Hiroshima, we don’t forget, end the threat of nuclear destruction

The first use of a nuclear weapon against people was sixty-seven years ago today, August 6 1945, when the United States Army destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. The city of Nagasaki was destroyed by another bomb three days later. Some two hundred forty thousand people, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, died from the attack and its aftereffects. Over the past six decades a historical consensus has emerged: the atomic bombings were by no means militarily necessary. The Empire of Japan, which had begun the war, was by summer of 1945 defeated, the people of its home islands starving, the capital ships of its navy sunk, its army in China about to collapse before a Soviet onslaught. Historians now believe the key motive behind the bombings was political, the American government's goal to intimidate the Soviet Union as generals on both sides looked ahead to the next war. The use of the atom bomb never to have been used again and only ever used by the United States that fine beacon of peaceful lands is a timely reminder to us all the huge destruction and death that a nuclear world can produce. The whole idea of a nuclear war scares the wits out of me. I once visited a disused nuclear bunker in Essex now a museum thankfully really brings it home to you how a nuclear attack would devastate everything and anything in its path. The potential power of a nuclear war could possibly end this planet we live on. It is more the threat of the use of one that scares people I’d say lot of saber rattling went on during the cold war years between the US and Soviet Russia where an arms race ensued. I dream of a nuclear free world, a world which can sustain itself on renewable green energies which can meet the needs of the people not just the ruling class. Now I’m a member of the CND campaign for Nuclear disarmament but these days the CND is not a c campaigning tool it’s more of a front for becoming a labour party bureaucrat which is not what I want. I remain a member as I fundamentally oppose nuclear weapons and the idea of them. I think a socialist world will be nuclear free and a safer world to live in. But just joining a campaign to say we’re against nuclear or signing a petition will never be enough. Only a mass movement of the working class arming themselves with the power and the knowledge to change society on the basis of a socialist society removing the wealth from the 1% and bringing democracy to all for the first time allowing decisions to be decided by the mass’s democratically will put a end to wars, exploitation and the potential for disasters. I for not one minute think this will be straight forward. If changing society was easy they’d have done it already I’m regularly told but it doesn’t make it less of a goal to aim for. A society and a world which offers so much are possible. A world without the threat of nuclear disaster is possible and entirely realizable. Wars are more often than not taken place on the basis of markets and over trade as this global economic crisis deepens lets unite the international working class to oppose disputes and conflicts by over throwing our ruling class’s across the globe to emancipate human beings and uncapping their latent power and knowledge. With extracts taken from http://networkedblogs.com/AG3kg