Friday, March 13, 2015

NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #21

OMNI
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER # 21, FOCUS ON MARSHALL ISLANDS LAWSUITS.  March 13, 2015.

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.

 (See #1, June 14, 2007; #2, January 8, 2008; #3 May 16, 2008; #4 June 10; 2009,  #5 July 23, 2009, ; #6 Sept. 21, 2009; #7 August 29, 2010; #8 April 11, 2011; #9 August 4, 2011; #10 Feb. 27, 2012; #11 April 4, 2012; #12 June 27, 2012; #13 July 27, 2012; #14 August 11, 2012; #15, Dec. 4, 2012; #16 July 20, 2013; #17 Dec. 17, 2014; #18 Feb. 8, 2014; #19, May 25, 2014; #20, July 20, 2014)

What’s at stake:  On April 24th, 2014 the Marshall Islands filed landmark cases in the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court. 
The Claim:
The nine nuclear-armed nations have failed to comply with their obligations, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and customary international law, to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons.
They act for the seven billion of us who live on this planet to end the nuclear weapons threat hanging over all humanity.  From NAPF.

 “The failure of the United States to uphold important commitments and respect the law makes the world a more dangerous place. President Obama has said that ridding the world of these devastating weapons is a fundamental moral issue of our time. It is time for the United States to show true leadership by keeping the promise set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”  
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

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CLOSELY RELATED NEWSLetters:
 HIROSHIMA NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE (the annual ceremony)
 AUGUST 6/9 NUCLEAR WAR August 6/9 Nuclear War/Abolition (like this one below but focused on HN),
MARSHALL ISLANDS NUCLEAR ZERO LAWSUITS All Correspondence
Blog

Contents Nuclear Weapons Abolition Newsletter #21

Anti-Nuclear War Organizations: Get Involved
Nuclear Zero, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Marshall Islands Lawsuits at ICC
      and US Court, Sign Petition, Join the Coalition
ICAN and IPPNW International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and
      International Physicians for the Prevention of  Nuclear War (Nobel Prize)
Dick, Ground Zero Organization and Magazine:  End Trident Submarines
Dick, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Space
     Alert!
Democracy Now! Reports, Rally Outside White House Against Obama’s Nuclear
      Weapons Upgrades
Global Zero, Sign the Zero by 2030 Pledge for a World Without Nuclear
     Weapons
Council for a Livable World (CLW) (founded by Leo Szilard)

Diverse, Numerous World of Nuclear Weapons Abolition
Gusterson, People of the Bomb:  Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex
SGI Exhibit, 'Everything You Treasure-For a World Free From Nuclear
      Weapons' at Little Elm Public Library
 Dr. Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, et al., NYC Symposium
Amy Goodman with Dennis Moynihan, Democracy Now (August 7, 2014),
      
Hiroshima and  Nagasaki 69 Years Later
Shiloh Krupar, Satire of US Toxic State
Scotland’s Independence Vote and Nuclear Weapons

Bill Griffin, In Memoriam:  Jonathan Schell  ADD MORE






NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION
SUNFLOWER   Issue #208 - November 2014
View this number of Sunflower on our website at
www.wagingpeace.org/sunflower-newsletter-november-2014

Issue #208 - November 2014
Facebook Twitter Addthis
The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits are proceeding at the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court. Sign the petition supporting the Marshall Islands' courageous stand, and stay up to date on progress at www.nuclearzero.org.   [Thanks to NAPF these lawsuits are receiving international publicity and support.  –Dick]
  • Perspectives
    • Peace Leadership by David Krieger
    • How We Learned to Stop Playing With Blocks and Ban Nuclear Weapons by Ray Acheson
  • Nuclear Zero Lawsuits
    • Sean MacBride Peace Prize to the People and Government of the Marshall Islands
    • Next Steps in International Court of Justice Lawsuits
    • Open Letter in Support of the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits
  • U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy
    • Which U.S. President Cut the Most Nuclear Weapons?
    • Catholic Bishop: Do Not Modernize Nuclear Arsenal
    • Lawsuit Spotlights U.S. Charities that Fund Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program
  • Nuclear Disarmament
    • 155 Nations Sign Statement on Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons
  • Nuclear Testing
    • British Study Reveals High Birth Defect Rate
  • Military Industrial Complex
    • Weapons Companies' Profits Soar Along with Global Conflict
  • Resources
    • This Month in Nuclear Threat History
    • Third Edition of Speaking of Peace
    • UN General Assembly's First Committee
    • ICAN Civil Society Forum
  • Foundation Activities
    • 31st Annual Evening for Peace
    • Peace Leadership in Maine
    • NAPF Activities in Vienna
  • GO TO:



