CONTENTS (10), Just World Campaign

• Court reserves decision on appointing Receiver and Manager to hold elections for One Nation in Western Australia. PERTH, Western Australia: A judge in chambers in the Perth Supreme Court building reserved her decision on October 3 on an application by some members of One Nation (Western Australian Division) (Inc) to have a Receiver-Manager appointed.
There were three lawyers at the bar table. It was stated that an executive committee elected in July 2002 was still in office, and elections were supposed to be held in October. The Receiver-Manager could preserve the assets, which included $44,000, and hold an election of office-bearers.
It was stated that when One Nation incorporated, its constitution made many functions subordinate to the national body. For example, any change to the state executive was subject to the prior agreement of the national body.

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This series begins at: http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont.htm    Also it was stated that an affidavit alleged there had been irregularities in the election of office-bearers and the supposed adoption of a new constitution.
   The purported actions to adopt a new constitution had not followed the constitution. The new constitution, leaving out the three members of [State] Parliament from the WA executive, but without getting national approval, was of no effect, it was argued.
   The lawyer for the applicants said that he had acted in a previous case in which a faction of the Australian Democrats was involved.
   An O.N. faction had called an "annual general meeting" on 12 October 2002; two meetings had been held that day. They had elected a steering committee, and a dispute arose as to which committee should run the party.
   Before a judge on 18 November 2002 there had been agreement on a spill at which all positions would be filled; afterwards the agreement fell apart.
   The funds had been $60,000, but today were $44,000, the judge was told.
   The Receiver-Manager would hold an impartial democratic election, after cleansing the rolls. This might cost $10,000.
   A lawyer for some of the respondents said there had also been a dispute at the national level as to who was on the national executive, and it had not met for a long period.
   The judge said that it seemed there had been no attempt to ask the national executive for permission in writing to change the state constitution. To change the rules there had to be a special resolution.
   It was said that if the Receiver-Manager was appointed, for four months the party would not exist. For example, who would answer the telephone? (There were about 24 in the public gallery.)
   The judge reserved her decision. Fri Oct 3 03
• My sister the political prisoner. Letter to the Editor: SURFERS PARADISE (Queensland) Australia: Democracy, free speech, justice for all Australians ... as long as your name isn't Pauline Hanson. In my sister's case, it's a crime to speak your mind, especially if your opinions espouse the will of many thousands of Australians. In this country, it's now a jailable offence to challenge the political power structures. Pauline's education is only from life experiences in the real world - single mother, successful small business owner, rural property owner, outcast politician and party leader. How dare she ask for accountable government? How dare she steal their votes? Well the precedent has been set and an example has been made. Our taxes have been spent getting rid of Pauline, rather than focussing on the murderers, drug dealers, paedophiles, child molesters and the like. We should all feel safe now that my sister is no longer a threat to society. Locked away in maximum security at Wacol prison, she is subject to all the rigid rules and regulations designed for dangerous criminals. The price of a hug from her children is the utter humiliation of a strip search. It's all part of the sentence. All I can hope is that your sister ... or your child ... or anyone you love doesn't ever try to speak out. Because democracy, free speech and justice for all obviously no longer exists in this country. Have your say..support the Pauline Hanson Rally - Thursday 16th October, Parliament House, Brisbane, from 10am. Tell Peter Beattie and John Howard what you really think! -- Judy Smith, judysmith@prd.com.au , Letter to Editor, "My sister the political prisoner," 1 / 204 Ferny Avenue, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, 4217, Australia. Mobile - 0412059741, October 06, 2003
• Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, says Blair knew no WMD were in Iraq. BRITAIN: The most damning claim in the diaries of the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, serialisation of which began yesterday, is that Tony Blair knew two weeks before the war began that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. It is a serious charge: that a government would commit the lives of its soldiers on a false premise. A similar charge was made on May 29 by the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan. In the months that followed Gilligan's report, No 10 and its director of communications, Alastair Campbell, relentlessly fought the charge in a battle with the BBC that only ended with the death of Dr David Kelly, in July. No 10 yesterday issued a flat denial of Mr Cook's claim but it has learned hard lessons from its confrontation with the BBC and, with Mr Campbell gone, has no desire to embark on another mammoth and debilitating battle. The excerpts from Mr Cook's diary over the last two years provide one of the most coherent accounts yet of how Mr Blair went to war. . . . In September 4 last year, Mr Cook records Mr Blair telling him: "Given the poor state of his conventional forces, it is not surprising that he wants to get his hands on nuclear weapons." That is a telling admission. Saddam's conventional forces were presented by the British government as the biggest in the Middle East, other than Israel, and a threat to its neighbours. -- The Guardian, Britain, "How Blair was puzzled by his predicament on the eve of war with Iraq; Cook's diaries expose dilemma of PM and claim he knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction before conflict began," http://politics.guardian.co.uk , by Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, Monday October 6, 2003
• In spite of torture reports, Australian officials have not visited Australians Habib and Hicks. AUSTRALIA: The Australian Government says two Australian men detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are being humanely treated, despite claims they may have been tortured. An Australian lawyer is considering taking the cases of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib to the United Nations Standing Committee on Torture. US based Richard Bourke has been working on the cases of detainees at Camp X-Ray for almost two years. He says the American military and former prisoners have told of prisoners being tied to a post and fired upon with rubber bullets, some being forced to kneel in the sun until they collapse and other tortures. He says Mr Hicks and Mr Habib have been victims. "People sometimes argue about the definition of torture, what they are doing clearly comes within the definition of torture under the international convention, but they are engaging in what amounts to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase," he said. The US tactic is to have a series of show trials in which people admit their guilt and plead guilty to vindicate the US policy." A spokesman for the Australian Federal Government says its officials have visited the men... the Red Cross has access to the prisoners, and both men are in good health. David Hicks's father, Terry, says he has also heard of torture stories and of his son being put under duress. "I have heard that they've been taking him out and firing rubber bullets and putting him into the crucifix position in the sun," he said. "Quite a number of other things - belting the bottom of their feet, there's quite a list of what I've gathered over the last 12 months." A spokesman for the Australian Federal Government says its officials have visited the men. The spokesman says the Red Cross has access to the prisoners and both men are in good health. -- Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online, ABC Television, "Allegations David Hicks tortured at Guantanamo Bay; Govt says Hicks, Habib being humanely treated," www.abc.net.au Wednesday, October 8 2003 [COMMENT: "Camp X-Ray" might not be the correct name now. COMMENT ENDS.] Oct 8 03
• Former judges, diplomats, military and human rights people urge Supreme Court to Act on Guantanamo. WASHINGTON (Reuters): A group of former U.S. federal judges, diplomats, military officials and human rights advocates urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to review the case of detainees held without being charged at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in the name of terrorism. The group filed seven friend-of-the-court briefs questioning the legality of the U.S. treatment of prisoners at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere under the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and international law. "The idea that American executive branch personnel, particularly military personnel, can detain people beyond the reach of habeas corpus is just repugnant to the rule of law," said John Gibbons, former chief judge of the federal appeals court in Philadelphia. Gibbons said he hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would "restore the rule of law" by authorizing a judicial review of these cases. The military is holding about 660 terrorism suspects from 42 countries at the U.S. base in Cuba. No charges have been brought against them but the United States has identified a handful it considers eligible for military tribunals. The briefs were filed in connection with two cases from Guantanamo Bay currently being appealed to the Supreme Court and one for an American-born Taliban prisoner detained in a U.S. Navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. The United States considers the prisoners enemy combatants and not prisoners of war who are granted a wide range of protections under international law. The first detainees, seized during the U.S. campaign against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, arrived in January 2002 at Guantanamo. Al Qaeda has been blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Ret. Rear Adm. Donald Guter, who was judge advocate general for the U.S. Navy from 2000-2002, said the war on terrorism should not be used as an excuse to