OMNI HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE 2024 AUGUST 6 AND 9 (AUGUST 4 EVENT, Part III), 2024

OMNI

HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI REMEMBRANCE 2024

AUGUST 6 AND 9 (AUGUST 4 EVENT, Part III), 2024

Part I:  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/07/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-186-july-17.html

Part II:  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/08/omni-hiroshima-nagasaki-remembrance.html

OMNI HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI PROGRAM 2024 PART III

PROGRAM August 4, 2024
Theme:   What did we learn? 
The event occurred Sunday August 4, 2024, at the Omni Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology.  Part III was published as soon as the presentations could be assembled online.

CONTENTS OF PART III

Program
Presentations at Program
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Anthology #3 2024

PROGRAM Speakers and Topics
Theme:   What did we learn? 
Sunday August 4, 2024, Omni Center for Peace
6:00 p.m. meal prepared by Alex and MayDay Kitchen chefs.

6:30 – Program -- Kelly Mulhollan MC

Opening Song, Kelly and Donna Mulhollan.  “Talkin Atomic Blues” or “Old Man Atom” by Vern Partlow (1946). 

Founder of OMNI Dick Bennett. The Consequences of Hiroshiima and Nagasaki Bombings .  

Art Hobson. Topic: Destructive Power of Nuclear Bombs, NATO, the UN International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (UNTPNW).

Ted Swedenburg.  Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Israel’s nuclear weapons, and the Gaza war.

Gerry Sloan:“Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima.”  “A New Kind of Anthem.”

Matthew:   Reading  “Nuclear Frontline Communities’ Statement on the Nuclear Legacy”  by Benetick Kabua Maddison, Marshallese Education Initiative.

Music.  Kelly and Donna.

Names of Victims.  Karen Takemoto.

Close with silence in honor of the dead.

8:00 – Closing gratitudes – Gladys Tiffany.

TALKS AND POEMS

This third version of OMNI’s H-N Remembrance program includes the contents of the program.  This year’s Remembrance presentations trace the Bombs from their first use by the US to the testing of more horrific H-Bombs in the Marshall Islands to today’s imminent threat by wars involving nuclear nations (US/NATO/Ukraine v. Russia and Israel/US/NATO v. Iran (and Pakistan v. India, and China v.US and allies, and more).

Opening Song.  Kelly and Donna Mulhollan, “Talkin Atomic Blues”

Partlow was blacklisted in the communist witch hunt.  Pete Seeger picked up the song in 1948 and Sam Hinton recorded it in 1950.  The song is in the 'Talking Blues' tradition.  

I'm gonna preach you-all a sermon 'bout Old Man Atom, that's me
I don't mean the Adam in the Bible datum
I don't mean the Adam that Mother Eve elated
I mean that thing that science liberated
The thing that Einstein says he's scared of
And when Einstein's scared, brother, you'd better be scared

If you're scared of the atom here's what’s you gotta do
You gotta gather all the people in the world with you
‘Cause if you don't get together and do it
Well, first thing you know I'm gonna blow this world plum two

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Alamogordo, Bikini

Now life used to be such a simple joy
My cyclotron was just a super toy
And folks got born, they'd work and marry
And "atom" was a word in the dictionary
And then it happened!
The science boys, from every clime
They all pitched in with overtime
And before they knew it, the thing was done
And they'd hitched up the power of the gol-dern sun
And put a harness on Old Sol
Splittin' atoms, while the diplomats was splittin' hairs

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Alamogordo, Bikini...

But the atom's here, in spite of hysteria
Flourishes in Utah, as well as Siberia
And whether you're a black, white, red or brown
The question is this, when you boil it down:
To be or not to be! That's the question!

The answer to it all ain't military datum
Like who gets there firstest with the mostest atoms,"
No, the people of the world must decide their fate
They gotta get together or disintegrate
I hold this truth to be self-evident
That all men may be cremated equal!

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Alamogordo, Bikini...

Yes, it's up to the people, ‘cause the atoms don't care
You can't fence me in, I'm just like air
I don't give a hoot about any politics
Or who got what into whichever fix
All I want to do is sit around and have my nucleus bombarded by neutrons

Now the moral is this, just as plain as day
That Old Man Atom is here to stay
I'm gonna stick around, and that's for true
But, ah, my dearly beloved, are you?

