#38: Hiroshima Peace [Nagasaki/Iran]: Grenpc, Hilary, Cvr-up, Terror, Threats? Islamism. Econ Jmp// Clntn/Obm McCn nuke 07.8.6=1 8am/20=1 10pm.

Nuclear Terrorism! Clinton/Obama & McCain? 07.8.20=1 10:10pm.

Hiroshima[1945.8.6, 8:15am] Peace Decaration 2007
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[Nagasaki 1945.8.9, 11:11am]
[Nagasaki & Iran etc.:]
http://tinyurl.com/2n7epv
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'Hiroshima Peace Declaration 2007: Aim for a Nuclear Weapon-Free World', by Mainichi Daily News staff writers; Pub. on Monday, August 6, 2007 by the Mainichi Newspapers:
http://tinyurl.com/yo7eyn

"" Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba gave the city’s 2007 Peace Declaration early Monday morning, the 62nd anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack. An English translation of Akiba’s declaration is reproduced in full below:

[[ That fateful summer, 8:15. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast — silence — hell on Earth.

The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. Their hair stood on end. Their clothes were ripped to shreds. People trapped in houses toppled by the blast were burned alive. Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies — Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.

Within the year, 140,000 had died. Many who escaped death initially are still suffering from leukemia, thyroid cancer, and a vast array of other afflictions.

But there was more. Sneered at for their keloid scars, discriminated against in employment and marriage, unable to find understanding for profound emotional wounds, survivors suffered and struggled day after day, questioning the meaning of life.

And yet, the message born of that agony is a beam of light now shining the way for the human family. To ensure that “no one else ever suffers as we did,” the hibakusha have continuously spoken of experiences they would rather forget, and we must never forget their accomplishments in preventing a third use of nuclear weapons.

Despite their best efforts, vast arsenals of nuclear weapons remain in high states of readiness — deployed or easily available. Proliferation is gaining momentum, and the human family still faces the peril of extinction. This is because a handful of old-fashioned leaders, clinging to an early 20th century worldview in thrall to the rule of brute strength, are rejecting global democracy, turning their backs on the reality of the atomic bombings and the message of the hibakusha.

However, here in the 21st century the time has come when these problems can actually be solved through the power of the people. Former colonies have become independent. Democratic governments have taken root. Learning the lessons of history, people have created international rules prohibiting attacks on non-combatants and the use of inhumane weapons. They have worked hard to make the United Nations an instrument for the resolution of international disputes. And now city governments, entities that have always walked with and shared in the tragedy and pain of their citizens, are rising up. In the light of human wisdom, they are leveraging the voices of their citizens to lift international politics.

Because “Cities suffer most from war,” Mayors for Peace, with 1,698 city members around the world, is actively campaigning to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020.

In Hiroshima, we are continuing our effort to communicate the A-bomb experience by holding A-bomb exhibitions in 101 cities in the US and facilitating establishment of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Study Courses in universities around the world. American mayors have taken the lead in our Cities Are Not Targets project. Mayors in the Czech Republic are opposing the deployment of a missile defense system. The mayor of Guernica-Lumo is calling for a resurgence of morality in international politics. The mayor of Ypres is providing an international secretariat for Mayors for Peace, while other Belgian mayors are contributing funds, and many more mayors around the world are working with their citizens on pioneering initiatives. In October this year, at the World Congress of United Cities and Local Governments, which represents the majority of our planet’s population, cities will express the will of humanity as we call for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The government of Japan, the world’s only A-bombed nation, is duty-bound to humbly learn the philosophy of the hibakusha along with the facts of the atomic bombings and to spread this knowledge through the world. At the same time, to abide by international law and fulfill its good-faith obligation to press for nuclear weapons abolition, the Japanese government should take pride in and protect, as is, the Peace Constitution, while clearly saying “No,” to obsolete and mistaken U.S. policies. We further demand, on behalf of the hibakusha whose average age now exceeds 74, improved and appropriate assistance, to be extended also to those living overseas or exposed in “black rain areas.”

