Shareware Overload/ShartewareOverload.cdr/games/fireside.zip/PEACES

Text File | 1986-08-14 | 16KB | 398 lines

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.h:                                                                      640 words


          Putting Away the Terrible Toys

          Lewis Thomas
          Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
          New York

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          Two years ago, I felt in my bones that we
          were in for World War III, and that it
          would be fought with thermonuclear
          weapons.  I had no idea when it would
          come, or how, but I was sure it would
          come, sooner or later.  My highest hope
          was that I wouldn't live to see it.

          Everyone knew the numbers: 1.1 billion
          killed outright, another 1.1 billion dying
          in the aftermath -- all told, about one
          half the human species.  Yet, despite our
          endless discussions of arms limitations,
          no one talks seriously about abandoning
          this malignant weaponry, giving it up,
          throwing it away.

          Of course, everyone says they will never
          be used.  They are not even intended to be
          used.  They are here in order to prevent
          the other side from using them against us.
          Do not worry about evaporated cities, we
          are told.  At the same time they add, in a
          lower voice: but we must keep some of the
          big ones on hand, just in case something
          goes wrong.

          I have never heard of a war in which
          things did not go wrong, usually as
          incalculably wrong as possible.  The truth
          is that there are people with excellent
          minds and good public manners who wish
          mightily to preserve nuclear weaponry.  To
          them, and to others of us, there is
          something terribly attractive about
          missiles and bombs.  There they are,
          buried like polished jewels in wonderfully
          engineered silos, or aircraft, or submarines.
          At the touch of a finger they ascend
          smoothly into space beyond the
          stratosphere, curve over the earth,
          descend toward a target and destroy by
          blast or firestorm any city they like.
          They are the most marvelous toys ever
          devised by man, triumphs of the human
          intellect.  Our fate at the hands of these
          sleek, magnificent engines seems assured.

          But there is a paradoxical reason for
          optimism.  The weapons turn out to be not
          just homicidal or genocidal.  Nuclear
          winter makes them suicidal as well.

          The way it works is embarrassingly simple.
          It is smoke that does it.  The scenario
          holds that a full-scale nuclear war would
          ignite enough cities and forests to
          produce a cloud of soot and dust over the
          entire northern hemisphere.  The TTAPS
          report (named for authors Turco, Toon,
          Ackerman, Pollack and Sagan) predicts
          that a war with 5000 megatons (less than a
          third of existing arsenals) would in a
          matter of months drop the temperature of
          earth's surface as low as -25 degrees
          Centigrade, freezing all fresh water
          bodies and destroying most species of
          plant and animal life, including, most
          likely, most human life.

          The only way to avoid the catastrophe
          would be to avoid setting fires,
          especially in cities, but this is what
          nuclear bombs are good at.  The TTAPS
          report suggests that an exchange under 100
          megatons might be safe, but that is a
          guess.  If true, a sensible arms control
          approach would be to negotiate a reduction
          from 18,000 to 100 megatons as soon as
          possible.  One hundred megatons should
          still be enough to make the hairs stands
          on end in all the streets ofthe world, but
          perhaps not enough for extinction.

          If predictions are correct, or anywhere
          near correct, the revelation of nuclear
          winter will come to rank, I believe, as
          one of the great scientific achievements
          of this century -- or, considering what is
          at stale, of any century.

          So I am astonished that the press and
          television news programs have paid so
          little attention to the story.  Their
          silence in the face of what, for me, is
          the hope of the earth, is a stubborn and
          stony silence, an unwillingnesss to face a
          set of probable or even possoible facts
          that should make the whole discussion
          ludicrous.  The weapons simply cannot be
          used, and that, I think and I pray, is
          that.

          #  #  #





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          [THREE VOICES FOR PEACE]
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          1.

          Of Life, Of Lies,
          And a Call to Action

          Linus Pauling
          Linus Pauling Institute of Science and
          Medicine
          Palo Alto, CA


          There is little doubt among scientists
          today that our civilization would be
          destroyed in a nuclear war.  Discussion
          during the last few years about nuclear
          winter has shown that in addition to
          deaths by blast, fire, immediate radiation
          effects and fallout, survivors of the war
          would probably all die of cold,
          starvation, and pestilence.

          In my Nobel Peace Prize lecture in 1963 I
          asked if there were not some actions that
          could be taken to decrease the existing
          great danger of outbreak of nuclear war.
          It was a tragedy, I said, that so much of
          the world's wealth is waste don
          militarism.  Most of the economic problems
          we have suffered in recent years has been
          the result ofw asting somuch money.

          Glenn Seaborg and I recently participated
          in a press conference, at which Seaborg,
          foprmer head if the Atomic Energy
          Commission, said that the Soviet Union was
          eager to make a comprehensive bomb test
          treaty,but that the Administration had
          instructed U.S. negotiators not to agree
          to such a ban, which would hamper the
          development of new weapons.

          In April 1986, President Regan refused to
          meet with President Gorbachev to discuss
          such a treaty.  Paul Warnke, former
          negotiator at these talks, said that
          "since 1981 the Reagan adminsitration has
          made it clear that they have no interest
          in a comprehensive test ban.  This is a
          lost opportunity to curb the arms race."

          For a while I was willing to excuse
          President Reagan and to accept the
          apologies of others in the White House who
          would say "The President misspoke himself,
          but it doesn't really matter."  But on 16
          January, 1984, I heard him state: "Over
          the past ten years, the Soviets devoted
          twice as much of their gross national
          product to military service."

