PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

4 SEPT 2016

US TESTING NUCLEAR MISSILE THAT CAN INCINERATE MILLIONS,HO HUM

NO SANCTIONS, NO FUSS FOR MINUTEMAN-III TEST
(...IF THE DPRK HAD TESTED IT WOULD BE THE END OF THE WORLD)


As the US tests yet another (unarmed) Minuteman-III at Vandenberg Air-force Base, on the Californian west coast not so far from San Francisco, LA and Santa Barbara, the local – and global reaction can only be described as 'Ho, Hum'. Though the event is announced clearly on the website of Vandenberg Air-force Base, those who do not obsessively follow such events would be blissfully unaware of it.

The US regularly tests Minuteman-III missiles, capable of lofting city-destroying nuclear warheads anywhere from 100Kt to a megaton or larger in size, firing them from Vandenberg Air-force base to its missile testing site in Kwajelein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan and occasionally Israel regularly test missiles as or more deadly than the now aging US Minuteman-III. Like those of the US, these tests attract little or no attention.

The Marshall Islands, in whose territory the missile will land, has taken the US, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, the DPRK and Israel to the International Court of Justice in an attempt to show that their nuclear weapons programs violate international law.

A Citizens Tribunal in Sydney recently indicted the same governments for endangering civilization and human survival.

http://www.global-directions.c om/ipt.pdf
http://sydney.edu.au/arts/peac e_conflict/practice/HSP_Tribun al.shtml

If the DPRK had tested a missile with capabilities remotely close to the Minuteman-III,(or Russia's Topol-M, or the Indian Agni, or the Chinese DF5 or 41) it would have been figuratively speaking, the 'end of the world', with sanctions and UN Security Council resolutions.

No doubt there will be no diplomatic reaction at all to this Sundays Minuteman-III test.

There should be. The test comes immediately after the Geneva-Based Open-Ended Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament demonstrated clearly that an overwhelming majority of the worlds governments want to negotiate a multilateral legally binding 'instrument' that will outlaw nuclear weapons.

A vote on that will come up in October at the UN General Assembly. It will hopefully pass with a big majority, but there isn't a government that should not be voting for it. That includes the Australian Government, who has consistently tried to undermine what it calls an 'unrealistic' ban.

The irony is that, of course, the US and Russia, with a number of thousands of very powerful nuclear weapons each, and just under 2000 of them kept on high alert, able to be launched in 'a few dozens of seconds', really CAN end the world. They have come terrifyingly close on just over a dozen occasions.

The DPRK is not remotely close to this unique capability. Most of the DPRKs recent tests haven't even worked at all.

So perhaps, when the US (Or Russia, France, China, Pakistan, or India) tests an utterly lethal missile, one that we already know for sure works with terrifying reliability, there really should be an outcry, as the end of everything inches just a centimeter closer.

John Hallam
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