“End the Threat of Nuclear Weapons,” Kerry Says—as U.S. and Other Powers Feverishly Develop New Nukes
April 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.
Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.
Bob Avakian, BAsics1:6
On April 11, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima, Japan. In 1945, the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and killed about 140,000 people, immediately and within the first two months of its aftermath. Tens of thousands suffered and many died from radiation poisoning in the years that followed.
Kerry laid a wreath in the Hiroshima Peace Park, and wrote in its guest book that the memorial is “...a harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all of our effort to avoid war itself. War must be the last resort—never the first choice.”
A few days after Kerry brazenly uttered these words in Hiroshima, the New York Times reported that the U.S., along with other countries such as Russia and China, is “aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller, less destructive nuclear weapons. The buildups threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race and unsettle the balance of destructive force among nations that has kept the nuclear peace for more than a half-century.”
Pilotless “hypersonic glide vehicles” that twist and swerve through the atmosphere at over one mile a second and set off massive explosions upon contact with land... underwater drones that can loft a cloud of poisonous nuclear radiation over targeted cities... space weapons designed to destroy military satellites, and new satellites designed to destroy those weapons... a nuclear “revitalization” program on which the U.S. alone will spend an estimated $1 trillion... “miniaturized” nuclear weapons intended to facilitate more precise destruction. All this and more is under development right now by the U.S. and other imperialist powers.
A handful of imperialist countries and big powers dominate the world and exploit millions and millions of people. To maintain their system of exploitation and gain a destructive edge on rival powers, these imperialists and other reactionary powers are compelled to use the enormous resources wrenched from the socialized production of millions of people to spend tens of billions of dollars every year and use scientific research and technological advances to produce nightmarish new ways of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
This is a criminal, outmoded system that routinely strangles human potential and poisons the planet. Its leaders are carrying out wars in many parts of the world today that horribly intensify this death, destruction, and misery. They already have arsenals of almost inconceivable destructive capacity, and are feverishly working to take that to whole other levels.
But the world could be a whole other way. Read this.
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