OMNI Founder Dick Bennett.  The Consequences of Nuclear Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 8-4-24

     Our Remembrance of these bombings is substantial.  Before OMNI, there was the Peace Organizing Committee active against the Vietnam War and remembering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Though POC declined at the war’s end and Ronald Reagan’s presidency, this Remembrance continued.  Some of you have participated at various times. 

     These sixty years have given you and me a deeper understanding of the bombings and of air war in general than we had in 1945.  Then, during desperate war, the annihilation of civilian cities—from Hamburg and Dresden to Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki --was considered inevitable, even patriotic.   But as we learned more about the events, we have perceived those decimations and air war in general as not so  simple.

      What have we learned?    

We were told that a million US soldiers might be killed in a land invasion of Japan.  After the many horrific Pacific islands battles, especially the Battle of Okinawa, that figure seemed plausible and persuasive. 

          But since 1945, additional motivations for and consequences of the atomic bombings have been revealed.

     The Pacific War of WWII was an intensely racist war on both sides.  In US propaganda, “Japs” were every variety of vile vermin to be exterminated.  So diabolical were they, that, in the worst single violation of civil liberties in US history, the West Coast US citizens with Japanese ancestry had their land stolen and were transported to prisons for the duration of the war.  

     Our insisting on our enemies’ unconditional surrender and end of the divine Emperor stiffened resistance and lengthened the war.  Absolute surrender also led to the firebombing of German and Japanese civilians.     Once the slaughter of civilians became an accepted practice of the US Strategic Air force—from Hamburg and Dresden to Tokyo--, the atomic bomb eradication of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a foregone conclusion.

      A third motive for the bombing reinforced the total bombing habituation:  Fear and loathing of the Soviet Union.   By agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill, Stalin was scheduled to invade Japan as soon as Hitler was defeated.   But because the Western leaders did not want the Soviets to share control of Japan, the new powerful bombs became warnings to Stalin that the West would control the Western Pacific and global politics.   The atomic bombs were the opening violence of the Cold War and the cause of universal dread of existential nuclear war continuing to this Ukrainian and Gazan moment. 

     But the most profoundly harmful result of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was its initiation of the nuclear arms race.   Quickly the Soviet Union created their bombs.  Soon the US was testing 67 more powerful bombs in the Marshall Islands.  Now nine nations have the bomb, and the US is spending a trillion dollars to update its arsenal.

        Our program is our protest. 

Art Hobson. The Bombs, the Danger, the Treaty.  Prof. Hobson described the horrific destructive power of the Bombs, the nuclear weapons triad that consists of three parts: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers.   Any one of these 3 weapons systems can destroy our civilization.  He connected these facts with the threat of NATO, and the hopeful new UNTPNW United Nations Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear War (which the US has refused to sign).  Prof. Hobson has more formally composed his remarks into his forthcoming column for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Ted Swedenburg.  Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Israel’s nuclear weapons, and the Gaza war.

When our group was asked to speak about Gaza and Hiroshima, the first thing that came to mind were the comparisons that started to be made, about three months into the assault on Gaza, between the amount of tons of TNT dropped on Hiroshima vs. Gaza since October 7.

To date, this is the picture:

Hiroshima atom bomb: 15,000 tons of TNT.

Dropped on Gaza since October 7, as of late April, 70,000 tons of TNT, and we could assume by now at least 75,000 tons so five times the tonnage dropped on Hiroshima on August 6.

The total killed at Hiroshima: 129,000-226,000, while a recent article in the medical journal Lancet states that the true death toll could be 186,000 in Gaza.

But this is all somewhat abstract. I recall, I think it was in the 8th or 9th grade, reading John Hersey’s famous book Hiroshima — recommended reading at my school and maybe it was recommended or required at yours too. Like all readers I was horrified and shocked by Hersey’s descriptions of the dead and wounded. To refresh my memory, a couple days ago I had a look at the famous New Wave French film from 1959, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which features in its opening minutes, shots of the wounded and dead and the destruction.

If you too have memories, images in your mind, of how dreadfully awful was the bombing of Hiroshima, then consider this: for the last 10 months, the members of my group FOPNWA have been viewing images as awful of those at Hiroshima, every single day. We watch al-Jazeera English, we follow Palestinians based in Gaza and others on social media, some of us are in daily contact with people in Gaza, we see reports which barely are registered in the corporate media, and we are feeling just what you felt when you saw pictures of the Hiroshima bomb, but we are dealing with those images in real time, daily, day and night or as much of it as we can stand.

