thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-08-04--Another Hiroshima is coming — unless we stop it now.

As usual , the pathetically corrupt and complicit American media fuels the hatred toward China instead of defusing it through truthful reporting .
hen 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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or more , then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties .
I met a man called Yukio , whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped .
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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 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 , I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukaemia .
`` No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruins '' saidfront page on 13 September , 1945 , a classic of planted disinformation .
`` General Farrell , '' reported William H. Lawrence , `` . ''
Only one reporter , Wilfred Burchett , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing , in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities , which controlled the `` press pack '' .
`` I write this as a warning to the world , '' reported Burchett in the London Daily Express of September 5,1945 .
Sitting in the rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter , he described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries who were dying from what he called `` an atomic plague '' .
For this , his press accreditation was withdrawn , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witness to the truth was never forgiven .
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality .
It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of America 's war propaganda in the 21st century , casting a new enemy , and target - China .
During the 75 years since Hiroshima , the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to save lives .
`` Even without 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 [ against Japan ] and even if no invasion had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Archives in Washington contains documented 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 made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace , including `` capitulation even if the terms were hard '' .
Nothing was done .
The US Secretary of War , Henry Stimson , told President Truman he was `` fearful '' that the US Air Force would have Japan so `` bombed out '' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able `` to show its strength '' .
Stimson later admitted that `` no effort was made , and none was seriously considered , to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [ atomic ] bomb '' .
Stimson 's foreign policy colleagues -- looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping `` in our image '' , as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it -- made clear they were eager `` to browbeat the Russians with the [ atomic ] bomb held rather ostentatiously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Groves , director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic 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 Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the `` overwhelming success '' of `` the experiment '' .
The `` experiment '' continued long after the war was over .
Between 1946 and 1958 , the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years .
The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic .
During the filming of my documentary , The Coming War on China , I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls .
It was here that the United States exploded the world 's first Hydrogen Bomb .
It remains poisoned earth .
My shoes registered `` unsafe '' on my Geiger counter .
Palm trees stood in unworldly formations .
There were no birds .
I trekked through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at 6.45 on the morning of March 1 , 1954 , the button was pushed .
The sun , which had risen , rose again and vaporised an entire island in the lagoon , leaving a vast black hole , which from the air is a menacing spectacle : a deathly void in a place of beauty .
The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and `` unexpectedly '' .
The official history claims `` the wind changed suddenly '' .
It was the first of many lies , as declassified documents and the victims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site , said , `` They knew where the radioactive fall-out was going to go .
Even on the day of the shot , they still had an opportunity to evacuate people , but [ people ] were not evacuated ; I was not evacuated… The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of radiation would do . ''
Like Hiroshima , the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the lives of large numbers of people .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a scientific study of mice and became an experiment on `` human beings exposed to the radiation of a nuclear weapon '' .
The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 -- like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in the 1960s and 70s -- suffered from a range of cancers , commonly thyroid cancer ; thousands had already died .
Miscarriages and stillbirths were common ; those babies who lived were often deformed horribly .
Unlike Bikini , nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test .
Directly downwind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it rained what first appeared to be snowflakes .
Food and water were contaminated ; and the population fell victim to cancers .
That is still true today .
I met Nerje Joseph ( right ) , who showed me a photograph of herself as a child on Rongelap .
She had terrible facial burns and much of her was hair missing .
`` We were bathing at the well on the day the bomb exploded , '' she said .
`` White dust started falling from the sky .
I reached to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as soap to wash our hair .
A few days later , my hair started falling out . ''
Lemoyo Abon said , `` Some of us were in agony .
Others had diarrhoea .
We were terrified .
We thought it must be the end of the world . ''
US official archive film I included in my film refers to the islanders as `` amenable savages '' .
In the wake of the explosion , a US Atomic Energy Agency official is seen boasting that Rongelap `` is by far the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adding , `` it will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment . ''
American scientists , including medical doctors , built distinguished careers studying the `` human uptake ' .
There they are in flickering film , in their white coats , attentive with their clipboards .
When an islander died in his teens , his family received a sympathy card from the scientist who studied him .
I have reported from five nuclear `` ground zeros '' throughout the world -- in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia .
Even more than my experience as a war correspondent , this has taught me about the ruthlessness and immorality of great power : that is , imperialpower , whose cynicism is the true enemy of humanity .
This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert .
In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed : `` A British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957 '' .
On the rim of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as far as the eye could see , and beyond , the ground was irradiated .
Raw plutonium lay about , scattered like talcum powder : plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 per cent chance of cancer .
The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians , for whom there was no warning .
According to an official account , if they were lucky `` they were shooed off like rabbits '' .
Today , an unprecedented campaign of propaganda @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric , which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric .
Anything Chinese is bad , anathema , a threat : Wuhan ... .
Huawei .
How confusing it is when `` our '' most reviled leader says so .
The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama , who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two .
Suddenly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This was nonsense , of course .
What was threatened was America 's unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest , the most successful , the most `` indispensable '' nation .
What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully -- with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed , their governments overthrown , their elections interfered with , their resources plundered .
Obama 's declaration became known as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State , Hillary Clinton , who , as WikiLeaks revealed , wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean `` the American Sea '' .
Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering , Obama was a maestro of marketing .
`` I state clearly and with conviction , '' said the new president in 2009 , `` that America ’ s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons . ''
Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A `` usable '' nuclear weapon was developed .
Known as the B61 Model 12 , it means , according to General James Cartwright , former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , that `` going smaller [ makes its use ] more thinkable '' .
The target is China .
Today , more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles , bombers , warships and nuclear weapons .
From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia , Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US strategist told me , `` the perfect noose '' .
A study by the RAND Corporation – which , since Vietnam , has planned America ’ s wars – is entitled War with China : Thinking Through the Unthinkable .
Commissioned by the US Army , the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist , Herman Kahn – `` thinking the unthinkable '' .
Kahn ’ s book , On Thermonuclear War , elaborated a plan for a `` winnable '' nuclear war .
Kahn 's apocalyptic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of State Mike Pompeo , an evangelical fanatic who believes in the `` rapture of the End '' .
He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive .
`` I was CIA director , '' he boasted , `` We lied , we cheated , we stole .
It was like we had entire training courses . ''
Pompeo 's obsession is China .
The endgame of Pompeo 's extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media , where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare , as were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racism is the sub-text of this propaganda .
Classified `` yellow '' even though they were white , the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an `` exclusion act '' from entering the United States , because they were Chinese .
Popular culture declared them sinister , untrustworthy , `` sneaky '' , depraved , diseased , immoral .
An Australian magazine , The Bulletin , was devoted to promoting fear of the `` yellow peril '' as if all of Asia was about to fall down on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gravity .
‘ The Chinese Octopus ’ , The Bulletin , Sydney 1886 , an early promoter of the `` Yellow Peril '' and other stereotypes .
As the historian Martin Powers writes , acknowledging China 's modernism , its secular morality and `` contributions to liberal thought threatened European face , so it became necessary to suppress China 's role in the Enlightenment debate ... .
For centuries , China 's threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting . ''
In the Sydney Morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as `` rats , flies , mosquitoes and sparrows '' .
Hartcher , who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon , likes to interpret the `` dreams '' of the current Chinese elite , to which he is apparently privy .
These are inspired by yearnings for the `` Mandate of Heaven '' of 2,000 years ago .
Ad nauseam .
To combat this `` mandate '' , the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the most secure countries on earth , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to hundreds of billions of dollars ' worth of American missiles that can be fired at China .
The trickledown is already evident .
In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians , Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders .
Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket .
Between April and June , there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians .
`` We are not your enemy , '' a high-ranking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but if you [ in the West ] decide we are , we must prepare without delay . ''
China ’ s arsenal is small compared with America ’ s , but it is growing fast , especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships .
`` For the first time , '' wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists , `` China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy… '' In Washington , I met Amitai Etzioni , distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University , who wrote that a `` blinding attack on China '' was planned , `` with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [ by the Chinese ] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons , thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [ that would ] lead to nuclear war . ''
In 2019 , the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War , much of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an `` Air-Sea Battle Concept for China '' – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China ’ s access to oil , gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa .
It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands .
In Shanghai , I met Lijia Zhang , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a new class of outspoken mavericks .
Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great !
Having grown up in the chaotic , brutal Cultural Revolution , she has travelled and lived in the US and Europe .
`` Many Americans imagine , '' she said , `` that Chinese people live a miserable , repressed life with no freedom whatsoever .
The [ idea of ] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 600 million . ''
Modern China 's epic achievements , its defeat of mass poverty , and the pride and contentment of its people ( measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew ) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West .
This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting .
China 's repressive dark side and what we like to call its `` authoritarianism '' are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively .
It is as if we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu .
And it is time we asked why : before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima .
Director John Pilger : Disastrous consequences if US proceeds with “ policy of provocation ”

