’s long
range fighters failed to deter an attack.
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Nike missiles were deployed around population centers and key gov-
ernment locations within the United States. Because of their rela-
tively short range, many missile sites were built in close proximity to
the communities they were built to protect. Starting in 1953, the mili-
tary constructed about 250 sites in the U.S. and overseas.
The first generation of Nike missiles were named Nike Ajax missiles.
They were capable of speeds north of
1,600 mph and could destroy a target
at 70,000 feet. The one Gladue saw in
Bristol towered 34-feet 10-inches tall,
the booster adding an extra 13-feet
10-inches to the missile’s height. Mis-
sile and booster together weighed just
under 2,500 pounds.
The Ajax missile generated a fair
amount of controversy: critics claimed
that its limited range of 25 miles pre-
vented it from being an effective
surface-to-air missile. However, it was
the only anti-aircraft missile in exis-
tence at the time and it was far supe-
rior to anti-aircraft artillery. Ajax missiles carried three warheads lo-
cated at the front, center, and rear of the missile. Plans to equip Ajaxmissiles with nuclear warheads were abandoned in favor of building
a new and improved Nike missile: the Nike Hercules.
Development of the Nike Hercules began before the first Nike Ajax
missiles had been deployed. The Nike Hercules was designed to
produce a missile with superior speed, altitude, and range com-
pared to the Ajax. A Hercules missile could achieve speeds of 2,700
mph, had a range of 90 miles, and could destroy a target at 150,000
feet. Larger than the Ajax, the Hercules missile rose 41 feet above
the ground with the booster and weighed over 10 thousand pounds.
While the Ajax missile was designed to defend against subsonic air-
craft, the Hercules was built to shoot down jets with supersonic capa-
bilities. Nike Hercules missiles were manufactured with nuclear war-
heads ranging from three to 30 kilotons
(for reference, the bomb dropped on Hi-
roshima measured 15 kilotons). Arming
missiles manufactured for defense with a
nuclear payload had two main advan-
tages: a single Hercules missile could de-
stroy an entire formation of fighter jets, and
the blast had a greater chance of destroy-
ing the incoming nuclear bomb(s). Hercu-les missiles were deployed in the United
States starting in 1958.
Another improvement the Hercules had
over its predecessor was its versatility as a
weapon. While Ajax missiles were exclu-
sively surface-to-air missiles, the Hercules
could be used as a surface-to-surface missile, meaning it could be
used to destroy enemy troops on the ground or to attack an invadingnavy. However, due to the missile’s limited range the Hercules could
not be used to attack another country, like an intercontinental ballis-
tic missile (ICBM) would be.
In the end it was the creation of the ICBM that ended the Nike pro-
gram. As a result of the widespread deployment of Nike missiles
across the United States, the Soviet Union adjusted their nuclear pro-
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gram to develop ICBMs which—unlike their which has bred and fed the use of private
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g p
planes—could not be shot down. Nike Ajax
sites were closed by 1964, the Hercules last-
ing another ten years before it was deacti-
vated. The Nike Project was the United
States’ most visible and costly defense sys-
tem, but, according to Gladue, not an oppres-
sive one.
“You didn’t really think anything of it,” he said.
THE RISE OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL
COMPLEX
Nike’s departure from the public eye and the
base’s replacement by a private universityrepresent the tension drop since the height of
the Cold War, but the transition is not indica-
tive of a movement towards demilitarization.
Visible defense systems such as the Nike pro-
gram, itself largely the work of private con-
tractors, have been replaced with the omni-
present, invisible military industrial complex.
Since the start of the Eisenhower administra-tion the nature of the American military has
changed dramatically. Once a massive gov-
ernment entity that employed everyone from
soldiers, to research and development
teams, to kitchen personnel, the military has
become increasingly privatized as the na-
tion’s military industrial complex has grown.
The growth of the military industrial complex,
p
contractors, dates back to the concept of
“Military Keynesianism”, named after the
economist Lord Maynard Keynes who popu-
larized the concept that government stimulus
spending could lift a country out of reces-
sion. Intuitively, Military Keynesianism applies
the same concept to the military: the morethe United States spends on its military, the
more people are needed to run it, the more
people it employs. Future conflicts and the
ensured obsolescence of military technolo-
gies make the military a permanent, self sus-
taining stimulus package. This economic the-
ory replaced the traditional belief that spend-
ing on war diverted resources from more so-
cially desirable outlets.