disregard the rule of law. He said the war on terrorism could continue for a long time and it could be years before these detainees got a hearing. "For all intents and purposes these folks are condemned to a long time on Guantanamo Bay in the prison camps with not even an opportunity to have their issues aired, their situation reviewed by a tribunal," said Guter. William D. Rogers, a former assistant secretary of state who joined a group of diplomats filing a brief, said U.S. policy on the detainees was having a devastating impact on foreign policy. Once regarded as a model for human rights, he said the United States was seen by many as the "bully on the block." "These prisoners stand in a kind of purgatory. They are beyond the reach of the rule of law which is the very essence of America's role in the world," said Rogers. -- Reuters©, "Groups Urge Supreme Court to Act on Guantanamo," see http://news.findlaw.com , By Sue Pleming, Thur Oct 9 2003
• Another Pauline Hanson policy "borrowed," but it's decision time. AUSTRALIA: A thoughtful newsitem on some immigration aspects points out that when Pauline Hanson (One Nation founder, now in gaol) suggested Temporary Protection Visas to cover people whose countries were in serious strife from warlike activities, the idea was attacked as unworkable. (All her good ideas were promptly howled down by the Establishment, including the so-called "rebels".) The then Immigration Minister Phil. Ruddock said it was a completely bad idea. But later the Liberal-National Government adopted it. Now, however, the three years of the TPVs is up, and Mr Ruddock has recently been changed from that ministry. The difficult decision is to do what the original policy said had to be done -- if the country of origin had settled down, repatriate them.
   [COMMENT: PM John Howard never said so, but Mr Ruddock's "visas for $10,000 donations" must have figured in someone's thinking about who was to be the next immigration minister. The news media had publicised that Mr Ruddock has personally intervened, in favour of the "unwanted" and ineligible immigrants, more times than any previous minister. The Howard Government, through its dishonesty about "children overboard", has fostered the idea it is in line with public opinion on immigration. In reality, the Lib-Nats are close to breaking all records, and the supply of cheap labour from depressed parts of the world is accelerating. The union movement is sluggishly waking up to this. COMMENT ENDS.] Approx. Oct 11 03
• National Interest Newspaper. AUSTRALIA: Issue No. 31, undated, includes articles: "One scared kid: Australia's first political prisoner," "Why Pauline Hanson should not be in jail," "The Bill of Rights [1688] guarantees freedom of elections," "Public liability nonsense must be stopped," "Massive multinational assault on alternative medicines," and "General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); This will affect you." -- National Interest Newspaper, 79 Ferry St, Maryborough, Qld, 4650, Australia; Editor: Tony Pitt. Tel 07 4122 1412, Facsimile 07 4121 6562, Mobile 0407 379 880, E-mail tonypitt@bigpond.com. (No. 31, received approx 11 Oct 03)
• US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops; Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers, while British are condemned as too soft. DHULUAYA, Middle East: US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops. The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.
   Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: "They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons." Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district. "They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees," said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'."
   What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added. The destruction of the fruit trees took place in the second half of last month but, like much which happens in rural Iraq, word of what occurred has only slowly filtered out. The destruction of crops took
   place along a kilometre-long stretch of road just after it passes over a bridge. Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation, lists only 32 people. The petition says: "Tens of poor families depend completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death."
   The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation.
   When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: "We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us."
   Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen if they are, in fact, attacking US troops. Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: "It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth." -- Independent, Britain, "US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops; Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers, while British are condemned as too soft," http://news.independent.co.uk , By Patrick Cockburn in Dhuluaya, 12 October 2003
• WHY THE PRE-EMPTIVE FIRST STRIKES MAY WELL BE NUCLEAR; United States: the Strangelove doctrine. FRANCE: Mention nuclear proliferation and people think of North Korea or Iran: But what about the United States? The Bush administration plans to use nuclear weapons even against countries without them. It also intends to enrich its massive arsenal with new high-precision bombs.
