military

Former “comfort woman” Lee Yong-Soo (L) stands beside her supporters holding portraits of Philippine, South Korean and Chinese comfort women who were sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, at a protest held in front of the Japanese parliament in Tokyo. Japan on 27 June 2007 brushed aside calls from US lawmakers for a fresh apology to wartime sex slaves, even as the former “comfort women” renewed their demands for Tokyo to acknowledge their plight. Japan said the US move to pass a resolution calling for an “unambiguous” apology from Japan for the coercion of women into army brothels during World War II would not damage relations between the two allies. Inset: Recruitment advertisements for comfort women in the Japanese Imperial Army.

Top: Former comfort women want Japan to do more to apologize. Bottom right: Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. A woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army’s “comfort battalions” is interviewed by an Allied officer.

Former Filipino “comfort woman” Piedad Nobleza, 86, at a demonstration outside the Japanese Embassy in suburban Manila. Elderly Filipino women and their supporters demanded Tokyo’s clear-cut apology and compensation for wartime sexual slavery by Japanese troops.  read more »

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On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

World War II in the Pacific - Liberation of Allied Prisoners of War in the Tokyo Bay Area.

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Photos courtesy of History.com and U.S. Navy

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Ben Wallace, an ex Army officer & former overseas director in the security & intelligence division at UK defense firm QinetiQ - one of the companies making the full body scanner technology - said, the "passive millimetre wave scanners", which QinetiQ helped develop, probably would not have detected key plots affecting passengers in the UK in recent years. Mr. Wallace said the scanners would probably not have detected the failed Detroit plane plot of Christmas Day. He said the same of the 2006 airliner liquid bomb plot and of explosives used in the 2005 bombings of 3 Tube trains and a bus in London.  read more »

"Whale Wars: Season 2" is coming soon, in the week of Dec. 29. 2009 - "This time they've gone too far".

Don't you think that there must be someone with great courage to stand between 750-ton whale-killing machines & their prey to end Japanese whaling once & for all? Ocean depletion is faster & faster...

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BNP leader Nick Griffin: "We want to present a moral choice between those parties supporting a futile and counter-productive war and one that says we should be out of there immediately."
Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev: "I believe that there is no prospect of a military solution. What we need is the reconciliation of Afghan society."
US Senate candidate Alan Khazei: "We've lost our way, strayed from our mission", "This isn't in our interest as a nation, and it's not fair to our troops."
Gordon Brown hopes to fix Afghan pullout date.

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calling for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, from a futile and counter-productive war

British National Party leader and parliamentary candidate, Nick Griffin -  read more »

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A Photographer's Personal Journey Through War
Like many of his contemporaries, American Peter van Agtmael felt compelled to cover the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I wish these pictures could convey more of what I experienced," van Agtmael writes. "They are harsh, despite the fact that I have great affection for many of the soldiers that I met as an embedded photographer. There is much that is left out, but I see no reason to romanticize war any more than it has been and always will be. If I found any truth in war, I found that in the end everyone has their own truth."

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Original Source: GlobalSecurity.org and atomicarchive.com