As the military industrial complex grew, out-
sourcing military jobs was viewed as able to
produce more efficient results and as more
economically responsible. Projects under-
taken by the U.S. military must meet strict
Congressional rules and are subject to inva-
sive oversight procedures. Contractors arenot subject to the same rules: as long as Con-
gress approves the total cost of the project,
day-to-day developments are safely out of
sight in the private sector. As military tech-
nologies became increasingly complex, the
government found itself increasingly reliant
on private companies to develop, maintain,
and operate its equipment (even Nike mis-
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siles were developed by private companies). In addition to the rela-
tive ease of passing work off to private contractors, the idea that free
market principles would control costs and ultimately save the govern-
ment money became popular in the defense sector: bidding on gov-
ernment jobs would assure the lowest possible cost and eliminate
wasteful spending. Indeed, at first glance the growth of the military
industrial complex appears to be a win-win: eternal economic stimu-lus and responsible government spending; what’s not to like? But
new analysis suggests that the privati-
zation of American warfare has be-
come extremely detrimental to the well-
being of the country.
HAYEK-SPLOSIVE
First, the Military Keynesianism bubble
burst. A viable economic stimulus in
the 1950s, the pursuit of military he-
gemony now burdens the American
taxpayer. Then, America was at peace.
The benefits of the growing military
economy stayed home with the troops.
Now, Americans employed as contractors work in conflict zones oron tour in foreign countries where the United States keeps a military
presence. Worse, the Rutherford Institute reports that 90 percent of
the security contractors hired in Afghanistan were Afghan, the most
extreme example of a growing trend in which contracting companies
hire foreign nationals instead of Americans. Additionally, a Political
Economy Research Institute (PERI) report found that growing sec-
tors such as renewable energy, education, and healthcare create
more domestic jobs per dollar than the military does. Investing in the
military industrial complex is no longer synonymous with investing in
the American public.
Exacerbating the situation is the fact that a free market does not ex-
ist in the defense industry. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
40 percent of Department of Defense (DoD) contracts were offered
exclusively to a single company. Secondly, in the case of the de-
fense industry, the government is the sole consumer; free markets,
however, rely on a number of consumers
working with and against each other to dic-
tate demand, which ensures affordable
pricing. Finally, economic inefficiencies
are permissible in the defense industry, un-
like the free market, where running over
budget puts a company out of business. Ifprivate contractors run over budget the
cost can be passed on to the federal gov-
ernment (read: taxpayers) with no conse-
quences.
According to The New York Times, a Con-
gressional report found that of the $206 bil-
lion paid to private contractors during the
first 10 years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least $30-$60billion had been wasted—that was a conservative estimate. Civilian
officials and military members benefitted from financial kickbacks in
some cases and in others up to 20 percent of Defense contracts
were spent on bribes to local warlords and insurgents for protection.
The dynamic that exists between the military and private contractors
is identical to the much more publicized relationship between politi-
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cians and special interest lobbyists. In some instances, senior mili-
tary officials retire from the military to lucrative lobbying jobs for con-
tracting companies. According to an article on The Atlantic website,
Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) brags that it has more
generals per square feet than the Pentagon.
Like on Capitol Hill, there exist few regulations to delineate the ex-
tent of fraternization appropriate between the military and the private
sector. Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary
Michael Chertoff’s consulting agency, the Chertoff Group, repre-
sented the manufacturer Rapiscan, which builds full body airport
scanners. Chertoff leveraged his status at the DHS with great effect
to publicly and privately lobby for the installation of the scanners
even though there existed no evidence that they improved security.
Central to the well being of the military industrial complex is a narra-
tive fed to the American public that they are constantly under threatof attack. It is what allows corporate corruption and waste to go un-
punished and prevents politicians from gutting the industry finan-
cially (the Pentagon’s budget is $700 billion). After the terrorist at-
tacks of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld instructed his
staff to “elevate the threat” posed by terrorists in their public state-
ments so that Americans would “realize” the prevalence and danger
of armed insurgents.
