Martin Luther King
A lETTER Urging
From The International Network for Peace Co-Chair Andrea LeBlanc who is also representing Peaceful Tomorrows:
On this day we, the members of The International Network for Peace, honor the Hibakusha and remember the suffering inflicted on them in 1945 when Atomic Bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their suffering has continued for survivors and successive generations for 64 years.
Members of the International Network for Peace are all civilian survivors of terrorism and violence of one sort or another and have, despite loss and suffering, resolved to work for justice and reconciliation through nonviolence. We look to the Japanese Hibakusha among us for guidance and inspiration. Nuclear weapons have caused grievous harm to not only the people who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 & 9, 1945, but to indigenous people of the South Pacific, Canada, the United States, Russia, and Australia exposed to uranium mining and nuclear fallout.
On this day we also send a sincere message of gratitude to all the dedicated Japanese people who lead the way toward a nuclear free future. We are indebted to you for your prescience, your wisdom, your courage and your unwavering determination. We are grateful for The Mayors for Peace Campaign, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, the Campaign to keep Article 9 in the Constitution, and the tireless efforts of the Hibakusha to educate people everywhere about the real human consequences of nuclear weapons.
It is very clear that the world’s people must insist that their governments wake up to the reality that continued nuclear armament is untenable if we are to survive. The good news is that more and more of us are listening to you.
We humbly bow to you .
Website for International Network for Peace Find ENGLISH here Find SPANISH here
Andrea LeBlanc
The International Network for Peace, Co-Chair
http://www.internationalnetworkforpeace.org
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
aldvm@comcast.net
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READ about Andrea LeBlanc - A 911 Widow who because of that tragedy devoted her life to peace education here
Death on a horrendous scale, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
This photograph taken by an unknown Japanese photographer was found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by US serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces.
Incidently, the report is that 1/2 million children have died in 5 years of the US occupation of Iraq - that's more children then died in the Hiroshima tragedy!
SPECIAL EVENT for
Also note the following EVENT - HARLEM JAZZJAM!
Tues. August 11, from 7 PM
$50 donation, cash bar
American Legion Hall Post #398
248 W. 132 St.
Betw. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd (7th AV.) and Frederick Douglas Blvd. (8th Av.)
Subway: 2, 3, B, C to 135 St.
Bus: M2, M10
By car: Exit 135 St. from the Harlem River Drive
A Benefit for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows here and Home Page for Peaceful Tomorrows here
5 comments:
Hiroshima Day:
America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years
By Daniel Ellsberg
I sensed almost right away, in August 1945 as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated, that such feelings-about our president, and our Bomb-separated me from nearly everyone around me, from my parents and friends and from most other Americans. They were not to be mentioned.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23206.htm
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The Great Hiroshima Cover-Up
And the Nuclear Fallout for All of Us Today
By Greg Mitchell
I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23208.htm
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Hiroshima, Nagasaki Atom Bombs Was Right Decision
According To Majority Of Americans: Poll
By John Christoffersen
The poll, released Tuesday, found 61 percent of the more than 2,400 American voters questioned believe the U.S. did the right thing. Twenty-two percent called it wrong and 16 percent were undecided.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23209.htm
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From Rabbi Waskow:
These dead shall not have died in vain;
This earth shall have a new birth of life, of peace . . .
Today, August 6, is the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The atomic bomb was the first irrefutable proof that human technology had forever changed the relationships among human beings and between the earthy human race and the earth -- in Hebrew, "adam" and "adamah." It forever changed the nature of war -- which ever since has tottered on the edge of holocaust.
It was no accident that its planniong and execution were almost simultaneous with the Nazi Holocaust -- a triumph of industrialized sadism. It is no accident that its date comes close to that of the ancient destrictions of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem: The archetype of deadly danger is the same. All these events challenged the world to end war, torture, genocide, terrorism. Yet today we pause to mourn not only the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the dead of our failure to meet those challenges -- our failure to end war and genocide and terrorism, our failure to address seriously our deadly technological impact on the earth that sustains all life.
And beyond mourning, to rededicate ourselves "that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this earth, in the Name of all the Names of God, shall have a new birth of life, of peace, of freedom, of compassion."
For all the children of Abraham, one of the most painful wars has been the one that for a century has disfigured the very region where Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael, and Isaac walked and the communities that claim kinship to them still sojourn. We are at a moment when in that Hundred Years War, glimmers of new hope are rising --- as well as new shards of pain.
There is a section of our website called "Israeli-Palestinian Collision."
You can click to it here -- http://www.shalomctr.org/taxonomy/term/23
Never Forget: The Bombing Of Hiroshima, 64 Years Ago Today
6.8.09
I developed a lifelong opposition to war at the age of ten, when “The World At War” was broadcast by ITV, and today’s anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has brought those feelings back. To mark this most distressing of anniversaries, I’m posting a commentary from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture,”
From the Boston Globe: August 6th marks 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan by the United States at the end of World War II. Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing. The US B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay” took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed “Little Boy.” At 8:15 am, “Little Boy” was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was converted into energy — an explosive energy that seared everything within a few miles, flattened the city below with a massive shockwave, set off a raging firestorm and bathed every living thing in deadly radiation. Nearly 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 70,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950. T
oday, Hiroshima houses a Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero, promoting a hope to end the existence of all nuclear weapons.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
'Hiroshima Mon Amor' has been one of my favorite movies. It's so haunting. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to FEEL about the issue and not just KNOW.
May we be willing to once again to have hearts of flesh and not of stone - to FEEL and not just KNOW and then to ACT accordingly.
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