Amy Goodman's Blog, page 10

Texas Strips Women of Their Health and Rights

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

SAN ANTONIO — In Texas, how far women have come can be measured by how far they have to go. Scores of medical facilities have been shuttered in Texas, stranding almost a million women hundreds of miles from a healthcare facility that they might need. The reason? These facilities provide, among other services, safe, legal abortions. Last week, the U.S. Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit affirmed Texas state restrictions on abortion access, closing 13 more clinics overnight. Overall, 80 percent of Texas abortion clinics have closed since the law went into effect.

Imagine the headline: “A Federal appeals court in Texas has ruled that 80 percent of gun stores in Texas must close.” Self-proclaimed patriots in Texas would be up in arms. But in the Lone Star State, not all rights are created equal. A woman’s right to choose, her right to terminate a pregnancy, her right to privacy, was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, more than 40 years ago, in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

The Texas Legislature, along with Gov. Rick Perry and Attorney General (and current Republican candidate for governor) Greg Abbott, imposed laws in 2013 creating two significant barriers to the operation of clinics in Texas that perform abortions: First, doctors in the clinics were required to have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals. Second, a series of architectural standards were devised, applicable only to abortion clinics, mandating massive renovations to facilities in order to stay open.

Pro-choice activists call these regulations “TRAP laws,” for “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.” The nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that focuses on reproductive-health issues, reported recently that “26 states have laws or policies that regulate abortion providers and go beyond what is necessary to ensure patients’ safety; all apply to clinics that perform surgical abortion.”

Jeffrey Hons, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Texas, told me, “We are the southernmost and westernmost place where you can find an abortion in Texas, and there’s a whole lot of Texas that is south and west of us.”

Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.

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A Force More Powerful in Jefferson County, Colorado

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“Don’t make history a mystery” read one of the signs at a rally in Jefferson County, Colorado. High-school students in this suburban district, referred to locally as “JeffCo,” have been walking out of class en masse this past week, protesting the planned censorship of the district’s Advanced Placement (AP) United States history curriculum by the local school board. The board proposed a committee that would review the course, and others, adding material to “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” as well as eliminating anything the board thought could “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” The student walkout coincided with several days of “sick-outs” by teachers. Ironically, the school board’s attempts to stifle teaching about the history of protest in the United States has provoked a growing protest movement.

School boards have long been an electoral target of the right wing in the U.S. In JeffCo, the current conservative majority won a narrow victory in November 2013, an off-year election with low voter turnout. “About 33 percent of the total population that could vote voted. Elections matter, and especially school-board elections,” John Ford said on Democracy Now! recently. He’s a social-studies teacher at Moore Middle School and the president of the Jefferson County Education Association, representing more than 5,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and other employees of the district.

Read the full column posted at Truthdig.

Global Warming and Global Warring

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Hours after 400,000 people joined in the largest climate march in history, the United States began bombing Syria, starting yet another war. The Pentagon claims that the targets were military installations of the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, as well a newly revealed terrorist outfit, the Khorasan group. President Barack Obama is again leading the way to war, while simultaneously failing to address our rapidly worsening climate. The world is beset with twin crises, inextricably linked: global warming and global warring. Solutions to both exist, but won’t be achieved by bombing.

“In today’s wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.” These words were spoken on Dec. 10, 2009, by that year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Barack Obama. Five years later, his pronouncement reads like a daily headline. The peace group Code Pink is calling on President Obama to return his Nobel medal.

“The world must come together to confront climate change,” Obama said in that same Nobel acceptance speech. “There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement—all of which will fuel more conflict for decades.” Obama even made the key point that “it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action—it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.”

Indeed, the Pentagon has long considered climate change to be a major threat to the national security of the United States. In its 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon noted that the many impacts of climate change “will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”

So it is fair to ask, why not address the threat of climate change when it is still possible?

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A Climate Week to Change Everything

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The climate crisis is worsening faster than predicted, by every scientific measure, and is paralleled by another crisis: the failure of the U.N. climate negotiation process. “You have been negotiating all my life,” student activist Anjali Appadurai said as she addressed the formal climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, back in 2011. The climate negotiations have been in a virtual gridlock, with nations, most notably the United States under President Obama, blocking progress and protecting their national interests while the planet heats up, potentially irreversibly.

“I speak for more than half the world’s population. We are the silent majority,” Appadurai said as the designated youth speaker. “You’ve given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not on the table. What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money?”

