tagged w/ annihilation
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CNN...
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A nuclear clash could starve the world
By Jayantha Dhanapala and Ira Helfand, Special to CNN
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updated 7:57 AM EDT, Fri May 11, 2012
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Sunao Tsuboi, who suffered horrific burns in Hiroshima, holds a photo of himself and friends taken hours after the explosion.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Writers: India, Pakistan and North Korea missile tests bring up dangers of nuclear war
Study shows war using half of 1% of global nuke arsenals would set off world famine
U.S. and Russia have huge nuclear arsenals, they say, a lethal holdover from Cold War
It's urgent for talks about reducing arsenals, they write, with a ban on weapons the goal
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Editor's note: Jayantha Dhanapala is a former ambassador to the United States from Sri Lanka, U.N. under-secretary general for disarmament and chairman of the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference. Ira Helfand is the past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and current North American vice president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
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(CNN) -- Recent ballistic missile tests by India, Pakistan and North Korea -- which has ominously threatened to "reduce to ashes" the South Korean military "in minutes" -- are once again focusing the world's attention on the dangers of nuclear war.
This concern was dramatically underscored in a new report released at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Chicago. Titled "Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk" (PDF), the study shows that even a limited nuclear war, involving less than half of 1% of the world's nuclear arsenals, would cause climate disruption that could set off a global famine.
The study, prepared by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, used a scenario of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs exploded in a war between India and Pakistan. If there were such a war, the study estimated that 1 billion people, one-sixth of the human race, could starve over the following decade.
Along with recent events, these findings require a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons.
The study, in positing a war between India and Pakistan, shows the importance of understanding that smaller nuclear powers, not just the United States and Russia, pose a threat to the whole world.
But the greater lesson concerns the forces of the larger nuclear powers. Each U.S. Trident submarine can destroy 100 cities and produce the global famine described in the study. The United States has 14 of them, a fleet of land-based nuclear missiles, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons that can be delivered by bombers. The Russians possess the same grotesque overkill capacity.
Even the most ambitious arms reductions under discussion would leave the United States and Russia with 300 warheads each, most of them 10 to 30 times larger than a Hiroshima sized bomb. This would be a massive arsenal capable of producing the global famine scenario many, many times over.
These arsenals are an archaic, but lethal, holdover from the Cold War. Their continued existence poses an ongoing threat to all humanity.
Steps can and should be taken immediately to lessen this danger. Substantial numbers of these weapons remain on what The New York Times has described as "hair-trigger alert." They can be fired in 15 minutes or less and destroy cities a continent away 30 minutes later. This alert posture creates the needless danger of an accidental or unintended launch, and the United States and Russia have had many close calls, preparing to launch a nuclear strike at the other under the mistaken belief they were under attack.
The most recent of these near-misses that we know about took place in January 1995, well after the end of the Cold War. The United States and Russia should stand down their nuclear arsenals so that it takes longer to launch their missiles, lessening the danger of an accidental war. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladamir Putin can take this step on their own without negotiating a formal treaty.
Beyond this, it is time to begin urgent talks aimed at reducing the U.S. and Russian arsenals as the next essential step toward multilateral negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a binding, verifiable, enforceable treaty that eliminates nuclear weapons altogether.
As former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev observed on reviewing the new "Nuclear Famine" study: "I am convinced that nuclear weapons must be abolished. Their use in a military conflict is unthinkable; using them to achieve political objectives is immoral.
"Over 25 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I ended our summit meeting in Geneva with a joint statement that 'Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,' and this new study underscores in stunning and disturbing detail why this is the case."
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers.
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A nuclear clash could starve the world
By Jayantha Dhanapala and Ira... more
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Philosopher Neil Evernden wrote that vivisectionists cut animal vocal cords so they did not have to hear the tortured animal cry as they conducted experiments.
Vivisectionists silenced the animal and therefore did not acknowledge it’s a tortured being.
Right of passage into the scientific way of being centers on the ability to apply the knife to the vocal cords - not just of the dog on the table - but to life itself. It’s about silencing voice then - and reflects the silencing of voices today.
“We are on the tip of an iceberg and the iceberg runs deep and the ship is running right into it. Industrial civilization is not sustainable. We all know that. It cannot be sustainable.”
“We could have solved these problems 50 years ago, but we are not going to solve these problems in the next 20 years. We can start, maybe. But I think we are in for a very, very difficult time. ”
“Dorothy is not in Kansas anymore. And Dorothy is not coming back to Kansas. This is not going to be easy. And like that Great Oz asked Dorothy and her friends - so are the politicians of our day - they ask us. Pay no attention the Great Oz says ‘to the man behind the curtain.’ Because the great deception is alive and well.”
Hubbard compares yellow brick road to gold & Emerald City to the green of money.
Oz is “this old white guy doing his thing, pulling hi levers, lying to the people to maintain is power. This is what we have been doing as a culture for how many years – ignoring the man behind the curtain. And now the chickens are going to come home to roost.”
A failed businessman/store owner, L. Frank Baum edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer newspaper before writing the Wizard of Oz..
After 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, Baum targets Native Americans in editorial for Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on death of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull.
Hubbard: That was act one. The great Wizard silencing nature.
Baum editorial
Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring. He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies. The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.
Author Neil Evernden
http://www.derrickjensen.org/essay.html
http://haydon4.tripod.com/id20.htm
http://www.derrickjensen.org/books01.html
Vivisection
http://www.infonature.org/english/world_news/eng-nature_news_animal_torture.htm
http://www.tonglen.oceandrop.org/Letter_Ban_Vivisection.htm
Baum on Sitting Bull
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum
http://www.put.com/oz/ozdi/199712.TXT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz
Baum fans apology
http://www.dickshovel.com/roeschbaum.htmlPhilosopher Neil Evernden wrote that vivisectionists cut animal vocal cords so they... more
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