An early atomic bomb detonation in Nevada desert.
(Photo: Getty)
BALTIMORE
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS
For the
32nd year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the
atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than
200,000 people. It has been 71 years since these awful events occurred.
Other organizations involved in the commemorations are the Baltimore Quaker
Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians
for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and Pledge of
Resistance-Baltimore.
HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATION on Sunday, August 7,
2016 at 33rd & N. Charles Streets
5:30
PM Demonstrate
against Johns Hopkins University’s weapons contracts, including research on
killer drones, commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and remember
Fukushima, Japan.
6:30 PM March to the
Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles Street. Joseph Byrne, from
Baltimore’s Jonah House, will perform some dulcimer music, and David Eberhardt,
a member of the Baltimore Four, will do some poetry. Mr. Toshiyuki
Mimaki, a Hiroshima Hibakusha (Atomic Bomb Survivor), will join us, and he will
call on the nations of the world to abolish nuclear
weapons so that the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is never repeated. The
Hibakusha’s greatest fear is that when they are gone, the memory of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki will disappear and nuclear weapons will be used again, this time
threatening life itself.
8
PM Enjoy
dinner at Niwana Restaurant, 3 E. 33rd Street, with our Japanese
guest.
NAGASAKI
COMMEMORATION on Tuesday, August 9, 2016 at Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N.
Charles Street
5:30
PM Savor
a potluck dinner with members of the peace and justice community. David
Eberhardt will again share some poetry, and there may be some music in the
room.
7
PM Gun
violence in the USA is unrelenting. Firmin
DeBrabander, a professor of philosophy at the Maryland
Institute College of Art, is the author of "Do
Guns Make us Free?" He will offer some possible solutions to the gun
violence epidemic.
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI
COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE, 325 East 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218 Ph:
410-366-1637 Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net
Massive
Deployment of US WMD Spotlighted by Peace Group
The ad pierces your
consciousness and catches you by surprise. Plastered on the side of Seattle’s
King County Metro it hurls you momentarily back in time, to a time when nuclear
weapons were an imminent threat to our survival. Or did the era never end?
The ad — sponsored by local
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action — reads: “20 miles west of Seattle is
the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the U.S.”
Behind this text is a map,
depicting the proximity of Seattle to Naval Base Kitsap, located on the eastern
shore of Hood Canal, one of the four main basins in Washington state’s Puget
Sound. The base is home port for eight of the US Navy’s 14 Trident ballistic
missile submarines as well as an underground nuclear weapons storage complex. Together
they’re believed to store more than 1,300 nuclear warheads, according to Hans
Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of
American Scientists.
This is arguably the biggest
single concentration of nuclear warheads not only in the U.S., but in the
world.
King County Metro was initially
hesitant to run the ad, until Kristensen confirmed its accuracy. The combined
explosive power contained in the base is equivalent to more than 14,000
Hiroshima bombs, he says.
But the most surprising thing to
him about the underground nuclear weapons storage complex — known as the
Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (SWF-PAC), and completed in 2012 — is the
extent to which a $294 million bunker has largely escaped public debate, except
for a few industry-related articles.
The small non-profit behind the
ad shares a land border with the naval base. It launched when Robert Aldridge,
an engineer for Lockheed Martin in California — the arms manufacturer has a
facility at the base to ensure that Trident D5 ballistic missiles are ready for
deployment on the subs — quit his job directing missile design when he saw they
could be used in a preemptive first strike against the Soviet Union.
According to Ground Zero’s Glen
Milner, Aldridge then contacted two peace activists — Catholic theologian Jim
Douglass and his wife Shelley — and the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent
Action was formed.
For a time Ground Zero was
successful in engaging the public. When the first Trident warship arrived in
Hood Canal in 1982, several thousand protesters gathered on shore and a small
flotilla of boats to meet it. The U.S. Coast Guard kept them at bay by severing
outboard gas lines and threatening to use fire-hoses.
When nuclear warheads began to
arrive at Naval Base Kitsap on rail cars from the Pantex assembly plant in
north Texas, momentum in the anti-nuclear movement began to build. The rail
cars were initially white, says Milner. As a result, the “white trains” became
a focal point not only for anti-nuclear weapons protesters in Washington but
around the country. The trains were met by protesters on their way to Bangor.
After this, the Department of Energy stopped shipping warheads by train and
began moving them via unmarked trucks and trailers.
The enormous amount of nuclear
weaponry in Seattle’s backyard is no secret to industry analysts, military
contractors, or public officials. But the general public is less informed, say
those who initiated Ground Zero’s bus campaign. They describe the goals of the
advertisements as two-fold: to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the naval
base, and to re-ignite public debate about nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
“This is a wake up call,” says
Ground Zero’s Leonard Eiger. “Why do these nuclear weapons exist 70 years after
Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why do we continue to not only deploy them but why are
we maintaining them and planning for a new fleet that could run over $100
billion? What are the economic, political and social costs?”
The Washington Military Alliance
— a group formally established in 2014 by Governor Jay Inslee, which advocates
for military investment in the state — claims that Naval Base Kitsap is a
driving economic force in the region.
The U.S. Navy has presented a
plan to spend more than a trillion dollars during the next 30 years upgrading
and maintaining the entire triad of U.S. based nuclear weapons, according to
Martin Fleck of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that advocates
for nuclear disarmament. This includes over $100 billion to replace the base’s
nuclear submarines.
The plan was approved by Obama
in 2010.
“We and our allies,” says Fleck,
“are arguing for sanity with nuclear weapons given that we have enough already
to end the world several times over. Why on earth would we invest another trillion
dollars in them at this late date?”
Nuclear weapons contractors in
the United States brought in $334 billion in government contracts between 2012
and 2014, according to research conducted by Physicians for Social
Responsibility.
The ranking member of the House
Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith, D-WA, has questioned the
nuclear spending currently being proposed. Smith joined 159 other members of
the House of Representatives to support an amendment to the House Defense
Appropriations bill, which would have slashed funding for a nuclear cruise
missile.
Both Lockheed Martin and Boeing
Corporation weighed in to oppose the amendment, and it was defeated along
partisan lines. But the vote, says PSR’s Fleck, proved that Congress is far
from united over the government’s massive WMD spending plan. Smith later penned
an op-ed for Foreign Policy magazine, titled “America Already Has More Than
Enough Nuclear Missiles.”
Kristensen of the Federation of
American Scientists disputes whether a new nuclear arms race is underway, but
admits there’s been a resurgence in the adversarial relationship between the
United States and Russia. As a result, “nuclear weapons are gradually becoming
more explicit. For now, this is fueling modernization of arsenals and
adjustments of operations and strategies.”
Nine nations, including China
and North Korea, are engaged in building or modernizing their nuclear arsenal.
In the face of this, those behind Ground Zero’s bus ad say it’s time to
“demilitarize diplomacy.”
“It’s time to step back from
building another generation of nuclear weapons,” says Eiger. “The doctrine came
out of the Cold War but it still exists. It’s a dangerous road to travel.”
Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: http://www.counterpunch.org
URL to
article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/03/massive-deployment-of-us-wmd-spotlighted-by-peace-group/
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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