Nuclear Maddness May 13, 2016
Posted by rogerhollander in About Nuclear War, Nuclear weapons/power, Uncategorized, War.Tags: general eisenhower, hiroshima, japan surrender, nagasaki, nuclear weapons, obama hiroshima, roger hollander, world war II
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Roger’s note: Obama is going to visit Hiroshima. He will be accompanied by a military aide carrying a metal briefcase, covered in black leather, known as the “nuclear football”. Inside are the codes US presidents need to authorize a nuclear strike when they are away from established command centres such as the White House.
Although many nations possess nuclear weapons, the United States is the only one to have ever used one in war. Many historians contradict the official justification for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two population centers of no military strategic importance, to save lives by ending the war without a costly invasion of Japan. General Eisenhower for one opposed the use of the A-Bomb, which killed an estimated 200,000 civilians: “I voiced … my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
Those historians allege the real reason was to demonstrate the weapon to the Soviet Union; as such it was in effect the first shot fired in the Cold War.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are 15,350 nuclear warheads on the earth today
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Russia and the United States each possess around 7,000. Other nations in this deadly club include the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Iran, by the way, has none.
The brilliant Russian playwright, Anton,Chekhov famously opined that if a gun appeared in the first act, it was destined to go off in the third. It seems to me that we are dangerously close to that third act.
roger hollander 
Poppy > Opioid > Addiction: Why I Don’t Wear One November 8, 2018
Posted by rogerhollander in Uncategorized, War.Tags: general eisenhower, military industrial complex, red poppy, remembrance day, roger hollander, smedley butler, veterans day, war, war is a racket
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War is an addiction. A most deadly addiction.
It pains me every year around this time to see so many of my fellow humans walking around sporting those red poppies, which to me represent a justification, if not a glorification of war.
I know that most of those who wear them would not see it that way, but, unfortunately, most of us don’t look beyond the surface of things. How could you not wear a “Support your local police” button? Don’t you support your local police (have you stopped beating your spouse?)? How can you not support those who fought and gave their lives to defend freedom, democracy and the American way of life?
But that’s not really the question to ask here. The question is: what do these ubiquitous red pieces of cheap material (made in China?) really represent?
We celebrate various holidays every year: we celebrate mothers, fathers, presidents, MLK, Christopher Columbus, the Easter Bunny, Spring Break, Thanksgiving, the questionable birth of a world religious leader, etc. But on only one day do we remember the dead. Veterans Day. We remember soldiers and war dead (and only our own, not the ones we cause).
Does that in itself not say something? Does that not elevate war above all else? Do we have a day to remember those who have died of poverty? hunger? illness and disease? automobile accidents? overdosing? smoking? natural disasters?
No. Only WAR.
War is an addiction. But, above all, war is a racket. As it destroys en masse human lives and lays to waste entire cities, it creates unimaginable wealth for the very people who are responsible for war, who General Eisenhower referred to as the Military Industrial Complex.
No one said it better than another general (note that I am citing here generals, not Gandhian pacifists), the estimable General Smedley D. Butler, in his classic “War is a Racket.”
Which is my recommended reading for 11/11.