There is widespread pollution in China. Film at 11:00.
I love to point to China when I hear about how the USA should gut it's reglatory systems. That's what we would be getting a repeat of where we were once.
It's not even wrong to think that when a system is designed to make money, that money won't be made in any manner possible.
Cleaning up after yourself costs money, and since it doesn't matter in six months, who the hell cares if you poison the water? There are plenty more countries with clean water to poison.
I'm still offering tours of what the coal mining companies did in the counties above mine. Land not fit to do anything but die on now. And that orange color in the water does not make it soda.
The sad thing is, the bubble *doesn't* get lonely. Not any more. No matter how stupid your opinion, it's not hard on the Internet to find a place where pretty much everyone agrees with you, and then you think you're mainstream.
That's one big reason why the American right has spun so far out of reality.
Yes, it is. Down in Texas, there are lot of people who think that Ted Cruz iz da shitz. Since they only talk to each other, they do then to think they have the only correct idas, and every other American is their enemy. Ted certainly does, as a Dominionist.
I've seen *many* people argue that that's not true. I've even debated them and shown them the many figures and historian accounts. Some of them seem inclined to bring it up every now and again on this site. They claim (incorrectly) that Japan was trying to surrender at the time, that Japan had tried to surrender just before that, and a few other arguments - none of them true or accurate.
on July 26, 1945, the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration. They broadcast it first in English, then in Japanese. They also dropped leaflets over Japan containing PotsdamThe Emperor and Premier Suzuki of Japan decided not to accept it. or more precisely, to inore it in a Japanese tradition known as Mokusatsu, or "killing with silence". Note Mokusatsu can also mean "wise silence", but it isn't remotely logical to assume their being wise in this matter. It was a known ultimatum. Even then Suzuki said regarding Potsdam - in a press conference:
"My thinking is that the joint declaration is virtually the same as the earlier declaration. The government of Japan does not consider it having any crucial value. We simply mokusatsu suru. The only alternative for us is to be determined to continue our fight to the end
There might be some debate over the difference between just ignoring it to kill it, or ignoring it as wise silence. But There was only one positive answer to Potsdam. Surrender. The other option, the negative answer has results as noted in the last line of Potsdam:
"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
That prompt and utter destruction happened just a few days later, after Japan whether through (un)wise silence or Killing by silence, completely ignored Potsdam.
taxpayers shouldn't play the role of venture capitalist
Some projects don't lend themselves to market capital funding. Take the interstate freeway system, for example. Clearly, the network offers a good profit to the economy and to the taxpayers who funded it, but it's not something that the free market can do well.
Read the platform: taxpayers shouldn't play the role of venture capitalist. Use a market-based approach to developing renewables rather than throwing billions at unproven technologies and solutions.
Use a market based approach - you mean like the fully market funded approach for oil and natgas?
The Japanese did indeed start the war, but that doesn't mean that everything we did to them was automatically justified.
Read my timeline of the very end of WW2, and tell me what we did wrong. Most revisionist WW2 history has 'Murrica having clairvoyant powers that allowed us to know exactly what Japan was thinking about, so we could ignore it. As late as ten days before the bombs hit, Japan had refused the Potsdam declaration.
So it was either us surrendering, Us nucing them, or another couple of years of war, in a war that had already killed between 70 and 85 million people. Your choice?
It's easy to consider when it is someone else. The main problem with the nukes was the kiling 300,000+ civilians to make a point. It made its point and the war ended, but it was still killing 300,000+ people who didn't necessarily agree with their government and doing it for show.
Would you prefer that we just continued the firebombing, then invaded along with the Russians and eventually killed most of the people of Japan? People fight like there's no tomorrow when there is no tomorrow.
Which is why I say that it's easy to condemn the US for killing all of those people when they don't consider the number was going to be many millions more under any other circumstances.
It's also important to note that there was no civilian control of the Japanese Army. The Imperial Army General Staff Office and it's navy counterpart were independent of the Rest of government and had direct acess to and only answerable to the Emperor.
Which is why it is a little amusing, the assertations of some that they were going to surrender later, but we bombed them earlier. A bunch of Samauri were runnig the country. And up until the end, many were planning on fighting to the last man, including an incident where they seized the emperor's palace for a short time.
