In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
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Pat Donnelly said
?
I hinted at this in earlier posts.
Japan was ripe to be attacked.
They were squeezed for oil, on which their navy and air force depended.
So they were sucker punched into attacking the obsolete BBs when the CVs were moved to safety.
The isolationists were rolled and business made trillions ever since.
So?
Maybe you want a useful idiot to say that?
!
Pat Donnelly said
Hitler was an agent for the US, the UK and possibly others. Eary in his political career he was a state agent.
So WWII was no surprise. Who won? Russia and the USA! The attempt to detroy Germany UK and Sov Russia was pretty successful for USA?
toadold said
It is a pity that Japanese history is so little studied even by the Japanese it seems at times. The tragedy of Pearl Harbor was preceded by events in the the 1930′s (The May assasinations in particular) when democracy in Japan gave its last gasp and died at the hands of the Nationalists movement.
An argument could be made that the seeds of Pearl Harbor were planted during the tumlut of the Meji restoration.
The conspiracy theories of WWII do a diservice to both the US and the Japanese in my opinion.
In Asia the period of plentiful food is a very recent thing historically speaking. War, famine, disese, and pestilence were/are present even unto this century. The starvation thing in particular colors the cultures.
Ecoutez said
What “seeds” of Pearl Harbor were planted in the Meiji Restoration? Seriously, I’m curious.
I rather think the seeds of Pearl Harbor were planted when the United States put giant military base in Hawaii.
Tony said
By the same logic one could say an argument could be made that the seeds of Pearl Harbor were planted during the arrival of the Mayflower.