ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 75: — Another Hiroshima is... https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/03/atomic-bombings-at-7...

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August 3, 2020 1995-202 Save 0 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that 25th Year form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new Donate here through enemy, and target – China. PayPal:

By John Pilger —– in Sydney, Australia

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting Keep Consortium News Going in the Tradition of for a bank to open. Robert Parry.

At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were Become a Consortium burned into the granite. News member!

Make your tax-deductible I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the donation by clicking here. survivors still lived in shanties.

I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the Watch ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them CN Live!

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had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.”

Nine years later, I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukemia.

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“No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin” said a New York Times headline on September Sign up 13, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. “General Farrell,” reported William H. Lawrence, “denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.”

Only one reporter, , an Australian, had braved the perilous journey Search to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities, which controlled the “press pack”.

“I write this as a warning to the Publisher Consortium for world,” reported Independent Journalism, Burchett in the Inc. London Daily Board of Directors Diane Duston, President Express of Julie Bergman Sender September 5,1945. Daniel Ellsberg Sitting in the rubble Sen. Mike Gravel Ray McGovern with his Baby Nat Parry Hermes typewriter, John Pilger he described hospital Gareth Porter Editorial Dept. wards filled with Joe Lauria people with no Wilfred Burchett (YouTube) Editor-in-Chief visible injuries who Corinna Barnard Deputy Editor were dying from Administration what he called “an atomic plague”. Michele Steinberg Administrative Director For this, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His Dino Zonic witness to the truth was never forgiven. Promotions CN Live! The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass Cathy Vogan murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that Executive Producer

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form the bedrock of America’s war propaganda in the 21st century, casting a new Elizabeth Vos Joe Lauria enemy, and target – China. Co-Hosts During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb

was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to save lives. WINNER OF THE 2017 “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic PRIZE FOR Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient JOURNALISM pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. “Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war [against Japan] and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

The National Archives in Washington contains documented Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the U.S. made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Nothing was done.

The U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the U.S. Air Force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. Stimson later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [atomic] bomb”.

Stimson’s foreign policy colleagues — looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping “in our image”, as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it — made clear they were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.”

The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

The “experiment” continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the Purchase Trick or Treason (and others) United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.

The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world’s first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered “unsafe” on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.

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August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019

Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site Marshall Islands. (UNESCO) February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 I trekked through the jungle to the concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the morning of November 2018 March 1, 1954, the button was pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again and October 2018 September 2018 vaporised an entire island in the lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which from the air August 2018 is a menacing spectacle: a deathly void in a place of beauty. July 2018 June 2018 The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and “unexpectedly”. The official history claims May 2018 “the wind changed suddenly”. It was the first of many lies, as declassified documents April 2018 and the victims’ testimony reveal. March 2018 February 2018 Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site, said, “They knew January 2018 December 2017 where the radioactive fall-out was going to go. Even on the day of the shot, they still November 2017 had an opportunity to evacuate people, but [people] were not evacuated; I was not October 2017 evacuated… The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of September 2017 August 2017 radiation would do.” July 2017 June 2017 Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the May 2017 lives of large numbers of people. This was Project 4.1, which began as a scientific April 2017 study of mice and became an experiment on “human beings exposed to the radiation March 2017 February 2017 of a nuclear weapon”. January 2017 December 2016 The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 — like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed November 2016 in the 1960s and 70s — suffered from a range of cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; October 2016 thousands had already died. Miscarriages and stillbirths were common; those babies September 2016 August 2016 who lived were often deformed horribly. July 2016 Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test. June 2016 May 2016 Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap’s skies darkened and it rained what first April 2016 appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water were contaminated; and the population March 2016 fell victim to cancers. That is still true today. February 2016 January 2016 December 2015

