North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet 182
Harperdog writes "Niko Milonopoulos, Siegfried S. Hecker, and Robert Carlin analyze terrific overhead photos of North Korea's nuclear facilities, discussing the rate of building and what the photos show. Also points to options for dealing with North Korea and their energy needs."
North Korea and Burma (Score:5, Interesting)
The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," reads the cable, published by the Guardian newspaper.
Some 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the authors said, although the cable suggested this number was improbably high.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says that for months there have been persistent reports in the press and specialised journals suggesting that Burma is building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.
Another cable released by the whistle-blowing site suggests that China, Burma's most powerful ally, is growing impatient with the country's leaders.
Frankly, this is what happens when powerful nations have nuclear weapons and smaller ones want them too to defend themselves. And remember that U.s. is still the only nation on planet to ever have used nuclear weapons. Against civilians, no less.
Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, there was a strong call to nuke Russia before they could develop nukes as well.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Interesting)
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden? In your comparison, please include comparisons of number of lives lost, percentages of military to civilian deaths, personal property losses, infrastructure losses, and the military value of all those losses.
Perhaps, if you have enough background, you could compare the overall losses to both German and Japan during and immediately after World War 2.
And, if you're up to the task, maybe you could explain why the US military still has a surplus of Purple Heart medals, to the tune of a quarter million of them.
Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
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Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
There's a big difference to the dying. All things considered, it's less horrible to bleed out in a couple hours than to die of radiation poisoning over a couple weeks.
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There's a big difference to the dying. All things considered, it's less horrible to bleed out in a couple hours than to die of radiation poisoning over a couple weeks.
How about dying over a couple of weeks to an otherwise treatable infection? How about dying over a couple of years to hunger? The pro-nuke side has plenty of room for escalation here.
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Firebombing can produce some pretty nasty slow deaths too, like being roasted alive in your own house. IIRC, Vonnegut described one case where civilians were boiled alive when they hid in a water tank.
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Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden?
The arguably Dresden was more necessary because it really was "us or them". If Britain had lost the war then Europe would have fallen completely to the Axis and we would have be subjugated totally. At first the US found area bombing and targeting civilians unpalatable so refused to join in, but we really were desperate and didn't have many options. And eventually the US did fire bomb Japan anyway.
The US, on the other hand, was never in any real danger of losing to Japan. Merely starting the war is regarded as a huge blunder by the Japanese because they could never win it, especially once their fleet in the Pacific had been decimated. The US also had lots of options available with its nuclear weapons. They could have been detonated on remote islands or high up in the atmosphere to demonstrate their power. As it happened the reason for surrendering was the fear that Tokyo would be attacked, and that same reasoning would have existed if targets other than cities had been destroyed.
The US wanted to test nukes on people though. At the time no-one knew what the effects would be, particularly long term. Presumably other countries would develop their own nuclear weapons and the US wanted to know what the likely effects on its cities and citizens would be. So they did some tests on the Japanese people. Morally there is no equivalence between Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
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Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden?
The arguably Dresden was more necessary because it really was "us or them". If Britain had lost the war then Europe would have fallen completely to the Axis and we would have be subjugated totally. At first the US found area bombing and targeting civilians with incendiaries unpalatable so refused to join in, but we really were desperate and didn't have many options. And eventually the US did fire bomb Japan anyway.
The US, on the other hand, was never in any real danger of losing to Japan. Merely starting th
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You, Sir, win the prize, for the most educated, and most intelligent response.
I happen to disagree with you, slightly. I believe that it was necessary to defeat the Japanese. As for those options you mention - hmmmm. How many bombs were available at that time? And, what would the cost have been to acquire more? Remember, this was new technology, then. Wasting a bomb on a non-military target for the purposes of demonstrating the power of the bombs was probably seen as "Not an option!"
Testing nuclear de
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh - I must add one thing that is often overlooked in discussions of this type. Japan had already been subjected to some of the more conventional firebombings, such as Dresden experienced. Those more typical bombings were even more horrible than Dresden, because the Japanese military-industrial complex was more spread out into poor neighborhoods, than Germany had been. They were more terrible, in that Japanese construction was vastly more flammable than German construction, causing the damage to be even more widespread, and more deadly.
