[align=justify]The destroyer of worlds

By Hamid Golpira
After the first test of an atomic bomb in July 1945 at the Trinity Site in New Mexico, Manhattan Project director Robert Oppenheimer described the event by quoting from the Bhaghavad-Gita, saying, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.�[/align] This is something to reflect upon, especially today, since it is the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Where is humanity 60 years into the Nuclear Age?
Paradoxically, many people both fear nuclear war and believe their countries’ must possess nuclear weapons to defend themselves.
In the 2005 Hiroshima Peace Declaration, delivered on Saturday, the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of that city, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba criticized nuclear weapons states for opposing calls for complete nuclear disarmament and encouraging trust in the bomb, saying, “Based on the dogma ‘Might is right’, these countries have formed their own ‘nuclear club’, the admission requirement being possession of nuclear weapons. Through the media, they have long repeated the incantation, ‘Nuclear weapons protect you.’�
The hibakusha (atomic bombing survivors) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their allies around the world are calling for total nuclear disarmament as mentioned in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Article VI of the NPT states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.�
Elsewhere in the Peace Declaration, the mayor of Hiroshima said that a consensus and harmony on the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of genuine world peace was taking hold all over the world, adding, “The keynote of this harmony is the hibakusha warning, ‘No one else should ever suffer as we did’, along with the cornerstone of all religions and bodies of law, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Our sacred obligation to future generations is to establish this axiom, especially its corollary, ‘Thou shalt not kill children’, as the highest priority for the human race across all nations and religions.�
There are seven declared nuclear weapons states, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, and Pakistan. The Zionist regime, which has never declared its nuclear status, is the eighth member of the nuclear weapons club. North Korea has also declared that it possesses nuclear weapons, but its claim has not been conclusively confirmed.
The United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France are also veto-wielding permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and official nuclear weapons states according to the NPT. This means that they do not have to commit themselves to immediate nuclear disarmament and can set the tone of the non-proliferation debate.
The United States and Russia both possess MIRVed ICBMs, which in plain English means they have intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles armed with nuclear weapons that can hit anywhere on Earth in about 25 minutes.
According to many scientists, the detonation of 7000 nuclear weapons would spread so much radioactive fallout throughout the world that it would kill every human being on Earth and would perhaps kill almost all life on the planet.
In the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union each possessed about 25,000 nuclear weapons. This means that their combined nuclear arsenals could have destroyed the world seven times. They have since reduced their nuclear arsenals. Today, the U.S. has approximately 10,600 nuclear warheads and Russia has about 20,000, so now they can only destroy the world about four times.
Some scientists say the detonation of 400 nuclear weapons would trigger a nuclear winter.
In the nuclear winter scenario, hundreds of nuclear explosions would set off firestorms in targeted cities and adjacent forests, sending several hundred million tons of smoke, soot, and dust into the atmosphere that would form clouds that would screen out most sunlight for several weeks. This would in turn cause a sudden drop in temperature and interrupt plant photosynthesis, which would destroy crops and cause food shortages and starvation.
The term nuclear winter was coined in the 1983 TTAPS study (from the initials of the last names of its authors, R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan). According to the TTAPS study, surface temperatures would plunge for a few weeks, perhaps by as much as 11° to 22° C (20° to 40° F). The TTAPS study set a threshold of 1000 nuclear explosions for nuclear winter to occur.
The authors of the TTAPS study noted that "the possibility of the extinction of Homo Sapiens cannot be excluded."
Other scientists have said that a limited nuclear exchange would only cause a nuclear autumn, but that would also damage crops and cause food shortages.
In addition, studies in the 1970s showed that the ozone layer that shields living things from much of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation could be depleted by the large amounts of nitrogen oxides produced by hundreds of nuclear explosions.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been used by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia. DU causes genetic damage, birth defects, cancer, immune system damage, and other serious health problems and is probably the cause of Persian Gulf War syndrome.
Physicians in Iraq have documented a threefold increase in childhood cancers and a fivefold increase in birth defects since 1990. The U.S. military used DU weapons in that country for the first time in 1991. U.S. forces used DU weapons in Iraq again in 2003 and are probably still using them in the war. There were unconfirmed reports that DU weapons were used in the assault on Fallujah.
The internet site Albasrah.net has a link to a site, http://www.einswine.com/atrocities/du/, which shows photos of Iraqi babies with horrible deformities. From that site there is a link to another site, http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.h tml, which shows more photos. Many physicians believe these birth defects were caused by the use of DU weapons.
After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, over 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area. Zones of Exclusion were set up, including the towns of Pripyat and Chernobyl, which were declared unfit for human habitation due to the high levels of radioactivity. It is believed that the area is so contaminated that it will not be safe for people to live there for at least 100,000 years.
In a violation of the letter and spirit of the NPT, the U.S. government is currently making plans to develop a new generation of smaller tactical nuclear weapons, dubbed mini-nukes.
In addition, U.S. officials have recently begun using expressions like “full spectrum dominance� and the U.S. Space Command is talking about putting nuclear weapons in space. Obviously, China and Russia are becoming extremely concerned. Due to this irresponsible nuclear brinksmanship, there is now the possibility of an arms race in space.
The nuclear waste generated by both civilian and military nuclear programs is also a major problem. In the United States, they are planning to establish a permanent nuclear waste dump, perhaps in the area of the Nevada nuclear test site, which is already contaminated. They are now trying to formulate a universal warning symbol, since the site will be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, when every modern language will most probably be extinct. Imagine that, a universal warning symbol that would be understandable for hundreds of thousands of years.
So, where is humanity 60 years into the Nuclear Age, and where are we going? Well, some people still have hope about the human race.
Mayor Akiba ended this year’s Hiroshima Peace Declaration with these words: “On this, the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombing, we seek to comfort the souls of all its victims by declaring that we humbly reaffirm our responsibility never to repeat the evil.
“Please rest peacefully; for we will not repeat the evil.�

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