“Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?” by Robert Freeman

Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?

by Robert Freeman

Few issues in American history – perhaps only slavery itself – are as charged as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Was it necessary? Merely posing the question provokes indignation, even rage. Witness the hysterical shouting down of the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit that simply dared discuss the question fifty years after the act. Today, another eleven years on, Americans still have trouble coming to terms with the truth about the bombs.

But anger is not argument. Hysteria is not history. The decision to drop the bomb has been laundered through the American myth-making machine into everything from self-preservation by the Americans to concern for the Japanese themselves-as if incinerating two hundred thousand human beings in a second was somehow an act of moral largesse.

Yet the question will not die, nor should it: was dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a military necessity? Was the decision justified by the imperative of saving lives or were there other motives involved?

The question of military necessity can be quickly put to rest. “Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.” Those are not the words of a latter-day revisionist historian or a leftist writer. They are certainly not the words of an America-hater. They are the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and future president of the United States. Eisenhower knew, as did the entire senior U.S. officer corps, that by mid 1945 Japan was defenseless.

After the Japanese fleet was destroyed at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the U.S. was able to carry out uncontested bombing of Japan’s cities, including the hellish firebombings of Tokyo and Osaka.

This is what Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, meant when he observed, “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” Also, without a navy, the resource-poor Japanese had lost the ability to import the food, oil, and industrial supplies needed to carry on a World War.

As a result of the naked futility of their position, the Japanese had approached the Russians, seeking their help in brokering a peace to end the War. The U.S. had long before broken the Japanese codes and knew that these negotiations were under way, knew that the Japanese had for months been trying to find a way to surrender.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reflected this reality when he wrote, “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, said the same thing: “The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

Civilian authorities, especially Truman himself, would later try to revise history by claiming that the bombs were dropped to save the lives of one million American soldiers.

But there is simply no factual basis for this in any record of the time. On the contrary, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported, “Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.” The November 1 date is important because that was the date of the earliest possible planned U.S. invasion of the Japanese main islands.

In other words, the virtually unanimous and combined judgment of the most informed, senior, officers of the U.S. military is unequivocal: there was no pressing military necessity for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.

But if dropping the bombs was not driven by military needs, why, then, were they used? The answer can be discerned in the U.S. attitude toward the Russians, the way the War ended in Europe, and the situation in Asia.

U.S. leaders had long hated the communist Russian government. In 1919, the U.S. had led an invasion of Russia – the infamous “White Counter Revolution” – to try to reverse the red Bolshevik Revolution that had put the communists into power in 1917. The invasion failed, and the U.S. did not extend diplomatic recognition to Russia until 1932.

Then, during the Great Depression, when the U.S. economy collapsed, the Russian economy boomed, growing almost 50

In addition, to defeat Germany, the Russian army had marched to Berlin through eastern Europe. It occupied and controlled 150,000 square miles of territory in what is today Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. At Yalta, in February 1945, Stalin demanded to keep this newly occupied territory. Russia, Stalin rightly claimed, had been repeatedly invaded by western Europeans, from Napoleon to the Germans in World War I and now by Hitler. Russia lost more than 20,000,000 lives in World War II, and Stalin wanted a buffer against future invasions.

At this point, in February 1945, the U.S. did not know whether the bomb would work or not. But it unquestionably needed Russia’s help to end both the War in Europe and the War in the Pacific. These military realities were not lost on Roosevelt: with no army to displace Stalin’s in Europe and needing Stalin’s support, Roosevelt conceded eastern Europe, handing the Russians the greatest territorial gain of the War.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, Stalin agreed at Yalta that once the War in Europe was over, he would transfer his forces from Europe to Asia and within 90 days would enter the War in the Pacific against Japan. This is where timing becomes critically important. The War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. May 8 plus 90 days is August 8. If the U.S. wanted to prevent Russia from occupying territory in east Asia the way it had occupied territory in eastern Europe, it needed to end the war as quickly as possible.

This issue of territory in east Asia was especially important because before the war against Japan, China had been embroiled in a civil war of its own. It was the U.S.-favored nationalists under General Chiang Kai Shek against the communists under Mao Ze Dong. If communist Russia were allowed to gain territory in east Asia, it would throw its considerable military might behind Mao, almost certainly handing the communists a victory once the World War was ended and the civil war was resumed.

Once the bomb was proven to work on July 15, 1945, events took on a furious urgency. There was simply no time to work through negotiations with the Japanese. Every day of delay meant more land given up to Russia and, therefore, a greater likelihood of communist victory in the Chinese civil war. All of Asia might go communist. It would be a strategic catastrophe for the U.S. to have won the War against the fascists only to hand it to its other arch enemy, the communists. The U.S. needed to end the War not in months, or even weeks, but in days.

So, on August 6, 1945, two days before the Russians were to declare war against Japan, the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. There was no risk to U.S. forces then waiting for a Japanese response to the demand for surrender. The earliest planned invasion of the island was still three months away, and the U.S. controlled the timing of all military engagements in the Pacific.

But the Russian matter loomed and drove the decision on timing. So, only three days later, the U.S. dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945, eight days after the first bomb was dropped.

Major General Curtis LeMay commented on the bomb’s use: “The War would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the War at all.” Except that it drastically speeded the War’s end to deprive the Russians of territory in east Asia.

The story of military necessity, quickly and clumsily pasted together after the War’s end, simply does not hold up against the overwhelming military realities of the time. On the other hand, the use of the bomb to contain Russian expansion and to make the Russians, in Truman’s revealing phrase, “more manageable,” comports completely with all known facts and especially with U.S. motivations and interests.

Which story should we accept, the one that doesn’t hold together but that has been sanctified as national dogma? Or the one that does hold together but offends our self concept? How we answer says everything about our maturity and our capacity for intellectual honesty.

It is sometimes hard for a people to reconcile its history with its own national mythologies – the mythologies of eternal innocence and Providentially anointed righteousness. It is all the more difficult when a country is embroiled in yet another war, and the power of such myths are needed again to gird the people’s commitment against the more sobering force of facts.

But the purpose of history is not to sustain myths. It is, rather, to debunk them so that future generations may act with greater awareness to avoid the tragedies of the past. It may take another six or even sixty decades, but eventually the truth of the bomb’s use will be written not in mythology but in history. Hopefully, as a result, the world will be a safer place.

Robert Freeman writes on economics, history, and education. He can be reached at robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.

Who Killed Rafik Hariri?

Repost from the old site.

One wonders where to begin with a post like this. Rafik Hariri, of course, was the Prime Minister and self-made billionaire who ruled Lebanon for a time recently. He was assassinated in an expertly planned car bomb attack, but no one really knows who did it. All suspicion fell on Syria, and Syria did have good reason to kill Hariri.

You really need a lot of background in Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics to even begin to understand the twists and turns of this sinuous murder mystery.

Hariri was elected head of Lebanon and proceeded to go on a borrowing spree, mostly with Saudi money, and rebuilt Lebanon after the Civil War destroyed it. He did this by playing all factions off each other. He also instituted a Lebanese version of free market economics, an economic system that, thank God, is largely absent from the Middle East because it contradicts Arab and especially Islamic values.

Hariri is a Sunni, but a fairly secular one. The Sunnis make up maybe 1

The Christians used to be the majority – in fact, Lebanon was originally split off from Syria by the French to give the Christians their own country. Partly for this reason, it’s very existence is resented by a number of Lebanese Muslims, especially Sunnis, who figure that Syria and Lebanon are all one country.

Syria itself has long regarded the severance of Lebanon from Mother Syria as illegitimate, and her behavior in recent years has been motivated in part by these feelings. The Shia were long-downtrodden, especially by the Sunnis. The Sunnis were the Muslims who were pretty much in charge of the place in terms of who was in charge of the Muslims in the country. The Sunni held the reigns, and discrimination against the Shia was rife.

Shia were regularly attacked by Sunni gangs in Beirut up into the 1970’s. The Shia complain that the Sunnis would only allow them to be garbagemen – that was the best job they could get. After the late 1950’s, when a Christian lost the election and Lebanese Christians feared that their power would be constricted, there has been a power-sharing agreement in place.

The Prime Minister must be a Sunni, another high post must be a Christian, etc, etc. As the Christians have gone from majority to minority, this system has become less and less fair. In particular, Muslims, especially the Shia, are dramatically underrepresented. The Christians did not want to give up their power in the late 1950’s, so the US Marines landed to enforce illegitimate Christian rule over Lebanon.