And, those firebombings had not even put a dent in their will to fight.
Invading Japanese islands and mainland would have been a nightmare indeed. I personally believe that the bombs were a necessary evil.
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Like, say, the bombing of Tokyo. It was firebombed and was the deadliest single air raid of the war. More than the atomic bombs. In terms of lives lost, buildings destroyed, people injured, etc, it was worse.
The reason that the atomic bomb raids worked so well is not their massive destruction, but the fact that one bomb could do that. The US did a god job convincing Japan it had a fleet of these bombs and would just keep doing it. They didn't say they only had three of them (one for the test, and the two th
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I've seen in history, only democracies nuke civilians.
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
Why? By that point, the war was pretty much over anyway. The only two at least semi-sensible arguments for using the nukes was: a) it'd likely make an invasion of Japan unnecessary and b) we have them, so we might as well just use them.
Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes. Compared to the cost of getting to the point of invading the home-turf, the actual act of doing it is much less costly. And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.
And if you look at the post-war recovery speed, both Japan and Germany did not differ much, so invading Japan would have worked just as well as nuking two cities full of civilians -- only that the former is somewhat less morally questionable, as it'd have mostly killed armed soldiers, instead of unarmed civilians and would've given the individual soldiers at least a chance to surrender.
So, given that fact a) is neither really pro-use nor fully contra-use, the most likely reason why they used the nukes was simply b). They had them, they wanted to test them for real, so they tested them for real. All in all, it just shows the banality of evil, and that a democracy is not immune against committing morally questionable or downright morally evil acts.
Oh, and using the argument "But it saved the lives of US-American soldiers" -- while certainly right -- is even worse, as it simply shows that your moral compass is blind in certain areas. It is basically trading the few or your own for the many of the others -- and good luck with morally justifying that without sounding just like those who you set out to defeat.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.
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Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.
The US also dropped leaflets advising the Japanese to surrender because resistence was futile.
If you are stupid enough to believe enemy propaganda in whatever form, you are pretty stupid. The leaflets could just as likely be a ruse.
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The CIA was formed in 1947 ...
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:4, Interesting)
I shared this point of view once... that the nukes were acts of state sponsored terrorism. I sought out quite a bit of info on the topics... I think most "woah" was a History channel special and an article about Operation Downfall (Not the Wikipedia one). But anything I has out would probably be included in this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I am convinced that due to the world's need for a Japanese surrender (War can only end when one side is defeated or surrenders), the pride of the Japanese emperor, had the bombs not been dropped, the Japanese "civilian" deaths would have been greater in the months that followed, and the military deaths at least 3x higher on both sides. That, with conventional war. But maybe that's just propaganda.
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they could probably have
While if they hit areas that still have surviving military and manufacture infrastructure (such as your so-called "maximum civilian causualties" targets), they would be a bit more certain of that "probably".
And who did the invasion of Germany? (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany was only partially invaded by the western allies, the russians did the lion share including the brutal Berlin battle. Japan's final battle by comparison was relatively peaceful.
As for civilians being killed, were these the same civilians who congratulated their sons for the mass murder they committed? I note Japan has never made reparations for their many war crimes.
The world at the time was tired of war, invading all of Japan by the US alone would have created a terrible cost, not just in soldiers lost but in retaliation by US soldiers against Japanese civilians. Lots of german women were raped, not that anyone could give a shit about it but the Russian soldiers were hardly in the mood to restrain themselves after having fought through the evidence of german war crimes to be nice to those same germans.
What would US soldiers have felt about the japanese people if they had to fight through Japan with more and more evidence of Japanese war crimes to fuel the already bitter hatred of the Japanese?
I also find it highly likely that you are willing to sacrifice soldiers without actually ever having served. An armchar moralist. Gosh, we need more of them. Easy bet you think Iraq was about oil while topping up your SUV.
Re:And who did the invasion of Germany? (Score:5, Informative)
Germany was only partially invaded by the western allies, the russians did the lion share including the brutal Berlin battle. Japan's final battle by comparison was relatively peaceful.
