Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 3

Good Old Stephen Colbert Returns

In former guise, with a great "Word"--which is "Trumpiness."

Live-Blogging the GOP Convention 2016

God help me, I've live-blogged every GOP hootenanny since 2004, first for Editor & Publisher (where I also served as the editor) and then at The Nation.  I even wrote books about the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.   In 2004, I attended the GOP convention in New York, got kicked off the floor, and also marched in the massive peace march.  So, with nothing much else doing at home tonight, I thought I'd try again tonight, off the TV,  for those with better things to do, updated at the top below.  All times ET.

Later:  It looks like Melania plagiarized part of speech...from Michelle Obama...you know, the part on hard work and integrity.  Yikes.


11:30  I suffered all night for you but I gave up with arrival of Joni Ernst.  MSNBC just brought on my old pal Paul Rieckhoff for a reality check on vets community.  

10:55  New York Daily News front page for tomorrow posted. 

10:50  Quote of the night from speaker Flynn: "War is not about bathrooms." Then he agrees with crowd: "Lock her up, that's right." Adds: "Damn right."  And "American exceptionalism is very real.  Our country was built upon Judeo-Christian principles."

10:22:  And Trump is on.  "Oh, we're gonna win, we're gonna win so big." Then repeats it.  Amazingly, says just a few more words before introducing wife.   She claims he is "kind and fair and caring," but admits that others do not always see it.  Otherwise not much to say.  Crowd seemed sleepy until ovation at end. She offered not a single personal anecdote, just declared his goodness without example, probably a first for candidate wife.  And sacrilege of intro with "Brown Eyed Girl."  Have to hope Van sues. 

10:10   Now weighing in -- Samantha Bee with video, see @FullfrontalSamB

10:00  Primetime.  The three networks join coverage.  MSNBC running clip from  impossibly lame interview Matt Lauer just did for Today with Trump and wife on the plane.  Melania:  Don is an "amazing guy." Stop the presses, if any are left....In the hall, the first protest, Code Pink, natch.  Now Rudy G on, still called "America's mayor" today by Jake Tapper.  Ranting like a hysteric.  As Molly Ivins said about a previous GOP confab, "It sounded better in the original German." And three-times married Rudy hailing three-times-married Trump as great family man.

9:45  Sen. Tom Cotton, likely 2020 candidate, on now. Tells troops, "Help is one the way."  Want us to "win wars not just end wars."  What do you think most troops in Afghanistan would prefer?  These GOPers love vets who have gone to war, unless they are on the other ticket, when they get swiftly boated.

9:25  Milwaukee sheriff on now, ready to slam Blacks Lives Matter and Obama.  He lost it with Don Lemon last night. Opens with "Blue lives matter," sparking chants. And brings "good news" of latest acquittal in Baltimore case.   Accuses BLM and Occupy of "anarchy."  Now Don Lemon on and proudly stating that he does not support Black Lives Matter either.

9:00  Underwear model speaking now.  He has said that he Obama is a Muslim.  Jesus told him to do it.   Says he has kids, in case you were thinking they were letting a gay guy speak.   Naked appeal for Trump....And over on Fox, Megyn welcomes...a former Black Panther and a Cleveland cop who claims Obama has "blood on his hands." 


8:45 Controversy over on Fox!  Trump went on O'Reilly taking attention from Benghazi woman!  Even Brit Hume hitting Bill over this.  Bill claims Trump broke news on promising to use Black Lives Matter against Dems.  And so on....Good Steve Schmidt line:  "The weaponization of grief." 

8:25  Delegates may bounce Pence and name Marcus Lutttrell veep.  Not craziest thing they're doing this year....Mother of Benghazi victim says she holds Hllary "personally" responsible.  How many probes and congressional committees have now cleared Hillary on this?  Says, "Hillary for prison--she deserves to be in stripes." Crowd goes crazy. Then they go to Benghazi video.  Don't recall any of thousands of 9/11 family members at DNC convention in 2004 naming Dubya as killer of their spouse or kid...MSNBC brings on congressman, and Richard Engel, to defend Hillary on this. 