The Civil War began in part once again over demands that Lebanese democracy be derived more on one man one vote and that the excessive power of the Christians be curtailed. Further, the Christians have always run the Lebanese economy, at least in recent years.

I say all of this because in the US there is a strong tendency to side with the Lebanese Christians against the evil Muslims. Further, the Lebanese Maronite Christians (the largest sect) have made an important alliance with the Zionist Jews in Israel, an alliance that helped to drive the Civil War.

So US Zionist propaganda, which floods our media night and day, strongly favors the Maronites once again. As an example of this alliance, one of the highest ranking neoconservatives of all is a Maronite Lebanese lawyer named F. Michael Maloof who is very close to uber-neocons Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. He is up to his eyeballs in the planning of the war on Iraq.

With the Lebanese Civil War and the rise of Hezbollah, the Shia have finally been given a place at the table of Lebanese politics. The Druze are a real wild card. They shift all over the place on the whim of their erratic leader, Walid Jumblatt, from anti-Israel and anti-US to anti-Syrian and pro-US.

The Shia, and Hezbollah along with the more secular Amal Party, are allied with Syria and Iran. Syria keeps Hezbollah armed in Southern Lebanon as a tool to threaten Israel with in order to try to get the Golan Heights back. That’s all Syria gets out of the game. If Hezbollah is disarmed in Lebanon, Syria loses it’s most powerful weapon and may never get its land back.

Hezbollah has since taken up the cause of Lebanese nationalism, agitating for the return of the Shebaa Farms and some nearby hills that they say Israel is occupying. It is probably Lebanese land, but Israel seems to have captured that land from Syria when it grabbed the Golan.

For its purposes, Syria wants to say that the Shebaa is Lebanese for purposes of keeping Hezbollah armed, and to say it’s Syrian as soon as Hezbollah tries to make peace with Israel or vice versa. So Syria must play a double game here, but everyone is in this crazy part of the world.

As a condition of ending the Civil War, Syria was tasked with ruling the place. Syria had actually entered the war to save the Maronite Christians from defeat, but the Christians soon forgot about this and turned on the Syrians. The Taba Agreement, constructed with the help of the US and other powers, put Syria in charge until the Lebanese could figure out how to stop killing each other.

Syria quickly started meddling in Lebanese politics bigtime, and an independence movement arose to get Syria out of Lebanon. This was ignored by the US until George Bush came to office. Now the same US that put Syria in power started demanding that Syria leave. Not only that, but there were increasing demands on Lebanon to “disarm all militias”, code words for disarm Hezbollah.

Now, Syria needs Hezb in Lebanon until it gets the Golan back, so them’s fighting words to the Syrians. At the same time, the US invaded Iraq and threatened Iran, Libya, and Syria, while Israel killed Arafat by poisoning him.

This whole process was set into motion by the neocons who were operating in the interests of the Israeli government. It was an UN Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for Syria to get out of Lebanon and for the disarming of Hezbollah. Note that France is still an imperialist power in the region, defending the interests of the Christians who they put in charge of their former colony.

Also, the US Congress pushed a bill called the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, a bill that may as well have been written by the Israeli Knesset. It’s so pro-Israeli, it’s almost impossible to comprehend that the US Congress wrote it. Apparently, it imposes sanctions on Syria for a variety of mostly-bullshit reasons.

The US is in Iraq, apparently forever, threatening Syria and Iran, for the most part in order to benefit the Israelis, since Syria and Iran have no particular beefs with the US. Iran and Syria clearly want the US out of Iraq and US guns away from their doorstep. They have no interest in keeping the US in Iraq at all.

Anyway, the US status of forces agreement that they are trying to negotiate with the Iraqis is explicitly meant to use Iraq as a base for attacking neighboring countries, mostly Iran but possibly Syria too. So rage at Syria and Iran for not being overjoyed about the US military in Iraq is misplaced. No sane Syrian or Iranian leader would want us there.

Amidst this backdrop, Hariri supported UN Resolution 1559, probably because finally even the Lebanese Sunnis were getting fed up with Syria’s high-handedness. They had supported Syria for a long time, but Syria kept trying to push people to their limits.

It was the Maronite Christians who really hated the Syrians being there. Why is uncertain. The Maronites despise the Shia and Hezbollah and want the Palestinian refugees gone too.

By the way, the reason that the Palestinians have never been allowed to work or become citizens in Lebanon is because of the Maronites. The Maronites fear that allowing the Pallies to become citizens will increase the Muslim population at the expense of the Christians.

So the Hariri crowd was riding the wave of anti-Syrianism. At the same time, he was closely allied with the Saudis. The Saudis’ whole role in the region is to support the Sunnis and screw the Shia, in a word. So the Saudis were backing Hariri solely because he is Sunni, and also to stop Iran and Hezbollah and increasingly Syria, who is allied with Iran and Hezbollah and hence in the enemy camp as far as the Saudis see it.

There really is not much sane reason for the Saudis to fear Iran. All the hate in the region goes from Sunni to Shia, pretty much. Perhaps the Iranians could energize the long-downtrodden Saudi Shia to rebel against the Saudis, but the Saudis ought to give them more rights anyway. Sunni fears of Iran attacking the region are simply insane, kind of like Nazi fears of the USSR overrunning Europe, so the Nazis had to attack first.

Iran has never attacked another state in at least 100 years and possibly longer. The Shia are on the outs in the Arab World, and the Sunnis have all the power. There are no nefarious Shia plots to evangelize Shia Islam and convert all the Sunnis – this is just mad Sunni paranoia. But the Saudis do work hard in Iran to convert the Shia Ahwaz Arabs to Wahhabi Sunnism, and they have had some success at this.

The Shia have been killing a lot of Sunnis in Iraq, but the Sunnis started it. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, started the war against Iran for no good reason, and received volunteers and money from most of the Sunni states in the region.

Against this backdrop, as Syria was leaving Lebanon (though a spy network remains behind) Hariri was killed in the very professional car bomb attack. An Al Qaeda type radical Salafist Islamist associated with Jund al-Sham (Army of the Levant) was promptly fingered in the attack, though there were a lot of questions about whether or not Syria was actually involved.

The US and France got a UN commission to actually send a law enforcement team to investigate the killing. A couple of teams were sent out there and a couple of reports came back. One team was headed by Detlev Mehlis, a German.

Jürgen Cain Külbel, a journalist in Germany, is an acquaintance. He’s a former member of the STASI and is associated with the former East German government and the political party that came afterwards. Külbel is a Leftist, and for a long time he was pushing theories saying that US imperialism was in back of a lot of the shenanigans in the ME, including I guess the invasion of Iraq.

He showed a profound disinterest in investigating any Israeli or Jewish Lobby involvement in many of the conflicts over there. This is standard Leftist line that absolves Israel of everything and pushes it all off on imperialism.

So it is interesting that Külbel has now come around to the notion that Israel killed Hariri and then tried to pawn it off on Syria. He has also shown links that Mehlis had with the US AIPAC. Mehlis, as it turns out, used to work for WINEP, which is nothing AIPAC as a research arm. So his finding that Syria was involved has been attacked by Külbel.

Külbel was subsequently imprisoned for ten days for violating a court order by printing some East German STASI papers on his website. I’m not sure of their contents, but it may have shown how Mehlis was associated with WINEP. So the Voltaire Network has taken up the cause of Külbel, about which I feel they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Of interest to our Maronite discussion above, a group called UNIFL, which has interests that are almost precisely in line with the Israeli government, figures in all of this. These are the most hardcore radical rightwing Maronites, who are for all intents and purposes a quasi-fascist movement.

They were deeply involved in the War Against Iraq and other great big messes. They’ve been selling this BS story about how the Christians are so persecuted in Lebanon, and the persecution is being done by evil fundamentalist Islamic Syria (run by ultra-secular Alawis).

It’s mostly just a pack of lies, but there were arrests, tortures and killings under Syrian rule, it is true. That’s all over now, and the Maronites did tons of killing in their own day.

After all, they committed the most and worst massacres of all during the Civil War.

Maloof is in with these guys, so is a guy named David Wurmser (Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship) and his evil witch of the West wife Meyrav (read Hebrew for “Mary”, no? Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship).

