None of these vicious acts by a vicious government justifies doing this to Japanese people, to civilian men, women and children who had no meaningful role in either the decision-making or in the fighting. No crime or atrocity of the Japanese government excuses a half-year campaign of terror against…

U.S. humanitarian airdrop missions have started in Iraq, a senior U.S. official told CNN Thursday.

URGENT UPDATE!: We’ve done a somewhat lackluster job promoting this fundraiser. Not completely: as of right now we’ve raised 10% of our goal — online and off combined, which is awesome. (Yeah you can totally just mail or drop off a check. Or mail well concealed cash if you want…) Unfortun…

gailsimone: “ discovergames: “ Check out gailsimone schooling fools on accepting criticism. And honestly, if you’re featured on eschergirls so often that you’re threatened by them, it might be time to…

They say it’s for his own good…

By Alan Pelaez Lopez I can no longer cross borders— my lungs, alma, and mind, can no longer swim, so I have to hop; saltar and play hide-and-seek in what once was my land Last fall, I received a call from an old partner I had not spoken to in six-months. In the middle of debating whether to answ…

The fact that the US government killed more Japanese by fire bombings than by atomic bombing, the fact that the US government might have instead of dropping atomic bombs invaded Japan and racked up high casualties, and the fact that the Japanese government committed atrocities like the Rape of Nanking and aggressive war maneuvers like the attack on Pearl Harbor, do nothing at all to justify the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing. At. All. These non sequiturs are invoked in the desperate attempt to, in Orwell’s words, “make murder respectable.”

You cannot justify the atomic bombings morally. The attempt to do so pragmatically is a strike against pragmatism, and otherwise wrongheaded. It is a sad spectacle that Americans and others do not want to confront the massive terrorism conducted by the US government in WWII and in other conflicts. Until it becomes an uncontroversial fact that the United States has committed indefensible terrorism and war crimes, I see no hope for a major cultural shift toward peace or freedom. You must entirely renounce the obviously unjust to become a voice for justice, and if you think exterminating a hundred thousand civilians with a push of a button can ever be justified, then you have swallowed ethical collectivism whole, and all the government needs is a good enough sounding excuse and you will sign on to virtually any barbarism.

This is a page from the Rad Geek People’s Daily weblog, which has been written and maintained by Charles Johnson at radgeek.com since 2004.