Leading Nuclear Leper’s Atrocious Conduct

Nonproliferation: tactic to keep Third World insecure

By Waseem Shehzad

In its 2017 review of the world’s total nuclear stockpile, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimated that Russia possessed a total of 6,800 nuclear warheads followed closely by the US with 6,600. Between them, the two leading nuclear powers not only possess the overwhelming majority of nuclear weapons but each one individually possesses more nuclear weapons than the other seven nuclear countries combined. France, China, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea are estimated to have about 1,150 nuclear weapons based on FAS estimates. Russia and the US each possess about six times as many nuclear warheads as the combined total of the other seven countries.

Why is the world awash in nuclear weapons and the delivery systems that threaten to annihilate the entire world in a matter of minutes? Aware that nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the human race, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970 and is considered to be the “cornerstone” of the nonproliferation regime. There are 189 countries that have signed the NPT. Exceptions include Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea and also, more recently South Sudan. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and has since carried out nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, becoming a member of the nuclear club. The NPT is predicated on three pillars:

1. nuclear nonproliferation,

2. nuclear disarmament, and

3. peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Those familiar with the workings of Western regimes would immediately notice that nonproliferation is enforced rigidly, especially against countries considered either not subservient to the US (Islamic Iran, for instance) or not sufficiently deferential. When it comes to its allies — such as Zionist Israel — nuclear know-how was smuggled to the apartheid regime in contravention of NPT regulations. Both France and the US are guilty of this and have deliberately turned a blind eye to Zionist acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The leading nuclear states — Russia and the US — have also tiptoed around the issue of nuclear disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This has not gone down well with non-nuclear states that constitute the overwhelming majority of countries in the world. At the NPT review conferences that are held every five years (the next one will be in 2020), article VI of the NPT is always one of the most hotly debated items. It calls on parties to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and international control.”

The two leading nuclear powers, America and Russia, have over the years reduced their stockpile of weapons but they have developed more lethal ones to replace it. Thus both the purpose and spirit of nuclear disarmament is defeated.

While the US bullies and prevents smaller states from acquiring nuclear energy even for peaceful purposes, its own stockpiles and those of Zionist Israel continue to grow. Washington blocks all attempts to force Israel to open its nuclear facilities for international inspection. Similarly calls by Middle Eastern countries to make the region a nuclear-free zone are sabotaged by US action because it would force its Zionist protégé to divest itself of nuclear weapons.

Nothing exposes US hypocrisy more than President Donald Trump’s allocation of $1.1 trillion to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Can Russia be far behind? Further, on August 9, US Vice President Mike Pence announced that America would create a Space Force. What this means is America’s colonization of space.

Pence is head of the newly reconstituted National Space Council. He alleged during his Pentagon announcement that “Our adversaries have transformed space into a warfighting domain already and the United States will not shrink from the challenge...” Karl Grossman, Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, dismissed Pence’s claim as “false.”

Grossman, author of The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, went on to say,

“Beyond the intent of the Outer Space Treaty and its setting space aside as a global commons, neither Russia nor China have been interested in bringing war into space for economic reasons. I’ve been researching — writing books and articles and doing television programs — on the space warfare issue for more than 30 years and have made numerous trips to Russia and gone to China, too.”

(see also 2008 piece from Reuters, “China, Russia to offer treaty to ban arms in space”).

Washington’s warlords are determined to use any means and peddle any lie to get more money from US taxpayers for their expensive and often useless weapons. That, however, does not stop them from indulging in vicious propaganda and offensive behavior.

In the nearly three decades from the early-1970s, Pakistan was accused of making an “Islamic” bomb. On May 18, 1974, when India conducted a nuclear explosion, it was not called a Hindu bomb; instead it was dubbed “peaceful.” Pakistan meanwhile was subjected to punishing sanctions even though it was merely reacting to Indian belligerence and to defend itself against Indian bullying.

Since America acts as a global bully terrorizing states whose policies it does not like, the only defence left to them is to acquire nuclear weapons. We can see how the US treated Iraq and Libya — one divested of all chemical weapons and the other from rudimentary knowledge of nuclear weapons. In contrast, Donald Trump went to meet King Jong-un of North Korea because it had mastered the nuclear cycle and acquired nuclear weapons.

There should be one rule for all: either no nuclear weapons for any state or every state should have nuclear weapons. America’s atrocious conduct over the years shows that it is truly a rogue state. After all, the US is the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons against Japan in the Second World War, twice. Further, it used depleted uranium shells in the war against Iraq in 1991.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of four million years. What this means is that in order to reduce its toxicity by half, it would take four million years. In Iraq, millions of horribly deformed babies have been born since the US used depleted uranium in 1991. Washington and its rulers should be held accountable for crimes against humanity.

The US is not only the Great Satan, in the words of the late Imam Khomeini, it is also the leading nuclear leper in the world. Let there be no doubt about that.

 

73 Years after Hiroshima, Disarmament Is Still Vital

TEHRAN (FNA)- On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and, three days after that, another bomb on Nagasaki. The two bombs together killed over 210,000 people instantly, and a large number died later from radiation exposure.

Joyce Olum Galaski, Rabbi Emeritus, peace advocate and daughter of the late Paul Olum, Manhattan Project scientist and lifelong critic of the nuclear arms race, wrote in Huffington Post that a little over 73 years ago, our father, Paul Olum, stood with his colleagues in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. They had spent the last two and a half years designing a new weapon, the first atomic bomb, and now they waited to see whether it would work. Then the explosion seemed to fill the sky, until it resolved into a huge mushroom-shaped cloud. The project had succeeded. They had designed and built the most powerful weapon ever seen on Earth.

Three weeks later, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and, three days after that, another bomb on Nagasaki. The two bombs together killed over 210,000 people instantly, and a large number died later from radiation exposure. Paul had mixed feelings about the bombing of Hiroshima. It seemed clear it would end the war swiftly, but there had been a very high cost in civilian lives. However, he felt the bombing of Nagasaki was unconscionable, because three days had not been long enough for the surrender.

Six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan did announce its surrender. World War II was over, but the nuclear arms race had begun, and Paul Olum became a lifelong advocate of nuclear arms control and disarmament.

By the 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union together had amassed about 27,000 "active" strategic nuclear bombs each hugely more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The arsenals of either nation were sufficient to destroy humanity many times over.

Paul had been only 24 years old when he and our mother Vivian went to Los Alamos in 1943. After the war was over, he went on to a distinguished career as a mathematics professor at Cornell and later as provost and then president of the University of Oregon. Yet, whatever else he was doing, he felt a responsibility to talk about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the importance of disarmament.

In 1983, Paul and Vivian received an invitation to a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bombs had been designed. They felt they did not want to celebrate the building of those bombs, which led to nuclear arsenals that could destroy the human race. Paul drafted a petition calling for an end to the nuclear arms race and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. It was signed by 70 scientists, including five Nobel Prize winners, and widely publicized. The scientists wrote that they were "profoundly frightened for the future of humanity."

Paul's efforts, and those of many others, brought a turning point in the arms race. Treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union and later Russia began to reduce the numbers of warheads and remove them from active status. When Paul died in 2001, the total number of active strategic nuclear warheads had been reduced to about 14,000. When the New START treaty of 2011 is fully implemented, the U.S. and Russia will have about 3,000 deployed strategic warheads in total, but this is still more than enough to destroy civilization.

Unfortunately, the threat of nuclear weapons seems to have faded from public consciousness, perhaps having been displaced by concerns over climate change. Climate change is a very serious threat, but it is a threat of a different character. Climate change could kill billions of people over the course of decades and render parts of the world uninhabitable. Nuclear war could kill billions of people immediately and might render the entire world uninhabitable as a result of radioactive fallout and nuclear winter (severe global cooling caused by soot propelled into the stratosphere from burning cities.)

So it is crucial that nuclear disarmament continue. Instead, the U.S. and Russia seem poised on the brink of a new nuclear arms race. Present U.S. plans involve new warheads with new missiles, bombers, and submarines to deliver them, at a total cost of about $1 trillion over the next 30 years. And this huge expense does not make America safer. Our current arsenal goes far beyond anything needed as a deterrent. Instead, it increases the risk that these weapons will someday be used, either intentionally, accidentally, or because they fall into the wrong hands.

Enough is enough. More than 30 years after Paul's Los Alamos disarmament petition, nuclear weapons still pose a threat to the existence of the human race. The time has come to end this threat, so that that 30 years from now it will not be necessary for our children to begin an article, "One hundred years ago our grandfather stood in the desert near Alamogordo...."

Hiroshima Marks 73rd Anniversary of US Atomic Bombing

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Hiroshima marked the 73rd anniversary of the US atomic bombing on Monday, with its mayor making a fresh call for a world without nuclear weapons through dialogue.

Despite some expectations of progress toward nuclear disarmament in recent years, Mayor Kazumi Matsui warned of the re-emergence of tensions over nuclear weapons seen during the Cold War and sought rational actions by global leaders.

"If the human family forgets history or stops confronting it, we could again commit a terrible error," Matsui said at a memorial ceremony to remember the atomic bombing, Kyodo news reported on Monday.

Japan needs to lead the international community toward "dialogue and cooperation for a world without nuclear weapons," the mayor added.

At the Peace Memorial Park, a moment of silence was observed at 8:15 a.m., when the "Little Boy" uranium-core atomic bomb dropped by a US bomber exploded above Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of that year.

Matsui expressed hope that the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula will continue through dialogue and called on global leaders to make an international treaty comprehensively prohibiting nuclear weapons a "milestone" toward the goal of ridding the world of nuclear arsenals.

The mayor made the Peace Declaration before representatives from 85 countries and the European Union. The United States sent its ambassador to Japan to the annual ceremony for the first time in three years.

"Certain countries are blatantly proclaiming self-centered nationalism and modernizing their nuclear arsenals, rekindling tensions that had eased with the end of the Cold War," Matsui said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, attending the memorial ceremony, pledged that Japan will try to bridge nuclear powers and non-nuclear states and lead international efforts.

"Maintaining its three non-nuclear principles, our country is determined to make strenuous efforts to serve as a bridge between both parties," Abe said.

As of March, the number of hibakusha stood at 154,859. Their average age is now just over 82.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his message the legacy of Hiroshima is one of "resilience" and sought continued moral support from hibakusha survivors.