Planet Waves | August 6, 2005 - from Jude Another lengthy post, my dears -- but appropriate to the day. This is the anniversary of human-kinds ability to destroy itself. I was born a child of war -- my mother was a pretty teenaged USO singer who married a young swabbie in a whirlwind romance. Because he went AWOL for a few days to do the deed, he ended up in the brig, then shipped off to the South Pacific for the duration and more. I toddled out to meet my father when I was eighteen-months old. One of the very first Boomers, I was also a child of the Bomb -- or perhaps I should more accurately say a child of the Manhattan Project. I arrived a few months after we dropped the nuclear hell of Fat Man on Hiroshima and, three days later, its companion, Little Boy, on Nagasaki. When Harry Truman made his announcement about the bombing, he told the American public, "The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war..." My father didn't make his way home until after he'd participated in Operation Crossroads, the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, that little spot in the Marshall Islands where we were so naive to the possibilities that we didn't even provide the sailors with protective gear or tell them to cover their eyes as we vaporized three islands. It has only recently been deemed habitable -- and barely. "As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn't been touched by the war and blew it to hell." ~ Comedian Bob Hope commenting on Operation Crossroads It didn't take long before humans knew how to terrorize more than enemies and islands. I was drilled on how to "duck and cover" when I was in second grade ... what to do should there be a "big flash of light." In my opinion, the turning point in the Iraq War build-up was when Condi Rice uttered the phrase "mushroom cloud." For millions of Boomers, no other word could clutch their hearts with so icy a hand ... or suggest so dire a childhood terror. Mankind has been "making mischief" for a long while, dearhearts - dark, nihilistic mischief. We keep messing with Mother Nature as if She didn't have consequences in store for us. We recently blew up a comet to "see what happens" and take the mischief into space. While this was for "scientific purpose," I expect the government was watching closely [finally, a scientific project it can wrap its arms around!] It has an intense interest in exploding things. And ... it has plans. Today, on the 60th anniversary of that first nuclear drop, United For Peace and Justice and other groups will be marching, gathering at nuclear facilities and other sites, somberly commemorating the horror. The Bomb was politicized early on, footage from the drops on Japan locked away so we couldn't see ... like the caskets we mustn't look upon these days, streaming into Delaware -- only much, much worse. General McArthur ordered the cover-up. The History Channel will be exposing that lost footage this weekend, tonight and tomorrow -- it will be difficult to watch, but for me it will be required. Despite all of this, just days ago the United States Senate approved a budget that expands funding for nuclear power, while Bush continues to harangue us about "being safe from terrorism." The WMD's that we couldn't find in Iraq are hastily being developed in Iran and other places as a deterrent to American aggression, and her own long-standing WMD. The WMD loop seems destined to go on forever ... well, perhaps not forever; just until someone is stupid enough to think radiation isn't carried in the air and water and soil, to harm us all. The new American darling of a Bunker Buster, for instance, has not proven safe "after the drop" -- it leaves unacceptable radiation levels that can be picked up by the wind and carried anywhere. We continue to test it, having just approved $2.5 million for it's further development. Here's a handy little flash presentation created by the Union of Concerned Scientists to illustrate: http://www.care2.com/go/z/25280 I don't think I have to convince most of you that nuclear power is Serious as a heart attack -- I think the word "vaporizing" says it all. Always brilliant, here's a Mark Fiori cartoon about this new "old" topic, resurrected by Bush after he withdrew [with John Bolton's assistance] from the ABM Treaty. Not only is Bush bubbling over with enthusiasm for nukes, he's opened a can of worms by inviting India into the "boyz club" of nuclear privilege. There are many links below if you wish to read further on any of the points I bring up in this post. Nuke Retro: Salesman from the 70s -- http://www.nukeretro.org/ Bush recently gave a pro-nuclear speech from a nuclear facility urging the building of many, many more. There have been no new facilities built in over 20 years, not since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. Those still functioning are worn out and in need of remodel and repair -- they are problematic, expensive and astronomical to insure. The White House alleges that Iran is hiding it's larger motives under the smoke-screen of creating nuclear facilities for energy; the finger points both ways. But then, Mr. Bush is cozy with concepts that I find heart-clutching and dangerous, and acting on them is unthinkable ... to me. Not to him. Consider: "The White House let it be known on May 18 that President Bush will soon issue a national security directive on the subject of weapons in space. The announcement and accompanying statements by Air Force officials, together with earlier developments, reveals much about the connection between missile defense and the militarization of space, and the possible consequences for nuclear proliferation. "The Rumsfeld report stated that an explicit policy is needed to direct capabilities for space "including weapons systems that operate in space." How we would operate in space was hinted at a year ago when Pete Teets, the former acting secretary of the Air Force, told a symposium on space warfare, according to The New York Times , that "we haven't reached the point of bombing and strafing from space. Nonetheless, we are thinking about the possibilities." " Since that first use of nuclear power, on August 6, 1945, this nation has come, slowly and painfully, to an agreement that the Unthinkable must not be tolerated. Yet now, with this rash president, we are looking again at the perils of MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction.] In the last sixty years, each president has spoken of nuclear capability with caution. Consider: President Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Let no one think that the expenditure of vast sums for weapons and systems of defense can