As usual, the pathetically corrupt and complicit American media fuels the hatred toward China instead of defusing it through truthful reporting.
W
hen 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 I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties.
I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped. 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, I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukaemia.
The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a "threat". This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America's unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most "indispensable" nation .
denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity
"No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruins" saidfront page on 13 September, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. "General Farrell," reported William H. Lawrence, "."
Only one reporter, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian, had braved the perilous journey to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities, which controlled the "press pack".
"I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the London Daily Express of September 5,1945. Sitting in the rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter, he described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague".
For this, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His witness to the truth was never forgiven.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of America's war propaganda in the 21st century, casting a new enemy, and target - China.
During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to 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 [against Japan] and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
The National Archives in Washington contains documented 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 made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Nothing was done.
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". Stimson later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [atomic] bomb".
Stimson's foreign policy colleagues -- looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping "in our image", as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it -- made clear they were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic 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 Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".
The "experiment" continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.
The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world's first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered "unsafe" on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.
I trekked through the jungle to the concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the morning of March 1, 1954, the button was pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again and vaporised an entire island in the lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which from the air is a menacing spectacle: a deathly void in a place of beauty.
The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and "unexpectedly". The official history claims "the wind changed suddenly". It was the first of many lies, as declassified documents and the victims’ testimony reveal.
Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site, said, "They knew where the radioactive fall-out was going to go. Even on the day of the shot, they still had an opportunity to evacuate people, but [people] were not evacuated; I was not evacuated… The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of radiation would do."
Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the lives of large numbers of people. This was Project 4.1, which began as a scientific study of mice and became an experiment on "human beings exposed to the radiation of a nuclear weapon".
The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 -- like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in the 1960s and 70s -- suffered from a range of cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; thousands had already died. Miscarriages and stillbirths were common; those babies who lived were often deformed horribly.
Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test. Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap's skies darkened and it rained what first appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water were contaminated; and the population fell victim to cancers. That is still true today.
I met Nerje Joseph (right), who showed me a photograph of herself as a child on Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns and much of her was hair missing. "We were bathing at the well on the day the bomb exploded," she said. "White dust started falling from the sky. I reached to catch the powder. We used it as soap to wash our hair. A few days later, my hair started falling out."
Lemoyo Abon said, "Some of us were in agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were terrified. We thought it must be the end of the world."
US official archive film I included in my film refers to the islanders as "amenable savages". In the wake of the explosion, a US Atomic Energy Agency official is seen boasting that Rongelap "is by far the most contaminated place on earth", adding, "it will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment."
American scientists, including medical doctors, built distinguished careers studying the "human uptake'. There they are in flickering film, in their white coats, attentive with their clipboards. When an islander died in his teens, his family received a sympathy card from the scientist who studied him.
I have reported from five nuclear "ground zeros" throughout the world -- in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia. Even more than my experience as a war correspondent, this has taught me about the ruthlessness and immorality of great power: that is, imperialpower, whose cynicism is the true enemy of humanity.
This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed: "A British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957". On the rim of the crater was this sign:
For as far as the eye could see, and beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 per cent chance of cancer.
The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom there was no warning. According to an official account, if they were lucky "they were shooed off like rabbits".
Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan .... Huawei. How confusing it is when "our" most reviled leader says so.
The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a "threat". This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America's unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most "indispensable" nation.
What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully -- with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown, their elections interfered with, their resources plundered.
Obama's declaration became known as the "pivot to Asia". One of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed, wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean "the American Sea".
Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing. "I state clearly and with conviction," said the new president in 2009, "that America’s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."
Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since the end of the Cold War. A "usable" nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means, according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that "going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable".
The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one US strategist told me, "the perfect noose".
A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn – "thinking the unthinkable". Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a "winnable" nuclear war.
Kahn's apocalyptic view is shared by Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical fanatic who believes in the "rapture of the End". He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive. "I was CIA director," he boasted, "We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses." Pompeo's obsession is China.
The endgame of Pompeo's extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media, where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda. Classified "yellow" even though they were white, the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an "exclusion act" from entering the United States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister, untrustworthy, "sneaky", depraved, diseased, immoral.
An Australian magazine, The Bulletin, was devoted to promoting fear of the "yellow peril" as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only colony by the force of gravity.
‘The Chinese Octopus’, The Bulletin, Sydney 1886, an early promoter of the "Yellow Peril" and other stereotypes.
As the historian Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China's modernism, its secular morality and "contributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China's role in the Enlightenment debate .... For centuries, China's threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting."
In the Sydney Morning Herald, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as "rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows". Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret the "dreams" of the current Chinese elite, to which he is apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the "Mandate of Heaven" of 2,000 years ago. Ad nauseam.
To combat this "mandate", the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American missiles that can be fired at China.
The trickledown is already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.
"We are not your enemy," a high-ranking strategist in China told me, "but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay." China’s arsenal is small compared with America’s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.
"For the first time," wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, "China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy…"
In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote that a "blinding attack on China" was planned, "with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war."
In 2019, the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an "Air-Sea Battle Concept for China" – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.
It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.
In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great! Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the US and Europe. "Many Americans imagine," she said, "that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million."
Modern China's epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting.
China's repressive dark side and what we like to call its "authoritarianism" are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.
www.johnpilger.com
@johnpilger
John Richard Pilger is a distinguished Australian journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. Pilger is a strong critic of American, Australian, and British foreign policy, which he [rightly] considers to be driven by an imperialist and colonialist agenda. is a distinguished Australian journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. Pilger is a strong critic of American, Australian, and British foreign policy, which he [rightly] considers to be driven by an imperialist and colonialist agenda.
Addendum
Director John Pilger: Disastrous consequences if US proceeds with “policy of provocation”


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-08-05--Unsung Heroes of Los Alamos: Rethinking Manhattan Project Spies and the Cold War

years ago before dawn on July 16 , 1945 , a cataclysmic explosion shook the New Mexico desert as scientists from the top-secret Manhattan Project tested their nightmarish creation : the first atom bomb , called “ the Gadget.
” This birth of the Nuclear Age , was quickly followed a few weeks later , first on August 6 by the dropping of a U-235 atom bomb on Hiroshima , a non-military city of 225,000 , and then , three days after that on Aug. 9 , by the dropping of a somewhat more powerful Plutonium atom bomb on Nagasaki @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The resulting slaughter of some 200,000 mostly civilian Japanese men , women and children naturally leads to talk of the horrors of those weapons and to discussions about whether they should have been used on Japan instead of being demonstrated on an uninhabited target .
What goes unmentioned , however , as we mark each important anniversary of these horrific events — the initial Trinity test in Alamogordo , the “ Little Boy ” bombing of Hiroshima and the “ Fat Man ” plutonium bombing of Nagasaki — is that , incredibly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a total of nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons , not one has been used in war to kill human beings since the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9 , 1945 .
And that ’ s not all .
Over those same 75 years , despite seven and a half decades of intense hostility and rivalry , as well as some major proxy wars , between great powers like the US and USSR , and the US and China , no two superpower nations have gone to war against each other .
The reason for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ catastrophic conflict of the type so common throughout human history is the same in both cases : No country dares to risk the use of a nuclear weapon because of the fear it could lead other nuclear nations to use theirs , and no major power dares to go to war against another major power because it is obvious that any war between two such nations would very quickly go nuclear .
Things could have gone very differently , however , with the dawn of the nuclear age .
At the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s unchallenged superpower .
It had emerged from war with its industrial base undamaged while Europe , the Soviet Union , Japan and much of China and were all smoking ruins , their dead numbering in the tens of millions .
The US also had a monopoly on a new super weapon — the atom bomb — a weapon capable of vaporizing a city .
And this country had demonstrated that it had no moral compunction about using its terrible new weapon of mass destruction .
Some important scientists involved in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its construction secrets with America ’ s ally in the war against the Axis powers , the Soviet Union .
These scientists , many of them Nobel-winning physicists , said negotiations should begin immediately at that point to eliminate nuclear weapons for all time , just as germ and chemical weapons had already been banned ( successfully as the history of WWII showed ) .
But military and civilian leaders in Washington balked at the idea of sharing the bombs ’ secrets .
In fact , after Bohr ’ s visit , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nobelist Nils Bohr , one of the Los Alamos scientists who directly pleaded with him to bring the Russians into the bomb project , and even considered barring him from leaving the US .
The Truman administration considered deporting Leo Szilard , and after Robert Oppenheimer proposed to Truman the sharing of the bomb with the Russians , his top-secret security clearance was revoked .
Instead of sharing the bomb with the USSR , which , remember , was America ’ s ally in World War II , and then working for its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dozens and eventually hundreds of Nagasaki-sized atom bombs , moving quickly from hand-made devices to mass produced ones .
The US also quickly started pursuing the development of a vastly more powerful bomb — the thermonuclear Hydrogen bomb — a weapon that theoretically has no limits to how great its destructive power could be .
( A one-megaton bomb typical of some of the larger warheads in the US arsenal today is 30 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki . )
Why this obsession with creating a stockpile of atomic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a country but the whole earth at such a time as the end of WWII ?
The war was over and American scientists and intelligence analysts were predicting that the war-ravaged Soviet Union would need years and perhaps a decade to produce its own bomb , yet the US was going full tilt building an explosive arsenal that quickly dwarfed all the explosives used in the last two world wars combined .
What was the purpose of building so many bombs ?
One hint comes from the fact that the US also , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producing the B-29 Super Fortress — planes like the Enola Gay that delivered the first atomic bomb to Hiroshima — and de-mothballing and refurbishing hundreds that had been built and declared surplussed right at the war ’ s end .
A B-29 could only carry one plutonium or two uranium bombs for any significant distance .
But the US was building several thousand of them in peacetime .
Why ?
The answer , according to a 1987 book , To Win a Nuclear War authored by nuclear physicists Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to launch a devastating nuclear first strike blitz on the Soviet Union as soon as it could build and deliver the 300 nuclear bombs that Pentagon strategists believed would be needed to destroy the Soviet Union as an industrial society and its Red Army as well , eliminating any possibility of the USSR responding by sweeping over war-ravaged western Europe .
And the B-29 was at the time the only plane they had which could deliver the bombs .
This genocidal nightmare envisioned by Truman and the Pentagon ’ s nuclear madmen never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constructing the bombs meant that the 300 weapons and the planes to deliver them would not be ready until early 1950 .
Meanwhile , Russia ’ s first bomb , a plutonium device that was a virtual carbon copy of the “ Fat Man ” bomb dropped on Nagasaki , was successfully exploded on August 29 , 1949 , in a test that caught the US by complete surprise .
At that point the idea of a deadly first strike was dropped ( or at least deferred indefinitely ) by Truman and Pentagon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Assured Destruction ( MAD ) had arrived , and according to Kaku and Axelrod , just in time .
For that bit of good fortune , I suggest , we have to thank the spies who , for whatever their individual motives , successfully obtained and delivered the secrets of the atomic bomb and its construction to the scientists in the Soviet Union who were struggling , with limited success , to quickly come up with their own atomic bomb .
To most Americans , those spies , especially the US citizens among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hall , the youngest scientist at the Manhattan Project , hired out of Harvard as a junior physics major at 18 , were modern day Benedict Arnolds .
The truth is quite different .
Hall , who was never caught , and who was not recruited to be a spy but volunteered plans for the plutonium bomb on his own initiative after searching for and finally locating a Soviet agent , and another spy , the young German Communist physicist , Klaus Fuchs , working independently of each other , both delivering critical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Moscow , clearly prevented the US from launching a nuclear holocaust .
By decisively helping the USSR develop and test its own bomb quickly by mid-1949 , half a year before the US could attain a stockpile of 300 bombs , they forced the US to have to consider the unacceptable risk of retaliation .
Had the Soviets taken longer to create their own atomic bomb , the US could have gone through with its criminal plans , which would have dwarfed Hitler ’ s slaughter of the six million Jewish and Roma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over 30-40 million Russians would be killed by a US nuclear blitz . )
Hall , in public statements made in the mid-1990s after de-encrypted Soviet spy codes became public and his name was identified in them , explained that he had acted to share the plans for the plutonium bomb because he felt that the US , coming out of WWII with a nuclear monopoly , would have been a danger to not just the Soviet Union , but to the entire world .
( The Russian bomb exploded in August , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Nagasaki plutonium bomb Hall had worked on in his two years at Los Alamos . )
Looking back to the US decision to use its first nuclear weapon not as a demonstration on an empty island or military base , but on two undefended civilian cities , and to catastrophic US carpet bombings using non-nuclear bombs , of North Korea and later Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia , it ’ s hard disagree with Hall ’ s thinking .
His concern about US nuclear intentions is further borne out by how close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bombs in crisis after crisis during the late ’ 40s and early ‘ 50s — against China and North Korea during the Korean War , in support of the French expeditionary force trapped at Dien Bien Phu , by JFK in the 1961 in the Berlin crisis , in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis .
and later when US Marines were trapped by Vietnamese troops in Khe Sanh .
Each time , it was fear of the Soviets responding with their own bomb that saved the day and largely kept American bombs on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ San case in 1968 atom bombs were actually delivered close to the Indochina front , but President Johnson called a halt to the military ’ s plans ) .
The truth is , if the Soviets had not had their own bomb during any of the above listed crises , it is hard to imagine that the US , with a monopoly on the bomb , would not have used it to full advantage .
If we ’ re honest , The MAD reality enabled by Russia ’ s Los Alamos spies proved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perhaps [ hundreds of ] millions of people around the world .
Americans may ( and should ! )
decry the hundreds of billions of dollars ( trillions in today ’ s dollars ) that have been poured into a massively wasteful arms race with the Soviet Union and later Russia and China — money that could have done incalculable good if spent on schools , health care , environmental issues etc .
— need to consider what the alternative would have been to Cold War and MAD .
With MAD ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no world wars , and no nuclear bombs dropped on human beings .
Without it , with the US having a monopoly on the bomb for perhaps as long as a decade following WWII , this country would have nuked cities all over the world , almost certainly destroying the Soviet Union entirely , and the US would today be known as the ultimate genocidal monster of history , rather than having Germany left holding that eternal badge of shame .
In reconsidering the work of Soviet atomic spies , Americans also need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Manhattan Project .
While the push to develop the bomb began with a letter from Albert Einstein to Roosevelt warning that the Germans might develop such a weapon , by the time the program got underway , it was clear that the real target was America ’ s Ally in the fight against the Nazis : The USSR .
Of course we must work to ban nuclear weapons and war .
Such weapons are incomparably evil and if the world agrees that germ warfare and poison gas weapons should not exist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worse should not !
But we should nonetheless , as we look back at the grim 75th anniversary of those three first nuclear bombs exploded by the US , admit a debt of gratitude to those spies at Los Alamos who kept the US from committing an atrocity that humanity would have never forgiven , and for giving us this amazing three-quarters of a century of no nuclear or world war .