Tell that to Russians who fought in Manchuria Soviet invasion of Manchuria [wikipedia.org]
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The time at which USSR declared war at Japan was determined by the Yalta conference to be exactly 3 months after the war in Europe ended. The latter was on May 8 (as far as Soviets were concerned, since the declaration of surrender signed the day before - what is usually celebrated as V-day in the West - did not properly include them), so USSR declared war on Japan on September 9. That US nuked Hiroshima three days before was likely not a coincidence, but if so, it was something decided by the American side
Re:And who did the invasion of Germany? (Score:5, Interesting)
I note Japan has never made reparations for their many war crimes. ...
What would US soldiers have felt about the japanese people if they had to fight through Japan with more and more evidence of Japanese war crimes to fuel the already bitter hatred of the Japanese?
One - Japan got a free ride from the USA in exchange for the data it gathered from their inhumane experiments. [wikipedia.org]
Two - They DID make reparations for many war crimes. [wikipedia.org]
Three - US soldiers would not feel a damn thing (other than the already present racism against the Japs [sfsu.edu] which was rather prevalent back then) - as Japan was not Nazi Germany.
Their concentration camps (as in places where war crimes was a part of daily routine) were mostly offshore in places like Korea, China and Philippines [mansell.com] - you know... places where they were actually doing the fighting, capturing and executing of soldiers and civilians, pillaging and other activities that make war so much fun apparently.
Their camps in Japan were mostly of the interment kind. [comcast.net]
No gas chambers or furnaces. Or even that much civilian prisoners.
As for German women being raped...
That was NOT due to Russians fighting through "the evidence of german war crimes".
Russians even did their share of mass executions. Just ask Poles. [wikipedia.org]
Russian soldiers were let loose in Germany because of the 26,600,000 Soviets lost in the WWII. [wikipedia.org]
About 8.6 million of them soldiers.
It was not some temporary loss of moral compass due to seeing incredible injustice and evil. It was a calculated revenge of a victor.
"What would US soldiers have felt about the japanese people if they had to fight through Japan with more and more evidence of Japanese war crimes to fuel the already bitter hatred of the Japanese?"
You mean the way they systematically raped and killed German civilians after having to fight through half of Europe, littered with evidence of German war crimes?
Oh no... wait... I meant the way they systematically distributed aid to German civilians. [wikipedia.org]
Slip of tongue there.
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No gas chambers or furnaces. Or even that much civilian prisoners.
My best friend is Filipino, and his grandmother mother managed to survive the war (the rest of her family did not). There there were no "civilian prisoners" because the Japanese of the time viewed most foreigners as sub-human, and so had as little remorse for killing the locals as they would a stray dog.
Just because the Japanese were not as systematic as the Nazis in WW2 does not mean they were any less brutal or evil.
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There there were no "civilian prisoners" because the Japanese of the time viewed most foreigners as sub-human, and so had as little remorse for killing the locals as they would a stray dog.
Just because the Japanese were not as systematic as the Nazis in WW2 does not mean they were any less brutal or evil.
Please reread the entire paragraph and the parents paragraph it is addressing.
I do not question or deny that Japanese have committed war crimes during WWII.
I am just saying that there were not that many signs of those crimes INSIDE JAPAN, as they were mostly committed outside of Japanese borders, in other countries.
Sure, Japanese soldiers did commit war crimes. [wikipedia.org]
But they did not exterminate 10-11 million "lesser humans" inside their own (at the time) borders.
They did not build hundreds of concentration and e
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Not sure about the GP, but I did serve and I am against armed conflict except in self defense. In fact part of the reason I left was because my number was coming up to go to Iraq and I felt it was immoral since it was not self defense. Not only that, Bush refused to be honest about his reasons and kept feeding blatant lies and excuses to the U.S. public
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I also find it highly likely that you are willing to sacrifice soldiers without actually ever having served. An armchar moralist. Gosh, we need more of them. Easy bet you think Iraq was about oil while topping up your SUV.
