68 years still flexing might, killing innocents: Far to Near East, Hiroshima to Syria

When will poverty eradication trump nuclear proliferation?

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett 

Mass destruction some can never forget

A thousand people set out in early May on three-month peace march that would take them from Tokyo to Hiroshima. ETA two days ago. Among the thousand was 74-year-old Yasuo Shiose, orphaned at age 7 when he lost his parents and two older brothers in the bombing of Hiroshima (Japan Times).

The peace marchers called for the abolition of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation. Banners and stickers read:

‘Let’s abolish nuclear weapons’

YES PEACE’

‘We don’t need nuclear weapons’

‘We don’t need nuclear power’

Yasuo Shiose was quoted saying, ‘I will walk with the aim achieving a peaceful world free of nuclear weapons and wars.’

 

Mass destruction some must always remember 

I

n the United States we too must remember. Remember the suffering we caused and still cause. Work together to correct the character and ethos; end the destruction. 

1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima: “On this day in 1945, the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The blast killed more than 70,000 people and destroyed most of the city.” [Britannica]

 

Today in London Hundreds of protesters gathered in Tavistock Square to remember those killed and otherwise affected in the U.S. nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War.

E

ast Asian Studies Professor Christine J. Hong spoke with Press TV and this is some of what she said about U.S. hostilities against the Far East then and now.

“The bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) were not justified by any military necessity even though Secretary of State Henry Stimson retroactively tried to impute a military rationality to these actions.

They were just an act of terror.

In fact, the propaganda value of the United States’ being the first user decimating a civilian population has served the United States’ purposes in terms of terrorizing the rest of the world, and especially its historic foes.

“When you have the United States flexing its nuclear might and when it has a history of creating massive civilian causalities, keep in mind that North Korea sustained an estimated 3.5 million deaths at the hands of a U.S. bombing holocaust and the United States has threatened North Korea ─ more than nine times ─ with a nuclear first-strike.

“Against that kind of record, as well as U.S. opposition to conditions of the armistice agreement, nuclear weapons in South Korea from the late 1950’s until the 1990’s ─ North Korea has seen very little other alternative than to develop nuclear self-defense as a means of guaranteeing its sovereignty.

“…You see the same thing in Iran and other places around the world that … stand as targets of a possible U.S. intervention.”

Professor Hong concludes

Indicated in today’s remembrance of Hiroshima is the message that “in the interest of responsible, rational and sane coexistence,” the people of the United States must “have a very vivid and very embodied sense of what it means to be on the devastating receiving end of U.S. foreign policy.”

C

ampaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) General Secretary Kate Hudson told the press that documents recently declassified by the United States National Archives and Records Administration show that “London played a key role in Washington’s decision to carry out the nuclear attacks” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in whose wake more than “340,000 people have died.”

CTBTO: Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO Preparatory Commission or CTBTO Prep Com) is an international organization based in Vienna, Austria, that is tasked with preparing the activities of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a multilateral treaty by which states agree to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996; but it has not entered into force due to the non-ratification of eight specific states.

UN remembers, urges disarmament

CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remind us “of what horrors nuclear weapons can inflict.”

However, key states have failed to ratify the treaty. Of 195 UN General Assembly Member States: 183 have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, 159 have ratified it.

Standing in the way of the treaty’s entry into force are “Annex 2 States,” which have failed to ratify: 

China 

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Egypt

India 

Iran 

Israel 

Pakistan 

United States of America

UN General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic, speaking at the Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima, said he hoped for “a significant step forward in fulfilling our goal to excise atomic weapons so that the suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of sixty-eight years ago may never repeat.”

In his message to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reminded the gathering of the obvious: that disarmament means life; it frees up resources better channeled to address world poverty, hunger, disease. Nuclear disarmament, he said, “can contribute to our efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and support the realization of a sustainable future for all humankind.”

 

A Requiem

Those days in August all those years ago, “I felt very sad,” author and broadcaster Allen L Roland writes. “A deep soul-connected part of me innately knew that the world would never be the same,” he said.

I also sensed at that exact moment the collective loss of thousands of Japanese children ─ children like myself ─ who were incinerated, maimed and left homeless by these unnecessary, barbaric attacks. 

“I … had a profound feeling that something very ominous for humanity had just happened ─ and I was right!  We now had the means to completely destroy humankind ─ particularly, evidently, yellow and brown races.”

In constant acts of carnage down to contemporary times, from the U. S. war on Vietnam through its war on Afghanistan (and other countries), “tens of thousands of innocent children have been killed and maimed and left homeless,” Roland observes; and “now drone (unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV) attacks are the preferred American method of killing and maiming the innocent ─ without having to shoulder the ‘moral’ responsibility for these unnecessary deaths.” Carnage endlessly executed “under the same, now badly frayed American imperialistic flag of freedom, liberty and democracy.”

