Nuclear Explosions Time Lapse by Isao Hashimoto

more information here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Nuclear Free Zone Olympia

I just published a letter that I sent to the City Council of Olympia Washington in regard to the Nuclear Free Zone Act of 2005: olyblog.net/what-nfza-means-me

Public Opinion Matters

In regard to the City of Olympia General Government Committee's decision to recommend repealing the Nuclear Free Zone Act:

Here's some of the text of a comment I just left at my City Council Member, Rhenda Iris Strub's blog:

You’re right. America is not a Democracy. It is a Republic. - However it is a democratic Republic. The opinion of the people matters. Public opinion is integral to the formation of the laws of government, and the ethics of society. No getting around that.

The opinion of the public matters. So, we must then ask, is the public opinion reasonable? Does it make sense? The argument in favor of the ordinance is a winning argument. What is the argument against the ordinance? It’s not strong enough? It is impractical? It’s ineffective.

Which leads me to my third point: The ordinance is effective. It is effective for me. It makes me feel good. I am proud of my City and my Community because of this, and similar, ordinance.

So, please. Don’t take it away. I hope the other City Council Members read this too, because the same applies to them.

Public opinion matters. The opinion of the public in favor of the ordinance (and in favor of strengthening it) is reasonable - it makes sense. And the ordinance IS effective.

Sincerely,

Bert

Here's a link to the post: Disrespectful and Duplicitous [url: http://rhenda.com/?p=30]

And a direct link to my comment: Defending the Nuclear Free Zone [url: http://rhenda.com/?p=30#comment-25]

40 Years after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and Global Climate Disruption

From Democracy Now!:

Forty Years After Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US Tops World in Nuke Arsenal

This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, when nuclear powers agreed to eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear states agreed not to seek to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. Forty years later, there are 189 signatories to the treaty and nine nuclear armed states in the world. The United States and Russia still have the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. We speak with Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
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And also, climate disruption caused by anthropogenic forces:

Leading scientist John Holdren says ‘global warming’ is not the correct term to use, he prefers ‘global disruption.’ “Global warming] is misleading, it implies something that is mainly about temperature, that’s gradual, and that’s uniform across the planet,” says Holdren. “In fact, temperature is only one of the things that’s changing it’s sort of an index of the state of the climate. The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snowpack, snowmelt, flooding, droughts—temperature is just a bit of it.”

As we continue our discussion on global warming, I am joined here in Aspen by one of the country’s top scientists, John Holdren. He is Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and just completed a term as board chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During the 1990s he advised President Clinton as a member of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. In addition to global warming, John Holdren’s research has focused on energy technology, nuclear nonproliferation and arms control.

John Holdren, professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and just completed a term as board chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

True American Terrorism

Robert Scheer has a reminder that the United States government itself is guilty of what can easily be considered one of the most extreme single (double really) acts of terrorism yet known to man.

When US military strategists targeted Japanese Civilians (twice) for assault with a nuclear weapon, they committed what was then amongst the very grossest of violations against humanity.

Worst of all, historical analysis suggests that the bombs were dropped because of an American (Governmental and Corporate) desire for global military and economic hegemony. The bombs most likely did not substantially promote an expedited surrender - because the Japanese were virtually exhausted militarily prior to the bombing. It seems that it was an American quest for dominance and conquest which led to the nuclear annihilation of such a large number of people.

go to original

By Robert Scheer

During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey conducted at President Harry Truman’s request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on April 6, 1945, “nearly all the school children ... were at work in the open,” to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab had envisioned for the bomb’s maximum psychological impact.

The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima’s Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba recalled this week: “That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. ... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies—Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead.”

Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the children nor the adults had any role in Japan’s decision to go to war, but they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military base whose antiaircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by U.S. atomic scientists—a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain—was rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying would be all the more dramatic.
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Just exactly what distinguishes the United States’ use of the ever-so-cutely-named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” atomic bombs on cities in Japan from the car bombs of Baghdad or the planes that smashed into the World Trade Center? To even raise the question, as was found in one recent university case, can be a career-ending move.

Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.

The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman’s rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely by the Soviets’ imminent entry into the fight.
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