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Current Events August

I am reporting this month from Hiroshima. In this city, the entire first week of August is a non-stop whirl of anti-nuclear activity. Gensuikin (Japan Congress Against A-and H-Bombs) and Gensuikyo (Japan Council against A & H Bombs) hold their annual world congresses. Hiroshima itself holds or helps to hold symposia, concerts, meetings and mini-concerts. Hundreds of religious or civic groups walk, rally, raise banners, collect signatures, and generally commemorate the occasion with well-planned activities designed to associate world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons with related problems like: poison gas, comfort women, Japanese crimes in Asia, anti-personnel landmines, MOX reprocessing and plutonium contamination, and the harvesting of human organs from unwilling, living donors in China. Everyone is for peace, and everyone is angry about something.

Meanwhile, well-behaved, uniformed children from elementary, junior high and high schools around Japan appear in endless lines to go through the museum, listen to survivors, and present paper cranes, flowers or other artwork to the Children’s Peace Monument, the Monument to Teachers and Students, the Monument to the Mobilized Students, the A-bomb Mound (for unknown victims), the Monument to Korean Victims, or any of the dozens of other monuments in Peace Park.

The kataribe (survivors who regularly tell their A-bomb experiences) are working overtime. This year, the newspaper caught one survivor talking to a group of respectful and attentive young people who were, for some unexplained reason, in Peace Park at 4:00 a.m. But young people are everywhere all the time. Some in uniforms. Some in neat white short-sleeve shirts. Some in earth-tone handmade clothes, sandals and dreadlocks. Some looking like heavy metal punks and streetwalkers. Some collaborate with adults and display their musical, dancing and drama talents in front of a thousand people in Phoenix Hall. Some take their drums and guitars under Motoyasu Bridge near the hypocenter and sing for small but admiring groups of fans. This year, some found a miraculous way to project an enormous, spectacular mural (5 meters tall, 30 meters long) on the seawall in front of the A-bomb Dome.

On the sixth itself, Peace Park is full of peaceful, reverent people (45,000 this year) sitting or standing in 90 degree under the blazing sun (only a few of the seats are under a roof, and those are supposed to be for the elderly and ill). At 8:15 a.m. (when the bomb exploded) we stand and pray for one minute to the ringing of the Peace Bell. Then, Mayor Akiba reads his Peace Declaration, in which he tells us that 1423 mayors are standing up to tell their national leaders that “Cities Are Not Targets.” After the mayor, Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gets up and tells us that Japan will abide by the Peace Constitution and help lead the world toward nuclear disarmament.

In Hiroshima on August 6, it is easy to harbor the delusion that the human family is awakening from its nuclear trance and is about to do what it should have done sixty years ago. But early on the 7th, reality sets in. In the quiet after the storm, you remember that the Gensuikin and Gensuikyo twins still do little or nothing together. You remember that HANWA (Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition), founded in 2001 to overcome the divisions in Hiroshima’s peace movement, was barely able to get 100 people to their big meeting this year.

You remember with pleasure and pride the large and successful International Conference on Banning Depleted Uranium Weapons. Then, you remember that another group of DU activists seems to hate this group. (The Hiroshima group wants to ban uranium weapons. The other group thinks going for a ban is a mistake because uranium weapons are already against international law and a new ban could let the users of DU weapons avoid paying reparations to those they harm before the ban. This difference in strategy has become a highly emotional feud.) And, you remember that another schism emerged in this conference between those who believe DU weapons are a kind of nuclear weapon and those who believe mixing bullets with fission and fusion weapons is a strategic mistake.

That reminds you of the other big conflict causing trouble in the anti-nuclear movement. Is it possible to oppose nuclear weapons without opposing nuclear power? Some say yes, others no, and it is remarkably difficult for these two groups to write a letter together to protest the plan to bomb Iran.

And what about the arms controllers versus the abolitionists? Which is better? A campaign that fails to do what needs to be done or a campaign that succeeds in doing something that doesn’t matter? Or, will it help to get Russian nukes under US control if the US is about to break the nuclear taboo in Iran?

Then there are the personality conflicts. One important activist is an irresistible womanizer. Another is clueless when it comes to working with women. One of the women is so radical it’s considered inadvisable for normal people to get too close to her. Another is so universally critical that people are afraid to talk to her. And I talk too much. For one reason or another, much of the disarmament community is reduced to parallel play.

This is not to say that nothing is happening. There was an important nuclear disarmament conference in New Zealand in May. In June, Vancouver held a wonderful World Peace Forum, at which nuclear disarmament was a surprisingly central theme. In July, Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima led an international delegation of mayors to London, Aldermaston (the UK’s main nuclear production base), The Hague (home of the International Court of Justice that declared 10 years ago [July 8, 1996] that nuclear weapons are illegal and all nations are under a legal obligation to negotiate in good faith to eliminate them) and Brussels, where the talented and effective Belgian activists hosted a conference. There, the disarmament community discussed going back to the ICJ to ask for an official opinion regarding what we should do with countries that ignore their legal nuclear disarmament obligations. To see what happened in August, go to www.august6.org. This site offers information about more than 80 events in 24 states in the US. An amazing number of events were planned and implemented around the world to mark Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days. The events on this website are just the tip of the iceberg.

And many of the activists are serious. According to Bill Quigley of T r u t h o u t (Wednesday 02 August 2006):

“Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week.

Their crime? They tried to disarm one of the 1700+ nuclear weapons in North Dakota. On June 26, 2006, they went to the silo of a Minuteman III first-strike nuclear missile and wrote on it, "If you want peace, work for justice." Then they hammered on its lock and poured some of their own blood over it. They waited to be arrested and have been in jail ever since. If convicted, they face imprisonment of up to ten years for criminal damage to federal property…. They went on to say, "U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people's responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life."

According to Act Up (http://www.actupny.org):

“Since the mid-70s, we have seen increasing nonviolent activity against the nuclear arms race and nuclear power industry. Nonviolent civil disobedience actions have taken place at dozens of nuclear weapons research installations, storage areas, missile silos, test sites, military bases, corporate and government offices and nuclear power plants. In the late 1970s mass civil disobedience actions took place at nuclear power plants from Seabrook, New Hampshire to the Diablo Canyon reactor in California and most states in between in this country and in other countries around the world. In 1982, 1750 people were arrested at the U.N. missions of the five major nuclear powers. Mass actions took place at the Livermore Laboratories in California and SAC bases in the Midwest. In the late 80s a series of actions took place at the Nevada test site. International disarmament actions changed world opinion about nuclear weapons.”

More recently, I personally know of remarkable civil disobedience actions in Washington, Wisconsin, and repeatedly in Scotland. A few years ago in Scotland, women who damaged nuclear submarines were found innocent by a judge who ruled that they were just trying to bring their nation into compliance with international law. So there is no doubt that thousands of people are working hard, putting their freedom and lives on the line, and it does seem that their numbers are increasing. And yet, the nuclear issue remains below the horizon. It still comes as an obvious shock whenever I bring nuclear weapons into polite conversation.

In 1959 the French biologist PP Grassé reported that a single termite will wander around aimlessly until it dies. Two or three termites will do the same thing. But if you have a certain number of termites, they begin working in a coordinated way to build a hill. They don’t need a queen or termites of any particular talent or rank. All they need is the critical number of termites. I’ve also heard from about a hundred people that with monkeys, the critical number is 100. I can’t help wondering what the threshold is for nuclear abolitionists. How many nuclear abolitionists does it take to build a powerful, high-profile, unified and effective campaign? Are we getting close? Will we get there before the nuclear taboo is broken? Stay tuned.