The NYT reversed itself to the official narrative of categorically dismissing reports of deadly effects of radiation in articles by a Times correspondent who was being paid by the government, report Amy and David Goodman.
In this introduction to the memoir of a Nagasaki bombing victim, historian Peter Kuznick shows why the bombs were dropped and how some victims’ anger propelled the Japanese anti-nuclear movement.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
Japan was ready to surrender, making the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki two days later, totally unnecessary and morally indefensible, say a panel of scholars in two video discussions.
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.
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.
A dark secret behind the Hiroshima bomb is where the uranium came from, a spy-vs.-spy race to secure naturally enriched uranium from Congo to fuel the Manhattan Project and keep the rare mineral out of Nazi hands, reports Joe Lauria.
Mythology about the rightness of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is relevant to today’s “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the revving up of a new Cold War with Russia, says ex-Pentagon military analyst Chuck Spinney.
At the upcoming G-7 meeting in Japan, President Obama will have a chance to pay his respects to the Hiroshima victims of the first U.S. nuclear bomb, but he’ll get criticized by political enemies, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.