   THE United States Strategic Command, which is in charge of the US nuclear arsenal, held a high-security meeting at a base in Nebraska in August to plan for the purchase of a new generation of nuclear weapons. More than 150 high-level specialists took part, among them members of the US administration, directors of the three main US nuclear laboratories (Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore), high-ranking Air Force and Strategic Command officers, industrialists and business specialists. However, Congressional observers were kept out (1).
   The aim of this exclusive brainstorming was to diversify the nuclear options available to US planners. The idea is to stock up on high-precision but low-intensity weapons, capable of penetrating deep underground to destroy bunkers and shelters. The Pentagon no longer limits itself to listing the missiles and bombers possessed by foreign countries that pose a threat to US security. It has gone so far as to draw up a list of 70 countries equipped with a total of more than 1,400 missile command posts or underground weapons of mass destruction installations (2). Those it considers dictators, hidden away in their bunkers, have given US defence chiefs a cold sweat. The crux of the problem is the reduction of the collateral damage that attacks on such sites might cause.
   So the US army is looking for a new kind of weapon that will "contribute to our ability to prevent attacks by deterring them", as Keith Payne puts it. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence until May 2003; then he joined a thinktank, the National Institute for Public Policy. He believes that weapons of this kind could deter potential enemies from building underground installations but says: "It's not worth the investment" (3).
   This would be the first time the expansion of one country's arsenal stalled the military efforts of its official enemies. We know from strategic history that this hasn't happened before. When one country accelerates its weapons programmes, especially if, like the US, it is seen as being aggressive against the weak, its potential adversaries necessarily make efforts to catch up or find a way around the threat.
   Other US defence chiefs share Payne's opinions. Pentagon spokesman Michael Shavers suggests that the US deal with emerging threats. Paul Robinson, director of the Sandia laboratory, says the US would have more chance of deterring attacks from adversaries if the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons became more blurred. He says the US should consider "combinations of conventional and/or nuclear attacks for pre-emption or retaliation" (4).
   We are a long way from President George Bush's statement - that the US needed unilaterally to reduce its nuclear arsenal - on 23 May 2000 during his election campaign, when he said "these unneeded weapons are the expensive relics of dead conflicts" (5). Partisans of weapons control, who have fallen from favour in Washington, have good reason to be worried, while US nuclear laboratories, which not long ago feared they would have to cut back programmes, anticipate good times. This nuclear strategy is not surprising. It follows from developments already under way. As early as September 1996 Bill Clinton signed a presidential directive revoking the commitment made in 1978 not to use nuclear weapons against countries that did not possess any.
   In January 2002 the Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, submitted a nuclear posture review to Congress. The idea of strategically developing a renewal plan for the US arsenal was already central. The document said that the US now had to face a wider variety of dangers from different horizons, not always foreseeable. The Pentagon felt that that the existing arsenal did not include precise enough weapons: the arms the US possessed, though extremely powerful, were insufficiently capable of penetrating underground. Hence the need for new weapons to destroy deep-level bunkers while limiting collateral damage. The report cited 1,400 subterranean targets. Conventional weapons were felt to have insufficient penetration to destroy these. To guarantee the longevity of long-range weapons as well as producing new nuclear warheads, it might be necessary to resume nuclear testing.
   Stripped of their Soviet adversary, Pentagon chiefs were desperately looking for a replacement enemy to justify the continuation of their programmes. The review listed seven countries against which new-generation tactical nuclear weapons could be used: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria (6).
   The conclusion of Jonathan Schell, a leading disarmament lawyer (7), was that "the new Bush policy clearly announces that the true prevention of proliferation is not to be any treaty but American attack" (8). This strategy is deeply worrying. It is a radical switch from the classic theory of deterrent towards a strategy of nuclear weapons use, based on rapidity and surprise. It will be a further challenge to the already ailing disarmament process. And it effectively promotes nuclear proliferation. The temptation to see nuclear weapons as being like any other, and therefore to use them, is not new. From the start, there were two rival views. Those who favoured the political approach insisted on the radical difference between conventional and nuclear weapons, which would supposedly frighten the adversary so much that they would never have to be used. Others presented nuclear weapons as military tools more effective than others, and did not rule out using them.