So is Richard Pele (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?), and worst of all, Daniel Pipes (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?) of Middle East Watch and Campus Watch and all of that Zionist fascist censorship, harassment and firing crap leaping up all over our land). Nice long sentence.

Pipes, whose father was an evil Cold War maniac and professional liar about the Soviet Union, inherited the evil maniac part, but all he cares about is Israel. Paul Wolfowitz (Israeli agent neoconservative with dual citizenship) is also in deep with these guys.

Harold Rhode (Israeli agent neoconservative. Dual citizenship?) is another one, but no one has ever heard of him, so I will make him famous today for all time. Rhode is a Jewish guy who is religious and was obsessed with attacking Iraq. He was in on the plot to attack Iraq with all the rest of them from the very start.

Afterward, he became obsessed with the Jewish religious relics that the evil anti-Semitic Arab-Nazi government had somehow, through a sudden stroke of anti-Semitism, managed to preserve, despite their genocidal intentions towards all the world’s Jews.

Saddam wanted to kill every Jew on Earth, of course, but damn right he was going to save those Jewish holy books. That proves Saddam was a madman all right, just like the yahoos screamed before the invasion.

Rhode ran over to Iraq as soon as the war was done and got himself a big team put together right away while the museums and archaeological relics of the nation were being devastated. After all, the history of Jews receives precedence of the history of those lowly, dirty Arabs and over the very history of mankind itself, right? Jews take precedence over Arabs. Jews take precedence over humanity. You get the picture.

Well, anyway, a lot of money was spent grabbing every single Jewish relic in Iraq and “storing” it away in the US (in Jewish hands, I guess). Well, that’s sort of illegal. Now that Iraq is more stable, the Iraqi government wants their Jewish stuff back. It belongs to Iraq, not to the world’s Jews. Whoops, I forgot. No nation is allowed to own Jewish relics. Jews take precedence over all real nations on Earth.

Also, it’s funny that the US (Are we the second Jewish state?) bent all over backwards to grab all that old Jewish stuff, while we sat back and watched, first, while the whole non-Jewish history of Iraq was looted and destroyed to Hell, in particular the History of the Ottoman Empire.

Well, screw the Ottomans, they were just evil Muslims who ruled the Arab World and treated the Jews like crap, right? Or they were just scummy Muslims, screw em. Anyway, obviously the Jewish history of Iraq got nabbed by the nimble hands of the Jewish “Americans”, but the non-Jewish history of Iraq was scatted to the Seven Winds and the Seventy Thousand Thieves.

After all, in any country with lots of Jews, only the Jewish history matters ,and the non-Jewish history is just, pshaw! Right? Trash the museums and the libraries and re-burn the Library of Alexandria if the US and Israel are in the book-burning and library-sacking business, which apparently they are.

Funny how the US can’t spare a soldier to save the history of Muslim Ottoman Iraq from being ruined. Those records have been flooded and subjected to all sorts of abuse, and the US can’t spare one sentry to guard that stuff. Wow, gee, why do they hate us anyway?

They must be jealous of all of our stuff, and our freedoms, and you know, our stuff.

Ever notice that the far-Right jingoist dickheads who scream the loudest about “our freedoms” and “they hate us for our freedom” are the first ones to start shutting freedoms down? catch one Mossad agent, and they just sentenced him to death after one of the shortest trials in recent history. If he’s really Mossad, hang him high, go ahead.

And I know that Iran is full of US spies and even US undercover troops (500 total? How many?). Same with British spies. Iran can’t catch these guys? The US guys are running around blowing up stuff up, and the British are giving bombs to Iranian rebels, including Al Qaeda types called Jundallah in Balochistan.

I guess Mossad, the US and probably the UK too, are all trying to get at Iran’s nuclear sites, and yes, I am certain the Iranians are making a nuclear bomb right now. I think they already have one, but it’s just a uranium bomb, and that isn’t good for anything but making one square mile of Earth uninhabitable for 70 years.

Actually, just to be a completely evil and horrible scumbag and make people hate me even more than they already do, I will right now officially support Iran’s efforts to get a nuclear bomb.

Is that an evil position or what?! Not to shoot one, just to get one.

Also to make a whole bunch of evil biological and chemical weapons and WMD-this and WMD-that. Also, just to be even more of an ass and arouse more hatred, I will say that I was deeply sad when North Korea blew up their reactor, because I wanted them to make more nukes to threaten people, namely the US, my country with. Not to shoot at us. Just to even it up.

Why be an ass? Long argument, but it has to do with imperialism’s gross abuse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement.

I’m not saying this is what happened or anything, Maronites and Mossad killing Hariri. No one on Earth will ever know what happened. Figure it out yourself, I give, and I spent many long hours reading and poring over this mystery until I finally just gave up and don’t want to read about it anymore.

Such are the homicidal intrigues of the Middle East, like vines in a jungle, no beginning, no end, no middle, nothing much to grab, and every new lead carries you off on more red herrings and impossibilities and possibilities, and everything seems possible, but still nothing ever totally adds up. God I love a mystery. To a point.

Sorry this went on, but I never wrote a Hariri post. Now it’s done, and hopefully I won’t need to write any more. Believe it or not, I could have written way more, but I’m not into putting readers to sleep. I’m long-winded enough, as it is.

Try the Angry Arab blog (I’ve talked to this guy; As’ad, a Leftist Arab nationalist professor at a university very close by) if you can’t get enough of this maddening Lebanon stuff.

Or Joshua Landis’ (an acquaintance) great Syria Comment if you want to dip into the Syrian mystery casserole, where nothing makes sense either, and you think you can see the fish in the bowl, but the more you look, the more you can hardly make them out, and plus they always change.

US Jewsmedia Completely Corrupted

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kureFeGmoDI&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] As you can see. The Atlantic Monthly is one of the worst ones of them all. Apparently, it’s become little more than an arm of the Jewish Lobby. Might be interesting to see who their owners and editors are? The video tells about a huge effort on the part of the Jewish Lobby in the US, involving $36 million, to plant stories and manipulate US news coverage in favor of Israel. It would not matter so much if the press had not gone along so willingly. The Atlantic Monthly apparently took money from the Jewish Lobby in order to run the Lobby’s stories or twist stories to towards their bias. It’s obvious that the US jewspapers, jewsmagazines, TV jews stations and radio jews is seriously corrupted by and biased in favor of a certain group of people. Whether this has to do with direct ownership and employment of certain ethnics in the various jews outfits, with advertising threats and biases or with the biases of the US public remains to be seen. I think we can rule out the US public’s biases, since the media never cares what Americans think about anything. The US media’s purpose is to propagandize the minds of Americans, not to reflect the views of Americans. It’s a gigantic brainwash machine for the ruling class. One clear example of pro-Israel bias in the US jewsmedia is how the Israeli nuclear arsenal is reported on. Frankly, as far as the media is concerned, the less said about it the better. However, occasionally, Israel’s arsenal is brought up. The sane people all realize that Israel has 200-400 nuclear weapons. However, for Realpolitik reasons, Israel refuses to acknowledge the arsenal that everyone knows it has, therefore it is not subject to the relevant treaties. The disgusting US government goes along with this charade. Republican President Barack Obama recently refused to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons program. One would think that the Fourth Estate would be above this sort of Realpolitik crap, but think again. A typical article in a major US jewspaper or jewsmagazine follows the US and Israeli government line in refusing to confirm or deny Israel’s nuclear weapons program. As if total ruling class domination of the US media were not bad enough, we have the added Jewish domination element to make things even more sickening.