Every country is perfectly willing to sacrifice soldiers -- that's pretty much the raison d'etre (the reason to be) of the military. You teach some of your own to be really good at fighting others who were taught to fight really well against others. That's the entire point of it. If it's for defense or offence is unimportant in that respect. The purpose of soldiers in the military is to fight, and if need be, to lay down their life. "For their country" being a relatively recent addition, admittedly, as prev
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Or we could have stopped Alcoa from selling the aluminum to Mitsubishi that they made into Zeroes that they crashed through the decks of our planes.
Or we could have stopped Prescott bush from knowingly funneling millions to Hitler's S.S. One of his contemporaries was arrested for selling a great deal of fuel to the Nazis too, can't find his name right now though, sadly. But only AFTER he sold them the fuel, so that the Nazis would be able to continue to fight and so that we could seize the proceeds.
The simp
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or we could have stopped Alcoa from selling the aluminum to Mitsubishi that they made into Zeroes that they crashed through the decks of our planes.
You can't stop something after it has happened.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
Germans are not Japanese. Germans were willing to surrender (to Brits or Americans, at least). Japanese were not. When the US invaded Okinawa, even civilians made pointless attacks against US troops, while many committed suicide. Now adjust for the fact that Okinawa isn't considered a proper part of Japan, and is very small and you'll have some idea what would have happened on the mainland.
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There were many Okinawans who weren't very keen on the Japanese. I'm sure some of those saw through the propaganda, or hated the Japanese so much they'd give the US the benefit of the doubt. Some turned against their former masters and helped the US by denounced hiding Japanese who could be recognized by their accents. That isn't going to happen among the "proper Japanese".
And Okinawa was just a colony. Japan (the mainland) is the sacred homeland. To suggest that defence of the latter would be less fan
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Insightful)
How about "it saved the lives of millions of Japanese"?
Could the US have just contained Japan until it collapsed? Sure. It wouldn't even have taken all that long, really. Things were pretty grim in Japan in August 1945 - lots of homelessness, and significant problems with production. They were short on every kind of raw material, and the food distribution system was in such dire straits that many factories couldn't operate because their workers had to choose between coming to work or obtaining food. (You don't usually think of "do work" and "obtain necessities of life" as mutually exclusive things, after all - but the official ration was down to starvation level, and so people did what they could to obtain more... which moved more food out of the official distribution system and into the black market, which made it worse for everyone else, which meant even more people had to spend their days getting food instead of working...)
The transportation network was in ruins. The harbors were mined, the transports were being torpedoed one after the other, the rail bridges were bombed, the ferries were wrecked.
On top of that, the winter of '45/'46 was one of the worst on record for Japan. Even with food aid from occupying US forces, hundreds of thousands of Japanese starved to death. That's with us providing bread instead of bombs...
The bombs killed something like 110,000 people, and that's regrettable. But pretending that Japan would have surrendered in August '45 without the nukes is foolish, and every month the war dragged on, the death toll for the Japanese civilian population continued to rise. Things had degenerated to the point where even if the US had literally quit and gone home - just said "forget it, we're declaring peace and not attacking any more" - more Japanese civilians would have died in the next year than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That's not even considering the nightmare scenario, where central governance in Tokyo collapsed and Japan's forces overseas could not be brought to surrender. Little Japanese garrisons on a hundred small islands in the Pacific, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and along the front in China... many of which would require sharp fighting to dig out. Or you could just try to starve them out, of course, but if you take that view of it, you might as well hang up your humanitarian hat...
It's true that nobody in the US high command was thinking of how many Japanese lives the bomb would -save-.
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Could the US have just contained Japan until it collapsed?
Seeing what happened to North Korea under near identical circumstances, I'd say "no". The US might be able to contain Japan indefinitely, assuming the USSR didn't ruthlessly exploit the situation, but they couldn't insure the collapse of Japan.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Informative)
And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.
Uh, no. There are two big differences. One is getting the troops to the Japanese homeland. The invasion of Germany was possible because of D-day. That was a pretty costly maneuver (in manpower lost and equipment), even though it was only a short hop across the Channel. Invading Japan would have meant massive amphibious landings supported not from the US homeland, but from small island bases.
Couple that with the Japanese willingness to fight to the last man, and the invasion would have been a bloodbath. So yes, a) was a valid reason.
