I can be most easily reached through the following email address for suggesting new additions to the subscription list or to cancel your subscription to the Bi-Weekly:
The Blog Address for the Bi-Weekly is: http://jvlbiweekly.blogspot.com
Please forward the Blog address for the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested
Friday, August 15th, 2008
Volume 7, No. 14
(Editor's note: According to information compiled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization devoted to monitoring the status of the nuclear threat worldwide, nine countries had nukes by April 2004. The nine countries are listed below. Each figure includes the approximate number of both tactical and strategic bombs (nuclear and thermonuclear, or "big" and "really gigantic").
| Country | Warheads |
| United States | 10,455 |
| Russia | 8,400 |
| China | 400 |
| France | 350 |
| Israel* | 250 |
| United Kingdom | 200 |
| India | 65 |
| Pakistan | 40 |
| North Korea | 8 |
| TOTAL | 20,168 |
6 Articles
1. USDA Report Indicates that Organic Labeling Fraud is Increasing
2. Why TV News in the US is Utter Rubbish
4. Cell Phone Cancer Risk Debated
5. The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century
6. Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable
1. USDA REPORT INDICATES THAT ORGANIC LABELING FRAUD IS INCREASING
BY
RONNIE CUMMINS
The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (NOP) announced August 5 that 15 of the 30 accredited organic certifiers they recently inspected failed the USDA audit and will have 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation with the NOP. Although the USDA euphemistically calls their enforcement actions “renewal pending subsequent audit,” it is clear that there are numerous violations of organic standards taking place in the U.S. and across the world. A number of the violations noted in the several hundred page audit related to Chinese imports certified by the French-based organic certifier Ecocert and other certifiers.
Strangely enough, Quality Assurance International (QAI), the largest organic certifier in the world, is not cited by the USDA, even though the Organic Consumers Association OCA has recently reviewed documents that indicate that QAI is indeed under investigation by the NOP. QAI has recently been in the news for sourcing ginger, contaminated with a dangerous and banned pesticide, Aldicarb, from its Chinese certification sub-contractors and then labeling it as “USDA Organic.” QAI is also under public fire, along with other certifiers, for certifying factory farm feedlot dairies supplying milk to Horizon and Aurora Organic Dairy, who in turn supply Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, and other organic private label organic milk brands.
For over six years the OCA, Cornucopia Institute, the Center for Food Safety and others in the organic community have called upon the USDA to implement a “Peer Review Panel” system, as required by law in the National Organic Standards, so that respected members of the organic community can monitor the USDA National Organic Program and police violations of organic standards on the part of producers, importers, and certifiers. A 2005 ANSI (American National Standards Institute) audit of the USDA’s National Organic Program found numerous problems and irregularities, according to Jim Riddle, former chair of the National Organic Standards Board.
As the USDA themselves have admitted “The National Organic Standards call for the Administrator of AMS (USDA Agricultural Marketing Service) to appoint members of a Peer Review Panel to evaluate the NOP¹s adherence to its accreditation procedures and its accreditation decisions.” It’s time for the USDA to stop dragging their heels and begin the public process to set up an organic community “Peer Review Panel,” so can we can start policing organic standards ourselves.
To Sign the Petition to the USDA for a Peer Review Panel go here.
Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of Organic Consumers Association.
(Editor's second note: On the same points is the following by DaSparky)
“USDA proposed in it’s initial standards to allow sewage sludge to be an organic soil amendment and that radiation of food be certifiable as an organic process. That was under the Clinton Administration! USDA has long been an advocate of industrial agribusiness under the guise of support for family farming.”
That is true, but it is also true that popular resistance STOPPED the USDA from calling irradiation and sewage sludge “organic”.
What do folks think we should do about our food supply? Mr. Hollow (organic gardener) says: “ONLY TRUST what your own hands put in the ground and pull out.” and Thomas More (organic retailer) says: “Absolutely agreed. You could never be sure unless you know the grower.”
