The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Edward Curtin
(Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”C. S. Lewis, author’s preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters
American history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase. Maybe radical “evil” will suffice. But right from the start the American colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called “manifest destiny.” Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions and millions of innocent people that continues down to today.
“Others” have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false flag operations. It is not a secret, although most Americans, if they are aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by “bad apples.” Or something from the past.
Our best writers and prophets have told us the truth: Thoreau, Twain, William James, MLK, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, et al.: we are a nation of killers of the innocent. We are conscienceless. We are brutal. We are in the grip of evil forces.
The English writer D. H. Lawrence said it perfectly in 1923, “The American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.” It still hasn’t.
When on August 6 and 9, 1945 the United States killed 200-300 thousand innocent Japanese civilians with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they did so intentionally. It was an act of sinister state terrorism, unprecedented by the nature of the weapons but not by the slaughter. The American terror bombings of Japanese cities that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – led by the infamous Major General Curtis LeMay – were also intentionally aimed at Japanese civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of them.
Is there an American artist’s painting of Tokyo destroyed by the firebombing to go next to Picasso’s Guernica, where estimates of the dead range between 800 and 1,600? In Tokyo alone more than 100,000 Japanese civilians were burnt to death by cluster bombs of napalm. All this killing was intentional. I repeat: Intentional. Is that not radical evil? Demonic? Only five Japanese cities were spared such bombing.
The atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union that we could do to them what we did to the residents of Japan. President Truman made certain that the Japanese willingness to surrender in May 1945 was made unacceptable because he and his Secretary-of-State James Byrnes wanted to use the atomic bombs – “as quickly as possible to ‘show results’” in Byrnes’ words – to send a message to the Soviet Union. So “the Good War” was ended in the Pacific with the “good guys” killing hundreds of thousand Japanese civilians to make a point to the “bad guys,” who have been demonized ever since. Russia phobia is nothing new.
Satan always wears the other’s face.
Many Baby Boomers like to say they grew up with the bomb. They are lucky. They grew up. They got be scared. They got to hide under their desks and wax nostalgic about it. Do you remember dog tags? Those 1950s and 1960s? The scary movies?
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died under our bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945 didn’t get to grow up. They couldn’t hide. They just went under. To be accurate: we put them under. Or they were left to smolder for decades in pain and then die. But that it was necessary to save American lives is the lie. It’s always about American lives, as if the owners of the country actually cared about them. But to tender hearts and innocent minds, it’s a magic incantation. Poor us!
Fat Man, Little Boy – how the words echo down the years to the now fat Americans who grew up in the 1950s and who think like little boys and girls about their country’s demonic nature. Innocence – it is wonderful! We are different now. “We are great because we are good,” that’s what Hillary Clinton told us. The Libyans can attest to that. We are exceptional, special. The next election will prove we can defeat Mr. Pumpkin Head and restore America to its “core values.”
Perhaps you think I am cynical. But understanding true evil is not child’s play. It seems beyond the grasp of most Americans who need their illusions. Evil is real. There is simply no way to understand the savage nature of American history without seeing its demonic nature. How else can we redeem ourselves at this late date, possessed as we are by delusions of our own God-blessed goodness?
But average Americans play at innocence. They excite themselves at the thought that with the next election the nation will be “restored” to the right course. Of course there never was a right course, unless might makes right, which has always been the way of America’s rulers. Today Trump is viewed by so many as an aberration. He is far from it. He’s straight out of a Twain short story. He’s Vaudeville. He’s Melville’s confidence man. He’s us.
Did it ever occur to those who are fixated on him that if those who own and run the country wanted him gone, he’d be gone in an instant? He can tweet and tweet idiotically, endlessly send out messages that he will contradict the next day, but as long as he protects the super-rich, accepts Israel’s control of him, and allows the CIA-military-industrial complex to do its world-wide killing and looting of the treasury, he will be allowed to entertain and excite the public – to get them worked up in a lather in pseudo-debates. And to make this more entertaining, he will be opposed by the “sane” Democratic opposition, whose intentions are as benign as an assassin’s smile.
Look back as far as you can to past U.S. presidents, the figureheads who “act under orders” (whose orders?), as did Ahab in his lust to kill the “evil” great white whale, and what do you see? You see servile killers in the grip of a sinister power. You see hyenas with polished faces. You see pasteboard masks. On the one occasion when one of these presidents dared to follow his conscience and rejected the devil’s pact that is the presidency’s killer-in-chief role, he – JFK – had his brains blown out in public view. An evil empire thrives on shedding blood, and it enforces its will through demonic messages. Resist and there will be blood on the streets, blood on the tracks, blood in your face.
Despite this, President Kennedy’s witness, his turn from cold warrior to an apostle of peace, remains to inspire a ray of hope in these dark days. As recounted by James Douglass in his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable, Kennedy agreed to a meeting in May 1962 with a group of Quakers who had been demonstrating outside the While House for total disarmament. They urged him to move in that direction.
Kennedy was sympathetic to their position. He said he wished it were easy to do so from the top down, but that he was being pressured by the Pentagon and others to never do that, although he had given a speech urging “a peace race” together with the Soviet Union. He told the Quakers it would have to come from below. According to the Quakers, JFK listened intently to their points, and before they left said with a smile, “You believe in redemption don’t you?” Soon Kennedy was shaken to his core by the Cuban missile crisis when the world teetered on the brink of extinction and his insane military and “intelligence” advisers urged him to wage a nuclear war. Not long after, he took a sharp top-down turn toward peace despite their fierce opposition, a turn so dramatic over the next year that it led to his martyrdom. And he knew it would. He knew it would.
So hope is not all lost. There are great souls like JFK to inspire us. Their examples flash here and there. But to even begin to hope to change the future, a confrontation with our demonic past (and present) is first necessary, a descent into the dark truth that is terrifying in its implications. False innocence must be abandoned. Carl Jung, in “On the Psychology of the Unconscious,” addressed this with the words:
It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses – and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.
But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true.
Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
How can one describe men who would intentionally slaughter so many innocent people? American history is rife with such examples up to the present day. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. – the list is very long. Savage wars carried out by men and women who own and run the country, and who try to buy the souls of regular people to join them in their pact with the devil, to acquiesce to their ongoing wicked deeds. Such monstrous evil was never more evident than on August 6 and 9, 1945.
Unless we enter into deep contemplation of the evil that was released into the world with those bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are lost in a living hell without escape. And we will pay. Nemesis always demands retribution. We have gradually been accepting rule by those for whom the killing of innocents is child’s play, and we have been masquerading as innocent and good children for whom the truth is too much to bear.
“Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one,” Screwtape the devil tells his nephew, Wormwood, a devil in training, “the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” That’s the road we’ve been traveling.
The projection of evil onto others works only so long. We must reclaim our shadows and withdraw our projections. Only the fate of the world depends on it.
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THE JAPANESE ACTUALLY BEHEADED MORE POW’S THAT DIED IN HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI COMBINED.YOUR ARTICLE IS MORE LIBERAL MISINFORMATION AND A ACT OF BETRAYAL AGAINST YOUR OWN PEOPLE.IF YOU ASK ME THATS THE EPITOME OF EVIL.GO SLIT YOUR WRISTS YOU LIBERAL BLOWHARD ,DO THE WORLD A FAVOR.THOSE [Japanese people] DESERVED EVERYTHING THEY GOT.
Please do not shout in capitals or use racist terminology. I will remove your posts if you continue to do this. Thank you, A2
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What really gets me about the nuclear issue is the unbelievable double-think so many in the west have managed to maintain.
When dealing with Iran or North Korea, we refuse to even entertain the idea of these nations possessing nuclear capabilities on the basis that they MIGHT use them to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
Meanwhile, the US, the only nation has literally proven its willingness to massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians using such a weapon, has never had its status as a nuclear power questioned.
This is the definition of American Exceptionalism.
Great article, by the way!
When confronted by the crimes of the American Evil Empire…sorry… Land of the Free, American apologists across the political spectrum resort to WhatAboutism–by casting the finger of approbation against some other nation or government and disingenuously muttering but, but what about what they did?
It’s quite pathetic, though very predictable for a nation like the United States, which in reality is not so much a nation, as it is a religion.
And if there is one thing that the Americans–and indeed Anglo-Americans in general–cannot stand, it is to have their religion of Americanism be called out as worshiping a false God.
America Is a Religion – An Aggressive One
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/how-its-exceptionalism-makes-america-dumb-and-aggressive/ri12257
Regarding the nature of the Satanic and evil in general, evil is not only defined by barbarism, mass murder, or genocide, which are enduring features of the human species itself.