Sources and notes 

“U.S. nuclear weapons lead to global nuclear competition: Hong” (Press TV has conducted an interview with UC Santa Cruz assistant professor Christine J. Hong to discuss the issue of United States’ use of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians during the World War II. August 6, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/06/317455/us-nukes-lead-to-nuclear-rivalry/

Christine J. Hong is University of California-Santa Cruz Assistant Professor in the Division Humanities Division, Department Literature Department. Her affiliations are East Asian Studies, History of Art/Visual Culture; her research Interests: Asian American literature and cultural criticism; African American literature and black freedom studies; Korean diasporic cultural production; Pacific Rim studies; postcolonial theory; comparative critical race studies; human rights; law and literature; narrative theory; film and visual studies, http://literature.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=cjhong

“A Statement of Peace, or an Epitaph” (Robert Scheer’s Columns) August 6, 2013,

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_statement_of_peace_or_an_epitaph_20130806/

“100s will rally in London to remember victims of U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan, August 6, 2013,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/06/317448/antinukes-activists-to-rally-in-london/

“Requiem for The Children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan” (Allen L Roland), August 6, 2013, http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/08/06/requiem-for-the-children-of-hiroshima-nagasaki-vietnam-iraq-and-afghanistan/

Allen L Roland is a Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist. He is also a practicing psychotherapist and author and lecturer who also shares political and social commentary on his website: AllenRoland.com. He guest hosts Truthtalk, a national radio show that airs monthly.

“Three-month peace march sets out for Hiroshima” (Kyodo), May 7, 2013, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/07/national/three-month-peace-march-sets-out-for-hiroshima/#.UgFI32zD-1s

  

CTBTO: Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

CTBTO Preparatory Commission or CTBTO Prep Com: an international organization based in Vienna, Austria, that is tasked with preparing the activities of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

The organization was established by the states that signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996 and will cease to exist upon the entry into force of the CTBT. It builds, certifies and operates the infrastructure for detection of Nuclear Tests, prepares regulations for the CTBTO and stimulates entry into force of the CTBT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTBTO

CTBT: The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a multilateral treaty by which states agree to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996; but it has not entered into force due to the non-ratification of eight specific states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty

  

“On anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing,” UN officials urge nuclear disarmament, August 6, 2013, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45574&Cr=nuclear&Cr1=#.UgFd4mzD-1s

Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first city in the world to be struck by an atomic bomb, which was dropped by a B-29 bomber of the U.S. Air Forces.

Most of the city was destroyed, and estimates of the number killed outright or shortly after the blast have ranged upward from 70,000. Deaths from radiation injury have mounted through the years.

Nagasaki

In the early 20th century the Nagasaki became a major shipbuilding center and it was this industry that led to U.S. targeting for the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. The bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. It destroyed the innermost portion of Nagasaki; between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed. Exact figures are difficult to come by because many records were destroyed by the bomb and the overall devastation of the area made accurate accounting for casualties impossible.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Ban them all: bombs, tests, war ─ Johnson

Dr. Rebecca Johnson was speaking from Britain to Britain

What she says speaks also to the USA

Excerpt, editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

Global nuclear disarmament strategies are coalescing to lay the groundwork for a multilateral treaty that will ban weapons of mass destruction for good but Britain appears stuck in a time warp, says the director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and co-chair of the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons.

Partisans' entrenched regress 

Dr. Rebecca Johnson says Britain’s “Liberal Democrat MPs have been hitched up to vain efforts to find a cheaper way to stay nuclear”; and when Labour Party Leader Edward Miliband should be demonstrating foresight and constructive alternatives for UK security without nuclear weapons, “he seems scared to pull the parliamentary party out of (former Prime Minister Tony) Blair’s short-sighted 2007 trap.”

U.S. Defense missile systems

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) ─ It can be argued, Johnson says, that despite its support by more than 180 nations, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) has not entered into force.

Obstruction

“That is because some of the nuclear-armed states placed the structural bar for entry into force much higher than with any other comparable treaty. Early in 1994, UK diplomats originated and then pushed vociferously throughout the CTBT negotiations for the extraordinarily stringent requirement that every possible nuclear-capable state must sign and ratify the treaty before it could enter into force,” said Johnson. 

Note: As of February 2012, 157 states had ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); another 25 states had signed but not ratified it. The United States is among the signers/non-ratifiers. The treaty will enter into force 180 days after the 44 states listed in Annex 2 of the treaty have ratified it.