So everyone here agrees, you literally cannot trust anything you eat unless you grow it yourself or get it directly from a grower you know personally, AND it is ENTIRELY POINTLESS to attempt to regulate markets to protect consumers by upholding standards?
Mr. More disagrees disagree. The original NOP of the USDA was created because activists fought long and hard for it. And there are still lots of great activists, like the author of this piece Ronnie Cummins and his pals at the OCA and Cornucopia, who have continued to fight hard for years to resist the dilution of organic standards and uphold the right of people to know what the practices of their farmers are.
So for everyone here who is reflexively trashing the NOP and the entire concept of organic standards: you seriously believe in tossing out the regulation, and leave all consumers to seek out and find personally trusted sources of food? What about all other forms of product regulation? Don’t buy an appliance unless you know the person who installed the electronic elements and welded the parts?
Again, i disagree. We need to FIGHT to uphold organic standards, not give up in hopeless cynicism and return to - what? An entirely unregulated market for food?
Seriously, what is the implication of all the comments here? And what are you saying to people like the author Ronnie Cummins, who has spent his life fighting this fight, and who wrote this article not to eliminate regulation and standards, but because he continues to FIGHT LIKE HELL to uphold them?
To clarify, I work in the retail end of the organic food trade, at a co-op grocery that has been certified organic for years, and we stay engaged in this fight. Please, if you propose to dump the NOP, do you seriously propose that everyone only eat what they grow themselves? Can I see a serious alternative proposed? If not, I will remain engaged in the fight for organic standards, and encourage you to do so too.
2. WHY TV NEWS IN THE US IS UTTER RUBBISH
(It's not just that world events are ignored in favour of celebrity gossip. News anchors skew the facts to provoke debate.)
BY
KIEREN McCARTHY
For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artifact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
Well, the truth is that it's far, far worse than that. There are a multitude of news channels - CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox. But after an hour of flipping between them during lunchtime last week, this was the sum total of information gleaned: there are two US presidential candidates; they have produced campaign ads; people have made video parodies and posted them on the internet; a US TV news host appeared on a US TV chat show last night; and someone said something controversial (read ignorant) on a different TV show the day before.
In the meantime, one of the most sought-after war criminals in the world had been arrested and sent for trial; several new scientific breakthroughs had been announced; Zimbabwe edged carefully toward shared government; the Indian government dealt with votes of no-confidence and terrorist attacks; and countless other real stories came and went. For millions of Americans, these events appeared as 15-word tickertapes at the bottom of their 36-inch widescreen TVs.
It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip. The clearest example of this is when one of the (between two and six) commentators on any given story provides their "analysis".
This comprises of showing a video clip and then talking with the assumed voice of the person in the clip. So, for example, Barack Obama gave a press conference. A clip of around four or five seconds of what he said is shown and then the TV studio people take over.
News anchor: "So what he's saying is 'Hey, I'm the guy in charge here - I'm the person who decides what to do, not you.' Is that right?"
Commentator: "I think what he was saying was: 'If I become president, then I'll be the person that calls the shots.'"
Commentator Two: "I don't agree. He's saying: 'I am going to listen to others – that's what I'll do – but make no mistake I'll be the person who makes the final decision.'"
This goes on and on with people making up dialogue and pretending to be Obama (or John McCain or anyone else that comes to mind) rather than broadcasting what was actually said.
But it gets worse:
• Unfair comment: The analysis of what someone has said is clearly bent by the reporters themselves along ideological lines. Unrelated facts and events are attached and then attacked, and the original news point ends up as little more than a launching pad for the experts' own political perspectives. So a sober report on, say, house prices ends up as a criticism of the Republican party's fiscal policy (without any details of that policy being provided). In the worst cases, something with no news value at all is introduced in order to score political points – such as McCain eating at a German restaurant, or Obama knocking fists with his wife.
