[sacw] Accidental Nuclear war video

[Harsh Kapoor]

23 November 1999
Dear Comrades sans arms in India & Pakistan,
As the Indian Bomb maniacs and Pakistani Nuclear strategic depth walas (in
reaction to them) plan & plot to develop & deploy weapons systems with the
Nuclear Bombs we need to keep up our public campaign work to warn about the
grave dangers of Nuclear weapons. One way to proceed is to demonstrate how
vulnerable the American and Soviet military machines were to accidental
nuclear war. Posted below are details of a campaign being launched in the
US, a campaign video is available for activists there. We should try to
obtain copies for screening across South Asia. Any takers.
best regards
Harsh Kapoor
(South Asians Against Nukes)

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Back from the Brink Campaign Launched
New Video Released

On January 25, 1995, millions of people were minutes away from being
incinerated by a mistaken nuclear weapons launch. Russian radar had detected a
US-Norwegian rocket that looked like a US Trident nuclear missile. The routine
notice that it was a weather rocket was lost in the bureaucracy. The black
suitcase containing Russian nuclear launch codes was already with President
Yeltsin when he was informed that it was a mistaken alert.

There have been many false alerts on the US side as well, including one in
which a nuclear warfare training tape being run on the command center computer
was mistaken for the real thing.

The Cold War officially ended after the Soviet Union fell apart eight years
ago. Yet today, the people of the United States and Russia still face the risk
of being evaporated in an accidental nuclear war. That risk is increasing
because of deteriorating infrastructure and the poor state of the Russian
economy.

There is something that can be done to greatly reduce this risk: take nuclear
weapons off of hair trigger alert. De-alerting nuclear weapons does not
require
a change in the size of the US or Russian arsenals. Nor are lengthy arms
reduction negotiations or legislative debates needed. De-alerting simply
requires a determination by national leaders to increase nuclear safety and
abandon confrontational nuclear postures.

On December 9, 1999, a major national effort to de-alert nuclear weapons, the
"Back from the Brink Campaign," will be launched. That morning, a new video
made by the Center for Defense Information, discussing nuclear dangers and how
de-alerting can reduce them, will be released at the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C. Speakers will include: Bruce Blair, one of the world's
foremost authorities on the subject and a MacArthur Fellow; former Senator
Dale

Bumpers, now head of the Center for Defense Information; Beatrice Brailsford,
Program Director of the Snake River Alliance, a statewide peace and
environmental group in Idaho, and Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.

The heart of the campaign will be outside Washington, DC. That's where the
pressure to persuade President Clinton as well as the House and Senate to
de-alert nuclear weapons must come from.

You can participate in the launch of the Back from the Brink Campaign by
showing the video at a house party or on your local cable access channel. Free
copies of the Back from the Brink Campaign video are available. To get one,
send an e-mail to srabb@e... or write the temporary campaign
office at
310 E. Center, Suite 205, Pocatello, Idaho 83201. After December 1, 1999, you
can call our toll free number at 1-877-55BESAFE.

You can also arrange a news briefing in your community around the showing of
the video. The campaign can send you sample press materials and other
information in a packet that you can use and distribute to local media.

The website of the campaign is at www.dealert.com