KILLERS IN COLD BLOOD (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr, Ray Black, Rodney Castleden, Ian Welch, Clare Welch Page A
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did nothing to make him suffer for his wrongdoings as he was too senile to leave the premises. In 2006, he finally issued a statement admitting full responsibility for his crimes. Evidently, his Catholic guilt had finally got the better of him. He died in December of that same year.
What is so heinous about Pinochet’s crimes is that people lost their liberty and their lives simply because they had different ideas about the best way to run a country. What’s more, had they been in power they wouldn’t have resorted to such underhand behaviour themselves. That is the whole point about modern democracy – it allows for the fact that people are different from one another but that they all have an equal voice. What is more, some of those who died might simply have been voicing socialist rhetoric merely to be seen to be anti-establishment, such as the young and impressionable are want to do.
The message should be clear; that regimes are outmoded and outdated in a modern world where civilisation demands freedom of speech. What makes humanity so special is the fact that all forms of society are works in progress, because they are all invented ways of living together in an increasingly populated world. So far, democracies have shown themselves to be the means by which most people are happy most of the time. Furthermore, anyone who has a grievance is free to let it be known, so that things remain in a constant state of flux and administration adjusts accordingly. For anyone to remove that possibility, be they communist, capitalist or extremist, it is always a cancer on the body of the human condition.
Hideki Tojo
When people think back to the Axis Powers or enemies of the Allied nations during World War II, they tend to think of the key nations involved and their leaders at the time. In Europe, Hitler was leader of the Germans and Austrians, while Mussolini was leader of the Italians, but who was leader of the Japanese in the Asian-Pacific part of the war? Well, in Japan it was more complicated, as they effectively had three leaders – Emperor Hirohito (Emperor Showa officially) and his prime ministers Fumimaro Konoe and Hideki Tojo.
As befitted the Japanese mindset of that era, the emperor was treated as something of a godlike figure, so he had the last word when it came to decisions over the war. It was an odd relationship though between emperor and government, because the emperor lived in a palatial world separated from his people, both physically and psychologically. This meant that he could make decisions without fully understanding the consequences of his actions. On the other hand, it meant that he could be manipulated into making decisions by being fed selected information. He was a puppet ruler and the politicians pulled the strings.
Central to the Japanese doctrine was a notion of racial superiority over their neighbours, which was something they had in common with the Nazis in Europe. In the case of the Japanese their target of hatred was the Chinese, whom they regarded as subhuman and so treated them with utter contempt. From 1937 to 1941 the Japanese had waged war on China under the premiership of Konoe, committing any number of atrocities in the name of their emperor, who had readily authorised the use of unethical means, such as chemical weapons, to exterminate the enemy.
By 1941 the Japanese were ready to join the world war, which had begun in 1939, seeing that the Nazis had weakened the position of Britain and the Netherlands with regard to their colonies in the Far East, which the Japanese fancied for themselves. By then the USA was in their sights, too, as the Japanese wanted control of the Pacific Ocean islands, so Japan declared war on the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
Japan went to war under the premiership of Hideki Tojo. He took office on October 18, 1941. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, took place on December 7. It marked the beginning of the Japanese
What is so heinous about Pinochet’s crimes is that people lost their liberty and their lives simply because they had different ideas about the best way to run a country. What’s more, had they been in power they wouldn’t have resorted to such underhand behaviour themselves. That is the whole point about modern democracy – it allows for the fact that people are different from one another but that they all have an equal voice. What is more, some of those who died might simply have been voicing socialist rhetoric merely to be seen to be anti-establishment, such as the young and impressionable are want to do.
The message should be clear; that regimes are outmoded and outdated in a modern world where civilisation demands freedom of speech. What makes humanity so special is the fact that all forms of society are works in progress, because they are all invented ways of living together in an increasingly populated world. So far, democracies have shown themselves to be the means by which most people are happy most of the time. Furthermore, anyone who has a grievance is free to let it be known, so that things remain in a constant state of flux and administration adjusts accordingly. For anyone to remove that possibility, be they communist, capitalist or extremist, it is always a cancer on the body of the human condition.
Hideki Tojo
When people think back to the Axis Powers or enemies of the Allied nations during World War II, they tend to think of the key nations involved and their leaders at the time. In Europe, Hitler was leader of the Germans and Austrians, while Mussolini was leader of the Italians, but who was leader of the Japanese in the Asian-Pacific part of the war? Well, in Japan it was more complicated, as they effectively had three leaders – Emperor Hirohito (Emperor Showa officially) and his prime ministers Fumimaro Konoe and Hideki Tojo.
As befitted the Japanese mindset of that era, the emperor was treated as something of a godlike figure, so he had the last word when it came to decisions over the war. It was an odd relationship though between emperor and government, because the emperor lived in a palatial world separated from his people, both physically and psychologically. This meant that he could make decisions without fully understanding the consequences of his actions. On the other hand, it meant that he could be manipulated into making decisions by being fed selected information. He was a puppet ruler and the politicians pulled the strings.
Central to the Japanese doctrine was a notion of racial superiority over their neighbours, which was something they had in common with the Nazis in Europe. In the case of the Japanese their target of hatred was the Chinese, whom they regarded as subhuman and so treated them with utter contempt. From 1937 to 1941 the Japanese had waged war on China under the premiership of Konoe, committing any number of atrocities in the name of their emperor, who had readily authorised the use of unethical means, such as chemical weapons, to exterminate the enemy.
By 1941 the Japanese were ready to join the world war, which had begun in 1939, seeing that the Nazis had weakened the position of Britain and the Netherlands with regard to their colonies in the Far East, which the Japanese fancied for themselves. By then the USA was in their sights, too, as the Japanese wanted control of the Pacific Ocean islands, so Japan declared war on the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
Japan went to war under the premiership of Hideki Tojo. He took office on October 18, 1941. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, took place on December 7. It marked the beginning of the Japanese
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