• Tail-chasing and navel gazing: The media reports constantly on itself. And that really does mean constantly. Anything reported on the TV news instantly becomes something to be reported on. For an entire day the lead on most TV networks was whether the media was giving Obama too much coverage. The second day comprised of whether the coverage given to Obama was too uncritical. By the third day, much of the coverage was about the previous two days' coverage, complete with clips of how rival networks were covering the "news". News hosts also regularly appear on other news hosts' shows, and then feature that appearance on their own show.
• Never let the story get in the way: The focus is entirely on the back story, and the actual news is given lip-service. So you'll hear more about how a decision was arrived at than what the actual decision was, or what impact it might have. The idea is that you are getting the real juice. The reality is you are forced to drink a pint of conjecture concentrate. Presidential campaign ads have become lead stories. A one-second image flash of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in a recent ad implied that Obama was no more than a celebrity. It led to hours of primetime news speculation, while the ad's central claim that Obama would raise taxes if elected was ignored.
• The Jerry Springer school of journalism: There is never a neutral statement - it is always an extreme perspective. If you are the news anchor, you can speak in a third-party voice and add a question mark on the end to suggest impartiality. But otherwise, wild claims are balanced with an equally wild claim at the other end. If someone attempts to point out logical inconsistencies, they are almost always faced with personal mockery by the other commentators. Just one example of this bizarre, school-bully behaviour: When one commentator, speaking from Las Vegas, tried to point out why an offshore drilling bill (which had been misrepresented as a reason why the Democrats were responsible for high petrol prices), had not been passed by Congress, he was told by the anchor that he had clearly spent too much time at the craps tables. He was told soon after by another commentator he had spent too much time at the bar. The substance of his argument did not of course merit discussion.
• The gold(fish) rush: There is absolutely no effort to provide historical context. The news is paced so frenetically that anything beyond soundbites is not tolerated. News anchors consistently talk over the top of anyone that doesn't provide a punchy point every 10 seconds. Swooshing graphics and dance music add to the general level of pace – which effectively masks the fact that almost nothing is being provided beyond personal opinion.
• When did you stop beating your wife? Coverage is deeply cynical in the sense that people are assumed to have a hidden and planned agenda even when the connection drawn would have been impossible to predict as it doesn't follow logical reasoning. Speculation with no foundation in logic or fact is opened up as a serious news item with the simple inclusion of the phrase "Did [insert name of person] know about [insert event]?" The answer – if there was ever any attempt to actually arrive at it – will always be "No".
• Fight! Fight! Fight! There is no effort to reach a greater understanding. Instead, the sole intent is to provoke disagreement and partisan perspective - with the anchor used solely to egg on disagreement. Nearly every segment ends with the anchor shutting off argument and promoting the idea that they will have to agree to disagree.
So where do you get your news while living in the US? News-starved Americans usually hold up National Public Radio, NPR, as the best option. But with interlude music fresh from the 1920s and a twee, kitchen-table-chat approach, this is news wrapped in a tea cosy.
Two comedy programmes, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, fill a peculiar niche of serious analysis with gags and are possibly the main news source for people under 30. They both viciously lampoon the news media, which pretends not to notice and runs clips from them on their own shows.
There is hope however. The non-news cycle is increasingly being broken by the internet. Thanks to cheap digital technology and fast net connections, online video is a simple prospect and means it is possible to get your fix of moving images with real news thrown in.
Not that TV news is concerned. The internet, and YouTube in particular, is a network's dream: an Aladdin's Cave of uninformed, one-sided and aggressive gossip and commentary, all of it searchable and requiring minimal expenditure of time or money. And so every day you can find news anchors running short clips of the very best the internet can offer before turning to the experts to give their views.
(The truth about the cell-phone–cancer link and what it means for you and your kids.)
BY
JULIE A. EVANS
When Vini Khurana, PhD, an Australian (and Mayo Clinic–trained) neurosurgeon, announced that the link between cell-phone use and cancer was irrefutable--the result of his analysis of more than 100 studies--it set off alarm bells around the world. Use a cell phone, he said, and you increase your risk of developing a malignant brain tumor by two to four times. Until recently, the majority of research indicated little or no link between cell phones and cancer (the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society maintain that cell phones pose no threat), but several new long-term studies have cast doubt about their safety. Given that cell phones and PDAs serve as lifelines for so many people--24 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds carry them--it raises urgent questions. To find out what precautions you should take when using your cell phone, we dialed the nation's leading experts.
