One who would guide a leader of men in
the uses of life
Will warn him against the use of arms for
conquest.
Even the finest arms are an instrument of
evil;
An army's harvest is a waste of thorns
In time of war men, civilized in peace,
Turn from their higher to their lower
nature.
But triumph is not beautiful.
He who thinks a triumph beautiful
Is one with a will to kill.
The death of a multitude is cause for
mourning
Conduct your triumph as a funeral.
- Lao Tzu
Friday, August 19, 2011
Lao Tzu: War as futile death wish & collective funeral
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Hong Sung-dam: "Gangjeong by the Sea"
Hong Sung-dam was born on the island of Hauido and raised in Gwangju, where as a youth, he took part in the 1980 uprising against Chun Doo-hwan's military dictatorship. In July 1989, Hong was arrested for allegedly breaking the National Security Act for sending slides of a mural he had created, along with around 200 other South Korean artists, to North Korea). Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience; he was released from prison (where he was kept in solitary confinement for three years after being tortured by the Korean CIA) in the early 1990s.
A member of Korea's globally renowned Minjung (politically and socially engaged) art movement, the artist was commissioned by the Government of South Korea to create a mural for Chonnam National University. Human Rights Solidarity published this interview with Hong Sung-dam in 2002: "War Serves the Politicians but Not the People."
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Hiroshima Ground Zero 1945 @ Int. Center of Photography, NYC, May 20-Aug. 28, 2011
(Photo: Hiroshima Ground Zero 1945 I International Center of Photography, May 20-Aug. 28, 2011)
ICP, 1133 Avenue of the AmericasHiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 Public Panel Discussion
Wednesday, August 17, 7:00pm
General Admission: $5. Free for ICP Members and Students
RSVP online.
Panelists: Erin Barnett, Adam Harrison Levy, Greg Mitchell
What can a suitcase, found in a pile of trash, tell us about Hiroshima and its legacy?
The suitcase was found eleven years ago by a man out walking his dog in Watertown, Massachusetts. Inside were 700 photographs of post-bomb Hiroshima. The images depict an annihilated city: twisted girders, imploded buildings, miles of rubble. This was the original Ground Zero, a term first used in 1946 to describe the epicenter of the blast.
Since then, accounts by survivors of the bombing have been published, documentaries have been produced, and historians have fiercely debated the decision to drop the bomb.
And yet, the photographic record of what took place in Hiroshima has long been absent. A U.S. military film crew, which shot the only color footage in the city (and focused on the human effects of the bomb), found that their images would be suppressed for decades. Our lack of visual evidence of the atom bomb's effect has helped us to deny its devastating impact. Think of photographs of Auschwitz after it was liberated and a series of powerful images come to mind: haunting pictures of war's destructive impact. But think of Hiroshima and what comes to mind is the mushroom cloud. Terrifying in its way, with its bulbous head and towering stem, it is nonetheless an abstract image freed of human agency and human consequence.
Join us for a discussion on how the ground-breaking images that make up the Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 exhibition at ICP were discovered and how the moving footage shot in post-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was censored by the U.S. government. Panelists include Greg Mitchell, the author of Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made (2011) and co-author (with Robert Jay Lifton) of Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (1995), Assistant Curator of Collections Erin Barrett, and writer and freelance documentary film producer and director Adam Harrison Levy.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Gloria Steinem's latest tribute, prayers, & action for Jeju Island
The Arms Race Intrudes on ParadiseRead Gloria Steinem's entire tribute here. See also this TTT post, "Gloria Steinem's message on behalf of Jeju Island, South Korea: Support democracy, peace, & environmental protection".
By GLORIA STEINEM
August 6, 2011
The New York Times
... Jeju isn’t called the most beautiful place on earth for nothing. Ancient volcanoes have become snow-covered peaks with pure mountain streams running down to volcanic beaches and reefs of soft coral. In between are green hills covered with wildflowers, mandarin orange groves, nutmeg forests, tea plantations and rare orchids growing wild; all existing at peace with farms, resorts and small cities. Unesco, the United Nation’s educational, scientific and cultural organization, has designated Jeju Island a world natural heritage site.