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November 2015 I met Nerje Joseph, who showed me a October 2015 photograph of herself as a child on September 2015 August 2015 Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns July 2015 and much of her was hair missing. “We June 2015 were bathing at the well on the day the May 2015 April 2015 bomb exploded,” she said. “White dust March 2015 started falling from the sky. I reached to February 2015 catch the powder. We used it as soap to January 2015 December 2014 wash our hair. A few days later, my hair November 2014 started falling out.” October 2014 September 2014 Lemoyo Abon said, “Some of us were in August 2014 agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were July 2014 terrified. We thought it must be the end June 2014 May 2014 of the world.” April 2014 March 2014 U.S. official archive film I included in my February 2014 film refers to the islanders as “amenable January 2014 savages”. In the wake of the explosion, a December 2013 Marshall Islander Nerje Joseph with a November 2013 U.S. Atomic Energy Agency official is October 2013 photograph of her as a child soon after the seen boasting that Rongelap “is by far September 2013 H-Bomb exploded on March 1, 1954 the most contaminated place on earth”, August 2013 July 2013 adding, “it will be interesting to get a June 2013 measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment.” May 2013 April 2013 American scientists, including medical doctors, built distinguished careers studying March 2013 the “human uptake”. There they are in flickering film, in their white coats, attentive February 2013 January 2013 with their clipboards. When an islander died in his teens, his family received a December 2012 sympathy card from the scientist who studied him. November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 “Baker Shot”, part of Operation Crossroads, a U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1946. (U.S. May 2011 Defense Dept.) August 2005 January 2004 I have reported from five nuclear “ground zeros” throughout the world — in Japan, October 2003 August 2003

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the Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia. Even more than July 2003 May 2003 my experience as a , this has taught me about the ruthlessness and April 2003 immorality of great power: that is, imperial power, whose cynicism is the true enemy March 2003 of humanity. February 2003

This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed: “A British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957”. On the rim of the crater was this sign:

WARNING: RADIATION HAZARD

Radiation levels for a few hundred metres

around this point may be above those considered

safe for permanent occupation.

For as far as the eye could see, and beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 percent chance of cancer.

The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom there was no warning. According to an official account, if they were lucky “they were shooed off like rabbits”.

The Enduring Menace

Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan …. Huawei. How confusing it is when “our” most reviled leader says so.

The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of U.S. naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a “threat”. This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America’s unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most “indispensable” nation.

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What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully — with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown, their elections interfered with, their resources plundered.

Obama’s declaration became known as the “pivot to Asia”. One of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed, wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean “the American Sea”.

Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing. “I state clearly and with conviction,” said the new president in 2009, “that America’s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Obama speaks about 60 years of the U.S.-Australian alliance in Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011. (Sgt. Pete Thibodeau/Wikimedia Commons)

Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since the end of the Cold War. A “usable” nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means, according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable”.

The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist told me, “the perfect noose”.

The Unthinkable

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.

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Commissioned by the U.S. Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn – “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war.

Kahn’s apocalyptic view is shared by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical fanatic who believes in the “rapture of the End”. He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive. “I was CIA director,” he boasted, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses.” Pompeo’s obsession is China.

The endgame of Pompeo’s extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo- American media, where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the lies about . A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda. Classified “yellow” even though they were white, the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an “exclusion act” from entering the United States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister, untrustworthy, “sneaky”, depraved, diseased, immoral.

An Australian magazine, The Bulletin, was devoted to promoting fear of the “yellow peril” as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only colony by the force of gravity.

As the historian Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China’s modernism, its secular morality and “contributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China’s role in the Enlightenment ‘The Chinese Octopus’, The Bulletin, Sydney 1886, an early debate …. For promoter of the “Yellow Peril” and other stereotypes. centuries, China’s threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as “rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows”. Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret the “dreams” of the current Chinese elite, to which he is apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the “Mandate of Heaven” of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.

To combat this “mandate”, the Australian government of Scott Morrison has

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committed one of the most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American missiles that can be fired at China.

The trickledown is already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.

“We are not your enemy,” a high-ranking strategist in China told me, “but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.” China’s arsenal is small compared with America’s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.

