The Nuclear Arms Race Has to Stop!
by Ann Froines, Back from the Brink
August 6 and August 9 were the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States Army Air Forces just days before the end of World War II. Our national and local media gave little attention to this anniversary, even as the Hibakusha—Japanese survivors of these bombings—still tell their stories in their international campaign for nuclear disarmament and world peace. NHK World – Japan, the international public television station of Japan, carried the film, The Pursuit of Peace, which describes the decades of worldwide peacemaking by the Hibakusha. Their goal is to make the Nagasaki bombing the last atomic explosion humankind will ever face.
Back from the Brink-CT Hub offers readers this update on media resources in the campaigns to prevent nuclear testing, for nuclear diplomacy (treaties) and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.
1. Back from the Brink website (preventnuclearwar.org) now has a series of podcasts from experts and activists discussing nuclear abolition. One podcast features Tina Cordova, a co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (trinitydownwinders.com) which advocates for those affected by radiation as a result of the first atomic explosion at the Trinity Nuclear Weapon Testing Ground in New Mexico, other tests in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific.
After a 20-year campaign directed at the U. S. Congress, $8 billion was appropriated for compensation to the victims who suffered from radiation poisoning, many cancer deaths, and increased infant mortality. See the website for information about the 2023 documentary film, First We Bombed New Mexico.
2. An Ordinary Insanity is a 30-minute film of Daniel Ellsberg’s final plea for nuclear disarmament, made freely available to all by the Ellsberg family as his final legacy before his death. Ellsberg, well before the Pentagon Papers reveal and controversy, started his career at the Rand Corporation developing nuclear weapon strategy. His plea argues that “national security” cannot be obtained by nuclear weapon superiority or an arms race, but instead guarantees just the opposite: the end of civilization in a nuclear Armageddon. Search for “anordinaryinsanity’ to find the film available on YouTube.
Readers, please join this campaign by writing to U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy urging him to support Senate Resolution 323, an act urging the United States to pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. These unstable times show the urgency of taking nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert.
Back from the Brink-CT preventnuclearwar.org
ann.froines@gmail.com