Now, a naval base is about to destroy a crucial stretch of the coast of Jeju, and will do this to dock and service destroyers with sophisticated ballistic missile defense systems and space war applications. China and South Korea have positive relations at the moment. But this naval base is not only an environmental disaster on an island less than two-thirds the size of Rhode Island, it may be a globally dangerous provocation besides.
Residents of Gangjeong, the village that is to be home to this base, have been living in tents along the endangered coastline, trying to stave off the dredging and bulldozing. In a vote several years ago at a village meeting, residents overwhelming opposed the base.
They’ve tried to block construction with lawsuits and pleas for a proper environmental impact study. They’ve been fined, beaten, arrested and imprisoned. They’ve gone on hunger strikes, chained themselves to anything available, invited tourists in to see what’s at stake, established Web sites and won support from global peace organizations. Members of the “no base” campaign, including children, camp out along the shore behind high walls erected around the site to conceal the protests. Police officers patrol outside. This has been going on for more than four years...
When I was invited in May to again visit Jeju, by friends in the Korean women’s movement, I could see why it attracts peace conferences, honeymooners, environmentalists, marine biologists, film crews, pilgrims and tourists. But I also visited the peace encampment, within sight of harassing police officers and waiting bulldozers. The mayor of Gangjeong, the leader of the resisters, said quietly that he and others would give their lives to stop construction. His 92-year-old mother walks down from the village to the shore every evening to make sure he is still alive.
Still, the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, a former head of a construction company who was known as “Mr. Bulldozer,” hasn’t yet had a change of heart about supporting the naval base. Indeed, he seems to have the same relationship to construction that President George W. Bush had to oil. But I fear South Korea is a tail being wagged by the Pentagon dog. In contrast, his predecessor, Mr. Roh, said before he died that he regretted only two things: sending South Korean troops to Iraq and permitting a naval base on Jeju Island.
Jeju Island is on a very short list of candidates in a public Internet campaign to choose a new seven wonders of the world, and Mr. Lee is campaigning hard for it. He may have to choose. How can Jeju Island be one of the seven wonders when its claim rests on nature about to be destroyed?
Meanwhile, there are more people signing protest petitions on the Web, calling anyone they know in Washington, or going to Jeju Island to support and safeguard the protesters and show that tourists without guns, not military bases, are its economic future. In my daily e-mails with protesters on Jeju, I learned that bulldozers were spreading small rocks in preparation for laying concrete over lava, and living coral that is a distinctive natural habitat. Once the bulldozers are out of sight, children pick up those rocks, pile them into towers and plant a peace flag in each one.
For myself, I am writing this column, putting a petition on my Facebook page, and hoping for enough Arab Spring-like activism to topple one naval base.
I’ve never known less what will happen. I can still hear the dolphins crying as if sensing danger. But somehow, my faith is in the villagers who say, “Touch not one stone, not one flower..."
Gloria Steinem is an author, an activist and a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Hiroshima 2011 Citizens' Peace Declaration - 広島 2011 市民による平和宣言
Via Peace Philosophy Centre...The "Citizens Peace Declaration 2011," by a group of NGOs including The Article 9 Group Hiroshima and Peace Link Hiroshima/Kure/Iwakuni, who organize the annual 8/6 Hiroshima Gathering for Peace.
This year, 2,000 people gathered at the "die-in" demonstration at the A-bomb dome, followed by a protest walk to the headquarters of Chugoku Electric to oppose nuclear power and the plan to build a new nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki.
