FDR didnt decide that. Truman did. Truman was a weakling. He was like a teenage bully who suddenly got unbelievable power. Even Churchill noticed how much he changed and how he always attacked and tried to provoke Stalin.
And that decision wasnt made because of fear of more lost lives. it was made because after Germany was defeated Russia very quickly advanced towards Japan. Truman didnt want want Russia to get a say in Japan at all costs. Yet they knew Japan was willing to surrender, with only one condition: The emperor would not be touched. The Americans didnt even want to accept that single condition. But the funny thing is, they did after the war. The emperor was not touched. But Truman, in his world, was pretty smart. He not only stopped any possibility of the Russians being able to get a part of Japan, he also showed Stalin what a powerful nation the USA has become, and that it should be feared. In reality, it was 2 atom bombs for NOTHING. Those 2 bombs were a huge factor in the start of the cold war, but ultimately it was Truman and the people behind him, who started that war. He always saw an enemy in Russia. He did everything to ensure they would think the USA is their enemy. Yet memos of Stalin and other documents showed clearly that Stalin never wanted a confrontation with the USA and even after the cold war started, he never took an attack on them into consideration.
Its just another chapter in the aggression and chaos the USA spreads on this planet.

Yeah, I'll just quote this...

"Truman did not cower at the mention of the word “socialism,” which in those days was distinguished in the minds of most Americans from Soviet Stalinism, with which the president—a mean cold warrior—was wrangling.

Nor did Truman, who counted among his essential allies trade unionists like David Dubinsky, Jacob Potofsky and Walter Reuther, all of whom had been connected with socialist causes and in many cases the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, rave about the evils of social democracy.

Rather, he joked that “Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, ‘socialism.’”"

You are like a small child afraid of the monster in the closet when, in reality, there is nothing there. Do public servants like police/fire brigade etc draw pensions on retirement? That's socialism. Capitalism says that they are at the end of their useful life, and if they haven't saved for their retirement, fuck em.

And let's not even get started on christianity (love they brother and money is the root of all evil), damn Jesus and his socialist bullshit... X D

@Trancecoach
lol...whaaaat?
are you living in an alternate reality?
west germany=social market economy,which later became to be called democratic socialism (which is what sanders is promoting).
east germany=stalinism style communism,which did end badly.

and you are right there was a short term plan but that was EAST germany,dictated by soviet union.

jesus trance...read a book.

There never was an issue about concessions. They always were ready to accept their fate. But even the peace talks before only included the condition that their emperor was left untouched. And thats exactly what the USA gave them later. So not accepting peace with them was a farce from the start, no matter from what side you look at it.

Truman didnt restrain Stalin. Truman provoked Stalin massively, making him think that they would invade Russia next or at least start a war with them, which started the cold war.
The USA was always provoking, especially at the start of the cold war. Theres a well known video on Youtube (prolly even here) that shows exactly where and when nuclear tests happened. It makes perfectly obvious how much the USA provoked the Soviets.

Well, right until Pearl Harbor there were the do-fights and don't-fights. If the anti-war party hadn't been assassinated, ran out and broken, we wouldn't have had to fight Japan at all.

The problem is these people still ruled. Imagine them pressing forward with a nuclear plan (which would have absolutely occurred if they thought they could get away with it.) Interestingly Germany sent material to them to dump on our shores as a sort of nuclear bomb but we intercepted it. It is thought that we used it against Japan, which is hilarious. But I digress.

The point is--even if they planned on surrendering, they had no intention of concessions. Would those in power (who were as guilty as the Nazi) willingly turn themselves over for trial? Huehue.

As far as the Soviet issue, yeah, your facts go without saying. And Truman did get his results--he got Stalin to restrain himself (In a certain way...though there was the cold war.)