Here is the rough timeline as we understand it:
In early 1945 HIrohito held meetings with Government officials regarding the war. Only one, an ex-prime minister by the name of Fumimaro Konoe wanted to start negotiations for surrender. All of the rest advised him to stay the course.
In April they decided to reaffirm the policy of fighting to the last man. Soon after The "Keeper of the privy seal" (sounds like the keys to the executive rest room) Kichi Kido, prepared a draft of the actual situation and proposed negotiating a surrender. The Emperor gave it some thought, and had it disseminated among th eless militaristic members of his cabinet. Already we are seeing some cracks in the facade. But no breakthroughs.
Some in Japan even considered a huge mass suicide
In the middle of June, they thought about having Russia mediate a negotiated surrender. In late June, the Emperor directed his ministers to lay out firm plans to end the war, and not plans dictated by the military, with it's death before dishonor and 47 Ronin outlook. A glimmer of hope to end the war.
On the 26th of July the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration which demanded surrender without conditions. The Emperor decided to not surrender. 10 days later, the first atomic bomb was dropped. Then a second.
On August 14, 1945, 8 days later, Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam declaration.
Even at that time some of the military attempted a coup known as the Kyj incident - they seized the Imperial palace. They then committed suicide as their demands went unmet.
So despite everything else, it would appear that in order to win a war they did not start, the US would have had to invade Japan, and kill Japanese foot by bloody foot. And the two bombs no doubt moved th eprocess along.
Nuking two Japanese cities and killing all of those people - some innocent, and many not - was a horrible thing. So was every other aspect of that evil evil war. But to make America for ending a war they did not start is to appear to applaud the losers for what they did.
It was a insane horrifying war that killed between 70,000,000 and 80,000,000 people. I do not give any postware responsibility to the Russians, who destroyed Berlin totally block by block, and if they laughed and enjoyed their revenge as they destroyed Berlin - so be it. They had lost 27,000,000 some people. Read that a few times to let it sink in. The entire world had lost between 70,000,000 to 85,000,000 people during the war years.The US got off pretty "easily" with only a little less than a half million. But it was 6 years of that insanity. And almost everyone was tired of it. It's so incredibly easy to condemn America now. W
I'm under the impression that it's the nuts that have the loudest voices or get the most attention. It's almost as if the media intentional seeks them out to plaster all over national news, I'm not even sure it's news any more it's like shock reporting where they find the craziest thing to air just to bring in viewers it might as well be News at 10 with Howard Stern.
At the present time, there is a lot of SJW stuff in the news. Partly because they are kooks, bent on whining about everything, and partly because people expect kookhattery from the right wing, so it isn't really news when one of them gets caught in the Restroom at Denny's giving Oral sex to some random dude stranger before going to a fundraising dinner to make Gay marriage illegal again. Kooks...Kooks everywhere...
There has not been a presidential candidate worth voting for since before I was old enough to vote your choices are... let me see which is less likely to completely screw everything up.
Does such a person even exist? Anything short of perfection is verboten. Hell, we had a president impeached because of a blowjob. Id if the worst thing you ever did was get a blowjob, you aren't doing too bad.
He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or[f] the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Waht doe Social Security numbers have to do with this?
If the bombs had been ready a bit earlier, Berlin may very well have been the first target. In fact, I wonder sometimes if the Americans had been able to stop the War in Europe before the Soviets were smashing through what would become East Germany if the post-war history of Europe would have been very different.
I think you are correct. If Germany had hung on a few months more, I suspect that just like the tide before a tsunami, the Russian army would have suddenly pulled back, and we would have nailed Berlin.
I think the tricky part would have been convincing the Russkies, to get out of the way for afew days, but we probably could have. And wow, as you note, what a historical difference that would have made.
Have you seen reddit? I've never had anything censored here.
Nothing is censored here. It just gets modded up or down. Brett Buck just cannot handle anyone who doesn't totally agree with him, and lables anyone who disagrees with him as a leftist.
Dude has a point. For example, what defines 'racism' - according to many people, the term includes anyone who disagrees with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement in any aspect.
It's a big world, with whackos on both left and right. I've been told to go die in a fire for asking what a regular person is going to use an assault rifle for.