The 2011 Citizens’ Peace Declaration
August 6, 2011
In 1938, with the help of Lise Mitner, the German chemist Otto Hahn discovered the nuclear fission of uranium. Just seven years later, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indiscriminately killing many civilians in these two cities. This criminal act of mass killing with a tsunami of radio-active fire can only be described as “human madness.” Yet sadly more madness was to follow, as the nuclear powers of the world, particularly the U.S. and Russia, developed and produced further nuclear weapons. As a consequence, radioactive contamination rapidly became a serious global problem, due to uranium mining, production of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear tests conducted in various parts of the world.
In December 1953, at the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, unexpectedly launched the policy “Atoms for Peace,” a concept to promote “the peaceful use” of nuclear energy. The primary reason for launching this policy was an attempt by the U.S. Government to curtail the power of the Soviet Union, which had carried out its first hydrogen bomb test in August that year. “Atoms for Peace” was devised to persuade Western nations to accept plans by the U.S. government and American investments to produce nuclear fuel and technology. Japan was among the most important of the targeted nations. Indeed, it soon became subjugated to the U.S. in two crucial ways: it came under the U.S. nuclear umbrella as part of the military strategy that evolved; and nuclear fuel and technology became part of its energy policy. This has had profound ramifications. On the one hand, U.S. military bases located in Japan, particularly that in Okinawa, were extensively used for many wars that the U.S. engaged in, such as those in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf and elsewhere. On the other hand, the building of nuclear power plants induced the structural corruption among collaborating politicians, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, and caused severe environmental problems. As a consequence, the U.S. – Japan Security Treaty, based on the nuclear deterrence strategy, as well as the leak of radiation from nuclear power plants and accumulated nuclear waste have long been threatening the livelihoods and well-being of the Japanese people. Despite this, the Japanese government firmly established, and continues to maintain, a political system which permits little criticism of these two issues.
The Japanese government, together with the electric power companies and the nuclear industry, has for many years promoted the myth that nuclear power is clean and safe, covering up various accidents at nuclear power plants and related facilities. The danger manifested by major accidents such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have also been consistently ignored. The fatal accident at the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant was not in fact an “accident” caused by a natural calamity, but rather a pending time bomb of “self destruction” which was destined to go off. Through its policies the Japanese government is now punishing its own people, as well as those in neighboring nations, with dangerous doses of radiation.
Despite the national crisis, however, not only Japanese cabinet members, but most Diet members, too, are now busy with their own power politics and are therefore totally incapable of dealing with the grave situation that confronts the victims of the earthquake and nuclear accident. As these politicians have neither the strong political commitment to protect civilians, nor any long-term vision on energy and environmental issues, the government countermeasures for this disaster have been less than effective, and there is political chaos. This state of confusion has provided an ideal environment for U.S. military forces to carry out training of their own special troops, specializing in radiation problems, as well as Marines, under the misleading name “Operation Tomodachi.” Every year Japanese taxpayers pay almost US$ 2.5 billion to maintain such U.S. troops in Japan.
Many A-bomb survivors from 1945 have died – often after a lifetime of suffering - or are still suffering from various diseases caused by the blast, fire or radiation. They live with the constant fear that they may suddenly be struck down by a fatal disease like cancer or leukemia. The use of nuclear weapons, which indiscriminately kill large numbers of people for decades afterwards, is clearly “a crime against humanity.” Yet the scale of damage to people and the environment that could be caused by a major accident at a nuclear power plant, where radiation is emitted either from the nuclear vessel or spent fuel rods, may be comparable. In this sense, a nuclear power accident could be seen as an “act of indiscriminate mass destruction” and so “an unintentionally committed crime against humanity.” The Japanese government is trying to cover up this event, adopting an inappropriate protection standard set by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection).
The wisdom of Hiroshima – that human beings and nuclear power, whether in the form of weapons or energy, cannot co-exist – must be reaffirmed and should be utilized to strengthen and expand our anti-nuclear and anti-war movements. We need to reflect on our hitherto narrow application of the expression “No More Hibakusha (victims of radiation)”, so that it covers not only A-Bomb survivors, but all victims of radiation, including those of nuclear power plant accidents. We need to consider the pain of all the victims of radiation and to think about drastically changing our society that so heavily relies on nuclear technology. Not only do we need to abolish nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, but we must also devise ways to initiate a hitherto impossible, totally new, peaceful and environmentally harmonious society.