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Shawn Clover | Flickr
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AMERICA: HOME OF THE SERVILE?
Whether or not the narrative has made Americans more fearful and
suspicious now than during the 1950s is up for debate. Earl Gladue
provided a conflicting account, describing the accustomed noncha-
lance some felt with one breath while referencing his neighbor’s bomb
shelter with the next.
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Roger Williams University Jer-
emy Campbell believes the visibility of the Nike program could have
reassured some, while spiking fear in others.
“People may have derived a sense of safety from the visibility of the
Nike program. There was a PR upshot to the bases: the government
could say, ‘See? We’re protecting you,’” he said. “Conversely, it may
have increased paranoia in those who lived near the bases, as it pro-
vided a reminder of the danger.” For his sake, Earl Gladue thinks the
country is better off now than it was half a century ago.
“I like the fact that you can get on the phone and call Russia,” he said.
From Gladue’s perspective, the existential threat posed by the Soviet
Union disappeared when the former USSR began to liberalize its econ-
omy and has not been replaced by any modern threat. The more stake-
holders in the global economy, he believes, the less incentive there is
to destroy one another. As for the current situation, Gladue says: “As
tense as things can be with terrorists, my own sense is that people
were much more worried then than now, because there was a real fear
that the whole country could have gone up in flames.”
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Peace on Earth—which man throughout the ages has
so longed for and sought after—can never be estab-
lished, never guaranteed, except by the diligent obser-
vance of the divinely established order.
THEOLOGY
—Pope John XXIII
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‘HOW WOULD JESUS TREAT JESSICA:’ ONE GIRL’SFIGHT AGAINST CHRISTIAN AMERICA
Small signs dot the lawns of Cranston homes, beginning with, “Our
Heavenly Father, grant us each day the desire to do our best….”
They’re the same words that hung in the auditorium of Cranston
High School West just years before. Now, on her way home from theUniversity of Vermont, 20-year-old Jessica Ahlquist notices the
prayer and is reminded of the year-long, grueling lawsuit she fought
with her high school when she was only 16.
“Maybe if I hadn’t had this experience, I would’ve liked to live here,
but having everything happen to me, it ruined the area,” Ahlquist
said.
Towards the end of her freshman year of high school, the Cranston
native first noticed the large banner hanging in the school’s audito-
rium that hosted the “School Prayer.” Having been raised Catholic,
Ahlquist never identified with organized religion and was a self-proclaimed atheist from a young age.
“I was just kind of startled by it. I mean it was titled ‘School Prayer,’ it
started with Our Father and ended with Amen, so I wasn’t com-
pletely unaware that it was illegal, even before the lawsuit. I was con-
fused because at that point, I didn’t think my school would be bla-
tantly breaking the law,” Ahlquist said. “I spent the summer doing re-
search on it. It was something I thought about pretty regularly, be-
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By Sabrina Caserta
I i t t d I t d t f l lik I b l d i
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cause I was interested. I wanted to feel like I belonged in my
school.”
The summer of 2010, when 15-year-old Ahlquist was entering her
sophomore year, she read in the newspaper that another mother
had commented on the presence of a Christian prayer banner.
The mother, who was Jewish, had garnered support from the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Rhode Island whocalled for the prayer’s removal.
“I think Rhode Island, in some respects, has shown a very
healthy respect for the separation of Church and state,” said Ste-
phen Brown of the Rhode Island ACLU. “Once in awhile, it falters.
The Ahlquist case is a good example of that.”
Cranston High School West’s School Committee, in response to
the ACLU’s letter, formed a subcommittee which would meet todiscuss the prayer’s place in the school.
“That was a problem with the prayer, it’s a public school. Not eve-
ryone there is Catholic, not everyone there refers to a ‘god,’”
Ahlquist said. “Anyone who has ever taken an American history
class knows that the people who settled this country were escap-
ing religious persecution, especially Rhode Island. And I think
people don’t value, because they don’t understand why it’s so sig-
nificant, the consequences of not having this clear separation.You don’t want this government endorsement of something that’s
supposed to be a personal belief and a personal decision, so I
think that for a lot of people, as long as the government is endors-
ing their religion, they don’t realize the danger of it. The point is to
protect people.”