So there are going to be people on the left who are just as nuts.
But what we do in polarized America has turned into people taking the most extreme elements left or right, and using a really broad brush to paint anyone they don't agree with as whoever it is they hate. That's how left wingers can paint every conservative as Ted Cruz Dominionists, and right wingers can paint anyone who disagrees with them as Chanty Binx acolytes.
When in fact, not many Republicans believe in shutting down the Government or America becoming a Dominionist nation as Cruz wishes, or that whatever the hell Chanty Binx is is representative of all Democrats.
But in modern day America, we have been programmed to paint anyone who disagrees with us as not human, therefore not worthy of humane treatment.
Hell, I enjoy arguing with people in here, It doesn't make me disrespect their selfhood. But that paints me as inhuman on both sides.
I am sure that would be a very clever and apt comment, if I could make *any* sense out of it.
Near as I can tell, you advocate censorship. Who decides what is acceptable and not? Here on slashdot, its the mods, who mod everything to the right of Mao Tse Tung and Castro into oblivion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and lefties think the same thing in the opposite direction.
I've had lots of posts modded in a battle between one group calling it a troll, and the other calling it insightful. opinion tug-a-war.
And if you think it's just left wingers, perform an experiment. Post a message asking "Why would someone even want an assualt rifle?" It will hit -1 troll with a bullet (that's a joke son)
That's just how it is man, people have different opinions.
Even more importantly, posts do not get "modded into oblivion". All you have to do is change the level at which you browse Slashdot. You can see everything posted, not a bit of censorship.
Slashdot is far and away the most repressive leftist forum I have ever seen, with mods absusing their power to censor literally anything but the hard-left party line.
Don't get out much, eh? Aside from no censorship taking place at all, you can't really be saying that everyone has to march in lockstep agreement with everything you post.
That's not even how life works, unless you are in an echo chamber where no one can express anything but approval for your opinion. The bubble gets lonely. Accept that not everyone will agree with you.
-The Government never said that.
-Yes, it did, under the auspices of the Secretary of War.
Gosh - I'd love ot hear just how that is a "No True Scotsman" argument Teach me, Turbistrado.
-Oh, well, but, but... it doesn't count!
Coulda shoulda woulda
Perhaps I might be swayed if the US had in it's possession, an instrument of surrender from the Japanese government or emperor, yet decided to nuke those two cities. Now there would be some smoking gun evidence. to support the concept that we just really wanted to nuke some place, not as an action of war, but apparently as something fun to do during a lazy summer day.
Because otherwise, it is people who we were fighting against, probably still in shock at just how much destruction took place, trying to rationalize a reason that we should not have done it. And I place the "We were really going to surrender later, but you bombed us, then we surrendered earlier, but you didn't have to bomb us earlier becuse we would have surrendered later." as just that.
And in the end, the way for Japan to completely avoid the issue was quite simple, don't you think?
Unless you are in the extreme whacko camp of believing the Pearl Harbor attacks having been engineered by FDR. But then we're done conversing.
The real truth - stuff they don't teach in 'murrican schools..
One day, the antichrist commie Franklin Delano Roosevelt woke up and said to himself...
It was Harry Truman, not FDR.
Oh whoosh.
My goodness, it's good to see that I have been corrected. Looks like Harry Truman conceived of and had the entire Manhattan District project finished from the time he became president on April 12, 1945, which must have been the date that WW2 started, until the project was complete on August 6, 1945. Right?
Amazing, that Truman took the project from conception to dropping the thing in less that 4 months. Right?
Score one for the 'murrican schools.
Sorry. I don't know what is worse - You thinking that this was Truman's baby, or your inability to catch the sarcasm.
If you need to catch my point, it is that while the US is excoriated for having the nerve to drop the bombs, it is apparently just a great thing that Japan started the whole thing. Or do you think that we would have dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki if we were not at war with Japan, a war that they started?
Or should we just have surrendered, so that the world would be more in line with how you think it should be run?
Now you probably will say that the "U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey is not The US Government", or something like that (it was "only" the result of the mandate from the Secretary of War pursuant to a directive from President Roosvelt). Well, whatever.
All you have to do is believe the survey respondants. A local television station has "surveys" too.
