David Swanson's Blog, page 138
August 6, 2013
Talk Nation Radio: Rooj Alwazir: U.S. Drones Terrorize Yemen
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-rooj-alwazir
Rooj Alwazir is a Yemeni American peace activist and an organizer and cofounder of the Support Yemen Media Collective: http://supportyemen.org She describes the horror and the disaster that is the U.S. drone war on Yemen.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio
Now Two States Pursue Truly Affordable Education
Maryland may soon join Oregon in exploring solutions to the crisis of student debt and unaffordable education.
Education is supposed to be a human right. But the United States puts people into deep debt to pay for it. Short of taxing billionaires or dismantling bombers (both of which we're all, I hope, working on), what's the solution?
The state of Oregon has passed a law creating a commission to study a plan called "Pay it forward. Pay it back." See Katrina vanden Heuvel: An Oregon Trail to End Student Debt.
This is not a plan to make education truly free, and that would probably be ideal. But this is not, I think, a step that would move us away from that goal -- in the way that strengthening but tweaking the private health insurance system arguably moves us away from a single-payer solution.
This is, however, a plan that makes college tuition at state universities initially free. Students would pay nothing up-front and borrow nothing from loan sharks. Then they would pay the state back 3% of their income for some number of years, possibly 20. The graduate who brings in $100 million per year would hand over $3 million. The graduate who brings in $10,000 would pay $300. While the purpose of an education for many students may not be related to money, in terms of money one is paying for what one gets. If you buy an unmarketable skill, you pay nothing for it. Some have responded by calling this perfect capitalism, while others have noted its correspondence with the ideal of "from each according to his/her means." This system also seems fair to those not interested in college: they pay nothing.
There are shortcomings, of course. Wealthy users of private universities contribute nothing to public universities under this scheme. Pursuers of high-paying careers might drift in greater numbers toward private universities, if they can afford to. A big investment is need to start this up, and then long-term trust in the public system is needed to keep it going in the face of inevitable pretenses that it's collapsing like Social Security (which -- breaking news! -- is not collapsing). Most importantly, perhaps, the Oregon model covers only tuition. Room and board and books should be included as well, or the problem of student debt won't be solved.
But this is a creative possible step forward that could someday spread to every state and to private institutions as well, which might discover it is needed for them to compete.
RootsAction.org members in every state and Washington, D.C., recently emailed their state legislators by the thousands asking them to set up commissions similar to Oregon's and to seriously pursue solutions to unaffordable education. You can do the same.
Here's the email that's being sent (you can edit it):
"As a constituent, I urge you to consider:
"The state of Oregon has passed a law creating a commission to study a plan called "Pay it forward. Pay it back." Under this plan, tuition at state universities will not be paid upfront or borrowed from loan sharks. Graduates will pay the state back by handing over 3% of their income for some number of years.
"The Oregon model could be improved. As proposed it covers only tuition. Room and board and books should be included as well, or the problem of student debt won't be solved.
"Getting such a program started will take serious investment and political will.
"For our children and our grandchildren, please exercise the sort of leadership needed and move our state toward treating education as a right, not a privilege."
Almost immediately, RootsAction heard from Maryland State Delegate Kirill Reznik who said he had been considering this idea and wanted to move on it now. He sent out this announcement:
"DELEGATE KIRILL REZNIK TO INTRODUCE “PAY IT FORWARD, PAY IT BACK” INITIATIVE IN 2014 LEGISLATIVE SESSION
"(ANNAPOLIS, MD) August 2, 2013 – Following the recent passage of the 'Pay It Forward, Pay It Back' bill that overwhelmingly passed the Oregon State Legislature in July, Delegate Kirill Reznik (D- Germantown) plans to introduce a similar bill in Maryland. If passed, Maryland would become the second state to explore alternative options to the mounting student loan debt epidemic.
"'Pay It Forward, Pay It Back,' is an idea that originated out of a Capstone Seminar on student debt out of Portland State University, generating an innovative solution to student loan debt. Whereby students would go to college tuition free and then give back a small percentage of their gross annual income over the next 20-25 years until their tuition was paid in full. Ironically, Oregon passed the “Pay It Forward, Pay It Back” bill on the same day that Congress voted to double student loan rates.
"Delegate Reznik will be introducing legislation to authorize a study to determine whether or not such an idea will work and how best to roll it out.