          This is a clever statement, cleverly
          worded to mislead almost all hearers, who
          will conclude that the Soviet Union is
          spending twice as much on military
          expenditures as we are.  Reagan should
          have added that the gross national product
          of the Soviet Union is only half what
          ours is -- and so military expenditures
          are essentially the same in the two
          countries.

          This is not a trivial matter -- it
          involves wasting hundreds of billions by
          misleading the American people.

          On 18 April 1986 a letter appeared in the
          New York Times by Roland J. Wall, with the
          headline "Of Whoppers, Tales and Mr.
          Reagan."  Mr. Wall criticized an editorial
          referring to "America's 'good-natured'
          acceptance of President Reagan's fondness
          for whoppers."

          "It is bad enough we have a head of state
          who consistently gets his facts wrong on
          public statements and that we have a
          public so hoodwinked by hype that it gives
          this habit 'good-natured' acquiescence,"
          Mr. Wall wrote.  "It is worse by far that
          the nation's foremost newspaper gives Mr.
          Reagan's misstatements, misinterpretations
          and outright lies the wholesome sounding,
          down-home label of 'whoppers.'"

          Not long ago an old friend of
          mine died, at age 82 -- George
          Kistiakowski.  George had worked in
          the explosives division of the National
          Defense Research Committee during World
          War II and afterwsard was head of the
          explosives division at Los Alamos. Later
          he was Science Advisor to President
          Eisenhower.   Upon retiring he devoted
          himself to working for world peace.

          His last article said that the
          construction of the first atomic bomb began
          the alliance between nuclear physics and
          what was to become known as the "military
          industrial complex."

          "As one who has tried to change these
          trends, working through official channels,
          I tell you as my parting words:  Forget 
          the channels!  There is simply not enough
          time before the world explodes.
          Concentrate instead on organizing a mass
          movement for peace such as there has not
          been before.  The threat of annihilation
          is unprecedented."

          And so, Kistiakowski told us, we must now
          take unprecedented action to save the
          world.

          I believe the world can be saved, that it
          exists to be saved.  But to save it we
          must have the great mass movement
          recommended to us by an old friend.

          #  #  #


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          [THREE VOICES FOR PEACE]

          2.


          When Peace Is a Risky Word 

          Betty Bumpers
          Peace Link
          Little Rock, AR
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          I wasn't part of the peace movement in the
          Sixties -- I was a housewife and mother of
          three in Charleston, AK (pop. 1,700) then,
          and I was busy with more mundane things.
          I do remember teaching "duck and cover" --
          having the kids crawl under their desks to
          protect themselves from nuclear attack.
          Only even I knew better than that, so I
          told the kids it was a "tornado drill."

          When my husband was elected Governor in
          1970, I found myself almost accidentally
          involved in a major public health effort.
          I led a statewide immunization drive that
          succeeded in immunizing 98 percent of the
          state's children, using a coalition of
          existing groups working together in their
          own communities.  In the process I learned
          a thing or two about grass-roots
          organizing.

          One day my daughter Brooke and I were
          driving back from washington and suddenly
          Brooke asked where we would regroup in the
          event of nuclear disaster.  I idly mused
          we would gather in Arkansas.   "Wrong,
          mother," Brooke told me.  "There won't be
          any Arkansas."  She listed the military
          installations and missile sites across the
          state.  She was right.

          And I began thinking -- the more I added
          it up, the crazier it all came out.   I
          knew that, as a newly-elected Senator's
          wife -- a position I use shamelessly for
          good causes -- I could reach other women
          who were coming to the same conclusions I
          was, that our children are in jeopardy.

          I spoke with a group of friends in
          Washington who regularly met around the
          kitchen table to discuss issues.  One
          woman remembered how her young son,
          watching a scene from the Mideast on the
          news, burst into tears.  "I'm afraid a
          nuclear bomb will go off and I'll die at
          school, away from you and Daddy," he
          cried.

          Back in Arkansas I started putting the old
          grassroots network together again, this
          time focusing the peace issue.  Groping
          for a name, we suggested Peace Links, and
          one of us objected that peace was too
          risky a word.  "If peace is a word we
          can't use, then something's really wrong
          in this country," someone else said.

          Peace Links came into being not as just
          another organization, but as a network to
          put peace issues on the agendas of other
          organizations -- everything from garden
          clubs and PTAs to League of Women Voters
          and American Association of University
          Women chapters.   Other Washington wives,
          Republican and Democrat, did likewise, and
          by the first Peace Day in October 1982,
          six months later, over 20,000 people in 10
          states participated.

          One incident marred that day -- Sen.
          Joshuah Denton (R-Ala.), charged me on the
          Senate floor with being a Communist dupe.
          But other Senators made clear that the
          time was past when redbaiting would be
          tolerated.

          Peace Links is not just a women's
          organization -- men are welcome, and many
          have joined in support.  But because
          women's voices gave gone unheard in the
          past, it is especially important that
          they be heard now.  Women think
          differently from men -- not better
          necessarily, but differently.  We think
          relationally, about our children and
          families, and what will become of us.

          Our leaders, by their nature, attempt to
          reassure, but this country's troubles
          almost always stem from a blind acceptance
          of false or misleading assurances.  Even
          Harry Truman admonished people to ask the
          hard questions and demand honest answers
          from their leaders.

          That's all Peace Links is, people working
          together to make their concerns heard.  It
          is democracy at its best.  I say, let's
          keep asking the hard questions.

          #  #  #