At the One World Parade: all’s well that ends well

“May you live in interesting times” is an age-old expression  erroneously claimed to be a Chinese “curse”. It is said with the intent of wishing misfortune on someone. I felt like the target of the “curse” today, before the beginning of the 76th annual One World Day parade on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive near University Circle. The motto for the event is “Peace Through Mutual Understanding.” 

As usual, I took part in the highlight of the day, a parade populated by people representing a wide array of nationalities and dressed in colorful native finery with one person carrying a green and white sign indicating the country they were representing. And as usual, this Vietnam War veteran walked behind the Vietnamese contingent in my 54-year-old U.S. Army Class A dress uniform complemented by my peace flag. 

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STOP THE BOMBING OF GAZA!

Cleveland Peace Action, without reservation, condemns the

unprovoked attacks by Israel upon the people of besieged

Gaza. In the latest round of attacks begun by Israel, at least

50 people have been killed with sixteen of them children.

Health officials in Gaza estimate that almost 400 people have

been injured in the attacks. We are stunned, not only by the

loss of life and injury to the working people and children of

Gaza, but also by the tacit support of the bombings by the

Biden Administration. Equally outrageous is biased coverage of

this latest attack on Gaza. Both the coverage offered by one

of the beacons of establishment liberalism, The New York

Times, and also by the Public Broadcasting Company are so

one-sided in favor of Israel that they scarcely qualify as

“news.” Why did Israel attack now? Many observers suspect

that Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid, wants to bolster his

anti-Arab credentials with the electorate in Israel because of

a surge in the polls by his opponent Benjamin Netanyahu who

has made a career out of anti-Arab bigotry. The election will

be held later this fall. Cleveland Peace Action calls on

President Biden to condemn the Israeli bombing and to demand

that Israel honors the ceasefire brokered by Egypt. It seems

to be a ritual that every time an Israeli politician faces an

election, they try to improve poll numbers by killing more

and more people in Gaza.

END US MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL!!! LIFT THE SIEGE GAZA!!!

Psychic Numbing and Nuclear War

Remarks by Francis Chiappa at “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” August 7, 2022, Rockefeller Lagoon, Cleveland, Ohio.

In the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States and the Soviet Union began a race for dominance. As our government furiously developed bigger and better bombs, it sought to pathologize fears of nuclear war and radiation, calling it “irrational,” as well as implying that such fear was unpatriotic. The politicians and the military brass were thinking a nuclear war could be won. But, hedging their bets, they relied on massive deterrent capability, where an attack by one side would result in “mutually assured destruction.” Some people thought this was insane. But the great majority coped through “psychic numbing.” They were indifferent to the possibility of holocaust, even as their governments made it more likely. With trauma, we humans tend to shut down emotionally, to minimize our fear, to not think about it. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton coined the term “psychic numbing” to describe how we deal with collective trauma. Wikipedia puts it this way: “Psychic numbing is about the way a culture or society withdraws from issues that would otherwise be too overwhelming for the human mind to comprehend.” It’s a challenge to comprehend the horrors of slavery. Or the Native American genocide. Or the long-term consequences of climate change. Or the threat of nuclear war.

“We the people” finally broke through denial and numbing in the early 1980’s. We mobilized. We helped people locate where they lived, on a city map, so they could see exactly what would happen if a missile landed downtown. We organized for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. No more research, testing or deployment of US weapons if the Soviet Union would do the same. Public support for it topped out at 80%, at a time when there were 60,000 nukes on Earth. Though the Freeze never passed in Congress, it was a major factor in Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev seeing the light, even coming to the belief that nuclear weapons should be abolished. These two men began negotiating and warheads were eventually reduced to the 15,000 we now have.

The US public was well-informed back then about the threat of nuclear war. The Berlin Wall was dismantled, the Soviet Union broke apart, the Cold War was finally over. The threat of nuclear war quietly slipped beneath our collective threshold of awareness. It was too just much to KEEP thinking about it.

The Doomsday Clock, the risk indicator of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is set at 100 seconds to midnight. For the last three years, we’ve been as close to Armageddon as we’ve ever been. But the great majority are largely unaware of the danger. With international tensions and instability escalating, accidental or intentional nuclear war becomes more possible. But psychic numbing prevails. The cure for psychic numbing lies first in awareness and then in action.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, this year at the UN, reaffirmed “the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons.” President Vladimir Putin reportedly said that he “didn’t think nuclear war was good for anyone.” Meanwhile, the US military brass was again talking, in 2019, about winnable nuclear wars. We don’t know what President Biden is thinking because the most recent Nuclear Posture Review is classified information.

Why should we worry about nuclear war?

  • The US, under Donald Trump, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.
  • Tensions have escalated with China, most recently over Taiwan.
  • A global nuclear arms race is underway, as other nations follow the example of the US.
  • The invasion of Ukraine has engaged the two largest nuclear weapon states in a proxy war, which both sides seem to relish, and which has no end in sight.
  • Russia has occupied a Ukrainian nuclear power plant and is using it as a missile base. This undermines international controls on fissile material and is a few different accidents waiting to happen.

Our national leadership will do absolutely nothing without pressure from us, from “We the People.” Here’s what we must tell our government to do:

  • Declare a No First Strike policy: we should announce that US will not be the first to use nuclear weapons! Period. Of course, this would apply in the Russia-Ukraine war.
  • Halt nuclear arsenal modernization, with its projected cost of $1T over 30 years – it’s a waste of money, it’s unnecessary for deterrence and it fuels the global arms race. It puts us in greater danger.
  • End the Russia-Ukraine war. Don’t accept the idea of endless war. Concessions must be made on both sides. Negotiate peace.
  • We must sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, joining 122 other nations, none which have nuclear weapons.
  • If we’re serious about a world without nuclear weapons, we must break through psychic numbing. We must take action.

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

posted in: Events, Home, News

The war in Ukraine has raised the chances of nuclear war, intentional or accidental. We call on the two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, to make sure this never happens. Here’s what each can do: 

1. Declare a No First Strike policy: we should announce that US will not be the first to use nuclear weapons! Period. Of course, this would apply in the Russia-Ukraine war.

2. Halt nuclear arsenal modernization, with its projected cost of $1T over 30 years – it’s a waste of money, it’s unnecessary for deterrence and it fuels the global arms race. It puts us in greater danger.

3. End the Russia-Ukraine war. Don’t accept the idea of endless war. Concessions must be made on both sides. Negotiate peace.

4. We must sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, joining 122 other nations, none which have nuclear weapons.

Read remarks by Francis Chiappa on Psychic Numbing and Nuclear War, from the August 7, 2022 event, Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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A Tale of Two Parades

Here is Lou’s dispatch from a busy Memorial Day Weekend: two rather different parades in Shaker Hts and Chagrin Falls -Ed.

Well, I’m “back in the saddle again,” as the saying goes, as far as parades are concerned.  Since COVID-19 has been largely held at bay, at least in our area, I was happy to be able to once again promote peace to hundreds of spectators at the Blossom Time Festival Parade yesterday in Chagrin Falls (Sunday, May 28th) and the Shaker Heights Memorial Day Parade today, both for the first time since 2019, although Shaker did have a parade on Labor Day last September, in which I walked. The parade experiences this weekend were enjoyable, albeit a bit grueling because of all the walking and high temperatures involved.        

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