Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 55

Tortured Reasoning

Jay Rosen in new post echoes my views in not being so impresed with NYT finally admitting U.S. torture under Bush was indeed torture.  Of course, Bill Keller was main culprit.

 A term like “enhanced interrogation techniques” starts with zero currency, extreme bloodlessness and dubious origins. A lot to overcome. In the years when the Times could not pick between it and torture — 2002 to 2014, approximately —  it seemed that its editors and reporters were trying to re-clarify what had been made more opaque by their own avoid-the-label policy decision. Thus the appearance of do we have to spell it out for you? phrases like “brutal interrogation methods,” meant to signal:  this was really, really bad. So bad you might think it amounts to…

Torture.

So for the fruits of avoiding a label the Times becomes a force for fuzzing things up. Early in a public reckoning with acts of state torture it decides it cannot call it that. Wrong side of your Orwell there, mister editor. To report what happened you have to first commit to calling things by their right names. Somewhere in a fog it helped to create the Times lost sight of that.

Kobe Bryant Courts Beethoven

No, this is not an Onion article:  Kobe Bryant is to introduce next week a new sneaker with a...Beethoven theme, specifically the Ninth Symphony (see my recent book and film I co-produced).  Yes, he's something of a pianist and all--and I guess Beethoven could also soar and go to the rim--but....It's lightweight for hot weather wear and partly made of yams.....

Murakami on Hiroshima & Nagasaki

You may know that Patti Smith reviewed the new novel by Haruki Murakami on front-page of NYT Book Review this week.  This jogged my memory--I recalled seeing a brilliant speech by him a couple years back that covered the atomic bombings, Japan, Fukushima and all of us as "perpetrators."  Here is link to all of it.   One small bit:  

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was the central figure in the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War. But when Oppenheimer learned of the horrific results of those nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he was deeply disturbed. Reportedly he turned to President Truman and said,
“Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.”

President Truman took from his pocket a neatly folded white handkerchief, remarking, “Well here, would you like to wipe your hands?”

Needless to say, you cannot find a spotless handkerchief large enough to wipe away that much blood anywhere in the world.

American Officer Gets Street Named After Him...in Nagasaki

I've been studying and writing about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on this date in 1945 for over forty years now (and have even spent a week there) and thought I knew a lot but this is a new one for me.  U.S. Army Lt. Col. Victor Delnore, son of Lebanese immigrants, got a street named after him today in Nagasaki, with his daughter there to take part.  Why?  Well, it seems he was in charge of the U.S. occupation there starting about a year after the bombing and was known for his kindness and good deeds.

He also was more liberal than his colleagues and superiors in advocating that survivors of the bombing get to tell their stories in print. (His full bio here.)  He okayed and spoke at the first annual public memorial in 1948--held every year since, including today, with U.S. envoy Caroline Kennedy in attendance.   And he was an opponent of nuclear weapons back then and spoke out until the end of his life.  Even before then, as a tank commander in Europe, he was known for not firing on defenseless villages and for not throwing Germans in prison camps if they didn't deserve it.  From that bio: "These acts grew out of the fact that Delnore himself was an immigrant, and he loved and respected the ideals of freedom and democracy in the United States. He hated to see Americans deny these same rights to others. Delnore always sought to treat people with respect and dignity. It was a philosophy that would serve him well in both wartime Europe and Occupied Japan."

There's a book that collects his World War II letters.  See my full piece on the tragedy of Nagasaki here.

69 Years Ago: First Journo Reached Nagasaki--His Story Disappeared for Decades

A few days back, I covered the controversial case of Wilfred Burchett, the first reporter to reach A-bombed Hiroshima. See my full story here  on George Weller, a well-known correspondent for a Chicago daily, who was the first outside journalist to reach Nagasaki after the atomic bombing, 69 years ago today.  It's an incredible tale, all the more so for me, since I've been haunted about Nagasaki ever since visiting it for a few days in 1984.  As I've written elsewhere:  If there is very questionable defense for destroying 140,000 civilian lives in Hiroshima, there is no defense whatsoever for the attack on Nagasaki.

