From The Sydney Morning Herald, 11/16/04:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Bush-threatens-mankind-says-Caldicott/2004/11/15/1100384498193.html

Bush threatens mankind, says Caldicott

By David Williams

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr Helen Caldicott fears US President George
Bush's re-election will lead to Armageddon and she isn't sure if
mankind would survive another four years.

"This is the most serious election that has ever occurred in the
history of the human race, without a scrag of doubt," she told
smh.com.

"I don't know if we'll survive the next four years ... I don't think
the Americans have, on the whole, the faintest idea - and I have to
say also I don't think most Australians do either. But it's not just
the threat from nuclear war. It's the threat of what's happening to
the environment, the global warming which is occurring rapidly now, to
ozone depletion, to species extinction, to deforestation - it's the
whole thing."

Speaking from her son Will's Boston home, the Australian
paediatrician, who runs the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in
Washington, has just spent a frantic two-and-a-half months
criss-crossing America to deliver her anti-nuclear and anti-Bush
message.

She discovered the country was more divided than at any time since she
first stepped onto American soil in 1966.

Early on election day she was convinced Democratic challenger John
Kerry would win but reality soon set in.

"This is what I've been afraid of and I actually can't believe it's
happening," she said.

"The voter turnout was so high, which should have supported Kerry.

"I don't think I've ever felt so personally, politically devastated in
my life and that includes when [former president Ronald] Reagan won a
second term of office - which was pretty devastating for me as I was
so heavily involved in the anti-nuclear movement in those days.

"But this is worse, these people are much worse than the Reagan
people."

Dr Caldicott rose to fame in the American peace movement during the
'70s and '80s, her vehement antinuclear stance earning her many
enemies, some of whom saw her as an apologist for the Soviet Union.

She has long warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons, America's
"first strike" policy and missile defence.

In her 2002 book The New Nuclear Danger, she detailed links between
the Government and weapons makers and Mr Bush's will to militarise
space.

Mr Bush's win meant "endless war and I think it could mean nuclear
war", she said.

"In January 1995 we got to within 10 seconds of nuclear war when
[former Russian president Boris] Yeltsin and the Russians made a
mistake and thought they were under attack. The Americans still have a
first-strike policy to win a nuclear war against Russia. The weapons
are still in place both in America and Russia. Virtually nobody knows
that in this country and that a mistake or a terrorist takeover of the
command system - on either side - or errors being made could lead to
the end of life on earth."

In a website interview two years ago, Dr Caldicott was asked why Mr
Bush remained so popular.

She replied she didn't believe it - that the polls were inaccurate
[although that was before the invasion of Iraq].

Now she has to face the reality that more than half of Americans want
Mr Bush back, despite [or because of] his policies.

She puts it down to brilliance on the part of his campaign team, in
particular Karl Rove, and the ignorance of much of the population.

"They [the Bush administration] have been able to con the American
people with their extremely brilliant propaganda and brainwashing,
with the help of the media ... they consistently lie. On the whole the
American people don't really understand the dynamics of the right at
all. They don't know that Bush et al want to go into Iran next and
that they want to dominate the world militarily and that they want to
put weapons in space.

"I don't think they [the American public] understand. It is a mandate
for Bush to do absolutely anything he wants. I know people don't like
me using this word but they're fascists."

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Harry