WINSLOW MYERS – If Lahaina carries an echo of Pearl Harbor, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, it also ties together the two largest challenges our species faces together, nuclear war and climate catastrophe.
Tag: Hiroshima
Zero Would Be Nice: on Oppenheimer and the TPNW
VICKI ELSON – We can safely abolish all nuclear weapons.
Oppenheimer Film Offers Great Organizing Opportunity
ROBERT DODGE – I attended this weekend’s Los Angeles opening of Christopher Nolan’s epic film, Oppenheimer. This must-see film provides a critical opening for an essential conversation about nuclear weapons and their role in our security and the fate of the planet.
It’s Time to Stop the MAD-ness!
JOHN MIKSAD – Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed 77 years ago this week. The two bombs the United States dropped on those cities killed some 200,000 human beings, most of whom were civilians. Comparing those bombs to the weapons of today is like comparing a colonial era musket to an AR-15. Now we can snuff out the lives of billions with the push of a button. When you consider the other species we’d annihilate, the number of lives lost “mushrooms” into the trillions. The result would be the destruction of a large portion of life on the planet.
How “Moral Disengagement” Permits War Atrocities
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Agent Orange, the most powerful of the herbicides used in Vietnam in Operation Ranch Hand, begun on August 10, 1961, contained dioxin, one of the most toxic substances on the planet. We dropped 20 million gallons of this and other herbicides on Vietnam, contaminating 7,000 square miles of its forests. Half a century later, we are fully aware of the consequences of this strategic decision, not just for the Vietnamese, the Laotians, the Cambodians, but also for many American troops.
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons is the People’s Job
PETER BERGEL – Any of our cities could be incinerated by today’s nuclear weapons without warning at virtually any moment, either accidentally or purposely. Yet this monstrous possibility has fallen off the radar of most citizens and politicians.
Hiroshima Unlearned: Time to Tell the Truth About US Relations with Russia and Finally Ban the Bomb
ALICE SLATER – August 6th and 9th mark 74 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where only one nuclear bomb dropped on each city caused the deaths of up to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Now, with the US decision to walk away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) negotiated with the Soviet Union, we are once again staring into the abyss of one of the most perilous nuclear challenges since the height of the Cold War.
Let’s Not Spend $1.7 Trillion on Our Nukes, a Group of N.J. Professors Says. Let’s Get Rid of Them, and the Threat of a Catastrophic War.
ZIA MIAN, ALAN ROBOCK and SHARON WEINER – On May 23rd, the New Jersey General Assembly approved Resolution 230, urging the federal government to pursue a broad range of measures to reduce the danger of nuclear war and to join the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. California and some American cities have already adopted similar resolutions to call for action in Washington on nuclear weapons. Here’s why.
Nuclear Weapons Ruined My Life, and I Wouldn’t Have it Any Other Way
FRIDA BERRIGAN – Nuclear weapons ruined my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I hope they are ruining your life too. Because that is the only way we are going to get rid of them. Editor note: This intimate, first person account is a must-read for everyone (and beyond) who cares about the fight to end the existence of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
Be a Citizen Diplomat – Travel to Russia in the Fall
SHARON TENNISON – We Americans must take diplomacy into our own hands — as our citizens did in the 1980’s!
Mayors for Peace Call for Early Adoption of Nuclear Abolition Treaty
MAYORS FOR PEACE – “We call on the cities around the world to unite in cross-border cooperation to pave the way towards the abolition of nuclear weapons.†This call made by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the establishment of “Mayors for Peace.†Since then, we have appealed for the establishment of a legal framework to prohibit nuclear weapons as we believed it to be essential in achieving their abolition.
This Is Our Lucky Day
DAVID SWANSON – This is our lucky day for quite a few reasons. We haven’t yet rendered the climate of this planet uninhabitable for our species. For those of us who are not in prison: we’re not in prison — and not because of some significant difference between us and many who are. For those of us not hungry or scared . . . (see note above re prisons). But there’s another big reason that this is our lucky day — a reason that is different in kind from these.
Massive Deployment of US WMD Spotlighted by Peace Group
MARTHA BASKIN – The ad pierces your consciousness and catches you by surprise. Plastered on the side of Seattle’s King County Metro it hurls you momentarily back in time, to a time when nuclear weapons were an imminent threat to our survival. Or did the era never end?
Obama Considering Nuclear Reductions Via Executive Order
RAMESH JAURA – Despite protests by Republican congressional leaders and the heads of Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, President Barack Obama is garnering wide support for his reported plan to implement at least a part of his cherished nuclear agenda through a series of executive actions during the next months before leaving the White House.
Obama in Hiroshima Paints a Peace Sign on a Bomb
DAVID SWANSON – President Obama went to Hiroshima, did not apologize, did not state the facts of the matter (that there was no justification for the bombings there and in Nagasaki), and did not announce any steps to reverse his pro-nuke policies (building more nukes, putting more nukes in Europe, defying the nonproliferation treaty, opposing a ban treaty, upholding a first-strike policy, spreading nuclear energy far and wide, demonizing Iran and North Korea, antagonizing Russia, etc.). Where Obama is usually credited — and the reason he’s usually given a pass on his actual actions — is in the area of rhetoric. But in Hiroshima, as in Prague, his rhetoric did more harm than good. He claimed to want to eliminate nukes, but he declared that such a thing could not happen for decades (probably not in his lifetime) and he announced that humanity has always waged war (before later quietly claiming that this need not continue).
