What are you doing on Hiroshima day?

Recent revelation of where the US nukes are awakens EU Peace Movement

By Tom Winter On Aug 4, 2019

US Nukes are at Buechel: German poster advertising Hiroshima Day protest at the Büchel main gate

What to do? “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”!

The neighbors are the last to know.
It’s old news that the US has A-bombs in Europe, but last month when a Canadian Senator accidentally spilled the beans about where they are, the locals got upset. Here is a screen capture from Military Times about the spill:

Here is the essential

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“A new era for nuclear deterrence? Modernisation, arms control and allied nuclear forces,” published by Canadian Sen. Joseph Day on behalf of the defense and security committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, mistakenly included secretive information concerning the location of approximately 150 U.S. nuclear weapons scattered across Europe, “specifically B61 gravity bombs.”

“These bombs are stored at six US and European bases — Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi-Torre in Italy, Volkel in The Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey,” the report states in a section titled, “NATO’s Nuclear Posture,” an excerpt first pointed out by Belgian media outlet, De Morgen.

Germany responds with a Hiroshima Day protest. See the poster above. They will hold it at the main gate of the Büchel Air base. Here is the text of Sevim Dagdalen’s note on the event:

US NUKES OUT!” (Wow! Germany has a peace movement!)

74 years after the horrors of Hiroshima, the risk of a nuclear arms race in Europe, and even the risk of nuclear war, is greater now than in decades.
The INF treaty has been shot down, and the new START treaty hangs by a thread.
Meanwhile here amidst us in Germany, in Rheinland-Pfalz Buchel, they are storing 20 atomic bombs each with 50 kilotons of explosive power — Hiroshima-power many times over. THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN GERMANY OPPOSE THE STATIONING OF US NUKES HERE. THE GOVERNMENT MUST AT LAST LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE. [translator emphasis]

We support the Peace Movement’s demonstrations for the removal of US nukes from Germany and will be there at the Hiroshima Day for the Peace Initiatives at the Büchel Airbase.

Come! Together against atomic weapons, armament, and war. For Peace and international understanding.

Sevim Dagdalen represents Germany’s Die Linke (The Left) Party, and she’s not kidding about the nuclear threat. The madmen in the Pentagon are back to thinking about it. From the Military Times article: “a scenario that’s drawing renewed attention from the Defense Department as the military prepares for the grim prospect of full-scale combat operations involving nuclear weapons.

“It’d be horrible,” retired Gen. Hawk Carlisle, former head of Air Combat Command and current head of the National Defense Industrial Association, said of this hypothetical scenario that could happen under new Pentagon doctrine.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, we hold a ceremony on the upwind side of a nearby lake and then float memorial lanterns, and think in silence as they are wafted across. At Hiroshima itself, at 8:15 on the morning of August 6th, marking the exact moment when the atomic bomb was dropped, bells ring out at temples, sirens wail throughout the city and the citizens of Hiroshima observe a solemn moment of silence in remembrance.

“Remembering the 140,000 irreplaceable human lives that were lost, either on the day of the bombing or in the ensuing months, and the numerous atomic bomb survivors who still suffer from its aftereffects even to this day, one cannot help but be left with a strong sense of the horrors of nuclear weapons and a strong hope for world peace in one’s heart.

“Additionally, the “Peace Message Lantern Floating Ceremony” is also held on the evening of August 6th. Anyone is welcome to write messages of peace on the lanterns, which will be set afloat down the Motoyasu River, where they will pass directly in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome.

“The experience of watching the warm lights of some 10,000 lanterns as they float tranquilly down the river in the dark of night, each bearing wishes for peace from the gathered attendees, has a powerful, almost other-worldly quality. The participants in this event include not only Hiroshima locals, but also many visitors who come from far and wide.

My daughters were charter members of an organization Youth for a Nuclear Freeze, YFNF, pronounced Yifnif. Now they are almost 50, and the youth organization has vanished. Nebraskans for Peace, which began in the Vietnam era, still exists, and holds the ceremony every year, though is generally focused on local justice issues. (“There is no peace without justice”)

Are we doomed? It is time to re-purpose Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece:
Do not go gentle into that goodnight

Rage, rage against the dying of the light