Spokesman Books

‘A nuclear explosion [dubbed ‘Little Boy’] was detonated some 600 metres above Hiroshima at 8.15 on 6 August 1945 … a second, over Nagasaki three days later, was a plutonium bomb, dubbed ‘Fat Man’. It is 66 years since those terrible experiments, which instantly killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of them civilians. Tens of thousands more suffered lingering deaths due to their injuries, caused by intense heat, blast, and radiation sickness … As the nuclear disaster at Fukushima continues to unfold, Japanese perceptions have probed more deeply. Sumiteru Taniguchi survived extensive injuries suffered during the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and, at 82 years of age, maintains a lively presence on behalf of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers (or Hibakusha , in Japanese). He recently observed that ‘Nuclear power and mankind cannot co-exist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as “peaceful” and continued to

The Israel-Palestine situation demands truth and reconciliation. We hope to aid that process. By Desmond Tutu and Michael Mansfield guardian.co.uk , Thursday 3 November 2011 Opportunities to break seemingly intractable and deadlocked situations are rare – especially on a scale which has rapidly developed this year from the beleaguered cries of citizenry across North Africa and the Middle East. There is a palpable consensus that the provenance of this movement is lodged firmly in the fundamental prerequisite for meaningful democracy: self-determination. All conventions on human rights have this tenet as a core rationale. Where it is repeatedly denied and suppressed there will never be peace or justice, let alone stability. On Saturday the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will open its third session: after Barcelona and London, this session will take place in South Africa, the location of a seminal struggle for self-determination by a community oppressed by apartheid. Partly as a result of