At the exact moment when the Olympic Games will begin in Rio de Janeiro, at 8:00 p.m. on August 6, 2016, 71 years after August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan, at the same time, that corresponds to 8:15 a.m., the dreadful launching of the atomic bomb on that city will be remembered. The bomb caused 242.437 victims, counting those who died instantly, and those who died later, as a consequence of nuclear radiation.

In the text of surrender of August, 14th, Emperor Hirohito recognized that «it was about a weapon that could cause the total extinction of human civilization». Days later, when sharing with the people the reasons for the surrender, he declared that the main reason was that the atomic bomb «could bring about the death of all the Japanese people». In his ancestral wisdom, Emperor Hirohito was right.

Humanity trembled. According to cosmologist Carl Sagan, suddenly humanity realized that we had created for ourselves the beginning of our self destruction. Jean-Paul Sartre said the same: «humans will appropriate the instruments of their own extermination». Terrified, the great British historian, Arnold Toynbee, who ultimately penned 12 volumes on the history of civilizations, wrote in his memoir, (Experiences 1969): «I lived to see the end of human history become an anti-historic possibility, capable of actually occurring, not as an act of God, but of man». The great French naturalist Theodore Monod emphatically said: «we are capable of senseless and deranged conduct; from now on, we can be afraid of everything, actually everything, even the annihilation of the whole human race» (And if the human adventure would fail? 2000).

In fact, the horror came to nothing, because nuclear weapons continued to be developed, ever more potent, capable of eradicating life from the planet and putting an end to the human species.

Presently 9 countries have nuclear weapons, totalling 17.000, more or less. And we know that complete security does not exist. The disasters of Three Mile Island in the U.S., Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima, in Japan, provide convincing proof.

A few days ago, the Northamerican President, Barak Obama, visited Hiroshima for the first time. Lamenting only the fact, he said: «death fell from the sky and the world changed… our moral awakening began». But President Obama did not have the courage to ask for forgiveness from the Japanese people for the apocalyptic scenes that transpired there.

A world-wide discussion now exists as how to evaluate this act of war. Many pragmatically claim that it was the only way to force Japan to surrender, and avoid thousands of victims on both sides. Others consider the use of this deadly weapon, in the official Japanese version, as «an illegal hostile act under the norms of international law». Others go even farther and affirm that it was a «war crime» and even «State terrorism».

Now we are moved to say that it was a criminal act against life, that cannot be justified in any form, because thinking in ecological terms, the bomb killed much more than people: all the forms of vegetation, animal and organic life and the total destruction of cultural goods as well. Wars are usually made of armies against armies, war planes against war planes, battle ships against battle ships. Not here. It was about a totaler Krieg (total war) in the Nazi style of killing anything that moves, poisoning waters, contaminating the wind and decimating the physical–chemical bases that sustain life. Conscious of this barbarity, Albert Einstein refused to participate in the atomic bomb project and, together with Bertrand Russell, he vehemently condemned it.

Besides other deadly threats to the life-and-Earth-systems, the nuclear threat continues to be the most terrifying, a true Damocles sword sits atop humanity’s head. Who could contain the irrationality of North Korea, in unleashing a devastating nuclear attack?

There is a deeply human proposal that comes to us from Sao Paulo, Brazil, from the Association of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Survivors (called, hibakusha–It is believed that there are some 118 in Brazil), led by Chico Whitaker, a militant opponent of nuclear energy, that on August 6, at the moment of the opening of the Olympic Games, there be a minute of silence, to remember the victims of Hiroshima. Not only that, but that our thoughts also turn against violence against women, refugees, Blacks and the poor, who are systematically decimated (in Brazil alone, in 2015, 60 thousand Black youth were lost), the indigenous, the quilombolas, the landless, the homeless, in fact, all the victims of the voracity of our system of accumulation.

On this topic, the Mayor of Hiroshima has already sent a letter to the Olympic Organizing Committee. Let’s hope that the Committee promotes that silent cry against all war, and for peace amog all the peoples of the world.

