The nuclear sword of Damocles

The Forum By Evaggelos Vallianatos,  20/10/2008 – “……………………………..the sword of Damocles, now armed with nuclear bombs, is ever ready to slice through the earth. Since August 6, 1945, the people of the world have had to live in the shadow of death.This new immoral condition is the outcome of the logic of total war and the religion of science, which grew around nuclear physics. That the global nuclear terror has survived for 63 years is partly a testimony to the hubris of the teachers of physics and engineering who, corrupted by the military, accepted bomb making as science.Such transformation of physics from the study of nature to the training of engineers to think and construct bombs and factories of nuclear electricity has had tragic consequences, the extreme example of which is evolving in Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea possessing or making their own nuclear weapons.

Many Pakistanis and Indians can barely afford one meal a day, yet their countries are armed to the teeth with the ultimate bomb. Iran, governed by Islamic priests, is determined to acquire the bomb. And Communist North Korea is telling the world that now that it has its own atomic or nuclear bomb no one will dare ignore it any more.

To avoid a global nuclear meltdown, we must abolish all that has to do with the smashing of the atom – nuclear weapons and factories of nuclear electricity – or these technologies will abolish us. In large numbers, nuclear bombs are possibly geocidal. But even one is genocidal……………………..We should know the nuclear bomb is neither a battlefield weapon nor an object of worship. Using this technology for electricity is a dangerous delusion. Nuclear power plants never cease poisoning people and nature. The wastes of these factories will be hazardous for hundreds and thousands of years.

Nuclear disarmament push a ‘difficult job’ for Rudd

ABC News Oct 17, 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will have difficulty leading the nuclear disarmament debate because of the nation’s expanding uranium industry, the Greens said.

Mr Rudd’s foreign policy initiative – the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament – will hold its first meeting in Sydney next week.

Mr Rudd last month said the commission has a two-year mandate to reinvigorate the global debate on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament…………………

Greens Senator Scott Ludlum said while the commission was a welcome step, Australia’s role was compromised by its expanding uranium export industry.

“The key thing really is that it’s at risk already of being sabotaged by the nuclear power industry and the uranium mining industry,” he said.

“So the Prime Minister’s got a bit of a difficult job ahead of him walking that line.

“It’s going to be very difficult for Australia as one of the world’s largest uranium suppliers with a very powerful mining lobby to be an honest broker in this case.”…………………..

“This commission’s not going to be successful unless we are able to wind back the civil nuclear power industry because every nuclear power station essentially is just a plutonium factory hooked up to a steam turbine,” he said.

“We can’t have radical expansion of nuclear power capacity without making it dramatically more difficult to prevent weapons from spreading.”