If you believe the results, all americans believe that children should be issued sidearms at birth, and should be armed in school, that the bill of rights needs suspended, and all manner of idiotic stuff.
Nope, all that those folk had to do was actually surrender. And of course, I can't know, but My guess is that if we nuced them on January 1, 1946, the survey would have shown that they were planning on surrendering on January 31st 1946.
The only time that a surrender takes place is the time it takes place.
"it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Where's Steve Garvey? Survey says?.......But they missed the most important part.
They actually had to surrender. Sweet Jeebus on a roto rooter, that part is critical.
Of course Japan would have surrendered. In a couple months after Russia and America reduced their country to rubble. And if Berlin is any example, the Russians would have treated the emperor to the same fate as old Adolph.
Yep, that's the best excuse and probably a valid one. They were ready to die till the last man.
So your fix was genocide of the Japanese? The concept of fighting to the last man, with America and now Russia, both completely tired of the bullshit, knowing they would have to kill every last one of the Japanese. Who were willing to die under those conditions.
A war of genocide was something they could envision. A war where one plane flies overhead, releases one bomb, and you are gone along with everyone else in the city - you can't even fight that.
To this day, a lot of people in Japan refuse to accept that Nanking even happened.
As for the nuclear bombs, we won, they lost, that is how it works. We don't see them as war crimes, thus no one will be tried for it (and they are all dead anyway).
A very compelling case can be made that using the nucs actually saved Japanese lives.
During the war in the pacific, Americans were stunned by the reaction of the Japanese soldiers and civilians. Figh like crazy, then when defeat was imminent, kill yourself. The amount of effort and cost of lives to take small islands was immense.
Yes, the Americans were winning. No they were not happy about the way it was going to happen.
As they closed in on Japan, it was only going to get worse. The casualties on both sides were going to be immense, and to win the war, something akin to genocide would happen if we were to take it on using the methods at hand. We were going to have to kill everyone who didn't commit suicide. Whatever else the rest of the world thinks about our willingness to commit mayhem, we aren't remotely genocidal.
Firebombing worked in a similar way to nucs, but was laborious as hell. A metric shitload of bombs were needed.
So under those conditions, the decision to nuc Japan happened. 1 each bomb that would level 1 each city.
It was a gamble on our part. What would happen if Japan still didn't surrender? After the second bomb hit Nagasaki, it was clear even to the never surrender crowd, they had lost. Lost so completely that with no way to protect their nation, they were just going to disappear completely, and we could do it just by flying over their country and dropping a bomb per city.(note: the amount of fissionable material might have had an impact)
As well, in all of this mess, Russia had just declared war on Japan, and the Japanese knew how the Russkies had carved Germany a new asshole. So Japan could expect the same and soon.
So for all of the hatred toward the nucs and America, using them probably saved lives, American and Russian, no doubt, but also Japanese - in the end.
Several of the criminals in the rape of Nanking were tried and found guilty in court. When will the criminals responsible for dropping nuclear bombs see their day in court?
Who says they were criminals? Nuclear bawmbs are just like any other weapon of war, only on steroids.
Firebombing had similar results to nucs, only it took a lot more effort. Either way, a lot of dead people.
War really sucks, and as WW2 turned into total war, shit got real. If people don't want retaliation, they shouldn't start wars. Some times the people who start wars are not the people that finish them.
The real truth - stuff they don't teach in 'murrican schools..
One day, the antichrist commie Franklin Delano Roosevelt woke up and said to himself - Dammit - I need something to get my pecker going, Elanore is so damn fugly, and since getting polio, it's just not that easy any more."
So he sat and thought, and Eureka! "I'll just pick the most unlkely, most pacifistic people on earth - the Japanese - that will give me wood!"
So we went over and nuked the innocent unsuspecting Japanese, and FDR got his jolly's
Slashdot Mirror
There is widespread pollution in China. Film at 11:00.
I love to point to China when I hear about how the USA should gut it's reglatory systems. That's what we would be getting a repeat of where we were once.
It's not even wrong to think that when a system is designed to make money, that money won't be made in any manner possible.
Cleaning up after yourself costs money, and since it doesn't matter in six months, who the hell cares if you poison the water? There are plenty more countries with clean water to poison.
I'm still offering tours of what the coal mining companies did in the counties above mine. Land not fit to do anything but die on now. And that orange color in the water does not make it soda.
The sad thing is, the bubble *doesn't* get lonely. Not any more. No matter how stupid your opinion, it's not hard on the Internet to find a place where pretty much everyone agrees with you, and then you think you're mainstream.
That's one big reason why the American right has spun so far out of reality.
Yes, it is. Down in Texas, there are lot of people who think that Ted Cruz iz da shitz. Since they only talk to each other, they do then to think they have the only correct idas, and every other American is their enemy. Ted certainly does, as a Dominionist.
I've seen *many* people argue that that's not true. I've even debated them and shown them the many figures and historian accounts. Some of them seem inclined to bring it up every now and again on this site. They claim (incorrectly) that Japan was trying to surrender at the time, that Japan had tried to surrender just before that, and a few other arguments - none of them true or accurate.
on July 26, 1945, the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration. They broadcast it first in English, then in Japanese. They also dropped leaflets over Japan containing PotsdamThe Emperor and Premier Suzuki of Japan decided not to accept it. or more precisely, to inore it in a Japanese tradition known as Mokusatsu, or "killing with silence". Note Mokusatsu can also mean "wise silence", but it isn't remotely logical to assume their being wise in this matter. It was a known ultimatum. Even then Suzuki said regarding Potsdam - in a press conference:
"My thinking is that the joint declaration is virtually the same as the earlier declaration. The government of Japan does not consider it having any crucial value. We simply mokusatsu suru. The only alternative for us is to be determined to continue our fight to the end
There might be some debate over the difference between just ignoring it to kill it, or ignoring it as wise silence. But There was only one positive answer to Potsdam. Surrender. The other option, the negative answer has results as noted in the last line of Potsdam:
"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
That prompt and utter destruction happened just a few days later, after Japan whether through (un)wise silence or Killing by silence, completely ignored Potsdam.
taxpayers shouldn't play the role of venture capitalist
Some projects don't lend themselves to market capital funding. Take the interstate freeway system, for example. Clearly, the network offers a good profit to the economy and to the taxpayers who funded it, but it's not something that the free market can do well.
Or nuclear reactors.
Read the platform: taxpayers shouldn't play the role of venture capitalist. Use a market-based approach to developing renewables rather than throwing billions at unproven technologies and solutions.
Use a market based approach - you mean like the fully market funded approach for oil and natgas?
Quickly folks, mod me as flame bait.
The Japanese did indeed start the war, but that doesn't mean that everything we did to them was automatically justified.
Read my timeline of the very end of WW2, and tell me what we did wrong. Most revisionist WW2 history has 'Murrica having clairvoyant powers that allowed us to know exactly what Japan was thinking about, so we could ignore it. As late as ten days before the bombs hit, Japan had refused the Potsdam declaration.
So it was either us surrendering, Us nucing them, or another couple of years of war, in a war that had already killed between 70 and 85 million people. Your choice?
It's easy to consider when it is someone else. The main problem with the nukes was the kiling 300,000+ civilians to make a point. It made its point and the war ended, but it was still killing 300,000+ people who didn't necessarily agree with their government and doing it for show.
Would you prefer that we just continued the firebombing, then invaded along with the Russians and eventually killed most of the people of Japan? People fight like there's no tomorrow when there is no tomorrow.
Which is why I say that it's easy to condemn the US for killing all of those people when they don't consider the number was going to be many millions more under any other circumstances.
It's also important to note that there was no civilian control of the Japanese Army. The Imperial Army General Staff Office and it's navy counterpart were independent of the Rest of government and had direct acess to and only answerable to the Emperor.
Which is why it is a little amusing, the assertations of some that they were going to surrender later, but we bombed them earlier. A bunch of Samauri were runnig the country. And up until the end, many were planning on fighting to the last man, including an incident where they seized the emperor's palace for a short time.
Here is the rough timeline as we understand it:
In early 1945 HIrohito held meetings with Government officials regarding the war. Only one, an ex-prime minister by the name of Fumimaro Konoe wanted to start negotiations for surrender. All of the rest advised him to stay the course.