Three years later, the United Nations is now holding a special climate summit in New York City on Sept. 23, with more than 100 world leaders expected. Unlike the formal U.N. climate negotiations, the goal of this nonbinding summit, the UN says, is “to raise political will and mobilize action, thereby generating momentum toward a successful outcome of the negotiations.” After 20 years, U.N. officials have apparently realized that, if left to the usual suspects of government and industry participants, the efforts to achieve a legally binding climate accord, slated for Paris in December 2015, will fail. Grass-roots action is now seen as a critical component for success.

Environmental activists protested in outrage at the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when President Obama showed up and derailed the U.N. negotiations by holding closed-door meetings with the world’s largest polluting nations. Back then, the United Nations responded by ejecting the activists. The U.N. climate negotiations are held around the world, but always in tightly secured convention facilities, far from people most directly impacted by climate change, and far from the sight and sound of climate activists who converge at the summits, hoping to pressure the negotiators to reach a deal before it is too late.

Just days before Ban Ki-moon’s invite-only summit next week, a broad coalition will hold the People’s Climate March, expected to be the largest march addressing climate change in history. People from all walks of life will gather on Central Park’s west side on Sunday, Sept. 21. Organizers expect over 100,000 people. More than 1,200 marching bands have been confirmed.

People will march in “blocs.” At the front of the march, “Frontlines of Crisis, Forefront of Change” will include indigenous and other communities directly affected by fossil-fuel extraction and the impacts of climate change. Organized labor and students will march under the banner “We Can Build the Future,” followed by “We Have Solutions” — alternative energy and sustainable food and water groups. The “We Know Who Is Responsible” bloc will highlight fossil-fuel corporations, banks and other polluters. Scientists and interfaith activists will comprise “The Debate Is Over” bloc, followed by the final, all-inclusive bloc, “To Change Everything, We Need Everyone.”

One of the principal organizers of the People’s Climate March is Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the climate-change organization named after 350 parts per million, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists consider to be safe and sustainable. Says McKibben, “The only way we’ll change ... is by building a big movement. That’s why September 21st in New York, which all these groups are coordinating, is such an important day.”

During the weekend, Union Theological Seminary is hosting a conference of clergy from around the world, addressing the moral issues raised by human-induced global warming. On Monday, the day after the big march, some independent groups are planning to “Flood Wall Street.” “Flood, blockade, sit-in, and shut down the institutions that are profiting from the climate crisis,” the group’s website implores, with a check box to indicate if you are willing to risk arrest. A group calling itself the “Earth Quaker Action Team” will theatrically investigate New York City branches of PNC Bank for the crime of “climate disruption,” for the bank’s role in financing mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Sunday’s climate march won’t include speeches. It’s all about the movement. But on Monday, author Naomi Klein will be among those speaking at the Wall Street actions. Her new book is out this week, titled “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.” It is a powerful, passionate, paradigm-shattering call to action. In it, she reminds us, “climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.”

The Climate Marches On

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“Unjust laws exist.” So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” The naturalist and pacifist asked, “Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” His answer was simple: “I say, break the law.”

One hundred and sixty-four years later, on May 15, 2013, Ken Ward Jr. and Jay O’Hara did just that. They navigated a small lobster boat, named “The Henry David T.,” to a point off the Massachusetts coast near the enormous Brayton Point Power Station, a coal-fired power plant built in 1963 that is the largest source of carbon emissions in the region. They dropped anchor and blocked access to the pier, preventing a cargo ship from unloading 40,000 tons of coal. They suspended banners from their boat reading “#CoalIsStupid” and “350,” a reference to the international climate action group 350.org. Three hundred fifty parts per million (ppm) is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists feel is the maximum level that will allow the planet to avoid catastrophic human-induced climate change. Ward and O’Hara succeeded in blocking the coal shipment. From the boat, they reported themselves to the local police and were later arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard.

O’Hara, a Quaker and a sailmaker on Cape Cod, explained, “We were charged with ... disturbing the peace, conspiracy to disturb the peace, negligent operation of a motor vessel and a failure to act to avoid a collision of a boat.” They faced years in prison. They decided to mount a “necessity defense,” admitting that they broke the law, but claiming that they did so only to prevent a much greater harm, i.e., the burning of coal that increases global warming. Last Monday, Sept. 8, they finally went to court. Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter offered them a deal. He dropped all criminal charges against them in exchange for a guilty plea to a civil offense and a fine. D.A. Sutter then went a step further—a few steps, actually, to the plaza in front of the courthouse, where he shocked the two defendants and close to 100 of their supporters with a short speech:

“The decision [we] reached today ... certainly took into consideration the cost to the taxpayers in Somerset, but was made with our concern for their children, the children of Bristol County and beyond, in mind. Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been gravely lacking ... we were able to reach an agreement that symbolizes our commitment at the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office to take a leadership role on this issue.”

Sutter’s incredible demonstration of political leadership is timely, indeed. This week, the World Meteorological Organization released its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, packed with dire statistics about the accelerating threat of climate change. “The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2013,” the WMO reported, with current concentration of carbon dioxide at 396 ppm. The WMO also warned, ominously, “The current rate of ocean acidification appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years.” Defendant Ken Ward, a former deputy director of Greenpeace USA, noting the urgency he feels for the climate, told me, “We should ... be taking emergency actions everywhere we can. And the very first emergency action is to stop burning coal.”

Click here to read the rest of the column posted at Truthdig.

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Get Ready for the ‘Internet Slowdown’

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Next Wednesday, Sept. 10, if your favorite website seems to load slowly, take a closer look: You might be experiencing the Battle for the Net’s “Internet Slowdown,” a global day of grassroots action. Protesters won’t actually slow the Internet down, but will place on their websites animated “Loading” graphics (which organizers call “the proverbial ‘spinning wheel of death’”) to symbolize what the Internet might soon look like. As that wheel spins, the rules about how the internet works are being redrawn. Large Internet service providers, or ISPs, like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and Verizon are trying to change the rules that govern your online life.

The fight over these rules is being waged now. These corporate ISPs want to create a two-tiered Internet, where some websites or content providers pay to get preferred access to the public. Large content providers like Netflix, the online streaming movie giant, would pay extra to ensure that their content traveled on the fast lane. But let’s say a startup tried to compete with Netflix. If it couldn’t afford to pay the large ISPs their fees for the fast lane, their service would suffer, and people wouldn’t subscribe.

The Internet is protected from this two-tiered, discriminatory practice through regulated “net neutrality,” the fundamental principle of the Internet that allows any user to access Web content freely without any corporation censoring the content or slowing down the connection. Because so much of the world’s Internet traffic passes through the United States, the way that the U.S. regulates the Internet impacts the entire planet. Sadly, the state of Internet regulation in the U.S., under the Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission, is in crisis. The Obama-appointed FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, has proposed new rules for the Internet that would effectively do away with net neutrality, allowing large ISPs to create these separate fast lanes and slow lanes.

Let’s look further at the example of Netflix. Streaming video depends on ample bandwidth. Customers with Internet at home provided by Comcast were complaining that their Netflix video was streaming poorly, with frequent buffering. So, last February, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for “paid prioritization,” meaning Netflix Internet traffic would flow to the customers faster than other Internet traffic, on a fast lane. Since then, Netflix has inked similar deals with AT&T, Verizon and Time-Warner. VHX is a small, New York-based video-streaming startup company. VHX’s CEO, Jamie Wilkinson, expressed his concern, writing on the VHX blog: “The companies with which we compete—Apple, Amazon, Google, the cable companies themselves—can afford to pay for a ‘fast lane’ ... We do not have that luxury.” VHX will “live or die” he wrote, based on the strength of net neutrality rules.

Corporate censorship is also a concern. Let’s say you advocate for union rights, in support of striking workers. A large Internet service provider could block your website, denying the public access to critical information. This is not hypothetical. In Canada in 2005, workers at the corporate ISP Telus went on strike. One of the strikers developed a website, Voices for Change, which supported the strike. Telus denied its Internet customers access to the website until the corporate censorship became national news. But if large ISPs get their way, this type of censorship could become routine.

Read the rest of the column posted at Truthdig.

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The Guns of August

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

In her epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Guns of August,” historian Barbara Tuchman detailed how World War I began in 1914, and how the belligerence, vanity and poor policies of powerful leaders led millions to gory deaths in that four-year conflagration. Before people realized world wars had to be numbered, World War I was called “The Great War” or “The War to End All Wars,” which it wasn’t. It was the first modern war with massive, mechanized slaughter on land, sea and in the air. We can look at that war in retrospect, now 100 years after it started, as if through a distant mirror. The reflection, where we are today, is grim from within the greatest war-making nation in human history, the United States.

In the early years of the 20th century, the leaders of the nations of Europe had contrived a web of alliances, each treaty binding one country to join in the defense of another in the event of war. When the Austrian emperor’s son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, visited Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated him. As Barbara Tuchman writes in her book, published in 1962, Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia, which set off a chain reaction, involving Russia, France, Belgium and Great Britain in the war against Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

After the war plans of the various powers failed, a period of brutal trench warfare began, with millions of lives lost under a relentless barrage of mortars, machine guns, mustard gas and newfangled airplanes outfitted with machine guns and bombs. By the war’s end, an estimated 9,700,000 soldiers would be dead, along with 6,800,000 civilians killed.

What, if anything, have we learned from the disaster of World War I? Look no farther than Gaza, or Ferguson, Mo. After nearly 50 days of the bombardment of Gaza with Israel’s intensely lethal, high-tech, U.S.-funded arsenal, Palestinian health officials put the number of Gazans killed at 2,139, of whom over 490 were children. Israel reported 64 soldiers killed as a result of its ground invasion of Gaza, with six civilians dead. The narrow Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, suffering under an Israeli-imposed state of siege, is now a pile of rubble through which people pick, searching for the bodies of loved ones.

Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.

The Ghost of Dred Scott Haunts the Streets of Ferguson

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Thousands have been protesting the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. He was due to start college just days after he was shot dead in broad daylight. Police left his bleeding corpse in the middle of the street for over four hours, behind police tape, as neighbors gathered and looked on in horror. Outraged citizens protested, and police brutally cracked down on them. Clad in paramilitary gear and using armored vehicles, they shot tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and flash-bang grenades, aiming automatic weapons at protesters. Scores of peaceful protesters, as well as journalists, have been arrested.

The protests have raged along Ferguson’s West Florissant Avenue. Four miles south of the protest’s ground zero, along the same street, in the quietude of Calvary Cemetery, lies Dred Scott, the man born a slave who famously fought for his freedom in the courts. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 is considered by many to be the worst one in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled that African-Americans, whether slave or free, could not be citizens, ever.

Scott was born into slavery in Virginia around 1799 (the same year noted Virginia slaveholder President George Washington died). Scott’s owner moved from Virginia, taking him to Missouri, a slave state. He was sold to John Emerson, a surgeon in the U.S. Army. In 1847, Scott sued Emerson for his freedom in a St. Louis court. Scott and his family prevailed, winning their freedom, only to have the decision overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court. The case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney, a supporter of slavery, wrote, “A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.” Thus, the court ruled that all African-Americans, whether slave or free, were not citizens, and never would be.

The ruling also declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The compromise made Missouri a slave state, but dictated that northern territories in the rapidly expanding United States would be free territories, with slavery outlawed. The Dred Scott decision opened up all of these new territories to slavery, and was deemed a victory for the Southern slave states. The decision sent shockwaves through the country. Abraham Lincoln invoked the decision in his famous “House Divided” speech, saying: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” The Dred Scott decision would help lead to the election of Lincoln as president, and push the country ever closer to civil war.

Click here to read the rest of the column posted at Truthdig.

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James Risen, Surveillance and Obama's Threat to Journalism

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The Obama administration’s espionage case against alleged CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling is expected to come to trial soon, six years after he was indicted. In addition to Sterling, also on trial will be a central pillar of our democratic society: press freedom.

Federal prosecutors allege that Sterling leaked classified information to New York Times reporter and author James Risen. Risen has written many exposés on national security issues. In one, published in his 2006 book “State of War,” he details a failed CIA operation to deliver faulty nuclear bomb blueprints to the government of Iran, to disrupt that country’s alleged weapons program. Federal prosecutors think Sterling leaked the details of that operation to Risen. They want Risen to divulge his source in court, which he has so far refused to do, asserting the First Amendment’s protections of the free press. James Risen has vowed to go to jail rather than “give up everything I believe in.”

The role confidential sources play in investigative journalism was perhaps best demonstrated by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They had a confidential source dubbed “Deep Throat,” who gave them leads, confirmed details, and instructed them to “follow the money.” With the help of that source, they uncovered wrong-doing at the highest levels of government that ultimately led to the President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office in 1974, to avoid impeachment.

At about the same time, revelations about FBI, CIA and the NSA misconduct and outright criminality led to Congressional investigations that prompted creation of new laws, like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was supposed to rein in abuses, requiring a court-issued warrant for surveillance.

Then, 9/11 happened, and, as common wisdom now holds, “everything changed.” The administration of George W. Bush initiated a wide spectrum of activities, including torture, kidnapping, warrantless wiretapping, and, of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq based on falsified intelligence and a sprawling propaganda initiative, conducted with a largely compliant mass media.