“For the first time,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy…”

In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote that a “blinding attack on China” was planned, “with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war.”

In 2019, the U.S. staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an “Air- Sea Battle Concept for China” – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.

In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great!

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Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the U.S. and Europe. “Many Americans imagine,” she said, “that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million.”

Modern China’s epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting.

China’s repressive dark side and what we like to call its “authoritarianism” are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.

John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20th century. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be found here.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Tags: Barack Obama Donald Trump Harry Truman Hiroshima John Pilger Marshall Islands Mike Pompeo

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ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 75: John Pilger — Another Hiroshima is Coming — Unless We Stop It Now

Alfred Olaba August 4, 2020 at 01:34

A beautiful article.

Reply

Robert Sinuhe August 4, 2020 at 00:52

I’m concerned that much has been done to shield the terrible effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Too much disinformation and outright lies. If the general public really knew the horror that the Japanese people experienced perhaps we could have the empathy to press our government to abandon these weapons. My fear is grounded on the world wide protests over the Iraq War. I and millions protested to no avail. How do you reach a government that will not listen.

Reply

David Copper August 3, 2020 at 18:57

As soon as I became aware of the devastation of these incomprehensible weapons as a young teen (sixties) I wondered why nothing was being done to do away with them. As I studied the all consuming destructiveness of these weapons I became active in the “ban the bomb” movement. Going to the Nevada test site in the late eighties to protest continued testing. To NYC with my 5 year old daughter 35 years ago by bus to March past the UN to central park for a ban the bomb rally. I am 73 years old and have lived my whole life under the threat if nuclear annihilation I am still involved with banning the bomb living under an illegally elected president who would not hesitate to use a “tactical” nuclear weapon if not worse May the Lord protect us all

Reply

Gretchen August 4, 2020 at 03:13

Well said, Mr. Copper. In my opinion the image of ‘Death Valley, Nevada’ could be a model of land left after a nuclear bomb dropped and detonated. Especially the salt beds within the Death Valley Park with “BAD WATER”……SIGN! The torture of chemical dust falling on humans for testing (research) purposes must be subject to investigation? Praying for love, peace, and leadership.

Buffalo_Ken August 3, 2020 at 18:53

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Over many years in my imagination I suppose I’ve personally put forth a lot of effort doing all I can to help avoid and prevent any kind of confrontation with Iran. There have been so many times when this seemed on the edge. Yet, the Persian history is to be remembered, and perhaps this is what stemmed it off. I admire it.

Same goes with the history of China. I will put forth a double effort when it comes to China. I’ll do likewise for Russia and for Mongolia.

Aren’t we all sick and tired of the Pompeo’s of this day and age. Ain’t it time for something better. Can’t anybody do anything about it? If you study history, the story of the past, you start to appreciate that which has stood the test of time. In this respect, the US is nothing but a baby. I think it is a baby that has been overtaken by a bunch of spoiled brats and I’m sick of them and all of their propaganda.

Things are fixing to change.

Reply

Douglas Baker August 3, 2020 at 16:42

So the American war department’s dream deferred of of bombing 190 Russian cities with atomic bombs has grown bigger with more Chinese cities than Russian on the bucket list to do ahead of the peace that passes understanding.

Reply

DW Bartoo August 3, 2020 at 14:22

I read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”, the first really “serious” book I ever bought, in paperback, in 1957 when I was ten years old.

Way back then, I wondered why it was that the adults around me had not joined together and insisted that nuclear weapons (we still called them “atom bombs” in those days) be banned, that the whole notion of organized mayhem, be outlawed?

These adults had, many of them, experienced the war, some very directly, or at least had grown up while it was occurring.

Now, sixty-three years later, I wonder the same things.

I have had the good fortune to know a number of people who did dedicate their lives to banning the bomb, many of them are now gone, having grown old (perhaps even weary and saddened that fewer and fewer people seemed to care) and died, as we old folks do tend to do.