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Since the emergence of the United States the First Amendment of religion played a very vital role in the founding of this country ” said
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Since the emergence of the United States, the First Amendment of
the Constitution birthed a firewall between church and state in at-
tempts to safeguard both the nation and religious entities from the
corruption, overreach, and bloodshed which plagued Medieval
Europe.
“We’ve seen various instances across two hundred years of Constitu-
tional History where there has been interference between, or interac-
tion between the government and the Church,” said June Speak-
man, a political science professor at Roger Williams University.
The overlap brokered between church and state has been show-
cased in our nation’s politics and public affairs. The words, “In GodWe Trust,” are printed on our dollar bills, the United States Congress
begins their sessions with a morning prayer and national politicians
regularly invoke religion—inviting God to bless America, while ask-
ing citizens to pray for victims of tragedy and disaster.
“I think if you look in the history of America, you see in the very be-
ginnings of our country- this land of the free, home of the brave- that
religion played a very vital role in the founding of this country, said
Father Henry Zinno, a pastor the Mount Carmel Church in Bristol,
R.I. “The ministers, who were the preachers at the time had a great
deal of influence on the founding fathers of this country. And Church
services were integrated into the very fabric of this nation.”
Today, the United States remains home to more Christians than any
other country in the world, and a vast amount of Americans –roughly seven in ten – continue to identify with some branch of Chris-
tianity.
Sixty-five percent of Americans claim religion is an essential compo-
nent of their day-to-day lives, as compared 33 percent of Polish, 25
percent of Germans and 24 percent of Japanese, according to Gal-
lup. This makes the U.S. one of the highest developed nations with
an emphasis on organized religion.
Rhode Island is the most Catholic state in America, with roughly 44
percent of the state identifying as Roman Catholic, according to a
study done in 2014 by the Public Religion Research Institute. The
second-biggest religious tradition in Rhode Island, however, is no re-
ligion. 21 percent of Rhode Islanders surveyed described them-
selves as atheist or religiously unaffiliated.
Ahlquist, who was publicly religiously unaffiliated, was pleased that
the issue of the prayer had been brought to the school’s attentionand decided to attend the meeting, which at that time, only drew in
roughly 20 other people. Ahlquist, not planning on participating or
commenting, believed the meeting would be an open and shut case
where the ‘school prayer’ would be promptly removed. Instead,
when she arrived, she was greeted by a sea of people strongly push-
28
ing for the prayer’s preservation with many saying ‘God will be mad wrong it’s not constitutional it’s not ethical I really thought it was ri-
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ing for the prayer s preservation, with many saying, God will be mad
if we take it down.’
“For me, it was really shocking. I just didn’t expect adults, these
grown-ups, to completely miss the point of a legal issue. I really tried
to redirect the conversation to the legality of it, not that I didn’t be-
lieve in God, because that really became the
focus for a lot of people,” Ahlquist said. “It be-came this non religious community versus re-
ligious community thing. If there was one
thing that was disappointing about the whole
thing, it was that. Even though I was nonrelig-
ious, I was trying to represent people of other
faiths too. I was trying to say that this isn’t fair
to anybody.”
Ahlquist was equally surprised at how cava-
lierly the school committee, as well as the
elected officials of the city of Cranston dis-
cussed the involvement of their own religious preferences in support-
ing the school prayer.
“It’s their job to make the community the best they can. It should be
common knowledge that when in a government, political setting,
we’re not talking about our personal opinions. We’re not talking
about our personal beliefs, we’re talking about politics and law and
these officials were saying, ‘I can’t leave my religion at the door. My
religion is a part of who I am, my religion is a part of this community
and my vote. Yes, I am going to vote based on my own religious pref-
erences.’ And they were proud of it, the community liked that. I
mean they got re-elected,” Ahlquist said. “This was obviously some-
thing that was a political move but it’s an illegal political move, it’s
wrong, it s not constitutional, it s not ethical. I really thought it was ri-
diculously immature and inappropriate for elected officials to be say-
ing, ‘No, I’m not going to leave my religion at the door. I’m going to
involve religion in my voting.’”
Political scientists have been citing religion, as well as gender, fam-
ily and socio-economic status as major fac-
tors that influence politicians legislating, aswell as voting patterns amongst Americans.
