Maine Owl

The late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. called the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki (65 years ago today) the "nastiest act by this country, after human slavery"

Sixteen years ago I attended a Hiroshima/Nagasaki Commemoration at the University of Chicago. Of course, Chicago was a key site in the development of nuclear weapons. It was there under the Stagg Field football stadium on December 2, 1942 that Enrico Fermi and his Manhattan Project team started up the first nuclear reactor capable of a sustained, controlled chain reaction.

Vonnegut was the featured speaker that day in 1994. The final question asked of him was about how we know that use of The Bomb was about something other than ending World War II or "saving lives" in said-to-be-necessary military actions.

He replied with one word, "Nagasaki," and left the platform.

Last Friday August 6 we held our annual Peace Center commemoration at Peirce Park in Bangor. Below I am including two videos. The first is the full ceremony and runs 25 minutes. Yours truly is the last speaker. The second video is the local television coverage airing on all three channels Friday evening.

Below the fold, I have included a written version of my remarks, as prepared. And HERE is a link to the Bangor Daily News story that ran Saturday. (Wow, BDN comments tend toward a swamp of wingnuttia, don't they?)


This video runs 25 minutes and includes the whole commemoration and die-in. Maine Owl is the last speaker.


Ch. 2, Ch. 5, and Ch.7 stories from Friday August 6

Sadly no tape could be made of the reading of "Grandmother's Doll" by Masanobu and Tomoko Ikemiya of Bar Harbor. The story is about a little girl, a hibakusha, who survives the horror of Hiroshima. Masanobu is a wonderful concert pianist who told of his own WWII family tragedies.

Remarks by Maine Owl on August 6, 2010
I stand here today with the best news about the effort to rid the world of nuclear terror in at least the decade-and-a-half since President Clinton signed the as-yet un-ratified Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

• President Obama is sympathetic to the idea that we should eliminate nuclear arsenals worldwide, including that of the US. He gave an April 2009 speech in Prague where he said, "I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."
• The Obama Administration has issued in 2010 a new Nuclear Posture Review about which journalist Robert Sheer (of "With Enough Shovels" fame) suggested that the president with it moved towards "Earning His Nobel Prize" because it (and I?m quoting Sheer) "pledges a halt to U.S. efforts to modernize such weapons, as had been proposed by then-President George W. Bush in his call for new nuclear 'bunker busters.'" Doubtless, this is a major step in the right direction.
• President Obama has signed a new (START) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. In my view, the importance of this Treaty is the signal it sends that the US and Russia know the Cold War is over, even though the overwhelming impetus of those awful decades is taking decades to undo.
• Last, I?ll mention that for the first time ever, the US sent an envoy to Hiroshima to participate in the commemoration of the bombings. "For the sake of future generations, we must continue to work together to realize a world without nuclear weapons," said the envoy, John Roos, in remarks echoing a statement made by Secretary of State Clinton yesterday.

With all this good news, could there be any bad? Is there anything left for us to do?

We can petition for two things:

• One is to let our senators know that we want the new START Treaty ratified.
• Two is we can tell our senators that the decades-long unfinished business of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty finally must be ratified, 14 years now after President Clinton signed it, but blocked by Republican opposition.

Handily, a petition covering these points should be going around?

But here is the hard part. Control of the nuclear establishment in the U.S. is deeply entrenched within a complex of scientific & military insiders and is firmly welded to the notion that power & security in a world where nuclear weapons exist flows directly from possessing the biggest nuclear bludgeon.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy (yes, it is Energy that runs NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration) operate on the belief that an umbrella of national security comes from the ?essential deterrence role? of nuclear weapons. This means that despite the end of the Cold War, the U.S. continues to spend tens of billions of dollars annually preparing to strike first with nuclear weapons anywhere on the globe under conditions of its own choosing.

Perhaps recognizing this nuclear entrenchment, President Obama immediately followed that hopeful 2009 statement in Prague with, "I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly ? perhaps not in my lifetime."

Herein lie the contradiction, indeed the price tag that has been assigned to the president's nuclear disarmament desires.

In order to get START through the senate, the budget proposals take a 180-degree opposite tack to the stated goals of nuclear elimination. During this past winter, the nuclear weapons production complex, a network of high-secrecy laboratories and the environmentally dirtiest industrial production facilities on the planet were given a 13% budget boost for new programs. Then just three weeks ago, an LA Times story (that was given a little tiny page-3 box in the Bangor Daily News) said that the budget increases will be part of a decades-into-the-future plan to keep our existing nukes, ?modern? ?safe? and ?secure?.

Apart from what is immediately before Congress, this I believe is the most urgent cause for action. We must point out and head off the budgetary violence that is set to wire the world with bombs while robbing us of the true security that comes from funding human needs ? health, education, nutrition, environmental protection.

Furthermore, there is bad news on proliferation of technology in the nuclear field. Our leaders would blame North Korea and Iran on this account. But here I see BIG contradictions. You?ve all heard the stern warnings and I?m sure you know Congress and the Administration have applied sanctions against Iran. So I won?t go into all of that. But it pains me that the same Obama Administration that is so keen on diplomacy could not take yes for an answer when Turkey and Brazil brokered a significant settlement on nuclear issues that Iran appeared to accept last spring.

Meanwhile, Israel possesses a full-blown triad of 200 land-, sea-, and air-launchable nuclear weapons.

So what do WE need to do. We have a president who understands the danger of believing security flows from nuclear weapons. I say that we must appeal to him, insist that he make good, remind him by pen and in the streets every day that we all want that world without nuclear weapons sooner rather than later. The message is simple: what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never happen again. The fact that you are all here to say this today is the best news of all.