Happened 70 years ago. Former Soviet Union started war against Finland in 1939 by (in)famous Shots of Mainila: Russia’s own artillery fired shots to Russia’s own territory near border town Mainila claiming Finland had fired the shots. In “response to Finnish aggression” Soviet Union sent bombers over Finnish civilian cities. Finland mobilized for war. Somehow we made it through. But as part of the peace deal Finland was declared guilty of war and required to pay war reparations to Russia for the damage Finland had caused!

Oxfam and – my goodnes the Finnish Church Aid – continues this (in)glorious Soviet tradition by their report. Especially as far as the point #5 in your blog is concerned…

Pasi

PS: Bought your book and read it during Christmas. Excellent analysis. Thanks.

If you read Robin Shepherd’s post far more closely and then give it some thought you’ll discover that the only person, at least for the very greatest part, you are arguing with is yourself.

It is off topic to get into whether it was justified or not, but the fact so many are either unaware of or choose to ignore is that the death toll caused by an invasion of Japan would have been immeasurably higher, due to deaths in battle by Japanese programmed to fight or commit suicide by the last woman and child and widespread starvation of the Japanese of any survivors due to the characteristics of their food distribution system. Unlike Israel, the US and Allies would not have taken the trouble to supply japan with food and other “essentials” including, believe it or not, toilet paper (a common complaint by Israel bashers vis a vis Gaza) once the backbone transportation system was destroyed.

But to the other point – the destruction of other Japanese cities by firebombing was as widespread and horrific as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and caused more deaths – actually, arguably more horrific since so many deaths were NOT instantaneous. I suggest you read James Brady’s “Flyboys” for the gory details, which are enough to turn your stomach.

Since you seem to like wiki as a source here is an article about the first raid (of several) on Tokyo alone, something that was repeated on other major cities once the “effectiveness” of the B-29 fire-bombing raids had been demonstrated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

The first raid using low-flying B-29s carrying incendiaries to drop on Tokyo was on the night of 24–25 February 1945 when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of the city.

Changing their tactics to expand the coverage and increase the damage, 335 B-29s took off[1] to raid on the night of 9–10 March, with 279 of them[1] dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost.[1] Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more than the immediate deaths of either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs.[2][3] The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low: Mark Selden wrote in Japan Focus

The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile, the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.[4]

The destruction and damage was at its worst in the city sections east of the Imperial Palace.

Over 50% of Tokyo was destroyed by the end of World War II.

Stanislaw
23 December 2009, 12:47 pm

Sophia: “Doesn’t anybody in power (in Britain) see this?”

Anon: “The answer is not only do they see it [racism and religious etremism in certain mosques] and, they agree totally with it.”

I think ‘agree’ is mostly too strong, but I do think those in power and in the media are quite aware of it, and are either inclined to try and pretend it doesn’t exist, or that it may exist but that there are more important matters, and ones which almost justify or at least explain the ‘apparent’ anti-semitism, etc.

Andrew Coates’ link to the article on Red Pepper and Hizbollah is a good example of this. If you were to try and press the point on Hizbollah’s successful campaign to ban Anne Frank’s Diary from Lebanese schools, I suspect that the mental reasoning at Red Pepper is now along the lines of: “Well, the good Hizbollah does – wonderful social programmes, I hear, I wish our local council was as good, hahaha – amply outweighs any slightly, er, conservative, aspects, and okay they are pretty…. er, uncompromising on Jews, though I think they really mean just ‘Zionists’, and we have to, er, put this in a wider context and… really, why do Israel’s supporters have to be such a nuisance about this, it’s just a book. It’s part of some Middle Eastern cultures to ban some books. Er, what about Lady Chatterly’s Lover? That was banned. How are we any better? Anyway, why are Muslims being demonised again?”

When the funding for Hizb ut Tahrir controlled schools matter came up in Parliament, Gordon Brown’s disgraceful strawman response was:

“The vast majority of Muslims in our country are part of the law-abiding majority of this country and I don’t want it to be said that those people who are citizens of our country and hold the Muslim faith are to be held responsible for acts of terrorism.”

i.e. he implicitly accused Cameron of saying or implying that British Muslims in general were responsible for acts of terrorism. The predictable deflection: “Let’s not demonise Muslims” response almost always means overlooking, ignoring, or in some cases just about detectably resenting the Jews who are on the receiving end of the hate-speech which started the whole inconvenient matter. Note that Brown had absolutely nothing to say about Hizb ut Tahrir’s violent plans for Jews, which cameron drew attention to. Jews just don’t count much with Brown and co, and if they are irritating Labour’s Muslim postal-vote ’support’, then they are a positive nuisance.

