DRANT #244: HIROSHIMA AND TEXAS REDUX

Here is a re print, slightly updated, of my DRANT #131, from August 6, 2005.
This was written just before my first visit to Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey in Crawford Texas.
On Wednesday August 8, Cindy will officially announce her Independent Candidacy for the US Congress, and officially begin her Independent campaign against the egregious, collaborative, genocide-financing, warrantless-wiretap yessing ONE party system in the USA, and in particular, one of its chief perpetrators, Nancy Pelosi.
More about that tomorrow.
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DRANT #131 August 6, 2005:

"Two anniversaries to note today, August 6.
Much is being said about the first, little is being noted about the other.
1- the 60th anniversary of the unspeakable atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
2- the sixth anniversary of the presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" hand-delivered to Bush August 6, 2001 at his ranch in Texas, warning of continued terrorist attacks on the USA.

Little has changed since either of these events.
The USA committed unpardonable mass murder in 1945, visiting death and disease on 100s of thousands of innocent civilians, justifying the murder with spurious theories of pre-emption. In 1945, the mortally deleterious effects lasted (and continue to last), for generations - children are still being born in Japan with diseases and debilities whose antecedents are traceable to the atomic fallout. In 1945 the American people and the world, were lied to, propagandized, and forcibly restrained from the truth, with actual photos and first person accounts of the real facts on the ground withheld and obstructed in a sinister coalition of government, politicians and the nation's press. And, for 60 years the Americans didn't try to find out too hard at all.
And so it is today. Same as it ever was.

Aug 6, 2001, the FBI, CIA and other Intelligence agencies personally delivered a strong WRITTEN official case to Bush, vacationing in Crawford, that a continuation of the series of violent attacks on the territory of the USA was a very real, imminent possibility.
Organizations and people--variously created, financed, equipped, organized, trained and activated by the CIA and other government operations, were focusing their sights on American targets.
Bush connived a bit with Tony Blair, got on his tractor and shoveled some manure for the photo ops, and turned on the tube over burgers with his lovely wife and charming family.
But this was no idiot's oversight. No booberie.
We needed a new Pearl Harbor, and by George, we were gonna get one.
The urgent alert had to be buried, not ignored, lest the plans of the PNAC be upset.
Whether they actually did it, or just let it happen, makes no difference for the moment.
They got their Pearl Harbor 2001, and as in 1945, the well paid ostriches and ventriloquists' dummies of the nation's press went along, co-conspiring to sell the official story, their sinister coalition operating in fine tuned harmony.
As in 1945, we are constrained from real photos, real truth, the real facts.
As in 1945, we are murdering 100s of thousands of innocent civilians, and the long term effects of the nuclear fallout from our use of Depleted Uranium is incalculable- the only difference being that this time we are dosing our own soldiers, not just worthless rag heads and their families. America never sees the photos of the newest generation of Iraqi children -- with the clear evidence of radiation sickness and horrendous lesions, and various cancers.

But as in 1945, and as always, our ignorance is our own responsibility.
Not knowing is not an excuse.
If CNN and the NY Times won't tell ya, it's on YOU to go find out the truth, not to turn on the tube over burgers and whine something about the media.
The hell with the media.
They are going to lie to you.
The media is THEM.
The truth is out there and available, and it is our responsibility to find it.
No more "I didn't know."
If its more comfortable to hide in your ignorance, if it makes you feel safer to cloak yourself in some flimsy robe of moral invisibility, then go on bro.
But don't tell me ya didn't know.
You know.
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For the actual front page of the NY Times from Aug 6, 1945, please click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0806.html#article

First Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan; Missile Is Equal to 20,000 Tons of TNT; Truman Warns Foe of a 'Rain of Ruin'
NEW AGE USHERED
Day of Atomic Energy Hailed by President, Revealing Weapon
HIROSHIMA IS TARGET
'Impenetrable' Cloud of Dust Hides City After Single Bomb Strikes

By SIDNEY SHALETT
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

Washington, Aug. 6 -- The White House and War Department announced today that an atomic bomb, possessing more power than 20,000 tons of TNT, a destructive force equal to the load of 2,000 B-29's and more than 2,000 times the blast power of what previously was the world's most devastating bomb, had been dropped on Japan.
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The Hiroshima Cover-Up
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1548255

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."