Do cell phones cause cancer?
Maybe…with extended use. Mobile-phone users are twice as likely to develop malignant, difficult-to-treat brain tumors called gilomas, according to a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed the effects of cell-phone use over 10 years or more and was published last year in the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. The Bioinitiative Working Group, an international coalition of scientists and public-health experts, recently published a hefty report detailing the link between the nonionizing radiation caused by a cell phone's electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and cancer, DNA damage, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. "The cells in the body react to EMFs in cell phones just like they do to other environmental toxins, including heavy metals and chemicals," says Martin Blank, PhD, a professor in bioelectromagnetics at Columbia University and one of the report's authors. The study found that risk from cell-phone use starts at 260 lifetime hours.
Do cell phones emit radiation only when you are talking?
No. "Cell phones give off radiation any time they're turned on so that they can communicate with base stations," says Lou Bloomfield, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Virginia and author of How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary. "The radiation emitted, however, is stronger and more frequent when you're talking or messaging." Also, the greater distance you are from a base station, the more radiation your phone must emit in order to get a signal, which is why your phone feels hot when you have low reception. That heat you feel is radiation. The Bioinitiative study found that adverse effects to DNA can also occur before the phone heats up. To reduce your exposure, make calls only when you have strong reception, hang up before your phone heats up, and store your phone away from your body when it's not in use.
What is a phone's SAR value and why does it matter?
SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate, and it refers to the rate of radiation exposure from radio frequency and microwaves measured in watts per kilogram of tissue, says Bloomfield. The FCC limit on any cell phone sold in this country is 1.6 watts per kilogram. To find the SAR value for your phone, go to fcc.gov/cgb/sar/. At press time, the phone with the lowest radiation was the LG KG800, at 0.135 w/kg. The highest: Motorola V195s, at 1.6 w/kg. The Apple iPhone is in the middle, at 0.974 w/kg.
What is the range of the radiation?
Exposure to radiation from your cell phone drops off slowly for the first three to four inches from your body, and then it falls dramatically, says Bloomfield. To reduce your exposure, invest in a hands-free headset and limit the amount of time you spend talking on the phone. Khurana recommends using the speaker mode and holding the phone about eight inches away from you. Also, limit your use of Bluetooth devices. While it's true that they emit the least amount of radiation (one study found they can operate as low as 0.001 watts per kilogram), even that can add up fast.
Is it risky to carry a cell phone in your pants pocket?
Maybe. One 2006 study found no link to testicular cancer, but other researchers suspect a link to male infertility. Ashok Agarwal, PhD, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, recently completed a study in which cell phones were set down for one hour in talk mode, next to sperm samples in test tubes. He found that the sperm's motility and viability were significantly reduced, and levels of harmful free radicals increased after exposure. Agarwal suggests storing the phone in your jacket pocket to reduce exposure to cell-phone radiation. Pregnant women need to take precautions too, because a recent study found that cell-phone use while pregnant is linked to behavioral problems in children.
Are kids more at risk?
"Yes, since children's nervous systems are still developing, and they have thinner scalps and skulls than adults, they should use cell phones only in emergencies," says Gene Barnett, MD, professor and director of the Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at the Cleveland Clinic. The association between childhood leukemia and exposure to EMFs like those from cell phones has led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to classify them as a "possible human carcinogen." The medical establishments in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all recommend severe restrictions on children's cell-phone use, with some experts going so far as to say that children under 16 shouldn't use cell phones at all. Make sure your kids opt for landlines when they're at home, and if you must buy them a cell phone for emergencies, get one with a low SAR number.
What about texting?
