(We’ll meet again some sunny day)
(click title)
Category: war
“Guernica” by Pablo Picasso.
Guernica was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world’s attention.
While living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, Picasso suffered harassment from the Gestapo. One officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, “Did you do that?” Picasso responded, “No, you did.” (read more)
“The falling soldier”
Robert Capa 9/5/36.
The Art of Peace is medicine for a sick world. There is evil and disorder in the world because people have forgotten that all things emanate from one source. Return to that source and leave behind all self-centered thoughts, petty desires, and anger. Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything.
“The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter – it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.” Morihei Ueshiba.
The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder, and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During this period hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Widespread rape and looting also occurred. Historians and witnesses have estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people were killed. Several of the key perpetrators of the atrocities, at the time labelled as war crimes, were later tried and found guilty at the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, and were subsequently executed. Another key perpetrator, Prince Asaka, a member of the Imperial Family, escaped prosecution by having earlier been granted immunity by the Allies.
Eyewitness accounts of Westerners and Chinese present at Nanking in the weeks after the fall of the city state that over the course of six weeks following the fall of Nanking, Japanese troops engaged in rape, murder, theft, arson, and other war crimes. Some of these accounts came from foreigners who opted to stay behind in order to protect Chinese civilians from harm, including the diaries of John Rabe and American Minnie Vautrin. Other accounts include first-person testimonies of the Nanking Massacre survivors, eyewitness reports of journalists (both Western and Japanese), as well as the field diaries of military personnel. American missionary John Magee stayed behind to provide a 16 mm film documentary and first-hand photographs of the Nanking Massacre.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East estimated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly. A large portion of these rapes were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were often killed immediately after being raped, often through explicit mutilation or by stabbing a bayonet, long stick of bamboo, or other objects into the vagina. Young children were not exempt from these atrocities, and were cut open to allow Japanese soldiers to rape them.
On 19 December 1937, Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:
I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet … People are hysterical … Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases.
Pregnant women were a target of murder, as they would often be bayoneted in the stomach, sometimes after rape. Tang Junshan, survivor and witness to one of the Japanese armyâs systematic mass killings, testified:
The seventh and last person in the first row was a pregnant woman. The soldier thought he might as well rape her before killing her, so he pulled her out of the group to a spot about ten meters away. As he was trying to rape her, the woman resisted fiercely … The soldier abruptly stabbed her in the belly with a bayonet. She gave a final scream as her intestines spilled out. Then the soldier stabbed the fetus, with its umbilical cord clearly visible, and tossed it aside. (read more)
Assad massacres
while the West fiddles.
The Syrian regime will commit genocide to survive, while the international community amuses itself with sanctions. If it were not so sad, it would be funny.
It was hard to miss the huge headlines reporting the death of US journalist Marie Colvin. Colvin and her colleague, French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, were in a makeshift press center in the Baba Amru neighborhood in Homs, when artillery shells fired by the Syrian army hit their building.
Their death was sad and unnecessary, as was the task they went out to perform. There are blood-drenched locations, where the presence of war journalists reveals to an indifferent world, atrocities that they did not know about. Syria is not such a place. Syrian bloggers, iPhone photographers, and human rights activists tell the stories themselves. If there is a journalistic story that is worth getting killed for, they are not the ones that brought Ochlik and Colvin to Syria. Granted, people around the world have done little for the wretched citizens in Syria, but it was well aware of their hardships before Western journalists arrived on the scene. (read more)
- Labels: death, fascism, revolution, war
rounded up
“Tagged for evacuation, Salinas, California,” May 1942 | Russell Lee
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
February 20, 2012 marked the 70th anniversary of #EO9066, the executive order signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that authorized the deportation and eventual detainment of Japanese Americans from the west coast during World War II. Here is a great rundown of some of the essential facts related to internment, a particularly dark spot on our nationâs history and one glossed over by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned, 2/3 were American citizens making the number of Japanese-Americans interned without cause greater then the population of Wichita, Kansas. Americans with as little as 1/8 Japanese ancestry were interned, including orphan infants and Americans of Taiwanese and Korean descent.
70 Years Ago Japanese-American Removal and Internments Began | Care2 Causes
Poetry in History
…In an era of liberal personhood, when most â but certainly not all, recent legislation in Arizona being a case in point â citizens of the United States enjoy relative protection under the law, how are we to respond to the egregious moment in 1942 when crowds of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children were herded onto fairgrounds, relegated to horse stalls and racetracks, and ârelocatedâ to barbed-wire compounds and hastily constructed prison barracks throughout the nation? And all this, in response to sentiment like that expressed by columnist Henry McLemore: âI am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I donât mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd âem up, pack âem off and give âem the inside room in the badlands⦠Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them.â
Autumn foliage
California has now become
a far countryâYajin Nakao
Frosty night
listening to rumbling train
we have come a long wayâSenbinshi Takaoka
The Delta Ginsha [a free-verse poetry club] was founded in 1918 by Neiji Qzawa⦠Its members met monthly and submitted their haiku to the master of the month, who was usually the host or hostess for the evening. They submitted for consideration as many poems as they desired. The poems were then read and discussed and a vote was taken to determine the best haiku⦠It was an evening anticipated by the membersâgrape growers, onion farmers, teachers, housewives, bankers, pharmacists, and othersâwho had assembled for an enlightening cultural and social event.
Poetry in History: Japanese American Internment | Lantern Review Blog
Executive Order 9066
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called “War Relocation Camps,” in the wake of Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.[1][2] The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast of the United States were all interned, while in Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the territory’s population, 1,200[3] to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned.[4] Of those interned, 62% were American citizens.[5][6]
President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate “military areas” as “exclusion zones,” from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in internment camps.[7] In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders,[8] while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.[9] The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau’s role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007.[10][11]
In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”.[12] The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.[13]
Japanese American internment – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Amache Japanese Internment Camp at Granada, Colorado
- Labels: america, government, military, police state, war
Heinrich Harrer (6 July 1912 â 7 January 2006) was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author. He is best known for being on the four-man climbing team that made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland, and for his books Seven Years in Tibet (1952) and The White Spider (1959).
In 1948, Harrer became a salaried official of the Tibetan government, translating foreign news and acting as Court photographer. Harrer first met the 14th Dalai Lama when he was summoned to the Potala Palace and asked to make a film about iceskating, which Harrer had introduced to Tibet. Harrer built a cinema for him, with a projector run off a Jeep engine. Harrer soon became the Dalai Lama’s tutor in English, geography, and some science, and Harrer was astonished at how fast his pupil absorbed the Western world’s knowledge. A strong friendship developed between the two that would last the rest of their lives.
In 1952, Harrer returned to Austria where he documented his experiences in the books Seven Years in Tibet (1952) and Lost Lhasa (1953). Seven Years in Tibet was translated into 53 languages, and was a bestseller in the United States in 1954, selling three million copies. The book was the basis of two films of the same title, the first in 1956 and the second in 1997, starring Brad Pitt in the role of Harrer.
In Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer wrote:
Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the cries of wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that my story may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world. (read more) (7 years in tibet trailer)
Nukespeak is a classic!
Award-winning investigative journalist Karl Grossman interviews Nukespeak co-author Rory OâConnor on Grossmanâs nationally-aired TV program, Enviro-Close-Up. Grossman has been a journalist for more than 40 years, and is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. He is also the chief investigative reporter for WVVH-TV.
Grossman said he was happy to be talking about the 30th anniversary updated edition of Nukespeak: âOf the books written about nuclear technology through the years, Nukespeak is a classic. The new edition of Nukespeak has been updated â with four new chapters â and added to its title is: The Selling of Nuclear Technology from the Manhattan Project to Fukushima. It tells how nuclear promoters have been â and continue â using Orwellian language to try to hide the truth about the deadly dangers of nuclear technology.â
more > whats up: Nukespeak is a classic! | Karl Grossman
EnviroVideo presents Enviro Close-UP with Karl Grossman on blip.tvA EnviroVideo produces environmental and social justice programs for television – including interview and news shows, specials, and documentaries. The underlying premise of EnviroVideo is that there are critical environmental issues at hand that can best be communicated to large numbers of people through the media most favored for news and information – television and the Internet. And if there is broad public awareness, pressing environmental matters can be dealt with and action taken to truly resolve them.
NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW
whats up: RC’S NUCLEAR BLOG
- Labels: atomic bomb, atoms, censorship, chernobyl, environment, fukushima, nuclear, pollution, radiation, war
By Peter Phillips and Craig Cekala
For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat, reports Cord Jefferson January 27, 2011 on www.good.ir. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. Veterans who, after serving, suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are also at high risk. The study showed that 47 percent of veterans with PTSD had thoughts of suicide before they found help. The internal anguish a soldier experiences after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can be far more severe than that experienced during live external combat.
More than 2 million troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Those who do return often suffer from physical, psychological, and cognitive trauma. More than 40 per 100,000 men from the ages of 20 to 24 take their lives each year. Some deaths, which are not part of these statistics, are due to driving while under the influence of alcohol consumed due to depression. In 2008, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were 75 percent more likely to die in a car accident and 148 percent more likely to die in a motorcycle accident. By making the calculations of 40 per 100,000 per year the numbers of veteran suicides reaches into the tens of thousands nationwide since the beginning of the 9/11 wars…
more > Human Costs of War & ViolenceâCensored News Cluster From Censored 2012 Chapter 1 | Project Censored
“This nation
will remain the land of the free
only so long as it is the home of the brave.”
Elmer Davis
End less war.
End this war.
End less war.
End this war.
End less war.
End this war.
End less war.
End this war.
They go to fight for freedom,
but they are dying for conquest !!!
- Labels: arms trade, corporations, death, fear, greed, war
X-37B during encapsulation ahead of the OTV-1 launch
X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) or USA-212 is the first flight of the Boeing X-37B, an American unmanned robotic spacecraft. It was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on 22 April 2010, and is currently operating in low Earth orbit.
The spacecraft is operated by the United States Air Force, which has not revealed what the spaceship’s specific payload is, stating only that it will “demonstrate various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components, and associated technology to be transported into space and back.”
Most of the mission parameters for the OTV-1 flight have not been disclosed. The vehicle is capable of being on-orbit for up to 270 days. The Air Force stated the mission time will depend on progress of the craft’s experiments during orbit. Mission control is handled by the 3d Space Experimentation Squadron, 21st Space Wing, of the Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs.
James Oberg speculates that the concurrent launch of Air Force’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle HTV-2 is related to the mission. Part of X-37B’s mission profile might involve a simulated enemy attack, which X-37B should detect and autonomously react on it. HTV-2 was launched at 23:00 UTC on April 22, 2010, i.e., 52 min ahead of X-37B, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Some speculators believe it marks the beginning of military operations in space. In particular, William Scott, co-author of the techno-novel Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III and former Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine believes that with OTV-1 the Air Force might test weapons delivery from a space plane in low Earth orbit. He mentions Rods from God as a possible scenario. (read more) (video clip)
…a very sad piece of truth, once we know
…are we supposed to do nothing about it?
- Labels: gaza, israel, media, mind control, palestine, paradox, peace, propaganda, war