Reactionary Nut Republican On Various Non-Existent Threats

From In Mala Fide, where many a flipped out reactionary hangs out, a super-rightist named Whiskey holds forth:

You’re completely off base on this. The objections to the START treaty is that it hamstrings the US, particularly with weapons modernization (so they actually work) and forbids a ABM shield. Which is needed. Obama’s objective is to punish White America for having and using Nukes by eliminating them first. As he’s pushed for repeatedly in speeches and actions. No one trusts him because he’s against the US having nukes or a military in the first place. Nor are you correct about Iran not being able to get nukes. North Korea has them, and just today it was revealed their centrifuge program, thought impossible was far along and done in less than a year, right before our eyes. Of course they have help, as does Pakistan and Iran: CHINA. China wishes to use proxies to threaten or even nuke the US, deniably, so they can scoop up much of Asia, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Their economy is a sham and they know it. They have a massive gender imbalance. They have looming demographic shortages coming. This is the mark of a “use it or lose it” aggressive power: see Japan and Germany, 1930′s. For the Chinese to take Taiwan, and the rest of Asia, as colonies and mercantile advantages (think 1600-1700′s France) they must move the US out, and indirect ways are less risky than overt war (which is disturbingly contemplated in Chinese media and thus with official approval). Iran is a threat because it too faces a looming crisis domestically with their economy, looming demographic implosion, and like China and Turkey aspirations for empire rebuilding. Iran’s leaders have stated they wish to reconstitute in Islamic form the Persian Empire, stretching into the Balkans, down to Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. As a practical matter, Iran’s nukes would allow it to keep oil prices sky high (by threatening the Gulf states) and turf out the US Navy. If you like paying less than $20 a gallon for gas and keeping your job, you’ll find Iran’s nukes a threat. Given the need to start paying off their gunmen and what amounts to a cadre of military gangsters they are likely racing to this goal of nukes + ballistic missiles. Both technology more than sixty years old. Its not that hard to do, the Russians did it in the 1950′s. As far as Iran plus Pakistan, each could point to the other if they are both nuclear, if a major US city goes boom! Which is why Lindsay Grahmanesty is right. We need to dismember Iran before they go nuclear. So we can have gas that is not so expensive it destroys the economy and puts us in horse and buggy times. We also need a robust nuclear deterrent, and ABM against nations like North Korea which are thinly disguised proxy attackers helped by China. Iran does not have any friends and a major power like the US needs to provide useful lessons and reminders of the danger of attacking us. Our main problem is that no one really believes we have the will and ability to punish nations severely if they threaten our core interests. China has no such problem and is our major competitor. Thus we need to dump the START treaty and do something about Iran, like bomb all its major facilities. Setting back its nuke program and promoting useful fear. [I mean really, who’d care if we bombed the crap out of Iran? But its a good way to put fear of the US into Pakistan’s military, so they control their jihadis.] Never underestimate the power of a useful example in international relations.

One insane remark at a time here. The objections to the START treaty is that it hamstrings the US, particularly with weapons modernization (so they actually work) and forbids a ABM shield. Which is needed. This guy must go to the Richard Perle School in International Relations. First he trots out the old, “We need to still keep building nukes ‘to make sure they still work'” line. Can you believe that this crazy line has captured the famished imaginations of many a US President? Sad but true. Next up we have the ABM shield. It’s a bad idea, and it’s based on the premise of a winnable nuclear war. Nuclear wars are not winnable. Everyone loses. In the we can win scenario, the ABM shoots down all the enemy nukes, and then we blast them with our nukes. It goes back to the USSR and the Cold War, which is supposedly over, but neocons like this guy are always finding new wars to fight. Obama’s objective is to punish White America for having and using Nukes by eliminating them first. As he’s pushed for repeatedly in speeches and actions. No one trusts him because he’s against the US having nukes or a military in the first place. Wow, some Tea Party White racism thrown in for good measure. Obama hates US Whites because we have nukes and niggers don’t. LOL. No one cares that Obama opposes even the US having nukes, supposedly, but even Obama isn’t nuts enough to unilaterally disarm. Of course they have help, as does Pakistan and Iran: CHINA. China, a nuclear power, is helping potential enemy neighbors and near neighbors also become military powers, so that maybe they can threaten China in the figure. Right dude. Rule #1 about nuclear powers is that they don’t tend to spread it around. Look at all the big nuclear powers. Any of them proliferated? Of course not. If you had the deadliest poison on Earth, would you even give it to your best friends or family? Of course not. China wishes to use proxies to threaten or even nuke the US, deniably, so they can scoop up much of Asia, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Their economy is a sham and they know it. They have a massive gender imbalance. They have looming demographic shortages coming. This is the mark of a “use it or lose it” aggressive power: see Japan and Germany, 1930′s. For the Chinese to take Taiwan, and the rest of Asia, as colonies and mercantile advantages (think 1600-1700′s France) they must move the US out, and indirect ways are less risky than overt war (which is disturbingly contemplated in Chinese media and thus with official approval). LOL, whoa dude. Too much, dude, too much. Even the Perle – Wolfowitz – Gaffney – Rumsfeld – Cheney – Feith Project for a New American Century sociopaths don’t say things this crazy. There’s crazy and there’s batshit crazy. This is batshit crazy. So nuts I won’t even bother to refute it. Suffice to say there is no evidence for it. China’s economy in some ways is in better shape than the West’s. It is growing at a remarkable pace. It avoided the financial ponzi scheme World Depression through the use of state banks. China invests in real capital investment, real productivity growth and real commodity production and increasing wages and living standards, whereas the US engages in asset stripping, bald and naked class war out of the 1890’s, financial ponzi schemes, the destruction of the real economy, a financialized casino economy that in reality is a house of cards, declining wages and living standards and an economy that both parties run only so the top China’s economy is run for the nation, the people and workers. The US’ economy is run by and for a parasitical FIRE sector with banksters at the helm determined to suck every last bit of surplus out of consumers in form of payments to banks. Iran is a threat because it too faces a looming crisis domestically with their economy, looming demographic implosion, and like China and Turkey aspirations for empire rebuilding. Iran’s leaders have stated they wish to reconstitute in Islamic form the Persian Empire, stretching into the Balkans, down to Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. Iran’s demographics are no big deal anymore than any other 3rd World Country. The birth rate is below replacement. The economy is doing ok, barring the sanctions. Iran certainly has no desire to be an imperialist state, and neither does Turkey (LOL) and even China does not aspire to such. Iran’s leaders certainly have never said that they want to recolonize the Arab World under a recreated Persian Empire. This sounds like the fevered blatherings of fanatical Sunnis more than rational analysis. As a practical matter, Iran’s nukes would allow it to keep oil prices sky high (by threatening the Gulf states) and turf out the US Navy. If you like paying less than $20 a gallon for gas and keeping your job, you’ll find Iran’s nukes a threat. Given the need to start paying off their gunmen and what amounts to a cadre of military gangsters they are likely racing to this goal of nukes + ballistic missiles. Both technology more than sixty years old. Won’t happen. Even if they ever get them, Iran won’t use nukes to blackmail the world. This is just ridiculous. They will use them like all other sane countries use them, in order to keep idiots like us from attacking them. Duh. As far as Iran plus Pakistan, each could point to the other if they are both nuclear, if a major US city goes boom! A US city won’t go boom unless someone shoots a nuke at it. If that ever happened, I’m sure the Pentagon has the high tech to figure out which country launched it. Snark. There’s no way to nuke a US city without shooting a ballistic missile at it. I deal with the suitcase nukes bullshit in an earlier post. Which is why Lindsay Grahmanesty is right. We need to dismember Iran before they go nuclear. So we can have gas that is not so expensive it destroys the economy and puts us in horse and buggy times. The homosexual Lindsay Graham is not right. We don’t need to invade Iran, much less dismember it. If you thought Iraq and Afghanistan were fun, try doing Iran! Iran does not have any friends and a major power like the US needs to provide useful lessons and reminders of the danger of attacking us. Yeah but no one’s “attacking us” you neocon dumbshit. Oh, that’s right, in the 107 degree minds of the neocons, the US is always “under attack.” Usually the attacks are the “invisible” kind, but they are attacks nonetheless. Snark. We also need a robust nuclear deterrent, and ABM against nations like North Korea which are thinly disguised proxy attackers helped by China. We don’t need the ABM, and it doesn’t even work anyway. Ever try shooting down a bullet with another bullet. That’s what an ABM is. It doesn’t work. North Korea is not a Chinese proxy. China has it’s own nukes, and it’s almost an ally anyway. There is huge trade between the US and China. No reason to screw that up with messy things like wars. Our main problem is that no one really believes we have the will and ability to punish nations severely if they threaten our core interests. Neocons are always saying this. “Our enemies think we are weak. We need to attack someone to show them we are serious!” By the way, this was one of the main rationales for the Iraq War, and look where that got us. Sure the world is scared of the US. In the above, “threaten” means just about anything. It means looking at Uncle Sam wrong. It means not following orders when the US issues them. “US interests” means the interests of US imperialism. Not a good thing. Thus we need to dump the START treaty and do something about Iran, like bomb all its major facilities. Yeah, brilliant idea, dumbass. Want to see that $20/gallon oil? Then try this. I mean really, who’d care if we bombed the crap out of Iran? Just about the whole world, in particular the Muslim World, Russia, China, everyone really? This is another of the neocon delusions. First of all, the world is full of enemies who “hate us for our freedom” or whatever bullshit reason they thought up last night. We have no friends. Second of all, the world really does love America and will secretly be overjoyed when we start the next war. This is the thinking behind the assholes who started the Iraq War, exactly. But its a good way to put fear of the US into Pakistan’s military, so they control their jihadis. Yeah dude. Um, Pakistan is afraid we are going to bomb their nuclear facilities? WTF. Never underestimate the power of a useful example in international relations. This is the “make an example out of them” neocon school. This argument was also very important in the Iraq War. Boy, this guy is drumming them out one by one here, no? The scary thing is that this raving lunatic represents the way the Republican Party thinks, and the way that 10’s of millions or possibly even a majority of Americans think, or could easily be led to think. Commenter AJ is right. US imperialism is a menace to humanity. The sooner it crashes and burns, the better.

