The Day of Two Sunrises

This was written to honor and mourn the victims of the Castle-Bravo H-Bomb blast on 1 March 1954. the Marshallese still suffer, but were conned by the government to sign off responsibility for a cash grant. (wampun for land?) Now it is fifty six years, and the malady lingers on.

* * *

The Day of Two Sunrises

My brother and I went to play
By the boats pulled up on the beach.
We raced and played tag
And chased land crabs in the predawn light.

The sun began to light the east
As it always had before,
Suddenly, a second sun arose in the west
Where never the sun had risen!

We ran to Mama to ask her what and why.
She did not know and the new sun died
As quickly as it grew.
In the Men’s House, they talked and remembered.

The day began as always, the men to fish in their outriggers,
The mothers cooking and digging taro, gathering plantains
And watching over the children
Who played at fishing and gathering and ran and played tag.

Suddenly, from the sky fell white powder!
Once a missionary had told of snow. Perhaps this was snow!
It came down covering everything. It was sticky.
We played, and scooped it up and threw it at each other. It was fun!

That evening I did not feel so well. My eyes hurt and my stomach turned to water.
My brother’s body was covered with blisters and his skin began to fall off.
Mother was vomiting, too, and her beautiful hair
Began to come out in handfuls.

Mother wondered if it was the snow, so she washed us,
But the water was filled with snow and the scrubbing removed the skin.
Soon, the whole village was sick, and the animals, and the plants,
All were sick.

After two days, the strange men came, in boats with a large mouth
Which dropped open on the beach and white clad creatures came out.
They wore masks with strange eyes and a long round mouth.
They pointed sticks at us which buzzed and crackled.

They pointed the sticks at everything, the trees, the well, the fish,
And listened to the buzz and crackle, then made marks on little boards they carried.
Finally they left, but told us we were very sick and not to eat
Of the fish, the coconuts, the plantains, the taro, that they were now tabu.

The men returned in their large boats and said our island was now tabu.
They gathered us up, leaving everything behind
We were taken to another place where we were poked and bled.
We looked so terrible that the people must have been afraid.

They wore the strange white suits when they looked in on us.
My brother looked the worst, like an old man with scabs
Which broke and bled and his teeth fell out
And then he was dead.

Mama became an old woman with patchy hair
And always a sickness.
Each time she saw me, she cried.
I was so sick, so tired, and then one day I died.

* * *

In memory of the Rongalapese and other Islanders who were poisoned by Castle Bravo (13.5 megatons, 1 March 1954) and other bombs. Just collateral damage in the quest for knowledge and power.

Steve Osborn
25 February 2004

Arms Race and Arms Reduction are Not Identical

Mr President, Building Up the Nuclear Weapons Complex Is NOT Nuclear Disarmament

When the CCCP collapsed and the cold war ended, the MIC was terrified! They were looking at the specter of having to make refrigerators and stoves, perhaps even get into real estate. A guy buys a refrigerator or a stove and he keeps it twenty years. Guy buys a house, he may be in it for many years. One sale! Where is the profit in that?

Guy buys a thousand pound bomb and, BOOM!, he buys another. That, my friends is real profit. Especially when your Corporation can sell thousand pound bombs to both sides of any conflict.

Phasing out nuclear power and coal/gas for solar/wind/wave/geothermal power cuts into huge profits by the associated corporations, heavily invested in by other corporations.

Nuclear weapon development has always been a protected multi-billion dollar cash cow. The SALT talks, the Outer Space Treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and others; all of these were anathema to those who control us, and the government, through their purse strings.

Bush unilaterally (and illegally) tore up those treaties, restarted the cold war and a nuclear arms race. Obama, instead of pushing for a reinstatement of those treaties, is aiding and abetting the increase of military power at the expense of We the People and the world at large, but at greatly increased profits to the MIC. The bought and paid for Legislative branch goes along with it, and the bought Supreme Court will proceed to make it all legal.

Those few who still read and study history will recognize the parallels with 1930's Germany.

The German people failed to turn theirs around. Thousands were executed for making attempts to do so as Hitler consolidated his power. Millions died because they no longer had any power to do anything but heil der Fuhrer and do what they were told.

Now that the Corporations, the Oligarchy if you will, have consolidated their power to the point where they can come out in the open, we are rapidly finding ourselves in the same position. Our Constitutional Right to air our grievances and demand redress is getting ever more brutally suppressed by police. Heavily armed pre-emptive raids are made on people who are only planning or discussing a protest. Our alleged representatives either ignore our communications, or send us form letters which are puff pieces bragging about inconsequential legislative victories while ignoring our call for a return to the Constitutional form of government we once had.

I am no seer, but I see that the concentration camps built during the Bushwhacking years are still there, maintained and ready. NorthCom is training combat brigades in "suppressing civil unrest," the number of foreclosed, homeless, jobless, hungry and ill people is increasing exponentially. Sooner or later, the kettle is going to start to boil over. They are ready for it.

In ancient days, when Ug and Og went from throwing sticks and rocks to inventing the spear, they did not resist using it. When others developed the same thing, Ug stockpiled spears until his cave could outgun the other. Then someone invented the bow and arrow and so it went.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed what could be done. East and West began yet another arms race, which finally stalemated. Now, many of our caves have nuclear weapons, but we have the most and have proven ourselves unstable enough to use them.

Sooner or later, someone is going to try a sneak attack on someone else. That will escalate, through fear (Am I next?) or retaliation. Probably, most of civilization (as we consider it) will be destroyed. Science Fiction is becoming fact far too rapidly these days.

Einstein once said, "I don't know what weapons world war three will be fought with, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones."

* * *

He looked out of the mouth of the cave at the devastation before him, then, cautiously, clutching his spear, he went out to forage for food for his hungry family...