guarantee absolute safety for the cities and citizens of any nation. The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit any such easy solution." President John F. Kennedy: "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us .." President Lyndon B. Johnson: "...uneasy is the peace that wears a nuclear crown. And we cannot be satisfied with a situation in which the world is capable of extinction in a moment of error, or madness, or anger. " President Richard M. Nixon: "A direct clash between the superpowers would almost certainly escalate to nuclear weapons. Over 400 million people in the United States and the Soviet Union alone would be killed in an all-out exchange." President Gerald R. Ford: "The world faces an unprecedented danger in the spread of nuclear weapons technology." President James E. Carter: "In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second -- more people killed in the first few hoursthan all the wars of history put together. The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide." President Ronald W. Reagan: "Nuclear War cannot be won and must never be fought." President George H.W. Bush: "School children once hid under their desks in drills to prepare for nuclear war. I saw the chance to rid our children's dreams of the nuclear nightmare, and I did." President Bill Clinton: "I am very disappointed that the United States Senate voted not to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This agreement is critical to protecting the American people from the dangers of nuclear war. It is, therefore, well worth fighting for. And I assure you, the fight is far from over." Yet now -- in a time of cold peace among old enemies, and hot war among new ones -- from a White House that values secrecy, empirism and corporate profit above good sense, all the while naming it "patriotism" ... we have another presidential opinion: "Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies and friends. They provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD and large-scale conventional military force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives." ~ President George W. Bush: Think of that! EVERY president but Bush has at least given cautionary lip-service to the dark side of nuclear capability. It's a question of trust, isn't it ... do you trust George Bush with WMD? Do we become a terrorist to defend against one? Is a "limited nuclear war" in ANY way acceptable? Is developing better and more effective WMD an acceptable use of our tax dollars? Is putting this kind of weapon into space in ANY way justifiable? Have we shown enough maturity as a nation to be ALLOWED to play with all these hyper-cool, deadly toys?? George won't last forever, and he's got a sizeable hitch in his giddy up right now, with his flagging numbers and failed policies ... that's encouraging. But what has he brought with him as legacy ... of the many laws and policies he's turned backwards, has he again unleashed the Worst Of It with his "credible military options?" To my mind, the worst of the last five years has been that so many things we'd worked diligently to lay to rest are back as if we'd never buried them -- and the only answer to this particular problem is for us, you and me, to go back to the rationality of [almost] every elected President since Little Boy and Fat Man fell from the belly of the Enola Gay -- This Is Not Acceptable. Bush still has a couple more years ... and a newly-inspired fundamental Iran, a frantically paranoid North Korea to deal with, not to mention a touchy Israel with nukes and a stand-off between India and Pakistan. He still has his Pentagon programs and his space wars plans. He still thinks he has a "mandate" ... although by now, I think we all agree he gave it to himself. We need to do everything in our power to keep him in check because ... well, because George IS a WMD. If all this information is overload, if you feel helpless and overwhelmed -- google "anti-nuclear" and find a group, a petition to sign, do something. Helplessness is overcome by action ... the outcome of this situation depends on what we do about it. Choice has always been in our own hands. Your own little squeak of a voice, added to the growing chorus of reawakened peace activistism, can become loud enough to shout down even the bullies of our beautiful, endangered world. I will leave you with this -- from the "picture worth a thousand words" category, I recommend this amazing site for your review. I ran into it over a year ago, a picture documentary weblog of the wasteland of Chernobyl by a Ukrainian biker chick named Elena In the last year she's improved her English and added other topics, but the riveting and chilling pictures are still in place. Click into the section that starts: "This is a story about a town where one can ride with no stop-lights, no police, no danger of hitting any of the living thing..." Ghost Town http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ Peace ~ Jude Lessons from Hiroshima, 60 Years Later -- Walter Cronkite -- http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cronkite.php?articleid=6892 The Hiroshima Cover-Up -- http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm US Suppressed Footage of Hiroshima for Decades -- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080305R.shtml The Myths Of Hiroshima http://www.tompaine.com/ Bombs Away! -- http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6962.shtml George W. Strangelove and the Triumph of Nuclear Faith -- http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=6703 Lessons Learned? -- http://www.alternet.org/story/23915/ The Folly Of Space Weapons -- http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050615/the_folly_of_space_weapons.php Glowing Endorsement of Nuclear Power Ignores True Costs, Missed Opportunities -- http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0622-23.htm Nearly 300 Groups Reject Nuclear Energy as a Global Warming Solution -- http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0616-29.htm On 60th Anniversary of US A-Bomb Attacks on Japan, Major Events Planned, Thousands Demand: 'No Nuclear Weapons!' -- http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0805-01.htm Jude, the editor of Political Waves, is standing in for Eric for a couple of days. You can subscribe to Political Waves (our all-politics news distribution list) for free at the link below. You'll receive between five and 10 news articles each day. You may write to Jude with your responses to her commentaries at moderator@planetwaves.net. Political Waves list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/political_waves/