Evil is more sophisticated.
Evil involves the manipulation of the “good.”
Evil involves the perversion of some type of noble values or universal ideals as a mask to disguise one’s malevolent nature, which can include barbarism, mass murder, genocide, etc.
Today, there is no greater evil than Anglo American “liberal democracy,” as embodied by the self-styled Leader of the Free World and its allied axis nations.
It is under the guise of championing democracy, freedom, liberty, human rights, blah, blah, blah, that the greatest crimes–particularly imperial wars of aggression–are committed by the United States of America and its crime partners like the United Kingdom.
See their wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Yugoslavia as only recent examples of the malevolence and, yes, evil, that the Anglo Americans have inflicted upon the world.
The Anglo American Empire today is merely the bastard spawn of the British Empire, both of whom–unlike the German Third Reich or Japanese Empire–have largely escaped the full judgement of history, not to mention punishment for their world historic crimes.
The Anglo Americans thus have not only gotten with their continuing crimes but also arrogantly propagandize much of the world into believing that they are the moral judge, jury, and indeed universal defenders of vaunted “democratic values and ideals.”
As even a Brit, Harold Pinter, was able to recognize regarding the USA (but not his own UK):
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
THAT is evil, the satanic in its greatest manifestation.
youre just mad because whitey whooped ya.
Good article by Curtin, but I take issue with his suggestion that the primary reason for dropping the bombs was to send a message to the Russians. Secretary of State Byrnes might have seen that as a bonus, but for him and for Truman the dropping of the bombs was just a continuation of the conventional civilian bombing that was already going on and that we had used against the Germans. It was designed to bludgeon the Japanese into accepting our unconditional surrender terms, which they were still unwilling to do even after we dropped the two A-bombs. They only surrendered when we dropped our unconditional surrender demand, upon a formula suggested by Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal. It’s all explained in my article, “Oliver Stone on the Japanese Surrender.” http://dcdave.com/article5/130122.htm.
Stone, like many American historians these days, argue that it was to Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan that brought about the Japanese surrender, but he and they are dead wrong about that.
No, Oliver Stone and I are right.
Uncle $cam $till $atanic:
Iswnews this sad report on the latest US-Saudi-Israeli atrocity in Yemen
US-Saudi Aggressors Targeted a School Bus Filled with Children While Passing a Local Market in Dhahian Southern Saada in Yemen
A total of 47 people, mostly children under the age of 10, were killed and 77 were injured when two Saudi-led airstrikes hit a school bus in Dhahyan popular market, the victims were on their way to attend a summer school in Dhahyan.
The head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Yemen, said on a twitter that “scores killed, even more injured, mostly under the age of 10” after the attack targeted a bus that carries children in the Dhahyan market. The organization stressed that “civilians must be protected during conflict under international humanitarian law.”
However, the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television quoted a statement by the Saudi-led coalition as saying that “Thursday’s airstrikes targeted Iranian-allied Houthi rebels who fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday at the Saudi commercial city in border Jazan region.”
In response, AnsarAllah spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam mocked the coalition statement as “absolutely ridiculous.”
“They killed pupils driving to school … this is a war crime,” Abdulsalam tweeted.
http://www.english.iswnews.com/2787/us-saudi-aggressors-targeted-a-school-bus-filled-with-children-while-passing-a-local-market-in-dhahian-southern-saada-in-yemen-video/
For the Wahhabist barbarians of Sordid Barbaria killing Shia, like the people of Yemen, is a very good thing. A genocidal regime as befits a close ally of Israel and the USA, the Wahhabist vermin see killing Shia and other ‘apostates’ as a compulsion, not to mention non-compliant Sunni etc.
This was sent to me by someone to whom I had forwarded Curtin’s article.
https://jamesperloff.com/2016/09/09/book-review-david-j-dionisi-atomic-bomb-secrets/
@GrassHopper. Link was worth reading; it opened a new — $pecifically $atanic and Anti-Christian — perspective on Nagasaki. Blogger Perloff might be distorting Dionisi’s book into propaganda against Zionist Freemasons such as Truman, but the Diaries of General Jordan which claim the Roosevelt / Truman Administration shared A-bomb technology with Stalin are presumably authentic.
From the review, Dionisi’s book apparently well complements my article, “Oliver Stone on the Japanese Surrender.” http://dcdave.com/article5/130122.htm
If using the term Satanic – please offer some definition as to exactly what you mean. Terror symbols can be added for narrative justification – as in invoking an anti-authority.
I have unanswered questions around the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – as on much of WW2 instigated a ‘new world order’ that is no less active today.
But regardless the means of death and destruction, an intentional and industrial mass sacrifice of civilians was the underlying nature of WW2 – which was also the theme of the concentration camps – the narrative of which is set by top down edict disallowing of the natural process of historical revision.
The practice of sacrifice can be that of forsaking one’s own, to gain more than one loses. or a partial loss to offset a believed greater gain. It can also be the reenactment of private gratification in the expression of power as terror – to be as gods in dealing death is to gain reinforcement for the wish-belief of attaining or reclaiming lost or a ‘rightful’ sense of denied power. Sacrifice traces back to the reenactment of the observed activities of the gods that became set in mythological narrative, along with appeals and appeasements for favour or escape from terror or penalty for presumed sin. Thus the magic of assigning the ‘payment’ in sacrifice for ‘order’ to be restored or maintained, is the selection of others to forfeit their lives – perhaps to be ‘glorified’ thereby.
Saturn/Chronos was observed to be ‘killing’ his own offspring – but this was after a Saturnian ‘golden age’. The saying is that you don’t know what you had until it’s gone – but this is a COMPARISION and not a truly relational presence. The dissatisfaction or indeed hatred of a world that fails to live up to or support a fantasy fulfilment of a personal sense of lost or denied power and connection operates as the perception of UN-worthiness, ugliness and worthlessness – which is then used to justify its destruction and remaking in the fantasy image. Keeping a fantasy agenda must sacrifice truth by believing their is none but what (power) dictates – including the power of deceit.
In some sense I associate ‘satanic’ with a love of form-based meanings at expense of truly felt and recognized meaning. This is the making of meanings assigned to forms that become idols of symbols of life – that are not themselves alive – and this extends to the dead letter and concept of an alien will – for it masks in the forms of life – yet ‘lives’ only on the sacrifice given it.
There is another aspect to Satanic – as the story of Job illustrates. The oppositional intent that sets up a choice NOT to know, or to be other than you are (within its conflicted sense of denial as a power unto itself). The development of this
negatively polarised ‘choice’ – (put in quotation marks because we are not humanly aware of this as a choice until it is revealed in light of a true awareness) IS the basis from which an awakened consciousness of light freely chooses or accepts the true, releasing the false. The expansion of consciousness to include and redeem all that is true by release of (identifying) false, is a different self and world experience than the need-driven compulsions of survival under terror that is of course hidden or veiled and masked out by the survival urge.
Moral integrity cannot be codified – although of course there are guidelines such as the 10 commandments or more positively, the two that Jesus chose to exemplify. But the former can be blind, merciless and inducing of compliance under fear – as well as the inhibiting of base impulses. The latter requires the disinhibiting of the ‘higher mind’ as the embodiment of inspired communication. To the ego-kingdom both are equally seen as threat to its order and both are pushed down to unconsciousness that becomes feared for what is hidden there instead of aligned in as the unselfconscious miracle of communication that we may yet open to in play or joyous endeavour. The attempt to regain the forms and feelings of an experience of grace or beauty will operate against the innocence of being open and with Now. In this sense we also deny our joy in the attempt never to lose it or to grasp and protect it.
The call to embrace Life is not the call to sacrifice but it seems that way to our investment in the possessive sense of control. Releasing what truly has no real belonging in the true of me is releasing the basis for a world of sacrifice.
Doing what we truly want is different from imposing a will over our true desire. Coercion is not needed within freely aligned purpose. But higher willing is – and that doesn’t come from rebranding the same old patterns of self-evasion.
My sense of a willingness to ‘sacrifice’ my first born son is not in human terms, but in terms of the release of my own THINKING or self-imaged miscreation in exchange for a true and direct relational awareness. This also was the ‘reward’ to Job whose intuitive faith was not baited or deceived by the forms of the world.
If a loveless deceit interjects to subject us to a world of fear and pain of loss – then let that serve the undoing of our correspondence within its thinking. Clean up your room, as the space in which to go forth from in conscious purpose aligned in a true acceptance of worth – because nothing we mask or manufacture can substitute for the love of Life, and the love of another as our self. This is a gift revealed. Not an application or possessive claim of ideology.
