TokyoProgressive August 2006

JAPAN AND ASIA

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Immunity of Non-Combatants and Myth of Good Intentions: 61 Years After Hiroshima/Nagasaki
…Truman initially “attempted to minimize the impression that civilians had been attacked with the atomic bomb.” His first press release had identified Hiroshima as “an important Japanese military base,” ignoring that the bomb had targeted the city’s civilian center in order to maximize civilian casualties….Most recently, the U.S. and Israel have taken the World War II pattern of city and infrastructure bombing and applied it to Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, Israel launched an air and limited ground attack on the sovereign state of Lebanon, using as a pretext the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Shiite Hizbollah fighters in south Lebanon. The Israeli plan, cleared months in advance with the Bush administration, was to destroy Lebanon’s communications system, roads, bridges, oil depots, factories, buildings and homes, and kill large numbers of Lebanese civilians–all in the mad hope of turning the Christian and Sunni populations against Hizbollah.

Read more:
Herbert Bix: Myth of Good Intentions

Iran, North Korea, Israel, Hiroshima: Media’s Love-Hate for Nuclear Weapons
…By all credible accounts, Tehran is at least several years—and probably more like a full decade—away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. But America’s top officials and leading pundits have been sounding urgent alarms. Judging from the frequent denunciations of some countries for alleged plans to build a nuclear arsenal, you might think that the U.S. media are down on nuclear weapons. Not so. Red-white-and-blue nuclear weaponry has been depicted by U.S. news media as a reassuring guarantor of national security—or at worst an unfortunate necessity—since the nuclear age went public 61 years ago with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima…

Read more:
Solomon:Nuclear Love-Hate

and:

Forced to ‘Choose’ its Own Subjugation: Okinawa’s Place in U.S. Global Military Realignment

http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2202

Japan’s Quake Standards Fall Victim to Greed
By Michael Zielenziger
http://www.jpri.org/members/zielenziger_LAT_0406.html

Rightist textbook adopted for use by public junior high school in Tokyo
http://www.japan-press.co.jp/2490/education.html

Edinburgh International Film Festival Returns Israeli Money in response to Boycott Plans
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/EIFF.html
【重大発表エジンバラ国際映画祭が、ボイコット計画に呼応してイスラエル出資金を返却】Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
http://blog.livedoor.jp/awtbrigade/archives/50360926.html

【ギリシャがイスラエルの映画祭から撤収】The Daily Star, Lebanon(2006/8/2)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/awtbrigade/archives/50355819.html

WAR & PEACE. TERRORISM, AND THE POLICE STATE IN OUR MIDST
Terrorism. Lebanon. Israel and Palestine. Issues in the news, and yet how little of the information one gets from the news media is reliable. if there is one thing that is striking is that almost no-one in the mainstream media is connecting the rise of “terrrorist threats” with the ongoing policies of death and destruction of the Bush and Blair regime. Israel and the West are portrayed as innocent victims of a culture war. As was true after 9-11, we are still expected to believe that envy or resentment of our freedoms is what it is all about. That all 3 countries do retain the rhetoric of democracies and and an almost fanatical faith in their status as democracies, and since those who do not challenge the prevailing assumptions are rarely on the receiving end of repression, it is easy for the average television viewer to conclude, falsely, that democracy is under attack from cultures that do not share “our” democractic values.

TokyoProgressive does not pretend to know all there is to know about these issues, but in the interest of counterbalanacing the assumptions and biases of the mainstream media, which are clearly those of the elites, we present the following commentaries by Americans, Israelies, and British writers who do not buy into the prevailing assumptions. Inclusion here, as always, does not automatically mean we endorse evereything the individual writers say. Nor does it mean there may not be other voices worthy of being heard. Their inclusion here, IS intended, however, underscore how the mainstream media systematically denies its audience an opportunity to learn what is really happening or, at least, that there are views other than those the mainstream media and those in power would like you to know about.

Feel free to join the forum and post your comments as well.

Terrorism: The Real Threat We Face In Britain Is Blair
On 12 August, the Guardian published an editorial (“The challenge for us all”), which waffled about how “a significant number of young people have been alienated from the [Muslim] culture”, but spent not a word on how Blair’s Middle East disaster was the source of their alienation. A polite pretence is always preferred in describing British policy, elevating “misguided” and “inappropriate” and suppressing criminal behaviour.

Read more:
Pilger: Blair is Terrorist Threat

Also:
We should be sceptical about this alleged plot, and wary of politicians who seek to benefit
(Written by the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan)

Noam Chomsky on Media Treatment of Israeli attacks on Lebanon
The posture of outrage over the capture of Israeli soldiers is cynical fraud, facts underscored by the (null) reaction to the regular Israeli practice over many years of kidnapping Lebanese. It also follows at once that there is no moral legitimacy to either of the two major escalations against the populations of Gaza and Lebanon. And of course if we look at the ratio of killings, it’s overwhelmingly US-Israel, always….

Read more:
Chomsky: Attack on Lebanon

“Are Israel and Jews” Synonymous? and AIPAC Congratulates Self on Slaughter
Notice how few, even in the anti-war contingent had the courage to speak out…Some organizations are just shilling for the Israeli government -no matter what it does-out of both tribal loyalty and political fealty to neo-con/Likudnik politics, a perspective which enjoys unrivalled and disproportionate access to the media and its think-alike punditocracy. Some are just money generating mechanisms sending money to Israel, a developed county that gets $3 billion dollars annually in US aid intended for developing nations. The Federation which supports many social service just sent millions. One wonders how much of this will go to Israeli Arabs who have also had homes bombed?

Read more:
Schechter and Walsh: AIPAC

Uri Avnery: From Mania to Depression
At the head of the critics are marching–surprise, surprise–the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war–they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war…..The brain-washing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish–I would almost say “criminal”–operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians. And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.

Read more:
Avnery: Madness

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