'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
A new report has found nuclear-armed states spent a record $73 billion on nuclear weapons in 2019, a $7.1 billion increase from 2018 expenditures. The United States, the center of the global coronavirus pandemic, accounted for nearly half of that spending.
As the economies of the US, China, France, and Russia all contract, their nuclear spending is expanding. Supplemental ICAN research shows yearly expenditure on nuclear weapons in the US alone could pay for 300,000 ICU beds; 150,000 nurses; 75,000 doctors; and 35,000 ventilators to address the COVID19 pandemic.
(United Nations)* — Achieving global nuclear disarmament is one of the oldest goals of the United Nations. It was the subject of the General Assembly’s first resolution in 1946, which established the Atomic Energy Commission (dissolved in 1952), with a mandate to make specific proposals for the control of nuclear energy and the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.
(UN News)* — On the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons marked on Saturday [26 September 2020], the UN chief has underscored the need to “reverse course and return to a common path to nuclear disarmament”.