Nathan Robinson gives a vivid account of what we are seeing in a recent issue of Current Affairs (26 July), and I quote: “Little children’s bodies just turned into a pulpy mass. A beheaded toddler. A father holding pieces of his child in a bag. People burned and squashed and pulverized. Even from thousands of miles away, I feel such sickness and anger and pain.” He goes on to say that he can’t imagine what it is like for people, on the ground, in Gaza, seeing and feeling and experiencing it all first hand. 

Perhaps the bombs dropped daily on Gaza are not as terrifying as the atom bomb, but they do bring death and injury in truly awful ways. White phosphorus, much of it manufactured at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, can and does burn children’s flesh down to the bone. The MK-84 2,000-pound bomb causes massive civilian casualties when used in dense urban areas like Gaza; its explosion means "instant death" for people within 100 feet, and its lethal fragments spread for up to 1,200 feet. US corporation General Dynamic manufactures the MK-84; Boeing makes the kits used to convert the unguided MK-84 bombs into guided munitions. Israeli-made weapons, in particular the M329 shell manufactured by Elbit, are designed to spray high levels of shrapnel. According to surgeons working in Gaza, these are causing horrific injuries, particularly to children, resulting in what they say are an astonishing number of amputations in the kids who manage to survive. I have no idea why we call these things conventional weapons.

How has our group responded to these ghastly atrocities. Since January, we have demonstrated almost every week, for a ceasefire, for an end to arms to Israel, for a free Palestine. We brought a ceasefire resolution before Fayetteville City Council, unsuccessful but we plan to push for another. We’re working with progressive Democrats to promote a ceasefire resolution by Washington County Democrats. Members of our group organized a dinner that raised over $40,000 for World Central Kitchen’s efforts in Gaza. We’ve organized a poetry reading, the screening of documentaries about Palestine, a bike ride, an Easter hike that ran the length of Gaza, mural painting, social media campaigns, an art event for kids, and we make buttons and pins and t-shirts and we table at as many events as we can, including Fayetteville Farmers Market. (If you want to be informed about our events, see me after we’re done here.)

Perhaps you’d like to know about an upcoming event, the 2024 Mid-America Aerospace + Defense Summit, held in Rogers on August 21st and 22nd. A business-to-business networking and trade show, its sponsors include Raytheon, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, which all have weapons manufacturing operations in Camden Arkansas. These merchants of death manufacture an array of aircraft, weapons, bombs, and technologies that have been and continue to be employed to lethal effect in the genocide in Gaza, as documented by the American Friends Service Committee.  The University of Arkansas is also a sponsor, and Senator Boozeman, Governor Sanders, and Representative Womack plan to be in attendance. Our group is doing further research and planning an action — but perhaps y’all here could, at minimum, check out the Mid-America Aerospace + Defense Summit website and AFSC’s webpage, C­o­m­p­a­n­i­e­s P­r­o­f­i­t­i­n­g f­r­o­m t­h­e Ga­z­a G­e­n­o­c­i­d­e, and then write to the University of Arkansas administration to ask them why in bloody hell they are participating in a summit sponsored by weapons manufacturers deeply involved in massive killing.

Maybe, just maybe, if we push on this issue, we could help stop yet another mushroom cloud’s worth of tons of TNT from falling on Gaza.

Poems.  Gerry Sloan:“Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima.”  “A New Kind of Anthem.”

MIYUKI BRIDGE, HIROSHIMA*

(August 6, 1945)

It's the ekphrastic that never should have

happened, survivors slumped over the bridge

on the blast perimeter, hair singed, skin

suspended like tattered rags, everyone silent

except for the young mother wildly rocking

her charred baby, entreating it to nurse again,

to cry as loudly as it wanted; but the photo

is mercifully silent. The girl in a school uniform

with her back to the camera is Mitsuko Kouchi ,

who lived miraculously into her eighties.

Most of the others would last only a matter

of hours, staring at the photographer

as if begging him to tell their story,

as if forbidding him to tell it their story.