Binra, you asked for definitions; here is my start:
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/master_file/satanicconnection.htm
How the Term “Satan” Originated
It was the Egyptian Set, the Egyptian God known as Set, which represented Satan or Saturn; the Persians, instead of calling it Saturn or set, called the planet Satan, and personified the planet as though it were a person. This Awareness indicates that the Persians were the first to invent the personification of that which was called Satan. Later, the time being in approximately the mid part of the Christian Age, Western mystics, in studying various religions, latched on to the Persian teachings of Satan and brought into the Christian religion. Prior to that there was no Satan.
Set (deity) – Wikipedia
Set / s ɛ t / or Seth / s ɛ θ / (Egyptian: stẖ; also transliterated Setesh, Sutekh, Setekh, or Suty) is a god of the desert, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion.
Let’s pause there; for, is not Uncle $cam the Full $pectrum Dominator of “the desert, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners”?
Set – the 3rd son of Adam and Eve, … no “god”, but man.
@Gheorghe. Interesting, that A&E’s 3rd son should have been named after an Egyptian god; Egypt is in N.Africa on the S.E.Med while Eden seems to be in Yemen — Red Sea / Indian Ocean area. While Abraham came from Basra on the Persian Gulf. But Noah’s Ark landed on Mt.Ararat in the N.E.Med / Black Sea area. The Wandering Jew already?
The Black Sea deluge hypotheses may or may not match Noah’s flood but there are quite a few Ice Age collapse flood that match it.
The wandering Jew may just be the Hyksos invaders who’d been expelled from Egypt. Quite a few correlations between myth and history.
Gregory Bateson suggested that the fate of Hiroshima might have been determined at Versailles in 1919 when the Allies reneged on their armistice promise to the Germans of a just peace with soft terms and no punitive measures. This sell out led ‘fairly directly and inevitably’ to the second world war.
For Japan, towards the end of WW2, ‘there was a lot of talk about “unconditional surrender,” perhaps because we could not trust ourselves to honor a conditional armistice’.
http://sacw.pagesperso-orange.fr/docbin/GregoryBateson.FromVersaillestoCybernetics.pdf
The rentier class who’d encumbered America with the national debt did the same to Germany. Leading to WWII and the cycle of permanent war for permanent debt servicing. (Rothschild agent Lazar Wolf was involved in the Lincoln assassination plot, bankers financed Japanese rearmament for the 1905 war with Russia, Germans and Japanese saddled with permanent war guilt).
Hi manfromatlan
Interesting – thanks.
We’ve conversed before – I used to post under the moniker ‘Odysseus’ on Peter Quennell’s site.
Hi, Ross, yes I remember, also on twitter.
A very good book “Lords of Finance” by Liaquat Ahamed
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6025160-lords-of-finance
All the Leaders of all the races, tribes, and nations of people in the world at various times in history fully qualify as monstrous, and in particular in the inducing of hordes of lesser individuals to enforce their monstrosities. Whether it’s Native Americans, Native South Americans, Asians, Africans, or Europeans, enslaving, killing, torturing, or cannibalising, or maybe just killing for fun or religion, all can just point the finger at someone else to relieve their guilt.
It’s a pointless exercise. After succumbing to exhaustion or the annillation of the ‘enemy’, the adult response is just to make friends, start over, and try again to get along, at least for a while until those with influence choose to exercise their evil intentions, usually for no particular reason other than to enhance their personal power and/or wealth.
Think about Iraq, Libya, and on the agendum, Syria, Russia, Iran, ad infinitum. It’s always been and will never end.
Zero-base thinking, akin to the zero-base accounting of the ’70s is probably the best defense to survive the moment we’re in.
“Ahab is forever Ahab, man. …. I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”
Ahab believes that the whiteness of the whale represents evil, and in my youth I read some critics who spread that whale-hunter propaganda. But when I came to read the book, my first revelation was that Ahab was actually the Anglo Capitalists lieutenant, acting under orders from “his” ship’s real owners – a couple of Anglo Capitalist brothers. Ahab was their hired hand, their Specnatz Advisor to a multicultural troop recruited from low-wage countries around the globe. Although Ahab grandiloquently purported to be Fate’s Crusade to Against Evil, when I came to read what his ship actually did, they caught living whales and converting them into whale meat, whale oil for lamps, whale bone for corsets, and spermacetti for cosmetics and industrial lubricants: from all of which Products his Capitalist owners expected profit. But Ahab’s mad Yankee Suprematist course around the globe, seeking to wreak Exceptionalist vengeance on the creature which had dared to hurt him when he hunted it, consumed all the profit from that Last Crusade. Thus, in my mind, that flick of the tail and final butt of the head from the White Whale, which destroyed not only all Ahab’s little attack craft but also his big mother ship, was Gaia grown finally impatient with would-be “Fate’s Lieutenant”.
You may want to read Matthias Chang’s classic, Brainwashed for War: Programmed to Kill. It explains how the people are always deceived into fighting needless wars that do not benefit anyone but the elites.
The atomic bombings were war crimes. Not the only Allied atrocities, though, but the ones that are widely known.
“The bombs prevented thousands more US troops from being wounded or dying, not to mention countless collateral Japanese and Asian non-combatants.” – no, that was a lie invented by McGeorge Bundy (later the architect of the war in Viet Nam)
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-myth-of hiroshima_us_5943d82de4b0d188d027fd76
The ‘we had to do it’ myth arose after journalists such as John Hersey reported on the terrible human suffering in Hiroshima.
The devastation inflicted by ‘Little boy’ was profoundly at odds with America’s perception of itself as a civilised society so propaganda was necessary to maintain certain self serving illusions.
Since little was learned after these criminal deeds it left the door open for the US to commit further acts of unilateral aggression while most people in the west remained blissfully ignorant of them (even when they were collapsing buildings, and murdering thousands of people in New York).
This is the crux of it – America does shit yet the queue of apologists for what they have done (including widespread support in the MSM) never seems to exhaust itself.
Until this changes the pattern is doomed to repeat itself (it would seem either Russia or Iran is next up)
American propagandists deliberately suppressed the effects of “atomic plague” – or radiation – in order to make the evil seem acceptable. They blamed the deaths on the blast alone. Access to the ruins was strictly controlled: limited to what we would call “embedded journalists” today. Only one Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett, managed to escape the military chaperones to file his uncensored reports. John Pilger later interviewed him:
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-lies-of-hiroshima-are-the-lies-of-today
Imagine if the Daily Express where still a world leading truthbreaking outlet!
One things for sure if a Viner led Guardian was reporting the post Hiroshima catastrophe they would soon be censoring anybody that did not subscribe to the ‘we had to do it’ school of thought (for contravening ‘community standards’).
Fascinating article here
http://theconversation.com/the-little-known-history-of-secrecy-and-censorship-in-wake-of-atomic-bombings-45213
To quote from it: “As soon as Japanese physicians and scientists reached Hiroshima after the bombing, they collected evidence and studied the mysterious symptoms in the ill and dying. American officials confiscated Japanese reports, medical case notes, biopsy slides, medical photographs, and films and sent them to the US where much remained classified for years (some for decades). Historians note the irony of American Occupation officials claiming to bring a new freedom of the press to Japan, but censoring what the Japanese said in print about the atomic bombs.”
And: “An additional explanation for the censorship of information pertaining to radiation is that US officials did not want the new weapon to be associated with radiological or chemical warfare, both of which were expanding in scope and funding after the war. Those associated with the atomic bomb wanted it to be viewed as a powerful but regular military weapon, a traditional “combat bomb.”
So only ‘a traditional combat bomb’ apparently – what sort of person actually swallows this kind of shit?
When testing the atomic bomb, observers were stationed not that far away, and wore sunglasses for protection.
People in downtown Las Vegas were able to see the explosions; it was an event, and was sold as a tourist attraction.
It’s pretty obvious that even in the ’50s, the full effects of radioactive exposure were not fully known.
“It’s pretty obvious that even in the ’50s, the full effects of radioactive exposure were not fully known.” – not all of the late stage effects but enough to know that Operation Teapot entailed significant health and environmental risks.
The US military suppressed clinical data from Japanese medics after the blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki then allowed cold war paranoia to blinker their judgement when it came to looking after the welfare of their own colleagues.
In other words the military might not have been able to quantify all of the risks but this is not the same as suggesting the tests were in anyway safe.
