“And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill…”
(Sonnet 66)
Sonnet 66 reflects the state of mind (and soul) of many – even of those who, within themselves, have not given up the fight for obvious justice, but see around them the ever more coercive arm of a government (or system) that prevents dissent. Not only, but in a psychopathic fear of truth, a system that wants to oppress evidence and coerce into silence the few voices raised against the totalitarianism of thought.
Art, in the wider meaning of ‘knowledge’, made tongue-tied by authority – at the risk of ending up jailed and tortured like Bradley Manning, or bottled up in an Ecuadorian embassy or seeking asylum in a country that, not long ago, was propagandized as the quintessential enemy of mankind.
And those as well who ask themselves how can the populace be so malleable, so amenable to be lied to, so still respectful of a political architecture in which they have no say whatsoever nor they ever will. Unless they show up at the door of sundry “elected” officials with more cash than their competitors. Which is of course impossible because, if and when they could vie with potential competitors, they themselves would have inescapably become one of them and therefore unable to represent the wishes, the spirit or the aspirations of the thinking section of the community.
We are in the time of the year when the specter returns – the specter of the live-experiment atomic bombing unleashed on a completely unwary population. Perhaps some viewers may know already some related information that the regime media never talks about. Even so, in the words of Lucrece to a maid who questions her pensiveness,
…if it should be told,
The repetition cannot make it less;
For more it is than I can well express
… considering that the same militaristic-corporate frame of mind that inspired those acts of instant genocide has hardly changed. Or rather, the emphasis has perhaps shifted towards the corporate more than the military. But the result is the same – the country is but an engine of death towards those who do not submit to the commands of the now transversal-globalized 1%.
As we know, the US has never apologized or made any atonement for this singularly horrific crime. In the corporate history books the US justifies the A-bombs as legitimate attacks, even though abundant related documentation shows that there was no military necessity for the bombings.
Even former president and top military commander Dwight Eisenhower would go on record as saying that the A-bomb attacks on Japan in August 1945 were completely unnecessary.
With reference to the current completely discredited “war on terror”, the unleashing of the atomic tests on mostly civilian populations was an act of supreme terrorism. It was a calculation by the planners to demonstrate the US’ demonic power to the rest of the world – and to the Soviet Union in particular. A rationale that makes it a crime surpassing the crimes, real or alleged, by the Nazis.
Perhaps casually, this very week, the US government alerts the world, once again, against terrorism. And the regime media describes the warning from the world’s paramount terrorist state as a benign service to international public safety.
As in the Aesop’s fable, the evidence of “crying wolf” to justify the apparatus is overwhelming – along with a string of accompanying lies. Only the ability of the various official government spokesmen to utter them without blushing parallels their enormity.
And there are so many that they are almost routine. The alleged 58 terror attacks prevented by the massive spying have frittered down to maybe one in Los Angeles. The guy who wanted to blow up his truck in Times Square in New York was detected by a passer-by. Not to count the Boston bombing or the Nigerian who was blocked by a passenger from blowing himself up in a flight from Europe to Detroit.
It is this overwhelming mountain of lies which stills prompt millions to discredit the official version of the attacks of 9/11 – not unlikely the mother of all subsequent lies.
In a saner world, the US should be a “rogue” state, shunned and sanctioned by the rest of the world, its government leaders past and present locked away for life.
But to return to atomic weapons, there are said to be about 17,000 total nuclear weapons in the world. About half of them are possessed by the US. The other major holder of such weapons is Russia.
And most likely, Russia would not have this atomic stockpile were it not that the US launched the Cold War with its act of atomic genocide.
Stalin knew that that act of terror by US President Truman was aimed at Moscow by way of demarcating the post-war lines of global hegemony. In some way it was good for the rest of us that Russia acquired equivalent power. Judging by current standards, the US may have used the weapons against Russia but for the fear of retaliation. Just as now the US is using drones at will as there is no fear of retaliation.
Behind the planet-destroying power of the US is the monstrous mentality of the minds that wield it, supported uncritically by a coerced and servile regime media.
In 1995 the Smithsonian Institution was preparing a critical display of the Japan atomic bombings intended to correct some of the myths behind them.
There was a reactionary outrage emanating from the government and the Smithsonian was forced to remove all of the unwelcome but meaningful sections of the story. Penalty for refusal was the threatened defunding of the Institute.
So much for freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
One critical item erased from the sanctioned corporate history has to do with the occupation of Okinawa, which cost thousands of American lives. It has been the official line that given the blood bath of Okinawa, a land invasion of Japan would have been even bloodier.
But data revealed from the Freedom of Information act shows Japan working on peace negotiations through its Moscow ambassador as early as April of 1945.
Truman knew of these developments because the US had broken the Japanese code years earlier. In a July 13, 1945 message, Foreign Minister Togo said: “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty, especially deposing the Emperor) is the only obstacle to peace.”
The war could have ended through diplomacy by simply allowing to retain the representative position of the emperor Hirohito – considered a deity in Japan. Ending of the war would have made the land invasion of Okinawa unnecessary.
The US originally refused the concession though, as we know, they approved it in the end.
And here is a statement by then Secretary of War Henry Stimson, said: “the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.” In other words, Stimson felt that the US had unnecessarily prolonged the war.
And here is a statement by Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, in his war memoirs, “I Was There”:
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
And General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a personal visit to President Truman a couple of weeks before the bombings, urged him not to use the atomic bombs. Eisenhower said (in a 1963 interview in Newsweek):
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”
The Russians had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day, May 8), which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, Russia did declare war on Japan on August 8 and was advancing eastward across Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan surrendering to Russia or sharing the spoils of war.
History, as we know, is not made of “what ifs”. But in the current climate of lies, impossible to digest and distributed with impunity to the world at large, some more accurate historical information, however unpalatable to some, is not amiss.