Sixty-two years after the atomic bombing, we offer today our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of all its victims and of Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki shot down on his way toward nuclear weapons abolition. Let us pledge here and now to take all actions required to bequeath to future generations a nuclear-weapon-free world. ]]

Copyright 2005-2007 The Mainichi Newspapers ""

Jim Hilgendorf August 6th, 2007 3:18 pm
Please join in the ongoing discussion and view the 42-minute video on Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and the human costs of militarism and war, free online at
http://www.americasdialogue.org

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http://tinyurl.com/ysc2tu

'Hillary, Hiroshima, and Hubris: Justifying mass murder', by Justin Raimondo; Antiwar.com Behind the Headlines, August 8, 2007:

"" The anniversary of the U.S. bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is, perhaps, a good time to note that arguments rationalizing and even valorizing the use of nuclear weapons, once considered beyond the pale, are now back in fashion. Here we have yet more evidence of the Bizarro Effect, which, ever since 9/11, has stood everything – especially our traditional concept of morality – on its head, not only repealing the laws of logic and common sense but also ensconcing evil in the place of good. ""
... ...
"" Lest I be accused of partisanship, I hasten to point out that Dr. Strangelove is all the vogue in the GOP, too. At one or another of the Republican debates, all the GOP presidential aspirants – with the notable exception of Ron Paul – refused to rule out nuking Iran. The liberal-conservative bipartisan unity on this question of nuclear mass murder – extending all the way from Hillary on the left to Tom "Nuke Mecca" Tancredo on the nut-job right – is really rather breathtaking, and it illustrates an important point: when it comes to the intersection of war, nukes, and foreign policy, Hillary and her hickish/hawkish constituency are but a milder and less kooky left-wing version of the fiercely nationalistic Republican fundamentalist hicks, who positively welcome the prospect of nuclear devastation as a sign of the "end times" and the second coming of Christ.

There is a sinister campaign afoot to make the use of nuclear weapons, albeit miniaturized "bunker-busters," acceptable, and this, too, is part of the spreading Bizarro Effect: in a world ruled by moral inversion, the unthinkable is now being openly talked about and justified. In a further sign that the Bizarro Effect has taken over the national consciousness, Hillary refusing to rule out the possible mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis and/or Afghans is now considered a move toward the "center," while Obama's initial moral revulsion (quickly overcome) is considered a "radical" deviation from the norm.

Ah, but don't forget: in the Bizarro World universe we slipped into after 9/11, the "norm" is the bizarre. ""

Copyright 2007 Antiwar.com

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http://tinyurl.com/a6eh3

'The Hiroshima Cover-Up', by Amy Goodman and David Goodman; Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun; CommonDreams.org News Center website:

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."

He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."

Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."

Recently, Mr. Weller's son, Anthony, discovered a carbon copy of the suppressed dispatches among his father's papers (George Weller died in 2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a big Japanese newspaper. Now, on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Mr. Weller's account can finally be read.

"In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki," wrote Mr. Weller. A month after the bombs fell, he observed, "The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here."

After killing Mr. Weller's reports, U.S. authorities tried to counter Mr. Burchett's articles by attacking the messenger. General MacArthur ordered Mr. Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.

Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: It deployed its own Times man. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the science reporter for The New York Times, was also on the payroll of the War Department.

For four months, while still reporting for the Times, Mr. Laurence had been writing press releases for the military explaining the atomic weapons program; he also wrote statements for President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was rewarded by being given a seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that he described in the Times with religious awe.

Three days after publication of Mr. Burchett's shocking dispatch, Mr. Laurence had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people. His news story included this remarkable commentary: "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. ... Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."

Mr. Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize.

Sixty years late, Mr. Weller's censored account stands as a searing indictment not only of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb but also of the danger of journalists embedding with the government to deceive the world.


Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are co-authors of The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. ""

© 2005 Baltimore Sun

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http://tinyurl.com/yr2la9

'The Terror America Wrought', by Robert Scheer; truthdig Reports. Posted on Aug 7, 2007

"" AP Photo, by Shizuo Kambayashi:
Grim remembrance: Japanese children mark the 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima with prayers and floating candles at the city’s Motoyasu River. ""

"" During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey conducted at President Harry Truman’s request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on April 6, 1945, “nearly all the school children ... were at work in the open,” to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab had envisioned for the bomb’s maximum psychological impact.

The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima’s Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba recalled this week: “That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. ... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies—Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.”

Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the children nor the adults had any role in Japan’s decision to go to war, but they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military base whose antiaircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by U.S. atomic scientists—a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain—was rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying would be all the more dramatic.

