Hiroshima

Rescapée de l’atomisation de Nagaski, photographiée par Shomei Tomatsu en 1961 pour la série photographique « Hibakusha Tsuyo Kataoka ». Hibakusha est un mot japonais désignant les survivants des bombardements atomiques

Jeune fille posant une lanterne sur le fleuve Ōta pour les âmes des victimes du bombardement d’Hiroshima. A l’arrière-plan, le dôme de Genbaku, mémorial de la paix d’Hiroshima (K. Mayama/EPA)

In 1945, US president Harry Truman (who had dictatorial control over the atomic bomb) and his advisor James Byrnes intentionally prolonged the US war with Japan until, and apparently so that, they could target Japanese civilians, without warning, with atomic bombs. The bombings were planned and carried out, as Alperovitz notes in an almost thousand-page study, in a way that[Read More...]

(COMMONDREAMS) As the city of Hiroshima, Japan, prepared to mark the 72nd anniversary of the United States’ deadly atomic bombing, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose harsh sanctions on North Korea, in the hopes that they will deter the country from using its own nuclear weapons.

The genesis of the world, the myth of creation speaks of seven days.1 Six days of divine labour whereon the seventh the lord of the universe rested.

With the failure of the Democratic establishment, the crisis of liberal democracy is now seized by a new rise of power. The US empire with Trump as commander-in-chief has renewed its vow toward colonial domination. With nationalism and militarism in full swing, Trump’s America aims to radically alter the future of this country. His campaign slogan “make America great again” was a kind of historical revisionism, ignoring the deep oppression and inequality that runs beneath this nation’s history.

Continuing from the first part of this series, one critique that is missed in the talk about the March on Science is the fact that science has often failed the proletariat, used in their oppression, and as a form of destruction. Of course, this may be too much to expect of a bourgeois progressive and liberal crowd in Washington and across the world who are myopically focused on Trump but not on the bigger picture.

Tom Secker joins me for a Christmas themed episode. We discuss the 1964 television film Carol For Another Christmas. Commissioned by the United Nations and produced by the Xerox corporation this 1964 film would feature a disturbing retelling of A Christmas Carol. Tom and I discuss the people involved in this movie including director Joseph Mankiewicz, actor Sterling Hayden, and writer Rod Serling. We talk about some of the various intelligence connections some of the individuals had prior to making this film with the UN.

Fear of “The Enemy” or “The Other” can drive humanity toward its worst instincts – a concern that Michael Winship recalls in light of a planned visit of reconciliation to Pearl Harbor by Japanese Prime Minister Abe and President Obama.…Read more →

Almost goofily, behind Official Washington’s latest warmongering “group think,” the U.S. has plunged into a New Cold War against Russia with no debate about the enormous costs and the extraordinary risks of nuclear annihilation, Gray Brechin observes. By Gray Brechin…Read more →