"Interview with Philip Giraldi: Israel's Policies are Manifestly Evil," by Kourosh Ziabari

Another good post from Rebel News. Once again, I’m republishing because I’m not sure how long they will be around. Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist. I’m not sure if he’s a typical anti-Semite at all. I’m having a hard time figuring that out. On the contrary, I would just say that he seems to be a typical American. Giraldi is a good guy, very smart, unfortunately a rightwinger, but he’s lifetime CIA, so what do you expect? I don’t think he’s anti-Semitic at all, and I agree with everything he says below. He’s a breath of fresh air in such circles. Deserves to be more widely read.

Interview with Philip Giraldi: Israel’s Policies are Manifestly Evil

Friday, 15 October 2010 23:37 Kourosh Ziabari

Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Now, he chairs the Council for the National Interest as the Executive Director. CNI is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the transformation of United States’ Middle East policy. As a CIA officer, Giraldi served in different countries including Turkey, Italy, Germany and Spain. He is now a Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance. He has appeared on several radio and TV programs including Good Morning America, MSNBC, NPR, Fox News, BBC, Al-Jazeera and 60 Minutes. Giraldi works with the American Conservative magazine as a contributing editor and writes a regular column for the Antiwar website. He is an outspoken critic of the hawkish policies of the United States and has publicly decried Washington’s unconditional support for the state of Israel. Philip Giraldi joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments of the Middle East, the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of a peaceful compromise between Iran and the United States and the impact of Israeli lobby on the long-term policies of the White House. Kourosh Ziabari: Why is the Israeli lobby so powerful, influential and authoritative? Almost all of the major media conglomerates in the United States own to well-off Jews who are committed to maintaining the interests of the state of Israel in the U.S. Some experts say that Israel is the representative of the United States in the Middle East region, but some others suggest that it’s Israel which determines the future of political developments in the United States. What’s your take on that? Philip Giraldi: The Israel Lobby is so powerful because it deliberately set out to establish control over key elements in the United States. It has demonstrated a number of times that politicians who are perceived as being unfriendly to Israel will face serious problems in being reelected because the Lobby mobilizes to provide money and media support to opponents. This means that congress is afraid to oppose anything that Israel and its Lobby wants. The same holds true for the presidency. Every presidential candidate must be seen as friendly to Israel or he will be attacked in the media and denied millions of dollars in political contributions, making it a safer option to support Israel. Finally, pro-Israeli interests control much of the media and, more important, dominate the opinion and editorial pages, making the only narrative that most Americans hear about the Middle East highly favorable to Israel and highly critical of all Israel’s enemies. As a result, Israel is able to control U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East and also much of the Muslim world. KZ: The recent call by the Iranian President on framing a fact-finding group to probe into the 9/11 attacks sparked intense controversy around the United States. Is it because the United States considers 9/11 a red line which should not be crossed? PG: Many Americans believe that 9/11 was never properly investigated. Some believe that the U.S. and, or Israeli governments were actually involved. The Federal government does not want the case to be reopened because a truly open investigation might reveal things that it would like to keep hidden. I do not know what exactly those things might be, but, at a minimum, there was a high level of incompetence within the government in the lead up to the attacks, both by Democrats and Republicans. KZ: The former Italian President had once said that Mossad had played a role in the 9/11 attacks. Is there any convincing evidence that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks? Can we rely on some implications including the five dancing Israelis who were seen cheering while the Twin Towers collapsed, or the closure of Zim Shipping Company’s headquarters at the World Trade Center two week before the 9/11 attacks? PG: Most intelligence officers believe that Israel, which was conducting a massive and illegal spy operation inside the U.S. aimed at Arabs living here, knew at least parts of the 9/11 conspiracy. It did not share that information and it is also clear that leading Israeli politicians welcomed the attacks because they made Washington a totally committed ally in full agreement with the Israeli view of Islamic terrorism. The Israel view, i.e. that anyone hostile to Israel is a terrorist, has done great damage to the United States because it has created enemies where no enemies previously existed. KZ: What’s your take on the exercise of double standards by the U.S. over Israel’s nuclear issue? PG: There is no justification for Washington’s hypocrisy over Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Israel should be held to the same standard as everyone else, but the action of the Israeli Lobby means that it will never be accountable for anything as long as Washington is in a position to protect it. KZ: As someone who has closely worked with one of the most sensitive parts of the U.S. government, do you like the continuation of belligerence and hostility between Iran and the United States? Are these two nations fated to be at odds forever? Can you foresee promising horizons of reconciliation and friendship? PG: I do not believe that Washington and Tehran are natural enemies. I believe that they have been turned into enemies by the media and the activity of the Israel Lobby. Unfortunately, that situation will not change until Washington completely overturns its policies in the Middle East, something that might not happen in our lifetimes. Many young Iranians, the bulk of the population, do not harbor any real hostility towards the United States and if the policies were to change I believe the two countries could again become friendly. KZ: Is it plausible to be a former CIA officer at the same time as being an outspoken critic of the U.S. administration? You’ve been quite forthright in your criticism of the U.S. foreign policy, especially with regards to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Haven’t been any pressure on you to soften your tone or retreat from your stance? PG: I have never been pressured to soften my criticism of the US government’s foreign and security policies. There are many former intelligence officers who have also been highly critical of developments since 9/11. It is because intelligence officers quickly recognize lies when they hear them and are not very tolerant of a government that lies its way to war. KZ: Iran marked the 20th anniversary of the conclusion of 8-year war with Iraq last month. Iranians well remember that it was the United States and its European allies, who persuaded, equipped, funded and aided Saddam Hussein in invading Iran. 20 years later, they came together to topple the very Saddam they had supported in war with Iran. Saddam killed more than 400,000 Iranians. My uncle was one of them. Can you put yourself in the place of an Iranian citizen who witnessed the war? What would be your feeling then? PG: For the United States, the support of Saddam Hussein against Iran was a quid pro quo that goes back to the holding of the U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran after the Islamic revolution. It was revenge pure and simple in hopes that Iraq would prove victorious and bring down the Iranian government. As an Iranian, you have a right to be outraged by what happened but the Embassy seizure was also outrageous. The U.S. response was, as it often is, disproportional and I am ashamed of my government’s support of wars to fix political disputes. KZ: and for the final question, how do you estimate the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict? PG: There is no hope for resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict as long as the United States continues to permit the Israelis to expand and commit crimes against humanity directed towards the Palestinian people. Evil is evil no matter how you try to dress it up and the Israeli policies are manifestly evil. The Palestinians cannot ever accept a peace settlement that requires being held in a large outdoor prison camp by the Israelis supported by the United States.

This Does Not Exist

This suitcase nuke does not exist.

See this fake picture of a suitcase nuke? The pic is fake. Fake, fake, fake, fake. How do we know it’s fake? Because not only do suitcase nukes not exist, but even if they did, they could never fit into this suitcase here.

A footlocker from 1943, used by the US military in WW2. Think you might attract attention carting this down the street? Yeah.

They would need to fit into a gigantic footlocker. Not only is it so huge that it was attract much attention, but the nuke, even if it could be compressed down to the size so small to fit into this locker, would have to be so heavy that it could hardly be carted around. With a 40-kiloton yield, I assume that it would have to weigh around 10 tons or 2,000 pounds. You’d probably need at least a forklift to even pick the thing up.