FREE WEBINAR ON NUCLEAR ZERO LAWSUITS:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2014

Nuclear Zero Lawsuits
Please join us on Wednesday, August 6 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a webinar hosted by Women's Action for New Directions (WAND). The webinar is free and open to the public, but you must pre-register at this link.
On April 24, 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) filed landmark cases in the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court against the nine nuclear-armed nations.
Speakers on the Webinar:
Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He will give an overview of the lawsuits and their current status in the courts, as well as a report on the civil society campaign that is happening in support of the lawsuits.
Neisen Laukon is originally from Rongelap Atoll (part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands). She works with the Marshallese Educational Initiative to share her story across the United States about the health effects she and her community suffered following the Castle Bravo nuclear bomb test by the U.S. military on March 1, 1954. Neisen was not on Rongelap on the day of the test, but was returned to the heavily contaminated atoll by the United States with her family in 1957.

Erica Fein, Nuclear Weapons Policy Officer at WAND, will introduce the speakers and moderate the hour-long webinar.
The webinar takes place on August 6, the 69th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Please join us to learn about this important campaign to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again. Click hereto register.
For more information about the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits and to sign the petition in support of the Marshall Islands' courageous action, visit www.nuclearzero.org.
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USA:   DON’T RESTOCK AND TEST NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT COST OF $1 TRILLION; DO NEGOTIATE THE END OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgYMZZm-ZoxyGYVbAxZOVT_g7feQSBlI-RzBc5WVxvsGVRb2T1tDKCfVylrcMr4Ezu4Ot1uFjzgljYor9opTn56fTnoMWRSM_tH045ThMmEwdILJWEDSX2lxBqwyA7DPJvKssrU8CHXW6gVPqX-e5bgPWkT763qrw8bDR0N7qDMnyxE-Ugwvw=s0-d-e1-ft
Dear Advocates,
Did you see NAPF President David Krieger's recent letter published in the L.A. Times on December 4? Here's what it said:
Restocking the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Would Send a Terrible Message
To the Editor: The U.S. can lead in modernizing its nuclear arsenal, resuming nuclear testing and, in general, continuing to demonstrate the perceived military usefulness of nuclear weapons. Or, the U.S. can lead in pursuing negotiations in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and achieve complete nuclear disarmament. ("New nuclear weapons needed, many experts say, pointing to aged arsenal," Nov. 29)
The first path will cost $1 trillion over the next three decades, encourage nuclear proliferation and keep the nuclear arms race alive through the 21st century. The second path will demonstrate U.S. global leadership, allow precious resources to be used for meeting basic needs and fulfill U.S. legal obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We have a choice about what kind of country we wish to be and what kind of world we will pass on to our children and grandchildren.

David's message is simple and to the point. We do have a choice. And we hope you will continue to choose a safer, more secure world.
By making a donation today, you will help:
·  Coordinate unprecedented legal actions to hold the nuclear-armed nations accountable to their legal and moral obligations of nuclear disarmament through the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits.
·  Mobilize millions (that's right - millions) of people to stand together for Nuclear Zero. You can sign on and join the growing consortium of experts, Nobel Laureates and organizations advocating together at nuclearzero.org.
·  Educate and disseminate accurate news about the costs and consequences of nuclear weapons policies.
Donate
Thank you to all of you who have recently supported NAPF! Here are just two quick highlights of what you have helped achieve:
Five Million Signatures for Nuclear Zero
Greenpeace Supports the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits
Thanks again!
Rick Wayman with daughter Lulu
Rick Wayman
Director of Peace Operations
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
P.S. Donate $100 with me and receive the newest edition of our inspiring quotation book, Speaking of Peace.


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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons: Action Plan
Along with global warming, nuclear war is the greatest preventable danger facing humankind. There are still more than 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world, and no comprehensive process is under way to abolish them. Opinion polls show that a majority of the world’s peoples want their governments to start negotiations to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Our challenge now is to transform this strong desire for security into fruitful negotiations and real action by governments.