The atomic bombings were Standard Operating Procedure for the USA, which goes out of its way to target civilians. For the latest example, the psychopaths in Thanatopolis DC claim that their utterly illegal sanctions on Iran, ordered by the USA’s true ruler, Netan-yahoo, are not intended to harm the Iranian people. But as before with regard to Iran, and was one of the prime mechanisms of genocide inflicted on Iraq in the 90s, medicines will be central features of the sanctions, and the USA will attempt, with typically vicious thuggery, to force third parties like India to join in this attack on Iranian society. And sometime in the next few years, when another Hell-hound like Madeleine Albright is confronted with the human death toll of these sanctions, she, he or it will snarl ‘Yes’, all those deaths of children were ‘Worth it’.
Sorry for the duplication – I sent this comment when my previous comment seemed to disappear into the ether after I posted it.
One might read history very differently from this article. It became clear near the end of the war, that a culture which for centuries honored suicide as a path to heaven (like modern Islam), was going to fight to the death. A suicidal pattern was becoming observed in battles leading up to the A-Bombs in which troops died rather than surrender. The bombs prevented thousands more US troops from being wounded or dying, not to mention countless collateral Japanese and Asian non-combatants.
Recall, it took TWO A-bombs to trigger Japan’s surrender – two. One can just as easily assert that ending a lost war by nuclear bomb saved many war-weary Japanese civilians caught up in the situation. It also saved millions of Koreans, Chinese, and Indian civilians from slaughter.
To characterize all Japanese civilians as innocents is rubbish. Most Japanese supported their war with the US and actively participated in manufacturing food, war machines, and ammunition to sustain the war.
As for scaring the Russians, that hypothesis is right out of the Alex Jones playbook. At that time, Russia was beyond war-weary, had been economically devastated by the war, millions of civilians and soldiers dead – millions more wounded or starving. Russia wa no immediate threat to anybody – least of all the US. People who know their history know chronology is telling. The only reason the US had animus to the pre-Soviet Russians was a misguided historical fear that communism would upend global capitalism – that US and European workers would once again start striking and demanding socialist services like healthcare and better pay. We have come a long way – full circle.
Garbage apologia for US genocide. DESPICABLE.
Neither ancient nor modern Islam’s “a culture which for centuries honored suicide as a path to heaven”. The Quran is very strict about that. Only the ancient and current iterations of the Hashishin, maybe 🙂
I agree that scaring the Russians was not a reason for dropping the bombs. Not only is that out of the Alex Jones playbook, but it’s out of Oliver Stone’s playbook and the Leftist playbook in general. See “Oliver Stone on the Japanese Surrender.” http://dcdave.com/article5/130122.htm.
The rest of this comment, however, is pure establishment baloney. Curtin is absolutely right that the bomb dropping was unnecessary. We ended up accepting surrender terms from Japan that were essentially the same as what they were offering, not only before we dropped the bombs, but also before the bloodiy invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Our stringing out the war was likely done partially at the behest of the pro-Communist advisers that Truman had inherited from FDR. It was a pro-Russian policy, not an anti-Russian policy.
In Judeo-Christian culture, ressentiment rules, says Nietzsche;
To put it another way, the Christan’s other cheek is the Jews revenge.
@rob a bobbin. Alas, poor Frederick! A good second-rate mind gone soft through his urge to propagandize instead of patiently establishing the truth about human behaviour (Genealogy of Morals, 1887) then ruined by a final descent into clinical madness (1889).
Gone ga-ga because of tertiary syphilis, I fear-unless he was faking it.
Almost certainly not faking but, with the hindsight of advances in neurology and the recorded progress of his symptoms, perhaps as or more likely frontotemporal dementia, in which the common characteristic of several subtypes is a physical shrinkage of the frontal lobes of the brain. Similar to Alzheimer’s but generally earlier onset and with differences in progression. Either way, more medical misfortune than moral culpability.
@Rob and Mulga. That’s what I meant by “clinical” madness; not Nietzsche’s fault. But the rhapsodci slapdash of his language, and the facile simplificity of his cartoon match between two straw men — Creeping Jesus vs Noble Overman — are his fault. A good secondrate philosopher gone soft and joined the prose poets — or worse, founded a cult.
His sister was responsible for the cult. He wrote nonsense beautifully. I’m assured it is even more impressive in German. Russell’s musings on what would have happened to Nietzsche if he did try to put his propositions for male-female relations into effect were quite droll.
I like Terry Eagleton’s summation of Nietzsche:
“Nietzsche is an astonishingly radical thinker, who hacks his way through the superstructure to leave hardly a strut of it standing. As far as the base goes, his radicalism leaves everything exactly as it was, only a good deal more so.”
I hear the utopian Aryan-supremacist settlement Nueva Germania, founded by Elizabeth Nietzsche and her husband Bernhard Förster in the 1870s, still survives in Paraguay – but it is very poor and the descendants of the German families suffer from physical and mental health problems associated with inbreeding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueva_Germania
Koreans are probably the best judges of whether living under a cruel Japanese military regime or living under the current US military regime is worse.
At least the Japanese did not pretend they were bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to the Koreans while the Korean peninsula was under their rule.
On seeing this load of racist tripe from CE, I am reminded of the saying “Best stay quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.
If anyone allowed the Japanese to evade responsibility for war crimes, it was the Americans themselves by punishing and executing a token few politicians like Tojo and allowing others like Shiro Ishii full immunity for their crimes if they agreed to give the US information and the results of research on biological and chemical weapons used on POWs and civilians.
Japan’s political and military establishment pursued empire because others (like Britain, France and Germany) had already pursued empire and were still doing so. In pursuing empire (a very Western idea at the time), Japan defeated another empire: the British empire in Singapore in February 1942. Hardly conservative, backward or stagnant for the period.
But keep going, CE – every place must have its village idiot.
On seeing this latest piece of racist tripe from Comite Espartaco, I am reminded of the old cliche “Best be thought a fool and stay quiet than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.
The fact is that the Americans punished and executed some Japanese war criminals but pardoned others if the latter willingly provided their conquerors with information or research into bioweapons and chemical weapons that the Americans did not already have. There is plenty of information available on the Internet concerning the fate of Shiro Ishii, head of the notorious Unit 731, if one is willing to search.
In pursuing empire, the Japanese were doing what European powers before them – Britain in particular, and France – had already done and were still doing. At the same time Japan was committing atrocities in China and other parts of Asia, Britain allowed 2 – 3 million to starve to death in the Bengal area in India.
In pursuing empire, Japan did what no other European power had been capable of doing: defeat the British Empire in Singapore (February 1942) in the most embarrassing way possible – by riding bikes down through the Malay Peninsula and into Singapore island while the British were expecting a sea invasion. The Japanese army captured 80,000 British, Indian and Australian POWs and 40,000 British Commonwealth civilians. By underestimating Japanese ingenuity and fighting prowess, the British suffered the worst military defeat in history.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4241644/The-moment-Britain-surrendered-Singapore-Japan-1942.html
No-one is excusing Japanese WWII war crimes and atrocities on this comments forum. But the Americans themselves did – back in the 1940s and 50s in order to pursue its own geopolitical ambitions in the vacuum left behind by the British, the Germans and the Japanese.
The USA was SO disgusted by Japanese war-crimes that they installed Japanese war criminals in power, destroyed trade unions, attacked socialists and Communists, and after a ten year reign, turned a mock ‘democracy’ over to the rich and the Imperialist ‘enemies’ of but ten years past, and these have ruled a one-party regime ever since, now headed by US favourite, Abe, an hereditary fascist, Imperial Japanese apologist and denier of the Nanjing Holocaust.
So horrified were the Americans by Japanese war crimes that they even considered turning over the whole Korean peninsula back to the Japanese to govern after 1945.
Considering the atomic bombings without the context of the war and the Japanese atrocities in Asia, is an unsustainable abstraction that can only fool those who want to be fooled. It would be comparable to saying that Hermann Göring should not be hanged, because he did not do anything in person or that soldier should not shoot as they could kill someone that did not shoot. There is a corrupted, flawed and racist logic in blaming ‘Americans’ and ‘Westerners’ for all types of crimes, while allowing the ‘Japanese’ to evade all responsibility for some of the most atrocious abominations in history because they lost the war they started. The criminal Japanese Empire, rejected unconditional surrender with the hope of avoiding revolution, occupation and responsibility for war crimes, while it practiced the most ruthless policies towards those it conquered.
It is, simply, not true that ‘Western’ minds are willing to accept ‘fig leaves’ to cover heinous crimes. On the contrary, it is Western critique that has moved modern history, as opposed to more traditional, conservative, backward, stagnant and uncritical ‘Oriental’ ways of thinking.
