[Col. Writ. 3/26/05] Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

How many people remember that at the beginning of the Iraqi War, voices could be heard in the
Administration advocating the use of 'limited'
nuclear weapons?

There it was -- the United States had embarked on an unjust war against what was essentially a second-rate power, and the 'N'-word arose.

Nuclear weapons.

How would people have looked back on the use of such weapons if they had been authorized?

It's been 60 years since the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and in that more than half a century, it's interesting to note that no other nation has used nuclear weapons. And plans are afoot, under the so-called Bush Doctrine, to remake nukes, this time into 'limited' and even 'conventional' weapons!

In Livermore, California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) is hard at work designing new nuclear weapons for the new millennium. The Bush Administration is seeking some $6.63 billion bucks for nuclear weapons activities in 2006. Coming soon, if they have their way, is the Modern Pit Facility, or 'plutonium pits', an echo of Cold War use of such pits, which are used for nuclear weapons testing. This campaign will cost $7.7 million for 2006, and an estimated $126 million through 2010 for initial design studies and related studies before the year it actually starts: 2013.

Some will say, 'so what?' Or, 'What's the problem?'

The problem is the United States, back in 1970, signed something called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, just one article of which obliges the U.S. to:

"... pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament ..."

Again, this is a Treaty signed by the U.S., and therefore, a part of American law.

But we don't have to be psychics to see which way the U.S. is now treating international law.

For a country that used the pretext of Iraq's violations of international law to justify its invasion and occupation (at first; now it's a -- ahem! -- 'democratic occupation'), the U.S. rather blithely and routinely violates or simply ignores international laws.

The U.S. abrogation of the Kyoto Treaty is but one example; the fact that there are dozens (if not hundreds) of foreign nationals on American death rows who, in violation of the Treaty of Vienna, were never allowed to contact their home embassies and consulates in another.

Being an Empire apparently means, international law doesn't matter.

In August, 2004, the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki issued a Peace Declaration. Hiroshima's Mayor Akiba decried "the egocentric worldview of the U.S. government."

He added, "Ignoring the United Nations and its foundations of international law, the U.S. has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and more 'usable.' Elsewhere," he explained, "the chains of violence and retaliation know no end: reliance on violence-amplifying terror."

Unless we turn back this madness, Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be signposts, not of an end, but of a mad, martial beginning of what Mayor Akiba aptly calls "violence-amplifying terror."

Out of fear, and out of corporate, defense industrial greed, we will see the erection of Weapons of World Terror.

For some, that day has already dawned.

It is going to take some serious organizing to stop this new wave of global, corporate terror.

But it must be done.

For the sake of humankind.

Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

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Posted by Violette to Mumia's Columns at 4/12/2005 08:21:00 PM