The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available soft targets, much like the children playing in Iraq, suddenly caught in the crossfire of battles waged beyond their control. In “White Light/Black Rain,” a devastating HBO documentary released this week, there is an interview with the sole survivor of a Japanese elementary school of 620 students. The murder of the other 619, and the 370,000 overall deaths attributed to the bombings, 85 percent of which were civilian deaths, has never compelled a widespread examination of the “end justifies the means” morality of our own state-sanctioned acts of terror. Indeed, the horrifying footage taken by Japanese and American cameramen soon after the devastation, and shown in the HBO film, was long kept secret by the U.S. government for fear that an informed American public might question this nation’s incipient nuclear arms race.

Just exactly what distinguishes the United States’ use of the ever-so-cutely-named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” atomic bombs on cities in Japan from the car bombs of Baghdad or the planes that smashed into the World Trade Center? To even raise the question, as was found in one recent university case, can be a career-ending move.

Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.

The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman’s rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely by the Soviets’ imminent entry into the fight.

At most, the Japanese were asking for the face-saving gesture of retaining their emperor, and even that modest demand would likely have been abandoned with the shift of massive numbers of Allied troops and firepower from the battlefront of a defeated Germany to a confrontation with its deeply wounded Asian ally. Instead, the U.S. played midwife to the birth of the nuclear monster, the ultimate terrorist weapon that presents a continuing and growing threat to the survival of human life on Earth.

This is a lesson to be pondered at a time when President Bush plays power games with a nuclear-equipped Russia while coddling Pakistan, the main proliferator of nuclear weapons to rogue regimes, and Congress authorizes an expansion of the U.S. nuclear program to better fight the war on terror by “improving” the ultimate weapon of terror, which the U.S. alone stands guilty of using.

More links:

For a fuller explanation of the suppression of footage taken shortly after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, follow this link.

Click here to go to HBO’s site for “White Light/Black Rain.” ""
... ...
"" Comments: 62 Published. Add Yours? ""
"" Elsewhere: 11 blog reactions ""

Copyright © 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

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Do Not Nuke Threats!
http://tinyurl.com/yo29ke or
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0810/p09s01-coop.html

'America, stop waving the nuclear threat at potential adversaries: The US should use its nuclear arsenal for deterrence only and preserve the 'taboo' on nuclear weapons use', by Jack Mendelsohn; From Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 2007 edition.

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Greenpeace, Japan:
http://tinyurl.com/2b4ctc

'Commemorating the 62nd Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings',
Statement from Jun Hoshikawa, Executive Director, Greenpeace Japan:

"" JAPAN - AUGUST 6 - Sixty-two years ago on August 6th, a uranium-type atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and a Plutonium-type atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later on August 9th. Both were indiscriminate bombings, both targeted the two city’s civilians and both starkly violated international law. We offer our deepest sympathy to the families of the people who lost their lives on not only August 6th and August 9th but also those who died from the fallout of the two bombs – over 400,000 people - and share the suffering of those who have survived through various levels of the radiation contamination.

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 with the aim of creating a world without nuclear threats. "" ... ...
... ...
"" In 2005, Greenpeace released a joint statement “No More Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stop Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant” signed by 28 Executive directors world-\wide on the Hiroshima Memorial Day as a gesture to renew our pledge for peace. Although we face even more nuclear and war threats today, our resolve remains just as firm. We will protect Article 9 and ‘aspire sincerely’ to strengthen our efforts to bring about a world without nuclear threats and war. ""

© Copyrighted 1997-2007
www.commondreams.org

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http://tinyurl.com/2tdnzp
'Boycott Truman’s Grave', Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos on August 26, 2007:

"" Sixty two years on, American and European commentators continue to blather on about the unwillingness of Japanese prime ministers to apologize about World War II. The Yasukuni shrine, where Japan’s 2.5 million dead soldiers are buried, has the same effect on our all-knowing ones as a man sucking a lemon in the front row of a concert has on a flutist playing Mozart. Every time a Japanese premier visits the shrine, the pundits go bananas and demand an apology. My question is apology for what? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The firebombing of Tokyo? Roosevelt’s embargo which forced Japan to go to war against Uncle Sam?

Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack against a military target. The firebombing of Japanese cities was an overt act against old men, women and children. The fat pundocracy should go and see Letter From Iwo Jima, the marvellous Clint Eastwood movie about gallantry in action by the outnumbered and outgunned Japanese on that miserable island. Westerners call the Japanese fanatics. I call them heroic. I’ve spent my adult life practising martial arts with the Japanese, and have named five of my yachts “Bushido,” after the code of the Samurai. Give me a Japanese Samurai any day, and you can keep your Podhoretzes, Kristols and Kagans, all sofa Samurais and very ugly to boot. Victor’s justice was practiced after the war against the Japanese, and one of the great crimes was to try Prince Konoye, “le chevalier sans peur and sans reproche." The pundits can go to hell. And Japanese prime ministers should continue to visit and honor their war dead. The war criminal was Harry Truman, and nobody complains when someone visits his grave. ""
© 2007 Taki's Top Drawer. All rights reserved.

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Islamism vs. Liberalism:
http://tinyurl.com/2wm8qc

'Liberalism v Islamism; Presentation at Neo conference, Stockholm, Sweden, 11 May 2007', melaniephillips.com; May 18, 2007:

"" First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.

By liberalism I mean the commitment to a free society, founded above all on the separation of secular government from religious worship — from which follow the concepts of equal respect for all people, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the rule of law.

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle. ""
... ...
"" Liberals also think they are superior in intelligence to everyone else. So they don’t understand that the Islamists are actually playing them for suckers, exploiting the intrinsic weakness of a liberal society they correctly assess as decadent: no longer prepared to fight for its values because it no longer even knows what they are.

What we are living through in the west is nothing short of a repudiation of the Enlightenment, a repudiation of reason; and its substitution by irrationality, obscurantism, bigotry and clerical totalitarianism — all facilitated by our so-called ‘liberal’ society, and all in the name of ‘human rights’. Western liberalism now embraces its Islamist mortal enemies and attacks its American and Israeli allies in the fight to defend civilisation.

We are giving the Islamists the message that we are theirs for the taking. This is how liberalism may disappear up its own backside. ""

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Economic Jump!
http://tinyurl.com/36fbdm

'Ireland's economic transformation offers lesson for Latin American nations', by Andres Oppenheimer; Article Launched: 08/06/2007 01:29:37 AM PDT

"" A news item saying the Irish have become Europe's wealthiest people should become a mandatory history lesson in all Latin American schools and be posted on the walls of government offices throughout the region.

What does that news story have to do with Latin America, you may ask yourself. Well, a lot. Tiny Ireland could be a phenomenal role model - and morale booster - for most countries in the region.

Like most Latin American countries, Ireland was until very recently a poverty-ridden, agricultural, soccer-loving, Roman Catholic country best known for having a sizable part of its population living abroad and an economy that was heavily dependent on family remittances from its migrants in the United States.

By some standards, Ireland was even poorer than most Latin American countries. The Great Irish Famine of 1846 left about 1 million dead. Until as recently as the early 1990s, Ireland was still one of Europe's poorest countries, and the Irish were often stereotyped as the British people's poor cousins. Like in many parts of Latin America, the most common joke in Ireland was, "Would the last person to leave the country please turn off the lights?"

Ireland was also largely known abroad for producing great writers, performers and sports stars, but very few successes in the business, science or technology worlds. This should sound familiar to many Latin Americans.

Yet in less than 15 years, which amounts to virtually nothing in a country's history, Ireland has become the richest country in the 27-nation European Union in terms of average wealth.
According to the report by the Bank of Ireland, the average individual net wealth of Ireland's 4.2 million population rose by 19 percent to $268,000 last year. Income from Ireland's technology export boom was further boosted by a huge rise in property prices and high savings rates, the bank said.

Ireland's economy has boomed since the country became home to more than 1,100 major multinational companies in the early 1990s. The country has become one of the world's top computer technology and pharmaceutical centers and, not surprisingly, has turned from a net exporter of people to a high-immigration country.

How did Ireland turn around so quickly? Contrary to what you may think, the key factor behind its success was not the economic aid it got after its 1973 admission into the European Union.

When I visited Ireland in 2003, virtually everybody told me that while the European support funds helped mitigate some of the hardships that came along with the country's drastic economic opening, they weren't the most important factor.