"'Receiving a higher education is the most effective way to promote economic mobility. Unfortunately, the cost of education shuts out those opportunities for too many Marylanders. As the State with the best public education system in the country, we should also be on the forefront of expanding higher education. The economic opportunities that will come along with this innovative approach will make Maryland a top destination for business and industry,' said Delegate Reznik.
###
"Delegate Kirill Reznik is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing the 39th District in Montgomery County. His district includes the areas of Gaithersburg, Germantown, Montgomery Village, Washington Grove, North Potomac and segments of Darnestown, and Derwood. He began serving in the House of Delegates in October 2007, and sits on the Health Government Operations committee. He was currently appointed to serve as the Chair of the County Affairs Committee within the Montgomery County House Delegation."
Now, the question arises: What about your state?!
Remaking the World from Madison Wisconsin
I'm on my way to Madison, Wisconsin, and I hope you are too, and not just for the beer and (veggie) bratwursts. Here are seven other good reasons:
· The Student Power Convergence, Aug. 1-5 (ending now, but folks sticking around).
· The Democracy Convention, Aug. 7-11.
· The Veterans For Peace Convention, Aug. 7-11.
· Marking the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with opponents of war.
· The opening of Dirty Wars with after-screening talks with Jeremy Scahill.
· The daily singing and protesting in the state capitol!
· And the big town hall meeting, Aug. 7, on "Illegal Wars, Torture & Spying: Millions Demanded Bush's Impeachment; Should Obama be Impeached for Continuing Bush's Crimes?"
Activists are converging on Madison, allowing for cross-fertilization and creative planning of future actions for peace and justice in the United States. I recently invited Roshan Bliss of the Student Power Convergence, Ben Manski of Democracy Convention, and Doug Rawlings of Veterans For Peace to discuss these events on my radio show, Talk Nation Radio. Click and take a listen.
The town hall on impeachment is, I think, the first of its kind I will speak at since Obama moved into the White House and began continuing the crimes for which a majority of Americans in various polls favored Bush's impeachment. It's not that I've turned down other invitations. It's not that I haven't been invited. This is the first Impeach Obama (for sane reasons) meeting I've heard of. Check it out. Also speaking: Coleen Rowley, Debra Sweet, Buzz Davis, Don McKeating, Joe Elder -- and you if you can make it.
The VFP Convention is the 28th such event. Veterans For Peace, a leading antiwar organization with members in every U.S. state and several other countries, will hold its 28th national convention at the Concourse Hotel at 1 Dayton Street. The convention, open to veterans and non-veterans, will feature speakers, entertainers, and workshops on a wide variety of topics related to the advancement of peace and the abolition of war.
Free public events include:
Lanterns for Peace,commemorating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Aug. 6, 7-9:30 p.m. Tenney Park Shelter
Poetry Night, Aug. 7, 8-10:30 p.m. Room of One's Own Bookstore, 315 W Gorham Street
Activist Night with national and local speakers, open mic, music, Aug. 8, 7-10 p.m., Concourse Hotel Ballroom
Rally and Peace Parade, families invited, bring peace banners, Aug. 10, 4 p.m., State Street and Capitol Square
Tribute to Lincoln Grahlfs, Aug. 11, 9-11 a.m., Capitol Lakes Retirement Center, 333 West Main Street
Iraq Veterans Against the War Art Exhibit, Aug 7-11, Rainbow Bookstore, 426 W. Gilman Street
Speakers at the VFP convention include:
Elliott Adams, former VFP president, hungerstriker to close U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Carlos Arredondo, Costa Rican-American peace activist and American Red Cross volunteer.
Leah Bolger,former VFP president, Drones Quilt Project.
Paul Chappell, Iraq War veteran, author, peace leadership director at Nuclear Age Peace Fdtn.
Ben Griffin, UK war resister.
Tarak Kauff, Vietnam War veteran, VFP board member, hungerstriker to close U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
John Kinsman, president of Family Farm Defenders.
Sister Maureen McDonnell, OP, Dominican sister of Sinsinawa and a spiritual guide.
Michael McPhearson, Gulf War veteran, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice.
Patrick McCann, Vietnam War resister, president of Veterans For Peace.
David Newby, founder of U.S. Labor Against the War and former President of WI AFL-CIO.
Scott Olsen, Iraq War veteran, shot in the head at Occupy Oakland.
John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders.
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine.