“Politicians seem less reserved—certain politi-
cians—Ted Cruz comes to mind, in express-
ing their religious views. But I would say we’ve
become more secular, not more religious as
we move into the 21st century,” Speakman
said, “Religious influences public affairs
mostly indirectly through the role it plays in citi-
zen’s lives. Public opinion, of course, leads
voters to support candidates with certain relig-
ious beliefs. I do think since the 1980s you’ve seen more pastors get-
ting involved in politics and being free to express their political opin-
ions to their flock.”
According to 2014 midterm election analysis by Pew Research, the
frequency of religious service attendance is a strong indication of
how people will vote in elections. The 2014 exit poll data revealed
that regular Churchgoers were more likely to vote for a Republican
candidate over a Democrat by a 58 percent to 40 percent margin.
Further research showed that avid Christians are less likely to sup-
port gay marriage, with only 24 percent of white evangelical Protes-
tants, being the least. Similarly, roughly 53 percent of devout Chris-
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tians who regularly attend services believe
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tians who regularly attend services believe
abortion ought to be illegal in all or most
cases.
“As priests, or pastors or ministers or rab-
bis, we speak to issues of the day. Where
the nation had evolved from this very in-
volved experience with the Church andState to now more of a separation, but a
willingness to listen and be guided by the
truths of the Gospel, the truth of the pres-
ence of God and see how that affects our
lives and then to inspire legislation and
leadership that can lead our country in free-
dom and democracy and justice,” Father
Zinno said. “The Church wants to help theState or the community to be a better place
to live. A place of moral principle and virtu-
ous habits and that’s how the Church is
able to to do that, through its preaching
and teaching and sanctifying.”
Christians continue to make up the majority
of the United States Congress. As of 2014,
92 percent of Congress claimed to be prac-ticing the faith, with 71 percent of the coun-
try also Christian. While nearly 23 percent
of all Americans identified as religiously un-
affiliated, there is is one member- or point
two percent- of the body that claims no re-
ligious affiliation.
30
“It’s very important that people feel that their government represents all things that happened in the 1950s, and it was a direct result of
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It s very important that people feel that their government represents
them regardless of what their religious beliefs are. If you have a gov-
ernment that’s neutral on religion, that isn’t trying to promote a relig-
ion, then you won’t see these kinds of nasty types of disputes take
place,” said Stephen Brown of the Rhode Island ACLU, one of the
lawyers in charge of Ahlquist’s case. “I was certainly really proud to
see how Jessica handled this, I don’t think a lot of adults could’ve
handled it the way she did, but it is a very good example of why it’s
so important, why this principle is so important, so people who see
their government representing them, do in fact, get represented by
them.”
After witnessing the vast support for the prayer, Ahlquist began to
comment during the public sessions and pursue the issue further.
She spent the majority of her sophomore year attending meetings-
which grew larger and larger each time, as more people in the com-munity began defending the prayer.
“A lot of the things people tried to say in response to what I was do-
ing was, ‘Well, of course there can be religion in the government be-
cause, look, it’s in the Pledge of Allegiance and it’s on the money,
and it’s the national
motto.’ And I’m like,
these things weren’t
there until 40, 50years ago,” Ahlquist
said. “That’s also
when the prayer at
the school went up.
What a coinci-
dence. These are
all things that happened in the 1950s, and it was a direct result of
communism. I think it has had a cultural impact. Our generation, the
whole time we’ve been alive in this country, that’s how it’s been the
way it is, so a lot of people don’t question that. They just think that’s
the way I’ve always been.”
Post-war America brought droves of people to churches in record
numbers, skyrocketing the numbers of traditional denominations,Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Lutherans and
Presbyterians. The growth of Churches swelled and the Bible be-
came the number one sold book in the United States.
This is attributed to the looming Cold War threat—pitting Christian
America against the Soviet Union’s “godless communism.” The
American perception of the Soviet Union in the 1950s found a base
in atheism, totalitarianism, and communism. Communist thinkers
from Marx to Lenin to Trotsky to Stalin advocated an abandonment
of a religion, stating they felt it to be superstitious and unproductive.