It's actually a safer way to communicate, says David O. Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. Since kids hold phones away from their bodies when texting, they're exposed to less radiation than when they have the phones to their ears. "We are very concerned about teen cell-phone use, fearing that we face an epidemic of brain tumors 10 to 20 years from now, and there are so few who are raising warning flags," says Dr. Carpenter. Make sure your teen keeps his cell phone turned off and stored in his backpack when it isn't in use, which will dramatically reduce exposure.
The 10 worst cell phones according to their SAR numbers:
1. Motorola V195s 1.6
2. Motorola Slvr L6 1.58
3. Motorola Slvr L2 1.54
4. Motorola W385 1.54
5. Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Sprint) 1.54
6. Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon) 1.54
7. Motorola Deluxe ic902 1.53
8. T-Mobile Shadow 1.53
9. Motorola i335 1.53
10. Samsung Sync SGH-C417 1.51
The 10 best cell phones according to their SAR numbers:
1. LG KG800 0.135
2. Motorola Razr V3x 0.14
3. Nokia 9300 0.21
4. Nokia N90 0.22
5. Samsung SGH-G800 0.23
6. Samsung Sync SGH-A707 0.236
7. Nokia 7390 0.26
8. Samsung SGH-T809 0.32
9. Bang & Olufsen Serene 0.33
10. Motorola Razr2 V8 0.36
Source: CNET.com, current as of May 22, 2008
4. CELL PHONE CANCER RISK DEBATED
(UW researcher sees vindication)
BY
TOM PAULSON
More than a decade ago, the University of Washington's Henry Lai and his colleague Narenda "N.P." Singh reported that cell phones appear to emit enough electromagnetic radiation to cause the kind of DNA damage to brain cells that can lead to cancer.
Few paid much attention, and mobile phone use exploded. But the UW scientists said they became targets of an industry strategy aimed at discrediting and suppressing studies raising health concerns about cell phone radiation.
"They even wrote letters to the UW trying to get me fired," said Lai, a gentle man who laughs easily despite being on the losing side in a war between business and science.
The latest skirmish to shine a spotlight on this battle – which has moved mostly to Europe because of lack of research funding for it in the U.S. – came last week when a prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Ronald Herberman at the University of Pittsburgh, warned parents against letting young children ever use cell phones.
"Recently, I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects, including cancer," Herberman wrote in an advisory that included brain imaging scans showing how radiation from cell phones penetrates much deeper into the heads of children compared with adults.
Herberman suggested that the electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phones should be of concern to adults as well, citing "unpublished data" from large studies done in Europe that – though not yet definitive – link cell phone use and brain cancers.
Lai, for his part, chuckled at the media frenzy Herberman caused.
"I guess it's only newsworthy when a cancer doctor, who hasn't done any of the research himself, discovers it," Lai said, grinning widely. "We've been saying this for more than a decade."
The UW bioengineering professor emphasized that there is no direct evidence showing that cell phone use causes cancer.
But in the decade since he was attacked by the cell phone industry – Motorola, to be specific – Lai said further epidemiological studies done in Europe show some indication of a cancer link.
Not everyone agrees.
"I consider it alarmist, premature and without any scientific basis," said Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a neuro-oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The most alarming studies aren't that credible, Chamberlain said, and the more credible studies done on the potential risk of cancer from cell phone use have failed to document any link.
Herberman's warnings, Chamberlain said, are basically hearsay and border on irresponsible. Brain cancer does appear to be on the increase, Chamberlain said, so it's important not to alarm the public without concrete scientific facts.
John Walls, a spokesman for the cell phone industry trade association CTIA, agreed and noted that numerous studies reviewed by the American Cancer Society, the Food and Drug Administration and other scientific organizations agree that the majority of research shows no convincing evidence of increased cancer rates among cell phone users.
"That may be due to the fact that so many of these studies have been done by scientists funded by the industry," countered Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, a newsletter devoted to getting the word out on evidence of harm from various kinds of electromagnetic radiation.
Given the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in the cell phone market, Slesin said, the industry is also trying to discredit or redirect the independent science in Europe.
