[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Firewall

[manni at snafu.de]

Forwarded Message:
> To: portside at yahoogroups.com
> From: portsideMod at netscape.net
> Subject: Firewall
> Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 16:39:30 -0500
> -----
> San Francisco Examiner
> 
> Firewall
> 
> By Conn Hallinan
> 
> When 200 people showed up at the gates of Lawrence
> Livermore National Laboratory last month demanding the
> right to "inspect" the sprawling complex for "weapons
> of mass destruction," the press either ignored it or
> dismissed it as clever political theater. But people
> had better start paying attention to what Livermore,
> and its sister labs at Los Alamos and Sandia, are up,
> which includes:
> 
> - Undermining the 1972 Nuclear Non-proliferation
>   Treaty;
> 
> - Sabotaging the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
> 
> - And testing bio-weapons in the heart of the Bay Area.
> 
> The demand for "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional,
> and unrestricted access" to Livermore-language lifted
> from the UN Security Council resolution on Iraq--might
> seem tongue-in-cheek, but representatives from
> California Peace Action, Tri-Valley CARES, Western
> States Legal Foundation, and Veterans for Peace were
> dead serious. "We are demanding an end to all weapons
> of mass destruction," Tara Dorabji of Tri-Valley CARES
> told the crowd, "whether developed in the suburbs by
> the University of California scientists or in Iraq."
> 
> The labs are flush with cash these days, and they are
> gearing up to create a new generation of nuclear
> weapons explicitly designed for use in conventional
> wars. And if that isn't scary enough, they are also
> seeking Biosafety Level 3 permits to grow and test
> anthrax, bubonic plague, Ebola fever, and biotoxins.
> 
> Behind this program are two lab honchos, Stephen
> Younger of Los Alamos (now at the Pentagon) and Paul
> Robinson, director of Sandia. The former is pushing to
> build a "bunker busting" nuke, and the latter for
> creating what he calls "low yield weapons with highly
> accurate delivery systems for deterrence in the non-
> Russian world." Translation: We nuke people as long as
> we are sure they can't nuke us back.
> 
> Congress has already allocated $15 million to study
> development of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, and
> both Los Alamos and Livermore are working on different
> versions of it. And if we build it, we will test it,
> since it would be folly to deploy an untested weapon.
> Secretary of State Colin Powell claims that the
> Administration is "not developing new nuclear weapons
> and not planning to undergo any testing." However, Paul
> Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, says the U.S. must
> "contemplate" returning to testing and the Department
> of Energy has already started upgrading the Nevada
> Nuclear Test Site. There goes the Comprehensive Test
> Ban Treaty.
> 
> Just in case you aren't up on international treaties,
> this is also a material violation of the Nuclear Non-
> Proliferation Treaty, which forbids the development of
> new weapons. It also trashes Article VI of that Treaty,
> which requires the nuclear powers to negotiate in good
> faith to abolish nuclear weapons. Lastly, it violates
> the Treaty section, which forbids threatening non-
> nuclear nations with nukes. Pretty much a clean sweep.
> 
> The push for the "bunker buster" is part of the Bush
> Administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which argues
> that "nuclear and nonnuclear strike systems" be
> considered just another "option" to "complement other
> military capabilities."
> 
> Which, as U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey points out, is
> pretty nutso, "A new bunker-busting nuclear earth
> penetrator sends exactly the wrong message to the
> world. At a time when we are trying to discourage other
> countries-such as North Korea---from developing nuclear
> weapons, it looks hypocritical for us to be preparing
> to introduce a whole new generation of nuclear weapons
> into the arsenal."
> 
> Developing an earth penetrator will require
> miniaturizing warheads, and the Tennessee Valley
> Authority has already begun a $3.25 million program to
> produce radioactive hydrogen, or Tritium. The latter is
> a "blast enhancer" that gives small warheads a big
> bang. If this technology ever gets out, some terrorist
> organizations won't need a shipping container to hide a
> nuke. An overnight bag will do just fine.
> 
> Even the mission of the labs to "monitor" the safety of
> nuclear weapons, the so-called Strategic Stockpile and
> Stewardship Program and its companion, the National
> Ignition Facility, has been perverted for weapon
> designing. The projected "Laser/Fireball" test, for
> instance, can be used to simulate low-yield nuclear
> warhead explosions.
> 
> All of this is aimed at breaking the firewall that has
> kept nuclear weapons on the shelf since Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki. Maintaining that firewall is in our own
> interests, since breaching it, as Princeton physicist
> Frank von Hipple points out, "would make it permissible
> for others to use them against us."
> 
>                                                 
> 
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