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News :: Miscellaneous |
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St. Louis Group Organizes Against Latest Bush Nuclear War Plans |
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by Jon R. Pike
(No verified email address) |
14 Jul 2002
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A Local St. Louis Group Is Organizing Against The Bush Administration's Nuclear War Plans With Advertisements, Education Even Movies At A Popular Movie Venue. |
Late last year, the Bush administration announced it was backing out of the nearly-thirty year old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty it had with Russia. The administration has said that there is a new state of affairs and Russia is no longer the chief enemy. The administration has been talking up the possibility that terrorist groups or the countries that it has dubbed the 'Axis Of Evil (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea)' represent a clearer missile threat. To respond to this danger, the Bush administration argues it needs the anti-ballastic missile technology that this treaty forbids. But not everyone agrees with the administration's assessment. The National public affairs magazine, The Nation (the nation.com), devoted an entire special section to critics of the Bush administration's new nuclear policies. Australian Dr. Helen Caldicott is on tour with a book calling these polices 'The New Nuclear Danger.' In the St. Louis area, the Saint Louis Economic Conversion Project is trying to sway public opinion with educational forums, advertisements and other public events.
Readers of the June 12th Riverfront Times(http://www.rftstl.com)found a full-page text ad headlined: 'The End Of The ABM Treaty: Another Foreign Policy Disgrace.' The ad took the Bush administration to task for violating, 'a ratified treaty while arrogantly dismissing decades of foreign policy which the citizens of this country have helped shape.' The ad also took the U.S. Congress to task for forsaking, 'its responsibilities while nuclear policy is being moved in a lethal direction.' The ad concluded by urging people to write their US Senators, Congressional Representatives and the President to express their displeasure with the administration abandoning the treaty and moving forward with its missile defense plans.
Christian Holz, of the St. Louis Economic Conversion Project, admits that the ad was an expensive undertaking for the organization. He says it cost $2,500, even with the non-profit organization discount that the paper offered. But, Stolz says that the group decided to spend the money to buy the space in a newspaper, 'because it's so hard to get media coverage,' for his group's point of view.
Their point of view, from an economic view says Stolz, is that missile defense is 'absurd.' Stolz says that the costs and time being put into missile defense represents resources not being put to other uses. Stolz says that technology that's being touted for an immediate benefit in preventing attacks from terrorists or rogue states will be about 30 years in the making. Stolz says that from his reading of the budget projections for missile defense, 'about 95 billion has already been spent and there is about 240 billion dollars projected for missile defense. But there's almost always cost over runs for pentagon contracts.'
Stolz demonstrates the priorities of the Bush administration by pointing out that in comparison to the above amounts, the administration has only pledged 500 million dollars to Africa for economic development.
Stolz says his group isn't relying on a one-time ad to try to influence public opinion. Stolz says they are trying to network with other groups and activists.
One method they've been using is hosting educational forums. This last spring, they hosted Dr. Ira Shorr, a member of the 'Bank From The Brink' organization (wwww.backfromthebrink.org) that has been organizing and educating on nuclear and peace issues for several decades. Stolz's group also brought in retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Robert Bowman, a former presidential advisor on security issues who currently heads up a think tank called the Institute for Space and Policy Studies (http://www.rmbowman.com/isss/).
The St. Louis Economic Conversion Project also is also planning on working extensively with other local organizations to use the August commemoration of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to inform the public of their point of view of the Missile Defense Plans. Although Stolz says that the local chapter of the Women's Internationa League or Peace and Freedom (www.wilpf.org), 'will be doing most of the leg work on the project.'
Stolz says his group will also be using some tactics that aren't as heavy-handed in their approach. In Mid-August during midnight and matinee showings of the Kubrick anti-war classic, "Dr. Strangelove," his group obtained permission from the Tivoli Theater to set up a literature table to "educate people about the latest round of Strangelovian nightmares."
The St. Louis Economic Conversion Project is not alone in its anti-nuclear activism. Tha national left-leaning public affairs publication, The Nation, took a substantial part of its June 24th issue to issue what it calls, 'an urgent call' to 'end nuclear danger.' The doucment written by long-time anti-nuclear weapons activist, Jonathan Schell, says that, 'a decade after the end of the cold war, the peril of nubclear destruction is mounting.' The document specifically takes the United States to task for retaining and developing new wepaons. Physician and activist, Dr. Helen Caldicott is appearing in just about any medium she can to get people to read her book on what she calls, 'The New Nuclear Danger' posed by the Bush administration (www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/04/23_Helen_Caldicott.html). An organization called Progressive Portal(www.progressiveportal.org) has a form fax and e-mai letter ready-to-go to Bush, Cheney and Powell for anyone who wishes to avail themselves off this. This group's website says that over 2,500 such faxes and e-mails have been sent. In this climate, Wisconsin US Senator Feingold (http://feingold.senate.gov/) has felt bold enough to challenge the Bush Administration on circumventing the US Senate in unilaterally breaking the ABM treaty.
Can such activism find support among the US public? According to a Harris Poll conducted about a year ago only about 20 percent of those polled thought that the country needed to commit immediately to building a missile defense sytem (www.clw.org/nmd/harrispoll0801.html). Though the Bush administration has used the public's fear of terrorism, post-September 11th, to
push it's missile defense plans, less than 10-percent of those responding to the poll said that missile defense was a priority for the president and Congress to tackle in 2002 (www.clw.org/nmd/nbcpoll1201.html).
A senior fellow for for Foreign Policy studies at the Brookings Institute, James Lindsay(www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/fp/projects/nmd/gaq.htm) says that the public's response to the missile defense issue is dependent on what exactly they are asked. James Lindsay says that while a lot of polls, may indicate support for missile defense, 'such polls are misleading because they solicit people's views without regard to financial or diplomatic cost.' Linday says that when those issues are factored in, public support for missile defense declines. he goes on to say that the message from polls about missile defense is that so far it, 'only matters to those Americans most interested in building them.' What Lindsay doesn't say it that it also matters greatly to those activists like the St. Louis Economic Conversion Project who don't want to see them built. It will be up to those organizations to highlight any diplomatic, or financial cost in order to sway the public to their side. |
