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Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

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Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#271

Post by cynicalpeace »

Manabu-eo wrote: post #263
fifilura wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that if you can colonize other planets you can also target them with nuclear weapons. It is like saying that the solution to all problems is colonizing Antarctica.

It's much easier to intercept said nuclear weapon because instead of minutes you would have months to do it. And attacking Mars outside the few months every two years that have the most favorable transfer windows would also be much more difficult. It's a non-trivial advantage. Of course, if you have nuclear weapons already on Mars that can be remotely triggered from Earth this doesn't apply, but hopefully we can avoi…

Yes- but raises an interesting problem of nuclear energy. Might be very important/useful in space.

The book series "The Expanse" does an amazing job of showing what a war in space would look like, and the role of nuclear energy.

Interestingly, nukes become small fry compared to slinging asteroids at planets.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#274

Post by evanjrowley »

kaon_ wrote: post #29

At home I have a book telling stories of Dutch WW2 survivors still living today. One of them was an eye witness account of the Hiroshima bomb. He was a POW and worked in a quarry or mine on the outskirts of town. He saw a single plane fly over. A bomb dropped with a parachute attached. Moments later he was flung to the back of the quarry and the city was gone. I would never have guessed there were eyewitnesses like t…

My opa was also a Dutch POW and I believe he was working in that same mine on the same day. When it happened, he was deep in the mine, which was evacuated because people inside initially thought the blast was an earthquake. Being a POW was without question extremely hard, but it was the bombing of Hiroshima that resulted in PTSD lasting many years after the war. He survived, retiring in Florida, and passed away in the late 80s. Some US government scientists asked if they could study his body, believing radiation exposure affected his long term health. It seems they were correct because his bones were found to have a slightly blue tint to them.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#276

Post by deanCommie »

The Hiroshimia/Nagasaki situation is one of the best examples I can think of with plenty of evidence of the "history is written by the winners" concept.

It has been justified repeatedly over the years both in terms of relativism ("The firebombing of Tokyo killed more people, yet isn't so controversial"), and in terms of hypotheticals becoming certainties ("The empire was never going to surrender without a massive fight. The US anticipated unprecedented losses from an invasion of the main island, and is still giving out purple hearts printed in anticipation of this invasion")

In the end the historical narrative was that dropping the bombs was necessary to end the war, as written by the winners.

The reality is that we just don't know what would've happened if the US waited. Japan was not an active threat any longer. What was? The Soviet Union that would've certainly "helped" invade Japan, and would've also demanded to carve it up post-war the way they did with Germany.

From evaluating the overall evidence it seems pretty clear that this is what was driving the urgency to drop the bomb, not once, but twice.

The irony is that it's entirely possible that for the population of Japan this ended up a better outcome than having half of it face the "East Germany" scenario for the next 40 years.

And while the "blight" of having actually used nuclear weapons to kill civilians may be on the US forever as the only nation to have done so, the horrors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki almost certainly helped prevent nuclear weapon usage throughout the cold war. If they were never tried, it's almost certain that either the US or the USSR would've been itchy to be the first in some future engagement, and then who knows what would've happened.

So the truth is messy. My position is that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings were NOT necessary to end WW2 and did not reduce the overall bloodshed within THAT conflict. But this action counterintuitively helped improve Japan's prosperity over the rest of the 20th century and may have reduced the likelihood of an actual nuclear war over the rest of the Cold War.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#277

Post by Manuel_D »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #265
Manuel_D wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people understand just how un-feasible life on Mars would be. It's got 1% of the atmospheric pressure as Earth. It's -65 degrees Celsius. It'd be more feasible to try colonizing the Moon or Antarctica.

We have permanent presence in Antarctica. Depends on your exact definition of "colony", but a narrow definition of it is barred by international treaty, I think. Moon is definitely a great first step. I originally said "other heavenly bodies". You sound like someone in 1900 saying "We can't fly, we're too heavy" or "We can't be in space it's got 0% atmospheric pressure".

