Author: Greg Mitchell

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and director of three films for PBS since 2021. He first wrote about the evils of Kissinger for Crawdaddy more than a half century ago.

Came back from dinner tonight to learn that ogre who has haunted my life for six decades, Henry Kissinger, has finally died. At least Jimmy Carter outlived him, though perhaps a million others he killed around the globe did not. But Christopher Hitchens, wherever he is, no doubt smiling and ordering a round of drinks for everyone. And I can say for the last and perhaps most apt time: Who’s Kissinger now?

No time to write my own anti-obituary, but I have collected some telling early reactions from media and social media. That’s a Steve Brodner classic illustration above. See my recent piece here on Victor Jara, the “Bob Dylan of Chile,” who died in Kissinger-directed coup in Chile.

Continue reading “Best Early Reactions to Death of Henry Kissinger, War Criminal”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

I have noted previously here that Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie R. Groves – depicted by Matt Damon in “Oppenheimer” as a tough cookie but smart, and basically a good guy – not only was the prime mover behind the use of the atomic bomb against Japan but in private conversation mocked early evidence of survivors afflicted with deadly radiation disease. Even as more of that evidence emerged in the weeks after the bombings, Groves gave little ground, influencing (due to his stature) the rather casual way the U.S, military and nuclear industrial sites would handle protection for soldiers and workers.

Seventy-eight years ago this week, Groves testified before a special U.S. Senate committee on Atomic Energy. The National Security Archive, which holds the transcript of the hearings, calls Groves’ testimony “bizarre and misleading.” Their summary on one portion:

On radioactivity and the bombings generally, Groves said that he saw no choice between inflicting radioactivity on a “few Japanese” and saving “10 times as many American lives.” He claimed that no one suffered radiation injury “excepting at the time that the bomb actually went off, and that is an instantaneous damage.”

Groves continued to go out on a limb by declaring that it “really would take an accident for … the average person, within the range of the bomb to be killed by radioactive effects.” Going further out on a limb, Groves stated that the victims of radiation whose exposure was not enough to kill them instantly would die “without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.”

Continue reading “When Shady Groves Mocked Radiation Effects”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

It’s taken nearly eight decades since J. Robert Oppenheimer’s “deadly toy” (as per Sting) was sent on its first mission, but the Japanese government decided Tuesday to recommend a collection of photos and videos depicting the devastation in Hiroshima after the August 1945 atomic bombing to a UNESCO documentary heritage program for 2025, the 80th anniversary of the U.S. attack.

Continue reading “Hiroshima Photo Archives Finally Getting UNESCO Attention”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Oppenheimer finally arrives as a streamer (and for purchase with extras) tomorrow, see my post here that previewed the bonus material. You still won’t see any Japanese victims of the atomic bombings but you already expected that. What is surprising is that two leading publications, in what seem to be unrelated moves, are taking this moment to issue strong messages about new nuclear threats today and in the future.

Just last week, I posted here a dire warning from a special issue of the venerable Scientific American: “The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks.”

Continue reading “As Oppenheimer Returns… New Warnings About Nuclear Dangers Today”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Just a quick, vital, scary, news flash, thanks to the new special issue, “The New Nuclear Age,” from venerable Scientific American, dated December 1 but just posted online. The heading at the top of the site warns: “The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks.”

Rather than summarize the separate articles, I will merely excerpt from their editorial, which hits the hot spots. Note: My award-winning PBS film Atomic Cover-up is now available for watching at their site for free, 27 minutes. And companion book here. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

Continue reading “The ‘Unfathomable Risks’ of the New US Nuclear Build-up”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

I was pleased on Sunday to find The New Yorker online posting at the top of its site a massive Q & A that finds Masha Gesssen interviewing one of my longtime mentors and heroes, Robert Jay Lifton, at age 97. We first met exactly 40 years ago when, as the editor of Nuclear Times magazine, I coaxed him into writing a piece for us. I knew his work from his National Book Award winner on Hiroshima survivors, Death in Life, and then Nazi Doctors. A few years later he hired me to help run his Center for Human Survival in NYC and we also began a long annual tradition of attending baseball games between my Mets and his boyhood hometown (Brooklyn now L.A.) Dodgers.

Oh, we then co-authored numerous articles and a classic bestseller Hiroshima in America in 1995 – with brilliant sections on Oppenheimer and Truman, and a few years later the acclaimed Who Owns Death?, on capital punishment in the U.S. (feel free to order either ot them). We co-wrote pieces for more than a dozen publications, ranging from TV Guide to The New York Times. I started attending his famous Wellfleet gatherings each autumn. Remained friends and writing partners ever since – also attended several Beethoven concerts – and he is still going strong at 97, with yet another new book, Surviving Our Catastrophes, which inspired the New Yorker piece.

Continue reading “Robert Jay Lifton On Nuclearism and Oppenheimerism”