In April they decided to reaffirm the policy of fighting to the last man. Soon after The "Keeper of the privy seal" (sounds like the keys to the executive rest room) Kichi Kido, prepared a draft of the actual situation and proposed negotiating a surrender. The Emperor gave it some thought, and had it disseminated among th eless militaristic members of his cabinet. Already we are seeing some cracks in the facade. But no breakthroughs.
Some in Japan even considered a huge mass suicide
In the middle of June, they thought about having Russia mediate a negotiated surrender. In late June, the Emperor directed his ministers to lay out firm plans to end the war, and not plans dictated by the military, with it's death before dishonor and 47 Ronin outlook. A glimmer of hope to end the war.
On the 26th of July the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration which demanded surrender without conditions. The Emperor decided to not surrender. 10 days later, the first atomic bomb was dropped. Then a second. On August 14, 1945, 8 days later, Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam declaration.
Even at that time some of the military attempted a coup known as the Kyj incident - they seized the Imperial palace. They then committed suicide as their demands went unmet. So despite everything else, it would appear that in order to win a war they did not start, the US would have had to invade Japan, and kill Japanese foot by bloody foot. And the two bombs no doubt moved th eprocess along.
Nuking two Japanese cities and killing all of those people - some innocent, and many not - was a horrible thing. So was every other aspect of that evil evil war. But to make America for ending a war they did not start is to appear to applaud the losers for what they did.
It was a insane horrifying war that killed between 70,000,000 and 80,000,000 people. I do not give any postware responsibility to the Russians, who destroyed Berlin totally block by block, and if they laughed and enjoyed their revenge as they destroyed Berlin - so be it. They had lost 27,000,000 some people. Read that a few times to let it sink in. The entire world had lost between 70,000,000 to 85,000,000 people during the war years.The US got off pretty "easily" with only a little less than a half million. But it was 6 years of that insanity. And almost everyone was tired of it. It's so incredibly easy to condemn America now. W
I'm under the impression that it's the nuts that have the loudest voices or get the most attention. It's almost as if the media intentional seeks them out to plaster all over national news, I'm not even sure it's news any more it's like shock reporting where they find the craziest thing to air just to bring in viewers it might as well be News at 10 with Howard Stern.
Bill Maher had an interesting insight into some of what what you are talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
At the present time, there is a lot of SJW stuff in the news. Partly because they are kooks, bent on whining about everything, and partly because people expect kookhattery from the right wing, so it isn't really news when one of them gets caught in the Restroom at Denny's giving Oral sex to some random dude stranger before going to a fundraising dinner to make Gay marriage illegal again. Kooks...Kooks everywhere...
There has not been a presidential candidate worth voting for since before I was old enough to vote your choices are... let me see which is less likely to completely screw everything up.
Does such a person even exist? Anything short of perfection is verboten. Hell, we had a president impeached because of a blowjob. Id if the worst thing you ever did was get a blowjob, you aren't doing too bad.
Here:
He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or[f] the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Waht doe Social Security numbers have to do with this?
A 5 year old can easily follow the logic, but it apparently escapes you...
Oprah Winfrey?
I think the person that paid these two-bit hackers should ask for their money back.
Hey, its 2016. 64 bit Hackers.
If the bombs had been ready a bit earlier, Berlin may very well have been the first target. In fact, I wonder sometimes if the Americans had been able to stop the War in Europe before the Soviets were smashing through what would become East Germany if the post-war history of Europe would have been very different.
I think you are correct. If Germany had hung on a few months more, I suspect that just like the tide before a tsunami, the Russian army would have suddenly pulled back, and we would have nailed Berlin.
I think the tricky part would have been convincing the Russkies, to get out of the way for afew days, but we probably could have. And wow, as you note, what a historical difference that would have made.
Offended, how about exercising your freedom of choice and avoiding parts of the Intertubes that Perpetually Offend you?
Many people, left and right are perpetually offended. So they look for things to validate their offendedness. Which is pretty offensive, all in all.
Slashdot is far and away...
Have you seen reddit? I've never had anything censored here.
Nothing is censored here. It just gets modded up or down. Brett Buck just cannot handle anyone who doesn't totally agree with him, and lables anyone who disagrees with him as a leftist.
