Unbelievable footage of A-Bomb destruction within a couple weeks of the disaster. I strongly recommend watching the 4 minute clip. It is shocking:
Yosuke Takashima and Kentaro Yamano. 2016. Hiroshima, Nagasaki release Soviet footage of A-bomb damage. THE ASAHI SHIMBUN August 5, 2016 http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201608050061.htmlHow could anyone even think about using such a weapon after seeing this footage? Today's most powerful nuclear weapons are much more devastating.
Rare footage documenting the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shot by former Soviet researchers only months after the U.S. atomic bombings in 1945 were released to media representatives on Aug. 4.
Sergei Naryshkin, chairman of the Russian State Duma, presented the five-minute black-and-white footage on a DVD when he met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo in June. It is voiced over with Russian narration.... Officials at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum believe that the Nagasaki portion was shot on Sept. 16, 1945. They said it represents the earliest known video of the destroyed city after the one taken by the U.S. military on Sept. 8 and 9.
Early atomic bomb footage was censored so I wonder how the Russians came upon the clip available at the Asahi Shimbun cited above. Greg Mitchell writes about the history of this cover up here:
The Tragic 'Atomic Cover-up" http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-new-book-atomic-cover-up-reveals.htmlJapan's powerful LDP party has recently declared that the nation will not possess nuclear weapons, although the new hawkish Defense Minister (a woman) stated explicitly that Japan retains the constitutional power to use them if necessary:
Abe rules out nukes but new defense minister. “Abe rules out possibility that Japan will possess nuclear weapons”Aug 6, 2016, http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20
160806/p2a/00m/0na/012000c
HIROSHIMA -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ruled out the possibility on Aug. 6 that Japan will arm itself with nuclear weapons in the future. "There is no way that Japan will either possess nuclear weapons or consider possessing such arms," Abe told a news conference in Hiroshima.
At a press conference on Aug. 3, newly appointed Defense Minister Tomomi Inada stopped short of denying the possibility that Japan will possess nuclear weapons in the future. "Under the Constitution, there are no restrictions on the types of weapons that Japan can possess as the minimum necessary," she said.
Regarding the defense minister's remarks, Prime Minister Abe said, "Her statement is consistent with the government's policy. I'd like her to do her best as a member of the Abe Cabinet to achieve a world without nuclear weapons."I've written about the hawkish turn encoded in Japan's proposed constitutional revisions (here). The turn right has been facilitated by North Korea's theater of the absurd as that renegade country launches missiles into, or adjacent to, Japan's territorial waters:
Ju-min Park and James Pearson. 2016. Latest North Korea missile launch lands near Japan waters, alarms Tokyo. Reuters, August 3, 2016: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missile-idUSKCN10D2Q8Adding to regional tensions are proposed joint military training exercises by China and Russia in the South China Sea:
North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Wednesday that landed in or near Japanese-controlled waters for the first time, the latest in a series of launches by the isolated country in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The main body of the missile landed in Japan's economic exclusion zone, a Japanese defence official said, escalating regional tensions that were already high after a series of missile launches this year and the decision by the United States to place a sophisticated anti-missile system in South Korea.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the launch as a "grave threat" to Japan and said Tokyo "strongly protested". Japan also said its self-defence force would remain on alert in case of further launches.
Tom Benner. June 5, 2016.Tensions escalate over South China Sea claims. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/tensions-escalate-south-china-sea-claims-160605065515637.html
Singapore - Asia's largest defence summit concluded on Sunday amid growing fears of a legal and military showdown in the South China Sea over China's rapid construction of artificial islands with ports, airstrips and helipads in one of the world's most bitterly contested waterways.
At the weekend-long Shangri-La Dialogue , Chinese military officials vowed to ignore a legal ruling expected in the next few weeks by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a Philippines' challenge to China's growing assertiveness in the key sea route between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.... The Hague court is expected to rule on the legality of the so-called "nine-dash line", China's cartographic marker that it uses to claim territorial rights over most of the resource-rich sea.
