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This week on Uprising:

* Howard Zinn on the 65th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima
* International Cluster Bomb Ban Goes Into Effect
* Black Agenda Report on Representative Maxine Waters
* BP Using Prison Labor to Clean Up Gulf Coast

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Howard Zinn on the 65th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima

Sixty-five years ago on August 6th the U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, in Japan. A hundred and forty thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed instantly. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, instantly killing 70,000 people. At least 130,000 more Japanese died of radiation poisoning within 5 years. Before his death earlier this year, people’s historian Howard Zinn wrote about World War II and the events preceding the bombing of Hiroshima in a book being posthumously published by City Lights Books, entitled simply, The Bomb. In it Zinn dissects the idea of “a good war”, a war between good and evil. He details many instances of US bombings of civilian areas and grapples with the more philosophical question of when a people become culpable for the atrocities perpetrated by their governments. Zinn delves into the evolution of wartime psychology that allowed the United States public to support the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Putting the events of 65 years ago into context, Zinn writes, “If the word “terrorism” has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Howard Zinn spoke about Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of his life, on November 11, 2009 at Boston University in a talk called Holy Wars. Howard Zinn was on the advisory board of Peace Action.

GUEST: Paul Kawika Martin, Organizing, Political and PAC Director Peace Action & Peace Action
Education Fund, speaking to us live from Hiroshima, Japan

Find out more about The Bomb here http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100167600.

Find out more about Peace Action at www.peace-action.org.

International Cluster Bomb Ban Goes Into Effect

The International Ban on Cluster Bombs took effect early this month. Since the Convention on Cluster Munitions opened for signature in Oslo in December 2008, over 100 countries have signed the treaty, with 37 countries having ratified it. Negotiations for the Convention were led by the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), an international network of more than 350 organizations founded in 2003 by groups like Human Rights Watch and Handicap International. The CMC also includes leaders from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which led the movement toward the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. When cluster bombs are dropped, their canisters release mid-air, scattering bomblets over a wide area. Most bomblets explode immediately, but those that don’t can detonate many years after being dropped. The CMC reports that over one-third of cluster munitions victims are children who touch unexploded bombs. Laos, Vietnam and Iraq are the three most affected countries, and cluster bombs have most recently been used in the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon, the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, and the ongoing US/NATO war in Afghanistan. Although the US possesses the greatest stockpile of cluster bombs, it has to date refused to sign the treaty. Other non-signatories include Israel, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea, and Russia. According to the CMC, the convention bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions. It also calls for countries to destroy their stockpiles in the next eight years, clear contaminated land in the next 10 years, and provide assistance to cluster munitions survivors and affected communities.

GUEST: Steve Goose, Director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch and co-chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition

Find out more at www.stopclustermunitions.org, www.hrw.org, and www.august1.org.

Black Agenda Report on Representative Maxine Waters

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about Maxine Waters.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

BP Using Prison Labor to Clean Up Gulf Coast

Last week Robert Dudley, the incoming CEO of BP, said it is “not too soon” to begin scaling back clean-up efforts along the Gulf Coast. BP has just filled its well in the Gulf with 5000 feet of cement to try to permanently seal off the gush that resulted in the biggest oil spill in history. Oil gushed into the Gulf for close to 100 days, from late April to mid-July. This week a congressional committee began an investigation on whether the Coast Guard allowed BP to use higher amounts of chemical dispersants than is recommended by federal guidelines. BP’s clean-up strategies have been closely guarded by the company, including their hiring practices. Writing for The Nation magazine, my guest Abe Louise Young recently reported that the use of prison labor on clean-up crews is an open-secret in Louisiana. Young reports that inmates work 12 hour days in a heat so intense their shifts are 20 minutes on, 40 minutes off to recover. Many work an average of 72 hours a week, performing back breaking labor, such as shoveling oil that has washed up on beaches into garbage bags. Inmates in work-release programs are eligible to be hired at market-rate wages, but they cannot decline to take a job without being penalized. The workers are under a gag-order and cannot talk to reporters. Louisiana prison officials and representatives of the Department of Corrections declined Young’s requests to be interviewed. Private Companies like BP, who hire inmates from work-release programs receive tax-credits of $2,400 for each employee. Young reports that beach clean-up jobs pay the lowest wages of any in the recovery effort, and they are among the most physically taxing and dangerous in terms of long-term health effects.

GUEST: Abe Louise Young: A poet and journalist from New Orleans, Louisiana, now living in Austin, Texas.

More of her work can be found at www.abelouiseyoung.com.

Read Abe Louise Young’s article in the Nation Magazine at http://www.thenation.com/article/37828/bp-hires-prison-labor-clean-spill-while-coastal-residents-struggle

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.” — Daniel Webster