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<h1 class="css-19v093x">ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING…
UNLESS WE STOP IT NOW</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">BrandFour
Design Communications</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">johnpilger.com</div>
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<p>In a major essay to mark the 75th
anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, John Pilger describes reporting
from five 'ground zeros' for nuclear weapons
- from Hiroshima to Bikini, Nevada to
Polynesia and Australia. He warns that
unless we take action now, China is next.</p>
<br>
<p>When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the
shadow on the steps was still there. It was
an almost perfect impression of a human
being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one
hand by her side as she sat waiting for a
bank to open.</p>
<br>
<p>At a quarter past eight on the morning of
August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were
burned into the granite.</p>
<br>
<p>I stared at the shadow for an hour or more,
then I walked down to the river where the
survivors still lived in shanties. I met a
man called Yukio, whose chest was etched
with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing
when the atomic bomb was dropped.</p>
<br>
<p>He described a huge flash over the city, "a
bluish light, something like an electrical
short", after which wind blew like a tornado
and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the
ground and noticed only the stalks of my
flowers were left. Everything was still and
quiet, and when I got up, there were people
naked, not saying anything. Some of them had
no skin or hair. I was certain I was
dead."??Nine years later, I returned to look
for him and he was dead from leukaemia.</p>
<br>
<p>"No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said
The New York Times front page on 13
September, 1945, a classic of planted
disinformation. "General Farrell," reported
William L. Lawrence, "denied categorically
that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous,
lingering radioactivity." Lawrence received
the Pulitzer Prize.</p>
<br>
<p>Only one reporter, Wilfred Burchett, an
Australian, had braved the perilous journey
to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of
the atomic bombing, in defiance of the
Allied occupation authorities, which
controlled the "press pack".</p>
<br>
<p>"I write this as a warning to the world,"
reported Burchett in the London Daily
Express of September 5,1945. Sitting in the
rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter, he
described hospital wards filled with people
with no visible injuries who were dying from
what he called "an atomic plague".</p>
<br>
<p>For this, his press accreditation was
withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His
witness to the truth was never forgiven.</p>
<br>
<p>The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass
murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic
criminality. It was justified by lies that
form the bedrock of America's war propaganda
in the 21st century, casting a new enemy,
and target - China.</p>
<br>
<p>During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the
most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb
was dropped to end the war in the Pacific
and to save lives.</p>
<br>
<p>"Even without the atomic bombing attacks,"
concluded the United States Strategic
Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over
Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure
to bring about unconditional surrender and
obviate the need for invasion. "Based on a
detailed investigation of all the facts, and
supported by the testimony of the surviving
Japanese leaders involved, it is the
Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have
surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not
been dropped, even if Russia had not entered
the war [against Japan] and even if no
invasion had been planned or contemplated."</p>
<br>
<p>The National Archives in Washington
contains documented Japanese peace overtures
as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable
sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador
in Tokyo and intercepted by the US made
clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for
peace, including "capitulation even if the
terms were hard". Nothing was done.</p>
<br>
<p>The US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson,
told President Truman he was "fearful" that
the US Air Force would have Japan so "bombed
out" that the new weapon would not be able
"to show its strength". Stimson later
admitted that "no effort was made, and none
was seriously considered, to achieve
surrender merely in order not to have to use
the [atomic] bomb".</p>
<br>
<p>Stimson's foreign policy colleagues -
looking ahead to the post-war era they were
then shaping "in our image", as Cold War
planner George Kennan famously put it - made
clear they were eager "to browbeat the
Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather
ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie
Groves, director of the Manhattan Project
that made the atomic bomb, testified: "There
was never any illusion on my part that
Russia was our enemy, and that the project
was conducted on that basis."</p>
<br>
<p>The day after Hiroshima was obliterated,
President Harry Truman voiced his
satisfaction with the "overwhelming success"
of "the experiment".</p>
<br>
<p>The "experiment" continued long after the
war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the
United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in
the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the
equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every
day for 12 years.</p>
<br>
<p>The human and environmental consequences
were catastrophic. During the filming of my
documentary, The Coming War on China, I
chartered a small aircraft and flew to
Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here
that the United States exploded the world's
first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned
earth. My shoes registered "unsafe" on my
Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in
unworldly formations. There were no birds.</p>
<br>
<p>I trekked through the jungle to the
concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the
morning of March 1, 1954, the button was
pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again
and vaporised an entire island in the
lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which
from the air is a menacing spectacle: a
deathly void in a place of beauty.</p>
<br>
<p>The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and
"unexpectedly". The official history claims
"the wind changed suddenly". It was the
first of many lies, as declassified
documents and the victims' testimony reveal.</p>
<br>
<p>Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to
monitor the test site, said, "They knew
where the radioactive fall-out was going to
go. Even on the day of the shot, they still
had an opportunity to evacuate people, but
[people] were not evacuated; I was not
evacuated... The United States needed some
guinea pigs to study what the effects of
radiation would do."</p>
<br>
<p>Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall
Islands was a calculated experiment on the
lives of large numbers of people. This was
Project 4.1, which began as a scientific
study of mice and became an experiment on
"human beings exposed to the radiation of a
nuclear weapon".</p>
<br>
<p>The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 - like
the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in
the 1960s and 70s - suffered from a range of
cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; thousands
had already died. Miscarriages and
stillbirths were common; those babies who
lived were often deformed horribly.</p>
<br>
<p>Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had
not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test.
Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap's
skies darkened and it rained what first
appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water
were contaminated; and the population fell
victim to cancers. That is still true today.</p>
<br>
<p>I met Nerje Joseph, who showed me a
photograph of herself as a child on
Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns and
much of her was hair missing. "We were
bathing at the well on the day the bomb
exploded," she said. "White dust started
falling from the sky. I reached to catch the
powder. We used it as soap to wash our hair.
A few days later, my hair started falling
out."</p>
<br>
<p>Lemoyo Abon said, "Some of us were in
agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were
terrified. We thought it must be the end of
the world."</p>
<br>
<p>US official archive film I included in my
film refers to the islanders as "amenable
savages". In the wake of the explosion, a US
Atomic Energy Agency official is seen
boasting that Rongelap "is by far the most
contaminated place on earth", adding, "it
will be interesting to get a measure of
human uptake when people live in a
contaminated environment."</p>
<br>
<p>American scientists, including medical
doctors, built distinguished careers
studying the "human uptake'. There they are
in flickering film, in their white coats,
attentive with their clipboards. When an
islander died in his teens, his family
received a sympathy card from the scientist
who studied him.</p>
<br>
<p>I have reported from five nuclear "ground
zeros" throughout the world -- in Japan, the
Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and
Maralinga in Australia. Even more than my
experience as a war correspondent, this has
taught me about the ruthlessness and
immorality of great power: that is, imperial
power, whose cynicism is the true enemy of
humanity.</p>
<br>
<p>This struck me forcibly when I filmed at
Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the
Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was
an obelisk on which was inscribed: "A
British atomic weapon was test exploded here
on 9 October 1957". On the rim of the crater
was this sign:</p>
<br>
<p><strong>WARNING: RADIATION HAZARD</strong></p>
<p><em>Radiation levels for a few hundred
metres around this point may be above
those considered safe for permanent
occupation.</em></p>
<br>
<p>For as far as the eye could see, and
beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw
plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum
powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans
that a third of a milligram gives a 50 per
cent chance of cancer.</p>
<br>
<p>The only people who might have seen the
sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom
there was no warning. According to an
official account, if they were lucky "they
were shooed off like rabbits".</p>
<br>
<p>Today, an unprecedented campaign of
propaganda is shooing us all off like
rabbits. We are not meant to question the
daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric,
which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of
anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is
bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan .... Huawei.
How confusing it is when "our" most reviled
leader says so.</p>
<br>
<p>The current phase of this campaign began
not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in
2011 flew to Australia to declare the
greatest build-up of US naval forces in the
Asia-Pacific region since World War Two.
Suddenly, China was a "threat". This was
nonsense, of course. What was threatened was
America's unchallenged psychopathic view of
itself as the richest, the most successful,
the most "indispensable" nation.</p>
<br>
<p>What was never in dispute was its prowess
as a bully - with more than 30 members of
the United Nations suffering American
sanctions of some kind and a trail of the
blood running through defenceless countries
bombed, their governments overthrown, their
elections interfered with, their resources
plundered.</p>
<br>
<p>Obama's declaration became known as the
"pivot to Asia". One of its principal
advocates was his Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed,
wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean "the
American Sea".</p>
<br>
<p>Whereas Clinton never concealed her
warmongering, Obama was a maestro of
marketing."I state clearly and with
conviction," said the new president in 2009,
"that America's commitment is to seek the
peace and security of a world without
nuclear weapons."</p>
<br>
<p>Obama increased spending on nuclear
warheads faster than any president since the
end of the Cold War. A "usable" nuclear
weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model
12, it means, according to General James
Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, that "going smaller [makes
its use] more thinkable".</p>
<br>
<p>The target is China. Today, more than 400
American military bases almost encircle
China with missiles, bombers, warships and
nuclear weapons. From Australia north
through the Pacific to South-East Asia,
Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to
Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as
one US strategist told me, "the perfect
noose".</p>
<br>
<p>A study by the RAND Corporation - which,
since Vietnam, has planned America's wars -
is entitled War with China: Thinking Through
the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US
Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch
cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman
Kahn - "thinking the unthinkable". Kahn's
book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a
plan for a "winnable" nuclear war.</p>
<br>
<p>Kahn's apocalyptic view is shared by
Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an
evangelical fanatic who believes in the
"rapture of the End". He is perhaps the most
dangerous man alive. "I was CIA director,"
he boasted, "We lied, we cheated, we stole.