*photo by Yoshito MATSUSHIGE

A NEW KIND OF ANTHEM

(after Wilfred Owen’s

“Anthem for Doomed Youth”)

         by Gerry Sloan

Not all anthems are equal.

Some are meant for the brain

while others take aim at the heart,

and some are too elusive

to be rendered into art.

Hovering above the threshold

of hearing, they leave only

questions we dare not ask,

plus the image of a hand at dusk

drawing shutters on the snuffed

torch of another sunset, someone

listening in vain for footsteps

that would never return.

No mother ever bore a son

to go missing for this reason;

no father ever born was meant

to ignore the 6^th Commandment.

A century later we have different

doorways to doom, strange clouds

that bloom in the shape of mushrooms

at the push of a button, war whose victims

will wear no uniform now that generals

and gunpowder are rendered obsolete,

with climate change waiting in the offing.

We lift our voices today because we can,

because we live in a culture that still

permits it, not to deny our fearful potential

but rather to reaffirm our humanity

through the gifts of music and poetry,

lifting our spirits to a higher plane

so that hope can be reborn,

so that Wilfred Owen

will not have died in vain.

 Matthew Reading  “Nuclear Frontline Communities’ Statement on the Nuclear Legacy”  by Benetick Kabua Maddison, Marshallese Education Initiative.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ui=2&ik=dd75a4efec&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1807198386740650360&th=1914755b9855e178&view=att&disp=safe 

“Nuclear Frontline Communities’ Statement on the Nuclear Legacy”

Delivered by Benetick Kabua Maddison, Executive Director Marshallese Educational Initiative NGO Statement for the 2nd Preparatory Meeting for the 2026 NPT Review Conference 23 July 2024, Geneva

Honorable Chair and Distinguished Delegates,

As a son of Aelōñ Kein Ad, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons from 1946 to 1958, I stand here today in solidarity with nuclear frontline communities around the world, urging this body and nations around the world to end all aspects of nuclear production.   While our cultures and languages are different, nuclear frontline communities’ experiences with various aspects of the nuclear legacy–uranium mining, milling, the nuclear fuel chain, weapons development, use, testing, and radioactive waste disposal–are similar. We continue to be forced to endure their devastating and ongoing consequences to our peoples’ health, environment, and culture.

It is essential to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples around the world have been severely and disproportionately affected by the nuclear legacy.

The uranium used by the United States in the Manhattan Project to produce the first atomic weapons that ultimately killed hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was predominately mined and sorted by people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo using their bare hands.   Since then, the nuclear legacy has affected millions of people worldwide.

Uranium mining – the essential first step in every nuclear activity – has taken a terrible toll on Indigenous communities in many parts of the world. Approximately 70 percent of the world’s uranium production occurs on lands inhabited by Indigenous Peoples, where it has affected human health, lands, water, and air.

We must promote self-determined development and respect Indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge, cultures, and practices that contribute to sustainable and equitable development. Free and informed consent must be respected.

As frontline nuclear-affected community members, we also know that women and children are often the first to feel the effects of radiation exposure. Women across the world who suffered the consequences of nuclear weapons testing have been blamed for miscarriages, stillbirths, and for bearing children with disabilities, while the nuclear-armed states have denied responsibility or ignored these realities. The nuclear arms race, as a product of patriarchy, militarism, and colonialism, has significantly contributed to reproductive violence in different corners of the world.

In the Marshall Islands, where the first prolonged nuclear weapons testing occurred from 1946 to 1958, women gave birth to what they called jellyfish babies because they had no words to describe newborns without bones or with translucent skin. It was also Marshallese women and children who were first diagnosed with thyroid tumors after exposure. In Kazakhstan, where more than 400 nuclear weapons were tested from 1949 until 1989, cases of female breast cancer and childhood cancer have been higher among groups exposed to ionizing radiation. In the southwestern United States, a University of New Mexico birth cohort study in 2023 showed radioactive elements in pregnant women and their babies.

The visible impact on frontline community members' physical health and well-being is also compounded by the invisible. Our communities have borne the brunt of psychological consequences, which are largely ignored or purposely normalized.

Additionally, the cultures and environment of nuclear frontline communities have been altered due to military occupation and the nuclear legacy. Nuclear frontline communities are tied closely to our ancestral lands. It is where we acquire our identity. The destruction and contamination of lands left behind by the nuclear legacy mean that people cannot grow or depend on traditional foods. Many communities have no alternative food options or water sources.