Leonardo Boff  is ecotheologian and writter

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Amidst the present discussions about corruption we must unveil what is hidden from and overlooked by the less than critical eye. What is hidden? The persistent will of the dominant groups that do not accept the rising ability of the popular masses to attain the minimum benefits of citizenship, and want to keep them where the masses of the people were always kept: at the margins, as a cheap reserve army at their service.
The investigation by juridical police of the Petrobras crimes implicates large enterprises, the PT (Labor Party), and many other parties as well, the PPS, PMDB and the PSDB, who benefited with subsides and contributions to their campaigns. Why is the investigation being conducted in such a way that it only centers on PT members? The principal objective appears not to be condemnation of the crimes, which obviously must be investigated, judged and punished. But the PT is not alone in this entanglement. The majority of the large political parties are deeply involved. Which of them did not receive millions from Petrobras and businesses for their political campaigns? Why are the Public Ministry, the federal Police and Judge Sergio Moro not investigating them, since they purport to be cleaning up the country? Did any of those candidates sell their country homes, or any of their properties to finance their million-dollar political campaigns? They were financed by cashbox B, which is illegal, but considered a common practice in our low level democracy.

It is disingenuous and misleading to think that those organisms, including the various branches of the justice system, up to the highest levels, are not full of bias and ideology. Let the classics of ideology tell us. Among them, Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault demonstrated that no social space is immune to special interests, and therefore, to ideological discourse, and does not move without a purpose. The narrative of the golpistas emphasizes the supposed independence of these instances and their allegedly impartial character. Past and present reality reveal something very different.

A firm ideological purpose of the organs of power linked to the police, the judiciary and the Supreme Courts, carried out by private means of mass communication of national scope, of a well known conservative, if not reactionary and anti-popular, character, would serve as a link, uniting them, all of them, in order to guarantee a certain type of order that has always benefited them, and that now the PT and its allies has limited.

Why the systemic attempt to destroy the figure of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was taken by force to give a declaration at the Federal Police, after he had already done so three times? It is the perverse desire to destroy him as a reference point for all those who see in him the politician who came from the very depths of our country, a survivor of hunger, who finally, with his charisma, arrived at the center of power. Lula achieved the most important thing for a person: his dignity. The people had always been considered by the owners of power as good for nothing, ignorant and redundant plebes. Long suffering, Lula got tired of seeing his hope of minimum improvements frustrated. The conciliation among the classes, the tonic of our political classes, was always done to ease the path of the powerful groups and deny benefits to the people. With the PT, this excluding logic was eliminated.

Now we see the purpose of the classes that do not accept having been one day removed from power. They want power back at any cost. They have realized that they will not be able to do so through elections, given the mediocrity of their leaders and the lack of a project that gives hope to the people, the lackeys of globalized imperial power. They want to accomplish it by manipulating the law, creating hatreds and intolerance as never before in our history has existed to this degree. It is class struggle, yes. This theme has not passed. It is not an invention. It is a fact of reality. It is enough see what is being said in the social media. It seems that the gates of hell have opened for loud, dirty talk, for lack of respect, and the will to demonize the other.

Politics in Brazil now does not consist of ideological confrontations, of different political projects and different readings of our critical situation, that is not just ours, but of the whole world. It is something more perverse: it is the will to destroy Lula, to destroy the PT, and pit it against the people. They are afraid that Lula will return to complete the policies that benefited the great majorities, and gave them awareness and dignity. What the holders of power fear most is a people who think. They want ignorant Brazilians, in order to be able to dominate them ideologically and politically, and in this way, ensure their privileges.

But they will not accomplish that. They are so obtuse and lacking of creativity in their hunger for power that they use the same tactics used in 1954 against Getulio Vargas, or the 1964 tactics against João “Jango” Goulart. It was always about crushing the demands of the people for more rights, that implied reducing their privileges and making some democratic improvements. But times have changed. They will not prosper because there is already a rise in awareness and popular pressure that will cause them to be ridiculed, in spite of their mouthpieces in the mass media, true “creepy runts”, who gather the worst they can find to continue lying, distorting, and inventing dramatic scenarios, to destroy the popular hope and thus to return to power, by force, rather than by democratic rights.

But, no… “No pasarán”

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission