Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may enjoy a sense of triumph in having succeeded to push through the country’s new military law. Both chambers of Tokyo’s parliament have now cleared the legislation expanding Japan’s military…
Category: Finian Cunningham
Finian Cunningham is an Irish journalist and writer. He is also Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent.
Anyone inclined to believe in divine retribution will find pause for thought over the latest calamity in Saudi Arabia, where a giant crane smashed into its Grand Mosque over the weekend, killing more than 100…
Japan’s embrace of American militarism in Asia-Pacific directed at China is perhaps the ultimate litmus test of Japanese sincerity about its past violations. The differing response from the United States and China to Japanese premier Shinzo Abe’s wartime “apology” speech is revealing. The American White House “welcomed” Abe’s statement of remorse for Japan’s war record, while China was far from placated. Chinese media rebuffed Abe’s “smart words” and “linguistic trickery” as not going far enough to make amends for Japanese crimes committed during the Sino-Japanese War and its overlapping Pacific War.
Even if we accept that there was a plausible military imperative to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to bring about a swift defeat of Japan and thus an end to the…
It’s been a bad month for the angst-ridden US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. Last week, she was “outraged” by Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council of an international criminal court into the…
Seventy-five years ago, when Europe succumbed to Nazi Germany it was the sound of trundling panzer tanks rolling into capitals that heralded defeat. Now it is German “panzer banks” that appear conquering all in front of them….
As leaders of the European Union meet this weekend to decide on whether Greece is to be ejected from the eurozone, Washington is pulling out the stops to prevent such an outcome. What is alarming…
One notable consequence of the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing confrontational stand-off between the West and Russia is the dramatic surge in military spending among several European countries. However, this unprecedented militarisation of economies across…
The prove-a-negative trap is the Big Lie technique of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels: there is no substance to the allegations and there is no obligation to present evidence to verify, thanks to the dutiful and unquestioning nature of Western corporate “journalism”. The United States and its Western allies are trying to ensnare Russia in an audacious disinformation trap over the Ukraine conflict. That trap involves imposing an insoluble conundrum on Vladimir Putin’s government, which we might call “prove a negative”. It is a familiar conceptual device that Washington has used elsewhere, against Iraq and Iran for example, in order to pursue what are otherwise illegitimate geopolitical aims.
After the Second World War, the German nation professed that they did not know about the massive crimes that were being carried out by Hitler’s Third Reich. While they were applauding his speeches, dressed in lederhosen, plaited hair and quaffing beers in public squares, they would later lament: «We did not know that millions were being exterminated». This weekend, the German public were similarly applauding Obama as he foisted a pile of ludicrous lies and propaganda in their midst. And yet, all the while, American war crimes and crimes against humanity were being committed unabated all around the world. Germany has an onerous responsibility in Europe to call a halt to Washington’s war machine. Are Germans once again going to tell us someday in the future: «We did not know»?