Throughout the post-war years of the Second Red Scare, “godless
communism,” along with similar variations, became a cautionary tale
to any religiously reluctant American. As the communist threat to the
American way of life grew, so did the idea that Christianity was inex-
tricably linked with the country’s self-image.
It was during these years that our national motto was established,though the phrase "In God We Trust" had appeared earlier in the na-
tion's history, including on coins minted in the 19th century, the
phrase officially becomes the national motto during the Cold War.
The Pledge of Allegiance also included “Under God,” and public
schools across the nation began embracing school prayers, Cran-
ston High School West being one of them.
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The amount of support in favor of the prayer put pressure on the city
of Cranston, as well as the school committee, to leave it up. The
ACLU, noticing the commotion, offered to represent Ahlquist in
court, if she decided to pursue it further.
“At this point, I was really hopeful that I could convince them to take
it down. I did public comment for like five meetings, I was really do-
ing everything I could to prevent it from going to court,” Ahlquist
said. “I should’ve been a little more scared. I didn’t know what I was
getting into.”
After the school committee voted to keep the prayer up, Ahlquist,
with the help of her father, decided to file a lawsuit in early 2011
against the town of Cranston and Cranston High School West calling
the legality of a School Prayer in a public high-school into question.
Though Ahlquist was hesitant to jump into a legal battle, she felt itnecessary.
“I was a really shy, quiet kid, I didn’t want this attention but it was
something I felt so passionate about, I felt I couldn’t accept this de-
feat because I believe in this now, I know this is wrong,” Ahlquist
said.
32
After a year-long court case, the judge ruled in favor of Ahlquist in from the school, how about that?,’ ‘Hmm Jess is in my bio class,
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g g
April of 2012, her junior year of high-school, and called for the re-
moval of the prayer. Cranston High School West covered the prayer
in tarp for the time being and decided against appealing the deci-
sion. Though the legal battle was over, Ahlquist’s problems seemed
to only have begun.
“I guess I should have known that win-ning wouldn’t be the end, that’s actu-
ally when things started to get worse,”
Ahlquist said.
People began threatening Ahlquist’s
life, both online and in hand-written let-
ters. She would often receive notes
stating, ‘I know where you live and I
know the license plates of your family’s
cars.’ Ahlquist, who has three younger
siblings, began to worry for her fam-
ily’s safety as well as her own. After be-
ing followed home on the bus one day,
the threats became so severe and so
chronic that the city had enlisted po-
lice officers to escort Ahlquist to and from each of her classes. They
also had constant police patrol around their block every hour to en-sure that her and her family were kept safe.
Some of the insults directed towards Ahlquist on Twitter or Facebook
read, ‘Hail Mary, Full of Grace @JessicaAhlquist is gonna get
punched in the face,’ ‘We can make so many jokes about this dumb
bitch, but who cares #thatbitchisgointohell and Satan is gonna to
rape her,’ ‘Yeah, well I want the immediate removal of all atheists
she’s gonna get some shit thrown at her,’ and ‘Nail her to a cross.’
According to research by DoSomething.org, 81 percent of young
people think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying
in person, while well over 90 percent of youths have witnessed cy-
berbullying, and ignored it.
“There was a ton of cyberbullying.
That’s what people did to stay anony-
mous. A lot of people didn’t even
bother to stay anonymous. A lot of peo-
ple in the community, definitely my
peers in school were attacking me, vi-
ciously on social media,” Ahlquist
said. “I was really startled by how
many adults were coming out of the
wood-work and saying really, really hor-
rendous things, threatening my family.
Just some of the insults you would
hear were unnerving. It’s unacceptable
and completely ridiculous that on one
note, people are saying that I’m evil
and immoral while also threatening me. I mean, the irony there is pre-
cious.”
Radicalized Christianity in America has spilled into the public
sphere, instances range from the Colorado Springs Planned Parent-
hood shooting in November of 2015, to the Kentucky county-clerk,
Kim Davis, refusing a same-sex marriage license to a couple. Her
singular claim being that she was acting “under God’s authority.”
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With the notion that the United States is still a ‘Christian-nation’, the
German non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung looked at Americans re-
sponse to non-religious or atheists. Their 2013 survey found 50 per-
cent of Americans still consider atheism to be threatening.