(Coordinator and Author: Yuki Tanaka)
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Tokyo University Researcher Slams Japanese Government Handling of Fukushima Crisis
Speaking on July 27th to the Committee on Welfare and Labor in the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, University of Tokyo Radioisotope Center Director Dr. Tatsuhiko Kodama delivered passionate testimony regarding the failure of the government to protect citizens living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant—particularly children—from ongoing nuclear radiation exposure.
At times speaking calmly and at other moments invoking what might be described as principled rage, Kodama joined other worldwide anti-nuclear critics such as Dr. Helen Caldicott and Arne Gunderson (whose recent joint radio discussion may be heard here) in describing the dangers of internal radiation exposure, while also denouncing the inaction of Japanese bureaucrats in their handling of post-Fukushima policy.
Putting the Fukushima tragedy in historical perspective, Madelyn Hoffman, the Executive Director of New Jersey Peace Action, calls for an end to the nuclear era and the suffering that it engenders in her excellent piece "Fukushima. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. When Will It Stop?"
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Kenzaburo Oe: "History Repeats"
Kenzaburo Oe's "History Repeats" published on March 28, 2011 at The New Yorker:
By chance, the day before th earthquake, I wrote an article, whic was published a few days later, i the morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun. The article was about a fisherman of my generation who had been exposed to radiation in 1954, during the hydrogen-bomb testing at Bikini Atoll. I first heard about him when I was nineteen. Later, he devoted his life to denouncing the myth of nuclear deterrence and the arrogance of those who advocated it.Read Kenzaburo Oe's entire prophetic essay here.
Was it a kind of sombre foreboding that led me to evoke that fisherman on the eve of the catastrophe? He has also fought against nuclear power plants and the risk that they pose. I have long contemplated the idea of looking at recent Japanese history through the prism of three groups of people: those who died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who were exposed to the Bikini tests, and the victims of accidents at nuclear facilities. If you consider Japanese history through these stories, the tragedy is self-evident. Today, we can confirm that the risk of nuclear reactors has become a reality. However this unfolding disaster ends—and with all the respect I feel for the human effort deployed to contain it—its significance is not the least bit ambiguous: Japanese history has entered a new phase, and once again we must look at things through the eyes of the victims of nuclear power, of the men and the women who have proved their courage through suffering. The lesson that we learn from the current disaster will depend on whether those who survive it resolve not to repeat their mistakes...
Like earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural calamities, the experience of Hiroshima should be etched into human memory: it was even more dramatic a catastrophe than those natural disasters precisely because it was man-made. To repeat the error by exhibiting, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same disrespect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of Hiroshima’s victims...
Therein lies the ambiguity of contemporary Japan: it is a pacifist nation sheltering under the American nuclear umbrella. One hopes that the accident at the Fukushima facility will allow the Japanese to reconnect with the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to recognize the danger of nuclear power, and to put an end to the illusion of the efficacy of deterrence that is advocated by nuclear powers.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Urakami, Nagasaki: August 9, 1945 & Today (renewed community at Ground Zero)
The city of Nagasaki came into being when Portuguese adventurers came to Japan in 1542 and asked Lord Sumitada, who ruled the area, for the use of the beautiful harbor. Japan's most southern island, Kyushu, had long been the archipelago's principal crossroads for Silk Road traders, and, before that, prehistoric travelers, but their route took them through Hakata, an ancient port city, slightly to the north.
