Articles by Jonathan Schell
We found 7 results.
The Path to a New 1914? How America Chose War after 9/11
Jonathan Schell - TomDispatch,
28 Jul 2014
Then came the attack of September 11 [2001]. Like the starting gun of a race that no one knew he was to run, this explosion set the pack of nations off in a single direction — toward the trenches.
→ read full articleAttacking Libya — And the Dictionary
Jonathan Schell – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2011
If Americans Don’t Get Hurt, War Is No Longer War – For the Obama administration to go ahead with a war lacking any form of Congressional authorization, it had to challenge either law or the common meaning of words. Either the law or language had to give. It chose language.
→ read full articleFrom Hiroshima to Fukushima
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
21 Mar 2011
Some have suggested that in light of the new developments we should abandon nuclear power. I have a different proposal, perhaps more in keeping with the peculiar nature of the peril. Let us pause and study the matter. For how long? Plutonium, a component of nuclear waste, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that half of it is transformed into other elements through radioactive decay. This suggests a time-scale. We will not be precipitous if we study the matter for only half of that half-life, 12,000 years. In the interval, we can make a search for safe new energy sources, among other useful endeavors. Then perhaps we’ll be wise enough to make good use of the split atom.
→ read full articleThe Revolutionary Moment
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
7 Feb 2011
If the world has a heart, it beats now for Egypt. Not of course, the Egypt of President Hosni Mubarak—of the rigged elections, the censored press, the axed Internet, the black-clad security police and the tanks and the torture chambers—but the Egypt of the intrepid ordinary citizens who, almost entirely unarmed, with little more than their physical presence in the streets and their prayers, are defying this whole apparatus of intimidation and violence in the name of justice and freedom. Their courage and sacrifice give new life to the spirit of the nonviolent, democratic resistance to dictatorship symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
→ read full articleWhat We Learned From WikiLeaks
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
15 Nov 2010
Perhaps here in the United States, when the country has found its moral bearings again, there will be recognition of the integrity and bravery of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. For now, the war- and torture-system rolls on, and it’s all found to be “nothing new.”
→ read full articleREACHING ZERO
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
12 Apr 2010
What is the purpose, if any, of the nuclear bomb, that brooding presence that has shadowed all human life for sixty-five years? The question has haunted the nuclear age. It may be that no satisfactory answer has ever been given. Nuclear strategic thinking, in particular, has disappointed. Many of its pioneers have wound up in a state of something like despair regarding their art.
→ read full articleOBAMA’S NUCLEAR CHALLENGE
Jonathan Schell,
18 Apr 2009
"So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," President Obama said at the open-air rally in Prague on April 5. With these words came a change in the global air, as if a window had been opened a crack in a […]
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