by DAVE LINDORFF
originally run on Aug 5, 2020 • republished Aug 4, 2023
78years ago before dawn on July 16, 1945, a cataclysmic explosion shook the New Mexico desert as scientists from the top-secret Manhattan Project tested their nightmarish creation: the first atom bomb, called “the Gadget.”
This birth of the Nuclear Age, was quickly followed a few weeks later, first on August 6 by the dropping of a U-235 atom bomb on Hiroshima, a non-military city of 225,000, and then, three days after that on Aug. 9, by the dropping of a somewhat more powerful Plutonium atom bomb on Nagasaki, another non-military city of 195,000. The resulting slaughter of some 200,000 mostly civilian Japanese men, women and children naturally leads to talk of the horrors of those weapons and to discussions about whether they should have been used on Japan instead of being demonstrated on an uninhabited target.
What goes unmentioned, however, as we mark each important anniversary of these horrific events — the initial Trinity test in Alamogordo, the “Little Boy” bombing of Hiroshima and the “Fat Man” plutonium bombing of Nagasaki — is that, incredibly, in a world where nine nations possess a total of nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons, not one has been used in war to kill human beings since the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
And that’s not all. Over those same 75 years, despite seven and a half decades of intense hostility and rivalry, as well as some major proxy wars, between great powers like the US and USSR, and the US and China, no two superpower nations have gone to war against each other.
The reason for this phenomenal and almost incomprehensible absence of catastrophic conflict of the type so common throughout human history is the same in both cases: No country dares to risk the use of a nuclear weapon because of the fear it could lead other nuclear nations to use theirs, and no major power dares to go to war against another major power because it is obvious that any war between two such nations would very quickly go nuclear.
Things could have gone very differently, however, with the dawn of the nuclear age.
At the end of WWII, the US was the world’s unchallenged superpower. It had emerged from war with its industrial base undamaged while Europe, the Soviet Union, Japan and much of China and were all smoking ruins, their dead numbering in the tens of millions. The US also had a monopoly on a new super weapon — the atom bomb — a weapon capable of vaporizing a city. And this country had demonstrated that it had no moral compunction about using its terrible new weapon of mass destruction.
Some important scientists involved in the creation of the bomb urged the sharing of its construction secrets with America’s ally in the war against the Axis powers, the Soviet Union. These scientists, many of them Nobel-winning physicists, said negotiations should begin immediately at that point to eliminate nuclear weapons for all time, just as germ and chemical weapons had already been banned (successfully as the history of WWII showed).
But military and civilian leaders in Washington balked at the idea of sharing the bombs’ secrets. In fact, after Bohr’s visit, President Roosevelt reportedly had the FBI monitor Nobelist Nils Bohr, one of the Los Alamos scientists who directly pleaded with him to bring the Russians into the bomb project, and even considered barring him from leaving the US. The Truman administration considered deporting Leo Szilard, and after Robert Oppenheimer proposed to Truman the sharing of the bomb with the Russians, his top-secret security clearance was revoked.
Instead of sharing the bomb with the USSR, which, remember, was America’s ally in World War II, and then working for its being banned, the US began producing dozens and eventually hundreds of Nagasaki-sized atom bombs, moving quickly from hand-made devices to mass-produced ones. The US also quickly started pursuing the development of a vastly more powerful bomb — the thermonuclear Hydrogen bomb — a weapon that theoretically has no limits to how great its destructive power could be. (A one-megaton bomb typical of some of the larger warheads in the US arsenal today is 30 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.)
Why this obsession with creating a stockpile of atomic bombs big enough to destroy not just a country but the whole earth at such a time as the end of WWII? The war was over and American scientists and intelligence analysts were predicting that the war-ravaged Soviet Union would need years and perhaps a decade to produce its own bomb, yet the US was going full tilt building an explosive arsenal that quickly dwarfed all the explosives used in the last two world wars combined.
What was the purpose of building so many bombs? One hint comes from the fact that the US also, right after the war, began mass producing the B-29 Super Fortress — planes like the Enola Gay that delivered the first atomic bomb to Hiroshima — and de-mothballing and refurbishing hundreds that had been built and declared surplussed right at the war’s end. A B-29 could only carry one plutonium or two uranium bombs for any significant distance. But the US was building several thousand of them in peacetime. Why?
The answer, according to a 1987 book, To Win a Nuclear War authored by nuclear physicists Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, is that the US was planning to launch a devastating nuclear first strike blitz on the Soviet Union as soon as it could build and deliver the 300 nuclear bombs that Pentagon strategists believed would be needed to destroy the Soviet Union as an industrial society and its Red Army as well, eliminating any possibility of the USSR responding by sweeping over war-ravaged western Europe. And the B-29 was at the time the only plane they had which could deliver the bombs.
This genocidal nightmare envisioned by Truman and the Pentagon’s nuclear madmen never happened because the initial slow pace of constructing the bombs meant that the 300 weapons and the planes to deliver them would not be ready until early 1950. Meanwhile, Russia’s first bomb, a plutonium device that was a virtual carbon copy of the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was successfully exploded on August 29, 1949, in a test that caught the US by complete surprise. At that point the idea of a deadly first strike was dropped (or at least deferred indefinitely) by Truman and Pentagon strategists.
A new era of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) had arrived, and according to Kaku and Axelrod, just in time.
For that bit of good fortune, I suggest, we have to thank the spies who, for whatever their individual motives, successfully obtained and delivered the secrets of the atomic bomb and its construction to the scientists in the Soviet Union who were struggling, with limited success, to quickly come up with their own atomic bomb.
To most Americans, those spies, especially the US citizens among them like Julius Rosenberg and notably Ted Hall, the youngest scientist at the Manhattan Project, hired out of Harvard as a junior physics major at 18, were modern day Benedict Arnolds. The truth is quite different.
Hall, who was never caught, and who was not recruited to be a spy but volunteered plans for the plutonium bomb on his own initiative after searching for and finally locating a Soviet agent, and another spy, the young German Communist physicist, Klaus Fuchs, working independently of each other, both delivering critical plans for the US plutonium bomb to Moscow, clearly prevented the US from launching a nuclear holocaust.
By decisively helping the USSR develop and test its own bomb quickly by mid-1949, half a year before the US could attain a stockpile of 300 bombs, they forced the US to have to consider the unacceptable risk of retaliation. Had the Soviets taken longer to create their own atomic bomb, the US could have gone through with its criminal plans, which would have dwarfed Hitler’s slaughter of the six million Jewish and Roma people. (Pentagon experts estimated that over 30-40 million Russians would be killed by a US nuclear blitz.)


