Displacing and destroying peoples by colonisation is not just a historical Western evil but a global and contemporary one Lachlan McNamee In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China and established a client state called Manchukuo (Manchuria). To secure control over Manchuria, over the next 14 years, the Japanese government lured 270,000 settlers there by offering free… Read More Settler colonialism
By NORMAN SOLOMON In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title “Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979.” As you’d expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico… Read More Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings “nuclear tests”? The U.S. government said so
Japan has marked the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima where the mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the G7 leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”. On Sunday a peace bell tolled at 8.15am, the time the bomb was dropped. About 50,000 participants in the outdoor memorial ceremony… Read More On 78th anniversary of atomic bomb, Hiroshima mayor says nuclear deterrence ‘folly’
When the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, US President Harry Truman ordered American scientists to embark on a new programme to build a hydrogen bomb, whose nuclear explosion could be 1,000 times more powerful… Oppenheimer, the government’s chief scientific advisor on nuclear policy and defence, objected on moral and practical grounds, reportedly telling… Read More ‘The father of the atomic bomb’ spent his final days as a Caribbean castaway
First posted October 24, 2011 According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories, which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I… Read More Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
Justin McCurry “It is broadly about what’s going on in the world … about the climate crisis and what we should do about it,” Saito said in an interview with the Guardian. “I advocate for degrowth and going beyond capitalism.” Kohei Saito’s book Capital in the Anthropocene has become an unlikely hit among young people… Read More Karl Marx in the Anthropocene: the post-capitalist, green manifesto captivating Japan
As a child, Wishma Rathnayake was fascinated with “Oshin,” a popular 1980s’ television drama about a young girl who rises from poverty to head a Japanese supermarket chain. Urged by her father to emulate her hero, Rathnayake started learning Japanese with a dream of one day moving to Japan from the small Sri Lankan town of Gampaha,… Read More Her dream to teach English in Japan ended with a lesson for the country. By Emiko Jozuka
Jacques Pauwels: Mythmaking and the Atomic Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Truman and his advisors thus fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence”. They convinced themselves that the new weapon would enable them to force their will on the Soviet Union. The… Read More August 6 & 9, Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Mythmaking and Atomic Destruction / Blinded by the Light: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Leave Truth to the police and us; we know the Good; We build the Perfect City time shall never alter; Our Law shall guard you always like a cirque of mountains… (p 266) But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by… Read More Journey To A War by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (1939) // W. H. Auden 'In Time of War' (1939)
After the truth-shower 