After a squabble with Ming China interrupted old commercial routes, the newly arrived traders became the Japanese elite's only source of Chinese silk, Indian and Persian luxury goods, and European guns. Military unifier Oda Nobunaga welcomed the European merchants and accompanying missionaries, aligning with them to create leverage against rival daimyos backed by powerful Buddhist temples in Kyoto. Franscisco de Xavier arrived with other Spanish Jesuits in 1549, and after two years, left behind behind 1,000 converts.
In 1582, after Nobunaga's suicide during a battle in Kyoto, power transferred to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who, inspired by European imperialism, launched an invasion of the Korean peninsula ten years later. Within six months, superior Korean strategists routed his troops (but not before they forcibly brought back tens of thousands of Korean master potters who created renowned Imari and Arita ceramics). Confounded by his loss and threatened by the power of Kyushu's daimyo traders and their European allies, Hideyoshi responded by issuing orders to execute Christians and instituting a draconian policy that came to define Japan: he began closing its borders to foreigners. By this time, hundreds of thousand Japanese in Kyushu had become Christian. Many of the conversions were nominal, ordered by daimyos; yet others would prove enduring.
After Hideyoshi died in 1597, his successor Ieyasu Tokugawa, restored trade with Korea, China, and European-controlled outposts throughout Asia. However the shadow cast by European imperial military power and Japan's growing community of native Christians proved too daunting for following shoguns who partially closed the archipelago's borders (allowing Chinese, Korean, Ryukuan, and Dutch exchanges at some ports).
Japanese Christians were forced to go underground, not to resurface until 1865 when several thousand Catholics from the fishing village of Urakami confessed themselves to a French priest in Nagasaki. In 1895, these descendents of Christians worshipping secretly for two centuries built the first cathedral in Asia in Urakami, a site of repeated earlier persecutions.
On August 9, 1945, clouds prevented an American B-29 from dropping a plutonium bomb on its original target, the weapons manufacturing center at Kokura. So the pilot aimed the bomb "Fat Man" towards their alternate target, the spires of Urakami Cathedral, the center point between his secondary targets, Mitsubishi's torpedo factory and steel and arms factory.
(People walking down a street in Nagasaki, unaware of the plutonium bomb explosion about to hit them.) 
The plutonium bomb exploded over Japan's (and East Asia's) largest church at 11:02 a.m.—while a priest was beginning midday Mass. More Japanese Christians (8,000 among 70,000 mostly civilian victims) were killed in that moment than in all the previous shogunate persecutions of Christians combined.
In 1959, parishioners rebuilt the cathedral on the exact spot where it was destroyed, on Angelus Street. They decorated the new cathedral with charred angel faces from the bombed building, and left blackened and broken statues of saints (now covered with chains of colorful origami cranes) standing in the front, as a memorial.
After spending the night traveling on the Akatsuki ("Red Moon"), a slow night train that left Kyoto in the early evening and arrived in Nagasaki early morning, I hopped on a streetcar and found myself in Urakami just as Sunday morning mass at St. Mary's had started. All the seats in the church were filled, so I joined people standing in the entrance way. The women all wore white veils and nuns wore old-fashioned blue habits. In this quiet place, I experienced awe, witnessing a renewed faith community that had experienced archetypal devastation.
After the service, I asked a tall, young, bushy-haired, smiling priest where I could find the ruins of the old cathedral. He asked an older, also smiling parishioner, to show me the broken and charred statues of saints, all covered with chains of colorful origami cranes. Looking into the eyes of the parishioner, a peaceful, even joyful survivor of the atomic bombing, I thought of Dr. Martin Luther King's view that the universe is held together by an invisible force of unsentimental, unshakeable love.
The recreated community seems to prove that this love that binds people together—is alive in the people of Nagasaki—and more enduring than man's greatest weapon of mass destruction.
— Jean Miyake Downey (text & contemporary photos)
Multiple traumatic effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the thousands of nuclear test explosions worldwide; other uranium weapons; and nuclear plant meltdowns have not healed, even if survivors and their descendants have been able to renew their communities. Please support nuclear abolition.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
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