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-08-05--The Beirut sea-port explosion

The Beirut sea-port explosion

I have mourned Beirut time and time again , but with all the cities I have lived in , Beirut will always be my favourite .
After all , how can I ever forget its hustle and bustle before the infamous fifteen year long civil war that started on Sunday the 13th of April 1975 ?
I was a student back then , with very limited financial resources , but back then , you didn ’ t have to be rich to enjoy the rich lifestyle of Beirut .
One didn ’ t have to go to the fancy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show .
With many movie theatres showing the best and latest of Hollywood , Bollywood and the Arab World ; not to mention French and Italian movies among others , the cost of watching the big screen started from a Lebanese Lira , fifty US Cents to be exact , with three daily sessions playing seven days a week .
One didn ’ t have to be able to afford five-star hotels and restaurants when one could walk out and get a falafel roll at 2 am .
This is not to mention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its beaches to the snow-capped hills , within a day , using public and cheap shared private transport , affordable by all .
Then as the civil war started , Beirut began to shed some of its glory bit by bit .
Its sea port , The Port of Beirut , was one of the first victims .
The Arab World that relied on the transit trade because it didn ’ t have its own infrastructure and ports , imported all its good via that port , the Port of Beirut .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Switzerland of the East ’ stature , it began to shed the features of its former glory one at a time .
It was no longer the centre of commerce or entertainment , but the Lebanese people always felt that there were some foundational icons that the country would not lose .
One of the them was the Lebanese Lira and the Lebanese Banking system .
Those financial entities were so robust that they managed to remain solid and functional after literally decades of strife ; despite a major devaluation of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As the repercussions of the civil war and what followed it continued to chip away at the backbone of Lebanon , not only financially but also as an entity , the events of last year have incrementally accelerated the collapse of not only the Lira , but also the entire Lebanese banking system .
As the pieces of the domino continued to tumble and fall , one corner stone was put at high risk , and still faces the spectre of collapse , and this is the American University of Beirut ( AUB @ @ @ @ @ @ @ known as the Syrian Protestant College , the university was founded in 1866 and has been an elite centre of higher education for the whole region for one and a half centuries .
When I heard the news about the demise of the AUB I was shattered .
What more could Lebanon lose I wondered .
The last thing that came to my mind was the Port of Beirut .
After all , how can a city lose a port ?
With a major mega explosion , it can .
Much speculation abounds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I am not a military and explosive expert , but the evidence I have seen points at one thing and one thing only ; utter negligence .
The port did not have one explosion , but two .
Literally thousands of people heard the first explosion , started to take videos of it with their smart phones , unbeknown to them that another huge one was to follow .
The massive second explosion was caught on countless videos from many different angles , clearly showing it was the one that caused most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one .
This begs the question .
If this was all premeditated , why would the ‘ perpetrator ’ deliberately create a chain reaction instead of hitting the main target directly ?
And , if the ‘ perpetrator ’ planned it this way , what was its guarantee that the first explosion would eventually lead to triggering the major one ?
Why execute this in such a convoluted manner and then conceal the identity of the actor ?
Israel would surely have boasted such a feat in harming Hezbollah ’ s influence and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local political enemies of Hezbollah might claim .
Some are reporting having heard Israeli jets in Lebanese airspace just prior to the attack , but such an occurrence is quite common in Lebanon .
Some videos even allege finding shrapnel of Israeli missiles at the scene , but there is no evidence to corroborate those videos with the explosion .
If Israel was the culprit , why did their jets not attack that main target ?
Israel , unabashedly , has inflicted much devastation upon Lebanon .
In the most self-righteous and open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Lebanon over the decades for allowing the PLO to operate from its territory , all the way to allowing Hezbollah to exist and be armed .
I would be the last to defend it , but I can not see how Israel could be behind this calamity .
Even President Trump called it an ‘ attack ’ .
With all the divisions in Lebanon , past and present , it doesn ’ t take much for the blame game to get a jump-start .
There are already many voices blaming Hezbollah directly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a ship named ‘ mv RHOSUS ’ which was loaded with ammonium nitrate bound from Georgia and its cargo held in Beirut Port in 2014 .
Allegedly , it is the 2750 tons of the highly explosive fertilizer from that ship that exploded in Beirut .
If there is indeed a culprit , did he use this volatile cargo to execute his act now or was the cargo sent to Lebanon as a time bomb six years ago ?
Both possibilities do not make much strategic sense for any calculating enemy of Lebanon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what material actually exploded ?
The reports that name the fuel as ammonium nitrate seems plausible .
After all , there are records of such a stash in the port as mentioned above , the material is explosive , and this would not be a world ’ s first .
Such disasters occurred earlier in history in many parts of the globe .
The losses of Beirut seem to have come full circle .
Its sea port was one of the first to lose its stature when the gradual demise of Lebanon commenced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more .
In my analysis , and as my friend Abu Omar puts it , this tragic calamity is the result of ‘ cumulative neglect and carelessness ’ .
The loss of Beirut Sea Port will have devastating consequences on the people of Lebanon .
Even in a country that is fully functional , the rebuilding will require a significant amount of time and enormous funds .
But for a country that is ankle-tapped and brought down to its knees by corruption and economic collapse , such rebuilding will not happen ; not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the situation even more dire , Lebanon is an import-reliant country .
It even relies on imported foods .
With its port-based wheat silos now totally destroyed , many would be imports destroyed at the docks , and already soaring food prices , famine is not an unrealistic outcome .
The cities of Tripoli and Sidon have sea ports , but they are not capable of dealing with the volumes required and can not replace the capacity of Beirut ’ s port .
In the face of this all , I look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose that already has not been lost .
Perhaps the only assets Lebanon has not lost are its coastline and mountains .
They continue to be taken for granted , but who knows what is down the track ?

