Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Op-Ed”
Negotiations begin Monday at the United Nations in New York on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading toward their total elimination.” These talks flow from resolutions adopted late last year by the General Assembly in landslide votes. These negotiations could be the most significant multilateral development on nuclear-arms control since the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty …
Tick, tock: the Doomsday clock measured by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved 30 seconds closer to midnight (meaning: global catastrophe) — from three minutes to two minutes, 30 seconds. Not since the 1950s has midnight been so close. Why the move? Scientists point to the growing threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, including a potentially lethal Trump-nukes-Twitter …
Two prime ministers and four ministers of foreign affairs later, Canada is still set to ship $15-billion of military equipment to human-rights pariah Saudi Arabia. This in spite of well-documented red flags and numerous unanswered questions about the process by which the deal cleared Canada’s military export controls. And notwithstanding yesterday’s Federal Court rejection of a bid to stop the …
January 18, 2016 January 4 The Globe and Mail: Ottawa going ahead with Saudi arms deal despite condemning executions (quotes Cesar) By Steven Chase January 5 The Globe and Mail: Critics push Ottawa to explain justification for Saudi arms deal (quotes Ken) By Steven Chase Common Dreams.org (progressive news hub): Canada Condemns Saudi Executions, But Arms Sales Speak Louder Than Words (quotes “Ploughshares”) …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published June 3, 2015 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Perhaps Bob Marley sang it best: “[Y]ou can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” And so, in the eyes of a growing number of nations and civil society organizations around the world, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—as currently …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published May 27, 2015 in The Globe and Mail By any modern standard, Saudi Arabia is a human-rights pariah. Yet the Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Crown corporation, has brokered a deal to supply $15-billion worth of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to the autocratic kingdom over the next decade, in what is by far the largest military export contract …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published April 29, 2015 in the Waterloo Region Record The uneven application of Canada’s nuclear non-proliferation standards is becoming increasingly apparent. For a country that has so vehemently decried the mere possibility that Iran might one day produce even a single nuclear weapon, Canada seems remarkably eager to supply uranium to India, a rogue nuclear weapons state …
AuthorCesar JaramilloPublished May 6, 2015 by Embassy, an Ottawa-based foreign policy weekly. On April 20-21, the Austrian government hosted a preparatory meeting toward the First Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, which is to be held in Mexico next August. Delegations from dozens of countries, multilateral organizations and civil society gathered at the historic Hofburg Palace in Vienna …
Authors Cesar Jaramillo and Setsuko Thurlow Published by Embassy, an Ottawa-based foreign policy weekly. As the prospect for a comprehensive legal ban on nuclear weapons seems to be moving from aspiration to reality, a window of opportunity is open for Canada—hitherto a spoiler rather than a constructive participant in this process—to signal a new direction in its nuclear disarmament policy. From April …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published by Embassy, an Ottawa-based foreign policy weekly. When the dust has settled, the fact will remain that the interim agreement reached on Nov. 24 in Geneva concerning Iran’s nuclear program was the best deal the international community could get. As uncertain as its success may be, the reality is that no better alternative was attainable. The negotiations …