China's claimed sovereignty stretches hundreds of kilometres to the south and east of its most southerly province of Hainan, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. The nine-dash line, first shown on a 1947 Chinese map, carves out an area that runs deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, and overlaps claims from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China has boycotted The Hague tribunal's proceedings and instead wants bilateral talks with rival claimants, all of which lack China's economic and military prowess.The footage of Hiroshim and Nagasaki demonstrates very clearly that war is utterly INSANE and GENOCIDAL yet the major world powers are taking us to the brink once again.....
Meanwhile, the US has stepped up military patrols and exercises in the South China Sea, and pledges to ensure freedom of navigation and flight - acts that China considers provocative and targeted at its sovereignty and security interests.
It's pure insanity; global leaders pursuing nuclear weapons (and energy) are freaking insane. Climate risks are too high.
ReplyDeleteWe are turning into radioactive chemical mush
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to believe what the United States did to Japan. Nuked em. Destroyed 80 percent of their cities. Then they pushed them into an industrial wasteland. Pushed them into relying on nuclear power. One of the most earthquake prone places on earth. Now Fukushima. We in america have lived in this horrible lie for more than 70 years
ReplyDeleteWhat is it about Harry Truman that we do not know? He was on a ship when word came of the Hiroshima atom bomb detonation. He expressed satisfaction and then went to a movie. This is not exactly normal behavior. When his daughter's singing was criticized he became very worked up -- but bodies of other men's children burnt to a crisp did not effect him. Was he just an unimaginative and ambitious politician very much out of his depth on the world stage? It seems after he became president he made one bad decision after another starting with the atomic bombs and concluding with the Korean conflict for which he never asked for or got Congressional approval. Perhaps Missouri was just too remote from the rest of the world for the man to ever develop a sense of that world. It was an abstraction devoid of real people--Japs were not real people; the Germans maybe a little more so. He needed money to get elected so he decided to recognize Israel. Marshall Plan moneys to France went to armed conflict in Vietnam that went on for years with the French. Etc. His most famous quote was, The buck stops here. Hilary Clinton has found a new meaning for that. When Harry was born America was still killing Indians to make them good. Nothing the USA does should surprise us. I believe it was the Latin poet Catullus who wrote, Nothing human is alien to me. That may take some work.
ReplyDeleteThe Polonium in that bomb,
ReplyDeletecame from Monsanto.
They supplied also the Vanderbilt University in
Nashville with radioactive iron for experiments on human beeings between 1945-1947.
The scientists administer that radioactive iron
to almost 900 pregnant women, to scrutiny
the impact of radioactivity on the human body
and the fetus !
(http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/enthuellungen/dr-joseph-mercola/die-schaurige-geschichte-von-monsantos-aufstieg-zur-macht.html;jsessionid=99857AA152E23DEB81CADC212A867CDC)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/08/wake-up-these-unneeded-instruments-can-wreck-mass-destruction/
ReplyDeleteThe detonation of those nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a big leap backwards for humanity. Same for the atoms for peace program. We will likely not recover. All the mythos and brainwashing and fairey tales they have had to manufacture and maintain all these years. A scourge to caring and loving people they have been and are.
ReplyDeletePotential radioactive mess arising in Greenland
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/radioactive-cold-war-military-base-will-soon-emerge-greenlands-melting-ice-180960036/
https://nuclear-news.net/2016/08/05/chemical-and-radioactive-waste-could-be-exposed-as-ice-thaws-over-abandoned-military-site-in-greenland/
The nuclear security state has created only insecurity. It has generated more death, chaos,and alarming cancer rates than we shall ever know.
ReplyDeleteThe Russian Video is alarming. Most manmade structures flattened. Some just severely damaged. Think of all the waste at Hanford, at Los Alamos, at westlake dump by St Louis. That's what went into making those two evil bombs. They have killed, and are killing more than just those where the bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for their thoughtful comments.
ReplyDelete