 

“Unfortunately,” Johnson continues, “they were successful – the last kick of Tory opposition to the treaty before they were ousted in 1997.” However, the practical political fact is, she says, “that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has already worked better than expected.

“It has established a worldwide verification regime and turned nuclear testing from a high status demonstration of nuclear prowess into a pariah activity that responsible states cannot pursue.…

“Among the English,” Johnson writes, “… the Green Party has a clear, rational policy on nuclear disarmament.” 

Progress

Tough the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was not designed to prevent nuclear proliferation, modernization, or other dangers of nuclear weapons production and deployment; it “has undoubtedly constrained new nuclear developments,” Johnson writes

“The next step – and one that presents Britain with important choices for our future – is likely to be a new multilateral treaty to comprehensively ban the use, deployment, production and transfer of all nuclear weapons and provide for their verified elimination.

“This is the strategic objective of a growing number of national and international campaign networks, and supported by more than 140 United Nations member states.”

Sources and notes

“From banning nuclear tests to banning nuclear weapons ─ on the 60th anniversary of Britain’s first atomic weapons test, we need to consider the parallels between how the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was achieved in the 1990s and today’s nuclear challenges. The British government is, yet again, unable to read the writing on the wall” (Rebecca Johnson) October 3, 2012, http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rebecca-johnson/from-banning-nuclear-tests-to-banning-nuclear-weapons

Rebecca Johnson, Ph.D.

Dr Rebecca Johnson is author of Unfinished Business (published by the United Nations, 2009) and Trident and International Law: Scotland’s Obligations (Luath Press, 2011). She is director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy and co-chair of the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Rebecca Johnson holds a doctorate in international diplomacy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and a vice president of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) campaigns non-violently to achieve British nuclear disarmament – for scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system and preventing its replacement.

Recognizing that Britain’s nuclear weapons are only a small part of the problem, CND also works to secure an international Nuclear Weapons Convention which will ban nuclear weapons globally, as chemical and biological weapons have been banned.

CND works also to end Britain’s participation in the U.S. Missile Defense system and – with other campaigns internationally – against missile defense and weapons in space.

Other CND campaigns include opposition to NATO and its nuclear policies and opposition  to nuclear power, and the prevention and cessation of wars in which nuclear weapons may be used and the encouragement of non-military solutions to conflict.

CND is funded entirely by its members and supporters. Its policies are decided upon by its annual national delegates’ conference at which its national leadership is also elected.

Dr Rebecca Johnson has also served as senior advisor to the International WMD (Blix) Commission (2004-06) and as vice chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2001-07).

She lived at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp for five years (1982-87),  co-founded the Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp(aign) in 1985, and co-organized Faslane365 (2006-07).  http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/rebecca-johnson

Wikipedia notes

UK’s Trident

Trident missiles are carried by fourteen active U.S. Navy Ohio class submarines, with U.S. warheads, and four Royal Navy Vanguard class submarines, with British warheads. The original prime contractor and developer of the missile was Lockheed Martin Space Systems. 

The Trident missile is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) equipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV).

The Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) is armed with nuclear warheads and is launched from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

One hundred and fifty-seven (157) states as of February 2012 had ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); another 25 states have signed but not ratified it. The treaty will enter into force 180 days after the 44 states listed in Annex 2 of the treaty have ratified it.

The United States has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Ratification proponents say the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty would:

Establish an international norm that would push other nuclear-capable countries like North Korea, Pakistan, and India to sign.

Constrain worldwide nuclear proliferation by vastly limiting a country's ability to make nuclear advancements that only testing can ensure.

Not compromise U.S. national security because the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program serves as a means for maintaining current US nuclear capabilities without physical detonation.

Ratification opponents say:

The treaty is unverifiable and that others nations could easily cheat.

The ability to enforce the treaty was dubious

The U.S. nuclear stockpile would not be as safe or reliable in the absence of testing.

The benefit to nuclear nonproliferation was minimal.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996.  It opened for signature in New York on September 24, 1996, when it was signed by 71 States, including five of the eight then nuclear-capable states.

‘Annex 2 states’ are states that participated in the CTBT’s negotiations between 1994 and 1996 and possessed nuclear power reactors or research reactors at that time.

As of December 7, 2011, eight Annex 2 states have not ratified the treaty:

China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified;

India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed.

In 1998, India said it would only sign the treaty if the United States presented a schedule for eliminating its nuclear stockpile, a condition the United States rejected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_missile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty#US_ratification_of_the_CTBT

Images 

image: Building E of the Vienna International Centre houses the offices of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), United Nations Office in Vienna (UNOV), and United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

Images from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, http://www.cnduk.org/home

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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