   During the 1950s President Dwight Eisenhower's team counted on the US nuclear capacity to compensate for the Soviets' larger conventional arsenal. Nuclear weapons were supposed to give you "a bigger bang for less bucks" (9). The graduated response strategy adopted in the 1960s followed the same line: it made explicit plans for the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. The same was true of the neutron bomb project (ultimately abandoned) in the 1980s. US strategic thought has always mixed political and military approaches to nuclear weapons. But never, until now, has the US proposed to pull the nuclear trigger not just first, but without prior provocation.
   What is a deterrent? An explicit threat to use nuclear weapons that would cause irreversible damage, to deter a potential adversary from resorting to any military attack, including one by conventional weapons. Seeming prepared to be the first to use nuclear weapons is essential to any credible deterrent. That is why supporters of the deterrent strategy reject the no first use position, which makes nuclear weapons a deterrent only to other nuclear weapons. The US and France both considered their deterrent good even against a conventional attack by the Soviets.
   But it was different when it came to non-nuclear states. From 1978 the US was committed not to use nuclear weapons against countries that did not have any. The five official nuclear powers (10) solemnly confirmed this commitment in 1994, when they extended the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 26 years after its original signing. This was a concession to non-nuclear states in exchange for renouncing all nuclear weapons programmes. The US is implicitly reneging on this commitment.
   Even more alarmingly this new strategic doctrine provides for the US to use nuclear weapons not only against a country with no nuclear capacity, but against one that has not attacked the US at all. To do this, the US would merely have to declare a preventive action, outside the legal parameters of self-defence, against a country it claimed to suspect of wanting to interfere with US security. Those in favour of the change in doctrine say that the war in Iraq would have been faster and smoother if the US could have killed Saddam Hussein in his bunker at the start of the conflict, using high-precision nuclear weapons. They had already put forward this argument after the first Gulf war in 1990-91 (11). By openly breaking the taboo that separated nuclear weapons (which have not been used since 1945 because of their apocalyptic nature) from conventional ones, these Doctor Strangeloves risk facilitating their use. Do they hope to resolve the complex situation in the Middle East with mini-bombs? You don't have to be a strategy specialist to balk at that. Not to mention the risk of targeting errors.
   On 6 August 2003, commemorating the 58th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the city's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, declared that the NPT was about to collapse, not because of North Korea's aggressive stance, but because of the US nuclear policy (12). Washington's plans would mean the end of a 10-year ban on development of weapons of less than five kilotonnes. It appears that the US dream is a policy of pre-emptive nuclear strikes, the atomic equivalent of the pre-emptive self-defence seen in the war on Iraq.
   Will the development of the new generation of weapons means the end of the moratorium on nuclear testing that the US announced in 1992? For the moment it is out of the question. Though Washington did not ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty concluded in 1995, it did make a unilateral commitment to respect it.
   In May 2002 the US promised Russia that it would reduce the number of active nuclear warheads in its possession from 6,000 to about 2,000. This was a sham promise: the US military retained the right to keep 10,000 warheads in stock, which could be reactivated in a matter of days if needed (13). For an inventor of arms control, Washington is remarkably stubborn in its rejection of any kind of negotiated disarmament.
   Arms control was the result of the strategically destabilising and financially ruinous effects of the arms race in the 1960s and 1970s. The idea was not to stop the race, but to control it bilaterally. The arsenals of the two superpowers continued to expand until the end of the 1980s, but at a much lower rate. At the start of the 1990s arms control became disarmament: commitments were made for the removal of intermediate-range nuclear forces, reductions in the main arsenals (SALT had given way to START, with reduction replacing limitation (14)), a total ban on chemical weapons and a reduction of conventional forces in Europe.