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Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes.
I guess you missed the part where 80% of the war against Germany was borne by the Russians.
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Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes.
I guess you missed the part where 80% of the war against Germany was borne by the Russians.
Please note that I did not state who invaded most of Germany. As I am a German myself, I merely assumed this to be common knowledge, so I did not saw the need to explicitly state it. This was, perhaps, foolish of me.
Believe me when I tell you that the history of the 20th century -- in all its at times gory details -- is a big topic in German history lessons.
What was this comment of the Israeli ambassador to Germany when he attended the opening of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" in Berlin, our
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Oh, and using the argument "But it saved the lives of US-American soldiers" -- while certainly right -- is even worse, as it simply shows that your moral compass is blind in certain areas. It is basically trading the few or your own for the many of the others -- and good luck with morally justifying that without sounding just like those who you set out to defeat.
That's the morality inherent in any war. After all, if you believe that killing the enemy to protect your own is not justified, then you can really reduce the casualties by surrendering on day 1.
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You think it was "pretty much paid for"? Are you INSANE? If by "pretty much paid for" you utterly ignore the insane cost of transporting goods and supplies to Japan during war time conditions, the insane cost of the multi-year battle it would take capture the country, and the half a MILLION or so American lives that they expected to lose, to say nothing of the Japanese lives, then, um, yeah... pretty much already paid for.
Fighting for Iwo Jima, an island that was 8 square miles, cost 28,000 casualties (7,0
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c) i) "I know, we've had a spy in the Manhatten Project for years"
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Apparently not for those on the receiving end. All the kittens, puppies and babies guilty of war crimes. All life has value, those that ignore this devalue their own life to less than nothing.
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All life has value, those that ignore this devalue their own life to less than nothing.
I mowed the lawn this morning regardless.
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:4, Interesting)
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
You are more right than you think.
Many people don't know that the Soviets had just declared war on Japan, and, after defeating the Kwantung army, had occupied nearly all territories held by Japan on the continent. After that they were planning to invade the Home Islands. Had the nuclear bombs not persuaded Japan to surrender at that moment, they might have been occupied by the Soviet Union. That would have had serious implications not just during the war, but after, because we would have likely had the People's Republic of Japan. What standard of living would its citizens have had?
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The nuclear bombs didn't persuade Japan to surrender, it was Russia. The japanese were scared of the new weapon but they were really terrified by Russia entering the war. Most if not all the discussion in this thread is about variants of mythology. The US entered the war in order to get as big a piece of the cake as possible because the big players were dividing the world amongst them.
It conquered Japan because it could and because it didn't want to share it with Russia.
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What this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo [wikipedia.org] about the Mccollum memo fails to make clear is that the McCollum memo made perfect sense and that it wasn't even necessary to read it in order to come to the same conclusions. Which explains why the recommendations were implemented.
Have you never wondered why it was necessary not just to retaliate against the Japanese and make them pay dearly but actually conquer them in the fullest way possible?
Re:Is your parting line supposed to be a critisism (Score:5, Insightful)
"N. Korea and Burma are oppressive dictatorships. It is in no one's desire to let these countries have or retain nuclear weapons."
Indeed, its only oppressive democracies that should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
A more important question is, should fair and relaxed dictatorships/democracies be allowed to have them ? Hmm, but i guess they wouldnt need them, because they dont go around trying to bully people all the time.
Perhaps having nuclear weapons is a sign that a country is oppressive ?
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Perhaps having nuclear weapons is a sign that a country is oppressive ?
Let's see....
India
France
United Kingdom
United States
No, that doesn't seem to correlate.
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I don't really want to troll or anything, but with the NDAA and SOPA, I worry that the USA is heading that way as well.
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If there is one country which should not have the right of having nukes, that's the US. The US has used it before.... will use it again
Both sides did more horrible things than that (Score:5, Interesting)
You often hear about the nuclear bombs and the horrors caused by those. It's a sexy story: A new weapon so powerful that nobody truly understood what it would do... A single massacre of civilians to end a war... It makes for great movies and great ethical arguments. Nothing like the cold and calculated cruelty, such as firebombing [wikipedia.org], that was utilized by both sides but perfected by allies when effectively destroying [alien8.de] European cities.