Herberman, he said, was referring to the so-called Interphone study – a 13-country, $15 million European epidemiological study of tumor rates among cell phone users – which was completed in 2005 but remains unpublished because of disagreement among the scientists (some of them funded by industry) on how to interpret the results.
"Industry doesn't like the data," said Slesin, who has quoted some scientists who say the study clearly shows increased cancer rates among cell phone users. "The problem is that we still don't know and the science has been heavily politicized. Henry (Lai) was never alarmist. He just presented his findings and refused to budge from them."
That was in the mid-1990s. Lai and Singh published their findings of DNA damage in rats exposed to relatively low levels of the kind of radiation cell phone users get. At the time, the UW researchers had been working with Motorola, sharing findings and meeting the company's scientists.
"We thought they were collaborating and interested in the science," Singh said.
"We were naive," Lai said.
As they later discovered when an industry memo was leaked to Slesin, and published in 1997 in Microwave News, Motorola had secretly drafted a "war games" memo that aimed to use media relations, industry-paid scientists and any other means possible to discredit and suppress the scientists' findings.
One industry-sponsored scientist even wrote a letter to then-UW President Richard McCormick asking that Lai and Singh be fired, according to a UW spokesperson.
Motorola spokeswoman Paula Thornton Greear, in an e-mail to the Seattle P-I, denied that the company ever sought to suppress Lai's research but rather sought out independent review of the UW's findings.
She said: "It is noteworthy that, despite numerous attempts, other scientists have not been able to confirm Dr. Lai's claims of DNA breaks. In fact, recent scientific reviews have concluded that the weight of scientific evidence demonstrates that RF (radio frequency) exposure does not induce DNA breaks."
Lai noted with a chuckle that if you subtract from the literature all of the industry-funded scientific studies, most research shows evidence of health effects from cell phone use.
Scientists at other institutions they worked with lost funding and university positions as a result of this industry campaign. Lai said the UW, however, supported them despite the industry attacks, but the campaign succeeded in effectively eliminating independent studies of electromagnetism and health in the U.S.
"It's all being done in Europe now," he said.
Well, maybe not all of it. Dr. Sam Milham, a retired Washington state epidemiologist who has for many years studied the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, continues to pursue this question on his own time.
Milham, Lai and other international scientists have formed the BioInitiative Working Group dedicated to improving safety standards for exposure to electromagnetic radiation.
Milham has long believed that even household or office exposures to electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous. But it remains a hard sell, and a hard case to make scientifically.
"Look, people love their cell phones and microwave ovens," Milham said. "Nobody wants to hear this. And even though the corporations have cut off all the research money for this in the U.S., there's plenty of new data supporting this coming out of Europe."
Lai, however, emphasized that scientists still can't say with any certainty that using cell phones causes cancer. But he won't use a cell phone or a wireless headset, which he said puts out just as much radiation.
What the professor said he does know for certain, from personal experience, is the cell phone industry has worked hard to prevent science from resolving the uncertainty.
5. THE LIES OF HIROSHIMA LIVE ON, PROPS IN THE WAR CRIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
(The 1945 attack was murder on an epic scale. In its victims’ names, we must not allow a nuclear repeat in the Middle East)
BY
JOHN PILGER
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 for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. 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 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 had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.” Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”. For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient 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 and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart 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 US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the 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 Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.
Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus “war on terror”, the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current “threat”. But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.
The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America’s Defence Intelligence Estimate says “with high confidence” that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media “fact” that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.
This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.
In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country’s political and military establishment, threatened “an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland”. This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.
The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.
6. MAKING NUCLEAR EXTERMINATION RESPECTABLE
BY
JAMES PETRAS
On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians – 12 times the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi holocaust:
“Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Barring this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”
Morris is a frequent lecturer and consultant to the Israeli political and military establishment and has unique access to Israeli strategic military planners. Morris’ advocacy and public support of the massive, brutal expulsion of all Palestinians is on public record. Yet his genocidal views have not precluded his receiving numerous academic awards. His writings and views are published in Israel’s leading newspapers and journals. Morris’ views are not the idle ranting of a marginal psychopath, as witnessed by the recent publication of his latest op-ed article in the New York Times.
