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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
95. Modern Times do share that particular peculiarity with NAZI Days.
Tue Jan 8, 2013, 03:12 PM
Jan 2013

The rich seem to have not only amassed the greatest wealth in human history, they also enjoy the greatest political power in human history. One example is the role of nuclear weapons in the hands of the protectors of greed heads fresh off Wall Street and into government self-service:

The story connects a few dots from the present day back to World War II.



War crime, Yakuza, Secret Government. Why not?



Japan’s Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link.

By Eleanor Warnock
June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST.
Wall Street Journal Blog

Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japan’s nascent nuclear industry.

Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan’s biggest-selling and most influential newspaper) and the founder of both the country’s first commercial broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known, according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.

SNIP...

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

SNIP…

Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shoriki’s behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/



After President Carter was out of office, it was pretty much full-steam ahead for the Japanese bomb during the Pruneface Ronnie-Poppy Bush years. Hence, Fukushima Daiichi Number 3 and other select Japanese reactors were set up to process plutonium uranium fuels.



United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium

By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.

SNIP...

A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japan’s modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.

How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html



Those of who have seen The World at War series on the tee vee are familiar with the black and white footage and great narrative chronicling the main events and figures of World War II. One of those episodes was entitled "The Bomb" and featured an interview with John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War to President Roosevelt and President Truman.



Here's part of what Mr. McCloy said about the Atomic Bomb – the use of which he counseled only as a last resort, after warning Japan to surrender (around 7:30 mark of Part 2):

“Besides that, we’ve got a new force, a new type of energy that will revolutionize warfare, destructive beyond any contemplation. I’d said, I’d mention the bomb. Mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group, was like, it was like they were all shocked. Because it was such a closely guarded secret. It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale – which you’re not supposed to do.”

After the war, McCloy was the United States High Commissioner to Germany, administering the U.S. zone of occupation, making him one of the front-line leaders of the Cold War. In that capacity, one of the questionable things he did was to forgive several NAZI industrialists and war criminals.

The great cartoonist Herb Block, HERBLOCK, depicted McCloy holding open a prison door for a NAZI, while in the background Stalin took a photo (if anyone has a copy or link to the cartoon, I’d be much obliged). About 15 years later, Mr. McCloy served the nation as a member of the Warren Commission.

While he wasn’t a member of Skull and Bones, McCloy certainly worked closely with a bunch of them, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. As a Wall Street and Washington insider, "Mr. Establishment" he was called, Mr. McCloy used the offices of government to centralize power and wealth. That is most un-democratic.

Mother Jones goes into detail:



The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs

How millions in campaign cash and revolving-door lobbying have kept America's atomic arsenal off the chopping block.

— By R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity
Mother Jones
Wed Jun. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report.

The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy, released the report on Wednesday to highlight what it described as the heavy influence of campaign donations and pork-barrel politics on a part of the defense budget not usually associated with large profits or contractor power: nuclear arms.

As Congress deliberated this spring on nuclear weapons-related projects, including funding for the development of more modern submarines and bombers, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million to the 2012 reelection campaigns of lawmakers whose support they needed for these and other projects, the report disclosed.

Half of that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that must approve all spending for nuclear arms—the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Energy and Water or Defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the Center compiled from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to lawmakers who are active on nuclear weapons issues because they have related factories or laboratories in their states or districts.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee this year have sought to erect legislative roadblocks to further reductions in nuclear arms, and also demanded more spending for related facilities than the Obama administration sought, including $100 million in unrequested funds for a new plant that will make plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, and $374 million for a new ballistic missile-firing submarine. The House has approved those requests, but the Senate has not held a similar vote on the 2013 defense bill.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations



It isn't ironic or coincidental. It is the Establishment, the in-group, the Elite, the One-Percent that’s pretty much gotten the lion’s share of the wealth created over the last 50 years. The same group that’s pretty much had their fingers on the atomic button ever since the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as profited from the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the almost continuous state of war since then. For lack of a better term, I call them the BFEE, or War Party.

Most importantly: Thank you for standing up to the evil warmongering, WillyT. People know who's who.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