For those too lazy to go to Wikipedia, Firebombing is a nasty tactic: The first wave of bombers attacks infrastructure (roads, electricity, firefighters, roofs of buildings), the second one contains powerful incendiary bombs. The fires are difficult to put out (due to the first wave) but there is also an added benefit: The people who managed to get into shelters have pretty good chance of suffocating to death as the whole city block is in flames for hours. This was used over and over again against civilian targets.
Not that ordinary bombing wasn't bad enough: It's nothing like the romanticized idea of a couple of people in a small bunker in their backyard. I've visited the old bomb shelters of Berlin: There are airtight rooms that can't be opened from the inside (if they run out of air there, opening the door would just result in them consuming all the oxygen from the rest of the shelter, too. It's better to just open the door from the outside after the raid is over and see if the people are still alive or not). There were dozens of people tightly packed into relatively small space, being very still and hoping that the air would last. At the beginning of the wars, there were indicators to tell how much oxygen was left (three at different levels and they'd change color when the oxygen was out near the roof, near the center and near the floor) but those just caused panic and were removed soon. As the number of raids grew, it no longer made sense to leave the shelter for extended time periods. The managers removed doors from toilets because by removing all the privacy, they were able to somewhat lower the amount of suicides (Several each day) that people committed in the shelter. This was all caused by the good guys.
To point out something "nice" from the Axis portfolio... The siege of Leningrad: The only place and time (as far as I'm aware of) in the modern western world where cannibalism actually became a widespread problem among the civilian population of a major city.
So... yeah. Nuclear weapons were bad but I don't think they're nearly the worst things that happened in those wars. I wouldn't even list them in top 3 (though they would get into top 10). This is also why I always feel a small amount of outrage when Americans talk about how they're at war (or even two wars): USA pays some people to risk their life overseas, some of which then end up dying. That's an invasion or perhaps expensive armed conflict or something, but hardly equivalent to being in war.
Also what people forget (Score:2)
Is that bombs were really, REALLY inaccurate back in the day. These days we (in the US at least) think about sending a single, small, bomber like an F-15E to do multiple missions. Go bomb this, then this, then come back kind of thing. A couple bombs per target at most.
In WWII that isn't how it worked. You wanted to take out an industrial plant inside a city you leveled a large part of the city around it. That was the only way to do it. Deploy a bunch of bombers and release hundreds of bombs. Statistically s
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Myanmar has made minor, if promising, moves in a democratic direction. "Partially democratized"? Not hardly.
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And by using them the US saved hundreds of thousands of lives, world wide.
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Slave labour is not very efficient :(
That place is one of several reminders that you don't have to go back half a century to find true evil.
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:4, Interesting)
nut jobs who think strapping explosive to themselves is a way into heaven and 72 virgins via martyrdom
Usually the promise of the martyr's family's safety and prosperity, as being something tangible, is a much greater incentive than any hypothetical harem in the afterlife. And those 72 virgins are an urban legend that is used to make saboteurs into religious fanatics they aren't. Most of the bomb attacks are not even suicidal, but it sounds exciting and western "civilizations" are suckers for gore.
They usually *are* fanatics (Score:2)
And those 72 virgins are an urban legend
No they are not.
Even if they're not mentioned in the Qur'an, they're an integral part of the official Islam in many parts of the world. See the Surah Quran 55:72:
""" It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham 'Adullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id al-Khudhri, who heard Muhammad saying, 'The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as
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Look, I love being politically correct as much as most left-wing Europeans, but anyone who yells "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") and then presses the button counts as a religious fanatic in my book.
I didn't say they were atheists and a faithful person commiting an act of martyrdom will supplicate to their $deity for mercy. To look at it from yet another angle, think about theis: are porn stars christian fanatics for yelling "oh god!" when they come?
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You may have missed the important "then presses the button" part of my comment.
Having sex or making porn (consenting adults): GOOD
Killing people: BAD
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it would have been much more humane to kill twice as many by invading, or the whole lot of them by blockade.
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:5, Informative)
We would probably have killed far more than twice as many invading. We were, after all, expecting more US casualties from invading than we inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we'd already established that we could inflict ten casualties for every one we suffered - air supremacy and armour, that sort of thing, are serious force multipliers....
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:4, Insightful)
They'd been conditioned to believe that they'd be raped and tortured if they surrendered. I don't know enough about the topography of Japan to suggest a credible invasion plan - must look it up sometime, if it was ever made public; the layout of the country is interesting. It'd make a good, if perhaps bleak, strategy game. But I digress.
Imaging invading some major city. Apart from regular army resistance, snipers and booby traps, random waves of civilians rush you from nowhere. Grandmothers with kitchen knives. Boys with homemade spears that (after a few guys who get cut with them succumb to gangrene) you conclude are dipped in shit. It won't take much of that before your soldiers, who may have started out with no intention of behaving barbarously - just "doing their job", start shooting anything that moves for their own protection.
I suspect it'd make the Russian front look like a punch up in a bar.
Re:North Korea and Burma (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They could have dropped the bomb on an uninhabited area, as a demonstration to the Japanese government. They could have allowed a longer period of time for the Japanese to surrender after Hiroshima instead of following up so quickly with the Nagasaki bomb. Etc. etc.
Overall, I agree with your point, better two cities lost than all the deaths that would have followed an invasion, but that's not to say that nuking two major cities was the best possible outcome
The biggest mistake. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is making the error to think countries like NK and Iran will use nukes because dictators are irrational madmen. Sure, they're 'mad' enough but that doesn't make 'm irrational. Launching nukes would mean imminent self-destruction and is akin to walking up to a battalion of tank with a single round of .22.
The only motivation pursuing nukes is for gaining more means to play the political game. Dictators use ideology (ie. Stanilism, religion) to mobilize citizens to maintain or expand power and/or resources. The rest is a game.
If you are so naive to believe entire countries act as suicidal maniacs then you're being fooled by the same tools dictators use, only we call it 'peace', 'democracy' and 'stability'.
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If you are so naive to believe entire countries act as suicidal maniacs
I'd be "naive" until it happens again. Several countries suicided during the Second World War, not all of them run by crazy dictators. The Third Republic of France crumbled like a wet paper bag. I can't see the construction of the obviously and deeply flawed Maginot line and the inexplicable inaction for years of the French government in the face of Germany's growing military power, as anything other than a fairly elaborate ritual of suicide.
Personally, I think we will see numerous uses of nuclear weapon
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I think you forget to factor in incompetence & arrogance.
So there are other factors that can result in suicide by nuke than just being crazy. I don't think I was forgetting those.
Cowboy diplomacy fails yet again (Score:4, Insightful)
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For crying out loud, would someone stop this Slashdot groupthinking?
Yes, there is blame to share with China, US or any other superpower for North Korea situation. However, in nutshell, most of it falls upon crazy leadership of NK. For normal country, amount of provocations from outside world to NK would be laughable. But these guys know that they are simply bad, and they will be towed away if any little chance is given away.
Was Bush warmongering when claiming North Korea, Iran and what else (I don't even do
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I also get tired of this idea that the US is supposed to be all nice and polite and caring all the time when other countries can get away with being complete fucking assholes in response.
I mean it with North Korea it would be like having someone over for dinner who screams about how evil you are, pees on your furniture, kicks your cat, and so on yet you are told you just need to be "more polite" to him.
Politeness, civility, etc, all two way streets. It is unreasonable to demand that one side be polite and c
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Google sketchup (Score:2)
Anyone want to tell those guys that SketchUp isn't open source? This is slashdot after all, and we care about these things don't we?
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Channel is on Iran now (Score:2)
didn't you get the memo? The Norks are just on re-runs. Switch before you miss the live bombing
I've always wanted to know ... (Score:3)
Nuclear disinformation (Score:3)
No direct complaint about TFA (pretty pictures, nice analysis) but just _why_ were USAF recon photos released? This smells like more propaganda blackwash, like the [non] nukes.