The impact of nuclear weapons extends beyond the immediate devastation they cause. The manufacturing process itself, including the handling and disposal of depleted uranium and other radioactive waste, contributes to environmental degradation and poses serious health risks to public health. Communities near production and testing sites often face disproportionate exposure to these hazards, exacerbating existing social and economic inequalities.

This is the slow violence of the nuclear legacy. It must be recognized as such, and it must end.

We are also deeply concerned about the dumping of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, which we see as an act of transboundary environmental harm.

We cannot eliminate nuclear weapons as long as we allow the commercial use of uranium and plutonium and parade nuclear energy as a safe, clean climate solution.

Nuclear-armed states and their allies must be transparent with the public about the true impact of the nuclear legacy. More education on the immediate and ongoing consequences of the nuclear legacy must be made available to the public. Frontline community members and their organizations must lead in educating the world about these threats.

Nuclear-armed states and their allies must take significant steps towards the disarmament pillar and obligations outlined in Article VI of the NPT and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to finally end the nuclear arms race. Therefore, nuclear weapons states and their allies must stop their overreliance on nuclear deterrence. For decades, nuclear frontline communities have been reminding you every day that nuclear weapons do not make us safe, and they do not keep the peace.

The United Nations recognized Indigenous rights in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Yet Indigenous lands continue to be poisoned, and Indigenous peoples are still dying from cancer caused by radioactivity. We must go beyond words and recognize this exploitation for what it is: a violation of human rights.

Honorable Chair and Distinguished Delegates, we know firsthand the cost of the nuclear legacy, and it is one of enormous destruction of human and animal lives, ecosystems, and our shared mother earth. The status quo is unacceptable. We must address these issues with urgency and commitment.

Thank you.
Sincerely, Benetick Kabua Maddison, Executive Director, Marshallese Educational Initiative
MORE https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/npt/prepcom24/statements/23July_MEI.pdf

OMNI HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI ANTHOLOGY 2024, PART III (16)

The following excellent articles arrived after our August 4 program.  Together with the two preceding H-N 2024 Anthologies, OMNI offers a world-class anthology of pro-peace, anti-nuclear weapons, nuclear abolition writings. GET THE LINKS

“US Atomic Bombing Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki Remembered” By Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Popular Resistance.org (8-9-24).  Over 50,000 people, including representatives from 109 countries, joined an event marking the 79th anniversary of the US’s bombing of Hiroshima. The main ceremony was held at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday, August 6. A total of 344,306 people were killed during the bombing as well as in the aftermath. Despite knowing the widespread destruction and irreversible losses caused by the attack, the US dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just three days later on August 9, killing 40,000 people immediately. The number of people killed in Nagasaki would double that figure... -more-

John Hersey: Hiroshima.  American Committee for US-Russia Accord (Aug 06, 2024).   Today marks 79 years since the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. To mark the occasion, we are providing a link to John Hersey’s groundbreaking report from the scene, published August 23, 1946 in The New Yorker.
VIDEO: How many people were killed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  American Committee for US-Russia Accord (August 06, 2024).   The aftermath of the bombings was the complete devastation of both cities in which countless numbers of people lost their lives.    Read in browser »

Brett Wilkins.    August 06, 2024.

"The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," said one hibakusha. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they?"
As the number of people who survived the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rapidly dwindles 79 years after the attacks, hibakusha—the Japanese word for the survivors—and others are imploring humanity to do everything possible to avert another nuclear war.
"People still don't get it. The atomic bomb isn't a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," Shigeaki Mori, who was an 8-year-old boy on his way to school on the morning of August 6, 1945, toldThe New York Times. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that."

US And UK To Boycott Nagasaki Memorial After Israel DisinvitedBy Imran Mulla, Middle East Eye.   Popular Resistance.org (8-9-24).  The American and British ambassadors to Japan have announced they will skip an upcoming ceremony commemorating the victims of the US’s 1945 atomic bombing because the city’s mayor did not invite the Israeli ambassador. The Russian and Belarusian ambassadors have also been excluded from the event this Friday by Japanese authorities. The Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony is intended to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, with many more later dying from radiation poisoning.  -more-

BOOK FORUM: WORLD BEYOND WAR ON NUCLEAR FALLOUT AND RADIATION
Many of the effects of nuclear fallout and radiation have been intentionally hidden by governments around the world. Public knowledge has been driven by activists demanding recognition and justice. Many Downwinders have fought for years, in the press and in the courts, to have their health and environmental concerns taken seriously. Just as radiation is invisible, many of these stories continue to be unseen.

