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Vertaal:
              De leugens van Hiroshima zijn de leugens van vandaag
Vrijdag, 19 September, 2008 Door John Pilger | In een artikel voor de Beschermer op de verjaardag van het laten vallen van de atoombom op Hiroshima op 6 Augustus, 1945, beschrijft John Pilger de vooruitgang `van leugens' van het stof van die doen ontploffen stad, aan de oorlogen van vandaag de - en bedreigde aanval op Iran. Toen I eerst naar Hiroshima in 1967 ging, nog daar was de schaduw op de stappen. Het was een bijna perfecte indruk van een menselijk wezen bij gemak: de benen verwijdden zich, achterneiging, één hand door haar kant aangezien zij het wachten op een te openen bank zat. Bij een kwart voorbij acht op de ochtend van 6 Augustus, werden 1945, zij en haar silhouet gebrand in het graniet. Ik staarde bij de schaduw voor een uur of meer, dan liep neer aan de rivier en ontmoette een mens genoemd Yukio, de waarvan borst nog met het patroon van het overhemd werd geëtstn hij droeg toen de atoombom werd gelaten vallen. Hij en zijn familie leefden nog in een keet die omhoog in het stof van een atoomwoestijn wordt geworpen. Hij beschreef een reusachtige flits over de stad, een „blauwachtig licht, iets als elektro kort“, waarna blies de wind als tornado en de zwarte regen viel. „Ik werd geworpen ter plaatse en opmerkte slechts de stelen van mijn bloemen werden verlaten. Alles was nog en stil, en toen ik opstond, waren er naakte mensen, zeggend om het even wat niet. Wat van hen hadden geen huid of haar. Ik was bepaald ik was dood.“ Negen later jaar, toen ik terugkeerde om hem te zoeken, was hij dood van leukemie. In de directe nasleep van de bom, verboden de verenigde beroepsautoriteiten al vermelding van stralingsvergiftiging en drongen erop aan dat de mensen waren gedood of slechts door de ontploffing van de bom verwond. Het was eerste groot ligt. „Geen radioactiviteit in de ruïne van Hiroshima“ zei de voorpagina van de New York Times, een schrijver uit de klassieke oudheid van desinformatie en journalistic abdicatie, die de Australische verslaggever Wilfred Burchett net met zijn lepel van de eeuw zette. „ik schrijf dit als waarschuwing aan de wereld,“ gemelde Burchett in Dagelijkse Uitdrukkelijk, hebben bereiktd Hiroshima na een gevaarlijke reis, de eerste correspondent om te durven. 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. With thanks to William Blum Have Your Say: The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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