... mindwalker_i Jan 2013 #1
Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI Octafish Jan 2013 #16
Full Godwin in one Fumesucker Jan 2013 #2
Bwah! Recursion Jan 2013 #19
You beat me to it. UnrepentantLiberal Jan 2013 #21
The rarely attempted double full Godwin Fumesucker Jan 2013 #22
. UnrepentantLiberal Jan 2013 #25
Even the Russian judge gave him a 10! Bucky Jan 2013 #42
It rings a bell. UnrepentantLiberal Jan 2013 #44
No, it was just a standard joke in the Cold War years of my youth Bucky Jan 2013 #47
It was East German judges, too... awoke_in_2003 Jan 2013 #113
I'm a whipper-snapper and I remember those. Heywood J Jan 2013 #57
Hey, I'm still pissed about that Korean boxing match NBachers Jan 2013 #110
He musta been triple dog-dared to do it! MADem Jan 2013 #126
Olympic was the service rendered by the United States... Octafish Jan 2013 #68
Yes, and now we have Homeland Security and we're headed toward implanted ID chips Fumesucker Jan 2013 #70
Personally, I don't see the humor. Octafish Jan 2013 #75
Hey, Octafish... I agree with you. bvar22 Jan 2013 #102
Operation Paperclip... Javaman Jan 2013 #71
General Reinhard Gehlen rose to become head of West German (NATO) intel... Octafish Jan 2013 #79
I really do not understand the "Godwin Law" Hugabear Jan 2013 #132
There's more than one accepted meaning of Godwin's law. Fumesucker Jan 2013 #133
The butterflies would be different. nt. hay rick Jan 2013 #3
... cyberswede Jan 2013 #6
Bradbury probably wouldn't have been allowed to be a writer. Kablooie Jan 2013 #10
I saw what you did there...... cliffordu Jan 2013 #23
Tyme Travell Ink Octafish Jan 2013 #72
For many people, the internet is that library. hay rick Jan 2013 #86
I tell good folk it's like the Library of Alexandria on your desktop. Octafish Jan 2013 #90
And sadly... awoke_in_2003 Jan 2013 #114
nicely done No Compromise Jan 2013 #4
+1 gateley Jan 2013 #76
The late Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) expressed very similar thoughts... Octafish Jan 2013 #78
I remember Church very well. dixiegrrrrl Jan 2013 #87
The super rich got smart... awoke_in_2003 Jan 2013 #115
Volfenschtein! SirChanceAlot Jan 2013 #5
''Money trumps peace.'' Octafish Jan 2013 #85
they did n/t librechik Jan 2013 #7
Looks that way to me, too, librechik. To Brennan, too. Octafish Jan 2013 #92
thanks Octafish! librechik Jan 2013 #139
And we never would have seen Hogan's heroes. Kablooie Jan 2013 #8
Or, Kelly's Heroes! longship Jan 2013 #18
Change The Oligarchs Can Believe In... WillyT Jan 2013 #9
Modern Times do share that particular peculiarity with NAZI Days. Octafish Jan 2013 #95
Snappier uniforms RudynJack Jan 2013 #11
kick samsingh Jan 2013 #12
Hope Gov. Don Siegelman reads this. Octafish Jan 2013 #99
he needs to be pardoned samsingh Jan 2013 #100
Octofish, have you read The Man in the High Castle Starry Messenger Jan 2013 #13
Yeah, I was going to say someone already wrote that book....nt eilen Jan 2013 #17
One of most BRILLIANT, most amazing alternate history books ever written... Moonwalk Jan 2013 #20
Right, the Nazis are alluded to in the story. Starry Messenger Jan 2013 #59
Plot Against America - Phillip Roth Old and In the Way Jan 2013 #127
You might also want to check out "Fatherland".. Javaman Jan 2013 #73
I have the paperback version. amandabeech Jan 2013 #120
Thank you for the heads-up, Starry Messenger! Have you read ''We''? Octafish Jan 2013 #118
+1, Star. Mc Mike Jan 2013 #122
Just served as Juror on alert of OP RobertEarl Jan 2013 #14
Why would someone alert on this? leftstreet Jan 2013 #24
Here's where the results from all the jurors can be found: AnotherMcIntosh Jan 2013 #27
Interesting Oilwellian Jan 2013 #28
Great point (n/t) a2liberal Jan 2013 #30
Apparently some "Nazis" think it's impolite to point. Kurovski Jan 2013 #105
The 5-4 decision is a pretty obvious reference Chathamization Jan 2013 #129
Octafish a troll??? Blue_In_AK Jan 2013 #34
That's what I immediately thought. AnotherMcIntosh Jan 2013 #60
A touch of unintended irony. allrevvedup Jan 2013 #38
Brennan? truebluegreen Jan 2013 #45
Could be worse. allrevvedup Jan 2013 #46
It's anti-Semetic and should be locked michigandem58 Jan 2013 #41
The OP minimized nothing. He assumed everyone with even a rudimentary education.... OldDem2012 Jan 2013 #83
While it does not rate an alert, it is not "the truth" treestar Jan 2013 #66
Hmmm. What did Octafish post that was not the truth? In all the years I've been reading.... OldDem2012 Jan 2013 #84
Another reason why alerter's should not remain anonymous. Old and In the Way Jan 2013 #128
Agreed RobertEarl Jan 2013 #130
Death, death and more death. Rex Jan 2013 #15
What would fix that? Octafish Jan 2013 #98
The sick thing is who would be bankrolling the Nazi party after the war. Rex Jan 2013 #103