ICAN—the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—was launched by IPPNW in 2007 and now has more than 300 partner NGOs in 70 countries. IPPNW is the lead medical NGO in this civil society campaign for a treaty to ban and delegitimize nuclear weapons, leading to their global elimination.

ICAN has developed a strong set of campaign materials and a vibrant website [www.icanw.org]; has built and strengthened grassroots partnerships in a number of countries; and has forged links with diverse civil society actors and organizations, with parliamentarians, mayors, and other civic leaders, and with prominent cultural figures. ICAN “ambassadors” include the Dalai Lama, anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-landmines advocate Jody Williams, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and many others.

IPPNW focuses, in particular, on the medical and humanitarian reasons for a global abolition treaty, such as the long term medical consequences of nuclear weapons use, the climate effects of regional nuclear war ("nuclear famine"), and the health and environmental impacts of nuclear testing and production and of an expanding uranium mining industry.

The ICAN action plan has three strategic components:

there is a humanitarian imperative to stigmatize nuclear weapons as fundamentally inhumane; banning them outright requires a comprehensive treaty-based approach rather than arms control;
the time is right to build stronger links and common cause with local, national, and international humanitarian, peace, human rights, environmental, and disarmament NGOs, and to develop a network of civil society campaigners all over the world committed to push for nuclear abolition;
non-nuclear-weapon states can and should take the lead to prepare for and negotiate a global treaty banning nuclear weapons, which will create an indisputable obligation for the nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their arsenals.
Detailed information about ICAN, facts and arguments supporting the Ban Treaty, campaign news and updates, and campaign materials can be found at www.icanw.org. Sign the ICAN petition. And learn how to get involved.

For more information about the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), contact John Loretz, Program Director, IPPNW, 66-70 Union Square, #204, Somerville, MA 02143; 617.440.1733, ext. 280.

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Ground Zero Magazine (October 2014).
This organization and its magazine continue the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons, especially the Trident submarines.  GZ’s philosophy is committed to nonviolent resistance to nuclear proliferation.
This number celebrates the life of one of its finest supporters, Catholic Worker Lynne Greenwald; describes its August 2014 Hiroshima-Nagasaki Weekend of Remembrance, “Music Not MADness”; welcomes Elizabeth Murray, its new member-in-residence; describes the trial of Trident nuclear weapons systems resisters, including their defense by the Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international treaties, and Article 6 of the US Constituion, and the judge’s minimal fine of $25; a review of the book Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Greatest Movie Never Made (2011).  –Dick


GLOBAL NETWORK AGAINST WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR POWER IN SPACE AND ITS MAGAZINE SPACE ALERT!
SPACE ALERT! (Winter/Spring 2015, #31, http://www.space4peace.org/newsletter/Space%20Alert%2031.pdf ).  By Dick Bennett.
     p. 5 “Integration of Space Warfighting Capabilities.”  Reprinted from Air Force Space Command.  When someone says to you, “I don’t like war,” what do expect to follow?  You’re right: but.  Here’s a statement by Gen. John E. Hyten, the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) commander:  “’We don’t ever want to go to war in space, but we need to be prepared to fight a war in that environment.’”  No war without preparation, preparation essential to war, preparation creates war.   Global Network, founded by Bruce Gagnon, has worked zealously to reveal to the world the massive US efforts to dominate space.  General Hyten continues, typical Pentagon euphemisms included:  “’The future of the United States Air Force is the integration of air, space and cyberspace to deliver singular effects on the battlefield in the most effective, efficient way possible and to allow the warfighters of today and the future to have unbeatable advantage on the battlefield.’”  GN has rung the alarm against the “singular effects” of nuclear war in space ever since its inception and for UN control of space, not the old national arms races and wars of the past. 
     I count 15 separate articles in this no. of the magazine, plus two-and-a-half pages of “Odds and Ends,” each of which is significant, don’t miss them.  For example, in one “Odds and Ends” we are reminded that the “new Secretary of War” (the truthful title, not “Defense”), Ashton Carter, in 2006 in an op-ed with William Perry, called for “the US to threaten a pre-emptive strike to take out a planned North Korean missile test,” less than two weeks after “the US conducted a successful routine test of a Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”  (Also an example Gen. Hyten’s double standard relating to war preparation.)  Another article (p. 11) reports on US pressure for South Korea’s missile defense system to be “extremely interoperable’ with the US system,” of which Japan is already a part.  Other articles on Space War: 
The following note ought to be printed in red ink, so immensely important is it to the future of our planet.  “No Weapons in Space Ban Remains Popular at UN” by Dr. Alexander Yakovenko, p. 6.    The Russians have led the opposition to the weaponization of space.  A treaty to that effect was first proposed by Russia and China in 2008 and the resolution eventually passed at the General Assembly “with only the US and Israel voting no.  The US refuses to enter into direct negotiations for such a space ban treaty claiming that there is currently ‘no problem’ in space.”  This is the old glass half empty or half full:  The most militarily powerful nation says no to diplomacy and world cooperation in space, but the UN is advancing its authority.
     Also on page 6 is “Long-Term Blank Check for War Spending” by Sarah Lazare which exposes the war budget for its egregious excess (“the US spends more on the military than the next 11 countries combined” and its hidden abuses.  The $554 billion overall for the Pentagon is only part of the expenses approved by Congress.  For the full text go to Common Dreams (Dec. 12, 2014).
     If peacemaking begins with truthtelling, as I believe, then every revelation of the realities of military power, enlarges hope for peace.   Many of the articles, as I have described, expose the machinations of military war preparation in space.  But others discuss alternatives for peace.  One is “Security for the Future—In Search of a New Vision,” the summary of a proposal for a more peaceful, less insecure world by “ammerdown,” a group in the UK. (www.opendemocracy.net/ammerdown-invitation). 
     Another is “US Military Land & Sky Grab” by Carol Miller (p. 15), who explains the three kinds of control of land and air through military base expansion and identifies the communities opposing them.  For example,
Peaceful Skies Coalition, national, US
Not 1 More Acre, Colorado
Tucson Forward, AZ
     As these two articles reveal, GN covers not only outer but all of space.  Thus this number of Space Alert! Includes an account by Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, of her arrest and trial for trying to take a loaf of bread and a letter to the commander of Whiteman Air Force Base in protest of the weaponized drones based there.  She also discusses the discrimination (against women, the poor) in prisons, in which she has had considerable experience.


Dozens Rally Outside White House against Nuclear Weapons Upgrade.  Democracy Now! (Feb. 2, 2015).
Dozens of people have rallied outside the White House to oppose President Obama’s plans to upgrade the nation’s nuclear weaponry. Obama has called for a nuke-free world, but has reportedly put the United States on pace to spend as much as $1 trillion over the next three decades to rebuild its nuclear arsenal and facilities. On Sunday, activists held up a full-size inflatable missile while calling for the verified elimination of all nuclear stockpiles by the year 2030.

 

SIGN THE ZERO PLEDGE
GlobalZero
AUGUST 9, 2014
Supporter, too many anniversaries pass by without a second thought.

But today [ August 2014] -- 69 years since the bombing of Nagasaki -- is an anniversary we can’t afford to forget. In 1945, an atomic bomb leveled a city and took 140,000 lives in a matter of seconds. The only way to ensure that it never happens again is global zero.

Sign the Zero by 2030 declaration
and reaffirm your commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.

Nearly seven decades is too long to linger under the threat of global annihilation. So to commemorate this important day, we’re launching one of our most ambitious campaigns to date -- Zero by 2030.

Today, from Washington D.C. to New Delhi, London to Islamabad, students, teachers, faith leaders, veterans, and citizens of all backgrounds are taking to the streets to ensure world leaders commit to a nuclear weapons-free world in our lifetime.

Join them by adding your name to the Zero by 2030 declaration. Together we can achieve a world in which the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happens again.

Sign the declaration here.

Onwards,
Erin Finucane
Global Zero is the international movement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
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DIVERSE WORLD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION

People of the Bomb
Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex
2004
 • 
Author: 
Hugh Gusterson
People of the Bomb
How the American military-industrial complex has invaded our consciousness to create consent for its programs
Integrating fifteen years of field research at weapons laboratories across the United States with discussion of movies, political speeches, media coverage of war, and the literature of defense intellectuals, Hugh Gusterson shows how the military-industrial complex has built consent for its programs and, in the process, taken the public “nuclear.”
Hugh Gusterson makes strange what we have taken for granted about living with bombs. People of the Bomb is a deeply informed consideration of what we desperately need to understand in new ways about ourselves and our political and scientific elites.
Catherine Lutz, author of Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century and Reading National Geographic




A WORLD FREE FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS. . . .