What does the publication by the New York Times of an article, which calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, tell us about US politics and culture? For it is the NYT, which informs the ‘educated classes’ in the US, its Sunday supplements, literary and editorial pages and which serves as the ‘moral conscience’ of important sectors of the cultural, economic and political elite.
The New York Times provides a certain respectability to mass murder, which Morris’ views otherwise would not possess if say, they were published in the neo-conservative weeklies or monthlies. The fact that the NYT considers the prospect of an Israeli mass extermination of millions of Iranians part of the policy debate in the Middle East reveals the degree to which Zionofascism has infected the ‘higher’ cultural and journalist circles of the United States. Truth to say, this is the logical outgrowth of the Times public endorsement of Israel’s economic blockade to starve 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza; the Times’ cover-up of Israeli-Zionist-AIPAC influence in launching the US invasion of Iraq leading to over one million murdered Iraqi citizens.
The Times sets the tone for the entire New York cultural scene, which privileges Israeli interests, to the point of assimilating into the US political discourse not only its routine violations of international law, but its threats, indeed promises, to scorch vast areas of the earth in pursuit of its regional supremacy. The willingness of the NYT to publish an Israeli genocide-ethnocide advocate tells us about the strength of the ties between a purportedly ‘liberal establishment’ pro-Israel publication and the totalitarian Israeli right: It is as if to say that for the liberal pro-Israel establishment, the nonJewish Nazis are off limits, but the views and policies of Judeo-fascists need careful consideration and possible implementation.
Morris’ New York Times ‘nuclear-extermination’ article did not provoke any opposition from the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) because, in its daily information bulletin, Daily Alert, it has frequently published articles by Israeli and US Zionists advocating an Israeli and/or US nuclear attack on Iran. In other words, Morris’ totalitarian views are part of the cultural matrix deeply embedded in the Zionist organizational networks and its extensive ‘reach’ in US cultural and political circles. What the Times did in publishing Morris’ lunacy has taken genocidal discourse out of the limited circulation of Zionist influentials and into the mainstream of millions of American readers.
Apart from a handful of writers (Gentile and Jewish) publishing in marginal web sites, there was no political or moral condemnation from the entire literary, political and journalistic world of this affront to our humanity. No attempt was made to link Morris’ totalitarian genocidal policies to Israel’s public official threats and preparations for nuclear war. There is no anti-nuclear campaign led by our most influential public intellectuals to repudiate the state (Israel) and its public intellectuals who prepare a nuclear war with the potential to exterminate more than ten times the number of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.
A nuclear incineration of the nation of Iran is the Israeli counterpart of Hitler’s gas chambers and ovens writ large. Extermination is the last stage of Zionism: Informed by the doctrine of rule the Middle East or ruin the air and land of the world. That is the explicit message of Benny Morris (and his official Israeli sponsors), who like Hitler, issues ultimatums to the Iranians, ‘surrender or be destroyed’ and who threatens the US, join us in bombing Iran or face a world ecological and economic catastrophe.
That Morris is utterly, starkly and clinically insane is beyond question. That the New York Times in publishing his genocidal ravings provides new signs of how power and wealth has contributed to the degeneration of Jewish intellectual and cultural life in the US. To comprehend the dimensions of this decay we need only compare the brilliant tragic-romantic German-Jewish writer, Walter Benjamin, desperately fleeing the advance of totalitarian Nazi terror to the Israeli-Jewish writer, Benny Morris’ criminal advocacy of Zionist nuclear terror published in the New York Times.
The question of Zionist power in America is not merely a question of a ‘lobby’ influencing Congressional and White House decisions concerning foreign aid to Israel. What is at stake today are the related questions of the advocacy of a nuclear war in which 70 million Iranians face extermination and the complicity of the US mass media in providing a platform, nay a certain political respectability for mass murder and global contamination. Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that ‘we did not know’ or ‘we weren’t notified’, because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment