Tag: DDT

Peace & Justice History for 1/7

January 7, 1953
 
President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen (fusion) bomb.
January 7, 1971
The U.S. District Court of Appeals ordered William Ruckelshaus, the Environmental Protection Agency’s first administrator, to begin the de-registration procedure for DDT so that it could no longer be used.

DDT being sprayed next to livestock
It was a widely used pesticide in agriculture (principally cotton).
This happened nine years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, a book which cautioned about the dangers of excessive use of pesticides and other industrial chemicals to plants and animals, and humans.
 
Rachel Carson
Read more about Rachel Carson
January 7, 1979
Vietnamese troops seized the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communist party. Pol Pot and his allies had been directly responsible for the death of 25% of Cambodia’s population.
When he seized power in 1975, capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.
All foreigners were thus expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign economic or medical assistance was refused. The use of foreign languages was banned. Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.All of Cambodia’s cities were then forcibly evacuated. At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way.

Pol Pot’s legacy: Skulls of the killing fields

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january7

Peace & Justice History for 9/27:

September 27, 1962
Rachel Carson’s book indicting the pesticide industry, Silent Spring, was published.

The scientist (17 years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and writer demonstrated the connection between the excessive and ubiquitous use of DDT and its long-term effect on plants and animals.

Rachel Carson at work c. 1936
The impact of her book proved seminal to a new ecological awareness. But even 30 years later, Carson was denounced for “preservationist hysteria” and “bad science.” But she had said when the book was published: “We do not ask that all chemicals be abandoned. We ask moderation. We ask the use of other methods less harmful to our environment.“ Rachel Carson, her Silent Spring and its impact
 September 27, 1967
An advertisement headed “A Call To Resist Illegitimate Authority,” signed by over 320 influential people (professors, writers, ministers, and other professional people), appeared in the New Republic and the New York Review of Books, asking for funds to help youths resist the draft.
September 27, 1990
The last U.S. Pershing II tactical nuclear missiles were removed from Germany, fewer than ten years after their installation provoked a massive anti-nuclear movement across Europe.The range and accuracy of the Pershing II pushed the Soviet Union to negotiate the Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) which completely eliminated all nuclear-armed ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (about 300 to 3400 miles) and their infrastructure.
The INF Treaty was the first nuclear arms control agreement to actually reduce nuclear arms, and the signatories destroyed almost 2700 nuclear weapons (including 234 Pershing II) by May of 1991.
September 27, 1991
President George H.W. Bush announced a major unilateral withdrawal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons:
“I am . . . directing that the United States eliminate its entire worldwide inventory of ground-launched short-range, that is, theater, nuclear weapons. We will bring home and destroy all of our nuclear artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads. We will, of course, insure that we preserve an effective air-delivered nuclear capability in Europe.
“In turn, I have asked the Soviets . . . to destroy their entire inventory of ground-launched theater nuclear weapons . . . .
“Recognizing further the major changes in the international military landscape, the United States will withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from its surface ships, attack submarines, as well as those nuclear weapons associated with our land-based naval aircraft. This means removing all nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. ships and submarines, as well as nuclear bombs aboard aircraft carriers.”

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september27