Japanese Balloon Battle

mw2040 writes "Slate reports on a little-known method used by the Japanese during WWII - hydrogen-filled paper balloons with deadly payloads floated without a guidance-system across the Pacific. Both amazing low-tech warfare and a cautionary tale about censorship during wartime. More links (even one for our neighbors to the North) (shamelessly stolen from the article)."

Comments

Balloon Battle?

[News for nerds]

No it's the Balloon Fight

Re:Little known??

[NatasRevol]

Heh, Moore is just a younger one...

The Really Huge Press Failure of Today

[Baldrson]

Prisoner rape in US prisons is the huge story that isn't being reported by US press. This is for a variety of reasons, but when the Slate article says:

We believe it never happened, just as our children might have been led to believe Abu Ghraib never happened.

They are acting as the press always does: Protect the US government from the public becoming aware that sexual sadism toward prisoners started here, against US citizens.

If there is anything worthy of the term "terrorism" it is the fact that the US government acts like a serial rapist that simply cannot control himself when it comes to the very demography that not only must "comply" with a vastly disproportionate tax burden, but which also makes up a disproportionate number of the deaths on the Iraq occupation: white males.

From Human Rights Watch "No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons":

Past studies have documented the prevalence of black on white sexual aggression in prison. These findings are further confirmed by Human Rights Watch's own research. Overall, our correspondence and interviews with white, black, and Hispanic inmates convince us that white inmates are disproportionately targeted for abuse. Although many whites reported being raped by white inmates, black on white abuse appears to be more common. To a much lesser extent, non-Hispanic whites also reported being victimized by Hispanic inmates.

Other than sexual abuse of white inmates by African Americans, and, less frequently, Hispanics, interracial and interethnic sexual abuse appears to be much less common than sexual abuse committed by persons of one race or ethnicity against members of that same group. In other words, African Americans typically face sexual abuse at the hands of other African Americans, and Hispanics at the hands of other Hispanics. Some inmates told Human Rights Watch that this pattern reflected an inmate rule, one that was strictly enforced: "only a black can turn out [rape] a black, and only a chicano can turn out a chicano." Breaking this rule by sexually abusing someone of another race or ethnicity, with the exception of a white inmate, could lead to racial or ethnic unrest, as other members of the victim's group would retaliate against the perpetrator's group. A Texas inmate explained, for example: "The Mexicans--indeed all latinos, nobody outside their race can 'check' one without permission from the town that, that person is from. If a black dude were to check a mexican w/out such permission & the mexican stays down & fights back, a riot will take place."The causes of black on white sexual abuse in prison have been much analyzed. Some commentators have attributed it to the norms of a violent black subculture, the result of social conditioning that encourages aggressiveness and the use of force. Others have viewed it as a form of revenge for white dominance of blacks in outside society. Viewing rape as a hate crime rather than one primarily motivated by sexual urges, they believe that sexually abused white inmates are essentially convenient surrogates for whites generally. Elaborating on this theory, one commentator surmised that "[i]n raping a white inmate, the black aggressor may in some measure be assaulting the white guard on the catwalk."

Some inmates, both black and white, told Human Rights Watch that whites were generally perceived as weaker and thus more vulnerable to sexual abuse. An African American prisoner, describing the situation of incarcerated whites, said:

• When individuals come to prison, they know that the first thing that they will have to do is fight. Now there are individuals that are from a certain race that the majority of them are not physically equip to fight. So they are the majority that are force to engage in sexual acts.

Another African American inmate, while generally agreei