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---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 09:24:47 -0400 From: Alan Phillips <aphil@icom.ca> To: Eric Fawcett <fawcett@physics.utoronto.ca> Subject: Please post on lists. Eric, Thank you for passing on this very informative and important speech by Joseph Gerson. Please post the following: Re: Gerson speech. Thanks to Eric for passing on this very informative and important speech by Joseph Gerson. One good thing about U.S.A. is that a person can express such radical disagreement with his government's policy, and have little fear of reprisals. Amid this fine analysis of the Asia-Pacific situation there is one paragraph that bothers me seriously about the peace movement. Gerson said: > I should add a note about the second US use of depleted uranium weapons >in war. This is dangerous because of the apparent mid-term medical >consequences and the poisoning of the environment. Even more dangerous may >be its blurring of the fire break between nuclear and "conventional" >weapons which provides a greater semblance of legitimacy to the possible >launching of cataclysmic nuclear weapons by the USA or other countries in >wartime. It is the peace and environmental movements that are "blurring the fire break" by writing and thinking of the use of uranium-nosed projectiles as related to nuclear war. It is as unrelated to a nuclear explosion as is the use of radium (another uranium product) for treatment of cancer. There is no danger of the military of any nation confusing use of uranium-nosed projectiles with nuclear war. Governments are another matter: if a lot of voters have had the distinction blurred by the great emphasis that peace people are putting on the alleged effects of uranium, then political leaders might come to think they could get away with using a nuclear weapon or two on a "rogue state". Any evil effects of uranium projectiles (other than the immediate effects of a direct hit) are minuscule compared with the other evil effects of war with conventional weapons. Alan Phillips.
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