Very. Even radio messages were intercepted that made that clear. The USA chose to ignore those, play them down.
Truman had his agenda with the Soviets. What does Russia has to do with Japan? Pretty simple actually. After Germany was defeated Russia was advancing very quickly towards Japan, and Truman didnt want them in Japan. Truman hated Stalin with a passion and used every opportunity to humiliate him or show Americas strength to him. One particular event was very telling, after he announced the nuclear bombs to Stalin and expected respect, fear and acknowledgement from Stalin but instead got indifference and burst in rage about Stalins reaction. Even Churchill noticed how much Truman changed after he got the bomb. He seemed like an insecure boy who suddenly got the power of a superhero. A very dangerous combination and it proved to be fatal for at least the Japanese and was pretty much the sole reason for the cold war.
Japan was bombed not only once but twice, even though the USA knew they would surrender soon, not because of them fearing more human loss on their side, but because they feared Russia would be able to reach Japan if they waited longer.

@Asmo

On your comment:

The CIA's role in the 1953 Iran ouster is generally exaggerated. Several things - (1) by 1953, the Islamic clergy supported Mossadeq's ouster, something they have been suppressing ever since in inflating their anti-US stance (2) by the time of his ouster he also lacked the support of either his parliament or the people, (3) prior to it that year, he deposed his disapproving parliament with a clearly fraudulent 99% of the vote in a national referendum, (4) strictly speaking Iran was still a monarchy and the shah deposed his PM legally under the constitution, something that Mossadeq refused to abide by.

Did the UK put economic pressure on Iran when it threatened to nationalize its oil and usurp its remnants of imperialism? Sure. Did the UK then convince Eisenhower to mount a political and propaganda campaign against Mossadeq? Sure. Was that instrumental in fomenting a popular uprising of the parliament, the clergy and large portions of the 20m general population against him? Probably not.

Also I listened to it. Really, it's a meandering, probably scripted (the parts where he feigns surprise at the questioning is particularly humorous) that tries to generalize US actions, some of which were obviously harmful and support his argument. Putting Stalin in a positive light relative to the willingness of the US to use the bomb is, amusing? I'm not sure what to call it.

That the US needs a common threat to unite against holds some grains of truth in the present day but is really part of a wider narrative by Putin to construct the US as imperalist and domineering when by all accounts since the end of the Cold War, excluding GWB's term, it has been pulling back. It hardly needed to invent Iran's covert nuclear ambitions in the early 2000s, NK's saber rattling or China's stakes on the South China Sea islands.

Modern US foreign policy largely relies on reciprocation. The US provides a military alliance and counterweight to China's military for small SE Asian nations at a hefty cost to itself, and presumably gets various trade concession and voting support in various international agencies. The key word being reciprocation, something that Russia could learn a fair bit from in its own foreign policy.

Guys, this ain't so hard...
You're a racist when you assign more or less value as a human being to people of a certain race (ethnical group) than you assign to yourself because of their ethnicity. There's a difference between saying "Stalin is less worth than M.L. King" (personal opinion) and "white people are worth less than blacks". The latter would be racism.
Prejudice is when you have opinions about people before knowing the facts about them.
Walking up to Mike Tyson and saying "You must have a giant cock because all black men are giants" is a prejudice that may be racist but it assigns positive values. Sure, it's offensive, like telling asian people they must be great at math, but somewhat forgivable. You're an ignorant cunt, yeah, but at least you said something flattering. You racist.
Walking up to Mike and telling him "All black men are criminals" is not only prejudice but also racist. Why? Because calling somebody a criminal is a negative judgement. A generalized negative prejudice towards an ethnic group is a racist way of thinking. Mike was convicted for raping his girlfriend. He is a criminal. Not all black men are Tyson. And if they were, I'd prefer the science variant. You're plain wrong.
Now saying "I bet all black people like listening to R'nB music" is just prejudice. There's no judgement here. Right? Unless you consider "he listens to R'n'B" an insult. How about "all polish people love ice cream"? Did you just imply polish people are all fat?
The difference between prejudice and racist prejudice lies entirely in subtext and context. It's not what you say, it's what you mean.
Prejudice is a tightrope made of blurry lines spanning over a pit of outrage. That's why politicians should not walk that way.
Being aware of differences between race, ethnic groups and talking about is simply being hones and probably not giving a shit about political correctness. We ARE different. That's the interesting part.
What we sadly forget is this: to focus on what we have in common. But somebody already said that way more eloquent than I ever could:
"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

This is getting old.
If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.
I point out that historically you are wrong. I cite specific examples illustrating that you are wrong. Still you come back insisting that somehow men with guns can't starve people out who want to farm. That somehow the mass starvations under Stalin, Mao, and North Korea weren't even related to the mass theft at gunpoint of farm crops and land from farmers. You insist that it's not what is today stopping farmland from productivity in places like the DRC, Liberia, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and many more. I give up.

the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today
But also
we can't get to the moon with NASA today, or get on a concord
I give up.

78% less glacier doesn't mean ...
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years
I cited the actual science from the IPCC with their own projections. You take the very, very worst of the multiple scenarios the IPCC run. Not content with that, you take the most extreme range of error within that extreme scenario. Not content with that, you then inject your PERSONAL BELIEF that even that position of science is likely to optimistic.

I give up. If you refuse to listen to fact and reason that's up to you. Just don't pretend your any better than the other side ignoring the actual science just from a different end of the spectrum.

@newtboy
I think the people of Kiribati would disagree that it's not time to panic!
If you'd read my post I didn't claim the people of Kiribati weren't in a position to panic. I actually went further in agreeing with you, to the point that they should have been panicked a hundred years ago in 1914 already. The distinction being that what ever the climate does wasn't going to save them. 200 hundred years of cooling and sea level decline from 1914 would still have them on an island a few feet on average above sea level and still a disaster waiting to happen.

California alone, which produces over 1/4 of America's food,
Here we do have a difference of fact. I don't know what measure you've imagined up, but the cattle in texas alone are more than double the food produced in California. The corn and other crops in any number of prairie states to the same. You can't just invent numbers. Yields across crops have been increasing steadily year on year in North America for decades.

The violence is often CAUSED by the lack of food, making the 'men with guns' have a reason to steal and control food sources. If food were plentiful, it would be impossible for them to do so.
I'm sorry, read more history, you are just wrong on this. 10 guys with guns against 10 farmers with food and the farmers lose every time. The guys with guns eat for the year. The farmers maybe even are able to beg or slave for scraps that year. The next year maybe only 5 farmers bother to grow anything, and next harvest there are 15 guys with guns. Look at the Russian revolution and that's exactly the road that led to Stalin's mass starvations and lack of food. It's actually why I am a Canadian as my grandfather's family left their farm in Russia with the clothes on his back after the his neighbours farm was razed to the ground enough times.

The thugs SELL that food, so it doesn't just disappear
Food doesn't create itself as noted above. The cycle is less and less food as the thugs destroy all incentive to bother trying to grow something.

adopting new tech, even quick adoption, absolutely CAN be an economic boon
I agree. I hadn't realized that adoption of new tech was that simple. I was under the impression one also had to take the time to, you know, invent it. The existing technology for replacing oil and coal cost effectively doesn't exist yet. Electric cars and nuclear power are the closest thing. The market will adopt electric cars without us doing a thing. Switching from coal to nuclear though, even if universally agreed and adopted yesterday, would still take decades for a conversion. Those decades are enough that even if we got to zero emissions by then(~2050), the sea level and temperature at 2100 aren't going to look much if any different(by IPCC best estimates).
So I repeat, if you want meaningful emission reductions, you have no other option but restricting consumption across the globe. That hasn't been accomplished in the past without setting of wars, so I keep my vote as cure is worse than disease.

The 78% glacial mass loss was worst case if CO2 emissions are still accelerating in 2100. The mountains with the glaciers will still be bulking each winter and running off each summer, just to a 78% smaller size in the depth of summer. As in, absolutely not 78% less run off. And they are not 'my' numbers as you wish to refer, but the IPCC's numbers. Your effort to somehow leave question to their veracity is the very campaign of 'doubt' in the science the video is talking about.

Then slow down with theories of our impending demise, the IPCC doesn't support it. You want to talk about not denying the science, then you don't get to preach gloom and doom. Don't claim a large percentage of farmland is going to be lost to sea level rise by 2100. Don't claim coastlines are going to be pushed back 10 miles by a worst case 1 foot rise of sea level by 2100.

