bcglorf is spouting the same old Zionist BS.

Israel has been the aggressor and involved in terrorism in the region since it was created by the UK at the Rothchild's bequest in 1917 (The Balfour Declaration).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

Casualties after they invaded Gaza ? 13 Israelis 1385 Palestinians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War

It's obvious Israel is a apartheid state, taking away rights from innocent non-Jews who have lived there longer than any Israeli, as most Israeli's are European immigrants.

Israel's reaction to Iran's new peace process is obvious once you realize they do not care about peace, they want land.

Why else would you have a racist as a 'Foreign affairs minister'?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avigdor_Lieberman
...who has threatened way worse on Palestine than anything I've heard from Iran.

@enoch,

I think our gap is from very disparate world views and taking for granted we'll each work out for ourselves more than we do.

I used to really hang onto the saying that war is the ultimate failure of democracy. It resonated with me, and it seems to me that it's very much were you are coming from? Looking at history more and more though, I've come to see that saying is more the way we would wish our world to be, and not how it really is. Instead I see our history telling out the truth that diplomacy is the ultimate goal of war.

Peace is a fleeting and pretty much impossible state of existence for us it seems. The only time peace ever lasts is when war and conquest simply won't lead to greater gains than it. Time and time and time again history has shown that the only time war and violence weren't followed was when the gains from it were not worth the cost. How many times in history did an invading nation turn back because the other side stood back and refused to fight back? It just doesn't happen, get enough people united and they will use whatever method is to their greatest advantage, and all too often that is violence.

In Pakistan the taliban are making huge gains through violent repression of everyone that opposes them. It is extremely effective because those living in the region are unable to fight back for lack of unity and numbers. The Pakistani military meanwhile is unwilling to fight back, because they have more to gain by letting the taliban kill Pakistani civilians while the elected government is nominally 'in power'. Negotiation with the Taliban is impossible to my eyes unless and until their use of violence no longer benefits them. The fastest and surest way of accomplishing that is meeting them with that same force and ensuring they lose more than they gain with each attack.

It's a brutal, but also very simple assessment I think. It also leads to drone attacks being the one method of fighting back directly at them that leaves the least number of collateral casualties in it's wake. It takes more than a year for drones to kill as many people as the Taliban do in a month. Of those killed by drones, from 50-90%(depending who's counts you believe) are identifialy Taliban militants and leaders. That includes taking out the Taliban's top leader twice in the last 5 years with them, and if you include American actions in Pakistan in general, it nets Bin Laden as well.

I'd urge you not to take that as a western or American centric goal or objective. The thousands killed each month I list as justification and wanting protection for are nearly 100% Pakistani Muslims.

I think you are missing the point a bit though. In our world loaded with humans wishing harm to one another, you ARE sometimes left without any 'good' options.

With what the Taliban are, your choices are fight them or not. Neither choice seems very 'good'. Both choices mean watching people die as a result of the choice. If you do choose to fight them, how do you do so? Waging a ground war would mean MORE casualties than drones. Drones have been extremely effective in limiting casualties to the 'bad' guys more than any other technique available. They are still part of an act of war and mean people dying, which is hardly a thing to declare as 'good'. Insisting that there is a 'good' alternative to choose from though is more than naive, it's a lie that sounds sweet when you don't have to face the real consequences that Pakistani civilians do.

Your argument is purely reactionary. You're essentially saying that we should just let people drive as drunk as they want and only punish them when somebody inevitably gets hurt. Shouldn't we try to prevent people from getting hurt in the first place? Isn't that the whole point of having laws? If laws only matter once the blood is on the floor, why bother having them at all?

There's no reasonable justification for driving drunk. Alcohol impairs your cognitive functions and when driving, you need those functions at their sharpest. There's an established correlation between driving drunk and getting into accidents (often resulting in casualties). Therefore, it is completely reasonable to punish people for driving drunk. It has nothing to do with "disliking personal behaviors" and everything to do with statistical fact. If your personal behavior puts other people at risk, then yes, the law should punish you for it.

