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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“Terror” policy will fall, People will stand—Joya

Afghanistan’s Joya exposes entrenched policy, persisting resistance of a people invaded but unbowed
Excerpts, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Leading into the September 11, 2001-September 11, 2010, more from Afghan truth teller Malalai Joya, A woman among warlords

“We Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on the one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other. We are feeling the squeeze and it is costing us in blood and tears. But the situation is not hopeless. I believe in the power of the people, and I know that there are millions of women and men standing and waiting—eager to play their role in history. Afghans have lost all patience with the corruption and violence that surround them, and they are just one spark away from an uprising that will once more demonstrate their power and show their thirst for freedom and justice.”

“The unjust and criminal occupation of Afghanistan and its puppet regime cannot last forever.


The use, abuse, and destabilization of Afghanistan by great powers and neighboring countries cannot last forever.


The domination of our country by warlords, Taliban, and their so-called intellectual lobbyists cannot last forever.


The impunity of war criminals—whether sitting in the Parliament or Kabul or at the ranch in Texas—cannot last forever.


The subjugation of women as second-class citizens cannot last forever.


The unpunished rape, abduction, murder, and mistreatment of women and girls cannot last forever.


The government and NGO corruption and embezzlement, the drug running and profiteering, all of which deny Afghans basic services such as health care and education, cannot last forever.


The terrorizing of honest journalists and the silencing of dissenting voices through violence and intimidation cannot last forever.


The suppression of the democratic and progressive people and parties in Afghanistan cannot and must not last forever.”

Entrenched policy experienced firsthand

“The people of Afghanistan can see very clearly that the warlords are supported and protected by the United States and other foreign troops. They could not continue their fascist agenda for even one day without the backing of the United States and NATO …

“Intervening against countries where governments take action against U.S. corporate interests is the policy of every president. It is, after all—militarism —imperialism—that has given the United States a dominant position in the world. Without war its empire will have no future. American foreign policy, in reality, is set; the job of the president is simply to implement it.

“If we look at the historical record, the policies of U.S. governments have been very consistent for decades. War making has been the policy of every president.…

“… Recent world events prove that ‘exporting democracy’ is just a hoax behind U.S. foreign policy.… Some of the closest allies of the United States are anything but democratic. In the Middle East, two key pillars of U.S. influence in the region are the dictatorship in Egypt and the fundamentalist monarchy in Saudi Arabia. When we analyze this record, it should not be too surprising to see the type of antidemocratic figures that the United States is propping up in positions of power in Afghanistan…

“Although the U.S./NATO forces say they are staying in Afghanistan to hunt down bin Laden and a resurgent Taliban, they might consider beginning their search in Kabul. … The new Afghan government is not only a photocopy of the Taliban, but some of the prominent figures from that former regime have been recycled and repackaged and now hold positions of power.”

This goes to show that the United States “has been less interested in destroying the Taliban than in cultivating ‘our Taliban,’ the ‘good Taliban,’ or any other ‘good’ fundamentalists who will serve their interests.…”

With a situation like this, “our country cannot stand on its own feet and will remain dependent on foreign troops.” The policy of the U.S. government “is to keep us in this situation [and] if things continue on this course, I believe the foreign powers could even lead us toward the breakup of our country along ethnic lines.… [Afghans] must fight against the disintegration of our national unity. We do not want to lose our Afghanistan.”


Terror inside out

“There are all kinds of terror in the world [Afghanistan in the past thirty years has been subjected to every kind of atrocity in the name of socialism, religion, freedom, democracy and liberation, now in the name of a ‘war on terror’ ],” Joya writes. “We live every day of our lives in the terror of endless war.”

“The ‘war on terror’ today serves as an excuse for war and intervention. As in the past, when many democratic governments were overthrown and replaced with dictatorships in the name of ‘fighting communism,’ so it is today with the language of ‘fighting terrorism.’…

“This so-called war on terror is in fact an extremely dishonest policy.” The only way this war needs to last decades is if the real purpose is for the United States and its allies to establish permanent bases to serve their strategic aims.

“To our people, the idea that the United States, with all its military might, technology, and power, could not have already defeated these medieval-minded groups—assuming that was the real American war aim—is like a bad joke. Instead, it looks like they are playing a game of cat-and-mouse in order to justify keeping their military in Afghanistan…

“What is important for the world is not whether the president is black or white, but what his ideas and his actions are. You cannot eat symbolism, and for us [U.S. President] Obama will only become a symbol of an unjust policy of war and domination if he continues down the path he has chosen to follow.”

“I believe only the people in the United States and other countries, once they understand their responsibility, can change this situation.…”


People unbowed

Afghans are more than just a handful of warlords, Taliban, drug lords, and lackeys. I have a country full of people who know what I know and believe what I believe, Joya writes.

That we Afghans can govern ourselves without foreign interference

That democracy is possible here but can never be imposed at gunpoint


That the blood of millions of freedom-loving martyrs runs through our veins, and their memories live on in every corner of our country


That Afghan women have been at the forefront of our struggle throughout our proud history [and] they inspire us to pick up the flag and carry on the struggle for justice and freedom.


It is a battle we will never surrender.”

“With the help of peace-loving people around the world, I know that the Afghan women and men are ready to do their part to stop this cycle of misery and build a better future. The ‘war on terror’ is a dead end for the people in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and in the West. Only a great, united movement of people can put an end to this foolish policy.”

“Our enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.…”

“Our fight for independence has gone on for centuries, and it will continue because it is a just and dignified struggle.”

“A river is made drop by drop. It is a long struggle but if we unite for justice and democracy, our people will be like a flood that no one can stop.


Social activist and politician Malalai Joya was born in Afghanistan’s remote Farah Province. She grew up in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan and is the youngest person ever to be elected to the Afghan Parliament. She was suspended from that Parliament in 2007 for continuing to denounce warlords and their cronies in government. In that year, Joya received a nomination for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.


Source
Her book A Woman among Warlords: The extraordinary story of an Afghan who dared to raise her voice (2009 with Derrick O'Keefe), excerpts from pages 196-210

WEEKEND NEWS

Afghanistan
Ten people died Saturday in Kandahar and more than a dozen suffered wounds in two separate attacks. Among the dead were police officers and civilians including a child [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/201094161033100180.html].

Hundreds of Afghans have been unsuccessful in withdrawing money from the country’s largest bank, amid concerns that it could collapse. “The panic was sparked by reports that Kabul Bank has lent millions of dollars to members of the political elite, who used the money to make risky investments”  [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/20109592512818877.html].

Neighboring Pakistan
Sixty-five people died after a suicide bomb exploded in a Shia Muslim procession Friday in the Pakistani city of Quetta. More than 150 people suffered wounds. In the past three years, more than 3,660 people have died as a result of “a series of suicide attacks and bomb explosions, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other al-Qaeda-linked fighters”  [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010948413333315.html]