Paul Soglin, mayor of Madison.
Margaret Stevens, VFP board member and Director of the Urban Issues Institute at Essex County College.
Nick Turse, journalist, historian, and author.
Mike Wiggins Jr., tribal chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.
S. Brian Willson, Vietnam veteran, author, activist, hungerstriker to close U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Diane Wilson, Vietnam veteran, author, activist, fisherwoman, hungerstriker to close U.S. prison at Guantanamo.
Col. Ann Wright (ret.), recently returned from meeting with families of drone victims in Pakistan.
James Yee, former U.S. Army chaplain at Guantanamo, falsely accused of "aiding the enemy."
Entertainers at the convention will include Lem Genovese, Ryan Harvey, Solidarity singalong, Forward Marching Band, Madison Raging Grannies, Watermelon Slim, Honor Among Thieves, Jim Walktendonk. Also Regis Tremblay will be screening his new film The Ghosts of Jeju. A drones quilt will be displayed during the convention.
Workshops at the VFP convention will include such topics as: Veterans farming, Creating a culture of peace, Educating the community, Agent Orange, Nonviolent bioregional revolutionary strategies, Debt and death: making clear the costs of war, Labor's role, Environmental disaster, the United Nations, Helping homeless veterans, Palestine, Veteran suicide, Military sexual trauma and suicides, Voices of Iraq: resolution, reconciliation, reparation, The written word for peace and reconciliation, Bradley Manning and G.I. resisters, The perversion of just war reasoning, U.S. policy in the Middle East, The long war for central Asia, Building peace in Vietnam, and Abolishing war as an instrument of national policy. The full program is available at http://VFPNationalConvention.org
Gar Alperovitz who authored an important book on the decision to drop the nuclear bombs on Japan will be in town, but he'll be speaking at the Democracy Convention on the topic of worker ownership and how people can create enough power to fix our broken democracy. He recently discussed his new book on Talk Nation Radio. Take a listen. Peter Kuznick, another great writer on the nuclear decision, currently in Japan with Oliver Stone, was also a recent guest. Listen here.
The Democracy Convention is a real movement and coalition building project pulling together activists from a wide variety of sectors to find strength and inspiration in numbers. Several conferences will overlap and interact, including:
The Race and Democracy Conference.
The Earth Democracy Conference.
The Democratizing Defense Conference.
The Constitutional Reform Conference.
The Education for Democracy Conference.
The Economic Democracy Conference.
The Media Democracy Conference.
The Representative Democracy Conference.
The Local Democracy Conference.
Think for a minute about who you'd most like to see leading conferences on those topics. Then click the links, and in most cases I think you'll find that they are doing so! We hope you can join us!
The Democracy Convention website describes Madison thus:
"You've seen the images and reports of the mass protests in Madison. The Wisconsin uprising was the first wave of the global anti-austerity protests to arrive in the United States. But it should be no surprise that Madison, Wisconsin, is at the center of the national movement against corporate power and economic austerity.
"Since Wisconsin statehood, in the revolutionary year of 1848, Madisonians have led the way, co-founding and leading the National Organization for Women (NOW), United States Student Association (USSA), United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), Sierra Club, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and four national political parties: the early, radical Republican Party, and then later, the Progressive Party of the 1920-30s, and the New Party and Green Party. Madison, Wisconsin, has long served as the capital city of the heartland of the progressive movement.
"Today, the Madison Common Council and Dane County Board are populated with progressive alders and supervisors, and a newly returned mayor, Paul Soglin, famous for his progressive leadership as mayor in the 1970s. Madison is a labor city with a very high density of union membership, as well as a center of the cooperative and credit union movements; nearly half the population of Madison belongs to some form of cooperatively owned and operated economic enterprise.
"If you've ever visited Madison in late August, you know you're in for great weather in a wonderful city. Join us this August 7-11 in downtown Madison, near the now world-famous Wisconsin State Capitol, easily one of the most stunning buildings in North America. In visiting, you will have the opportunity to take part in our downtown farmers market, one the world's largest, and the nation's oldest. You can also take some time off on the shores of one of Madison's four (or five, depending on how you count them) major lakes. If you've been wanting to return to Madison and Wisconsin, or to visit for the first time, August 7-11 will be the time to do that."
August 4, 2013
August 3, 2013
John Kerry Needs an Intervention
If John Kerry was beating his children and promising to stop "very very soon" and then explaining that he meant "very very soon" in a geological sense, he'd be forced to resign his office.
