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>From the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms ARMAGEDDON AND INDIAN POINT More than 60 people came out on Thursday night to participate in a conversation on nuclear power and nuclear warfare with Helen Caldicott and Jonathan Schell, which was moderated by Bill Hartung. Jonathan Schell, author of Unconquerable World, The Fate of the Earth and many other books, began by describing nuclear weapons as geriatric. "We are in the seventh decade of the nuclear age," he said, and then offered a brief but compelling thumbnail sketch of where we stand in the nuclear story. Schell, who is The Nation's peace and disarmament correspondent, noted that there has been a "genuine revolution" in U.S. nuclear history, continuing to say that even those of us who oppose it are not quite caught up with how fast events are unfolding. U.S. nuclear polices were dragged into the vortex of the so-called "war on terror" and the post-9/11 period has seen the completion of this nuclear revolution, which has two parts- once which is public and visible and another which is covert and hidden. On the public side there are all sorts of new and explicit ideas-regime change and preventative war are now seen as "tools in the foreign policy toolbox." And then, by defining Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil," the Bush administration drew nuclear policies further into the war on terror, asserting U.S. intention to use nuclear weapons even against those countries which do not possess or plan on using nuclear weapons. Thus, Schell observes, the United States seeks a monopoly on the use of force,. But rather than deter other countries from seeking nuclear weapons, Schell sees a revolution in proliferation. North Korea has nuclear weapons. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Iran is a work in progress. The war in Iraq has obscured the shifts in nuclear policy and allowed nuclear proliferation to take hold. Turning to the invisible part of this nuclear revolution, Schell described the Bush administration's quest for nuclear supremacy. He discussed "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," the recent Foreign Affairs article which begins: "For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun." The article, by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press was published in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs and is available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html Frida Berrigan discussed "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" on CBC Radio on April 28th, and the segment can be heard online here http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2006/200604/20060428.html Much of the analysis Schell shared at the New School lecture can be found in his article "A Revolution in American Nuclear Policy," http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2837 Helen Caldicott, founder and director of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, began her remarks by observing that despite the fact that we are at the most dangerous point in history there is no moral outrage. To murmurs of assent from the audience, Caldicott went on to say that there is no strategy, no leadership and no guts on the nuclear issue- in congress or anywhere else. As people agreed with that, she went on to say that she would "be an Australian tonight," implying we were in for a brash, no-pulled-punches talk* and we were. Repeatedly, Caldicott used medical metaphors from her training as a physician to describe the planet as "in intensive care," or having an "acute clinical syndrome." Beyond the call to urgent action on behalf of humanity and the planet, the most substantive part of Caldicott's presentation was an effective undercutting of the environmental and geopolitical arguments for nuclear power. She observed that electricity is a "transient byproduct" of nuclear power generation, with the real product being the nuclear waste which we will be saddled with for millennia. Through basic conservation, she went on, Americans can cut their electricity consumption by 20%-- about the same amount of electricity generated by the country's nuclear power plants, rendering the dirty and expensive facilities unnecessary and obsolete. And finally, she painted dire scenes of relatively simple terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants that have dangerous and debilitating impacts on a large segment of the population. Dr. Caldicott's New Nuclear Dangers has recently been released in paperback, and is available (along with lots of other resources) on her website, The Nuclear Policy Research Institute http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm IN OTHER NUCLEAR NEWS Indian Nuclear Weapons Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, appeared before Congress in April to discuss the administration's plan for nuclear cooperation with India and draw attention to the plan's implications for U.S. national security. Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Milhollin asked: "Why, after 9/11, when we should be doing all we can to fight terrorism, and when we talk almost every day about states or terrorists getting their hands on an atomic bomb, should we weaken the controls on the export of nuclear material? Is this the right time to do that? And if we do it, will it make us safer?" Read his complete testimony, which answers all these (and more) questions, http://www.iranwatch.org/Gary/sfrc-milhollin-042606.htm The Stimson Center also provides a useful analysis of the U.S.-Indian Nuclear deal, called "A Guide to the Perplexed," http://www.stimson.org/pub.cfm?id=286 The Arms Trade Resource Center was established in 1993 to engage in public education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the international arms trade. _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. 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