Dude has a point. For example, what defines 'racism' - according to many people, the term includes anyone who disagrees with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement in any aspect.
It's a big world, with whackos on both left and right. I've been told to go die in a fire for asking what a regular person is going to use an assault rifle for.
So there are going to be people on the left who are just as nuts.
But what we do in polarized America has turned into people taking the most extreme elements left or right, and using a really broad brush to paint anyone they don't agree with as whoever it is they hate. That's how left wingers can paint every conservative as Ted Cruz Dominionists, and right wingers can paint anyone who disagrees with them as Chanty Binx acolytes.
When in fact, not many Republicans believe in shutting down the Government or America becoming a Dominionist nation as Cruz wishes, or that whatever the hell Chanty Binx is is representative of all Democrats.
But in modern day America, we have been programmed to paint anyone who disagrees with us as not human, therefore not worthy of humane treatment.
Hell, I enjoy arguing with people in here, It doesn't make me disrespect their selfhood. But that paints me as inhuman on both sides.
I am sure that would be a very clever and apt comment, if I could make *any* sense out of it.
Near as I can tell, you advocate censorship. Who decides what is acceptable and not? Here on slashdot, its the mods, who mod everything to the right of Mao Tse Tung and Castro into oblivion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and lefties think the same thing in the opposite direction.
I've had lots of posts modded in a battle between one group calling it a troll, and the other calling it insightful. opinion tug-a-war.
And if you think it's just left wingers, perform an experiment. Post a message asking "Why would someone even want an assualt rifle?" It will hit -1 troll with a bullet (that's a joke son)
That's just how it is man, people have different opinions.
Even more importantly, posts do not get "modded into oblivion". All you have to do is change the level at which you browse Slashdot. You can see everything posted, not a bit of censorship.
Slashdot is far and away the most repressive leftist forum I have ever seen, with mods absusing their power to censor literally anything but the hard-left party line.
Don't get out much, eh? Aside from no censorship taking place at all, you can't really be saying that everyone has to march in lockstep agreement with everything you post.
That's not even how life works, unless you are in an echo chamber where no one can express anything but approval for your opinion. The bubble gets lonely. Accept that not everyone will agree with you.
They don't have a newsletter, but you can always subscribe to Anne Coulter's twitter.
Gotcha, well played.
"Where's Steve Garvey? Survey says?"
Nice "True Scotsman".
-The Government never said that. -Yes, it did, under the auspices of the Secretary of War.
Gosh - I'd love ot hear just how that is a "No True Scotsman" argument Teach me, Turbistrado.
-Oh, well, but, but... it doesn't count!
Coulda shoulda woulda
Perhaps I might be swayed if the US had in it's possession, an instrument of surrender from the Japanese government or emperor, yet decided to nuke those two cities. Now there would be some smoking gun evidence. to support the concept that we just really wanted to nuke some place, not as an action of war, but apparently as something fun to do during a lazy summer day.
Because otherwise, it is people who we were fighting against, probably still in shock at just how much destruction took place, trying to rationalize a reason that we should not have done it. And I place the "We were really going to surrender later, but you bombed us, then we surrendered earlier, but you didn't have to bomb us earlier becuse we would have surrendered later." as just that.
And in the end, the way for Japan to completely avoid the issue was quite simple, don't you think?
Unless you are in the extreme whacko camp of believing the Pearl Harbor attacks having been engineered by FDR. But then we're done conversing.
The real truth - stuff they don't teach in 'murrican schools..
One day, the antichrist commie Franklin Delano Roosevelt woke up and said to himself...
It was Harry Truman, not FDR.
Oh whoosh. My goodness, it's good to see that I have been corrected. Looks like Harry Truman conceived of and had the entire Manhattan District project finished from the time he became president on April 12, 1945, which must have been the date that WW2 started, until the project was complete on August 6, 1945. Right?
Amazing, that Truman took the project from conception to dropping the thing in less that 4 months. Right?
Score one for the 'murrican schools.
Sorry. I don't know what is worse - You thinking that this was Truman's baby, or your inability to catch the sarcasm.
If you need to catch my point, it is that while the US is excoriated for having the nerve to drop the bombs, it is apparently just a great thing that Japan started the whole thing. Or do you think that we would have dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki if we were not at war with Japan, a war that they started?