If we even discovered that John Kerry had once beaten one of his children, even many years ago, perhaps shortly after he returned from killing people in Vietnam, he'd be forced to resign.
Imagine if we were to discover that John Kerry was actually murdering children, and women, and men, using missiles shot out of flying robots and promising to stop "very very soon" and explaining that what he meant by that was "I'd like to see you try to stop me you goddamn primitive Pashtun peons."
Would we respond?
We didn't respond when he claimed Bush won Ohio. How'd that work out?
What if we were about to consider possibly responding, and maybe even growing indignant, and John Kerry stood up on a pile of corpses and screamed "Wolf! Giant ass wolf right behind you! Arabic speaking wolf! Wolf! Wolf!"
And what if he added, "The safest thing for you to do now is to go shopping. But try not to get blown up. What? You don't believe me? Look, here are all the details of what the terrorists are planning. If Bradley Manning gave you this kind of information, I'd hang him by his ears and get a red hot poker with one of those . . . . I mean, the point is very very soon I'm going to stop killing people. Not very soon, but very very soon."
Would we react with the outrage we'd achieve if John Kerry drove drunk? if John Kerry smoked pot? if John Kerry had sex with someone not his wife? if John Kerry promised never to nuke Iran?
Are we sure we've got our priorities straight?
It's been months since Obama gave a speech on prison victims and drone victims. Since then no prisoners have been freed, Obama's drones have kept killing, and people who cheered for Obama's speech are ready to cheer for John Kerry's.
As our global Zimmermen stand their ground, we need to step in. Addicts who oppose their own addictions -- be they to caffeine or hellfire missiles -- are ready to take the next step in shaking the habit.
John Kerry needs an intervention.
If he were beating his wife, we'd advise her to leave. So, we must advise the world's governments. Stop putting makeup over your bruises and covering up for your abuser. The time has come to walk away. You don't need any more drone strikes. John Kerry does not love you and he never will.
There was once a time, from the birth of the nation to the birth of the internet, when the U.S. government could tell the Native Americans or the Mexicans or the Filipinos one thing, and the good citizens back home something else.
No longer.
The Washington Post can compare innocent prisoners in Guantanamo with Nazis, but not without the world recognizing the extent of the sickness from which the U.S. establishment is suffering.
A 16 year old American boy murdered by presidential drone has a grandfather who is suing in court to find out why his grandson was killed.
I am confident he'll receive an answer very very soon.
August 2, 2013
Global Hot Spots
Remarks at the War Resisters League's 90th Year Convention at Georgetown University, August 2, 2013.
Congratulations on 90 years! The War Resisters League is almost as old as the Espionage Act and may outlast it yet.
So I sat down yesterday to think about what connects global hot spots, and the first obvious answer I thought of for a great many of them was the United States military. By some strange coincidence numerous war-torn places on the globe have been given or sold weapons or sent troops or been visited by airplanes or drones courtesy of the same nation that spends the most on its military, keeps the most troops stationed in the most countries, engages in the most conflicts, sells the most weaponry to others, and thumbs its nose most blatantly at the use of courts to restrain its warmaking or even, any more, to put individuals on trial who can just as easily be hit with a hellfire missile. When I heard that our government had set up an atrocities prevention board, I immediately pictured a 2x4 being stuck through the door handles at the Pentagon to keep the place closed. That would truly be an atrocities prevention board.
(Is that espionage to say that, or have people heard of 2x4s before?)
I've been working on a book about abolishing war, and most of those writing on the subject who think it can't be done, and those who think it can, and those who think war is already abolishing itself so there's really nothing to worry about, all tend to treat war as arising out of poor nations of dark skinned people. So the debates over whether this factor or that factor makes war inevitable focus on things like resource scarcity or population density. The evidence is overwhelming, by the way, that no such factor makes war inevitable. Missing from the debate are the factors contributing most significantly to war-making right now: the power of the military industrial complex, the skill of propagandists, the open bribery and corruption of our politics, and the perversion and impoverishment of our educational and entertainment and civic engagement systems that lead so many people in the United States to support and so many others to tolerate a permanent state of war in search of enemies and profits despite decades-long demonstrations that the war machine makes us less safe, drains our economy, strips away our rights, degrades our environment, distributes our income ever upward, debases our morality, and bestows on the wealthiest nation on earth miserably low rankings in life-expectancy, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness.