In any case, after Weller bravely reached the city, he foolishly filed his dispatches via Gen. MacArthur's office in Tokyo--from where they never emerged.  Ever.  They remained hidden until Weller's son, who I have interviewed, found the carbons in an old trunk about then years ago.  See my book here for the whole story,  the U.S. occupation of the city (where our troops were afflicted), my own visit to Nagasaki,  and for more on the decade-long "coverup" of many other elements of the atomic bombing of Japan, including U.S. film footage. 

Tricky Dicked

Harry Shearer re-enacts the moments before Nixon resigned--verbatim from how it actually happened.  Though you may be amazed:

Another Shameful 'NYT' Casualty Count

Late Friday:  Revised version of story now correctly states that "most" of the casualties in Gaza have been civilians, not "many." Not sure if my widely linked and tweeted complaint (below) had any effect, but hope it did.

On the other hand, in another typical example that suggests the Times, perhaps, bowing to a complaint from IDF:  A headline on another Rudoren story that once read: "A Boy At Play in Gaza, an Israeli Missile, a Mourning Family" has been changed to "A Boy at Play in Gaza, a Return to Warfare, a Family in Mourning."  It's all the more odd because, in a rarity in a Rudoren story, she clearly says that an Israeli drone fired the missile.  Then again, she's in Gaza now.  Perhaps her usual IDF spokesman source couldn't reach he to insist on the usual, "Israel denies...might be Hamas rocket...looking into it...."  Note:  She does severely undercount the death toll of children, which the UN places at 440 tonight, while Rudoren simply has it at "more than 300."

Earlier: Along with many others, we've critiqued Jodi Rudoren's major piece for the NYT the other day which reflected Israel's spin on a supposedly lower civilian body count in Gaza.  At least then, Rudoren still admitted a majority of the dead were likely civilians (even if she rejected UN and other counts that put that percentage at 70 to 82% or more).

But in today's piece, on the end of the ceasefire, written with the other half of the Times' less-than-dynamic duo, Isabel Kershner, they actually write this:   "Since the fighting began on July 8, more than 1,880 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, and 67 have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers."  Can you dig it?  "Many" of them civilians, which could mean, oh, 100 or so, not the (even in Rudoren's recent count) 1000 or more.  Perhaps the IDF now claims less than half are civilians and Rudoren, with steno pad out, has relayed that without a journalistic filter.

And then then for the Israelis, "mostly soldiers"--when the tally is actually 64 soldiers and 3 civilians. Do the Times' editors have no shame?

UN tonight updates: about 1400 of 1600 dead IDed in Gaza are civilians, with another 300 fighters or not yet IDed.  That sure is "many" civilians.

As we noted earlier, the IDF (and needless to say, Rudoren's) count is based on statistics showing the a large number of young males have died in the shelling.  The only explanation? They were militants aiding Hamas and so were somehow precisely targeted as fair game by the Israelis.  This, of course, ignores the reality captured by other reporters and  videos: the majority of aid workers, medics, ambulance drivers, and others out in the streets trying to help people, dig out the rubble, or go for food and water are...young males.  Who often then fall victim to new air strikes.  I guess they also all double as Hamas rocketeers.  

Did Truman Not Understand Likely Civilian Toll of A-Bombs?

Terrific new article by the invaluable Alex Wellerstein raising a question I haven't confronted in years:  Did Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's well-known success in getting the great cultural city of Kyoto taken off the atomic hit list mislead Truman into thinking the other targets were primarily military and not large teeming cities?  I'm not convinced.  I think Truman was insensitive to that to begin with (as were so many American leaders, military and even some scientists) but the point is worth considering.  If true, it does show how early clueless leaders can order slaughter, especially if shielded by subordinates.  Truman did describe Hiroshima merely as a "military base" in his historic announcement and I've always figured that was pure propaganda, but who knows, maybe he thought that was (mainly) true.  Nagasaki happened because he didn't care enough to halt for a few days--it was assembly-line massacre.

No Pot of Gold

My nomination for grimmest great song:  Richard Thompson, "End of the Rainbow."

Starry Starry Fright

Photo from space shows four hurricanes lined up in the Pacific, as first hits Hawaii.  Channeling Van Gogh?