He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."

Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."

Recently, Mr. Weller's son, Anthony, discovered a carbon copy of the suppressed dispatches among his father's papers (George Weller died in 2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a big Japanese newspaper. Now, on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Mr. Weller's account can finally be read.

"In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki," wrote Mr. Weller. A month after the bombs fell, he observed, "The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here."

After killing Mr. Weller's reports, U.S. authorities tried to counter Mr. Burchett's articles by attacking the messenger. General MacArthur ordered Mr. Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.

Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: It deployed its own Times man. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the science reporter for The New York Times, was also on the payroll of the War Department.

For four months, while still reporting for the Times, Mr. Laurence had been writing press releases for the military explaining the atomic weapons program; he also wrote statements for President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was rewarded by being given a seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that he described in the Times with religious awe.

Three days after publication of Mr. Burchett's shocking dispatch, Mr. Laurence had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people. His news story included this remarkable commentary: "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. ... Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."

Mr. Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize.

Sixty years late, Mr. Weller's censored account stands as a searing indictment not only of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb but also of the danger of journalists embedding with the government to deceive the world.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are co-authors of The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

© 2005 Baltimore Sun
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* Hiroshima Cover-up: Stripping the War Department's Timesman of His
Pulitzer *

This weekend marks the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William Laurence, the New York Times reporter who
covered the bombings was also on the US government payroll. Journalists
Amy Goodman and David Goodman call for the Pulitzer Board to strip
Laurence and his paper, The New York Times, of the undeserved prize.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1548241

* Film Suppressed: The US Government Hides Hiroshima Nagasaki Footage For
Decades *

Footage of the devastation after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that was commissioned by the US occupying forces was suppressed
for decades. Erik Barnouw reads the words of the Japanese filmmaker Akira
Iwasaki.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549202

* From Oak Ridge to Lawrence Livermore to Los Alamos: Hiroshima and
Nagasaki Remembered *

Activists around the nation are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the
U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Grass-roots organizers speak
about the ongoing nuclear weapons activity and community resistance.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549211

* Hiroshima Survivor: No More Hiroshimas, No More Nagasakis, No More War *

Sunao Tsuboi survived the bombing of Hiroshima. Speaking at an anti-
nuclear weapons rally in New York, he said, "Even if you luckily survive
you...suffer from psychological and physical disruption...until your life
ends."

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1549218

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The fourth anniversary of the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" telling Bush of planned terrorist attacks on the USA.

http://www.howardlabs.com/4-04/AP--%20Al-Qaida%20Threat%20Included%20in%20Bush%20Memo.html

http://www.themoderntribune.com/august_6th_2001_memo_to_bush_before_9_11.htm

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The following is available on the Internet at http://www.WantToKnow.info/050723robertmcnamaraapocalypse

"What is shocking is that today, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the basic US nuclear policy is unchanged. Of the 8,000 active or operational US warheads, 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on 15 minutes' warning. On any given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes' deliberation by the president and his advisors."
-- Former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, May 2005
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2829 Foreign Policy magazine (Page 1 of 5)
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Former US Secretary of Defense (under President John Kennedy) Robert McNamara has written a powerful essay exposing an outdated policy that puts our entire nation and world at risk of annihilation at any moment. After 13 years as the president of the World Bank, McNamara risked his career and reputation by going public with his concerns about the policy giving the president the authority to initiate a nuclear holocaust, even when the threat to the US might be based on faulty information. He claims it is long past time to change this dangerous policy in order to avert a future apocalypse.

For another eye-opening article on how the media has been complicit in concealing the dangers of nuclear weapons ever since WWII, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/atomicbombcoverup And for more powerful information revealing how the military/industrial complex promotes war in order to pad the wallets of the corporate elite, see our War Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation By educating ourselves and those around us on the risks that are a result of greed and secrecy, we can more effectively work together to build a brighter future for us all.
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Quote of The Day:
"...In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki...A month after the bombs fell...The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here." "
George Weller, Nagasaki, 1945`