The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 lift up for us the insanity of the nuclear policies of the United States which are renewing a nuclear arms race- and, how the good angels of our American experiment have been left in the dust over the past 75 years since August 6 1945.
Our Constitution which makes ratified treaties, such as the United Nations charter, the law of the Land. Yet our courts did not and will not admit the necessity (to break the law to prevent a greater harm) defense to be used by nuclear protestors.
The Bill of Rights guarantees speedy trials and reasonable bail but its is approaching 2 years on from the Plowshares action and still the sentencing has not been completed.
The US has withdrawn from a number of treaties that were reducing the threat of nuclear war and now the Atomic Doomsday clock is as closer to midnight that ever. (greater harm)
The US is pouring trillions of dollars into new (more– and so called useable), a new fleet of Columbia class submarine delivery systems, the F-35 joint strike boondoggle, the B-2 bombers, all that can deliver nukes. The low ball figure is $1.7 Trillion. (greater harm)
Congress continues to trust The National Security State, created in 1947, to justify preparations for pre-emptive wars like the war against Iraq to get their non existent weapons of mass destruction. (greater harm)
The myth about this first Atomic attack — that it quickly ended the war with Japan and saving a million lives — continues in our collective consciousness. This, even when we know that it was the Soviet declaration of war on August 8 that convinced the Japanese general staff that the jig was up.
Truth is labelled revisionist history. War is Peace. Death is Life. George Orwell lives. The National “Security” state continues to live in secrecy.
We must ask ourselves what if we and the Soviets had spent the well over 12 trillion dollars of national wealth we jointly committed over the these 75 years instead, on health care, environmental care, fair distributions of wealth, developing non-fossil fuel power, clean water, and universal education for the whole planet?
The paper cranes we fold remind us of the long term negative consequences of our trust in nuclear weapons. Sudoku died of A Bomb initiated leukemia 7 years after her Hiroshima exposure. She was not alone.
Our soldiers and sailors have sickened and died from exposures to fall out from nuclear bomb test in the Pacific and at the Nevada test site.
Our civilians–8 to 15 thousand– have died from fall out, documented by the CDC studies for one radionuclide alone, Cesium 131.
Who knows how many downwinders from other fall out.
And how many nuclear workers building bombs have been damaged and died at US nuclear plants. And all this doesn’t even account for the similar deaths in the Soviet Union, and other countries.
Let this 75 anniversary NOT be used to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as necessary war ending and life saving. Let it bring Truth to light and so commit our nation to joining the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty, to commit to a no first use policy, and to redirect so called national defense money that is being spent to re-up the nuclear weapons complex. Let’s take a hard look at what we mean by national defense and get busy defending against climate change, against economic injustice, for the whole of the human family. Let’s not elect any Senators, or Presidents, who put their Trust in Nuclear Weapons, in War, in Special OPs, and in keeping our citizens away from the Truth.
WAR IS NOT PEACE Death is not Life, Nukes got to go.