None of these factors are insurmountable, but we won't surmount them if we imagine the path to peace is to impose our superior will on backward foreigners by means of cluster bombs and napalm meant to prevent atrocities.
According to the standards of a White House fact sheet posted on April 23, 2012, and addressing nations guilty of atrocities, if the standards were consistently applied, then actions taken by the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and other countries should compel the U.S. government to sanction itself, deny itself entry into itself, surge civilians from the State Department and USAID into itself, write reports about itself, block the flow of money to itself, prosecute itself for its crimes, seek to have itself prosecuted internationally, and unleash its military against itself as needed. The same standards seem to require action against Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and numerous other nations where the United States chooses to support atrocities rather than dropping new atrocities from the sky to prevent the existing ones. In fact, it seems the United States has a moral responsibility to join in on both sides of the war in Syria, given the horrors each side has by now committed, and the responsibility the war machine believes it has to wage war against anyone waging war.
We are a nation of misconceptions. A majority of people in the United States believes Iraq benefitted from the war that destroyed Iraq. And a plurality believes the Iraqis are grateful. Those who admit that the weapons of mass destruction were fictional claim the U.S. still needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein, even though Bush reportedly told the Prime Minister of Spain that Hussein had offered to leave if he could keep $1 billion. He'd also offered to withdraw from Kuwait before the previous war. And even further back in the mists of time, the U.S. government had supported and armed him.
Not only did the U.S. government not need to overthrow Hussein, not only could it have refrained from supporting him in the first place, but overthrowing a government is a crime, war is a crime, and these wars are one-sided slaughters. Iraq lost 1.4 million men, women, and children at best estimate. U.S. deaths were 0.3% of the deaths, yet people in the U.S. think they suffered while Iraq benefitted. As important as it is for Americans to hear about financial costs and costs to U.S. troops, which are certainly horrendous, we're going to have to do a better job of spreading the news about the costs to the wars' victims. Those reluctant to invade Syria because the Syrians aren't worth it will be ready to support the next war if a case is made that it's in U.S. interests.
What ended the war in Iraq, after eight years of efforts by Iraqis and five years or so by a significant U.S. peace movement, wasn't the Nobel laureate in the White House pushing Iraq to allow U.S. personnel to stay in Iraq with immunity from prosecution for the crimes they would commit. What helped the Iraqi government to reject those demands was the evidence of past murder and torture made public by a heroic young man named Bradley Manning.
If you want Manning to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, go to ManningNobel.org.
You know, we could be far better off ourselves in this country and make ourselves the most beloved people in the world at the same time. We could do it by practicing democracy rather than preaching it. We could end starvation around the globe for a year, for a third of what we just spent for year #13 of the supposedly winding down war in Afghanistan still scheduled to go on for longer than most wars used to take from beginning to end. We could give the world clean drinking water for a third of what it cost us to keep kids from starving. Al Qaeda is gaining popularity in places like Yemen where it was barely heard of before by opposing U.S. drone strikes and by providing basic services to people. The United States has the resources, if it could find the humility to distribute them respectfully, to make itself remarkably popular by coating the globe with schools and hospitals and solar panels.
I'm tired of hearing that such things would cost money. We're building the world's largest building in Utah dedicated purely to violating the Fourth Amendment. We're putting drone blimps in the skies above Washington. If anybody has a War Resisters League pie chart on them, I can point out exactly where the money would come from, and the billions extra that we could set aside for the things we'll become capable of imagining only after war is gone.
Down in Charlottesville VA we passed a city resolution against drones as at least three other cities have done since, and we quickly formed a coalition that included people who don't want to be spied on and people who don't want to murder foreigners. I think some of the peace activists came to value the need to avoid getting spied on. And I think some of the libertarians, civil and otherwise, came to understand the need to stop the president from picking men, women, and children to murder at meetings every Tuesday. We didn't tone anything down. We welcomed everything in.
That's what I think abolition movements should do. That's where the passion is. We don't need to civilize war into a process that will supposedly someday exclude every crime but murder. We need to put an end to murder along with all of the other abuses it inevitably drags along in its wake.
A weapons profiteer on National Pentagon Radio was asked what he would do if the occupation of Afghanistan were to end, and he replied that he hoped there could be an occupation of Libya. He was clearly joking. But had he joked about molesting children or practicing racism his comments would not have aired. Joking about a new war has not yet been made offensive. It is not yet understood as joking about mass murder.
I don't think it need take 90 more years. I think we're closer than ever. But I think we're going to have to resist harder the closer we get.
Join the War Resisters League.
The next big conference not to miss.
July 31, 2013
Talk Nation Radio: Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-medical
Judith Newman is, together with Allen Hornblum and Gregory Dober, author of Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America. She discusses the background for and the extent of non-consentual experimentation on human beings, in particular underprivileged children, in the United States through the twentieth century.
Dr. Judith Newman has been a faculty member at Penn State's Abington College for 36 years and has been the recipient of several outstanding teaching awards during that time. Dr. Newman teaches a wide array of life-span developmental courses, from Infancy and Early Childhood to Adult Development and Aging. She also teaches an Ethics course for students entering the mental health field.
For a discussion that touches on current forced sterilization of women in California prisons see last week's program at http://davidswanson.org/node/4098
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio
July 30, 2013
A Nuclear Free World
We've managed to outgrow or to come within sight of outgrowing cannibalism, slavery, blood feuds, duels, capital punishment, child labor, tar and feathering, the stocks and pillory, wives as chattel, the punishment of homosexuality, and listening to Rush Limbaugh. To various degrees, these practices -- and many others -- have been eliminated or reduced and stigmatized.
While the stupidest practice ever created -- the mass killing known as war -- remains, we've seen most of the world ban poison gas, land mines, cluster bombs, biological weapons, depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorous, and other disgusting weaponry. But the worst weapon of all remains, and the treaty requiring its reduction and elimination is completely ignored.
We've begun learning to avoid long-lasting environmental damage. We try not to poison our fruit trees or our grass or our rivers. But when it comes to damage that lasts longer than humanity has existed, we go right on producing it. And in so doing, we contribute to a slowly building crisis that could soon slip out of humanity's control and eventually remove humanity from existence. Meanwhile, Pandora's Propaganda tells us that nuclear energy -- the same stuff that proliferates the weaponry -- will help the earth's climate rather than hurting it.
Uh huh. And blood-letting and lobotomy will heal what ails you.
Except that they won't. And we've come to admit and accept that and to move on. We don't fund lobotomies. Why must we fund nuclear energy? And don't say: because television can replace lobotomies but will never reproduce Fukushima.
August is Nuclear Free Future Month. Take a look at what Fukushima is like two years after. Here's a hint: its former residents have to visit it by Youtube too.
Here's something you can do to help: Set up a screening of this new film: The Ultimate Wish: Ending the Nuclear Age.
The Ultimate Wish is the wish for a world without nukes. This is a film that connects Fukushima to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here we watch a survivor of Nagasaki meet a survivor of Auschwitz. And it strikes us with crystalline clarity that they are both victims of incredible stupidity and cruelty. We completely set aside the fact that the holocaust was created by bad German lies about a master race while the dropping of the bombs was created by good U.S. lies about ending World War II and starting the Cold War. The politics fades, and we're left with the human species treating itself as even ants would never treat their fellow ants.
In The Ultimate Wish, produced by Robert Richter and Kathleen Sullivan, we see nuclear survivors in classrooms speaking with young people. One teacher asks the students to close their eyes. She drops a single ball bearing into a metal pan, the noise meant to represent all the bombs of World War II, all the bullets, all the grenades, even the two nuclear bombs. Then, to represent the nuclear weapons now in existence, she dumps a whole noisy bag of ball bearings.
A large coalition has issued the following appeal:
Do you want to reach thousands on August 9 with our message on the need for the Obama administration to engage in multilateral negotiations now for a nuclear free future?
Then join our Thunderclap. Watch a brief video and learn about how a Thunderclap works.
Thousands will see the message below on all of our Facebook pages and Twitter accounts on August 9 at 11:02 a.m., the time the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki:
Aug 9 1945 US A-bombed Nagasaki. Pres #Obama: Speak out at Sept 26 UN Nuclear Disarmament Summit! #NoMoreNagasakis http://nuclearfreefuture.org
How do you join the Thunderclap? Click on this link http://thndr.it/13ioRhC and sign up.
And on August 9 the message will automatically be sent to all your friends and supporters.
Not a bad idea, huh? Try to reach some of your non-friends and non-supporters too.
