AFF/NUCLEAR: AS KILLING MACHINES NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE UNIQUELY EVIL

NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE UNIQUELY EVIL IN THE WAY THEY KILL HUMAN BEINGS

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are horrific examples of the destructive potential of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons cannot distinguish between combatants and civilians. They impose suffering of the most horrible kind on their victims, including on the yet-unborn through trans-generational effects. Civil and medical defence against them is impossible. They are uniquely evil in their capacity to exterminate all life on this planet.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE UNIQUELY EVIL

Nuclear weapons are uniquely evil and have no legitimate role to play as strategic armaments or as deterrents. They are weapons of mass destruction. The sheer scale of their impact, even if only a "few" such weapons are ever used, is simply unconscionable.

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE HAS DECLARED NUCLEAR WEAPONS AS THE ULTIMATE EVIL

The International Court of Justice has unequivocally condemned nuclear weapons. Calling them "the ultimate evil," its President pronounced the decision of the Court on July 8, 1996, declaring the threat and use of nuclear weapons "generally contrary to rules of international law applicable in armed conflict." In its historic decision, the Court unanimously called on all states to "bring to a conclusion" negotiations leading to "disarmament in all its aspects."

NUCLEAR WEAPONS INESCAPABLY KILL THE INNOCENT

MOVEMENT IN INDIA FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, 2001, Why are Nuclear Weapons Uniquely Objectionable?

Thus, unlike any conventional weapons of warfare, the damage caused by nuclear weapons is not limited either in space, or, even more devastatingly, in time. Nuclear weapons will leave effects transcending generations; - not only innocent people but their unborn children will be deeply damaged, as will be the world around them, by even a 'small' nuclear weapon. There is no way of ensuring that damage will not be done to bystander civilians, nor to limit the time for which damage will be caused. The damage by nuclear blast radiation is likely to be at least as grave if not more for the environment, where there will be violent and chaotic genetic alterations resulting for every life form on earth. The degradation of the local environment, with both short-term and long-term debilitating effects on the human communities, is likely to be even more drastic and less predictable than with the commoner man-made causes of such degradation.

Therefore, nuclear weapons are weapons that by their very nature are expected to target the innocent, and as such are quintessential terrorist instruments.

NUCLEAR EXCHANGE KILLS BILLIONS

Doug las Roche, 1996, former Member of Parliament (1972-1984); and was Canada's Ambassador for Disarmament to the U.N (1984-1989); and Chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Committee at the Forty - Third General Assembly in 1988; and presently visiting professor at the University of Alberta. THE ULTIMATE EVIL - THE FIGHT TO BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS // GJL

Agricultural production and the survival of natural ecosystems would be threatened by a considerable reduction in sunlight, temperatures several degrees below normal, and the suppression of precipitation. These effects would be aggravated by chemical pollutants, an increase in ultra-violet radiation associated with ozone depletion, and the likely persistence of radioactive "hotspots." This sensitivity of agricultural systems and natural ecosystems to variations in temperature, precipitation, and light, means that the widespread impact of a nuclear exchange on the global climate would pose a severe threat to world food production. The prospect of widespread starvation as a consequence of a nuclear war would confront both target and non-target nations. The human impact would be exacerbated by an almost complete breakdown of health care in target countries and the likelihood of an increase in damaging ultra-violet radiation. The direct effects of a major nuclear exchange could kill millions: the indirect effects could kill billions.