We are talking about advancements solving problems like a maximum sea level rise of a foot in the next 100 years, with best guesses being lower than that. I think it's modest to suggest our children's children will have figured out how to raise the dikes around places like New Orleans by a foot in the next 100 years.
The concord and moon trips are no longer happening because they are expensive. We can do them if we needed to, and more easily than the first time around. Finding out people aren't willing to pay the premium to shave an hour off their flight doesn't mean the technology no longer exists. Just because America no longer needs to prove they can lift massive quantities of nuclear warheads into orbit doesn't mean we couldn't still go to the moon again if it was needed. There's just no reason to do it, the tech exists still none the less.
Yes, there are social problems that confound the use of new technology. You fail to notice that is also the problem with feeding everybody. Food production isn't the problem, but rather the men with guns that control distribution. Stalin's mass starvation of millions was a social problem, not climate change or technology. Mao's was the same. North Koreas the same. All over Africa is the same. We have more than enough food, and plenty of charities work hard to send food over to places like Africa. Once the food gets there though the men with guns take most of it and people still starve. The reason Africa has so many crop failures is the violent displacement of the farmers. Exactly the same problem that saw millions starve in Russia, China and North Korea.
You are right that a changing climate could compound Africa's ag industry a bit, but it's a small hit compared to the violent displacement problem. Also, don't neglect to consider to impact of meaningful CO2 emission restrictions around the globe. A large scale global economic downturn probably means a lot more war, bloodshed, and starvation. If you do not reduce emissions enough to trigger that downturn and instead just 'marginally', you get stuck with both because Africa is still going to see virtually the same climate changes through the next hundred years.

And if you are worried about losing the glaciers in the Himalayas by 2100 there is very good reason to believe that's gonna be alright:
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/39/84Q12/index.xml?section=topstories

Hm, so if businesses don't create jobs, I guess the only other option would be employment by the state... That's the theory that John Galt put to the test in fiction, and Joseph Stalin put to the test in practice. (And we all know how well that went!)

Jeez, 4 years under a Clinton regime seems like such a long time! I suppose the only glimmer of hope would be that, given how pro-cronyism she clearly is, I doubt she really believes what she says here. Maybe what she means is that businesses don't create jobs unless they are cronies. Otherwise, they just have to go out of business. Perhaps having a hypocrite in office may be better than having a fanatic, but who can tell?

Of course, there's always the chance that she actually knows nothing of economics and has no common sense either....

People who spend all their lives in "public service" often have no clue of how businesses actually run or what businesses do or need to function. Such people live in a different world where money "magically" comes out of a (Federal-Reserve-controlled) "printing press" at the push of a button whenever the powers-that-be deem it so. They live in a world where the "customers" are forced by law to pay for "services" they don't want, and follow rules that are not applicable to the rulers themselves.


(But then, again, Hilary says she was "dead broke" when she left the White House. I guess we should take her word for it.)

Note: Ancient Rome also had its share of crazy Patricians and rulers. This tends to become more commonplace as empires go off the deep end.

Is it nuance to be an innocent family on the receiving end of a high explosive round? Last time I checked, whether it's via gas or a shell, death is death. Do you think the Palestinians suffer less fear waiting to see if they are about to die? That you raise scale as a method of differentiation is laughable. Israel has has ~70 years of slowly whittling away at Palestine and it's people.

And the facile differentiation between a German concentration camp and Gaza is beneath you. You would much rather not live in fucking either, and neither would all of us if we were given a choice. That the Israelis are going about the business of eliminating Palestine slowly is more about international backlash. If they thought they could get away with it, they'd sweep them in to the sea and be done with it.

And in response to the invocation of Godwin's Law, you do understand that the purpose of the Godwin is to reduce/remove ludicrous hyperbole, not to shut down legitimate comparisons? Much as you could draw parallels with Idi Armin, Stalin/Russia etc, Israel is engaging in similar tactics. Fascism, racism, segregation, making war on civilians etc. That it isn't a 100% carbon copy is irrelevant.

I agree. This is amusingly awful, but the Transformers movies were an affront to basic human decency.

That said, that is no reason to go upvoting this! That's like saying Hitler wasn't such a bad guy because Stalin was worse!

yeah, I went there!

Stalin: epic moustache... kind of a dick