Pen-Elayne on the Web

58 Years of Devolution and Counting...

Bob Goodsell (link at sidebar) reminded me that today is the 58th anniversary of the US dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (at least 231,920 killed instantly or suffering slow deaths from radiation poisoning in the years to come). Some idiots are actually still proud of this ultimate barbarism, but perhaps that's to be expected in our hyper-warmongering culture. Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba is far blunter in his critique of this "worship [of] nuclear weapons as God." (Unfortunately I can't find an English transcript of his speech anywhere online yet.) Looks like Nagasaki mayor Itcho Ito is planning to follow suit in three days. Update: Steve Bates reproes the text of Akiba's declaration on his blog today; it can also be found here on the Hiroshima Peace Site's page.