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June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
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Seattle and Beyond
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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Reviews of Gore:
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June 10,
2002
Stopping a Nuclear War in South
Asia
by David Krieger
Two nuclear-armed countries stand on the brink
of war and the world seems paralyzed as it watches events unfolding
in what seems like slow motion. It is a war that could easily
escalate into a nuclear holocaust taking millions or tens of
millions of lives, and virtually nothing is being done to end
the standoff. The US and the UK have advised their citizens to
leave the region and the UN is pulling out the families of UN
workers in the region, but the UN Security Council has not yet
even put the matter on its agenda let alone put forward any constructive
solution.
The US has sent its Secretary of Defense
to the region, but has lifted sanctions on the sale of military
equipment to both countries that it imposed after they conducted
nuclear tests in 1998. At the same time, the US continues to
demonstrate its own reliance on nuclear weaponry, announcing
on June 1st that it will resume production of plutonium "pits"
used to trigger nuclear warheads.
Here is what Indian novelist Arundhati
Roy has to say about the situation:
"Terrorists have the power to trigger
nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement,
dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just
funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition
against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives
to preach peace and on the side, to sell weapons to both India
and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist asks
me: 'Are you writing another book?'
"That question mocks me. Another
book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art,
the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilization
means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of
book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while
pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That's what nuclear bombs
do, whether they're used or not. They violate everything that
is humane, they alter the meaning of life.
"Why do we tolerate them? Why do
we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the
entire human race?"
Arundhati Roy is absolutely right. It
is because we tolerate these men and their dangerous, inhumane
and genocidal policies whether they be in the US, Russia, UK,
France, China, Israel, India or Pakistan -- that nuclear war
is possible and increasingly likely.
But what should we do now, while these
men remain in control of the future of the fate of the people
of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world? Here are a few
modest suggestions:
Call for the UN Security Council to take
charge of the situation as a matter of highest priority, require
Indian and Pakistani forces to stand down their nuclear forces,
move back from their front line positions, interpose UN Peacekeeping
forces between them and require mediated talks between the leaders
of the two countries.
Call for the permanent members of the
UN Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to immediately
cancel the sale and delivery of all military equipment to both
India and Pakistan.
To deal with the continuing dangers of
nuclear war, so easy to visualize in the India-Pakistan standoff,
we should also call for all nuclear weapons states to immediately
commence good faith negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear
weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and
the International Court of Justice.
Forty years ago, the world stood by helplessly
as the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled into nuclear
war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obviously failed to learn
the lesson then that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be
left in the hands of any military force. Now we run the risk
that acts of terrorists in the Kashmir conflict could trigger
a war in South Asia that could quickly escalate to nuclear war.
Similar conditions exist in the Middle East.
The potential for war in South Asia must
be defused now before it erupts into large-scale conflict that
could go nuclear. But it is not enough to only defuse the present
crisis. The world must also become deadly serious about putting
away forever these dangerous instruments of annihilation and
genocide, before these instruments become seriously and massively
deadly in wars that no one can truly desire or in the hands of
terrorists.
David Krieger
is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation and Deputy Chair of the International
Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.
He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org
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