In article <bh298l$1h4p$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, Dave Muller says...

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 PEACE protesters rallied in Melbourne today to mark the anniversary of 
the Second World War atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

*Hundreds at Nagasaki Day rally *

AAP 09aug03

HUNDREDS of peace protesters staged a rally in Melbourne today to mark 
the anniversary of the Second World War atom bombing of Nagasaki.

Members of the Victoria Peace Network (VPN), and the Medical Association 
for Prevention of War (MAPW) took to the streets of Melbourne to show 
their opposition to nuclear weapons.

MAPW spokeswoman Giji Gya said more than 600 people took part in the rally.

"The rally was part of a nationwide event to mark Nagasaki Day and to 
show our opposition to nuclear weapons," she said.

"People lay down in the street and we drew chalk around them to 
represent the people killed in Nagasaki.

"The continuation of maintaining nuclear weapons and nuclear capacity 
puts us all in dire jeopardy of becoming a victim to their use either 
through terrorism or in response to terrorism.

"This should be at the forefront of our minds and debate, after seeing 
more bomb attacks in the past two days in Jakarta and Iraq."

___________________________________________________________

*US proliferation and bunker busters*
By Katrin Dauenhauer
* Aug 8, 2003

*WASHINGTON - The Strategic Command (Stratcom) meeting in Omaha, 
Nebraska, this week, behind closed doors, will involve some 150 people 

>from weapons laboratories, the US Energy, Defense and State departments, 

and the White House. The weapons labs of the Pentagon and the Department 
of Energy have already proposed developing low-yield nuclear 
earth-penetrating weapons, also referred to as nuclear bunker busters.

Since President George W Bush last year announced plans to deploy a 
limited missile defense system at several sites in the US, 
counter-proliferation has moved center-stage.

Under current administration plans, new strategic nuclear forces will 
remain in the US arsenal until at least 2070, the 100th anniversary of 
the Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which the United States and other 
nuclear-weapon states promised to disarm.

"In my view, proposals for new nuclear weapons provide no military value 
for the United States and it would result in enormous political, 
diplomatic and proliferation costs," said Daryl Kimball, executive 
director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based 
non-governmental research organization.

"To pursue the development of new types of nuclear weapons would make 
the task to ban the spread of nuclear weapons even more difficult," he 
said. "There is a 'do as I say, not as I do' philosophy implied. In 
order to develop and produce them, testing would be required that by 
itself would trigger a global reaction cycle that would harm 
international security. China might resume testing, or Russia."

Meanwhile, a 112-page report by Physicians for Social Responsibility 
(PSR), an advocacy group based in Washington, states, "The 2002 National 
Security Strategy is radical in its prescription for a preventive or 
preemptive use of force in halting NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] 
weapons proliferation."

That strategy to fight weapons of mass destruction (WMD) "is a dramatic 
extension of the policy of counter proliferation, and gives a far 
greater role than in the past to nuclear weapons within that strategy", 
continues the report, "What Wrongs Our Arms May Do", presented at a 
conference on Tuesday.

Critics also oppose bunker busters, fearing that their relative 
smallness will blur the line between conventional and nuclear war, 
posing a new threat to world security.

They also question whether radioactive fallout can actually be 
contained. "Constraints of physics stop bunker busters from being 
effective, as there are limits to how far the bomb can penetrate. In 
order to hit the deepest bunker - meaning 20-30 feet [six to nine 
meters] - it has to be a large bomb to send shock waves to penetrate 
down," said Martin Butcher, director of security programs at PSR and 
author of the report. "However, this will lead the fireball ... to 
disperse and radiate dust particles up into the atmosphere, creating a 
dirty bomb - the most dangerous weapon there is," he said. "These 
questions just weren't addressed by those who are in charge of the 
development of these weapons," added Butcher.

In the 2003 federal budget, Bush requested US$15.5 million for research 
on bunker busters. The administration is spending almost $8 billion on 
missile defense this year, which will include equipping a California air 
force base with interceptor missiles.

Washington's missile-defense plans are also intricately linked to its 
preemptive-war policies aimed at countering proliferation of WMD, say 
critics.

While the administration argues that the missile-defense system will 
increase protection against a missile attack, experts question that 
assumption. "Missile defense will encourage the United States to pursue 
preemptive attacks, possibly with tactical nuclear weapons," said Martha 
Clar, author of another PSR report, "A False Sense of Security: The Role 
of Missile Defenses in Counter-Proliferation Doctrine", at a conference 
on Tuesday. "Missile-defense deployment will actually encourage 
proliferation as rogue states attempt to develop the number of weapons 
necessary to overwhelm a US missile defense," she added.

If the United States resumed new nuclear testing, the Comprehensive Test 
Ban Treaty would be severely harmed, critics charge. Washington signed 
the treaty in 1996, but the Senate denied its ratification in 1999. 
Still, the United States' current status as a signatory places 
considerable political constraint on future testing, experts say.

"If the United States started testing again, it would destroy the 
treaty, which has been the goal of American administrations for 40 
years. To throw this away would be reckless," said Butcher.

Coinciding with the Stratcom meeting are countrywide commemorations of 
the August 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which 
215,000 people were incinerated instantly or died from injuries that year.

"It's actually a tragic thing that in the week when people across the 
world remember the two uses of nuclear weapons in war in Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki that this administration should get together hundreds of its 
top officials and have them examine how to develop new nuclear weapons 
and test new nuclear weapons and maintain America's nuclear arsenal for 
the rest of the century," said Butcher.

(Inter Press Service)

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