The same was the case with references to killing homosexuals in the Undercover Mosque programme. When the authorities studiously ignore the original comments, and even criticize, portray as bigots or even threaten those who simply bring these teachings to light, then yes, the other minority is bound to feel threatened not just by the Islamists but by the state itself due to its bizarre ‘pact’ with said Islamists. It is also now quite common to dismiss or distrust support for, say, gay people or Jews or women under attack from such sources, as being motivated solely or mainly by a neo-con agenda. That is to say, for parts of the left, causes like gay rights, women rights, etc have become intrinsically suspect and something that many supposed progressives are apparently finding it harder and harder to believe in as worthy ends in themselves. They are presumed to be fronts, unwitting or not, for racism, Islamophobia, neconservatism etc. Whatever the progress of recent decades until recently, Jews, women and gay people are certainly now lower down the minority pecking order than Muslims or homophobic Africans, and slipping further.

I think anyone who is serious about halting the state-funding of the march of Islamism and the wider rise of ‘multicultural’ conservatism against Jews, gays, women et al – let alone its fundamental antipathy and antagonism towards middle-of-the-road British patriotism and values, should certainly now vote against Labour. So long as it’s not BNP, it hardly matters for whom else. The Labour Party needs to be wrecked, purged and reconstituted by secular British leftists, rather than carrying on as an unwitting front organisation for the forces of religious and ‘multicultural’ conservatism. Likewise, the police, CPS and courts need to be purged of their anti-British, pro-multicultural conservative strain, which has weirdly infected the liberal left and put them in many respects objectively to the right of the Tories.

Aside from the fact that that, if true, made it no less reprehensible,
this is what our host actually wrote:

“Now, one presumes that even someone as dim-witted as Jimmy Carter has heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki since one of his own predecessors gave the orders to obliterate them. As a consequence, of course, there wasn’t a lot to repair and it was more a question of starting from scratch.”

From an article about the Hiroshima bombing at Wikipedia:

“The radius of total destruction was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires across 4.4 square miles (11 km2).[27] Americans estimated that 4.7 square miles (12 km2) of the city were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that 69% of Hiroshima’s buildings were destroyed and another 6–7% damaged.[5]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima

And from an article about the Hiroshima bombing at an official US government website:

“Nearly every structure within one mile of ground zero was destroyed, and almost every building within three miles was damaged. Less than 10 percent of the buildings in the city survived without any damage, and the blast wave shattered glass in suburbs twelve miles away. The most common first reaction of those that were indoors even miles from ground zero was that their building had just suffered a direct hit by a bomb.”

http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/hiroshima.htm

From an article about the Nagasaki bombing at the same US government website as directly above:

“Although the destruction at Nagasaki has generally received less worldwide attention than that at Hiroshima, it was extensive nonetheless. Almost everything up to half a mile from ground zero was completely destroyed, including even the earthquake-hardened concrete structures that had sometimes survived at comparable distances at Hiroshima. According to a Nagasaki Prefectural report “men and animals died almost instantly” within 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) of the point of detonation. Almost all homes within a mile and a half were destroyed, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly burst into flames as far away as 10,000 feet from ground zero. Of the 52,000 homes in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and 5,400 more seriously damaged. Only 12 percent of the homes escaped unscathed. The official Manhattan Engineer District report on the attack termed the damage to the two Mitsubishi plants “spectacular.” Despite the absence of a firestorm, numerous secondary fires erupted throughout the city. Fire-fighting efforts were hampered by water line breaks, and six weeks later the city was still suffering fromBodies in a trench, Nagasaki a shortage of water. A U.S. Navy officer who visited the city in mid-September reported that, even over a month after the attack, “a smell of death and corruption pervades the place.” As at Hiroshima, the psychological effects of the attack were undoubtedly considerable.”

http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/nagasaki.htm

Jimmy Carter has a cheek opening his mouth about anything at all. he is, of course, a paid shill of the Arab lobby, who bailed him and his peanut farm out care of the BCCI scandal.