Feels like home. raouldukelives Jan 2013 #26
Sacha Baron Cohen just went up in my book. Octafish Jan 2013 #119
Likely, the Russians would have kicked his ass out eventually anyway. redgreenandblue Jan 2013 #29
It's easy to assume Russia would have ended up winning davidpdx Jan 2013 #36
Oy. I guess somebody's been watching Oliver Stone's revisionist silliness. Bucky Jan 2013 #43
Yup, I did watch that. redgreenandblue Jan 2013 #49
This reminds me of a scene from the recent movie "The Dictator" Initech Jan 2013 #31
Historically speaking, Hitler could've conceivably won if the Business Plot succeeded against FDR. Selatius Jan 2013 #32
you forget the Einstein letter.. napoleon_in_rags Jan 2013 #58
The fascist coup against FDR should be in ALL U.S. history textbooks... Octafish Jan 2013 #125
It can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis was a great book about Nazis taking over the US. libinnyandia Jan 2013 #33
uh, no that's certainly not what it's about cali Jan 2013 #35
Thank you for the heads-up, libinnyandia! Octafish Jan 2013 #131
I'm stunned by how few think of what could have happened if Japan had won the war davidpdx Jan 2013 #37
I am also stunned Shankapotomus Jan 2013 #48
I didn't know about the Aleutian Islands davidpdx Jan 2013 #52
Except Japan didn't have a fart's chance in a whirlwind after Pearl Harbor. dairydog91 Jan 2013 #61
The reason there chances were dismal was because FDR went all in right after the bombing of PH davidpdx Jan 2013 #136
That is a fascinating question and a good reminder: USA forgave the Japanese War Criminals, too. Octafish Jan 2013 #134
In a way they did win thanks to people like stultusporcos Jan 2013 #39
Thanks to banking, there are no borders for individuals and organizations with means. Octafish Jan 2013 #121
Where's the part about exteriminating Jews and murdering 12 million people? michigandem58 Jan 2013 #40
If the Nazis had gone through with Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust would be an addendum. dairydog91 Jan 2013 #64
Read the book "The Fourth Reich" by Jim Marrs Casandia Jan 2013 #50
I wonder whether there would be an Internet with countless political discussion forums Nye Bevan Jan 2013 #51
Thank you, Octafish! Everytime you pull out "Know your BFEE" I smile.... Raster Jan 2013 #53
Frightening when you really think about it. There is only one on your list.... OldDem2012 Jan 2013 #54
Even that line has been crossed. Octafish Jan 2013 #96
I've made it a personal habit to always look for your "know your BFEE" posts.... OldDem2012 Jan 2013 #101
Thank you, OldDem2012. Octafish Jan 2013 #138
South Carolina blm Jan 2013 #55
No Stephen Colbert! Kurovski Jan 2013 #106
Now is the time on Nazi earth when we dance! Adenoid_Hynkel Jan 2013 #56
Here you go Capt. Obvious Jan 2013 #62
Yup. Europe would be a significantly different place...nt SidDithers Jan 2013 #63
Very poor analogy treestar Jan 2013 #65
Didn't Newt Greengooch write a series of "alternate history" novels where the nazzies won? Erose999 Jan 2013 #67
No, he and a co-author wrote 1 book. MicaelS Jan 2013 #89
Philip K Dick wrote a great book on that.. ananda Jan 2013 #69
"SS-GB" By Len Deighton. Paladin Jan 2013 #74
I posted the map above Capt. Obvious Jan 2013 #117
imported comment from another thread about Republicans perfectly describes what would happen... No Compromise Jan 2013 #77
Nazis are bad! zappaman Jan 2013 #80
What would Nazis do to our food supply?What kind of designer drugs would they sick on the population No Compromise Jan 2013 #81
Old Tom Jefferson rolling in his grave, rolling in his grave, KurtNYC Jan 2013 #82
People wouldn't be screaming for more gun control regjoe Jan 2013 #88
Wow... The United States is just like Nazi Germany... Ohio Joe Jan 2013 #91
+1 for being right! n/t zappaman Jan 2013 #93
We would all have good Sauerkraut and not that shit in a jar snooper2 Jan 2013 #94
Kicking! n/t Hotler Jan 2013 #97
Just as I thought. Kurovski Jan 2013 #104
K&R. nt OnyxCollie Jan 2013 #107
Comparing the United States to Nazi Germany in anyway... iandhr Jan 2013 #108
Where do you think the NAZIs got their ideas? Octafish Jan 2013 #116
Like this: Gore1FL Jan 2013 #109
You are exactly correct. n/t truth2power Jan 2013 #111
I seem to recall a book entitled... awoke_in_2003 Jan 2013 #112
I'd imagine that if Germany had indeed won the war, LanternWaste Jan 2013 #123
I used to think that, too. Then I read 'Friendly Fascism' by Bertram Gross... Octafish Jan 2013 #124
We write what we want to, we say what we want to, we see what we want to. LanternWaste Jan 2013 #135
I appreciate that, LanternWaste. My main concern is Secret Government and its continuation... Octafish Jan 2013 #137
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