SOCIAL CHAOS IN OUR TIME
I have mourned Beirut time and time again, but with all the cities I have lived in, Beirut will always be my favourite. After all, how can I ever forget its hustle and bustle before the infamous fifteen year long civil war that started on Sunday the 13th of April 1975? I was a student back then, with very limited financial resources, but back then, you didn’t have to be rich to enjoy the rich lifestyle of Beirut.
One didn’t have to go to the fancy and exclusive Casino Du Liban to see a show. With many movie theatres showing the best and latest of Hollywood, Bollywood and the Arab World; not to mention French and Italian movies among others, the cost of watching the big screen started from a Lebanese Lira, fifty US Cents to be exact, with three daily sessions playing seven days a week. One didn’t have to be able to afford five-star hotels and restaurants when one could walk out and get a falafel roll at 2 am. This is not to mention the ease of transport from the coast and its beaches to the snow-capped hills, within a day, using public and cheap shared private transport, affordable by all.
Then as the civil war started, Beirut began to shed some of its glory bit by bit. Its sea port, The Port of Beirut, was one of the first victims. The Arab World that relied on the transit trade because it didn’t have its own infrastructure and ports, imported all its good via that port, the Port of Beirut.
But incrementally, as Lebanon lost its ‘Switzerland of the East’ stature, it began to shed the features of its former glory one at a time. It was no longer the centre of commerce or entertainment, but the Lebanese people always felt that there were some foundational icons that the country would not lose.
One of the them was the Lebanese Lira and the Lebanese Banking system. Those financial entities were so robust that they managed to remain solid and functional after literally decades of strife; despite a major devaluation of the Lira in the 1980’s.
As the repercussions of the civil war and what followed it continued to chip away at the backbone of Lebanon, not only financially but also as an entity, the events of last year have incrementally accelerated the collapse of not only the Lira, but also the entire Lebanese banking system.
As the pieces of the domino continued to tumble and fall, one corner stone was put at high risk, and still faces the spectre of collapse, and this is the American University of Beirut (AUB), my alma mater. Formerly known as the Syrian Protestant College, the university was founded in 1866 and has been an elite centre of higher education for the whole region for one and a half centuries.
When I heard the news about the demise of the AUB I was shattered. What more could Lebanon lose I wondered. The last thing that came to my mind was the Port of Beirut. After all, how can a city lose a port? With a major mega explosion, it can.
Much speculation abounds as to who is behind the explosion. I am not a military and explosive expert, but the evidence I have seen points at one thing and one thing only; utter negligence.
The port did not have one explosion, but two. Literally thousands of people heard the first explosion, started to take videos of it with their smart phones, unbeknown to them that another huge one was to follow. The massive second explosion was caught on countless videos from many different angles, clearly showing it was the one that caused most of the devastation; not the first one.
This begs the question. If this was all premeditated, why would the ‘perpetrator’ deliberately create a chain reaction instead of hitting the main target directly? And, if the ‘perpetrator’ planned it this way, what was its guarantee that the first explosion would eventually lead to triggering the major one? Why execute this in such a convoluted manner and then conceal the identity of the actor? Israel would surely have boasted such a feat in harming Hezbollah’s influence and standing in Lebanon, despite what some local political enemies of Hezbollah might claim.
Some are reporting having heard Israeli jets in Lebanese airspace just prior to the attack, but such an occurrence is quite common in Lebanon. Some videos even allege finding shrapnel of Israeli missiles at the scene, but there is no evidence to corroborate those videos with the explosion.
If Israel was the culprit, why did their jets not attack that main target? Israel, unabashedly, has inflicted much devastation upon Lebanon. In the most self-righteous and open manner, it has made countless threats to Lebanon over the decades for allowing the PLO to operate from its territory, all the way to allowing Hezbollah to exist and be armed. I would be the last to defend it, but I cannot see how Israel could be behind this calamity.
Even President Trump called it an ‘attack’.
With all the divisions in Lebanon, past and present, it doesn’t take much for the blame game to get a jump-start. There are already many voices blaming Hezbollah directly or indirectly.
There are reports about a ship named ‘mv RHOSUS’ which was loaded with ammonium nitrate bound from Georgia and its cargo held in Beirut Port in 2014. Allegedly, it is the 2750 tons of the highly explosive fertilizer from that ship that exploded in Beirut. If there is indeed a culprit, did he use this volatile cargo to execute his act now or was the cargo sent to Lebanon as a time bomb six years ago? Both possibilities do not make much strategic sense for any calculating enemy of Lebanon.
Other numerous theories abound as to what material actually exploded? The reports that name the fuel as ammonium nitrate seems plausible. After all, there are records of such a stash in the port as mentioned above, the material is explosive, and this would not be a world’s first. Such disasters occurred earlier in history in many parts of the globe.
The losses of Beirut seem to have come full circle. Its sea port was one of the first to lose its stature when the gradual demise of Lebanon commenced, and now it is here no more.
In my analysis, and as my friend Abu Omar puts it, this tragic calamity is the result of ‘cumulative neglect and carelessness’.
The loss of Beirut Sea Port will have devastating consequences on the people of Lebanon. Even in a country that is fully functional, the rebuilding will require a significant amount of time and enormous funds. But for a country that is ankle-tapped and brought down to its knees by corruption and economic collapse, such rebuilding will not happen; not in the near future.
To make the situation even more dire, Lebanon is an import-reliant country. It even relies on imported foods. With its port-based wheat silos now totally destroyed, many would be imports destroyed at the docks, and already soaring food prices, famine is not an unrealistic outcome.
The cities of Tripoli and Sidon have sea ports, but they are not capable of dealing with the volumes required and cannot replace the capacity of Beirut’s port.
In the face of this all, I look at Lebanon and ponder what is left to lose that already has not been lost.
Perhaps the only assets Lebanon has not lost are its coastline and mountains. They continue to be taken for granted, but who knows what is down the track?