North Korea, Following China and India, Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. So Could Obama
JOHN LAFORGE – North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea hasn’t got one usable nuclear warhead. The New York Times did admit, “US and South Korean officials doubted that North Korea has developed a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile that would deliver a nuclear payload to the continental United States.â€
30 Ways Chernobyl and the Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival
HARVEY WASSERMAN – The on-going radiation releases from jalopy nuclear reactors impact our health and undermine our eco-systems every day, threatening our future on this planet, and standing in the way of the Solartopian Revolution in renewables and efficiency that must ultimately save our planet from ecological and economic ruin.
Open Letter: Political Responsibility in the Nuclear Age
RICHARD FALK, DAVID KRIEGER (pictured) and ROBER LANEY – By their purported test of a hydrogen bomb early in 2016, North Korea reminded the world that nuclear dangers are not an abstraction, but a continuing menace that the governments and peoples of the world ignore at their peril. Even if the test were not of a hydrogen bomb but of a smaller atomic weapon, as many experts suggest, we are still reminded that we live in the Nuclear Age, an age in which accident, miscalculation, insanity or intention could lead to devastating nuclear catastrophe.
$56 Billion to be Spent on Nuclear Weapons This Year
ROBERT F. DODGE, M.D. – Following the arrival of spring each year, our nation renews its commitment to our priorities on Tax Day, April 15th, from education to health care, infrastructure and national defense. Included among these expenditures are nuclear weapons programs—weapons that can not and must not ever be used. The funding for these programs, while more transparent than in the past, is still quite secretive. From the beginnings of our nuclear programs in 1940 we have spent as a nation in excess of $6 trillion dollars on them. This Tax Day we will spend ~$56.3 billion more on these same programs. From Los Angeles County’s expenditure of $1.785 billion to our nations capitol at $107 million, these are monies that we can ill afford to spend.
Nuclear Legacy Calls for Action
RIVERA SUN – Nowhere is Hannah Arendt’s phrase the banality of evil more potent than at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The prosperous county -one of the nation’s richest – sits amongst the piñon pines and junipers in the high-altitude desert of northern New Mexico. It exists almost exclusively for the purpose of researching and developing nuclear weapons.
Scientists Set Doomsday Clock Closer to Armageddon
ROBERT F. DODGE, M.D. – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has just announced its latest nuclear Doomsday Clock moving ahead the minute hand to three minutes till midnight. The clock represents the count down to zero in minutes to nuclear apocalypse – midnight. This significant move of two minutes is the 22nd time since its inception in 1947 that the time has been changed.
Hiroshima – 69 Years Later
ROBERT F. DODGE, M.D. – On Aug. 6th, sixty-nine years ago, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing 80-140 thousand people immediately. Three days later on August 9th, a second U.S. nuclear bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, killing an additional 74,000 people. From that week to the present moment the world has been held hostage to the insane threat and potential annihilation by these weapons that now number in excess of 17,000 worldwide. However daunting, we have witnessed this past year some of the most significant progress and awareness of this threat and work to eliminate nuclear weapons, thus realizing the long standing desires of people everywhere, to live in a world free of nuclear weapons. It is time for our elected officials to support the international efforts toward this end.
From Helen to Hillary: Women in War
DAVID SWANSON – The relationship of women to war has changed dramatically in recent decades, even while remaining the same. But make no mistake, waging war at the behest of female politicians is no different than waging war at the command of male politicians.
Japan’s Deadly New ‘Fukushima Fascism’
HARVEY WASSERMAN – Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts. The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S. But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.
Connecting Globally, Acting Locally for a More Peaceful and Just Future
PETER DECCY – For 68 years the peace movement has worked to insure nuclear weapons will never be used in war again. Worldwide solidarity of peace movements is increasingly possible and is more and more necessary in the work for peace so war will have no place to take root, so the wealth of nations is directed to creating a better world for its citizens and not spent on preparations for its destruction.
It’s Us or the Nukes
DAVID SWANSON – Three years later a Soviet Lieutenant Colonel acted out the same scene, with the computer glitch on his side this time. Then in 1984 another U.S. computer glitch led to the quick decision to park an armored car on top of a missile silo to prevent the start of the apocalypse. And again in 1995, the Soviet Union almost responded to a U.S. nuclear attack that proved to be a real missile, but one with a weather satellite rather than a nuke. One Pentagon report documents 563 nuclear mistakes, malfunctions, and false alarms over the years — so far.
From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Approaching the Nuclear Tipping Point
DR. ROBERT DODGE – This week marks the 67th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the combined initial death toll of approximately 200,000 and thousands more in the years that followed. As Albert Einstein famously said, “With the dawn of the nuclear age everything changed save [except] our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Fukushima: “Biggest Industrial Catastrophe in the History of Mankindâ€
DAHRJAMAIL – Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.
Hiroshima/Nagasaki Bombing Myths Need Correction
RUSSELL VANDENBROUCKE — Every August, as the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approach, comments resume about American decisions at the end of World War II. Despite the passage of 65 years, heated opinions are repeated as fact and myths become immortalized as truths. Beyond distorting the historical record, wishful thinking about it leads us to repeat past mistakes in new ways against new enemies.
U.N. Chief to Visit Hiroshima on August 6
KYODO NEWS: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has decided to visit Hiroshima on August 6 as the Japanese city marks the 65th anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing, according to a senior U.N. official. The plan, expected to be formalized around July, would make Ban the first U.N. chief to attend an annual commemorative ceremony at the city’s Peace Memorial Park.