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"An individual life is a serialized, capitalistic, miniature crisis, a disaster that has your name on it." Brian Massumi, as quoted in a review of Endstation Amerika written by Carl Hegemann. This play, by Brian Castorf. is his interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire. It premiered at the Volksbuehne Theater, Berlin on October 13, 2000. |
Remembering Hiroshima
August 5, 2008
To a friend:
Here's a voice in the wilderness (appended), if I ever heard one. I don't even think they're right. Given the fact that the US will never, ever relinquish its most terroristic weapon, the only logical solution is for every state that wishes to pursue an independent foreign policy to acquire such weapons for itself. This is an extremely difficult pill to swallow, but I see no alternative.
The US purposely let this genii out of the bottle in WW2 when it duped a lot of otherwise smart physicists, who were swept up in war hysteria, into thinking that they were in a race with the Nazis to develop the weapon. The real race was to have the bomb ready before Japan surrendered so they could accomplish the most essential objective for any terrorist: To convince your enemy that you are not morally inhibited from using your weapon on your hostages. On a small scale this typically means shooting one hostage and dumping the body where it can be seen. That was Hiroshima. The most cold-blooded killer will do it twice. That was Nagasaki.
The Cuban missile crisis proved that the Russians, in a real showdown, will blink. This reinforced, for the US, the psychological advantage that a psychopath always possesses in any confrontation: The sure knowledge, in the mind of his opponent, that he will shoot as many children as necessary and dump their bodies in the street.
The really successful terrorist, living out his old age in comfortable retirement and surrounded by his grandchildren, will regale them with the tale of the difficult decision which faced him back then. The story will end, as it always does, with the moral that, had he not acted wisely back in those trying times, they would not be here today.
Best regards,
Otto
August 5, 2008
Member,
Managing board of
the Party of the Left
The Campaign For a World Without Atomic Weapons By
2020
Despite the overcoming of the East-West conflict, the danger of a renewed use of nuclear weapons is greater than before. The policy of the Party of the Left continues to be: A world without nuclear weapons is possible and necessary.
The Party of the Left notes with concern the increasing militarization of the foreign policy of states, including those in Europe. The spiraling armament race in many parts of the world turns ever faster and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is becoming increasingly meaningless.
The striving for dominance in the relationship between states, the pursuit of national economic interests, and the achievement of these objectives by military means have also come to characterize the administration of President Bush. The Party of the Left supports those forces in the United States who decisively oppose this policy. In common with the parties of the European Left, the German Party of the Left stands with the majority of the Czech and Polish people in opposition to the planned so-called anti-missile system of the US and opposes a policy with respect to Iran that is based exclusively on military threats.
In memory of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the necessity for overcoming the nuclear threat to the children of this and future generations, the Party of the Left asks everyone involved immediately to treat nuclear disarmament as an urgent political issue. In this sense, the Party of the Left welcomes the statement of Senator Obama in Berlin in which he lightly touched upon the subject of a world without nuclear weapons and it proposes the following steps to achieve a world without nuclear weapons by 2020:
Source:
Original
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Translation: Otto Hinckelmann