As you can see with this disgusting piece, the terrorist nukes meme has been picked up by of all people, the Palestinian nationalist movement.

The suitcase nukes were always held to be developed by the USSR, but in the latest mutation of the lie, they are now held but the new version of the “Soviet Menace,” the land everyone loves to hate…drum roll…Israel! The evil Israelis either made them themselves or they got them from the equally evil Americans. Anyway, the diabolical Jews are set to set off one of these suitcase nukes in the US in one of their infamous false flag operations.

Sure, Israel’s done a few false flags, mostly long ago. But the False Flag crowd is really nutty. Every time some Arab commits some atrocious terrorist attack (an Arab specialty since Arabs specialize in terrorism), guess what? It’s not really Ay-rabs that done it! It was really those darn sneaky Jews! Damn those devious Jews get around!

The Terrorist Nukes Bullshit

Barack Obama is in Washington hosting a stupid international conference on terrorism and nuclear weapons. Supposedly, the terrorists are trying to make a nuclear bomb. Once they get one, they will use it. Everyone is scared! Even the smart people!

There are several strands of idiots who are feeding this Stupid Frenzy.

First, there are the National Security Staters in the US, ever hungry for a bigger budget.

The Defense budget is higher than any time since WW2, we spent more on defense than the rest of the world combined, yet it’s never enough, and we are terrified of nations like Iran with a military budget

None of it makes sense, but it’s been a part of American Stupid Culture for a long time now. Both parties are “strong on defense.” Why? Who knows? With the Republicans, it’s an article of faith, and with the Democrats, they keep trying to act like Republicans on this issue, but no matter how hard they try, Republicans scream that the Dems are “soft on defense.” Tens of millions of otherwise intelligent Americans are actually intensively involved in this insipid debate.

There is one reason for a gigantic military budget like that, and one only. If the US is an Empire, and US capitalist imperialism intends to rule the globe for multinational corporations and the world elite, then the gigantic US imperialist army makes perfect sense. Like the Roman Army back in the day. But no one ever says we need the huge military for Empire, although apparently that’s what it is for, since it can’t be for anything else. Why is that?

US imperialism is funny. Anyone with a brain can see it exists, as all huge capitalist powers are necessarily imperialist, but no one ever admits it.

Ever hear a Republican shout, “Hooray for US imperialism!”? Of course not. Republicans all insist there is no US imperialism, and they call you Commie for even bringing it up.

Democrats, sadly, also say there is no US imperialism, and they give you a disgusted look when you say there is. The more intelligent ones say that we used to be an imperial power, back in, say, 1903. But we chucked all our colonies, except for a few! Whoops! And we have not been imperialist for decades now. Others will tell you that the USSR was imperialist because they controlled Eastern Europe, but the US isn’t.

US imperialism works great. Everyone who matters knows it exists, but they never talk about it. The other 9

The second faction is International Zionism.

International Zionism is in control of about 400 nuclear weapons, including atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and the ultimate capitalist weapon, the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb is cool because it kills off the useless wage-hogging human workers while letting the capitalists keep all their stuff, like buildings and factories and banks. Israel also may have tactical nukes, which are some of the worst of all. These are designed for specific situations, and can be supposedly fired out of artillery.

Like the Americans above, the Israelis have Insecure Bully Syndrome. They have 400 nukes and the 4th biggest military on Earth, but they scream and yell like children every time some nignog from Gaza shoots a glorified bottle rocket at them. It’s like there’s a 300 champion prize fighter screaming that 7 year old girls are going to kick his ass. So he beats up little girls in self-defense, while everyone nods and agrees with him. That’s how nutty it is.

Anyway, Israel doesn’t want any competition. They get all the nukes, and their enemies get none. That’s called: fair. I’m not kidding. That’s what it’s called: fair.

International Zionism is always yelling, “Terrorists will get nukes and drop them on Aunt Ruth in Tel Aviv! Oy vey!”

It’s ridiculous, but it’s mostly just a way of whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria. After all, terrorists = Muslims.

The other faction are the liberals.

Liberals hate nuclear weapons, and they are always wringing their hands about them. We have to stop proliferation!

Hmm, are the nuclear powers going to give up their bombs? Course not. Don’t ever challenge a liberal on this one. They will stammer and sputter and slam their fist on the table. The US must have nukes because we are Good. Possibly even God-ordained Good. Therefore we can’t give up our nukes. So…does anyone else get nukes to, like, defend themselves against the saintly Americans? No way! The liberal is pounding the table by now and his face is turning red.

US liberalism has always been pretty bankrupt.

So Obama’s hosting the Stupid Conference. You know, the Conference To Keep Muslims From Getting Nukes, because that’s what it’s really all about:

The day before the conference, the Indian prime minister met Obama and tackled him about Pakistan’s inaction against Muslim terrorists and exhorted him to jointly combat terror emanating from Pakistan as the most dangerous source of potential nuclear terror.

According to Debkafile’s military and intelligence sources, the Indian and US leaders failed to agree on whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was sufficiently secure. Indian leaders as well as their military and intelligence advisers have repeatedly warned Washington that al Qaeda and Taliban were moving in on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities through their deep penetration of Pakistan’s intelligence service and may soon be in position to take over.

In his previous conversations with Obama, Singh reported that Israeli intelligence shared India’s assessment of the Pakistani nuclear hazard.

Or maybe it’s the Get Pakistan Conference. Pakistan is home of the Muslim nuke, and Muslims are terrorists, so Pakistan = nuclear terrorism. Um, right?

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel, was supposed to show up, but he canceled, afraid he would have to admit to the 400 nukes he has stashed in his backyard.

Well? So is it real or what? I mean the terrorist nukes?

No, no and no. It’s not real. The terrorists, whoever they are, cannot make a nuke. Even large countries with huge budgets, gigantic universities and thousands of the best engineers have the darnedest time making these things. It’s quite difficult, and many nations have tried to make nukes and given up because they were not able to do it.

So that means a bunch of terrorist yo-yos hiding in caves are going to “make a nuclear bomb,” right?

Can you believe serious people discuss this stuff?

Another thing is that a nuke, if you have one, is more or less useless. For instance, if I were a terrorist, I could not stash my secret nuke here in my apartment. That’s because a nuke is about the size of a Volkswagen. Should be simple to smuggle such a tiny object around, no?

OK, suppose I got a nuke the size of a Volkswagen. I bought it at Osama’s Used Terror Supplies on the Internet.

I somehow got it shipped to my house without the world’s intelligence agencies finding out, and now I’m storing in my garage, next to my other car. Suppose I put it on a truck to detonate it. Thing is, there is no way to detonate this bomb.

I could even put it in a plane, assuming I could find a plane big enough to carry a Volkswagen, and drop it on New York City and nothing would happen other than a few folks might get squashed. Same as if you dropped a Volkswagen on Manhattan. Just dropping the thing won’t detonate it.

You could shoot it with any weapon you can think of, drop bombs on it, set the darn thing on fire, heck, I bet you could even stick on a rocket and shoot into the Sun and nothing, I mean nothing, is going to detonate that bomb.

In order to detonate a nuclear bomb, you have to perfect a detonation device. The device must be calculated down to the thousandth or millionth of a second. Many nations have spent years trying to get the detonation right and have not succeeded. I doubt if North Korea has the detonation down yet, and they’ve probably been trying for 15-20 years.

So, obviously, a bunch of yahoos who ride donkeys and live in mountain caves could make a detonation device just like that, huh?

See how dumb this debate is?

The International Zionists and US Security Staters (pretty much the same folks anymore) like to scare themselves, and scare you. They’re like this international brotherhood of Steven King types running around thinking up scary stories all the time to keep their oft-useless paychecks coming.

One of their latest horror stories was something called the suitcase nuke. Fools have been on prime time news for 20 years now warning us direly about these suitcase nukes, perfect for terrorists. And the terrorists are always trying for the suitcase nukes. You know, so they can act like they’re going to the office and instead blow up Washington DC while they’re riding on the subway reading the paper.

You picture some guy with a suit and tie, carrying a suitcase, right? Inside is a nuke! To blow up Manhattan! Scary, huh?

Know what? It’s bullshit. There are no suitcase nukes. They exist in the same netherworld as anything in the world of science fiction. They are totally theoretical, and anyway, they would be the size of a footlocker, not a briefcase, if they even did exist. After the USSR broke up, wild rumors swirled around that the Soviets had developed suitcase nukes. 20 years later, and not one has ever turned up. No photos, no evidence, no nothing. So far, they’re as real as the Man in the Moon.

