Why There Cannot Be Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians

Hitler killed people who were not doing any harm to anyone.

Jon Stewart: Truman's a War Criminal for Bombing Hiroshima

Sunday 5 August 2012
Phil Strongman: Hiroshima is a war crime that haunts my family, 67 years on

The US intentionally prolonged the war for the sole purpose of testing the atomic bomb on real cities

Apologists for these events have used two arguments. These attacks were necessary because Japan wouldn't surrender without them, and because a land invasion against Japan's disciplined troops would have caused 300,000 US casualties or more. The bombing also kept the Soviets out of Japan and helped speed the end of the war.

No one objected to the A-Bomb's use in 1945, we are told. No one who knew the score amongst the military high-ups. There was no alternative.

But the argument that no one in the know objected is a fallacy. General Eisenhower opposed it, "Japan was already defeated… dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."

The Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Nimitz agreed: "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in their defeat."

Admiral Leahy, President Truman's Chief of Staff, concurred: the atomic attacks were "of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already ready to surrender…"

By the spring of 1945 Japan was faltering. Germany surrendered in May and since April US aircraft had roamed almost at will over Japan. Heavy bombing raids using dozens of B-29s were met with token resistance, and the firebombing of Tokyo had not been seriously opposed. A sea blockade had decimated imports.

During this time Japan put out peace feelers: on 25 July Japan tried to get envoys to Russia, carrying Imperial letters which read, in part: "His Majesty… mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice of the peoples… desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But as long as England and the US insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on… for the honour and existence of the Motherland …"

These feelers were rebuffed by the US demand for unconditional surrender.

But this was unacceptable to Japan, for it could mean that Hirohito –seen as semi-divine – could be put on trial.

In mid-1945 The Washington Post kept asking why Truman was demanding unconditional surrender while granting that a condition could swiftly end hostilities.

the United States News confirmed, days after Hiroshima, that "competent testimony exists to prove that Japan was seeking to surrender many weeks before the atomic bomb…"

And, of course, post-Nagasaki, the US did grant the condition that the Emperor be left alone. So if America could agree to this in August, why not in July or even June? Why not end the war earlier?

US stubbornness only makes sense if it's seen for what it really is: an excuse to delay peace long enough to test the bomb on real cities. Which is why previous heavy bombing raids had always spared the first atomic targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Kyoto.

I've had JTT on Ignore for a long time, and usually forget about him. Every now and then I see a quote from one of his typically wierd, neurotic posts in someone else's post here. I am then reminded of his sordid existence. It's a bit like inadvertantly stepping on a cockroach.

How many war crimes did Japan get away with during the war?

think JTT's heart is in the right place. He really believes that the US does the terrible things he accuses us of.

Good video, RL.

"What has changed has been the continued failure of the so-called US peace process."

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

By John le Carré

AMY GOODMAN: British novelist John le Carré. I spoke to him in London on Sunday. While he’s famous for his spy novels, he wrote a widely read antiwar essay in 2003 just before the US invasion of Iraq. It’s called "The United States of America Has Gone Mad." This is an excerpt.


JOHN LE CARRÉ: America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.


The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.


The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.


But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost—because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people—in Iraqi lives?


How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.


Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall—just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26427.htm

U.S. Pulls All Funding For UNESCO After Sweeping Vote to Support Palestinian Membership

Not with the likes of Oralboy and BillRM. They fail to see the obvious. One is a scum sucking bottom feeder and the other is a "semen slurper."

"Do you think that it helps your argument when you use addhomanems or gestures like semen slurper and so forth or do you think that it could possibly make others not pay attention to what you have to share?

I still don't do video.

My apologies to those who slurp semen in the human, loving sense for associating them with as evil a creature as Oralboy.