Or should we just have surrendered, so that the world would be more in line with how you think it should be run?
Now you probably will say that the "U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey is not The US Government", or something like that (it was "only" the result of the mandate from the Secretary of War pursuant to a directive from President Roosvelt). Well, whatever.
All you have to do is believe the survey respondants. A local television station has "surveys" too.
If you believe the results, all americans believe that children should be issued sidearms at birth, and should be armed in school, that the bill of rights needs suspended, and all manner of idiotic stuff.
Nope, all that those folk had to do was actually surrender. And of course, I can't know, but My guess is that if we nuced them on January 1, 1946, the survey would have shown that they were planning on surrendering on January 31st 1946.
The only time that a surrender takes place is the time it takes place.
"it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Where's Steve Garvey? Survey says?.......But they missed the most important part.
They actually had to surrender. Sweet Jeebus on a roto rooter, that part is critical.
Of course Japan would have surrendered. In a couple months after Russia and America reduced their country to rubble. And if Berlin is any example, the Russians would have treated the emperor to the same fate as old Adolph.
Yep, that's the best excuse and probably a valid one. They were ready to die till the last man.
So your fix was genocide of the Japanese? The concept of fighting to the last man, with America and now Russia, both completely tired of the bullshit, knowing they would have to kill every last one of the Japanese. Who were willing to die under those conditions.
A war of genocide was something they could envision. A war where one plane flies overhead, releases one bomb, and you are gone along with everyone else in the city - you can't even fight that.
To this day, a lot of people in Japan refuse to accept that Nanking even happened.
As for the nuclear bombs, we won, they lost, that is how it works. We don't see them as war crimes, thus no one will be tried for it (and they are all dead anyway).
A very compelling case can be made that using the nucs actually saved Japanese lives.
During the war in the pacific, Americans were stunned by the reaction of the Japanese soldiers and civilians. Figh like crazy, then when defeat was imminent, kill yourself. The amount of effort and cost of lives to take small islands was immense.
Yes, the Americans were winning. No they were not happy about the way it was going to happen.
As they closed in on Japan, it was only going to get worse. The casualties on both sides were going to be immense, and to win the war, something akin to genocide would happen if we were to take it on using the methods at hand. We were going to have to kill everyone who didn't commit suicide. Whatever else the rest of the world thinks about our willingness to commit mayhem, we aren't remotely genocidal.
Firebombing worked in a similar way to nucs, but was laborious as hell. A metric shitload of bombs were needed.
So under those conditions, the decision to nuc Japan happened. 1 each bomb that would level 1 each city.
It was a gamble on our part. What would happen if Japan still didn't surrender? After the second bomb hit Nagasaki, it was clear even to the never surrender crowd, they had lost. Lost so completely that with no way to protect their nation, they were just going to disappear completely, and we could do it just by flying over their country and dropping a bomb per city.(note: the amount of fissionable material might have had an impact)
As well, in all of this mess, Russia had just declared war on Japan, and the Japanese knew how the Russkies had carved Germany a new asshole. So Japan could expect the same and soon.
So for all of the hatred toward the nucs and America, using them probably saved lives, American and Russian, no doubt, but also Japanese - in the end.
Several of the criminals in the rape of Nanking were tried and found guilty in court. When will the criminals responsible for dropping nuclear bombs see their day in court?
Who says they were criminals? Nuclear bawmbs are just like any other weapon of war, only on steroids.
Firebombing had similar results to nucs, only it took a lot more effort. Either way, a lot of dead people.
War really sucks, and as WW2 turned into total war, shit got real. If people don't want retaliation, they shouldn't start wars. Some times the people who start wars are not the people that finish them.
And let's remember why Hiroshima happened at all.
The real truth - stuff they don't teach in 'murrican schools..
One day, the antichrist commie Franklin Delano Roosevelt woke up and said to himself - Dammit - I need something to get my pecker going, Elanore is so damn fugly, and since getting polio, it's just not that easy any more."
So he sat and thought, and Eureka! "I'll just pick the most unlkely, most pacifistic people on earth - the Japanese - that will give me wood!"
So we went over and nuked the innocent unsuspecting Japanese, and FDR got his jolly's
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