So this is what Obama is hosting an international conference about right now. Barack today:

Ahead of the Washington conference, US president Barack Obama called nuclear terror “the single biggest threat to US security, short term, medium and long-term.”

You idiot.

Simon Jones "Mordechai Vanunu Interview"

Repost from the old blog. Although it is four years old, it is still interesting because Vanunu has not given many interviews. This is guest poster Simon Jones’ transcription and cleanup of an informal interview Israeli nuclear dissident Mordecai Vanunu gave on a Norwegian chat site. Note: I have added my own editing to the piece, with the proviso of changing only grammar, style and punctuation, not substance. Anyway, the interview below is with Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu, a Sephardic Moroccan Jew, worked as a nuclear technician in Israel’s top secret nuclear laboratory, the Negev Nuclear Research Center, from 1976 to 1985. It was there that he learned about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Vanunu somehow managed to sneak a tiny camera into Israel’s most heavily-guarded facility, leading most to assume he was a Mossad agent at the time. He amazingly took many photos of the lab, then, even more shockingly, managed to leave the country after he was laid off from the plant in 1985. Even more oddly, Vanunu, while getting his Master’s Degree at Beersheba University in Israel in 1975, had gained a reputation as a far Leftist who spent most of his time hanging around with Arab students. Given his background, why was he hired for this ultra-sensitive job? After he left the country, he wandered to Nepal, where he thought of converting to Buddhism, then wandered to Burma and Thailand. Next he drifted down to Sydney, Australia, where he lived in a hostel and worked odd jobs. He began going to a local church and later converted to Christianity, which caused his Jewish family back in Israel to renounce him. In Sydney, he met Peter Hounam, a British journalist working for the British paper The Sunday Times. Hounam and Vanunu then took a plane to London, where Vanunu showed his nuclear evidence to the paper’s editors. The paper took their time confirming the story, fearing a hoax. The paper was wary because it had been previously burned when it published a fake diary of Hitler that it had thought was genuine. Frustrated with the delays, Vanunu naively approached another London paper, the Sunday Mirror, now The Daily Mirror, which was run by Zionist Jew scumbag mega-millionaire Robert Maxwell, who according to a later report, was a longstanding Mossad agent. Vanunu tried to sell the story to Maxwell but Maxwell notified the Mossad instead. Very quickly (possibly within a day) a beautiful female spy was dispatched to London, and she someone managed to seduce the naive Vanunu and begin a wild love affair with him (also within a matter of days). Within a matter of maybe only four days, she convinced Vanunu to go off to Rome with her. Once in Rome, she got him alone and somehow drugged him. On September 30, 1986, a team of Mossad agents somehow managed to sneak him through Rome’s traffic and the next thing Vanunu knew, he was being shipped out of Italy via freighter. The ship took him back to Israel, where he was secretly tried and convicted of treason. Around the same time, the Sunday Times published its blockbuster story based on Vanunu’s photos, claiming that Israel had 200 nuclear weapons. The details the paper published about Israel’s nuclear weapons program rocked the world. Given all the bizarre particulars of the case, many have long assumed that Vanunu was a Mossad agent. A more recent analysis by Uri Avnery in Alexander Cockburn’s brilliant Counterpunch magazine indicates that Vanunu was probably not a Mossad agent. Avnery concludes that the bizarreness of the case is due to the fact that Vanunu was an idealistic, naive Leftist, and that Israel’s much-touted Mossad is, at times, much more incompetent than anyone thinks. Vanunu, son of well-off Moroccan Jewish immigrants, spent his early years in Israel in a primitive camp before moving to Beersheba, where his family lived in poverty. He still managed to get a Master’s Degree, but complained of discrimination and rude treatment by the Ashkenazi Jews who have always run Israel. All of these experiences seem to have alienated Vanunu, and pushed him into leftwing politics. At his secret trial, Vanunu was convicted of treason and received a long sentence at a trial that made international headlines. He was sent to prison and spent 18 years there, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for which there was probably no justification for, only punishment. While in prison, Vanunu infuriated guards and prison officials by befriending Arab freedom fighters at the prison who were jailed for waging attacks on Israel. Vanunu says the Arabs accepted him completely and they got on famously. Soon Vanunu was asking to have his exercise breaks at the same time as his Arab brothers. Vanunu’s jailers spent most of the time trying to break him psychologically, but he says they never succeeded. Vanunu was released from prison almost exactly one year ago in the midst of a media circus. Interestingly, one of the first things he said upon his releases was that the female agent who entrapped him was either a CIA or FBI agent, and not a Mossad agent. In my opinion, Vanunu has failed to make a good case of this. Vanunu bases his reasoning on the fact that the agent was an American, and therefore must have been a US agent. But it’s well-known that the Mossad has recruited many Americans, especially US Jews like the agent in question. I believe that the female agent was a Mossad agent. A little-known fact about this spy movie case is that the entrapping agent, known as “Cindy”, is actually a woman named Cheryl Hanin Bentov. Bentov now lives with her husband, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, in Orlando, Florida, where they run a successful real estate business. Bentov is “Jews don’t need a state”, Vanunu said recently. “We should give the land back to the Palestinians.” On that note, let us move on to the interview! Here are some of Mordechai Vanunu’s answers to questions fielded by Net surfers in an informal, 3-hour interview on a Norwegian chat site. What follows is just a short summary of some of Vanunu’s statements during the interview. I have corrected most of the grammar and spelling of the interview and included the surfer’s question only when it was necessary for clarification. I see now why the Israeli government doesn’t want Vanunu to leave – he is eloquent, has a sharp wit, and will be a brilliant world peace campaigner once he is freed. Let’s keep up the pressure to free him. Peace, SJ The Interview: Q by Anonymous: Were there more people like you who wanted to tell the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program, or were you the only one? **** MV: There is no one else in Israel who wants to speak about Israel nuclear weapons because you need to be not only against NW’s but also believe in peace and criticize Israeli policies in many fields, including their own Jewish religion. **** ***** The way to survive [in prison] is to be very, very strong, trusting your humanity and believing in humanity. But the human race is good and we are doing this for the survival of the human race on this earth. I decided that they can imprison my body but not my mind and spirit, so I keep this belief all the time. I practice my freedom by exercising the freedom to read and write what I want. Also, I listen to classical music like opera. I studied philosophy and geography in Beersheba University. I have my first degree. I started my second degree but didn’t finish it. But now I have a doctorate in modern psychological brainwashing in a modern spy mind war. That’s what I learned in 18 years in prison. I am not at all bitter [about prison]; I’m very sad for Israelis that they are not mature enough to accept my acts and my life and to respect me as a human being. We need to save the Jewish people of Israel from their past history and bring them to live in this new age. I would do it again and again without any regret. Israel is a military dictatorship governed by security and secrecy. This is a modern phenomenon in a democratic system. Israel is destroying the democratic system from the inside and exporting this policy to the US and Europe. Your ‘Israel – the only democracy in the region’ is demolishing houses of families without any crimes; is arresting thousands of young people without trial. Israel invaded Italy to kidnap a citizen [Vanunu himself] and they have been occupying foreign territories for 35 years, building settlements. They expelled 8 ***** Q by Sigurd: Are you guided by a scientist’s ethics, or are you a genuine humanist? Perhaps it is something else that drives you? ***** MV: Yes, something from our humanity that no one can control is driving us to save this earth from crazy militarism spy power. I am very proud and happy that I have 6 billion people around the world regarding me as a hero. ***** Q by Joakim: Are you still interested in art and do you have a favorite Norwegian artist/painter? ***** MV: I like Edward Munch’s The Scream. ***** ***** I know you have very beautiful fjords and very beautiful women! And very beautiful human rights activists and the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize. ***** ***** Why is it when someone like Salman Rushdie writes a book about Satan writes ‘hate all Muslims’ poetry, you all lift Rushdie to the sky and worship him? But now when a man is imprisoned for 18 years because he let the world know about a nuclear project… And I am still paying for it. ***** ***** Terrorism is not a real threat. The real danger is nuclear weapons in secret – that is the main problem for every state, including Norway. ***** ***** About the US – we are now in the new century post-Cold War and we need to have a new world order. That could be started by all of Europe and US together behaving fairly with Israel to end the Middle East conflict. That could happen if both Europe and US made the right decision to confront Israel with a series of demands. They should demand that Israel become a secular democracy, that she give equal rights to every citizen and that she end her colonialism of the Middle East with her nuclear weapons. Next, we need all the world to be free from nuclear weapons – to take from the nuclear weapons away from every superpower. That is the only way for a new world order, governed by the people of the world, by the United Nations for the people of the world, and not for any State. ***** Q by Ken: You converted to Christianity from Judaism. Was it because you believed in Jesus? Was it because you disliked Judaism? Or was it another reason? What was the reason? ***** MV: All the answers are very good. One more reason I converted is that Judaism is one of the faiths that believes, supports, and encourages racism, and is based on supremacy – creating an apartheid regime. Israel is government by Judaism. But I believe in secular democracy. Jews should accept and respect Jesus’ teaching, values, and the New Testament as much as the Old Testament. I’m a Christian. I was converted in Australia in 1986 because I reject the Jewish traditional beliefs of Judaism supremacy. I believe all human beings are equal. In Israel if you are Jewish you have all the rights. If you are Christian or Muslim, you are second-class with no rights. The best solution is a secular state with equal rights for all citizens. Not a Jewish religious state or Muslim religious state, but one secular state. I am a Christian and no one hates Jews [now]. All the world now respects any human being. Europe has all kinds of minorities. There is no more anti-Semitism. I think if I was [still] Jewish the Israelis and US would have loved me very much and received me as a hero in all the world. But because of my Christianity the Israelis [are] trying to destroy my image and deny me the right to celebrate my freedom. In Israel I am still regarded as a double traitor – for the nuclear weapons issue and for my Christianity. ***** Q by Gabriel: What reason do you believe Israel has for being a nuclear power? Offensive or defensive? Threat and power or war? ***** MV: In my view, in 1950’s, Israel decided as an act not to go for peace but to trust power and impose on the Palestinians and the Arab world this Israeli Jewish apartheid state. They did that instead of making peace and receiving back the Palestinian refugees. Now they say the nuclear weapons are for defence. But for defence of this racist state. ***** Q by Innsendt: Is Israel capable of using these horrible weapons of mass destruction and do you think they will use them? ***** MV: Yes, yes, they have them and they will use them. ***** Q by Innsendt: I guess you must now know what it is like to be a Palestinian living in Occupied Palestine under tough restrictions? **** MV: Yes. And I knew before, and I was against it since 1967. ***** Update: This blog is offering respectful readers the interesting opportunity to contact Mordecai Vanunu on your own. We only ask that you be respectful in your dealings with him. His email address is here. He also goes by his new Christian name of John Crossman. MV may be reached at St. George Cathedral, 20 Nablus Road, East Jerusalem, PO Box 19122. His mobile phone number is 052 2260908. MV was elected rector of Glasgow University in Scotland in December 2004 in a ceremony at the church above, St. George.