   This momentum was lost in the second half of the 1990s, with the rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the repeal of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (after it had survived all the vicissitudes of East-West confrontation), and the rejection of the treaty banning mines and the compliance protocol for the biological and toxin weapons convention. The extremely unilateral US is trying to retreat from its existing commitments (to which other countries are expected to adhere) and refusing to sign up to any new ones (which other countries are expected to honour). This is disarmament no longer negotiated, but imposed upon the weak as though they were the defeated party in a conflict.
   The US, like the rest of the international community, has always turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear programme, which is not a potential capacity but a present threat. After pressuring India and Pakistan not to develop nuclear weapons, and increasing pressure after their tests in 1998, the US has now accepted de facto their status as nuclear powers. We should note that all three countries stayed out of the NPT and are not in breach of any legal obligations.
   The US plans, far from finishing proliferation, risk restarting it. Potential nuclear states can conclude from the new strategy, and from the Iraq war, that it is better to have a capacity to respond harmfully to attack than to adhere to commitments outlawing WMD, if you want to stay out of the firing line of the US. North Korea, which officially admits to having nuclear weapons and refuses any kind of international control, is being treated diplomatically by the US. But we know what happened to Iraq, which denied having nuclear weapons and accepted unlimited verification of its statements. The seventh review conference of the NPT, scheduled for 2005, could be stormier than usual.
___________________
(1) Julian Borger, "Dr Strangeloves meet to plan a new era", The Guardian, London, 7 August 2003.
(2) William J Broad, "US presses program for new atom bombs", International Herald Tribune, Paris, 4 August 2003.
(3) International Herald Tribune, 4 August 2003.
(4) The Guardian, 7 August 2003.
(5) Speech to the National Press Club.
(6) Barthelemy Courmont, "Une nouvelle doctrine nucleaire americaine?", Defense nationale, Paris, July 2001.
(7) Author of the disturbing 1982 classic The Fate of the Earth, reprinted by Stanford University Press, 2000.
(8) "Disarmament wars", The Nation, New York, 25 February 2002.(Subscribers only)
(9) See Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Macmillan, London, 1987.
(10) United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, China.
(11) See Boniface, Contre le revisionnisme nucleaire, Ellipses, Paris, 1994.
(12) "Is Bush readying a first strike strategy?", International Herald Tribune, 18 August 2003.
(13) Georges Le Guelte, "Une nouvelle posture americaine: revolution dans les concepts strategiques?", Revue internationale et strategique, Paris, #47, Autumn 2002.
(14) The SALT agreements signed by the US and the USSR in 1972 and 1979 authorised further development, but with limits. The START agreements, 1991 and 1993, imposed a real reduction in the arsenals of both countries, from 13,000 to 6,000 warheads.
Translated by Gulliver Cragg -- Le Monde Diplomatique, http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/10/04nuclear ,
By Pascal Boniface; Pascal Boniface is head of the Institut de relations internationales et strategiques (IRIS), Paris, and author of La France Contre L'Empire, (Robert Laffont, Paris, 2003); October 2003, received Oct 14 03
• WHY THE PRE-EMPTIVE FIRST STRIKES MAY WELL BE NUCLEAR; Nuclear terrorism: the truth.
   FRANCE: No plane has ever crashed into a nuclear power station or reprocessing plant. But as far as we can predict, the number of deaths from radiation poisoning in such an event would probably be quite low, as long as the building had been equipped with anti-incendiary devices comparable to those used in airports, so that the fire caused by the plane's fuel could be got under control quickly.
   Research suggests that if a criminal were to detonate a dirty bomb (containing radio-active material), the explosion itself, rather than the subsequent radiation, would cause most of the deaths. There would also be considerable material damage. More importantly, the attack would have serious psychological consequences, with the danger of panic among a badly informed population suspicious of anything nuclear (military or civilian) and with hospital staff ill-prepared.
