On D-Day – Remember why they fought

Watching the BBC broadcasting from Normandy, with Chuck, his Ma and her bidie-in, any socialist could almost be forgiven for disassociating themselves from the whole enterprise. Ceremonies like this always bring God, Queen and country to the fore. But the anniversary of D-Day deserves more respect, because we need to remember why they fought.

Remembering Hiroshima

Today is the 67th anniversary of the US dropping a nuclear bomb over Japan - 'Little Boy' - which exploded 600 metres above the city of Hiroshima killing 140,000 people. Jeremy Corbyn MP writes that 'all over the world there will be commemoration ceremonies for peace, even though we can fully expect the media to be firmly fixed on coverage of the Olympic Games. I hope the London commemoration can be joined by some of the thousands of Olympic visitors to show the world they want peace, not war, and that nuclear weapons are both immoral and unnecessary'
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/122119
For details of the London event (which will be chaired by Jeremy Corbyn) and others throughout the UK see the CND website: http://www.cnduk.org/get-involved/events

Hiroshima Day - Get involved!

CND has published details of events taking place across Britain tomorrow to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima: http://www.cnduk.org/get-involved/events/item/1214-hiroshima-day

On the brink of... by Suheir Hammad

Written 20 March 2003 in tribute to Rachel Corrie
On the brink of
tears, sanity and war,
I feel powerless, hope
less and less than alive.

UNISON Women celebrate the centenary of International Women's Day!

The origins of International Women’s Day lie deep within the struggle of working class women to unions and the fight for women’s suffrage. These two issues united European and American women. In 1908 hundreds of women workers in the New York needle trades demonstrated in Rutgers Square in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to form their own union to demand the right to vote. This historic demonstration took place on 8 March. It led in the following year to the uprising of 30,000 women in the shirtwaist makers which resulted in the first permanent trade union for women workers in the USA.

Lest We Forget…..

On Remembrance Sunday, the ceremonial often overshadows the real emotions that lie behind the reasons why we need to remember the past. The glorification of war had no place for past generations who had actually fought in them, who saw that a day of remembrance should be a day to consider the futility of conflicts where human sacrifice was used for the political expediency of the ruling classes.

Poppies by Jane Weir‏

Three days before Armistice Sunday
and poppies had already been placed
on individual war graves. Before you left,
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

Cuban trade unions - an urgent call to prevent a new holocaust‏

To all trade union organisations worldwide from the Cuban Workers Trade Union Central: In times in which mankind commemorates a new anniversary of the unjustified throwing of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which caused the immediate death of more than two hundred thousand people, while many other died in the aftermath or suffered as well as their descendants the devastating sequels, serious threats of a new holocaust hangs over a large portion of the world.

9 August 1945 - Nagasaki remembered‏

Today, Japan and peace campaigners worldwide mark the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. The horrendous attack by the USA killed more than 70,000 people and blighted the lives of many more. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10914914

6 August 1945 - Hiroshima Remembered‏

The Japan Council against A- and H- Bombs is this week is holding two major international conferences, involving up to 10,000 people, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to commemorate barbaric dropping of atomic bombs on Japan as the second world war drew to an end...