Here's a book -- and an online book club with the editor and some of the authors-- that tells these stories.

From 2017 to 2020, Jacob Hamblin and Linda Richards facilitated the Oregon State University Downwinders Project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, to support research and scholarship on the Downwinders cases near the Hanford nuclear site in Washington. Additionally, each summer the project team sponsored a workshop that brought a variety of stakeholders together to explore the science, history, and lived history of radiation exposure. These workshops took a broad view of nuclear contamination, beyond Hanford, beyond the United States, and beyond academia. Community members and activists presented their testimonies and creative work alongside scholars studying exposure worldwide.

Making the Unseen Visible collects some of the best work arising from the project and its workshops. Scholarly research chapters and reflective essays cover topics and experiences ranging from colonial nuclear testing in North Africa to uranium mining in the Navajo Nation and battles over public memory around Hanford. Scholarship on nuclear topics has largely happened on a case study basis, focusing on individual disasters or locations. Making the Unseen Visible brings a variety of current community and scholarly work together to create a clearer, larger web uniting nuclear humanities research across time and geography.

LEARN MORE AND RESERVE YOUR SPOT HERE.

In September 2024, World BEYOND War will be holding a weekly discussion each of four weeks of Making the Unseen Visible: Science and the Contested Histories of Radiation Exposure, with the co-editor Linda Marie Richards and various contributing authors. When you register for the club, we'll send you a paperback edition of the book.

We'll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom details to access the discussions.

When: For one hour on four Sundays, September 1, 8, 15, 22, 2024 at 18:00 UTC. That's Sunday at 8 a.m. in Honolulu, 11 a.m. in Los Angeles, 12 noon in Mexico City, 2 pm in New York, 7 pm in Yaoundé, 8 pm in Berlin, 9:30 pm in Tehran.

SIGN UP NOW TO RECEIVE THE BOOK WITH TIME TO READ IT.

“William Hartung and Hekmat Aboukhater, Cashing in on Nukes.”  August 7, 2024.

Be depressed, very depressed.

When you read today's piece by TomDispatch regular William Hartung and Hekmat Aboukhater, you'll be reminded that, in the Biden years, the U.S. military has continued to focus on what's all too strangely called the "modernization" of the American nuclear arsenal. Mind you, that program -- in a world where the present unmodernized arsenal could already end all life as we know it on this and undoubtedly several other planets -- is now estimated to cost the American taxpayer a mere $2 trillion dollars or so in the coming decades.

And that, by the way, is the good news. That's what's likely to happen if Donald Trump doesn't win the 2024 election. Should he indeed reenter the Oval Office, given what his backers at the Heritage Foundation and elsewhere are already proposing, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. A wounded ear? No, we're talking about the possibility of this whole planet going up in flames and smoke. His backers have, for instance, already made it clear that a new Trump administration would restart underground nuclear testing, ending a decades-old moratorium honored by the planet's major nuclear powers. In addition, under an "America first" banner, it would undoubtedly relaunch a global nuclear arms face-off that's long been in abeyance. And that's just to begin down a potential list of horrors. As The Donald reportedly said in 2016 when he was president, "Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.” Then, he asked "a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them." Why, indeed? He also assured the governor of Puerto Rico, “If nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.”

And of course, it was his administration that pulled out of both the INF nuclear treaty and the Open Skies arms control agreement with Russia, as well as the Iran nuclear agreement, while launching the present staggering "modernization" program. So, while you read today's striking piece by Hartung and Aboukhater about part of the present nuclear build-up, just imagine for a moment that Donald Trump does indeed make it back into the White House. One thing that's already all too clear from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 (put together by a host of former Trump officials) is that the present version of nuclear "modernization" will be dwarfed by the Trumpian one the next time around and the new Cold War that could follow globally might prove all too horrifically hot. Tom

“

World-Ending Maneuvers?Inside the Nuclear-Weapons Lobby Today”

By William D. Hartung and Hekmat Aboukhater.

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.
This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act -- a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs -- found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

World-Ending Maneuvers?By Hekmat Aboukhater and William D. Hartung, Scheer Post. The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon... -more-

“Remembering the Children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”         

 from ICAN International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 8-5-24 (Nobel Peace Prize, 2017). 

Dear Dick,

This week marks 79 years since the devastating US nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed more than 210,000 people – including some 38,000 babies and children.   In a major new report published by ICAN today, we describe in detail the catastrophic harm inflicted on children in the two Japanese cities, as well as on those living near nuclear test sites globally.   The main conclusion of the report – which was reviewed by pediatricians – is that children are more likely than adults to die or suffer severe injuries in a nuclear attack, given their greater vulnerability to the effects of nuclear weapons: heat, blast and radiation.  The fact that children depend on adults for their survival also places them at higher risk of death or hardship in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, with support systems destroyed.

These findings should have profound implications for policy-making in countries that currently possess nuclear weapons and those that support their retention as part of military alliances.   While children played no part in developing these doomsday devices, it is children who would suffer the most in the event of their future use – one of the myriad reasons why such weapons must be urgently eliminated.  In the words of the UN secretary-general, António Guterres: “Nuclear weapons are the most destructive power ever created. They offer no security – just carnage and chaos. Their elimination would be the greatest gift we could bestow on future generations.”

Please read the report (or listen to an audio version of it) and share it widely.  

Sincerely, Tim Wright, Author of The Impact of Nuclear Weapons on Children
Treaty Coordinator, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. 

ICAN · Place de Cornavin 2, Geneve 1201, Switzerland

U.S. decision to tear up INF Treaty has left nuclear ‘sword of damocles’ hanging over Europeans’ heads

Editor.  mronline.org (8-6-24).

Originally published: Defend Democracy Press  on August 3, 2024 by sputnikglobe.com (more by Defend Democracy Press)  |  (Posted Aug 05, 2024)

WarGlobalNewswire

Friday is the fifth anniversary of the Trump administration’s 2019 decision to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Sputnik asked veteran US military and international affairs commentators Scott Ritter and Michael Maloof what was so significant about the INF, and why its absence has made the world a more dangerous place.

On August 2, 2019, Washington formally announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty, untying the Pentagon’s hands to resume development, production and fielding of ground-based nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles in the 500-5,500 km range.

The US justified the decision to scrap the pact on the basis of claims that Russia had an INF-violating missile (a claim Russia went to great lengths to refute). Behind the scenes, the Trump administration hoped to strong arm Russia and China into a new agreement by subjecting Beijing’s growing arsenal of intermediate-range missiles to INF-style restrictions.

Signed in December 1987 and entering into force in June 1988, the INF Treaty facilitated the liquidation of an entire class of US and Soviet nuclear missile systems, allowing Europe to breathe a sigh of relief after a decades-long Cold War.

“Things got so heated that in Germany in October of 1982, the German government collapsed because of opposition to the deployment of these American INF systems. But the systems were deployed, and the world nearly went to war,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik, recalling the tense atmosphere from the early 1980s when the US deployed Pershing II and cruise missiles in West Germany.

“In 1983, in the fall, there was a NATO exercise, Able Archer, that tested the nuclear command and control, basically how NATO would launch nuclear weapons at time of war. The Soviets caught wind of this and were concerned that what was happening was NATO was getting ready for a preemptive strike, and so they put their own nuclear forces on alert. Fortunately, there was no miscalculation, mistake, misjudgment, and we dodged a bullet,” Ritter recalled.

Unfortunately, the world didn’t get a chance to ‘live happily ever after’ for long after the INF Treaty’s signature and implementation, the observer, who played a major, personal rolein verifying compliance with the INF in the late 1980s and early 1990s, lamented.

Along with withdrawing from the treaty in 2019, the US added insult to injury recently by announcing the deployment of new offensive missile capabilities in Germany beginning in 2026. . . . MORE click on title

JEFFREY SACHS INTERVIEW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGFJt8Ho6O4   Aug 3, 2024 UNITED STATES

Jeffrey Sachs Interview: “A Stark Reality.” #jeffsachs Website: jeffsachs.org

Comments

The Shalom Center  8-7-24

Between the Fires

“LEARNING FROM THE BURNING: THE FATE OF THE EARTH.” 

“It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze
But a light in which we see each other fully”

The above lines from a prayer by Rabbi Arthur Waskow… encapsulate the major learning imperative we peace educators must, at last fully confront.  Poignantly called to our attention on these days of reflection on the 75^th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet it is always at the very center of our on-going daily work. As we educate for what we refer to as “transformation,” how will we enable ourselves and our students, “to make from fire… a light in which to see each other fully?”

To “see each other fully” is to begin to see in all people the universal humanity that Einstein and Russel called upon us to put above all else, in the “Manifesto” that charged us to abolish nuclear weapons; to accord to each other and to Earth the breath that gives and maintains life, an image and message often invoked by Rabbi Waskow in reflections that have relevance to all of us, of all religious faiths or no religious faith. In so doing he encourages us to do the work of educating to overcome violence and advance justice in this larger frame of the living Earth, the life and spiritual meaning we draw from it.

The prayer-poem invokes the images of the great modern crimes against humanity and Earth as manifest in flames; images which call up world-wide lethal temperature rise, brush fires, floods, and indeed, diseases linked to climate change, one now experienced as the COViD-19 pandemic. These are all images of conditions that inflict human suffering as the consequence of lack of care of and for each other. It is not likely that until we have learned to “see each other fully,” and to see the integral political and ethical relationships that inextricably link war and weaponry to the fate of “The Earth and all who live as part of it,” will we realize the humanity in which Russell and Einstein, and most of us peace educators put our hope and our faith.

Though these views are not necessarily those of The Shalom Center, it is The Shalom Center that brings them to you for your thought. So — If you are joyful to see The Shalom Center’s providing ideas and resources to create a more just and loving Earth and Humanity, or saddened but had your determination to act for change strengthened by a Shalom Center report of danger, please help us keep doing this work by contributing. We are 40 years old and we are working to transform ourselves for the next 40; if you can quadruple your last gift, please do! Click here: theshalomcenter.org/donate

The Shalom Center   6711 Lincoln Dr   Philadelphia, PA 19119-3119

SIGN THE PEACE PLEDGE FROM WORLD BEYOND WAR 
“I understand that wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties, and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities. I commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.” 

https://worldbeyondwar.org/individual/?link_id=1&can_id=3d53bb64e2596ba3e930952f90ab3f2c&source=email-thank-you-for-supporting-the-peace-pledge&email_referrer=email_2408346&email_subject=thank-you-for-supporting-the-peace-pledge

NEVER AGAIN
uspeacememorial.org/Donors.htm
Dear Dick,
On August 9, 1945, the U.S. bombed Nagasaki. I have tried to imagine how my parents, stationed at an Army Air Force base in Texas, must have felt that day. Did they expect peace? That now they could get on with their lives and start a family? I was born precisely nine months later.

Tragically, the U.S. chose a path of unprecedented aggression. Since the end of World War II, our military has bombed residential areas in at least thirty countries, resulting in the deaths of millions and the maiming of tens of millions more. No other country can match this evil.
 

It's not too late for a reset—a fresh start. Join the US Peace Memorial Foundation to help us honor Americans who work to end U.S. war and militarism. Please donate at www.USPeaceMemorial.org/Donors.htm.    CLICK HERE TO DONATE.

 
The Foundation honors Americans who stand for peace by publishing the US Peace Registry, awarding the US Peace Prize, and working to promote and raise funds to build the US Peace Memorial in Washington, DC. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHO OUR FOUNDING MEMBERS ARE.

Peace,
Michael
Michael D. Knox, Chair 
US Peace Memorial Foundation

The US Peace Memorial Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3), EIN: 20-3915218.

JOIN US

Donations are tax-deductible to the extent provided by U.S. law.

DANIEL ELLSBERG
Roots Action: “Organizing Against ICBMs.” American Committee for US-Russia Accord.  Aug 19, 2024.
Dear friends: This year, we learned that the U.S. effort to replace its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program was an astonishing 81% over budget and years behind schedule. In an April 2023 interview, Daniel Ellsberg described the profound danger of keeping the ICBM force: “For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs […]
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Our mailing address is:
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PO Box 2134, New York, NY 10025

END H-N ANTHOLOGY 2024 PART III