Hiroshima Saved 500,000 American Lives And Other Lies

Repost from the old site. This is a debate that never really ends, and probably never will end. There is a lot of passion on the side of the debate that said the atom bomb saved Americans lives. They really want to justify the crime of dropping that bomb. Or 1 million American lives, plus countless Japanese lives (As if we cared about that!), plus British lives (Huh?). My father was quite fond of this one, as he was scheduled to be with the invading force for the invasion of Japan. This bullshit has become ingrained in the minds of tens of millions of otherwise intelligent, sensible and liberal Americans, like my parents for instance. It’s a bunch of crap. After the bombs were dropped, no one made any efforts to explain the mass slaughter of civilians away with justifications about saving lots of lifes by massacring 300,000 others in a couple of days. It was only after time went on and questions started arising about the need to drop those bombs in the first place that this choice piece of steaming propaganda crap steak was served up and fed to an American public hungry to have their guilt absolved. There has long been consensus among historians, including US historians, that the 500,000 lives saved figure is complete nonsense. In fact, when scholars finally got access to all of the secret reports that the US had made on how many US lives were be saved by dropping the two bombs, the estimates concluded that no more than 20,000 US lives were saved by dropping atom bombs, and possibly much fewer, even down to zero. Keep in mind that the Japanese were getting ready to surrender at the time. The military was devastated and the nation was in ruins. The army and civilians were both going hungry and there were shortages of everything. The whole society was near collapse. The Japanese were negotiating terms of surrender with us, but there was a sticking point in that they wanted to keep the emperor. We said no way, and dropped the bomb. We dropped the second one before they even knew what hit them. Why did we drop two bombs, including the utterly gratuitous bomb at Nagasaki? Because that was all we had – two bombs. As it turned out, we let them keep their emperor anyway. There is good evidence, knowing the depths of the evil and stinking gutters in which the worms of US imperialism have always slithered, that the bombs were dropped for the most part in order to scare the shit out of the USSR. Many historical analyses have stated that this was indeed the reason for dropping the bombs, or at least a secondary reason. Considering scholarly consensus on this subject for at least 23 years, it’s incredible that the American people have never been told that the 500,000 figure is a big, fat, stinking lie. “Freedom of the press” and American “democracy”, what a joke.

Fuck Off Israel

It’s called “ambiguity” and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. It’s been going on for 40 years and that’s way too long.

Everyone with a brain cell in their skull knows Israel has more nuclear bombs than matzo balls. The only people who won’t admit are Zionist Jews, and they’re some of the biggest liars on Earth anyway, so why listen to anything they say? Paying attention to a Jewish Zionist is like listening to the boy who cried wolf. They lie like they breathe, so why bother analyzing if what they are saying has any truth to it?

The Jewish Zionists insist, for some Realpolitik reason, that they have no nuclear weapons. Everyone knows they have like 200-300 of these things, but they won’t admit. Every other nuclear nation on Earth has admitted it (Correct?). Yet the Israeli ultra-liars won’t fess up. What’s going to happen if they admit it? Are they all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

The entire US (((media))) goes along with this BS charade. The entire US (((government))) does too. For example, the US recently announced the right of Israel to have its (non-confirmed) nuclear arsenal as long as one single enemy nation is threatening to develop one single nuclear weapon.

Wait a minute!

Israel gets to have 300 (actual but we won’t admit it) nukes in the case that perhaps even one of their enemies might deign to develop one single micro-nuke. Why does this make sense? Why does Israel get all nukes and its enemies don’t get any?

In the Cold War, it was acknowledged that the US and the USSR and China all had a right to arsenals as long as their enemies did. Further, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allows all nations under threat of nuclear attack to develop their own nukes. That means, de facto, that all Arab nations and Iran, along with North Korea and Cuba, have a right to develop nuclear weapons, according to international treaty.

The special case of Israel has to do with some nonsense. Supposedly, these folks called “Muslims” are “suicidal”. They all wanna die – not just today but yesterday!

Pakistan is actually an extremely Islamist-oriented and -influenced land, yet they have never deigned to shoot a nuke at India, though they could easily do so. India would retaliate and kill millions of Pakistanis. If the Pakistani military, full of Al Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers, won’t even shoot a nuke at the infidels, why would the super-sane Muslims in Iran or the pro-West sellouts in the rest of North Africa and Arabia do so?

The whole bullshit about Israel rests on two profoundly silly notions.

First, that Israel must be able to overwhelmingly dominate all of its enemies.

Second, that all of Israel’s preposterously weak enemies are actually Samson-like Superman ready and willing to exterminate the Jewish state in single bound, stopping all the speeding bullets along the way.

This ought to be a joke for a stand-up comedian, but instead, it’s recited with dour seriousness by the entire US and media elite.

How dumb.

The story of how Israel got the bomb is most interesting. JFK was dead set against the Israeli bomb, and the Israelis and their agents in International Zionism were practically threatening to kill him over this. This has given rise to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that suggest that Israelis or their Jewish sympathizers killed JFK.

Truth is that Israel got the bomb around 1966. How? Jewish spies, working for Israel and against the US in a dual loyalty role that Jews insist that no Jew has ever played, infiltrated the US nuclear program, lifted the blueprints and documents out from under our noses, and gave them to Israel. We know their names and everything about them, but no prosecutions have ever occurred.

Israel already had the bomb by 1973, and they came very close to using it. That they were threatening to use it was one reason that Kissinger opened the arms shipment floodgates that enabled Israel to turn the war around.

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