Yet I have seen very few younger people rise up to replace those staunch old warriors who championed peace and reason.

The same is true with the anti-war movement.

Indeed, I hear and read comments, mostly from the youngish, that nuclear weapons do not even exist, that they are simply a hoax.

Of course my generation, the boomers, when we were young and at school, primary and secondary, not only had fire drills, but also “bomb” drills, and were instructed that “fallout shelters” were to be found in most cities, however small, as those cities might be targets of the Russians.

In those days, it was always the Russians, but “we” had bombs and missiles (many more than they did, as it turned out, but much bipartisan political hay could be made of alleged “gaps” and the Strategic Air Command had nuclear-armed bombers in the air 24/7.

For a time, wealthier families built their own fallout shelters and stocked up “supplies” that

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would last several months.

This movement lost much of its appeal when it sunk in that more than months might be required before the “radioactive” contaminated water and soil OUTSIDE the family retreat would be “safe” to make use of.

And then, miraculously, everyone simply forgot about the bombs.

The bombs did not go away.

In fact, they became “more sophisticated”.

Eventually the “neutron bomb” was developed which promised to kill all living things, without harming the infrastructure, and would rapidly dissipate its harmful debris.

It was touted as a great thing for real estate development after the end of hostilities.

You know, wipe the people out and move in within a matter of mere months.

None of this seemed to affect people as reprehensible, they seemed to take it quite in stride.

Of course, that was when the U$ could still pretend that it was the manufacturing and “development” center of the world (or even the universe, for that matter).

Rationally, nuclear Armageddon is as much an existential threat to continued human presence on the planet as environmental collapse.

Both, happily, from the perspective of oligarchic domination, are simply ignored by the many and denied by those for whom profits trumps all.

I do sometimes wonder what people, a hundred years from now, will think about those of us who refused to confront either threat, assuming that people are still around then and even bother thinking about the things we assiduously ignored.

Assuming further, that they have any feeling about us at all, beyond disgust and wonderment about how we could all be so careless, selfish, and so stupid as to permit the pathologically dangerous and greedy to be the “adults” who were “in control”.

But then, I recall that old dinosaur who used to say, “Posterity? Posterity hell! What has posterity ever done for me?”

I feel so fortunate to be a member of a generation whose “plan” is simply to no longer be here, when the shit hits the fan.

In all, it is a clever career move.

The kids can clean up the mess …

Reply

Buffalo_Ken August 3, 2020 at 19:11

@DW Bartoo

I know you didn’t really mean to suggest that the “kids can clean up the mess”. That ain’t fair.

From my perspective it is old-timers like you who are going to be the ones who make the difference one way or the other.

We need your wisdom, but we don’t need fatalism. If the blood is still flowing and you can think, then by all means please make a difference for the better. I don’t know about you, but I need all the help I can get. So make things better while you still can.

I’ve got a freaking plan, and I could spell it all out, but who would give a shit……….if it don’t resonate, then it don’t matter. That is why we need to work together. Individualism

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can only go so far and the limit has been reached.

I’ll tell you a funny story cause why the hell not? I asked Alexa to tell me about Peter Kropotkin. Then afterwards, I asked her to tell me about Anarcho-Communism…….man the answers were out there more than 100 years ago.

Take Care, Ken

peter mcloughlin August 3, 2020 at 13:50

A very moving piece by John Pilger. He is right, China is the new “enemy”. Every conflict in history has been about power (manifested as interest). Today the US aims to maintain its global dominance. China has made enormous economic strides in the last forty years, lifting up to 600 million out of poverty, if Lijia Zhang’s figure is correct. The country is not prepared to sacrifice those gains. As a result, the two most powerful nations on the globe are on course for war. Like so many wars in the past, leaders are often blind to what fate awaits them. Every incumbent hegemon eventually faces the very war it seeks to avoid: annihilation of its own power. If leaders and decision-makers cannot see the pattern of history they will never be able to change it, and so survive at all. (ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com)

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