It was like we had entire training courses."
Pompeo's obsession is China.</p>
<br>
<p>The endgame of Pompeo's extremism is rarely
if ever discussed in the Anglo-American
media, where the myths and fabrications
about China are standard fare, as were the
lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the
sub-text of this propaganda. Classified
"yellow" even though they were white, the
Chinese are the only ethnic group to have
been banned by an "exclusion act" from
entering the United States, because they
were Chinese. Popular culture declared them
sinister, untrustworthy, "sneaky", depraved,
diseased, immoral.</p>
<br>
<p>An Australian magazine, The Bulletin, was
devoted to promoting fear of the "yellow
peril" as if all of Asia was about to fall
down on the whites-only colony by the force
of gravity.</p>
<br>
<p>As the historian Martin Powers writes,
acknowledging China's modernism, its secular
morality and "contributions to liberal
thought threatened European face, so it
became necessary to suppress China's role in
the Enlightenment debate .... For centuries,
China's threat to the myth of Western
superiority has made it an easy target for
race-baiting."</p>
<br>
<p>In the Sydney Morning Herald, tireless
China-basher Peter Hartcher described those
who spread Chinese influence in Australia as
"rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows".
Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American
demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret
the "dreams" of the current Chinese elite,
to which he is apparently privy. These are
inspired by yearnings for the "Mandate of
Heaven" of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.</p>
<br>
<p>To combat this "mandate", the Australian
government of Scott Morrison has committed
one of the most secure countries on earth,
whose major trading partner is China, to
hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of
American missiles that can be fired at
China.</p>
<br>
<p>The trickledown is already evident. In a
country historically scarred by violent
racism towards Asians, Australians of
Chinese descent have formed a vigilante
group to protect delivery riders. Phone
videos show a delivery rider punched in the
face and a Chinese couple racially abused in
a supermarket. Between April and June, there
were almost 400 racist attacks on
Asian-Australians.</p>
<br>
<p>"We are not your enemy," a high-ranking
strategist in China told me, "but if you [in
the West] decide we are, we must prepare
without delay." China's arsenal is small
compared with America's, but it is growing
fast, especially the development of maritime
missiles designed to destroy fleets of
ships.</p>
<br>
<p>"For the first time," wrote Gregory Kulacki
of the Union of Concerned Scientists, "China
is discussing putting its nuclear missiles
on high alert so that they can be launched
quickly on warning of an attack... This
would be a significant and dangerous change
in Chinese policy..."</p>
<br>
<p>In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni,
distinguished professor of international
affairs at George Washington University, who
wrote that a "blinding attack on China" was
planned, "with strikes that could be
mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as
pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear
weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible
use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead
to nuclear war."</p>
<br>
<p>In 2019, the US staged its biggest single
military exercise since the Cold War, much
of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships
and long-range bombers rehearsed an "Air-Sea
Battle Concept for China" - ASB - blocking
sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and
cutting off China's access to oil, gas and
other raw materials from the Middle East and
Africa.</p>
<br>
<p>It is fear of such a blockade that has seen
China develop its Belt and Road Initiative
along the old Silk Road to Europe and
urgently build strategic airstrips on
disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly
Islands.</p>
<br>
<p>In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing
journalist and novelist, typical of a new
class of outspoken mavericks. Her
best-selling book has the ironic title
Socialism Is Great! Having grown up in the
chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has
travelled and lived in the US and Europe.
"Many Americans imagine," she said, "that
Chinese people live a miserable, repressed
life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea
of] the yellow peril has never left them...
They have no idea there are some 500 million
people being lifted out of poverty, and some
would say it's 600 million."</p>
<br>
<p>Modern China's epic achievements, its
defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and
contentment of its people (measured
forensically by American pollsters such as
Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood
in the West. This alone is a commentary on
the lamentable state of Western journalism
and the abandonment of honest reporting.</p>
<br>
<p>China's repressive dark side and what we
like to call its "authoritarianism" are the
facade we are allowed to see almost
exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending
tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu
Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before
it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.</p>
<p><em>Follow John Pilger on twitter
@johnpilger</em></p>
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