A Read Vital to the Survival of Our World

Daniel Ellsberg, who ought to be a hero to all Americans for his role in exposing the lies that led to the catastrophe of the Vietnam War, presents his insider's knowledge of an infinitely greater catastrophe that has been waiting to happen for the better part of a century: global nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia--in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

Ellsberg rightly calls the nuclear arsenals possessed by our two countries a dual Doomsday Machine that would lead to the extinction of all or nearly all human and animal life on Earth if ever put into operation--and he points out that the U.S. has used nuclear blackmail dozens of times since the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Don't imagine, either, that the danger has gone away in the twenty-five years since the Cold War ended.

I will never forget how almost thirty years ago my late grandfather, a World War II veteran, told me the civil disobedience of the Berrigan brothers against America's nuclear arsenal was justified. We the people must put an end to this madness, before it puts an end to us.

5 "Phoboses"