Rather, Ireland's success is largely due to a combination of a 1987 temporary truce between labor unions and business owners; the elimination of bureaucratic hurdles that discouraged foreign investments; an across-the-board amnesty for tax evaders; a reduction of corporate taxes aimed at encouraging investments; a strong emphasis on science, technology and engineering in its universities; and the successive governments' determination to stay the course despite mounting social tensions at the start of the economic opening.

Granted, skeptics will say that even if European support funds were not the determining factor behind Ireland's takeoff, the estimated $14 billion that Ireland received from the European Union in the 1990s provided a crucial safety net that allowed a smoother-than-usual transition to a globalized economy.

But most Latin American countries - South America especially - are getting more than that nowadays, thanks to sky-high commodity prices and massive food and mineral purchases from China. They should use their commodity-export windfall to follow Ireland's steps and switch to mass production of higher value-added exports.

My opinion: While Latin American countries should not follow Ireland's model, or any other, blindly - the region has the highest inequality levels in the world, and should do a better job than Ireland in distributing wealth - they could learn a lot from its successful immersion into the global economy.

It shows that countries can go from the poorest to the richest on the list in a very short time, if they attract investments and focus on exporting more sophisticated goods. So it wouldn't be a bad idea to spread the latest news story throughout Latin America as a reminder that size doesn't matter, and neither does history.


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'Clinton and Obama: Wed to Nuclear Terrorism', by Joseph Gerson;
Published on Monday, August 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
http://tinyurl.com/2bpgbl

"" I was in Hiroshima, participating in the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, when the latest barrage of nuclear madness flailed out from the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Almost inured to Bush’s romance of ruthlessness and believing that almost anything else can only be an improvement, people from nations across the world were shocked and angered by Obama’s and Clinton’s recent nuclear madness.

It remains to be seen how badly Barrack Obama’s self-inflicted wounds will be. First he played cowboy sheriff and G.W. Bush - threatening unilateral military attacks against a sovereign and already fragile nation - Pakistan, but attempted to soften the blow by pledging not use nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda. Someone was planning to hit South Waziristan with nuclear weapons? He then further demonstrated incompetence and ignorance by saying that he would not use nuclear weapons against civilians. Nuclear weapons can be used without inflicting Hell on earth and taking countless civilian lives? Has he not heard of fall out or considered the fact that the U.S. tactical (as opposed to “counter-value” strategic) nuclear weapons include many Hiroshima-size A-bombs?

Hillary Clinton then went on to confirm what many long suspected: that in its approach to the world, terrorizing U.S. first strike nuclear weapons are always on the table, saying “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.” That means that U.S. presidents should never remove the nuclear threat when dealing with other nations.

This is consistent with other statements she has made on her presidential campaign trail. Last February, as she was leaving the New Hampshire high school where she had just formally launched her campaign with a carefully staged event, a young peace activist caught her going out the door. She asked Senator Clinton, “When you say that all options must be on the table with Iran, do you really mean that we should be threatening all of that country’s women and children with genocide?” The Senator’s chilling response was, “I meant what I said.”

The Obama and Clinton statements - like President Bush’s nuclear threats and campaign to post-modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and vastly expand the U.S. nuclear weapons production infrastructure - violate commitments the U.S. has made in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and they stand in stark defiance of the International Court of Justices’ advisory ruling on the use and threatened use of nuclear weapons.

They also reflect the banality of evil. Regardless of what their personal beliefs about the existence and actual use of nuclear weapons may be, to rise to the pinnacle of power of a nuclear-enforced empire, they and other aspiring politicians have found it necessary to demonstrate that they are tough enough to defend the empire with nuclear weapons. You can’t build or maintain an empire without terrorizing people across the planet.

However, like symbolic politics, engaging in the banality of evil results in true evil. Statements and threats create expectations. When their bluffs are called George Bush and future U.S. presidents may believe it necessary to back up their words by carrying out their threats. Since the nuclear annihilations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during international crises, confrontations and wars, every U.S. president has prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear attacks — primarily to maintain U.S. hegemony in East Asia and the Middle East - most recently during the run up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In several cases: The Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1976 “Ax Incident” in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and Bill Clinton’s 1994 nuclear threat against North Korea the world came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe.

These U.S. threats and the refusal of the U.S. and other declared nuclear powers to fulfill their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty commitment to negotiate the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals are the primary forces driving nuclear weapons proliferation, which in turn, further increased the dangers of nuclear war.. As Mohamed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel Laureate Joseph Rotblat frequently reminded us, because no nation will long tolerate an equal imbalance of terror, ending nuclear “hypocrisy” and moving to abolish all nuclear weapons is the only way to prevent proliferation.

Understandably other nations want to redress this imbalance - most by demanding implementation of Article VI of the NPT. Some, however, having given up on the NPT, have sought or seek their own deterrent nuclear arsenals: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and now possibly Iran.

To stanch nuclear madness in Washington, Iran’s apparent nuclear weapons program, and the possibility of nuclear weapons proliferation across the Middle East and elsewhere, political candidates and the rest of us should be singing a different tune: The U.S. and other nuclear powers must honor their “irrevocable” commitment to implement Article VI of the NPT, beginning with credible steps to fulfill the 13 steps agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiating a Fissile Materials Cut Off Treaty would be a start. The U.S. must also cease turning a blind eye toward Israel’s provocative and genocidal nuclear arsenal and actively join the campaign for the creation of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East as called for in the 1995 NPT Review Conference and by Arab nations since then.

These are hardly radical notions. Even the war criminal Henry Kissinger, Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz, and Clinton Secretary of Defense William Perry have concluded that the embrace of the nuclear double standard is a losing strategy and have called for the U.S. to honor its Article 6 abolition commitments. Another world is truly possible.

Joseph Gerson is with American Friends Service Committee. ""

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'Comment: Saved by the bomb: Senator McCain has hit upon a solution to all the Republican party's woes: a nuclear war with Iran', Terry Jones; Saturday May 5, 2007; Guardian

"" Campaigning in Oklahoma the other day, the Republican senator John McCain was asked what should be done about Iran. He responded by singing, "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran", to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann. (Join the hilarity and see for yourself on YouTube.) How can any thinking person disagree? I mean, any country with a president who doesn't shave properly and never wears a tie deserves what's coming to it - a lot of American bombs, with a few British ones thrown in to ensure we don't miss out on the ensuing upsurge in terrorism.
The problem is how to unload enough bombs on Iran before next year's US election to bring about enough flag-waving to get the Republican party re-elected. This is essential if we are to safeguard the revenues of companies such as Halliburton - particularly at a time when the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is discovering what a shoddy job Halliburton has been doing. In projects at Nasiriya, Mosul and Hilla - declared successes by the US - inspectors have discovered buckled floors, crumbling concrete, failed generators and blocked sewage systems - due not to sabotage but largely to poor construction and lack of maintenance.

The trouble is that the re-election of the GOP is becoming more problematic as opinion turns against George Bush's little invasion of Iraq. Even Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah recently condemned the US action as "an illegal foreign occupation"; his nephew, Prince Bandar, hasn't been returning calls for weeks.

More worrying is the plummeting popularity of the party, as White House corruption becomes ever more difficult to disguise. The LA Times reports that what Representative Thomas M Davis III called a "poisonous" environment has begun to dent fundraising - an unheard-of problem for the Republicans.

So the only solution is to bomb Iran, as Senator McCain so wisely and amusingly suggests. The real issue is whether to use regular weapons or do the job properly and go nuclear.

Nuclear bombs have the advantage of being much bigger, and they will also pollute vast swathes of Iran and make much of the country uninhabitable for years. With a bit of luck some of the fallout will sweep into Iraq and finish off the job the US and UK have begun without incurring more costs.

But the biggest advantage of nuclear weapons is that the repercussions would be so enormous, the upsurge in terrorism so overwhelming, that the world would be totally changed. A year before 9/11, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby signed a statement for the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative thinktank. They rather hoped for "some catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbor" to kickstart their dream of a world run by US military might. A nuclear war would do the trick in spades. The Republican party could expect to stay in power for the next 50 or even 100 years.

Of course, a large proportion of the human race could be wiped out in the process, but that shouldn't be a problem as long as there are anti-radiation suits for White House and Pentagon staff. Such a shake-up would give the US a golden opportunity to corner what's left of the world's oil reserves.

In 1955 Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell said the world was faced by a "stark and dreadful and inescapable" choice: "Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?" Senator McCain wasn't bothered by such questions; the human race may be standing on a precipice, but the Republicans have a chance of permanent re-election.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python: Terry-jones.net

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ""

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