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August 17, 2011
66 Years of USA Nuclear Insanity
By eileen fleming
his August 6th and 9th mark the 66th anniversaries of the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people; America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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This August 6th and 9th mark the 66th anniversaries of the most brutal acts of terrorism upon innocent people; America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It has been spun ad'nauseum that action "saved thousands of American lives" but all of Washington knew that Japan was ready to surrender and all they wanted was to "save face" and retain their emperor. But even after nuking Hiroshima, America targeted and terrorized Nagasaki, when 40,000 were immediately fried by "Fat Man" with the death toll totaling 73,884 and injured 75,000 with several hundred thousand more who have become diseased and are dying due to nuclear fallout and the blow back of radiation.
"You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to obey the laws of life."- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The universally understood definition of insanity is to persist in the same behavior while expecting a different outcome.
"Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest, is a nation approaching spiritual death." -Rev. MLK, Jr.
Budgets are moral documents for where ever your heart is-is where you lay your money down.
We the people are being taxed to pay for a $3.7 Trillion Budget that Calls for Military Spending Increases and Deep Cuts to Social Service Programs.
The Tea Party succeeded to protect the tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans and next step is for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to create a bipartisan plan to reduce deficits by an additional $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
Some say Social Security and Medicare are under the gun, yet nobody's talking about the $185 Billion increase to "modernize" America's Nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.
At the World Conference against A- & H- Bombs, in Hiroshima, on August 3, 2011, Dr. Joseph Gerson, Disarmament Coordinator of the American Friend Service Committee and Director of its Peace and Economic Security Program cited an article from "Foreign Affairs" that after Obama's initial phase of "multilateral entrenchment" we now have an Obama Doctrine of aggressive "counterpunching" that reasserts U.S. power and influence across the world "when challenged by other countries, reassuring allies, and signaling resolve to potential rivals"." [1]
Some believe that Obama nuclear weapons policy is schizophrenic, but Gerson argues, "Obama's Prague speech was part of a diplomatic offensive designed to achieve the nation's preeminent strategic goal: preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and thus reducing the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States. Following the recommendations of Shultz, Kissinger and others, Obama acknowledged the Untied States' Article VI NPT abolition obligations and demonstrated commitments to at least limited disarmament. We had Prague, Obama's special Security Council session, the Nuclear Security Summit, New START, and preparations for CTBT ratification.
"The U.S. is building the nuclear arsenal needed to enforce empire for decades to come. The deal that secured New START ratification committed Obama to "a major modernization effort to revitalize' the nation's genocidal strategic nuclear warheads and its massive arsenal of stockpiled nuclear weapons.
"The extra $185 billion will pay to expand the nuclear weapons production infrastructure, train a new generation of nuclear weapons designers and technicians, extend the murderous "life' of aging nuclear warheads, and replace so-called "old delivery systems.'" [IBID]
Unless we the people put an end to America's 66 years of Nuclear Insanity, the Pentagon will be modernizing low-yield nuclear weapons that will be deliverable by new nuclear-capable F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and cruise missiles. Funding also will remain to replace Trident submarines and pay for a new generation of nuclear-capable drones and air launched cruise missiles.
With the need for massive U.S. budget reductions, cutting the Pentagon's funds makes Common Sense, but President "Nuclear Free World' Obama and the Tea Party have resurrected policies that led to America's First Great Depression.
The FY 2012 budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration includes 7.6 billion for nuclear weapons research and production.
Funding for a new "Uranium Processing Facility" for production of thermonuclear secondaries at the Y-12 production plant near Oak Park Ridge, TN, is proposed to increase to $160.2 million from $115 million in 2011.
The 2012 budget request also creates a new Life Extension Program for the B61 warhead funded at $223.6 million, even though that gravity bomb's original mission of forward deployment in Europe against a Soviet threat vanished at the end of the Cold War.
Life Extension Programs extend the service lives of existing nuclear weapons for three decades or more, in contradiction to our declared national security goal of a future world free of nuclear weapons, and it also endows them with new military capabilities. [2]
Life Extension Programs also undermine sound national security by introducing major changes to America's existing nuclear weapons stockpile that had been extensively tested and known to be most reliable weapons of mass destruction.
If THAT DAY, we call 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that America's nuclear arsenal cannot defeat 'terrorism' or provide security from the actions of a few violent mad men who target and murder innocent ones.
American money is imprinted with "IN GOD WE TRUST" but reality is we have become a nation of hypocrites, for by our foreign policy we expose that we live by the sword.
America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War.
An estimated 150 -- 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed on foreign soil.
From Ashkelon prison in 1987, Mordechai Vanunu asked:
"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation. Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?"
On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage amongst thousands of flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century nuclear weapons:
"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We're here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.
"Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked --- that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act"It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."
"There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.
"Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it.
"Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people"[and] Human destiny will be what we make of it."
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King Jr. said:
"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!" [3]
This Citizen of Conscience for US House of Representatives 2012, demands Medicare, Social Security and Veterans Benefits must all stand but ending the spending for nuclear weapons must end!
We can also build the economy by providing jobs for the refurbishing of every manufacturing plant in this nation that currently provides a "cog'* a "bolt'* or any component that goes to build Weapons of Mass Destruction and all things Nuclear to research and manufacture green energy. This will also change the paradigm of the " visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to obey the laws of life" to a society of compassionate people where all life and all things good will flourish.
1. Overcoming the Obama Doctrine: Joseph Gerson's speech at
afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/Hiroshima.2011.pdf
3. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html