[van-announce] Reminder: Forum on nuclear weapons tonight at VPL

[Derrick O'Keefe]

*Please distribute widely*

StopWar.ca education committee presents a public
forum:

NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND WAR
Thursday, August 11, 7:30pm
Vancouver Public Library (350 West Georgia Street)

Sixty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, nuclear weapons still are a threat. Given
U.S. sabotage of efforts to revitalize the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty. Given rapid development of
"battle-field" nuclear weapons. Given continuing use
of depleted uranium weapons. Given the fog of
double-standards.

August 6th marks sixty years since the nuclear bombing
of Hiroshima. And mere days before this commemoration,
the National Post carries a widely syndicated column
stating the “obliteration” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were for “good and sufficient reasons”. Those reasons?
“Japanese culture” itself.

Columnist Richard Cohen then goes on to say: “Now we
are similarly confronting another enemy that seems so
alien it might as well not be considered human.” His
clear message: “obliterate” them too.

This is not the voice of a marginal racist group in
some obscure publication. This is a “respected”
columnist for the Washington Post, reprinted in a
national paper in Canada.

If nothing else it should alert us to the reality that
the horrors of nuclear weapons are not confined to the
past. Nor did the danger of their use disappear with
the end of the “cold war”.

With the US sabotage of the latest month long
international effort in New York to revitalize the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty, with their
continuing development of new “battle-field” nuclear
weapons, with their use since 1990 of “depleted”
uranium weapons in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and
Afghanistan, the movement against all nuclear weapons
is more urgently needed than ever.

And in rebuilding it we must penetrate the double
standards of those who have been the first to use
nuclear bombs. ‘The US and its friends, like Israel,
can build and expand their nuclear arsenals—in
violation of international treaties; but Iran and
Korea must never attempt to do likewise.’ War, not
peace, is the end-point of such double-speak.

We invite you to attend this forum —to hear, and to
raise questions, about the nuclear non-proliferation
negotiations, the use of depleted uranium, and the fog
of double standards.

You are invited to a Public forum with:

UBC Professor Michael Wallace  "Failure of the
anti-nuclear weapons negotiations and the dangers of
war".

Mordecai Briemberg  "Depleted Uranium: what it is and
where it's used".

w/Songs by the Raging Grannies...

Organized by StopWar.ca

For more information: 604 298 9638