Sure, everyone says NK has nukes after two tests. But look carefuly at those tests -- both sub-kiloton in yield. 0.5 - 0.7 kt . AFAIK, it is _extremely_ difficult to design reliable pits in that range. Much easier and safer to go for the typical 15 kt yield (less Pu/HEU). OTOH, it would be simple to make 0.5 kt from ANFO (ammonium nitrate - fuel oil) explosive in a mine with chosen radiowaste at the mine-mouth to leave the desired radioisotope signature.
The US mil-ind complex must be desperate to keep that bogeyman alive. China needs both whipping boys (NK, Burma) to corral its peoples.
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Most do it twice.
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Yeah be we are talking about spy satellites. I assume they use orbits well beloe 1000 km.
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Sounds dangerous flying satellites at that altitude.
South Korea still flies the U2.
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South Korea still flies the U2.
Hell, we still fly the U2. They fly them out of Beale, for example, I used to watch 'em when I was going to Yuba College. Saw some pretty close because I had a class on Beale AFB, they held some computer classes on base so that airmen could take them and they padded them with civilians so that they'd have sufficient enrollment.
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He meant this [wikipedia.org] U-2.
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U-2's fly at 70,000+ feet.
And would you tell me how they get to 70,000' from 0'? There is a calculus principal that is relevant here.
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Quantum tunneling.
Re:Negev Nuclear Research Center (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which is worst? Two theocratic societies on collision course? Or a fat brat with an agenda?
For some reason this made me think of the 2012 US presidential election, mormons, evangelicals and Rush Limbaugh.
Re:North Korea vs. Iran (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.
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Obviously, you don't understand Iranian politics. The president of Iran has a bit of power. A little bit, that is. Real power rests with the "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Khomanie (spelling). The Ayatollah draws his power from his circle of Ayatollahs, who run the country behind the scenes. The president is little more than a figurehead. Our own president in the United States has much more real power than the president of Iran.
Most countries' presidents are a figurehead, the real power lies in the prime minister. The only exception that I can think of is the US, and whoever it is who holds real power over the lawmaking houses is not specifically named. That is not to say that the position does not exist.
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It's not actually quite that simple. Iranian politics is surprisingly complex, and goes beyond what their laws say on the subject.
Yes, the most powerful force in the country today are the religious leaders. Ironically, their main backing is not the Revolutionary Guard, but plain old army, and uneducated conservative voters in the provinces. These are the ones who would actually nuke Israel if it came to that.
The other force - still to be reckoned with - is the president. These guys are backed by Revolutiona
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Good post, thank you very much.
I'll be perfectly honest here - I hate politics. Hate 'em with a passion. And, I've never dealt with Iran, so there's a lot that I don't know. But, it so often happens that despite my ignorance, I find other people making posts, such as AC made above, that are so overwhelmingly ignorant, that I can't just let it pass. Hopefully, a few people have read your and my posts, and come to the conclusion that what the mass media feeds them is so much bullshit.
Yes, the Persians are
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Yes, I agree the reason why Iran is an Islamic state today is most certainly due to US and UK. Without it, it would more likely be a populist social state, maybe democratic, maybe not. I think it would have been a better deal for the citizens either way.
(By the way, same goes for Afghanistan: in retrospect, Soviets were much better for it than Taliban - still no democracy, but at least they built roads and hospitals and universities, and promoted secular education.)
Either way, what we have today is what we
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All the big corporations who run the country behind the scenes.
It's not even behind the scenes! You can see who's paying who, and you find out who wrote the legislation! The difference is that in our society, who's calling the shots is actually a matter of public record, and we still don't do anything about it.
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Well, I think parent thought about formal process. Formally Obama has more power. Formally Iran's president has very little power.
But you are close to truth about lobby (money) power in Western world - they are our informal power influentials.
In all countries there are people who are power junkies. They have their own ( a little religiously crazy ones, indeed). Our have been sane for most of 20th century, but now I'm not so sure anymore :(
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Don't wander that much. They'll send lots of contaminants down-river, and have lots of their peole die fixing the mess. They'll probably react faster than Japan and probably won't ask for help.
What I wonder is how long that reactor will last, if it is a real one, and what is down-river.