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-08-05--Lebanon SITREP: Letter from a Lebanese friend

a ) this disaster completely serves current US-Israeli efforts to pressure Lebanon economically to bow down to their demands b ) the site of the explosion , Port of Beirut , was the transit through which 50-80 % of Lebanon ’ s commodity and trade needs were met c ) the explosions struck wheat reserves stored there as well , exacerbating the dire economic situation and inflation further d ) Israeli officials few days ago were warning the Resistance that if they struck Israeli army targets ( a response to recent Israeli crimes by Resistance was imminent ) , Lebanon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) one year ago exactly Israel ’ s ambassador to UN said at the Security Council that the Port of Beirut had become ‘ Hezbollah ’ s Port ’ .
Lebanese ambassador said this was a direct threat to Lebanon ’ s civilians and security f ) last but not least , the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate ( that exploded ) were reportedly stored there 6 years ago , and they have been described as a ticking time bomb considering the irresponsible way that they were stored .
Is it really coincidental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today , at the worst possible moment for Lebanon ( country is failing on all levels , coronavirus , US siege at its peak etc ) ?
So , while initial reports have said this disaster was caused by the utter negligence , corruption and lack of accountability of Lebanese state institutions , an official investigation is currently underway , and the Resistance will certainly be doing its own investigation , because there was no worse possible time for this disaster to occur to Lebanon than today .
Sabotage by the enemy must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proving that may be difficult ) .
s soon as I heard about the tragic explosion in Beirut I told my family “ you will see , there will be some idiots who will say it was a nuke ” .
Sure enough , today I already see nonsense posted about the usual suspects about the Israelis nuking of Beirut .
Some even claim this was a thermonuclear explosion !
This just proves to me that I was right when I added this rule to the “ I am banning any and all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including alleged use of tactical nukes by Israel in Syria or Lebanon , or by anybody ( including the USA or Israel ) in Yemen .
In fact from now on , I am the ONLY person allowed to report the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
” s soon as I heard about the tragic explosion in Beirut I told my family “ you will see , there will be some idiots who will say it was a nuke ” .
Sure enough , today I already see nonsense posted about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beirut .
Some even claim this was a thermonuclear explosion !
This just proves to me that I was right when I added this rule to the moderation guidelines However , considering how huge this explosion was , I feel that I ought to post these few reminders : • None It is quite impossible to conceal the use of a nuclear device , even a low-yield one , in particular in a densely populated area and in a warzone .
• None Most ( all ? )
major explosions produce a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rushes back into the place from where it was expelled by the explosion .
• None You can clearly see two colors in the explosion , which points to a chemical , not nuclear , event .
• None There is a complete absence of any nuclear flash and fireball .
• None In the case of the Beirut explosion , you can clearly see in the footage that there is/are a ( few ) primary explosion ( s ) and a much bigger secondary explosion .
You don ’ t see that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But most importantly is this : if the Israelis were crazy enough to actually strike Lebanon ’ s capital with a nuke ( or even with a huge conventional bomb/missile ) you could be sure that Hezbollah and Iran would strike at cities like Tel Aviv and a number of other Israeli cities ( and ports ) .
To visualize this , just think of the Iranian strike on the US base in Iraq , but aimed at key Israeli government buildings and facilities .
What happened in Beirut is an immense tragedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wonderful people of Lebanon , whom I love and admire .
Trying to make money by generating clickbaiting nonsense about what actually took place is absolutely repulsive and shows a total lack of respect for the victims .
Shame on those who engage in such behavior !
PS : One more thing : some speculated that this was a weapons depot .
I can not be categorical , but in most cases when weapon depots blow up , there is a primary explosion followed by MANY smaller explosions ; that kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the case of Beirut , after the huge mega-explosion there was silence .
This also indicates to me that it was one major chemical explosion .
This is now confirmed by pretty much the interested parties .
Well , except for Trump and some of his general who initially seemed to believe that it was a bomb of some sorts .
PPS : By the way , I am not saying that sabotage is not possible or that Israel had nothing to do with this .
All I am saying is that nukes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were not used .
BELOW : Different views of the explosion