Japan’s elites wanted an empire and were prepared to go to the most brutal war to acquire it, dragging the whole population with them, but in their desperation to exploit and plunder Asia, they attacked a giant that could only crush them, as it duly did.
Only a lying hypocrite would assert that opponents of the A-bomb atrocities are according Imperial Japan the ability to ‘..evade all responsibility some of the most atrocious abominations in history…’, and only a truly vile racist and inhuman thug would believe that innocent Japanese civilians deserved to be evaporated, or burned beyond recognition or be poisoned, generation after generation, for the crimes of a vicious elite who treated any dissent from the populace with vicious cruelty.
The article is not an apologia for Japan’s barbarity it is an attempt to situate violence exercised by successive US governments in a broader political context, and unlike 1940’s Japan one that persists to this very day.
At the heart of Curtin’s analysis is a concern about a willingness amongst western minds to accept self-evident fig leaves rather than the heinous deeds they often cover.
If you look at the Irving link below (and leaving aside some of his other repugnant views) you will see that there is a paper trail verifying America’s disregard for a diplomatic solution – this is an undeniable historical fact, surely?
It’s pathetic to say that just because Japan was a cruel imperial power this gave the US carte blanch when it came to murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Needless to say the media campaign in the aftermath of the bombing was based on lies including this cracker from the New York Times which claimed “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin”
https://bennorton.com/1945-new-york-times-lies-no-radioactivity-in-hiroshima-ruin/
Can you see a pattern here?
The atrocities committed by the Japanese Empire, one of the most racist and brutal entities of the WWII, were numerous and well documented. Around 30% of the total casualties of the war, were inflicted on the Chinese by a merciless occupation. Among Western POW’s, those in the hands of the Japanese died at a rate of around 30% as compared to 4% in German hands (57% for Soviets). Slavery, sexual slavery, tortures, medical experiments and other atrocities were commonly practiced by the Japanese. The military and civilian populations of Japan were indoctrinated to obtain fanatical obedience towards the Emperor and its criminal entourage, a true religious cult that demanded human sacrifices and focused on the Emperor as living God. Surrender was never not an option and was consider shameful and dishonourable and, thus, deserving the harshest of punishments. This no surrender ideology had its military (and civilian) expression in kamikazes, suicide charges, self-immolation before capture and maniacal resistance against the enemy that took a heavy toll amongst American and Allied soldiers. The atomic bombings were just the deserved consequence of that ideology, policy and culture and fitted well with the sacrificial rites of the bloodthirsty religion of ruthless and racist exploiters.
The USers waited for the dry winds, so they could make a firestorm in Tokyo.
If Japan deserved what was coming why stop at 2 cities, why not flatten a few more just for the hell of it?
You see once you have ceded moral authority as Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo did then anything becomes possible.
By the end of WWII the US had not only joined the club but set the tone for asymmetrical warfare redefined by the media as exporting democracy, or acting as the worlds policeman.
The atom bombs were just the beginning and the US has been a leading terror state ever since.
After the war, the USA and UK crafted a series of plans for carpet-bombing the Soviet Union with nukes, as part of the Cold War that they instigated, and began planning for as soon as the defeat of their cats-paw, Nazi Germany, became certain. Only the Soviet getting its own nukes in 1949 prevented that attack occurring. The US had to be content with carpet-bombing Korea and killing four million Koreans, then moving on to Indochina, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Murder is their one true religion.
Ho hum, those who sow the seeds of brutality and inhumanity , as Japan did even before the outbreak of WWII(anyone remember the “Rape of Nanking”?), the Bataan Death March and Unit 731(biological experiments on POWs), tend to reap what they so? And spare me the nonsensical canard beloved of Soviet propagandists that the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended to “intimidate the USSR”- intimidate it from doing what??? Forcibly Sovietizing Eastern Europe? Launching first the Berlin Blockade of 1948- 49 or the Korean War a year later???
Always instructive to see an Imperial thug glorifying his beloved Empires’ serial genocides.
Thank you
Shiro Ishii was given full immunity by the US for his role as head of Unit 731 in exchange for handing over information and “research” on bioweapons that the Americans wanted. He and the US reaped a pretty good harvest from what he sowed, it seems.
Wilfred Burchett, the great Australian journalist, and the first journalist to visit Hiroshima after the bomb and report on the ‘atomic plague’ of radiation sickness, knew well of Ishii and his record. He noted later that he knew something foul was afoot when he saw that Ishii had visited the fascist puppet South Korean regime, just before the war broke out. And then Burchett personally witnessed American germ warfare in Korea, using insects and other arthropods as vectors of contamination, exactly as Ishii had done while spreading plague in China.
that foul power – consider themselves of higher immortal bloodline ?… greater than’s, modern day versions of Pharonic Egypt….the new Earth Overlords , attended by the Masters of Slavery…( those now called, Presidents/Prime ministers etc)…whose Chattel Slaves, the products of the forever milicomic War – replenish the immigrant plasma pump that we were, and are….the labouring level, the dog fight worker game, birthed in a machine of fixed programmed inadequacy, built to fight for the illusion of the fat leftovers…a 24/7 Bombardment – of the Vital Force.
The figure of civilians killed at Guernica is according to local historians 153 although the Basque government at the time claimed over a thousand. . As an interesting aside if you divide by ten the official figures given by the propagandists in WW2 which have been carried on to this day you will find yourself closer to the true tally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica
“Eighty years later, the Nazi war crime in Guernica still matters”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/nazi-war-crime-guernica-80-anniversary-bombing-spain-picasso-hitler-franco-a7704916.html
Not because of the numbers killed, but
Since Guernica, civilians targeted in market places, be it Sarajevo or Hodedah, barely register as we become immured to ‘humanity’s continuing capacity for evil’.
In Sarajevo, civilians ‘targeted’ in marketplaces were, on at least one occasion, killed by Bosnian attacks, not Serbian or any others. Hardly surprising as al-Qaeda and other jihadists were heavily involved on the Bosnian side, (hence the numerous atrocities inflicted on Serbs), courtesy of their Masters, the USA, who flew them (including Osama) to Bosnia to join the campaign to destroy Yugoslavia.
This is a typical falsification of history, so common amongst the tortured minds of a mystical and mystified ‘New Age’ left that has lost all sense of proportion.
The understanding of violence in history, requires certain perspective and context and not religious or quasi-religious abstractions.
The bombing of Hiroshima, in spite of the sad ravages visited upon ‘innocent’ people, was completely justified and was forced on the American leadership by an uncompromising, fanatical and criminal Japanese imperialist regime, bent on survival and the prevention of revolution. The Allied Declaration of Potsdam, made abundantly clear to the Japanese the conditions and consequences of continuous resistance and, though it did not mention the bomb, it was already evident that, even without the atomic bomb, the obliteration of Japan through area bombing would be the inevitable outcome. That the Japanese Nazis continued their obstinate resistance, was only due to their fear of a Communist revolution and to the reaction of a population that could discovered the truth. To preclude that, they were prepared to ‘endure the unendurable’ and, so they did, only the unendurable was endured by others as usual.
Americans, as individuals, might not be worst or better than others, but as a culture and civilization, it is not possible to deny the advantages and progress they represent if compared to many others. In a world dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the extension of the brutal exploitation shown by their conquests, would have been, simply, unbearable, even by Satan himself.
You are of course correct.
Very few countries acquit themselves very well, particularly those that have sought exalted positions in the world, It is unedifying watching the United States as it slowly sinks into civil war, but unlike many who hold to that naieve belief that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, I have no illusions about many countries, including our own but even more so the so called People’s Republic of China, for whilst the US may have treated their native Americans appallingly, China is currently committing genocide in Tibet, and is estimated to have murdered a million of its own citizens in order to harvest their organs which are sold on the open market Currently, China’s policies in Tibet threatens the water supplies of every nation in South East Asia.
These facts are well documented but almost unknown in the west and one tends to assume that were they known,most so called progressives would ignore them in their desire to see only the failings of our current fashionable demons. Of course they are largely ignored too by our opinion formers because almost everything any of us buys is made in the PLC. After all, whilst it was once relatively easy and even fashionable to boycott South African or indeed Israeli fruit now, it would be inconceivable that we would do without our smart phones.
What is your source of “currently committing genocide in Tibet”?
Epoch Times, probably, or some Zionazi rag. The Zionazis really hate and fear China, and their shit-rags, like the Fraudian sewer are, day after day, stuffed with vicious, racist, Sinophobic hate propaganda. The American killed millions of Native Americans, while the Chinese delivered the Tibetans from theocratic barbarity and serfdom, educated the population for the first time, delivered modern services and emancipated women, while the USA fomented terrorism and rebellion by bandits and the long-term CIA asset, the Dalai Lama.
Good point, Mulga. The Dalai Lama as CIA creature confirmed by Marchetti’s excellent “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence” also here https://www.globalresearch.ca/tibet-the-great-game-and-the-cia/8442
‘the Chinese delivered the Tibetans from theocratic barbarity and serfdom, educated the population for the first time’.
Quite apart from the fact that education has to be paid for in Tibet, it is next to impossible for Tibetans to receive an education in their own language.
Since the building of the Lhasa railway, Tibetans are now a minority in their own country, treated with contempt by most Han settlers who receive generous inducements to settle in Tibet.
When the Chinese invaded Tibet, they demanded that Tibetans grow wheat, a crop that was unsuitable to the country’s elevation, but which the Ham prefer. In the ensuing famine many Tibetans died.
Having caused major ecological damage in Tibet by its policies, China refuses to accept that damage those policies have caused, and instead blames nomadic herders who had led their lives without damage to their environment for thousands of years. Nomads have been forced to live in breeze block shanties, isolated, regularly harrassed by the police and like many native Americans before them, resort to alcoholism.
The CIA did indeed train and equip Tibetan guerrillas who had camps in Mustang, Nepal. Unfortunately, the US withdrew its support as a condition of rapprochment of the US with China and the brave freedom fighters mostly committed suicide in despair.
In 1981, and in an attempt to make an accommodation with the Dalai Lama, China allowed a delegation from the Tibetan Government in Exile. The Communists clearly believed that Tibetans, impressed at the reforms they had seen would tell the delegation how wonderful their lives were under communism. Wherever the delegation appeared, they were mobbed by Tibetans, wailing at their treatment by the communists and seeking information about the Dalai Lama. There have been no similar delegations since, and since 2008, when Tibetans rose against the Han in several population centres, there has been a news blackout from Tibet and many protesters have been executed
You clearly have little understanding of the barbarities committed by China in Tibet, in Eastern Turkestan, and in China proper, and prefer to use abuse against the bearers of bad news in order that your head can remain firmly in the sand. In the early seventies, I recognised the increasing power of China and I have been a China watcher since then. I am aware of the many achievements of the Chinese people over many thousands of years, and I have personal reason to be grateful for them, but I have serious doubts about any country that is run by a single party that puts its own survival in power before everything else. It is western capitalism that has fuelled the rise of China. I fully understand that monetary gain will blind capitalists to the barbarities of life under the CCP, but I despair at the willful ignorance of that subject by so called progressives.
You’re quite a vicious Sinophobe racist, plainly, and the gibberish about Xinjiang, Chinese territory for most of the last 2200 years, being ‘East Turkestan’ is pure jihadist propaganda. Just why Western Sinophobe racists are so happy to hop into bed with jihadist butchers, many of whom have slaughtered, terrorised and tortured with Daash in Syria is a question for the moral ponerologists. Am I correct about Falun Gong, or are you just a racist hater of the ‘Yellow Peril’?
The International Commission of Jurists
The International Commission of Jurists is an “international human rights non-governmental organization”, another NGO that pummels select adversaries. If there’s an “ongoing genocide”, you know the drill.
Filthy, deranged, racist, fascistic lies-you must be a Falun Gong lunatic, or just yet another Western supremacist racist driven mad with fear and rage at China’s rise.
There really is no cause for such unpleasantness. I disagree with your world view. Why is that any cause for such unpleasant ad hominems?
Incidentally, I am not a practioner of Falun Gong, and although I do perform Guo Lin Cancer Control Qigong every day, since I received a terminal cancer diagnosis in January 1999, I was taught by the daughter of an important figure in the in The Chinese Communist Party in revolutionary times. My teacher had been a Red Guard and later, a doctor in the People’s Liberation Army.
The whole subject of Qigong in China is a fascinating one, there is little room for it here. It is said that it was almost wiped out by Mao as part of his attacks on the ‘four olds’, but when western medicine couldn’t treat the cancer of a party official but qigong did, he forced qigong teachers, on pain of death, to make their secret teachings public. From that time onwards, parks in China were full of tai ch and qigong practitioners.
Contrary to your rather slanted view, Falun gong practitioners were not lunatics, but many of them were middle management Communist Party officials. The party became very concerned that this threatened the party and launched the start of its many attacks on Falun Gong practitioners. Quite literally millions of Falun Gong practitioners were imprisoned and many, estimated to be a million were murdered and their organs sold. It is simply Communist Party propaganda that Falun Gong members were lunatics.
As I have said earlier, I have serious concerns about a political party that puts its own survival before serving its people- all the more so when by so doing, it commits such barbarities as mass murder for profit. It does though, amaze me that good, progressive thinkers are so easily taken in by the Chinese Communist Party’s blandishments.
Well I am glad that you have survived ‘terminal’ cancer so long, but your opinions re. China are, in my opinion, false, racist and Orientalist. The CCP so-called ‘one-party’ state coheres to ancient Chinese practises of rule by meritocrats. Your Orientalist demand the China abandon its system and turn to the obscenity of the Western ‘liberal democratic’ system, which is, in fact, a disguised one-party, the party of the rich parasites who own the economy, system, plus the delights of vicious partisan division, as is verging on civil war in the USA, is utterly misguided and an arrogant presumption. And your utterly mendacious assertion that the CCP puts its own interests before that of the public, is a Big Lie worthy of its creator, because no society on Earth has ever seen as great a leap in human welfare for as many as has occurred in China. And your vicious crap about ‘…mass murder for profit’ is simply a psychopathic lie. Sorry not to be able to be more ‘polite’ to a creature like you.
Then we shall have to agree to differ, but I hope you will forgive me for suspecting that your need to resort to such unpleasantness again and again is simply evidence of the dawning of a slightest realisation of the shakiness of your world view.
No-my ‘unpleasantness’ is a reaction to mendacious hate-mongering designed to brainwash anyone stupid enough to believe it, in preparation for either a war on China, or even greater efforts to provoke social discord and violence inside the country. The only thing unpleasant is creatures like you acting as cheer-leaders for genocide. I hope that’s easy enough to understand.
… It is simply Communist Party propaganda that Falun Gong members were lunatics…
Falun Gong members may be sane but what can be said of the Falun Gong founder who believes that the children of inter-racial unions are sub-human and destined for Hell, who regards homosexual people as also sub-human, and who also lives a comfortable life in the United States while his followers in China languish in prison?
The Falun Gong leader is a CIA asset now living in luxury in New York-where else?
He could be living the high life in Miami with that well-known Foggy Bottom asset, the once favoured golden boy of Victoria Nuland, Arseny Yatsenyuk.
Debating particulars in the historical accuracy of an article is one way to attempt the nullification of it’s message. I am interested in hearing your take on IBM’s complicity in the holocaust.
axisofoil, IBM’s complicity in the Holocaust pales before this guy: Henry Kissinger’s sponsor “Establishment Chairman” John McCloy had a greater influence https://www.economicsvoodoo.com/tag/henry-kissinger/
Your earlier ‘contributions’ established that you are a despicable, racist, Orientalist hate-monger, and here you, unsurprisingly, sink deeper into the sewer of race hatred. To sneer that the Japanese civilians butchered, burned and radiologically poisoned, who had NO say in Japanese Imperial aggression, were ‘innocent’, with the despicable use of inverted commas to signal your inhuman contempt for their suffering, shews us exactly what sort of filthy swine you are.
The rape of Nanking was an appalling incident, which incidentally, appalled even the Nazis because of its brutality. It often amazes me that victims- and China had clearly been a victim of colonial aggression for over a century at the time of Nanking- then become the most appalling brutalisers of others. Zionists did it to Palestine, and lied all the time, claiming that it was protecting itself from the chance that the Holocaust might happen again, whilst China lies to its own people and the wider world that what it does in Tibet it has the right to do because Tibet is Chinese. In so doing it ignores the fact that Tibetans speak a different language, follow a different culture, a different currency and taxation system.
I’ve noticed a lot of this type of Evil Sinophobic lying in the usual shit-holes-the Fraudian, the Murdoch hate-machine, all stooges of the USA and Israel etc, lately. Obviously the preparations for war against China are proceeding apace, and all the Sinophobe haters need to get with the program. Truly despicable. The proposition that the Tibetans are treated anywhere near as badly as the Palestinians is particularly vicious.
Are the Tibetans treated well? Is there not a danger of whitewashing in portraying China as a fine and worthy upholder of human rights simply because it opposes (to some extent), western interests?
