PRESS RELEASE
European Warnings on the Brink of Nuclear War
Aug. 4, 2015 (EIRNS)—"It Is 5 Minutes to 12— We’re on the Brink of Nuclear War, and You Don’t See It Coming," is the headline of a commentary on the Netzfrauen website (netzfrauen.org), based in Austria, which quotes Ian Kearns, director of the European Leadership Network, as warning: "We’re living in as dangerous a situation as has not been seen in the past 20 years. Maybe, we should go back even further, to the time of the Cold War." Kearns’s Network is an association of former heads of state and of high-level security experts, including former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt—as Netzfrauen notes.
The commentary voices deep concern over the escalation of tensions between U.S.-NATO and Russia, also quoting Mikhail Gorbachov as saying:
"We will not survive the coming year if, in this over-heated situation, someone should lose his nerve. I am not just blathering, I am really worried."
The Berlin-based leftist online magazine Telepolis carries a commentary on the Aug. 6 and 9 anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by old peacenik Franz Alt, who warns that the situation in and around Ukraine in particular, can escalate into a war with nuclear weapons. The German branch of the Catholic Pax Christi and the Peace Desk of the Lutheran Churches in Germany (EKD) have issued declarations denouncing the possession and modernization of nuclear weapons, including their role in defense planning, as always keeping the world on the brink of nuclear war and extinction.
The World Council of Churches in Geneva has deployed a delegation of bishops from various denominations to Japan, to take part in the respective commemorative events there, and the German delegate, EKD President Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, announced that they intend to lobby, immediately after their return from Japan, with not only the governments of the nuclear powers but also with governments of non-nuclear powers such as Germany that rely on the nuclear weapons of other NATO states for their defense, to exit from the nuclear weapons option.