8:10  Chris Matthews hailing Trump kids as incredibly great and nice (as if raised by Jackie Kennedy, he adds) and even "genteel," except maybe when shooting rare creatures in Africa, and so on....."Duck Dynasty" star, the "yuppie hillbilly," takes the stage with prayer and American flag headband.  Still recall when Abbie Hoffman got arrested for wearing a flag shirt....Scott Baio now on, claims Hillary wants to be president only "for herself." Trump just acting for USA, closes, "Let's make America, America again."  Shark jumped.

7:35  Preferred Sarah Paulson's Nicolle Wallace to Nicolle Wallace's....Former obnoxious Saturday Night Live bandleader G.E. Smith once again providing the music for the GOP confab, as he has done in past....Elsewhere in the national league, Cornel West today endorsed...Jill Stein.

 7:15  Every four years there are predictions of protests at conventions making a lot of news and causing chaos but when the times comes they rarely have any impact--as the parties and cities learned long ago to restrict them to security zones far from the hall and most of the media.  I guess I am partly to blame, as a attendee at infamous  Chicago convention protests in 1968. 

7:00  A reminder that Jon Stewart re-joins Stephen Colbert at least briefly tonight.  If you missed Stephen taking the GOP stage, watch. 

6:40  MSNBC interviewing Ohio's Connie Schultz, great columnist and wife of Sherrod Brown, who would be my pick for VP--if that wouldn't cost Dems a Senate seat.  Dana Bash on CNN chats with Rick Perry who says he is backing Trump because of SCOTUS (but she misses chance to ask him for other reasons)...Chris Hayes runs clip of him interviewing folks at Roger Stone and Alex Jones rallies. Brian Williams now in the anchor chair, with Rachel, and Gene Robinson and Steve Schmidt....Rep. Steve King also told Chris that white race (literally) sueprior to others.

6:25  Just kicking this off by noting that I watched the brief anti-Trump (or if you will, "fair rules") rebellion this afternoon, which the two cable channels almost blew with confusing coverage, though they have compensated since.  Question is: Did delegates really withdraw signatures on petition calling for vote, and if so, what pressure produced it?   One might say it's much-ado-about-little, as the effort to "stop Trump" had no chance to succeed though embarrassment was not killed, as the cablers have been going wild about it since.   Highlight for me was former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey denouncing the "brown shirt" tactics, linking this to "fascism," and then doubling down by saying it reflected "Trump."   NBC's Kelly O'Donnell later got kicked off the floor, for a bit. We'll see if this goes anywhere later tonight or, as I suspect, the promises of disruptions will go nowhere.

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus-19 Days

Two days ago in my annual series the highlight was the first nuclear test, at Trinity, on that date 71 years ago.  The following day, in Potsdam, Truman met Stalin for the first time, and had a new bounce in his step after receiving word of the positive test.  Still, he had to insist that the Soviets keep their promise to enter the war for he knew, as he wrote in his diary, that would mean "fini Japs," even without use of the atomic bomb.  As it would turn out, he decided not to wait for that but chose to use the bomb first.  As he wrote in his diary on this date he was certain that Japan would would quit when "Manhattan" (his name for the bomb, from the still-secret Manhattan project) appeared in the sky.

Also today Gen. Leslie Groves, who managed the Manhattan effort, sent a long and detailed memo to Secretary of War Stimson on the Trinity test, which included eyewitness accounts by scientists and what would become a decades-long theme: downplaying the negative effects of radiation.  Much more in my book and ebook Atomic Cover-up.

Countdown to Hiroshima, X-Minus-21 Days: Unholy Trinity and the Birth of the Atomic Age

While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its 71st anniversary will be marked—or mourned today.

Entire books have been written about the test, so I’ll just touch on one key issue here briefly (there’s much more in my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America, and my own recent book and ebook Atomic Cover-Up). It’s related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era.

In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain.

Indeed, scientists warned of danger to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the military boss, General Leslie Groves, ruled that residents not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (at least until they spotted a blast brighter than any sun). Nothing was to interfere with the test. When two physicians on Oppenheimer’s staff proposed an evacuation, Groves replied, “What are you, Hearst propagandists?”

Admiral Williams Leahy, President Truman’s chief of staff—who opposed dropping the bomb on Japan—placed the bomb in the same category as “poison gas.” And, sure enough, soon after the shot went off before dawn on July 16, scientists monitored some alarming evidence. Radiation was quickly settling to earth in a band thirty miles wide by 100 miles long. A paralyzed mule was discovered twenty-five miles from ground zero.

