When I lived in Chesterfield, was a member of the Labour Party and we had a proper MP in Tony Benn, he insisted, and he wasn't a conspiracy theorist in general, that after the Second World War, when he visited Japan, he was shown documents proving the Japanese were attempting to sue for peace BEFORE the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though history now records that those appalling acts ended the war.
Though a peace campaigner, nuclear disarmer and committed socialist Tony Benn was meticulous about facts and the recording of truth - to the extent that he held tapes of almost every interview he'd given and diaries kept throughout life. The whole point of wiping out all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was as an American warning to the Russians, who at that time were actually our allies. They were also developing a nuclear capability and were very clearly being put in their place. The message was, don't even think about it!
Given that the decades which followed saw British adventurism alongside a disintegrating empire and America expanding its interests across the globe in its self- appointed role as global policeman and guardian of capitalist right-wing Christian values, is it any wonder that Putin's Russia has difficulty with the concept that NATO, dominated by America and Britain, is a purely-defensive organisation? We cheered the disintegration of the Iron Curtain to the echoes, but sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
I've no sympathy for the steroid-cheeked tyrant Putin and the terror he is unleashing on the Ukrainian people, but the Russia he leads was not created only inside that strange state. The West has played its part. The result for Ukraine is that it is left with one implacable giant enemy determined to erase its freedom and a fair-weather friend, which cannot for the sake of the rest of the world risk acting on its impulses.
When you manage relationships through fear, violence is never far below the surface. Unless and until we can manage relations with countries who run their affairs in a wholly different way to ours in a friendly manner we will remain committed to dispute, violence, war and destruction. We called Isis a death cult, but that is equally applicable across the human race. If alien spacecraft do indeed hover at a distance, looking nervously down on Earth I can only agree with them. Beam me up Zzinmuxian of Planet Prong 3 Quadrant 17 I'll give it a go.
Though a peace campaigner, nuclear disarmer and committed socialist Tony Benn was meticulous about facts and the recording of truth - to the extent that he held tapes of almost every interview he'd given and diaries kept throughout life. The whole point of wiping out all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was as an American warning to the Russians, who at that time were actually our allies. They were also developing a nuclear capability and were very clearly being put in their place. The message was, don't even think about it!
Given that the decades which followed saw British adventurism alongside a disintegrating empire and America expanding its interests across the globe in its self- appointed role as global policeman and guardian of capitalist right-wing Christian values, is it any wonder that Putin's Russia has difficulty with the concept that NATO, dominated by America and Britain, is a purely-defensive organisation? We cheered the disintegration of the Iron Curtain to the echoes, but sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
I've no sympathy for the steroid-cheeked tyrant Putin and the terror he is unleashing on the Ukrainian people, but the Russia he leads was not created only inside that strange state. The West has played its part. The result for Ukraine is that it is left with one implacable giant enemy determined to erase its freedom and a fair-weather friend, which cannot for the sake of the rest of the world risk acting on its impulses.
When you manage relationships through fear, violence is never far below the surface. Unless and until we can manage relations with countries who run their affairs in a wholly different way to ours in a friendly manner we will remain committed to dispute, violence, war and destruction. We called Isis a death cult, but that is equally applicable across the human race. If alien spacecraft do indeed hover at a distance, looking nervously down on Earth I can only agree with them. Beam me up Zzinmuxian of Planet Prong 3 Quadrant 17 I'll give it a go.