Eileen Fleming

[The World]---"It's like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan. But this time, we made it ourselves."- Keijiro Matsushima, an 82-year-old survivor of America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima. [1]

Japan's quake-damaged northeast has helped recall the fact that sixty-six years ago Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s razed villages and burning shells of buildings were MADE IN THE USA!

Japan has 54 nuclear power plants and about one-third of its nationwide electricity comes from nuclear energy.

There are 104 nuclear power plants in the United States!

Japanese journalist JoAkira Tashiro, has been actively advocating for the elimination of nuclear weapons and regarding the damaged nuclear plants in Japan said, "This might be a good turning point. I hope Hiroshima will take a lead on this because of our own experience with the atomic bomb.” [Ibid]

The American Experience:

At 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began, when the first nuclear bomb was exploded by the American federal government at the Trinity Test Site, at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Plutonium and other toxic and radioactive chemicals were dispersed for hundreds of miles and some areas are still contaminated.

The bomb that exploded over the New Mexico desert vaporized a tower and turned the asphalt to green sand. Seconds later a huge blast of heat scorched the desert. No one could see the radiation generated by the explosion, but they all knew it was there. A half a mile away, the steel container called "Jumbo," weighing over 200 tons was knocked over as the orange and yellow fireball stretched up and spread into a second column, that rose and flattened into a mushroom cloud; imprinting upon the human consciousness a symbol of violent power and destruction.

The father of the atomic bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer chose to name this harrowing happening the "Trinity" test.

"Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East, In all flat Maps—and I am one—are one, So death doth touch the Resurrection.' That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God.'"

In the moment that followed that atomic inferno, Oppenheimer then recalled this sentence from the Bhagvad Gita:

"Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds."

When Oppenheimer was asked for his thoughts regarding Sen. Robert Kennedy's efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, he responded: "It's 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity."

Indeed! But it was not and that lead to the US who upped the ante by continuing to create even more diabolical creations of mass destruction since Little Boy, the uranium bomb, which was dropped upon innocent civilians in Hiroshima on August 6, and the plutonium weapon of mass destruction called Fat Man, that followed three days later in Nagasaki.

Sixty-six years later and we the people are reaping the continuous ionizing radiation pollution and contamination in the 'home of the brave' and also other locations throughout the world!

Today’s UN-Holy "Trinity" is a triune of radiological horrors: nuclear bombs, nuclear reactors, and conventional Uranium Weapons (such as Depleted Uranium or DU) that are used in military testing, training, and military combat.

Case in point:

In a 71-page report released March 25, 2009, by Human Rights Watch, Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes.

"Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza," provides eye witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza.

"Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school in Gaza immediately after hostilities ended in January.

"Militaries officially use white phosphorus to obscure their operations on the ground by creating thick smoke. It has also been used as an incendiary weapon, though such use constitutes a war crime.

"In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops," said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. "It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died."

During Operation Cast Lead, the 22 days of Israeli assault on Gaza, "Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault was decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation!) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza." [2]

"The deliberate use of manmade ionizing radiation is an assault upon people, the environment, and all living things.

"Since the first Plutonium and Uranium nuclear bomb was exploded in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the contamination of the United States and the rest of the world [continues].

"Those responsible for seven decades of both domestic and international radiological assault are our own government agencies: the Departments of Energy and Defense, and the NRC (some say it stands for the Nuclear Radiating Committee) along with a multitude of corporations involved in various aspects of manufacturing munitions of both nuclear and 'conventional' weapons varieties.

"Used in military combat, these radioactive munitions have been contaminating the Middle East and other nations wherever they are fired and tested.

"Beyond military weapons applications, energy firms that use nuclear reactors to generate the electricity that powers America's TV sets are similarly polluting our air, water, and soil with these DNA-wrecking poisons…[and] there are efforts underway to enrich even More Uranium as well as plans to build More weapons facilities and fund bailouts using taxpayers' money to build More experimental nuclear reactors with unsafe designs like the Westinghouse AP-1000 and AREVA's European Pressurised Reactor (EPR).

"While Nuclear-Everything is being pushed on America as a "clean" energy alternative sanctified under the guise of reduced carbon emissions, consider if you will just a few effects of ionizing radiation: decreasing fertility rates, miscarriages, genetic mutations, increasing rates of cancers, some forms of heart disease, neuromuscular disease, and thyroid disease, diabetes, and other endocrine-related disorders and many other radiation-induced diseases." [3]

Regarding the President who promised US change we could believe in, we the people are being taxed $18­4 billion for three new bomb factories at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Kansas City of which 100 Billion is to go for new delivery systems for nuclear weapons, such as p­lanes, subs and missiles.

Regarding this warning by America’s prophet, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. made decades ago:

"Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death."

This reporter adds America is on its last gasps!

On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage amongst thousands of flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century nuclear weapons:

"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We're here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.

"Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, Yes, we can.

"There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

"Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it.

"Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…[and] Human destiny will be what we make of it."

In 1995, from Ashkelon Prison, the Whistle Blower of Israel’s WMD program, Mordechai Vanunu wrote:

"A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima...A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima...Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn't know you - you are not a Jewish Holocaust."

On March 15, 2011, Vanunu wrote [spelling and punctuation corrected]

"Hiroshima was a Nuclear weapons test on Human beings. Fukushima is a Nuclear Energy test of Technology- until now no big disaster. Japan became The Nuclear test field. Freedom Now for all human Beings. The Nuclear age freedom!" [4]

In 1946, Lewis Mumford said:

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”

Because of nuclear weapons we have nuclear energy and until both are abolished all the people of the world do indeed "live under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or madness. The weapons of war [and nuclear energy!] must be abolished before they abolish US."-President John F. Kennedy in his address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Sept. 25, 1961.

And because this reporter is also a Christian Anarchist Buddhist with a dose of dervish, I cannot help but wonder if the World will ever Wake Up before 'civilized men' blow it up to what Jesus Christ was talking about when he was about 33, and hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people;

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and 'sins' honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God.

How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven't got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.

God's name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said, "My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours." -Isaiah 55:8

Christ proclaimed more: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge. In other words: how comforted you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled."

In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what "God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord."-Micah 6:8

"Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy."

In other words: how comforted you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your 'enemy.'

"For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you" Christ warns his disciples as he explains the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God."

In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.

"Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God."

And what a wonderful world it would be when we all seek peace by pursuing justice; for there can be none without the other.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires, theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven."

And one fine day the lion may just will lie down with The Lamb and man will indeed abolish nuclear everything and thus make war no more; and that will create the Kingdom of God on this tiny planet we call earth.

PS: The only 'sin' is selfishness.

1. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.hiroshima/index.html?hpt=C2

2. http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-us-arms-used-for-war-crimes-in-gaza/

3. http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=114934

4. http://www.youtube.com/user/vanunuvmjc

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In Solidarity YES WE CAN begin the world again.

Eileen Fleming,

A Citizen of Conscience for House of Representatives
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com

Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" and BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming