[Vision2020] Oslo 12-10-17: Nobel Peace Prize speech by ICAN campaigner, Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****
-----------------------------------

I meant to respond to the PHD Comic on nuclear weapons that was presented
to Vision2020 on 12-11-17.  Thankfully in the interim we have not had
nuclear war, even with threats of "fire and fury like the world has never
seen."  What madman would talk like this?

I think the probability that nuclear weapons will eventually be used should
not be described, as this "PHD Comic" Mr. Force referred to, phrases it:
 "small but non-zero."  Rather, the language employed in the following
article, which expresses a higher probability than implied by "non-zero,"
should be employed, to inspire more action to rid the world of the insanity
that these weapons even exist!

I pasted in an excerpt from the article below that contains the sort of
language I am referencing.
---------------------------
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300
Nuclear Weapons in a Changing Climate: Probability, Increasing Risks, and
Perception
Adam J. Liska Departments of Biological Systems Engineering and Agronomy
and Horticulture, University of Nebraska.
View further author information
<http://www.tandfonline.com/author/Liska%2C+Adam+J>, Tyler R. White
Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska.
View further author information
<http://www.tandfonline.com/author/White%2C+Tyler+R>, Eric R. Holley School
of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska.
View further author information
<http://www.tandfonline.com/author/Holley%2C+Eric+R> & Robert J. Oglesby
University of Nebraska.
View further author information
<http://www.tandfonline.com/author/Oglesby%2C+Robert+J>
Pages 22-33 | Published online: 06 Jul 2017