In 2012, the Pew Research Center found that the number of millenni-als reporting doubts about the existence of God has doubled in five
years—being roughly 31 percent at the time the survey was pub-
lished.
This means more people in the United States now identify as nonre-
ligious than any time in the past 30 years, and those numbers are
steadily increasing, especially amongst the youth.
Ahlquist’s story in Rhode Island is echoed by other cases like that of
Damon Fowler in Louisiana, who got his school to cancel their plans
for a prayer at his graduation ceremony, only to be kicked out of his
house by his parents- and Gage Pulliam of Oklahoma, who was
greeted with threats, bullying and exclusion when he anonymously
sent a picture of the 10 Commandments hanging in his public high-school’s biology classroom to the Freedom From Religion Founda-
tion. After being found out, he feared for his safety, as well as his
family’s due to the high-level of hate he received.
For Ahlquist, the insults weren't confined to the Internet, or school
walls- from students yelling insults across the halls while wearing a
T-shirt with the prayer printed on it, to teachers telling her that she
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Ed Uthman | Flickr
asked for it- but, elected officials commenting on public radio or in Meet people who believed that I did the right thing. That was really
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front of large crowds.
Ahlquist was forced to sit through a question and answer session
during the high-school’s “Diversity Week,” featuring the Mayor of
Cranston, Allan Fung, who, when asked about the prayer, said that
he saw no problem with it, that he didn’t understand why I wanted it
taken down, and should be kept up, Ahlquist recounted. She wasthen greeted by a room chock-full of cheering students and teach-
ers.
Her state representative, Peter Palumbo, publicly called Ahlquist “an
evil little thing,” and referred to her as a “pawn-star,” insinuating she
was nothing more than a pawn for the ACLU and the atheist agenda.
“I was 16 at the time, so this was adults, my representative, attack-
ing a 16 year old high school girl. I definitely saw the worst from hu-manity,” Ahlquist said. “At this point it wasn’t just about the legality or
the religion anymore, it was about, is it right to attack a 16 year old
girl?”
Her supporters began printing their own T-shirts, saying “Evil Little
Thing,” to turn Palumbo’s comments into a joke. They also carried
signs asking: “How would Jesus treat Jessica?”
“So it was a lot of anxiety, a lot of negative attention that really took
away from my education, that took away from my overall childhood.
But for me, it was something worth doing and it wasn’t just nega-
tive,” Ahlquist said. “It was also people coming out to tell me that
they supported me. Not just in the community, but on a national
level. Even on an international level. I started to get invited to speak
at different events which was a really rewarding experience for me. I
got to go all over the country and meet different types of people.
great to hear. So there were these extreme negatives as well as
these extreme positives.”
Though Ahlquist was garnering support outside of her community,
the stress of attending a school where everyone seemingly hated
her caused her to become depressed. That, combined with the
amount of speeches she was traveling for, caused her to opt out ofCranston High School West and chose to be home-schooled by her
mother instead. She spent the end of her junior year, and the remain-
der of her senior year at home, chipping away at her high-school di-
ploma. She did not attend graduation or prom in the city she had
grown up in.
‘At that point, I felt like so many people in my school wished I was
dead. I mean I didn’t want to be around that so honestly I moved on
from it and was happy that I was traveling and meeting people whoagreed with what I did. That meant more to me than prom,” Ahlquist
said.
Today, Ahlquist’s siblings attend Cranston High School West without
issue. Her siblings, all much younger when this issue came to frui-
tion, weren’t really involved. Her parents, each supportive in their
own way, were also going through a divorce during the time of the
case, which added to Ahlquist’s stress.
“There were definitely times I felt like I was really alone,” Ahlquist
said. “But, I don’t regret it at all. I'm happy I did it. I'm living with the
good and bad results of it and I think that if I hadn’t done it, that’s
what I would regret. At the end of the day, the majority doesn’t have
the right to take away my rights. Who cares about what people
think? Is the law on your side? Do you feel passionately about it?
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A PEACE OF THE SOUL
Let us be still for a moment. Let us mute the racket of our everyday
search for success and happiness and allow ourselves to be pre-
sent in this very moment. We are here. And everything worth looking
for is here too. As we breathe in and out we begin to recognize
those lovely intangibles that we go out into the world to find are in
fact right inside of us. Waiting for this moment when the noises areoff and we are nothing but present. Here.
Buddhism is the practice of finding oneself in those pockets of still-
ness, and recognizing the importance of this fleeting moment before
returning to the distractions of the external world. Through medita-
tion and intrinsic evaluation, one can reach happiness, peace, with-
36
FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
Dukkha or The truth of suffering
The Truth of the cause of suffering
The Truth of the End of suffering
Truth of the Path leading to the End of suffering
By Chelsea Boulrisse
out any needed help from those things that occupy the world out-
id f l Z i h l d i d i h b
thought the world needed to do to apparently achieve peace. Those
h b ib d h i l i f hi h i
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side of ourselves. Zen is not a path traveled in tandem, it has to be
followed as a solo journey into the recesses of ourselves that we
overlook because of its subtle and unassuming ways.
“Zen means understanding yourself,” said Zen Master Bon Haeng of
the Providence Zen Center. “With our minds we can solve the little
questions of life.”
The practices of Buddhism can be traced
back to India during what is believed to be
between 4 or 6 BCE. There is no god in
Buddhism, no higher power that tells you
what is right and wrong; the moral responsi-
bility rests squarely on the shoulders of
those who seek it. Unlike Christianity or Is-
lam, where there are set philosophies andpractices that one is required perform in or-
der to be accepted by God, Buddhism has
no dogma. Instead, there are techniques
that have been refined so that people can
come together and meditate. One of the
common misconceptions about Buddhism is that Buddha is a deity,
a god who is above all those he teaches and who follow him.
“Our practice has nothing to do with getting something new,” said
Bon Haeng. “It has to do with recognition of what we already are.”
The endless quest for peace is what keeps religions in business.
People who are lost in this world find guidance through the spiritual
teachings of others who claim to have found this elusive peace. In
Pope John’s encyclical, “Pacem in Terris”, he outlined what he
who subscribed to that particular version of peace saw this as their
call to arms to go out into the world and create peace.
The practices of Buddhism challenge the ideals of an extrinsic
peace by citing that the very peace others are searching for in our
surroundings, is in the last place any of us thinks to look -- right in-
side of us.
“Peace on Earth is already here,” said Zen
Master Bon Haeng of the Providence Zen
Center. “We get in the way of peace on
Earth and inadvertently create suffering for
each other.”
PEACE ABOVE GROUND
The only oxygen John Kohler had was
within the small triangle cavity made by his
arms in the duck and cover position. On
top of him was almost eight feet of Rock-
land Red dirt, a premature grave caused by the lack of safety struc-
tures in the ditch Kohler was working in which folded in on itself, cov-
ering him in the process. The electric jigsaw he had been using on a
plastic sewage pipe was still whirring, but the pressure of the dirt al-
lowed no movement. All he could do was wait for help that may not
come in time.
“My immediate reaction was that I was going to die, there was not a
doubt in my mind,” Kohler, a New York contractor, said. “My first
thought was that I didn’t have enough life insurance and my wife
37
who was eight months
t ith d h
were on their hands and knees digging with trowels, shovels, or their
b h d t ll K hl t th f i ti A i
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pregnant with my daugh-
ter was going to lose
the house.”
His brother, Pete, who
was working with him on
the project was aboveground, panicked and
searching for a quick
way to pull his brother
out. His first response
was to grab the site’s
backhoe and just dig. While the effort was there, beneath the dirt
Kohler was in a state of sheer terror because now suffocation was
not his only risk. The backhoe claw was ripping through the dirt to
either side of him and was getting closer and closer to hooking him
and dismembering him in one well-meaning scoop.
“All I pictured was the four prongs on the bucket going into my back
and tearing me in half,” Kohler said.
Soon after, due to the stress and lack of breathable air, Kohler
slipped into unconsciousness. He said that at that moment he was
preparing to die. This was the end.
“I don’t know where I went but I was on the other side somewhere
because there was this extremely bright light down there,” Kohler
said. “And it was like looking into the sun and my son’s face is down
there with me.”
Above ground, Pete had abandoned the risky backhoe rescue and
had recruited passersby to help with the rescue of his brother. Men
bare hands to pull Kohler up to the surface in time. A