[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Weapons of Mass Destruction Discovered Here: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and North Dakota 08/03/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. These nuclear weapons killed over 100,000 people, almost all civilians, and injured many tens of thousands more. Fr. Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week. Their crime? They tried to disarm one of the 1700+ nuclear weapons in North Dakota. On June 26, 2006, they went to the silo of a Minuteman III first-strike nucclear missile and wrote on it "If you want peace, work for justice." Then they hammered on its lock and poured some of their own blood over it. They waited to be arrested and have been in jail ever since. If convicted, they face imprisonment of up to ten years for criminal damage to federal property. The Minuteman III is a first-strike intercontinental nuclear missile with a range of over 6000 miles and carries 27 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There are over one hundred fifty Minuteman III missiles planted in the grounds in silos in just the northern part of North Dakota. Fr. Kabat has been a Catholic priest for over forty years. Greg Boertje-Obed was a First Lieutenant in the US Army. Mike Walli served two tours in Vietnam. All three men were born in small towns or rural areas of the Midwest. Walli and Boertje-Obed are members of the Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker community in Duluth, Minnesota. Together they are called the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares." The Plowshares movement seeks to follow the instructions of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to "beat your swords into plowshares." At the time of their arrest, the three specifically linked their actions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Two of the most terrible war crimes occurred on August 6th and 9th, 1945. On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people (including U.S. prisoners of war). Three days later the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, killing more than 50,000 people. Use of these weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations were abominable crimes against humanity." They went on to say "U.S. leaders speak about the dangers of other nations acquiring nuclear weapons, but they fail to act in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which commits the U.S. to take steps to disarm its weapons of mass destruction. We act in order to bring attention to people's responsibility for disarming weapons of state terrorism. We can begin the process of exposing U.S. weapons of mass destruction, naming them as abominations that cause desolation, and transforming them to objects that promote life." Mike Walli enlisted in the army as a young man. With the experience of two tours in Vietnam, he said "This is not about our national defense. The hundreds of Minuteman III nuclear weapons are offensive weapons of mass destruction. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that the United States is the chief purveyor of violence in the world. We must become a people-oriented society rather than a thing-oriented society. We must kick the war economy habit." Greg Boertje-Obed, who, after his time as an officer in the military, married and is the father of an eleven year old daughter, told me "There is a sense of righteousness and harmony that comes from being in jail on August 6. When I was in the military, I was trained to fight and "win" a nuclear war. It became clear that all the preparations for a nuclear war were wrong. In contrast Jesus taught "Love your enemies.don't fear those who can kill the body. those who live by the sword will die by the sword." Now is the time to turn away from the ways of violence. Treat others the way we want to be treated. Now is the time to take steps to help the starving, ill, orphaned, weak, war-oppressed, and down-trodden all over the world. It is time to turn away from the bomb and the possibility of ending all life on our planet and to end the nuclear nightmare. Fr. Carl Kabat spent several years in the Philippines and Brazil. "August 6th and August 9th are appropriate times to be in jail," he reflected. "We are here to witness against the insanity of nuclear weapons. When these bombs were dropped on the Japanese I was too young to realize what had happened. Those bombings were war crimes that we, even today, do not acknowledge. The indiscriminate killing of children, women, old people and everyone else certainly cannot be accepted under any just theory of war. Perhaps the fact that we are in jail can help us as a nation remember the criminality of those days in the past. None of us can make up for the killings in the past, but there is a possibility that our being in jail during this time might help stop such insanity from being repeated in the future." North Dakota is home to more nuclear weapons than any other of the 50 states. The Bureau of Atomic Scientists estimated that the state contained more than 1700 nuclear warheads, not counting the ones planted in concrete silos in the ground. A friendly cab driver in Bismarck told me "If North Dakota seceded from the Union, we would be the world's third most-powerful nuclear state." The Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares hope their actions will invite the people of North Dakota, and the rest of the US, to do something about our nation's nuclear weapons of mass destruction in light of many issues of justice, including the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is a legal advisor with the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares. You can write Fr. Carl Kabat, Greg Boertje-Obed, or Mike Walli c/o Southwest Multi-County Correctional Center, 66 Museum Drive, Dickinson, ND 58601. You can find out more about the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares at: http://www.jonahhouse.org You can contact their community c/o Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker Community at 218.728.0629. You can email Bill Quigley at Quigley@loyno.edu
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: BTP Holdings, christine, Zapporah, PeteAtomic, IndieTx, lodwick, robin, Cynicom, randge, Jethro Tull (#0)
Truthseeker
Not too shabby. King was more on track than people give him credit. That is the main reason he was killed. He should've stayed away from the commies, though.
"Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." Lord Keynes
The same folks who gave us capitalism are the same people who gave us "communism", and all the other "isms", like national socialism, their favored method of governing. We have to rise above the false right/left dichotomy, only if we are united will we overcome the evil we face. Here is an excellent online book by Antony Sutton, the researcher who wrote America's Secret Establishment, the definitive book on the Bonesmen. BTW Kris Millegan's excellent site is a very good site about the bonesmen and their history: http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/ In other words these isms are merely tools for social engineering and should be looked at in that light. They keep us apart and vulnerable. Anyway I hope this information is useful. WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION By Antony C. Sutton http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/
Truthseeker
Damn you AARP terrorists! I shake my fist at thee!
Check out the World Socialist Website for an occasional good article. I don't agree with them on many things since I am opposed to socialist doctrine, but they do have interesting and often accurate analysis of events.
"Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." Lord Keynes
peace bump
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers The WSWS occasionally has something worthwhile. I have it bookmarked and go there everyday. Thanks.
Truthseeker
right on..thanks for the accompanying link to Sutton's book too.
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison
My pleasure, I hope many find the url's useful.
Truthseeker
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||