India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
After dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, top U.S. government officials lied, claiming there was “no radioactive residue” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that Japanese reports of deaths due to radiation were “propaganda.”
Each anniversary of the atomic bombings provides us a unique opportunity to study and reflect on the horrors of possible nuclear war and the massive destruction already wrought by pursuing nuclear madness.
The Pentagon is just one element in an ever more costly American national security state. Adding other military, intelligence, and internal-security expenditures to the Pentagon’s budget brings the total upcoming “national security” budget to a mind-boggling $1.4 trillion.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, I’ve heard more discussions of nuclear war than I did in the entire nine years that I wore an air force uniform. I’m glad that people are finally discussing the existential dangers of nuclear weapons. There have been more near-misses than the world knows.
“Coming out” on thyroid cancer — or indeed about any negative health impacts resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster — remains largely taboo in Japan. Studies that conclude the medical impacts are significant or even substantial, are met with hostility, stoniness or just plain silence.
Even when the West expresses genuine human solidarity with Ukraine, we cannot overlook its racist context and Europe-centric bias. The West’s solidarity is reserved for whoever is willing to join its bloc, and is not found when violence is directed against non-Europeans.
I am against killing and destruction. I will therefore join in a march for peace – but not in step with the greedy, violence-hungry forces who have taken up the Ukraine issue to pursue their own disastrous goals.
The number of people displaced by war, general violence, or human-rights violations last year swelled to a staggering 84 million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. If they formed their own country, it would be the 17th largest in the world, slightly bigger than Iran or Germany.
Tokyo Electric Power Company – TEPCO – has been attempting to decommission three nuclear meltdowns in reactors No. 1 No. 2, and No. 3 for 11 years now. Over time, impossible issues grow and glow, putting one assertion after another into the anti-nuke coffers.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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