Probably no better nor worse than other obstreperous provinces acted upon by external forces for secession, Admin. If foreign agents act up, they get thumped, be they in Sinkiang, Balochistan, or Aleppo.
China is not perfect-no state is. But the Western media coverage of Chinese affairs is 100% hate propaganda. I cannot recall a single positive story re. China’s political, governance and social systems being published anywhere in the Western fakestream media, that I came across, in decades of reading and listening. Yet China has effected the greatest leap forward, for the greatest number, in human welfare in all history, and that definitely includes Tibet, where literacy, life expectancy and all parameters of social well-being have improved markedly since liberation in 1950, and since the Dalai gang ran away to their US masters in 1959. The stories that life for the Tibetans is an Hell on Earth are just the black propaganda turds that make up the entirety of Western fakestream discourse, leavened by racist hatred and fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’.
This comment by Comite Espartaco is deliberate misrepresentation, stripped of all context, aimed at pushing CE’s idiot opinions and worldview.
The Japanese had already endured fire-bombing of most of their major cities including Tokyo. The Allied Declaration of Potsdam would have been meaningless to Japan as much of the country was already destroyed. The Japanese government had previously offered to surrender (with conditions) but the Americans wanted unconditional surrender and the abolition of the monarchy.
And even after Japan surrendered – mainly because the Soviet Union had declared war on the country and Japan still remembered the hiding its forces got in Mongolia in 1939 – the Americans granted immunity to several Japanese war criminals, in particular the war criminal Shiro Ishii who headed Unit 731 in Manchuria, in exchange for information concerning biological warfare experimentation. He was later reported by Reuters in the early 1950s as having been in South Korea in 1951 at the same time that North Korea alleged that the US used biological weapons against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii#War_crime_immunity
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/10129901/posts/5532
Friend of mine in Australia, recently put this out about Gunther Anders who spent all his life after 1945 railing against the existence of nuclear weapons and the effect their existence was/is having on Mankind
Which is more sickening, abhorrent, morally unjustifiable, the killing of many individually over time, or the killing of many together at the same time?
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM
(There exists other sources of the atrocities committed by the Japanese, but the one here will do).
Baron. I went to the link you provided, which rightly catalogues Japanese mass murder. I hope you are not therefore trying to justify the killing of innocent civilians for the crimes committed by their governments. Try applying that logic to killing of US citizens for the millions murdered by the US since 1945. We are all Humans, whatever rave, colour or creed.
It was the Japanese governing elite that sanctioned the killings of the many, including civilians, Hugh, as it was the US Government that did the same (say) in Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Those doing the killings had more often than not no chance of disobeying, but didn’t have to behave in a ‘satanic’ way torturing the defeated (google nanjing massacre if you must).
As for applying the same logic to the many killed by the US governing elites since 1945 only this: Fukuyama got it wrong, history hasn’t ended yet, who knows what the future may bring.
After the war Hideki Tojo the former Japanese PM was found guilty of crimes against humanity and executed, yet after hundreds of thousands of non-combatants were incinerated by nuclear weapons not only were there no calls for justice, but in the eyes of the west these terrible deeds were not even recognised as crimes – this is one of the key points in Edward Curtin’s excellent analysis.
Back then, just as today the US is dogged by historical illiteracy – school children were fed myths about by the necessity of nuclear weapons by equally ill-informed educators.
This utter lack of self-awareness is a long standing pattern in US public life and can always be relied on to produce sufficient levels of apathy or incomprehension when the US bully weaker nations.
Put another way, if you can nuke defenceless non-combatants and get away with it (even though their leader is trying to surrender) then the world really is your oyster when it comes to international aggression without the public being able to see such acts for what they really are.
Of course the media is complicit and instead of confronting the root cause of asymmetrical violence churn out endless ‘won’t someone think of the children’ type articles, presumably because virtue signalling is much easier than tackling the rotten status quo?
The USA long planned the incendiary fire-bombing of Japan, once its Imperial ambitions became plain. The USA doesn’t tolerate rivals, anywhere. The effects of incendiaries were studied on mocked-up wooden buildings, and wildfires like the Peshtigo Fire of 1871 were carefully studied, in order to prepare for the destruction of the cities of Japan, or what the US Air Force General Chennault called ‘..the teeming Asiatic bamboo ant-heaps’, with that vicious racism that has ALWAYS been the mark of the US ruling elites.
Just because the Japanese committed acts of high depravity against POWs and civilians alike wherever they went is not an excuse to justify the fire-bombing and other destructive acts the US engaged in against Japan.
If the US had aspirations to being an “exceptional” nation, it would have arrested and put on trial those responsible for abusing those aspects of Japanese culture, religion and belief systems (such as the belief in bushido and the idealisation of samurai) to support, encourage and justify Japanese racism and the atrocities that brainwashed Japanese soldiers committed in China and SE Asia, just as those who gave the orders and/or who participated in the atrocities should have been arrested, tried, convicted and jailed.
Japanese civilians would then need to learn what their nation had done to them in addition to learning what Japanese forces had done overseas. This would have required a considerable investment in reforming the culture to rid it of its fascist layers – it would not just be limited to reforming the nation’s education systems. The Japanese could have been encouraged to atone for their government’s actions overseas through various projects and initiatives.
Of course this was never done. In their own way, the Americans were no more and no less virtuous (or fascist) than Japan and Nazi Germany were, and even gave succour to those Japanese and Nazi German war criminals in exchange for information and research on various scientific and medical topics deemed to be of military value.
One could just as easily argue that war is unjustified, however it is conducted, but to the best of my knowledge, war continues, unabated.
My father, a Japanese prisoner of war, committed suicide in 1980 and I reported his death to the local Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association. The honourary president of the Association wrote me a very compassionate reply and I learned some time afterwards, that he took himself onto the moors with his old service revolver and blew his brains out. Far eastern prisoners of war suffered so grievously during their captivity that few lived to what could be called a ripe old age, and many, unable to live with their memories, committed suicide.
I take seriously the view that the US conducted its war in order that it would become pre-eminent nation in the world, but I have always refused to argue with the point made by many prisoners of war of the Japanese who believed that had bombs not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and invading US forces set foot on Japanese mainland, prisoners of war would have been murdered. Many went to their graves believing this, whilst the dogged defence of Japan by soldiers willing to die rather than surrender, convinced many in the military that the bombs were necessary.
Of course we all respect the response of Oppenheimer, father of the bomb to what he had been responsible for, and we can all have our doubts about the psycopaths who seem often to rise to the top in the world, but to those many brave men who did the fighting, those bombs saved their lives.
I guess there is room in August for the usual platitudes and the inevitable outburst of self righteousness from people who have never lived through world war, but we must never forget the sacrifices of those who knew all too well. Nor should we forget that people are still alive who live with the consequences of World War two, on all sides of the conflict.
It is unfair to dismiss critics of the US decision to drop atom bombs as self righteous, there’s a bit more to it than that including fears today about US belligerence towards states that unlike Japan posses nuclear weapons of their own.
Hating the oppressor or wanting revenge are entirely understandable positions from the victim’s perspective and personally I do not think we can criticise those directly affected if ex-servicemen came to believe bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right thing to do.
But the people who made the decision to drop the bombs had not been affected in the same way, nor do I think their primary motive was to avenge troops that had been brutalised, no matter how inhumane their treatment had been at the hands of Japanese captors.
I can see that this is a very personal issue for you and that should be respected – it might even have been possible to take a slightly different tac if the US had revisited the wisdom of using such force or at least not gone down the road of unilateral aggression then controlling the media discourse on why it has become necessary to take millions of lives from states that pose absolutely no threat to America.
It is this pattern of asymmetrical power that draws attention back to its genesis on 6th August 1945.
Whilst I appreciate the humanity of your response, it is more than a personal involvement in issues raised by the annual August remembrance, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; my concern is more about the way such articles often lead to a parade of kneejerk responses, whilst thoughtful responses.sometimes result in abuse.
There is a real danger to mental health in the constant seeking of what might be called ‘reverse gratification’. It ought to be obvious that I am no supporter of US imperialism any more than I support Chinese imperialist aims, but life is far more complex than sloganising may lead many followers of this esteemed site to believe.
It might interest you to know, Jen, that the American Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan (1945-1952) DID in fact put on trial those who gave the orders and/or who participated in atrocities.
