Pacific Ecologist 22 Summer 2013
Contents
- Stopping nuclear holocaust top of the agenda
by Kay Weir & Alyn Ware
politics raising tensions
- Taking nuclear apocalypse off the menu
To prevent nuclear apocalypse by malfunction or error, it’s high time the U.S. and Russia took their ready-to-launch, computerised nuclear weapons systems off high alert. John Hallam reports. - us plans for global dominance: Effects on the Asia-Pacific region
Tensions are rising as America expands its military bases and ballistic missile defence systems in the Asia-Pacific region in a policy to ‘contain’ China and Russia, reports Bruce K. Gagnon. The war-games are destabilising the region, prompting an arms race, obstructing nuclear disarmament negotiations and will have severe ecological and human rights impacts in a region already damaged by war and nuclear weapons experiments. We must oppose this deadly confrontation which threatens the future of all life on Earth. - India & Pakistan race to annihilation
Bitter rivalry abetted by the actions of global superpowers has locked India and Pakistan into a deadly nuclear arms race writes Tom Hundley in this abridged article. This race is now an immediate threat to the entire world.
feature
- Effects of using nuclear weapons ‘quite simply unthinkable’
We must strengthen our efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament, as the potential for nuclear war is increasing, reports Dr George Preddey, physicist/author of ‘Future Contingencies. 4: Nuclear Disaster.’ Military and political leaders should be challenged for ignoring decades of scientific research and turning their backs on the unthinkable consequences of even a regional nuclear war on the Earth and its people. The annihilatory effects of using nuclear weapons should be openly and publicly discussed instead of ignored. To survive, we must fundamentally change.
nuclear weapons testing legacies
- Nuclear contamination of food in the Pacific: Lifting the veil of secrecy
Fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the United States in the 1950s caused immediate injury and left a legacy of environmental contamination around the Marshall Islands test site. Radioactive contamination of the food chain and resulting health risks to the islands’ residents were concealed, writes Dr Nancy Pollock. As the true picture has emerged, recompense of the affected islanders has become paramount. - Bikini Atoll World Heritage site
- France: No honour, no mercy over Moruroa testing
France has yet to compensate the people of French Polynesia for grievous, long-lasting damage to health and the environment from 30 years of nuclear testing on previously pristine coral atolls. Kay Weir reports.
get active
- Get active! What you can do to help abolish nuclear weapons
strategies to eliminate nuclear weapons
- The United Nations and nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament is central to the work of the United Nations and was the aim of its first resolution adopted in 1946, reports Angela Kane, High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. - The climate–nuclear nexus
Alyn Ware and Rob van Riet report on the Climate-Nuclear Nexus project and identify the links between these two great threats to human survival. Working on the two issues together will have many benefits and help develop the co-operative strategies necessary to address both climate change and nuclear disarmament. - A treaty to ban nuclear weapons: A Red Cross perspective
The indiscriminate, large-scale effects on public health and the environment of nuclear weapons are so great that they are considered by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Red Cross Movement and the International Court of Justice to be incompatible with international humanitarian law. Stuart Peters reports on the campaign for a binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons. - STOP investments in mass incineration & famine
Despite the global economic crisis and budget cuts, nine nations continue to make plans to squander hundreds of billions of dollars to ‘modernize’ nuclear warheads and missiles and the vehicles which deliver these weapons of mass incineration. Tim Wright reports on the urgency for a global campaign to divert investments away from maintaining and producing nuclear weapon and to build momentum for a universal ban on manufacturing nuclear weapons.
reviews
- The day the sun rose in the west: Bikini, the lucky dragon and I by Oishi Mataschichi
- Slaying the nuclear dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Tanya Ogilvie-White & David Santoro
- Security Without Nuclear Deterrence by Commander Robert Green, Royal Navy (retired)
- Nuclear Weapons, a French Fib: Reflections on nuclear disarmament by Paul Quilès
- A Thorn In Their Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder by Robert Green and Kate Dewes
- Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1 (DVD, 2012) Directed by Adam Jonas Horowitz
nuclear-weapons-free zones
- Taming Godzilla: Nuclear deterrence in North-East Asia
Nuclear weapons are a monstrous threat to the security of all countries in North-East Asia and prevent global collaboration on other urgent security issues. ALYN WARE, HIROMICHI UMEBAYASHI, and KIHO YI explore the tortured history of nuclear deterrence and the plans to phase it out with nuclear disarmament. Regional security is better addressed by co-operation, with mutually beneficial partnerships enhancing the security of all countries. - An Arctic fit for Santa: Adding the Arctic to the nuclear-weapons-free world
Matt Robson reflects on the huge costs of global military expenditure, 10 times more is spent on destroying humanity than is spent on humanity’s survival. He reviews the progress being made in establishing regional nuclear-weapons-free zones (NWFZs), and the urgent need for the Arctic to be free of nuclear weapons as an ecologically vital and vulnerable region of the Earth. - Iran and a Middle-East zone free of all weapons of mass destruction
A Middle East Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone, proposed in 1974 by Iran, was widely endorsed. Ruth Wangerin and Shahriar Khateri explain why the proposal was extended in 1990 by Egypt to include chemical and biological weapons. A key meeting in December 2012 to discuss establishing a Middle-East zone free of all weapons of mass destruction was postponed indefinitely by certain interests. Yet this zone could end the instability and conflict in the Middle-East region. Civil society’s help is needed to build a worldwide consensus that nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction are totally unacceptable.
