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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".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 09 2016, @05:57PM
If you're happy that life sucks for the majority of people and that no matter how hard they try, only a small minority have a realistic chance of succeeding in significantly improving their position, that's your perspective. I think it's a clear failure of democracy that this condition has persisted and worsened for so long.
What I'm not happy with is your story. I don't buy that it is true or that we're any better off by considering it.
What I think is going on is the cure is so bad, that one has to play up the supposed disease in order to sell the snake oil. "Wage slavery" sounds bad while "earning a living", "raising a family", "growing up", etc doesn't have the necessary sting to it.
For the majority in the developed world, life is quite comfortable not "life sucks". And fiddling with employment, even when it doesn't make things worse, just isn't going to have much impact on the aspects that make peoples' lives less comfortable.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 09 2016, @10:17PM
For the majority in the developed world, life is quite comfortable not "life sucks".
Most of my perspective that "life sucks for a lot of people" comes from big city centers, especially in the late 1980s through about 2000. In those places, Miami, New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, Paris... the "angry poor" are readily visible, and it's not hard to see why they feel the way they do. The work they can get doesn't pay well and their living conditions are dramatically worse than their wealthy neighbors. Street people in 1988 New York had visible terminal medical conditions, open sores, bloating... The shops and restaurants in 1990s "middle class" Miami Biscayne Blvd. were staffed with angry locals who resented their customers who had enough money to buy their food. Even when you move out into the conservative voting countryside, the same poor people who can't get ahead are all over the place, just less concentrated and visible. These people are, statistically, more prone to violence and crime, and they make life less pleasant for the people with enough money to be more comfortable; and they provide impetus for a booming security industry for the people who have enough money to afford it.
As one of those people who sees "the other side" hurting from circumstances that they really don't have the means to correct for themselves, I'd be happier and I believe better off in a world where they do have more and better opportunities. Are there a million different ways to screw up that effort and actually make things worse for everyone? Sure there are, but that doesn't mean we should abandon all hope and just "let nature take its course." Without laws and regulations, money doesn't exist, there are no jobs. We should try to improve the laws we have to make things better for everyone. I'd be very much in favor of starting with a law that says for every new piece of legislation, 2x that amount of old legislation needs to be repealed or reduced in complexity equal to 2x the new proposals. Doubtful that would work very well with the current political system, but I think it would be better for society overall if we worked toward a system where anyone could become 100% conversant in the law and tax codes without devoting years of study to it.
Along the way, the new simpler laws should improve provisions for leveling of the playing field - not preventing the Elon Musk's of the world from starting their own space launch companies; but not keeping the working class' noses so firmly pinned to the grindstone that they can't improve their lives if they choose, while simultaneously leaving large portions of the population unemployed and/or underemployed and dependent on tax based aid.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:53PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 11 2016, @12:40AM
Just a zinger from the recent election: H won the popular vote... largely in the cities.
The population is continuing to concentrate in the cities.
You don't need 51% of people to be miserable in order to benefit from doing something about it. One alienated, abused, marginalized person can significantly negatively affect many people - the mass shooters are the dramatic examples, but for every mass shooter there are thousands (millions?) of pissed off poor. Most of them aren't typhoid Mary spitting in your food, but they get their digs in all sorts of ways.
🌻🌻 [google.com]