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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

#291

Post by smsm42 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #53
cbolton wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? It was probably obvious to the scientists working on the bomb that other countries would get it too sooner or later, including countries at odds with each other.

I don't know. Could Hirohito (Suzuki, etc.) have been convinced by bombs dropped elsewhere? (our physicists were able to back-of-the-envelope; should their physicists have needed hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths to calculate what an A-bomb could do?) So I think it's not obvious (multiple books have been written on the subject) what could or should have been done or not done back then; now, from my point of vi…

> Could Hirohito (Suzuki, etc.) have been convinced by bombs dropped elsewhere?

Not likely, Tokyo was firebombed to ashes and it didn't move him to surrender.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#292

Post by nyc_data_geek1 »

palata wrote: post #204
seabass-labrax wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't personally believe we should colonize other heavenly bodies because of a potential nuclear apocalypse, but the negation of that is no reason to abandon space travel either. Every time we have launched a mission into deep space we have learnt more as a species about what makes Earth 'tick'. We can also do a lot without actual space travel - maybe if more people had heeded the observations of the greenhouse eff…

> maybe if more people had heeded the observations of the greenhouse effect on Venus in the 60s We know pretty well what's happening on Earth and we have for decades. It's not like we just realised 5 years ago that we have a problem. We have not done anything (and we still aren't), but we knew, that's for sure. > I'm not confident that our place is in the stars, but it would be narrow-minded not to give living out th…

This precisely. We're in fact nowhere close to a sustainable off world human habitat, with all the inputs/outputs such requires, not to mention the ecosystem needed to sustain such in perpetuity.

If people are really interested in perpetuating "the light of consciousness" among the stars, they'd be working themselves to death to make life sustainable here on Earth, where we're from, which still presents far more hospitable conditions relative to anywhere else in the Universe we've so far identified. Say you're a billionaire with such an interest - wouldn't your funds be somewhat better directed ensuring we don't annihilate ourselves in a mad max hellscape locally, before we suffocate in the void when the O2 machine breaks down and we can't source replacement parts because Earth is now a wasteland?

The Great Filter is us, and so far, doesn't look like we're making it past.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#293

Post by cynicalpeace »

aguaviva wrote: post #279
cynicalpeace wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Original provenance was Ukrainska Pravda. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2022/05/5/7344096/

At some point a name was put to the anonymous source, could be one of the many journalists who have investigated this quote, as you yourself admit there are lots of sources on this topic.

But that single quote aside, it's not like they're saying this in secret. Even Victoria Nuland and Foreign Affairs said some version of the same thing.

Nuland says the West didn't want to basically disarm Ukraine, and Foreign Affairs did an investigation of the negotiations (Ukrainska Pravda's investigation was better) and said the West didn't want to provide security guarantees to Ukraine.

And they all say it out loud that they don't want give an inch.

Good/evil moral compass is enormously important, especially when faced with war. It's precisely this flippant view towards morality that leads normal people to justify horrific acts of violence.

Murder, war, invasion bad.

Family, health, love, business good.

It really is that simple and the moment you stray from that, you stray towards everything we want to avoid.

I understand there are moments you MUST go to war. If I were Ukrainian I would be 100% on the war effort.

But I'm not Ukrainian. I'm American. Russia didn't attack America and I have a say in where my tax dollars go.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#294

Post by macintux »

vkou wrote: post #217
vasco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I put a hammer over your head that can fall any minute you'll be worrying, but if you're born with the hammer over your head and your parents before you as well, it becomes less of a thing.

My parents had no problem reminding us that we all live with a nuclear sword hanging over our heads. It just so happens that most people in the West are comfortable, are completely insulated from the consequences of war, and can't even imagine a regular war happening to them . And nuclear war is so much more horrifying and its consequences are so much beyond the pale, that people can't even think of what it would mea…

> It just so happens that most people in the West are comfortable, are completely insulated from the consequences of war, and can't even imagine a regular war happening to them.

One of my great disappointments after 9/11 was that U.S. citizens were not, by and large, asked/expected to make any sacrifices (other than our liberties). It felt that if we were at war, we should all be contributing, but it seemed to me that our value as consumers was more important than as citizens.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#295

Post by smsm42 »

thimabi wrote: post #55
cbolton wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? It was probably obvious to the scientists working on the bomb that other countries would get it too sooner or later, including countries at odds with each other.

But was it really obvious? From what I can tell, much of the nuclear arms race happened thanks to espionage. Had information on warheads and the like been properly contained, maybe other countries would not have so easily developed the bomb.

Unfortunately, democracies have their downsides. One of them is that "properly containing" things is extremely hard. Soviet spy network was vast and infiltrated all tiers of US society, and without instituting some extremely draconian policies, compared to which McCarthy would look like a hippie, I don't see how it would be possible to prevent it. Especially given a lot of top scientists were, unfortunately, if not communists themselves than quite friendly with communists and would probably refuse to cooperate with any draconian regime that would be capable of suppressing the communist networks.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#296

Post by roschdal »

dang wrote: post #180
roschdal wrote: post #8

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

This comment is simply stating historical facts. It's not unsubstantive. The actions of the US military in this particular case are relevant to this story. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II caused an estimated 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, according to some sources.

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#297

Post by historyartifucj »

parl_match wrote: post #290
hereme888 wrote: post #285

[flagged]

> Also, those bombs saved a lot of lives. I know many will disagree, but it's true. This is a hotly, perhaps one of the most hotly contended, modern questions of World War II. To say what you said so blithely betrays your ignorance on the subject. General modern consensus suggests that the first is up for debate for various reasons, but that the second one really didn't do much to change the Japanese government's cou…

[flagged]

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#298

Post by protomolecule »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #262
protomolecule wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why mention Castro?

Because the person I responded to said that if everyone has nukes we are safer because of MAD but if Castro had nukes he would have used them! Fanatical leaders don't give a damn about MAD

How do you know that Castro would've used them?

Re: Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 awarded to Nihon Hidankyo

#299

Post by ericmcer »

tomp wrote: post #97

[flagged]

I kind of agree, but we have way too many bombs just floating around.

How many nukes does a country need to have readied in order for mutually assured destruction to be relevant? I feel like 100 would be enough to deter any aggression, and if two countries unload their full arsenal at each other would not end life on earth.

Russia and US have closer to 10,000 between them which could pretty much end humanity on any day.

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