Antartctica has a permanent presence that's totally dependent on regular supplies delivered from other continents. They don't grow their own crops, have their own industry.

We couldn't fly until the early 1900s, primarily because we didn't have engines with power to weight ratios sufficient for heavier-than-air flight. The concept of flight via the Bernoulli principle was known for a long time, and when engines improved people did start flying.

The lack of atmosphere on Mars largely prohibits any self sufficient colony. Colonies could be limited to pressurized habitats. But again, at that point we might as well focus on colonizing the moon which is much closer. I guess if we have a mechanism to somehow pump mars full of air, colonization would become more feasible. But it's a lot harder to work around the law of conservation of mass, than it is to improve internal combustion engines. No, it's not like people doubting the feasibilityy of heavier-than-air flight.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#278

Post by octopoc »

istjohn wrote: post #214
tgv wrote: post #25

In "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes, a poignant point was made, originating from people like Bohr, who were definitely on the peaceful side: without demonstrating the effect of the atomic bomb, the "nuclear taboo" would not have come into existence, and the first large conflict between nuclear powers would have seen a terrible outcome. The use of the bomb was inevitable, so it was sadly better to use it in a…

> And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: > Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women... Ezekial 9:5-6 > Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15:3 > And every li…

All those examples are from a single ancient culture. Why did you pick only from that culture?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#279

Post by aguaviva »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #252
aguaviva wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if the Russians are just as jingoistic and corrupt, Short story: current regime in the Russian Federation quite definitely is, may more so in fact, and has fascist, revanchist, genocidal ideology to boot. You may want to look further into its history (and that of the Russian/Soviet empires, which it sees itself as the natural successor to), and into the writings/thinking of the folks the helm of that reg…

It is absolutely true. Davyd Arakhhamia, Ukraine’s chief negotiator at Istanbul, said "[Boris] Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the NATO powers] are not" We've all been drip-fed by the military industrial complex sin…

Except that's not a direct quote from Arakhmiya - now is it?

Rather, it's a characterization of what he said -- whose original provenance seems to be difficult to track down, and there are conflicting versions available, which of course got copy-pasted all over in both left- and right-wing outlets (as well as by the Kremlin of course). But both Johnson and Arakhmiya have strenuously denied this characterization in any case, when directly asked about the topic:

  “This is nothing more than nonsense and Russian propaganda,” Johnson said in an interview with the Times.

  His words were confirmed by the head of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party faction, David Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation at the Ukraine-Russia talks in Istanbul in March 2022. ... Arakhamia denied that the Ukrainian delegation was allegedly ready to sign such a document, and Johnson stopped Kyiv.
And yet somehow you've come to believe that the first characterization you came across was "absolutely true". Why is that?

It's evil, no I will not forget Dick Cheney.

You can build an anti-shrine to him on your bedroom wall, and throw darts at it every night if you want to. The unfortunate point here is that it seems you've allowed him to become a bogeyman, just like the big bad old MIC. And when I'm saying "forget about him", I don't mean in the literal sense. Of course we have to remember assholes like Cheney and the evil they did, what Eisenhower said way back when and all that.

But the bigger point is: that doesn't mean we have to let these ghosts not only dictate our narratives, but completely override our understanding of events in the present moment. More to the point -- if you'd like to yourself a huge favor, and just forget about all these good/evil narratives altogether. Instead focus on the facts of who said what, and when, and what really happened as a result.

Which in the case of the current Ukraine war, really aren't that complicated or hard to figure out.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#280

Post by bonzini »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #200
bryanlarsen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump's first term was basically another 4 more years of Bush. Without leadership from the top, his mostly Bush-era appointees kept doing what they did before. His second term will be filled with fanatics rather than Bush-era appointees.

I don't manage to keep up with Republican party machinations - please could you explain why the Bush-era staff won't be there if Trump is elected again?

Because they had enough of Trump after 4 years.

Dick Cheney is voting for Harris, that's the equivalent of Norman Osborn voting for Peter Parker.

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