These abuses came to light thanks to the work of investigative journalists like Risen, and to whistleblowers who take great risks, personally and professionally, to bring abuses of power to public attention. Risen has taken his case to court, where a Federal district judge threw out the subpoena against him. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which, importantly, has jurisdiction over Virginia and Maryland, where the CIA and NSA are headquartered, respectively, reinstated the subpoena. The U.S. Supreme Court, at the Obama administration’s urging, failed to hear the case. Risen has thus exhausted his legal appeals, and will either have to testify in Sterling’s trial, or face contempt of court charges, which can include massive fines and jail time.

“As long as I’m attorney general,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised, “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.”

If Sterling’s federal prosecutors compel Risen to testify, it’s not clear what Holder’s promise will be worth.

One of the reasons that the district court judge threw out the subpoena against Risen is that, the judge reasoned, the prosecutors already have a strong case against Sterling, and they don’t need Risen’s confirmation that Sterling was the source. The case against Sterling includes Risen’s credit card and bank statements, telephone records, and other information allegedly linking the two. Therein lies another profound threat to journalism: the unprecedented level of surveillance happening. Ironically, it was James Risen and his colleague Eric Lichtblau who first exposed the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, in an article written in 2004 but withheld until after the 2004 presidential election by then-executive editor Bill Keller.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union jointly released a report in July, “With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale U.S. Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy.” In detailing the negative impacts on journalism by mass surveillance, they quote Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, who said, “I feel ... like somebody in the Mafia. You’ve got to go around with a bag full of quarters and, if you can find a pay phone, use it, or, like drug dealers use, [a] throwaway burner phones. These are all the steps that we have to take to get rid of an electronic trail. To have to take those kind of steps makes journalists feel like we’re criminals and like we’re doing something wrong.”

Of course, investigative journalists are not guilty of doing something wrong. The online activist group Roots Action has petition with more than 125,000, calling on President Barack Obama and Attorney General Holder to halt legal action against James Risen. Scores of press freedom organizations have publicly supported Risen, as have 20 Pulitzer Prize winners. A crack down on the press ultimately violates the public’s right to know.

There is a reason why journalism is protected by the U.S. Constitution: A free press is an essential check and balance, necessary to hold those in power accountable. Journalism is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 69 Years Later

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“I hate war,” Koji Hosokawa told me as we stood next to the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan. The skeletal remains of the four-story building stand at the edge of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The building was one of the few left standing when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed—many instantly, and many more slowly from severe burns and what would come to be understood as radiation sickness.

The world watches in horror this summer as military conflicts rage, leaving destruction in their wake from Libya, to Gaza, to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Never far from the dead and injured, nuclear-armed missiles stand by at the alert, waiting for the horrible moment when hubris, accident or inhumanity triggers the next nuclear attack. “I hate war,” Hosokawa reiterated. “War makes everyone crazy.”

Koji Hosokawa was 17 years old in 1945, and worked in the telephone exchange building, less than 2 miles from ground zero. “I miraculously survived,” he told me. His 13-year-old sister was not so fortunate: “She was ... very close to the hypocenter, and she was exposed to the bomb there. And she was with a teacher and the students. In all, 228 people were there together with her.” They all died.

We walked through the park to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. There, on display, were the images of death: the shadows of victims burned into the walls of buildings, the pictures of the fiery chaos that followed the bombing, and of the victims of radiation. Almost seven decades later, Hosokawa’s eyes tear up in the recollection. “My biggest sorrow in my life is that my younger sister died in the atomic bomb,” he said.

The day before my meeting with Koji Hosokawa, I sat down in Tokyo to interview Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was 10 years old in 1945. “When Japan experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this was a greater catastrophe than anything we had ever known,” he told me. “The feeling of having to survive this, go beyond this and renew from this, was great.”

Now nearing 80, Kenzaburo Oe thinks deeply about the connection between the atomic bombings and the disaster at Fukushima, the nuclear power plant meltdown that began when Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The Nobel laureate told the French newspaper Le Monde: “Hiroshima must be engraved in our memories: It’s a catastrophe even more dramatic than natural disasters, because it’s man-made. To repeat it, by showing the same disregard for human life in nuclear power stations, is the worst betrayal of the memory of the victims of Hiroshima.”

After the Fukushima disaster, Oe said, “all Japanese people were feeling a great regret ... the atmosphere in Japan here was almost the same as following the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the war. Because of this atmosphere, the government [in 2011], with the agreement of the Japanese people, pledged to totally get rid of or decommission the more than 50 nuclear power plants here in Japan.”

Click here to read the full column posted at Truthdig.