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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (35524)	7/31/2002 3:51:45 PM
From: aladin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Win, Whats your point? Whats your proposal? Yes, the cold war was ugly. Yes, we backed some pretty bad guys to deal with their pretty bad guys. Lets think about who we were fighting. The Soviets - who killed how many millions (8 figures) in most cases their own people. Now how about those nice Chinese - how many died there - conservitive estimates are 8 figures (49 - thru Nixon and detente). Then in SE Asia when we finally did get out, what was the figure? It was close to 3 million. We backed some pretty bad people in WW2 while fighting the Nazi's and Japanese (Stalin among others). Should we have fought them at the same time? Morality cannot always be conveniently black and white, good and evil. Else we all halve to be good christians and offer no resistance to the lions. John

To: Win Smith who wrote (35524)	7/31/2002 4:01:14 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Remember the U.S. military-industrial complex doesn't want to think about morals too much --> its VERY focussed on making money (and with a record defense budget and a new global war on terrorism its entering another boom period <G>).

To: Win Smith who wrote (35524)	8/1/2002 11:14:09 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex by Helen Caldicott amazon.com Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Since September 11, it has become clear that the United States is headed for more military funding to fight the "war on terrorism." But as longtime antinuclear activist, author and pediatrician Caldicott (Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do) shows, this buildup is nothing new with the exception of the first President Bush, U.S. policy has generally favored military spending. But spending on nuclear weapons is ineffective in fighting terrorists holed up in caves, Caldicott contends. Using a medical model, she focuses on what she calls the "disease" before she launches into her "remedy." She is strongest focusing on the ties between the American nuclear arsenal and large corporations, which have only their own interests at heart a point that should resonate in the post-Enron era. In impressive detail, she describes how hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on questionable defense projects such as Star Wars. To her credit, this book also serves as a defense primer: she lays out the various weapons projects in terms accessible to the average reader an accessibility she argues that the government wants to deny citizens. But her remedies for the problem she describes diverting millions of dollars from the defense budget for health care and the environment seem na‹ve and unrealistic. In addition, her strident tone ("the Pentagon thinks about nuclear strategy in a strange and pathological way") might turn some readers off to the book's important message. From Booklist For three decades, physician Caldicott, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility, has tirelessly articulated the drastic consequences of nuclear weapons to a public kept in ignorance by their government. Moved once again by world events to disseminate hard facts in the hope of averting disaster, Caldicott presents a meticulous, urgent, and shocking report on the current state and true nature of America's nuclear weapons program. She explains with chilling precision the medical effects not only of nuclear weapons themselves but also of the carcinogenic nuclear waste that already permeates our environment. Her harrowing descriptions make it abundantly clear that to flirt with the terrible power of uranium and plutonium (which was named after the god of hell for good reason) is to risk the very "death of life." And yet the powers-that-be, an amalgam of arms dealers and politicians, proceed, unchallenged by a distracted and docile citizenry, according to Caldicott. She dexterously exposes the enormous influence that weapons corporations such as Lockheed Martin have on George W. Bush's administration, then illuminates myriad facets of our hubristic and potentially apocalyptic corporate-driven nuclear scheme, from the dogged pursuit of worthless missile defense systems to the real work of the cynically named Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program--the wildly irresponsible creation of new, treaty-breaking nuclear weapons. The Doomsday Clock, the symbol of nuclear danger, has just been set two minutes closer to midnight, so the time to take Caldicott's measured and wise words to heart is now. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ---------------- About the Author The world's leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement, Dr. Helen Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Both the Smithsonian Institute and Ladies' Home Journal named her one of the Most Influential Women of the Twentieth Century, and she has honorary degrees from nineteen universities. She divides her time between Australia, where she is standing for Senate, and the United States, where she has devoted the last two years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age.