(Images selected by TGP)
H
uge disaster, investigation underway, on face value was caused by utter negligence, corruption and incompetence of Lebanese state, but I am one of those that has been stressing that the enemies could have exploited this state negligence and corruption to trigger this disaster through sabotage. Few simple reasons for this, including:
a) this disaster completely serves current US-Israeli efforts to pressure Lebanon economically to bow down to their demands
b) the site of the explosion, Port of Beirut, was the transit through which 50-80% of Lebanon’s commodity and trade needs were met
c) the explosions struck wheat reserves stored there as well, exacerbating the dire economic situation and inflation further
d) Israeli officials few days ago were warning the Resistance that if they struck Israeli army targets (a response to recent Israeli crimes by Resistance was imminent), Lebanon’s infrastructure will be targeted
e) one year ago exactly Israel’s ambassador to UN said at the Security Council that the Port of Beirut had become ‘Hezbollah’s Port’. Lebanese ambassador said this was a direct threat to Lebanon’s civilians and security
f) last but not least, the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate (that exploded) were reportedly stored there 6 years ago, and they have been described as a ticking time bomb considering the irresponsible way that they were stored. Is it really coincidental that this ticking time bomb goes off today, at the worst possible moment for Lebanon (country is failing on all levels, coronavirus, US siege at its peak etc)?
So, while initial reports have said this disaster was caused by the utter negligence, corruption and lack of accountability of Lebanese state institutions, an official investigation is currently underway, and the Resistance will certainly be doing its own investigation, because there was no worse possible time for this disaster to occur to Lebanon than today. Sabotage by the enemy must remain a strong possibility (though actually proving that may be difficult).
Beware of sensationalism clickbaiting and crazy rumors: Beirut was NOT a nuclear explosion
Dear friends, [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s soon as I heard about the tragic explosion in Beirut I told my family “you will see, there will be some idiots who will say it was a nuke”. Sure enough, today I already see nonsense posted about the usual suspects about the Israelis nuking of Beirut. Some even claim this was a thermonuclear explosion! This just proves to me that I was right when I added this rule to the “I am banning any and all references to use of tactical nuclear weapons, including alleged use of tactical nukes by Israel in Syria or Lebanon, or by anybody (including the USA or Israel) in Yemen. In fact from now on, I am the ONLY person allowed to report the use of tactical nuclear weapons.” [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s soon as I heard about the tragic explosion in Beirut I told my family “you will see, there will be some idiots who will say it was a nuke”. Sure enough, today I already see nonsense posted about the usual suspects about the Israelis nuking of Beirut. Some even claim this was a thermonuclear explosion! This just proves to me that I was right when I added this rule to the moderation guidelines However, considering how huge this explosion was, I feel that I ought to post these few reminders: It is quite impossible to conceal the use of a nuclear device, even a low-yield one, in particular in a densely populated area and in a warzone. Most (all?) major explosions produce a “nuclear mushroom” simply because the air rushes back into the place from where it was expelled by the explosion. You can clearly see two colors in the explosion, which points to a chemical, not nuclear, event. There is a complete absence of any nuclear flash and fireball. In the case of the Beirut explosion, you can clearly see in the footage that there is/are a (few) primary explosion(s) and a much bigger secondary explosion. You don’t see that with nukes. See for yourself: But most importantly is this: if the Israelis were crazy enough to actually strike Lebanon’s capital with a nuke (or even with a huge conventional bomb/missile) you could be sure that Hezbollah and Iran would strike at cities like Tel Aviv and a number of other Israeli cities (and ports). To visualize this, just think of the Iranian strike on the US base in Iraq, but aimed at key Israeli government buildings and facilities. What happened in Beirut is an immense tragedy and my heart goes out to all the wonderful people of Lebanon, whom I love and admire. Trying to make money by generating clickbaiting nonsense about what actually took place is absolutely repulsive and shows a total lack of respect for the victims. Shame on those who engage in such behavior! The Saker PS: One more thing: some speculated that this was a weapons depot. I cannot be categorical, but in most cases when weapon depots blow up, there is a primary explosion followed by MANY smaller explosions; that kind of stuff can last for days. In the case of Beirut, after the huge mega-explosion there was silence. This also indicates to me that it was one major chemical explosion. This is now confirmed by pretty much the interested parties. Well, except for Trump and some of his general who initially seemed to believe that it was a bomb of some sorts. PPS: By the way, I am not saying that sabotage is not possible or that Israel had nothing to do with this. All I am saying is that nukes (even less so thermonuclear devices) were not used.
BELOW: Different views of the explosion


thegreanvillepostbiasrating--2020-08-05--Why we don’t respect the West anymore (MUST READ!)

And that ’ s your fault , my Western friends .
It was you who pushed us into “ Russians never surrender ” mode .
I ’ ve been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia .
Sack all those [ Neocon warmongering ] parasites .
With their short-sighted sanctions , heartless humiliation of our athletes ( including athletes with disabilities ) , with their “ skripals ” and ostentatious disregard of the most basic liberal values , like a presumption of innocence , that they manage to hypocritically combine with forcible imposition of ultra-liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epileptic mass hysteria , causing in a healthy person a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia , and not in Hollywood , with their post-electoral mess in the United States , in Germany , and in the Brexit-zone ; with their attacks on RT , which they can not forgive for taking advantage of the freedom of speech and showing to the world how to use it , and it turned out that the freedom of speech never was intended to be used for good , but was invented as an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of crystal mop that shines from afar , but is not suitable to clean your stables , with all your injustice and cruelty , inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you .
You and your so called “ values.
” We don ’ t want to live like you live , anymore .
For fifty years , secretly and openly , we wanted to live like you , but not any longer .
We have no more respect for you , and for those amongst us that you support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support you .
That ’ s how this 5 % came to be .
For that you only have yourself to blame .
And also your Western politicians and analysts , newsmakers and scouts .
Our people are capable of forgiving a lot .
But we don ’ t forgive arrogance , and no normal nation would .
Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn history from its allies , all of them are former empires .
To learn the ways they lost their empires .
Only because of their arrogance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my ass ( in English in the original text – trans . )
But the only Empire , you have left , ignores history , it doesn ’ t teach it and refuses to learn it , meaning that it all will end the way it always does , in such cases .
In the meantime , you ’ ve pushed us to rally around your enemy .
Immediately , after you declared him an enemy , we united around him .
Before , he was just our President , who could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our Leader .
We won ’ t let you change this .
And it was you , who created this situation .
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism .
Although , they shouldn ’ t be mutually exclusive notions .
This false dilemma , created by you , made us to choose patriotism .
Even though , many of us are really liberals , myself included .
Get cleaned up , now .
You don ’ t have much time left .
and of the state-owned international news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parents are descendants of Armenian refugees from the Margarita Simonovna Simonyan ( Russian : Маргари́та Симо́новна Симонья́н ; born 6 April 1980 ) is a Russian journalist and the editor-in-chief of the English -language television news network RT ( formerly Russia Today ) and of the state-owned international news agency Rossiya Segodnya .
Simonyan was born in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar , into an Armenian family.Both of her parents are descendants of Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire .
Her father 's family , originally from Trabzon , settled in Crimea @ @ @ @ @ @ @

source: https://ria.ru/analytics/20180319/1516767644.html
E
ssentially, the West should be horrified not because 76% of Russians voted for Putin, but because these elections have demonstrated that 95% of Russia’s population supports conservative-patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas. That means that liberal ideas are barely surviving among a measly 5% of the population.
And that’s your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into “Russians never surrender” mode.
I’ve been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those [Neocon warmongering] parasites. With their short-sighted sanctions, heartless humiliation of our athletes (including athletes with disabilities ), with their “skripals” and ostentatious disregard of the most basic liberal values, like a presumption of innocence, that they manage to hypocritically combine with forcible imposition of ultra-liberal ideas in their own countries, their epileptic mass hysteria, causing in a healthy person a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia, and not in Hollywood, with their post-electoral mess in the United States, in Germany, and in the Brexit-zone; with their attacks on RT, which they cannot forgive for taking advantage of the freedom of speech and showing to the world how to use it, and it turned out that the freedom of speech never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, like some sort of crystal mop that shines from afar, but is not suitable to clean your stables, with all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so called “values.”
We don’t want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer.
We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. That’s how this 5% came to be.
For that you only have yourself to blame. And also your Western politicians and analysts, newsmakers and scouts.
Our people are capable of forgiving a lot. But we don’t forgive arrogance, and no normal nation would.
Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn history from its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their empires. Only because of their arrogance.
White man’s burden, my ass (in English in the original text – trans.)
But the only Empire, you have left, ignores history, it doesn’t teach it and refuses to learn it, meaning that it all will end the way it always does, in such cases.
In the meantime, you’ve pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately, after you declared him an enemy, we united around him.
Before, he was just our President, who could be reelected. Now, he has become our Leader. We won’t let you change this. And it was you, who created this situation.
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they shouldn’t be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us to choose patriotism.
Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.
Get cleaned up, now. You don’t have much time left.