Saturday, October 12, 2013

The nuclear deterrent is a racist lie: Mother Nature is displeased

Well, nukes are bad but at least they ended World War II, saved millions of Americans from being killed invading Japan, and kept the peace for 45 years of the Cold War, not to mention how clean nuclear power is.

How many problems can we find with that one sentence full of misinformation, disinformation, and Just Plain Lies?

  • The US could have ended World War II as early as December, 1944, since they had cracked all Japanese codes, intercepted diplomatic communiques acknowledging that the Japanese war council mostly wanted to negotiate a ceasefire and terms of peace, but the US chose to develop the Bomb and to wait for peace until it was used on cities, to scare the imperialistic pants off of the Soviet Union (Thomas & Witts, 1977).
  • Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan--all wars that took millions of lives during the Cold War when it went hot, involving the troops of the Soviet Union, the United States, and/or China (Shifferd, 2011).
  •  During the "Cold" War there were many wars every year--both interstate and civil wars--that were funded and weaponized by one or both superpowers using proxy or surrogate troops. All wars were fought on the soil of nation-states of people of color (except Hungary, 1956), even though the funds and weapons came from the white-majority superpowers.
  • Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima--these are just the opening acts of the eco-disaster that nuclear power brings to our biosphere, upon which all life depends.
 Time to review the need for nukes, the alternatives to having them, and the ways we can lower the existential threat to all of life by abolishing them altogether.
Evolve or die--this is the harsh message to us from Mother Nature, who will no longer tolerate our radioactivities, our carbon loading, and our chemical warfare against Her. Our methods of conflict management are the key. We can fight each other forever using nonviolence and we won't offend Mother Nature. And when we learn that indeed, nonviolence is more effective than violence, and produces more democracy and human rights, why oh why would we wait to learn more about it?

References



Brogan, Patrick (1990). The fighting never stopped: A comprehensive guide to world conflict since 1945. New York, NY: Vintage Books.


Shifferd, Kent D. (2011). From war to peace: A guide to the next hundred years. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
 

Thomas, Gordon, and Witts, Max Morgan (1977). Enola Gay.Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein and Day.
 

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