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhyckSa5ifQWbbDsGxeaVVATyG9_MbebTpWlD3QoG9C3SZkXsvRS9qm2mKNSjdZGoOfQf5Y-WnCmjuwsoxVxmcDaYVWcJ0SwUGEQu0U65QKGDn-6VFdkWDCrAb9FMWlEDLPpciD9LGNynB1JKJY5fh5fQzVwV-07oPzpueBDjKxfvopEd8Mc3CzUsWkdn4=s0-d-e1-ftSGI-USA presents
'Everything You Treasure-For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons'

The exhibit, presented and curated by SGI-USA, opens on March 15 and closes on March 22nd. The exhibit is divided into three sections, each one with a message describing a world of peace, free from nuclear weapons.

The exhibit's three sections span a total of 40 panels. In the first section, "What Do We Treasure?" the exhibit includes a display of human security and sustainability providing a safe and secure life for all. Also, the historical realities and continuing threat of nuclear weapons are highlighted. It concludes with an invitation to viewers to reflect on what is most important to them. The second section, "Learning More" includes a display on understanding the nuclear weapons issue from 12 perspectives: humanitarian, environmental, medical, economic, human rights, energy, scientific, political, spiritual, gender, generational and security. Finally, section three, "Changing Our Worldview" looks at achieving disarmament and next steps; realizing a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC); and an awareness that we ourselves are the solution. In the final panel, viewers are invited to share their personal commitment to action. 

The Little Elm Public Library is located within the Town Hall complex, 100 West Eldorado Parkway in Little Elm. The exhibit opens on Sunday, March 15and will remain on display through the following Sunday, March 22.Viewing the exhibit will coincide with normal library hours of operation.

An opening reception is set for Monday, March 16 with speakers from the Dallas Peace Center, the SGI, and Peace Action Denton invited to share their remarks. The reception is set for 6 p.m. at the library.


DR. HELEN CALDICOTT AND Upcoming Nuclear-Free Symposium in NYC
BG
thanks for forwarding this 
I listened to the interview with Dr Caldicott by Harvey Wasserman. Some pretty disconcerting news about the Ukraine with its 15 operative nukes with enormous amts of spent radioactive waste sitting nearby still operating there as this regional confrontation/warfare between Russia & the US is playing out. I will forward this on to others here to see if anyone locally would be interested in driving 21hrs from here to NYC to attend. Dr Caldicott who is now 77yrs old is saying this will be her final symposium.  David D

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 7:01 PM, BG <thinkcivic@gmail.com> wrote:
Symposium on a “Nuclear-Free Planet” in New York City at the New York Academy of Medicine from Feb. 28 – March 1.
bg
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Harvey Wasserman, The World Community Must Take Charge at Fukushima Campaign <noreply@list.moveon.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 4:34 PM
Subject: Helen Caldicott's Upcoming Nuclear-Free Symposium in NYC
    http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/20/helen-caldicotts-nuclear-free-planet/

 
   Helen Caldicott’s ‘Nuclear-Free Planet’ with Noam Chomsky and Other Great Minds Harvey Wasserman |
The great Dr. Helen Caldicott will present a major symposium on a “Nuclear-Free Planet” in New York City at the New York Academy of Medicine from Feb. 28 – March 1. The gathering will feature some of the world’s most important speakers and thinkers on the issue of nuclear war and how to prevent it.
She spoke about it with us at the SOLARTOPIA GREEN POWER & WELLNESS SHOW this week in a live broadcast that you can listen to here:
 Dr. Caldicott has been speaking, writing and campaigning against nuclear power and war since she was a teenager living in Australia in the 1950s. A medical doctor and one of the world’s leading organizers for a green-powered Earth, she once met with then-President Ronald Reagan for more than an hour, schooling him on the realities of atomic war....

This message was sent by Harvey Wasserman, The World Community Must Take Charge at Fukushima Campaign through MoveOn's public petition website. MoveOn Civic Action does not endorse the contents of this message. To unsubscribe or report this email as inappropriate, click here: http://petitions.moveon.org/unsub.html?i=27717-1491698-e==8fJ
Want to make a donation? MoveOn is entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
-- 
Protect Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Food

When Dr Spock lived with his wife Mary Morgan in her house in Rogers north of here he arranged to have Dr Caldicott come and speak. I had the opportunity to spend considerable time with her talking and her general attitude about our species chances of surviving were pretty pessimistic then. Listening to Harvey's interview with her here made it appear her present impression of our chances have become even more dark now.
This conference is not going to be uplifting but urgent that the message gets out. Again from this interview she gives us the impression that the news media are pretty much refusing to give her conference any coverage. I just wish NYC was not 21hrs away. David D


DEMOCRACY NOW, A DAILY INDEPENDENT GLOBAL NEWS HOUR
with Amy Goodman & Juan González
AUGUST 07, 2014< PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY >
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 69 Years Later
[Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima]
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Amys_column_default
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
“I hate war,” Koji Hosokawa told me as we stood next to the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan. The skeletal remains of the four-story building stand at the edge of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The building was one of the few left standing when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed—many instantly, and many more slowly from severe burns and what would come to be understood as radiation sickness.
The world watches in horror this summer as military conflicts rage, leaving destruction in their wake from Libya, to Gaza, to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Never far from the dead and injured, nuclear-armed missiles stand by at the alert, waiting for the horrible moment when hubris, accident or inhumanity triggers the next nuclear attack. “I hate war,” Hosokawa reiterated. “War makes everyone crazy.”
Koji Hosokawa was 17 years old in 1945, and worked in the telephone exchange building, less than 2 miles from ground zero. “I miraculously survived,” he told me. His 13-year-old sister was not so fortunate: “She was ... very close to the hypocenter, and she was exposed to the bomb there. And she was with a teacher and the students. In all, 228 people were there together with her.” They all died.
We walked through the park to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. There, on display, were the images of death: the shadows of victims burned into the walls of buildings, the pictures of the fiery chaos that followed the bombing, and of the victims of radiation. Almost seven decades later, Hosokawa’s eyes tear up in the recollection. “My biggest sorrow in my life is that my younger sister died in the atomic bomb,” he said.
The day before my meeting with Koji Hosokawa, I sat down in Tokyo to interview Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was 10 years old in 1945. “When Japan experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this was a greater catastrophe than anything we had ever known,” he told me. “The feeling of having to survive this, go beyond this and renew from this, was great.”
Now nearing 80, Kenzaburo Oe thinks deeply about the connection between the atomic bombings and the disaster at Fukushima, the nuclear power plant meltdown that began when Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The Nobel laureate told the French newspaper Le Monde: “Hiroshima must be engraved in our memories: It’s a catastrophe even more dramatic than natural disasters, because it’s man-made. To repeat it, by showing the same disregard for human life in nuclear power stations, is the worst betrayal of the memory of the victims of Hiroshima.”
After the Fukushima disaster, Oe said, “all Japanese people were feeling a great regret ... the atmosphere in Japan here was almost the same as following the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the war. Because of this atmosphere, the government [in 2011], with the agreement of the Japanese people, pledged to totally get rid of or decommission the more than 50 nuclear power plants here in Japan.”
Related


Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste by Shiloh R. Krupar.  U of Minnesota P, 2013.
Hot Spotter’s Report
How biopolitical militarism in the U.S. obscures the domestic remains of war
Using empirical research, creative nonfiction, and fictional satire, Hot Spotter’s Report examines how the biopolitics of war promotes the idea of a postmilitary and postnuclear world, naturalizing toxicity and limiting human relations with the past and the land. Exposing “hot spots” of contamination, in part by satirizing government reports, this book seeks to cultivate irreverence, controversy, coalitional possibility, and ethical responses.
The nuclear remaking of the world is the ambitious theme of Shiloh Krupar’s innovative and often startling new text. Dispatches from a natural world saturated with the toxic products of the U.S. nuclear state perform the uncertain futures, mutant ecologies, and new subjectivities of a post-nuclear America—an important contribution not only to environmental studies, critical theory, and nuclear studies but also to narrative form.
ABOUT THIS BOOK



Steve Rushton, News Report, NationofChange, August 18, j2014
The Scottish independence movement is heating up and one thing they are all against, nuclear weapons.












JONATHAN SCHELL, IN MEMORIAM
Bill Griffin, “Jonathan Schell, 1943-2014,” The Catholic Worker (Jan.-Feb. 2015).  An appreciation of the great peace advocate who “wrote in a spirit of hope that one day the US government would begin the world’s nuclear disarmament on its own.”


Contents of Nuclear Weapons Abolition Newsletter #20, July 20, 2014
Presidents Obama and Medvedev Commitment 2009
Plan to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Global Zero Movement
Two Reviews of Elaine Scarry’s Nuclear Monarchy


END NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION NEWSLETTER #21



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