Japanese civilians (like Germans) learned what their nation had done to them in addition to learning what Japanese forces had done overseas. The culture was reformed to rid it of its fascist layers – The Japanese were encouraged to atone for their government’s actions overseas through various projects and initiatives, so much so there is considerable discussion amongst the Japanese as to how much “war guilt” the country and its people should bear.
https://open.library.ubc.ca/handle/2429/12112/ubc_2002-0125.pdf
I suspect that Baron was more likely noting that American exceptionalism, up to the paragraphs on Kennedy anyway, is still alive and well, in there jostling with all its fellows, from Japan to Ireland to the Vatican City to Rio de Janiero to iona to Babylon to Lascaux (they didn’t call it “original sin” for no reason) to…
Dedicating our life to the embrace of the shadow, is the truly courageous path which very few embark upon…
Understandable, due to the density and ferocious nature of what the collective unconscious has become.
The bombings were also medical and engineering experiments to test the effects of nuclear weapons on unprepared populations and undamaged civilian infrastructure. The two cities, along with the others included in the target list as fall-backs, were all left untouched by conventional bombing raids. This was in spite of the presence of legitimate military targets, such as torpedo plants, in the cities. The ordinary citizens there were used to seeing US bombers passing over without attacking them, so on the fateful days they were out in the open as normal, watching the planes apparently passing by as normal. The combination of unprepared civilians and undamaged infrastructure allowed the US scientists to confirm expectations about damage and destruction incurred.
America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide
It’s NO ‘secret’ to those familiar with Edward Herman and his associates’ research on the subject-among others. Rwanda was just another ‘Made in the USA’ genocide, which the Western media lied about.
So very well written and for me the most important part “But to even begin to hope to change the future, a confrontation with our demonic past (and present) is first necessary, a descent into the dark truth that is terrifying in its implications.” can not be overstated .With the media so well entrenched with their faux news ,I still have hope but it is only a small candle light in the wilderness .
Thank you Edward Curtin .It is so well written.
Good piece. Should also be mentioned that Truman knew the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had already effectively ended the war with Japan. Also, five of America’s six wartime 5-star generals and admirals – incl such peaceniks as MacArthur, Nimitz and Eisenhower- condemned the dropping of nuclear bombs on civilians as unnecessary, immoral and shameful.
Thank you.
Er, but not the fire-bombing of civilians in Dresden, Tokyo, and North Korea, later?
Was there a change end 1945 that Stalin could take whole China by keeping Mao on strings? Could that have been an additional US fear?
The cloud cuckoo has landed.
This article says all that needs to be said. It should be read a dozen times. An additional reminder of a thousand more acts of evil is only self-serving. To me it seems atrocities are common place and their horror has become our entertainment. One stands alone when stating the facts of our willful brutality, arrogance and indifference. Taking a position outside one of the groups we have been provided to receive our talking points, is to stand out as almost delusional. Certainly cynical. To value all human life and draw to you any who might see the world through that value, is to witness the revolving door of cognitive dissonance. The truth is a mirror. There is that moment when one catches a glimpse, then turns back to a safer world. That moment is usually accompanied by “we’ll just have to turn out in larger numbers to vote.” If there is a God, that God is patient. This will not last. There will be a reckoning.
If there is a god of vengeance, he is fully active in the misery of human existence. But if that is OUR projection, then we do to ourselves in attempt to preempt a greater terror.
God as Unconditional love gives All to all – under the law of ‘go forth and multiply’. (This is the nature of Mind extending as Idea) What you choose to think or give focus and identity in is your creation. A negative or conflicted and fearful ‘creation’ is making by division, limitation and scarcity or loss – but always as the experience of being DONE to.
The personality fragment of the victim/victimizer is not the level of responsibility for choice (which is all that remains of the truly creative in a world of subjection to tyranny). The victim is not responsible for their suffering, but the acquired habit of using grievance to get or get away from is an archetype of limited sacrifice in exchange for power and protection. The reckoning is our own exposure to ourselves without recourse to masking mind. It isn’t that Life or the living is evil but that thinking makes it so. Much of this thinking is below the surface of the bubble of cognitive dissonance we make our self and world. If you judge your thought truly, you will find that which naturally abides and that which has no belonging in you. The attempt to damn or demonize and eradicate that which has no true belonging in you is THE WAY to keep it while seeming to fight the righteous or necessary fight. When our ‘light’ is gotten from opposition, we are unwittingly operating the loveless even while believing ourselves right and on the side of right.
Human capacity to tolerate pain of insanity is limited – and so there is a limit to our ability to give it allegiance or compliance – but we are each in our own reckoning and to only look to what everyone else is doing – or failing to do – is to delay or evade our own. Not least because we associate truth with sacrifice and loss of self – and so the ‘unknown’ outcome is projected with our worst nightmares and the ‘devil we know’ seems like a lesser evil. This framing works to make even the most terrible choice seem a lesser evil – in its moment of choosing. Many choose death rather than yield their thinking up to question. (Follow false thinking to death).
There Is no choice anywhere but Now and the true of now is the light in which to discern or evaluate where we are coming from. There is nowhere else to ‘arrive’ than where we are ‘coming from’. (The definitions we are acting upon as if true)
Fantasy choices in hindsight or projected futures are wishful – not willing. An oppositional will is wishful asserted wilfully. A true willingness is open to the wholeness of a situation instead of private self-will as the determiner of our perception-reaction.
The world of our experience is a mirror – both personal and collective, conscious and unconscious. Truth can be extended and reflected here, (in the ever changing), but this is a decision to not project false witness or deal false currency. The power of the mind is here used to make a disempowered, weak and conflicted mind (in its frailty of body) – or the hiding of the Creative and a consequent fear of penalty for ‘doing so’ that reinforces the mind in defence against it true creative source and nature. Having learned the result of miscreation The Separation or Fall) is to be determined to NOT change and this fixity of split off ‘power’ against ‘chaos’ works a blind or loveless agenda that literally knows not what it does.
And pray tell, where are the churches in all of this?
Or historians, although there are one or two exceptions.
David Irving may be a pariah but who can argue with this?
Why did the US pick Hiroshima – well according to Irvings analysis it was because it was an undamaged city and the US military wanted to find out just how much damage would be inflicted by ‘Little boy’.
As an aside the perfidious Stalin ripped up the non-aggression pact with Japan and just 3 days after Hiroshima launched a surprise attack with over 1 million troops. https://nationalpost.com/news/did-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-really-end-the-war
Stalin assured his allies in 1943 that the USSR would attack Japan once Germany had been defeated. ‘Perfidious’ Stalin therefore kept his word despite the fact that around 27 million of his people had already died during the war with the Nazis and the Soviet Union was utterly exhausted by its efforts at liberation of the west.
Although the Japanese had routed Russia during the Russo Japanese War of 1904-5, Russia had thoroughly routed the Japanese in the Russo Japanese border war of 1939. It is arguable that had Japan invaded Russia from the east in concert with Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union would have been destroyed. It was imperative that Japan was kept out of the Soviet theatre. However, since the USSR had been calling for a second front in Europe from late 1942 and did see the US and UK invading Sicily and then Normandy, it was actually am act of loyalty to come to the aid of its allies in August 1945. although it would have been folly for her to have attempted to do so before.
The atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union That is as much as can fully agree with the article author. Stalin already had concurred several Northern Japanese islands : this stopped him from taking more.
Also the US wanted to reduce its own death toll; the conquest of many pacific islands before (Okinawa!) was very hard and these bombs were a quick way to avoid much more US body bags.
Without the US South East Asia would have been under a cruel Japanese military regime.
Perhaps, Antonyl, Japanese efforts to create a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” would have resulted in a cruel Japanese military regime http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/papers/coprospr.htm though when you compare that to the deliberately starved Bengalis in the 1942 famine Churchill was even more of a monster than the Japanese, just saying.
Churchill received at least one report on the progress of the deliberately worsened Bengal Holocaust. One note he appended in his own hand inquired, ‘Why has Gandhi not been killed?’.
From fake news to more serious research:
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/
An apologia for genocide-why am I not surprised? You are quite consistent in your contempt for the suffering of the lesser races.
P.S-you do know that Churchill was a REAL Judeophobe, don’t you?
Aside from the fact you discount the well documented Japanese notions of racial superiority as “fake news”, you quote Churchill hagiographer Sir Martin Gilbert as an authoritative source, LOL. From a recent book http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html
I could continue to do your homework, Antonyl, but then you’d never learn would you?
The regimes that the US installed in South Korea and South Vietnam were at least as cruel and murderous as the Japanese.
If you read the exploits of Soviet spy Richard Sorge, Kevin, you’d know his efforts prevented the opening of a second front against Russia by Japan http://www.historynet.com/the-spy-who-saved-the-soviets.htm
Blessing the cannons, most likely