-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 7, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

Hiroshima Day protest to aim political guns at Pentagon

By John Catalinotto

The traditional anti-nuclear protest commemorating the horror inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities in 1945 will break new ground this Aug. 9. Anti-nuclear protesters plan a demonstration that politically challenges the Pentagon and its continuing development of new weapons systems of mass destruction.

The International Action Center initiated the call for a march and rally. It will begin at the Veterans Administration Building at H Street and Vermont N.W., and end at the Department of Energy at 10th and Independence.

Already more than 30 organizations have endorsed the protest. They include several Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day committees, Native organizations, Peace Action, Women Strike for Peace and the Iraq Action Coalition.

The targets of this new anti-nuclear protest are "conventional" depleted-uranium weapons, the new "bunker buster" nuclear bomb and the plutonium-laden Cassini space probe.

By raising these new issues, the anti-nuclear movement will express solidarity with the world's oppressed nations against the U.S. military establishment. It will also confront dangers to the world's environment.

The National Aeronautics and Space Agency plans to launch the Cassini space probe of the planet Saturn in October. The Cassini rocket will contain 72.3 pounds of plutonium-238 fuel. That is more of this dangerous material than ever before sent out into space.

Plutonium is both radioactive and a highly dangerous carcinogen. As little as one-millionth of a gram could induce lung cancer, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

As reported in the Summer 1996 Covert Action Quarterly, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said that an accident with the Cassini probe could cause "10 to 20 million extra deaths."

`BUNKER BUSTER' IS NEW N-BOMB

Anyone who thought the end of the Soviet Union would reduce the threat of nuclear war didn't reckon on the Pentagon's now-untrammeled aggressiveness.

The May 28 New York Times reported that Washington has developed a new nuclear weapon known as a "bunker buster."

Called the B-61, it's a hydrogen bomb fitted in a needle- shaped case made of depleted uranium.

The new bomb can burrow 50 feet underground before detonating. Then it can obliterate underground structures.

By developing this new weapon, the United States is violating the START nuclear treaty. William Arkin, whom the Times described as a "non-governmental expert on nuclear weapons," said the B-61 is "signaling to the Russians that we're still in the business of nuclear-weapons production."

It is also a weapon the Pentagon can choose to use against countries that are not nuclear powers, countries the U.S. propaganda machine has demonized--as it has Iraq, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It thereby raises the possibility of nuclear war.

The third new target for the anti-nuclear movement this August is conventional depleted uranium. This metal, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate effectively. It is poisonous and radioactive.

Made from the waste material of the nuclear arms and power industries, it is suspected of being a major cause of Gulf War Syndrome.

During the 1991 Gulf War, when DU shells hit Iraqi tanks, the DU burned, spewing tiny radioactive particles into the air. There they could be ingested or inhaled by millions of people in the Gulf region, including hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.

Once in the body, the particles become permanent "hot spots" of low-level radiation.

Organizers of the Aug. 9 protest characterize these so- called conventional shells as another type of nuclear weapon.

At the protest atomic-bomb survivors from Japan and radiation survivors from the United States, Native people opposing uranium mining and dumping, people from the traditional peace and anti-nuclear movement will join with people fighting cuts in their health and social programs to feed the war machine.

More information is available from the following groups: International Action Center, 39 West 14 St., Room 206, N.Y., NY 10011. Call: (212) 633-6646. Fax: (212) 633-2889. E-mail: iacenter@iacenter.org. Web: www.iacenter.org.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee, c/o Gray Panthers of Metro Washington, 711 8 St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Call (703) 222-7570. Fax: (703) 222-9196 with your endorsements.

- END -

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org)

Copyright © 1997 workers.org