The Real Nuclear Threats to Our Future
ECO FOCUS: Nuclear Waste 'Dumped' on Beaches
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/030605EA.shtml
................................................
As one looks to the future it does not seem likely that a small nation such as an Iran or a North Korea is likely to launch a nuclear attack on a major enemy -- unless its national leaders are totally suicidal. The responses from the major powers to such an attack would be devastating.
Rather the real future nuclear hazards are far more obviously:
1) the spread covertly of nuclear wastes as reported above or fallout such as occurred with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 (which has been cited as the source of numerous cancers of some of our finest CUNY students from the Ukraine).
2) the move through our loose transportation barriers by terrorists of stray nuclear materials from the former Soviet Republics -- which we have not bothered to collect -- (or from our 'ally', Pakistan, which has notoriously been sharing nuclear know-how here, there, and elsewhere) that could produce either a nuclear explosion in an exposed major population area or a so-called dirty bomb with more limited, but equally deadly effects on those exposed.
Needless to say our major efforts should be directed to:
1) preventing and detecting dangerous nuclear pollution.
2) preparation for emergency treatment of those exposed to dangerous radiation.
Is it out of order, then, in the light of such long-term hazards facing us to call for American troops to exit Iraq on the same time table as the Syrians departing Lebanon so that we might redirect our attention and funding to the real security threats facing us now and in the future? My Flatbush subway entrance still seems to be totally unprotected from whatever one might wish to drag into it and the Ides of March is rapidly approaching. Isn't it time that we stopped dancing to the previous generation's conception of how to fight a war and got on to the next's? Let us not forget France's disastrous dependence on its Maginot Line after WW1:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1491/pagetwo.html
For the benefit of my students who were not around then, the French built what they thought would be an impenetrable line of fortresses between 1939 and 1940 that they assumed would wall out Germany from a surprise attack. The Germans in the meantime had developed the new Blitzkrieg tactics of rapidly moving troops (shock and awe) which simply bypassed the French fortifications and easily defeated the immobilized French troops: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/blitzkrieg.htm
And let it be noted that walls have never been effective barriers against determined enemies. Peace-making is a far more dependable way to go. Ed Kent
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/030605EA.shtml
................................................
As one looks to the future it does not seem likely that a small nation such as an Iran or a North Korea is likely to launch a nuclear attack on a major enemy -- unless its national leaders are totally suicidal. The responses from the major powers to such an attack would be devastating.
Rather the real future nuclear hazards are far more obviously:
1) the spread covertly of nuclear wastes as reported above or fallout such as occurred with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 (which has been cited as the source of numerous cancers of some of our finest CUNY students from the Ukraine).
2) the move through our loose transportation barriers by terrorists of stray nuclear materials from the former Soviet Republics -- which we have not bothered to collect -- (or from our 'ally', Pakistan, which has notoriously been sharing nuclear know-how here, there, and elsewhere) that could produce either a nuclear explosion in an exposed major population area or a so-called dirty bomb with more limited, but equally deadly effects on those exposed.
Needless to say our major efforts should be directed to:
1) preventing and detecting dangerous nuclear pollution.
2) preparation for emergency treatment of those exposed to dangerous radiation.
Is it out of order, then, in the light of such long-term hazards facing us to call for American troops to exit Iraq on the same time table as the Syrians departing Lebanon so that we might redirect our attention and funding to the real security threats facing us now and in the future? My Flatbush subway entrance still seems to be totally unprotected from whatever one might wish to drag into it and the Ides of March is rapidly approaching. Isn't it time that we stopped dancing to the previous generation's conception of how to fight a war and got on to the next's? Let us not forget France's disastrous dependence on its Maginot Line after WW1:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1491/pagetwo.html
For the benefit of my students who were not around then, the French built what they thought would be an impenetrable line of fortresses between 1939 and 1940 that they assumed would wall out Germany from a surprise attack. The Germans in the meantime had developed the new Blitzkrieg tactics of rapidly moving troops (shock and awe) which simply bypassed the French fortifications and easily defeated the immobilized French troops: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/blitzkrieg.htm
And let it be noted that walls have never been effective barriers against determined enemies. Peace-making is a far more dependable way to go. Ed Kent
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
posted by Ed Kent at 10:28 AM
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