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52 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Important Book in the English Language, September 21, 2002
Amazon.com has an inventory of over two million books. If I had to choose the single most important book, the one book I would recommend to ANYONE, I would say that this is it. Dr. Helen Caldicott is an Australian pediatrician and human survival activist. She is frequently on the short list of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. As of the day I'm writing this, she hasn't quite won it yet. I personally think it's just a matter of time before she does. Would you say that you have a really rock-solid, thorough, complete understanding of the nuclear threat in today's world? Probably not. The topic has had a far lower profile than it once did, since the end of the Cold War. Well, don't you think you ought to consider updating your understanding? This book is user-friendly, it's timely, and it's EXTREMELY informative. You should buy this book for Chapter Two alone. When's the last time you read anything about nuclear winter, written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about? Don't you think you should be well-informed about the topic? How about accidental nuclear war? Did you know we came within less than 3 minutes of a major, accidental exchange of nuclear missiles, on January 29, 1995? How good an understanding of fallout do you really have? What about its specific medical consequences? As a voter and a taxpayer, don't you think you owe it to yourself, to your children, and to ME (and all the rest of humanity, obviously) to be as well-informed about these topics as possible?! The bulk of this book is devoted to discussing the often incestuous relationships between major defense contractors and our national government. Dr. Caldicott illuminatingly describes how nuclear policy can be not only influenced, but actually formed, directed, and driven by the extremely well-funded corporate forces of our arms establishment. She makes a number of excellent points about the dangers inherent in this situation. I will let you discover her brilliant observations for yourself. Even if you don't expect to agree with her views, you should at least hear Dr. Caldicott out. If you disagree with her, that's your right, but at least listen to what she has to say. In a totally non-partisan spirit, she also provides four helpful appendices, which I imagine people of any political stripe would find to be informative and helpful. These appendices include A.)Major U.S. Nuclear-Weapons Makers; B.)U.S. Nuclear-Weapons Control Centers and Government Authorities; C.)Locations of the Majority of Usable U.S. Nuclear Weapons; and D.)Major Antinuclear Organizations in the United States, Great Britain, and Russia. If you value being informed about matters of life and death, I recommend that you also seek out "The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War," by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich. Another user-friendly, informative book, which assumes no prior knowledge or scientific background, is "Planet Earth in Jeopardy: Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War," by Lydia Dotto. But again, the most important book on the topic, and the one I hope you ask all your friends, family and neighbors to read, is "The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex," by Dr. Helen Caldicott. Please buy it, and above all, please try to understand what Dr. Caldicott has to say to us all.
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48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A chilling call to action, January 9, 2003
When Dwight D. Eisenhower left the presidency in 1961, he issued a famous warning: "In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process." Just how prophetic Eisenhower's words were is documented in passionate clarity by Dr. Helen Caldicott in The New Nuclear Danger. She demonstrates in chilling detail how the American military-industrial complex, with the willing help of the Congress and a series of administrations, shrugged off the end of the Cold War and seized on the fallout from 9-11 to cement its hold on our government, our lives, and our futures. The U.S. is now spending far more on the military than we were during the height of the Cold War, and much of that on new or "improved" nuclear weapons. Nobody doubts that Caldicott is a fierce and passionate advocate of arms reduction, de-militarization, and of making "conflict resolution and peacekeeping our new priorities." What gives this book enormous weight and impact is the immense amount of factual research she presents to support her views. The book is full of hard information about the giant companies that comprise the military-industrial complex, their leaders, and their financial, political and personal links with the government. It's also replete with details about the grossly expensive and enormously threatening weapons systems currently being developed, many in contravention to the arms control treaties that once seemed to give us hope of limiting or controlling the proliferation and spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. This book, more than anything I have read, makes sense of our foreign policy. If in fact Washington is as profoundly influenced by, in the pockets of, and, increasingly, advised and staffed at the highest levels by representatives of the arms industry, our aggressive stance toward the rest of the world, our apparent contempt for arms control treaties, and our go-it-alone attitude all make perfect sense. One of the most worrisome points Caldicott makes is that the billions currently being spent on the "Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program" are not simply keeping our thousands of nuclear weapons in working order, but are being used for the research and development of entirely new kinds of nuclear weapons. Another is reminding us that the Bush administration's full-court-press towards its version of Star Wars is intensely destabilizing. She makes it frighteningly clear how easily our steps toward a (probably unworkable) missile defense system will be interpreted by our adversaries and even our allies as giving us a first strike capability. This, in turn, will almost certainly provoke a renewed arms race, with increased risk of mutual annihilation. If you believe that the existence of increasing numbers and types of nuclear weapons, in the hands of an increasing number of nations (of decreasing stability), is the road to peace and prosperity, then you will hate this book. If, on the other hand, you are concerned about the direction the U.S. is moving in, distrust nuclear proliferation, and would like to see your children and grandchildren living in a truly safer and more secure world, then this book is an absolute must. As Caldicott concludes, "We cannot continue to behave as primitive animals . . . conflict resolution and peacekeeping must be our new priorities." Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, Sept. 2002).
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58 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Conspiracy of Epic Proportions..., May 26, 2002
In her exhaustively cross-referenced book, Dr. Caldicott has comprehensively shown how the business side of the current military-industrial complex works. Basically, massive arms makers in the United States buy politicians and also get their own executives into positions of power within the government. With their minions in power, the companies get the Pentagon and Congress to spend nearly incomprehensible amounts of money on weapons and hardware that are often unnecessary for our country and for the world. The Bush administration (and she does name many names) does what it does in order for the right winged aristocratic elite to make absurd amounts of money. I used to think that the world was a complicated place where we armed ourselves to the teeth in order to stay safe. Now I know that the world is a complicated place where a handful of weapon-makers buy and dictate policies not to make the world safe, but to make themselves preposterously rich (and no I am not a bleeding-heart anticapitalist). Dr. Caldicott documents many examples of where business prevails over peace. What goes on would be laughable if it weren't so insidiously dangerous. This book documents a process that should be understood by anyone who votes, and by anyone who still gives a hoot about where our dying planet is heading. Although most of the book is concerned with details of the who, how, and why of nukes, it also shows how truly crooked politicians have become as they sleep in the beds of big-business every night. Do you know who is really running your country? As she quotes in the book "the only way evil flourishes is for good men to do nothing." And as an environmentalist and concerned citizen, I now see that while recycling and planting a tree are as important as ever, there are bigger, scarier elephants in our collective living room. Dr. Caldicott, I salute your ambition, intellect, and most of all your courage.
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