Still, it could have been worse; the cloud had drifted over loosely-populated areas. “We were just damn lucky,” the head of radiological safety for the test later affirmed.

The local press knew nothing about any of this. When the shock wave had hit the trenches in the desert, Groves’ first words were: “We must keep the whole thing quiet.” This set the tone for the decades that followed, with tragic effects for “downwinders” and others tainted across the country, workers in the nuclear industry, “atomic soldiers,” those who questioned the building of the hydrogen bomb and an expanding arms race, among others.

Naturally, reporters were curious about the big blast, however, so Groves released a statement written by W.L. Laurence (who was on leave from the New York Times and playing the role of chief atomic propagandist) announcing that an ammunition dump had exploded.

In the weeks that followed, ranchers discovered dozens of cattle had odd burns or were losing hair. Oppenheimer ordered post-test health reports held in the strictest secrecy. When W.L. Laurence’s famous report on the Trinity test was published just after the Hiroshima bombing he made no mention of radiation at all.

Even as the scientists celebrated their success at Alamagordo on July 16, the first radioactive cloud was drifting eastward over America, depositing fallout along its path. When Americans found out about this, three months later, the word came not from the government but from the president of the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, who wondered why some of his film was fogging and suspected radioactivity as the cause.

Fallout was absent in early press accounts of the Hiroshima bombing as the media joined in the triumphalist backing of The Bomb and the bombings. When reports of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki afflicted with a strange and horrible new disease emerged, General Groves, at first, called it all a “hoax” and “propaganda” and speculated that the Japanese had different “blood.” Then the military kept reporters from the West from arriving in the atomic cities, until more than a month after the blasts, when it controlled access in an early version of today’s “embedded reporters” program.

When some of the truth about radiation started to surface in the U.S. media, a full-scale official effort to downplay the Japanese death toll—and defend the decision to use the bomb—really accelerated, leading to an effective decades-long “Hiroshima narrative.” But that’s a story for my Atomic Cover-Up book—which also covers the suppression of film shot by the US Army in Hirohsima and Nagasaki—and for another day here.

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus-22 Days

Once again this year I have launched by daily "Countdown to Hiroshima," covering events on each particular date leading up to the atomic attacks on Japan in August, 1945.  Below you will find posts this week on petitions from atomic scientists that attempted to convince President Truman to demonstrate for the Japanese the power of the bomb before dropping it over the center of cities, killing tens of thousands of civilians.  But one of Truman's tops advisers, Ralph Bard, tried a different

He was Under Secretary of the Navy and also a member of the Interim Committee, which had advised Truman in June that he should approve the use of the bomb against Japanese cities as soon as it was tested (which would come on July 16, 1945) and ready.  Bard sent Secretary of War  the following memo and also may have met with  Truman to discuss it (there is some debate about this).   He remained convinced until the end of his life that Truman should have followed his advice. In fact, many historians believe that he is correct.  His three-angled proposal included warning the Japanese that the Soviets would likely declare war against them soon (which they did, just after Hiroshima); and to offer assurances that they could keep their emperor as a symbolic leader (which we okayed but only have we got a chance to use two of the new weapons). 

Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use. The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling.

During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender. Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program. The stakes are so tremendous that it is my opinion very real consideration should be given to some plan of this kind. I do not believe under present circumstances existing that there is anyone in this country whose evaluation of the chances of the success of such a program is worth a great deal. The only way to find out is to try it out.

RALPH BARD

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus 23 Days

This week I launched my annual daily countdown to the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aftermath in 1945.  You can find the first couple of days below.  In one of them, I described how famed nuclear physicist Leo Szilard organized a petition campaign  to try to get President Truman to order that their creation not be used against humans or if so, only after a demonstration to the Japanese of its power.  This sparked a similar petition, on around this date in 1945,  by 67 scientists at Oak Ridge, Tenn., who were also working in the Manhattan.  For more see my Atomic Cover-up book.  This post is from the War Department's official release on the lead up to Trinity test of the first weapon, which would occur on July 16.  The release, of course, was not distributed to the public until after Hiroshima.