Due to probabilistic realities, Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking
recently concluded that future use of nuclear weapons is highly probable,
perhaps even inevitable, given the passage of enough time.3
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300#>3 S.
Knapton, “Prof Stephen Hawking: Disaster on Planet Earth is a Near
Certainty,” *The Telegraph*, 19 January 2016. If there is a small
probability of an event occurring each day, then over time these
probabilities increase due to multiplication of the individual daily
probabilities and opportunities: see D. J. Hand, *The Improbability
Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day*
(New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).View all notes Former U.S.
Secretary of Defense William Perry also recently warned, “Today, the danger
of some sort of nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold
War.”4 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300#>4
J. F. Harris and B. Bender, “Bill Perry is Terrified. Why Aren't You?”
*Politico*, 6 January 2017.View all notes Secretary Perry, speaking about
the implications of even a limited nuclear exchange, said, “The political,
economic and social consequences are beyond what people understand.” Two
other former U.S. Secretaries of Defense, Robert McNamara and Graham
Allison, and numerous nuclear weapons specialists have also suggested that
future use is probable.5
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300#>5 L.
Eden et al.,
On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Ron Force <ronforce at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1988
>
> Ron Force
> Moscow Idaho USA
>
> On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 10:15 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>> ***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
>> plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
>> outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
>> without the express written permission of the author.*****
>> -----------------------------------
>>
>> I listened/watched to this speech live at about 5 AM this
>> Sunday morning.  Words fail to capture the impact.
>>
>> Assuming humanity survives the barbaric age we are living through, future
>> generations will be aghast at the horrors we have and continue to inflict
>> on each other, and the living planet as a whole.
>> ----------------------------------
>> Nobel Peace Prize speech by ICAN campaigner, Hiroshima survivor Setsuko
>> Thurlow
>>
>> December 11, 2017 (Mainichi Japan)
>> http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171211/p2a/00m/0na/005000c
>>
>> International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), activist and
>> Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow speaks in Oslo City Hall, Norway, Sunday
>> Dec. 10, 2017, after ICAN officially received the Nobel Peace Prize 2017.
>> (Terje Bendiksby/ NTB scanpix via AP)
>>
>> The following is a speech delivered by Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the
>> August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on behalf of the International
>> Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace
>> Prize, as released by the Nobel Foundation.
>>
>> Your Majesties,
>>
>> Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,
>>
>> My fellow campaigners, here and throughout the world,
>>
>> Ladies and gentlemen,
>>
>> It is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on
>> behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You
>> each give me such tremendous hope that we can -- and will -- bring the era
>> of nuclear weapons to an end.
>>
>> I speak as a member of the family of hibakusha -- those of us who, by
>> some miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
>> Nagasaki. For more than seven decades, we have worked for the total
>> abolition of nuclear weapons.
>>
>> We have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and
>> testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with
>> long-forgotten names, like Moruroa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga,
>> Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were
>> experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted.
>>
>> We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate
>> fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in
>> terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought
>> us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories
>> of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
>>
>> Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who
>> perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around
>> us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each
>> person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in
>> vain.
>>
>> I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic
>> bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15,
>> I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the
>> sensation of floating in the air.
>>
>> As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself
>> pinned by the collapsed building. I began to hear my classmates' faint
>> cries: "Mother, help me. God, help me."
>>
>> Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man
>> saying: "Don't give up! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the
>> light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can."
>> As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that
>> building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter,
>> unimaginable devastation.
>>
>> Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people,
>> they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies
>> were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their
>> eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their
>> intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the
>> air.
>>
>> Thus, with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its
>> residents were civilians who were incinerated, vaporized, carbonized --
>> among them, members of my own family and 351 of my schoolmates.
>>
>> In the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would
>> die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of
>> radiation. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors.
>>
>> Whenever I remember Hiroshima, the first image that comes to mind is of
>> my four-year-old nephew, Eiji - his little body transformed into an
>> unrecognizable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint
>> voice until his death released him from agony.
>>
>> To me, he came to represent all the innocent children of the world,
>> threatened as they are at this very moment by nuclear weapons. Every second
>> of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we
>> hold dear. We must not tolerate this insanity any longer.
>>
>> Through our agony and the sheer struggle to survive -- and to rebuild our
>> lives from the ashes -- we hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the
>> world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our
>> testimonies.
>>
>> But still some refused to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities -- as
>> war crimes. They accepted the propaganda that these were "good bombs" that
>> had ended a "just war". It was this myth that led to the disastrous nuclear
>> arms race -- a race that continues to this day.
>>
>> Nine nations still threaten to incinerate entire cities, to destroy life
>> on earth, to make our beautiful world uninhabitable for future generations.
>> The development of nuclear weapons signifies not a country's elevation to
>> greatness, but its descent to the darkest depths of depravity. These
>> weapons are not a necessary evil; they are the ultimate evil.
>>
>> On the seventh of July this year, I was overwhelmed with joy when a great
>> majority of the world's nations voted to adopt the Treaty on the
>> Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having witnessed humanity at its worst, I
>> witnessed, that day, humanity at its best. We hibakusha had been waiting
>> for the ban for seventy-two years. Let this be the beginning of the end of
>> nuclear weapons.
>>
>> All responsible leaders will sign this treaty. And history will judge
>> harshly those who reject it. No longer shall their abstract theories mask
>> the genocidal reality of their practices. No longer shall "deterrence" be
>> viewed as anything but a deterrent to disarmament. No longer shall we live
>> under a mushroom cloud of fear.
>>
>> To the officials of nuclear-armed nations -- and to their accomplices
>> under the so-called "nuclear umbrella" -- I say this: Listen to our
>> testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential.
>> You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering
>> humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil.
>>
>> To every president and prime minister of every nation of the world, I
>> beseech you: Join this treaty; forever eradicate the threat of nuclear
>> annihilation.
>>
>> When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smouldering rubble, I kept
>> pushing. I kept moving toward the light. And I survived. Our light now is
>> the ban treaty. To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I
>> repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima:
>> "Don't give up! Keep pushing! See the light? Crawl towards it."
>>
>> Tonight, as we march through the streets of Oslo with torches aflame, let
>> us follow each other out of the dark night of nuclear terror. No matter
>> what obstacles we face, we will keep moving and keep pushing and keep
>> sharing this light with others. This is our passion and commitment for our
>> one precious world to survive.
>>
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