Japan

By Tim Shorrock | ( Tomdispatch.com | – – Despite the attention being given to America’s roiling wars and conflicts in the Greater Middle East, crucial decisions about the global role of U.S. military power may be made in a region where, as yet, there are no hot wars: Asia. Donald Trump will arrive in […]

Japan

On 71st Anniversary of Hiroshima, the Fear of a Nuclear Trump

contributors

TeleSur | – – Donald Trump also recently asked a national security expert three times why, since the US has nuclear weapons, it can’t use them. Japan marked the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Saturday as its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for eliminating nuclear arms. “We must not have […]

Japan

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history?

contributors

by Akil Awan | (The New Statesman) – – Surely 70 years is long enough for us to put to rest the tired canard of the atomic bombings on Japan being “the lesser of the two evils”, and recognise the true gravity of this crime against humanity. Seventy years ago today, the Unites States dropped […]

Japan

How Dropping the A-Bomb on Japan initiated the Military-Industrial Complex

contributors

By Michael Hiltzik | (Author, Big Science) | – – This summer — August 6 and 9, to be precise — marks the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seven decades on, the social, political, and moral implications of birth of the nuclear age still are widely and bitterly debated. Indeed, […]

Asia

The Yasukuni Shuffle: China and Japan duke it out via T.V. Serials on the Wrongs of WW II

contributors

By Philip J Cunningham Everyday hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese and Japanese kill one another on Chinese television. Hundreds of Anti-Japan war dramas were churned out last year and the genre dominates China’s airwaves round the clock like never before, even though eight decades have gone by since Japan’s war of invasion. What’s more, […]

Asia

Is Obama right that America’s Future is in Asia, not the Middle East?

Juan Cole

(by Juan Cole) Barack Obama, brought up in Hawaii and having lived as a child in Indonesia, is the first Pacific president, and his current trip to Asia, beginning in Japan, is meant to underline his policy of “rebalancing” toward Asia. Although the phrase has miffed some Europeans, the policy isn’t intended to substitute US […]

Asia

US Pivot to Asia Should Deploy Soft Power, not the Marines

contributors

(By John Feffer) In a future update of The Devil’s Dictionary, the famed Ambrose Bierce dissection of the linguistic hypocrisies of modern life, a single word will accompany the entry for “Pacific pivot”: retreat. It might seem a strange way to characterize the Obama administration’s energetic attempt to reorient its foreign and military policy toward […]

Energy

Fukushima’s Strontium Leaks a Neverending Crisis? (Germanos)

Juan Cole

Andrea Germanos writes at Commondreams courtesy VOAnews As the disaster at Fukushima plant continues to unfold, one nuclear expert is warning that "this is an accident that’s shockingly not stopping." Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), sounds particular alarm around radioactive strontium that is being released from the trouble-stricken […]

Arab Spring

Middle East Regional Contention over Egypt’s New Government

Juan Cole

The change of government in Egypt produced starkly different reactions in various Middle Eastern countries, which tells us something about the situation there. With the exception of maverick member Qatar, the Gulf Cooperation Council, grouping six conservative Gulf oil monarchies, cheered loudest for the military coup made by Brig. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi against elected […]