This phase of the Atomic Bomb Project, which is headed by Major General Leslie R. Groves, was under the direction of Dr. J. R. Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist of the University of California. He is to be credited with achieving the implementation of atomic energy for military purposes.

Tension before the actual detonation was at a tremendous pitch. Failure was an ever-present possibility. Too great a success, envisioned by some of those present, might have meant an uncontrollable, unusable weapon.

Final assembly of the atomic bomb began on the night of July 12 in an old ranch house. As various component assemblies arrived from distant points, tension among the scientists rose to an increasing pitch. Coolest of all was the man charged with the actual assembly of the vital core, Dr. R. F. Bacher, in normal times a professor at Cornell University.

The entire cost of the project, representing the erection of whole cities and radically new plants spread over many miles of countryside, plus unprecedented experimentation, was represented in the pilot bomb and its parts. Here was the focal point of the venture. No other country in the world had been capable of such an outlay in brains and technical effort.

The full significance of these closing moments before the final factual test was not lost on these men of science. They fully knew their position as pioneers into another age. They also knew that one false move would blast them and their entire effort into eternity. Before the assembly started a receipt for the vital matter was signed by Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, General Groves' deputy. This signalized the formal transfer of the irreplaceable material from the scientists to the Army.

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus-24 Days

This week I launched my annual daily countdown to the use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aftermath in 1945.  You can find the first couple of days below.  In one of them, I described how famed nuclear physicist Leo Szilard organized a petition campaign from Los Alamos to try to get President Truman to order that their creation not be used against humans or if so, only after a demonstration to the Japanese of its power.  This sparked a similar petition, on around this date in 1945,  by 67 scientists at Oak Ridge, Tenn., who were also working in the Manhattan.  For more see my Atomic Cover-up book.

To the President of the United States:

We, the undersigned scientific personnel of the Clinton Laboratories, believe that the world-wide social and political consequences of the power of the weapon now being developed on this Project impose a special moral obligation on the government and people of the United States in introducing the weapon in warfare.

It is further believed that the power of this weapon should be made known by demonstration to the peoples of the world, irrespective of the course of the present conflict, for in this way the body of world opinion may be made the determining factor in the absolute preservation of peace.

Therefore we recommend that before this weapon be used without restriction in the present conflict, its powers should be adequately described and demonstrated, and the Japanese nation should be given the opportunity to consider the consequences of further refusal to surrender. We feel that this course of action will heighten the effectiveness of the weapon in this war and will be of tremendous effect in the prevention of future wars.

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus-25 Days

Every year I post daily on what was taking place on this date in 1945 as the U.S. got ready to use atomic bombs against Japan.  You can see my first post this year just below on this blog.  Here is today's item.

Even at this late date, few Americans are aware that the Soviet entry into the war against Japan just hours after the bombing of Hiroshima may have had as much (or more) to do with Japan's quick surrender than the bomb.  This is a subject of great debate among historians and it coming days in my posts you will see much more about it.  But for now, this link, and an expert  summary:

"Since September 1940, under the covername 'Magic,' U.S. military intelligence had been routinely decrypting the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The National Security Agency kept the 'Magic" diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the series for 1942 through August 1945 in its entirety until the early 1990s. This summary includes a report on a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow concerning the emperor's decision to seek Soviet help in ending the war. Not knowing that the Soviets had already made a commitment to its Allies to declare war on Japan, Tokyo fruitlessly pursued this option for several weeks. The 'Magic' intercepts from mid-July have figured in Gar Alperovitz's argument that Truman and his advisers recognized that the emperor was ready to capitulate if the Allies showed more flexibility on the demand for unconditional surrender. This point is central to Alperovitz's thesis that top U.S. officials recognized a "two-step logic" that moderating unconditional surrender and a Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Japan's surrender without the use of the bomb."

National Booker Award

Don't miss new doc up on iTunes and maybe elsewhere, Bayou Maharajah, which could only be about NOLA crazy/genius piano man James Booker.  Sample of his work, live from Montreaux.  Daddy made love to white mama "in front of the KKK."  And "we all better watch out, watch out, for the CIA."

October Surprise?

Well, maybe for most people...that's when my book The Tunnels will be published by Crown.  Click on cover at right to learn more.  And unofficial trailer below (my son, the pro, will do a better one down the road).  Music: Patrick Ffrench (yes, that's two f's).