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posted by takyon on Thursday December 08 2016, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the gears-of-war dept.

David Swanson, author of "War is a Lie", writes via CounterPunch:

The facts [of the Pearl Harbor story] do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.

[...] Churchill's fervent hope for years before the U.S. entry into the war was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in the targeting of submarines as it had been doing. On December 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew up a declaration of war on both Japan and Germany, but decided it wouldn't work and went with Japan alone. Germany quickly declared war on the United States, possibly in hopes that Japan would declare war on the Soviet Union.

Getting into the war was not a new idea in the Roosevelt White House. FDR had tried lying to the U.S. public about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. The map was of the quality of Karl Rove's "proof" that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.

And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and--just 11 days before the "unexpected" attack, and five days before FDR expected it--he had secretly ordered the creation (by Henry Field) of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.

[...] On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as "the Marshall Plan". In fact we don't remember it at all. "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan", Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.

[...] Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II [...] found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference [of August 1941]. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been "cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade". Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the catchy slogan "Kill Japs! Kill Japs!") had given instructions to him and others to "shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea".

The article is very detailed and shows repeatedly the duplicity of those who have claimed that the strike on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise".


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:23PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:23PM (#438813) Journal

    More than 90% of the stories that are submitted to SN are about science & technology proper. Those are not the discrete fields anymore, and they shade into a great many other areas of life, such that it's not too hard to find articles about technology & fashion, for example. If you count those, the percentage climbs higher still. It's undeserved to cherry-pick the few as absolute proof that the site's "GOING DOWNHILL!!!"

    I sentence you to go out, find, and submit 3 tech/science stories as penance.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:54PM (#438828)

    Not to mention that lively discussion rarely occurs on the cut and dry tech articles.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:06PM (#438835)

    Fine.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/americas-mysterious-rising-death-rate/485354/ [theatlantic.com]

    http://www.livescience.com/57103-electronic-chip-just-three-atoms-thick.html [livescience.com]

    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/despite-lack-free-electrons-bismuth-superconducts [sciencenews.org]

    I sentence you to use a bit more discernment in what stories you post.

    The issue isn't even the type of stories, the political slant, or even the source per se.

    But by god give us some MEAT, and maybe reserve articles such as this for when the barrel has gone completely dry.

    If you want to increase the level of discourse, it starts with the articles. Demand better.

    • (Score: 1) by charon on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:41PM

      by charon (5660) on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:41PM (#438879) Journal
      Thank you, I'll arrange to have these made into submissions. You may wish to look at the output of the site, as Phoenix666 said, and count up how many political articles there are vs. science articles. You are noting the outliers and somehow thinking they are the majority.