Hiroshima

The Vatican comes with its ills, contradictions and blatant hypocrisies in the field of moral theology and human existence, but on the issue of atomic and nuclear weapons, the position has been fairly consistent, if marked by gradual evolution.  On February 8, 1948, Pope Pius XII held an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  “What misfortunes,” he asked, “should humanity expect from a future conflict, if it should prove impossible to arrest or curb the use of ever newer and more surprising scientific inventions?”

Ruinous and deadly wars throughout history should have given people everywhere down through the ages cause and pause for thinking about what has happened and why it has happened. While many people presumably have and continue to do just that, what they know and understand is usually controlled by their nation’s power elite. That is never more the case than in America from its beginning and continuing.

Catastrophic events that send the world into turmoil happen on ‘just another day’. The atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima took place while thousands of ordinary folk were just going about their everyday business on ‘just another day’. A missile attack on a neighbourhood in Gaza or a drone attack on unsuspecting civilians in Afghanistan: death and destruction come like a bolt from the blue as people shop at the local market or take their kids to school on ‘just another day’.

Not all atrocities are created equal — except that all are equally atrocious.  Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Memorial Day weekend, 1921, and many other scenes of modern genocide besides, are easily seen as crimes against humanity of the worst magnitude.  Yet, if you add Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the mass murderous mix in the presence of a card-carrying American exceptionalist, you are quite likely to trigger a savage burst of effluvia terribly tied to Pearl Harbor.  I exaggerate, of course — but only mildly.

The U.S. air war in Japan was one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.
— General Bonner Fellers, MacArthur’s Intelligence Chief, from Cultures Of War: Pearl Harbour/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq by John W. Dower, 2011, pp. 195-96.

http://davidswanson.org/long-after-hiroshima/
How do we honor victims? We can remember them and appreciate who they were. But there were too many of them, and too many unknown to us. So, we can remember a sample of them, examples of them. And we can honor the living survivors, get to know and appreciate them while they are still alive.

Given all the hysterical saber-rattling over Iran recently, one wonders if old Uncle Sam’s simply having another spastic episode with his Pent’agonal cane?  Mixed into the usual cacophony of paranoid ramblings, one hears ominous mumblings linking Iran, al-Quaeda, and the Nine-One-One…

The refurbished peace boat set sail on May 1, with its first leg taking it to Hawaii, reports Colonel Ann Wright. ‘Wave Maker’ Found Derelict in 2011  By Ann Wright Special to Consortium News A refurbished peace boat that left…Read more →

 
[Prefatory Note: This post is the writeup of a presentation in Lund, Sweden at a peace gathering organized and moderated by Stefan Andersson on Oct. 3, 2018.]
 
Rethinking Nuclearism: Thirty Years Later
 
 

Professor Noam Chomsky’s lecture at St. Olaf College on 4 May 2018. This lecture continued with lots of questions and answers, and is available on Youtube, in case anyone wants to continue the transcription. It’s a very detailed but depressing summary of where he thinks we are with respect to the threat of nuclear war and the collapse of the environment. What 20-year-old students thought of this monotone and pessimistic soon-to-be 90-year-old professor talking about “two minutes to midnight” I have no idea!