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CND in the News
CND in the News: 10-17 August 2005
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1 Solemn memories
11 August 2005
http://www.herts24.co.uk/content/herts/news/story.aspx?brand=HADOnline&category=News&tBrand=herts24&tCategory=newshertsad&itemid=WEED11%20Aug%202005%2011%3A57%3A41%3A700
TWO separate ceremonies were held at the weekend to mark the 60th anniversary
of the end of the Second World War. More than 70 veterans from ex-service
associations such as Burma Star, the Royal British Legion, the Royal Marines
and the Navy came together at Jersey Farm Woodland Park on Sunday to mark
the anniversary of both VE and VJ Days. And at St Albans Abbey, a similar-sized
crowd was present on Saturday at a remembrance ceremony for the dead of
Hiroshima. The Jersey Farm service was conducted by the Rev Roy Day, a
Burma Star medal holder who recounted his personal experiences of the
conflict. Special guest was Alderman Ken Haywood, also a veteran of the
war, who recalled his own memories. Music was provided by the Salvation
Army Band who were spontaneously applauded for their contribution.
The Abbey event was organised by Laurie Gibson, secretary of St
Albans CND who recalled that the-then Dean of St Albans, Cuthbert
Thicknesse, had refused to let the Abbey bell ring out for victory at
the end of the war because of the devastation wrought on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Alderman Portia Harris represented the Mayor of St Albans and
the present Dean, the Rt Rev Jeffrey John, spoke of the tremendously-destructive
power of nuclear weapons and the bitter irony that the Hiroshima bomb
was dropped on the Feast of the Transfiguration that commemorates the
appearance of the Lord in divine glory during his earthly life.
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2 A-bomb's damaging fallout
August 16, 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-1736317,00.html
THE 60TH anniversary of the defeat of Japanese aggression enables us
to thank those survivors who accomplished it. To the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, on the other hand, it represents an opportunity to inculcate
into schoolchildren a tendentious political message. CND
has produced a Hiroshima Education Pack nominally about the dropping of
the A-bombs on Japan in August 1945 but giving no indication of the historical
debates over that decision. Its treatment of the subject consists in denouncing
as a “lie” the notion “that the US dropped the nuclear
bombs in order to minimise casualties, claiming that a ground war would
have killed many more people”.
The rest of the pack includes a selective history of CND,
denunciations of the alleged bellicosity of the current US and UK governments,
and a candid admission addressed to CND supporters that
“the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an important
opportunity for us to raise awareness amongst the general public of the
horrifying reality of nuclear war and the need to join CND’s campaign”.
There are also role-playing games that, in specifying that “students
should be organised in mixed-ability groups to support each other”,
charmingly recall an educational idée fixe of a bygone age.
CND’s sole cited source for its historical claims
is a long-debunked thesis of 40 years ago. Recent historical research
supports what CND denounces as lies. In 1997, D. M. Giangreco, of the
US Army Command and General Staff College, concluded after exhaustive
research of the primary sources that “the estimate that American
casualties (in a ground invasion of Japan) could surpass the million mark
was set in the summer of 1944 and was never changed”. In 1998, the
Japanese historian Sadao Asada demonstrated, after assessing newly released
documents about the surrender, that the dropping of both bombs was crucial
in strengthening the position of those within the Japanese Government
who wished to sue for peace.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible acts of warfare undertaken to avoid
the certainty of far greater casualties on all sides. The charge that
the bombs were dropped for cynical reasons of US realpolitik is ahistorical.
CND’s dissemination of it to schoolchildren in
order to buttress its current campaigns is intellectual irresponsibility
of a high order.
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3 Costello adds anti-war lyrics to song
Monday, August 15, 2005
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/15/music.antiwar.reut/
NEW YORK (Billboard) -- He had a 4 a.m. wakeup call, but it wasn't necessary
because Elvis Costello couldn't sleep the night before his recent appearance
on NBC's "Today" with his band the Imposters and guest Emmylou
Harris. It was then that the additional lyrics to his 2004 Academy Award-nominated
song "The Scarlet Tide" from the movie "Cold Mountain"
came to him: "I thought I heard a black bell toll up in the highest
dome/Admit you're wrong/And bring the boys back home."
He repeated this portion of the first verse of the anti-war song, which
he wrote with T-Bone Burnett, with a second revision: "You know you
lied/Just bring the boys back home."
The song originally related to the Civil War setting of "Cold Mountain."
Costello performed the rewrite on "Today," and the updated implication
was not likely lost on a Costello-friendly crowd.
"We have to speak up now," says Costello, who lives in New York
when he is not on the road.
"I have looked forward to living in the true value of this country
for the last 25 years, and it is an ideal we give up at our peril,"
he continues. "Everything that I have ever loved about America is
rapidly being eroded -- the unspoiled vastness, that, at its best, can
absorb such cultural, religious and regional diversity, and the basic
decency -- when it isn't tainted by one or other corruption of a belief
inspired by a government intent on establishing some freakish hybrid:
a spin-controlled theocracy."
Costello points out that Burnett "always said 'Scarlet Tide' was
an anti-fear song." He credits singer Freda Payne "for the inspiration"
for the "Scarlet Tide" revision -- pointing to Payne's Vietnam-era
hit "Bring the Boys Home," which he featured in his "Artist's
Choice" compilation for Starbucks.
Costello has since performed the altered "Scarlet Tide" in concert.
"It is impossible to say whether every last person approves of the
sentiments contained in the amended lyrics," he says. "There
was a considerable roar of approval in Boston, but I was even more encouraged
to receive a similar response in Pittsburgh, which I have always regarded
as a more working-class town. In the 1980s I played a Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament benefit show in Barrow-in-Furness in
the north of England -- where the submarine yards were the main employer
-- so I know that this can be tricky territory. My guess is that it is
still these towns from which the men and boys are being culled to do the
dirty work. Nevertheless, the cheer was considerable."
His appearances with Harris on this tour infused a "stronger American
folk music element" into his shows, better enabling Costello to "speak
to people in their own musical language."
Shows included renditions of "Gathering Flowers for the Master's
Bouquet," the Stanley Brothers' bluegrass classic about death. Its
relevance, Costello concludes, "was perhaps not lost on some of the
listeners."
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