   But the consequences of such an attack cannot be compared to those of an actual nuclear explosion. A strike with a nuclear device would produce at least tens of thousands of victims, with lasting impact on social institutions and public infrastructure. Its psychological, social and political effects would be of a far greater magnitude and of a totally different kind, as well as being hard to predict. This danger is infinitely more serious than any other.
   Are there ways of reducing the probability of such attacks? For years, specialists have been suggesting techniques for avoiding aircraft hijackings. Though some are now beginning to be used, it has taken years for all these proposals to be considered. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has long pushed for an international convention requiring all countries to safely dispose of all radioactive material used for medical or industrial purposes on their territory. The United States has refused this, but nothing stops Europe from taking the initiative and signing the convention without Washington, as it did for the Kyoto protocol and the international criminal court.
   In accordance with the START agreements on nuclear disarmament between the US and Russia, many warheads have been taken out of service. But nobody knows how many of these have been dismantled, nor how much radioactive material was retrieved. We know only that the Russians possess at least 500 tonnes of highly enriched uranium and 50 tonnes of plutonium that are no longer used for defence purposes. This fissile material would be enough to make thousands of explosive devices. Even more alarmingly, it is stored in poorly insulated installations with unsatisfactory security conditions. This is one of the few means by which terrorists could actually produce an explosive device.
   To eliminate this danger it would be simple to dilute the highly enriched uranium with natural uranium. But, for financial or commercial reasons, only 200 tonnes have been diluted since the end of the cold war. Neutralising plutonium is more complicated, but technically possible. Yet since 1991, only 180 grams of fissile material has been neutralised.
   Another way of getting hold of a nuclear device would be to take advantage of the spread of arms, especially in countries such as Pakistan, Iran or North Korea. The policy of non-proliferation is an essential part of the fight against nuclear terrorism. Yet American neoconservatives have threatened this policy for some time, while European countries still do not consider it a priority.
   Terrorism is not unavoidable. Different policies in the Middle East and Asia, and not just military measures, could reduce the number of suicide attacks. Greater international co- operation against trafficking of all kinds, starting with effective measures against money laundering, would limit the material means available to criminal organisations. Yet Europe and the US have made only modest efforts to achieve this.The danger of nuclear terrorism is not new. We have been aware of the risk ever since nuclear weapons were invented, but until now, we have considered it too unlikely to warrant vigorous preventative action. If we now believe that it represents an imminent threat, we must urgently take draconian measures to make sure it doesn't happen.
   But President George Bush and his entourage have simply used the risk of nuclear terrorism as a scarecrow. They have not cited a single proven fact to justify their sudden alarm, nor taken the slightest measures to counter it.
   Instead, their main aim is to frighten US public opinion into accepting investment in anti-ballistic defences, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and ultimately the whole neoconservative programme, which is not what the electorate voted for. Nuclear terrorism is a very real danger with potentially catastrophic consequences. The role of world leaders is to reduce the likelihood of its happening, not to use it as an tool to govern by fear.
Translated by Gulliver Cragg -- Le Monde diplomatique http://MondeDiplo.com/2003/10/05terrorism , By Georges Le Guelte (Director of research at the CNRS) October 2003, received Oct 14 03

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Hived off with Microsoft® WordPad© on 31 October 2003, spellchecked with Ms Word 2000© (Regionalised spelling and grammar retained where applicable) on 05 Nov 03, No 11 separated off on 05 Nov 03, last modified 15 Dec 03 Made with monitor screen set to 800 x 600 pixels Translations: http://babelfish.altavista.com/ www.tranexp.com/ www.alis.com/ http://lingvo.org/traduku
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"Canyon" MIDI, console 145 x 40, 21 kb, plays for approx. 2 minutes. Console HTML code adapted from: Web Design for the Arts and Humanities, and others.
Doc. 251: URL = http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont10.htm