Notes

New Deal

I bristle with missiles Like a porcupine in heat I shall forfeit my prowess When I cannot compete – If they have ten thousand Then I must have more I need several assistants To help me keep score. I know they maintain A close tally on me But my troubles compound For accounts don’t agree.

The only escape From these seeming dead ends Is to scrap the whole business And treat them as friends.

– Murray Wilton

Déjà vu

“In 1982 the Swedish Government put forward a paper to the Committee on Disarmament calling for an interna­tional radioactive monitoring data ex­change to complement the existing International Seismic Data Exchange,and thus to serve further the purpose of verification of compliance with a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” — Derek Paul, Radioactive Air Monitoring, 1985.

“President Ronald Reagan has written to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pro­posing,:that experts meet to discuss improving the verification of agreements on underground nuclear tests.” — Michael Gordon, NY TIMES Service, Globe and Mail 26 Dec. 1985.

“Slowly, the nuclear-weapons powers seemed to be responding to the protests against the testing of nuclear weapons. …Scientists from East and West worked out a very detailed scheme for a world-watch system to monitor possible viola­tions.” (July, 1958) — Alva Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament, Pantheon Books, NY 1976.

“The superpowers have no reason to question the reliability of verifica­tion of a test ban; they have at their command a network of seismological observation facilities and,in addition, capacity for global surveillance by satellites using remote sensing instru­ments of increasing refinement.” — Alva Myrdal (ibid.)