That aside, I completely agree that everyone should be punished for causing harm, regardless of their BAC or mental state when doing so.

As I recall from studying this is a college class, we had only the two atomic bombs available. Getting material for another was possible, but I think I recall that at the time we could only collect enough for one bomb every several months.

So, a HUGE aspect of this is that we had a pretty good hand of cards in the poker game, but felt that we had to bluff to suggest that it was even more overwhelming.

To me, the interesting part of the debate isn't blockade vs conventional bombing vs invasion vs A-bombs. I think it gets most interesting to consider alternatives that involve dropping one or more of the 2 A-bombs some place where their power would be demonstrated, but where casualties would be as low as possible.

Either option you mentioned would have been GREAT, if they worked (and forced surrender). But both had potential pitfalls also. Drop one on an unpopulated area, and they might have believed we were trying to take credit for some sort of natural event (German V2s blowing up in London were often attributed to sewage gas explosions early on). Staging a demonstration for scientists and leaders to witness might have hardened their resolve and/or made them question ours.

If I had been in Truman's shoes, I feel like I would have preferred to use ONE of the two bombs on something like one of your suggestions; either unpopulated drop or demonstration. Then, use the second on a target of military significance if/when they didn't surrender.

However, in hindsight that would have been a risky move -- they didn't surrender after the Hiroshima bomb, only after both. Would a demonstration and one "we mean business" bomb have been enough to elicit the same response? Who knows. At that point, consider how screwed we could have been if it HADN'T, and it would have taken months to build another bomb (plus keep in mind that we weren't 100% confident in the bombs working reliably, even after trinity and the first two drops). I guess that we could have maintained a blockade and said "we'll give you 3 months to come to your senses" while we made another bomb, but I think that would have legitimately resulted in Japan questioning our resolve quite a lot; we'd be showing our cards too early.

I guess that at the end of the day, I don't envy Truman for having to make that kind of decision. Given the givens, I think that he probably played it as safe as possible and went with the option that was the MOST likely to force surrender. Perhaps some other option would have worked as well but avoided some of the casualties, but Truman took the information available to him and made the decision that he felt was the best -- I think that is pretty much the best we can ask of our leaders.

@bcglorf
thanks for the thoughtful response my friend.

since i wrote my comment i have come across a few more pieces of information that implicate assads regime but not assad himself.it has become apparent that chemical weapons were used but still no conclusive evidence WHO authorized the use.

so right now,in regards to who is to blame for the usage of chemical weapons is still conjecture.

my friend,syria is an awful situation.
two millions people displaced and flooding into neighboring countries.innocent people are dying.the political situation is a hornets nest of privileged power,theocracy and religious dissidents.

but you skipped over (much like the obama administration is doing currently) my questions regarding diplomacy.
why are we not searching with vigor a multi-lateral diplomatic solution?
what would a limited strike on damascus actually produce besides continued violence in which the innocent will pay in blood and only succeed in prolonging a violent civil war?
already the civil war had been prolonged due to outside interference (many countries bear that shame,including the US).

now let us consider if we DO go in to "punish" assad.which i think is likely.
what are the possible consequences?
could it be possible that russia,china and iran react?
what then?

do you see where i am going with this?
a diplomatic resolution may take more time.it may take some..you know..talking and patience,but the final outcome will benefit those innocents both you and i (and pretty much the world) AND the political stability in that region and all outlying players.

while a military resolution will create more casualties and deaths,many of them innocent civilians,and may possibly create a conflaguration of a world powers conflict.where the innocent body bags will begin to be counted in the millions.

am i being overly-dramatic?
possibly.
my point is the diplomatic resolution keeps innocent death counts low while a military resolution will only raise the death count and create more refugees.

so maybe i was not clear in my commentary because i guess i appeared that i didnt want the united states to do anything.
this is untrue.
i was just pointing to the utter hypocrisy of the political rhetoric.
and whatever moral credit america once possessed,it was spent many years ago.

so the best route to take BEFORE there is even talks of military action is diplomacy.even our staunches allies have refused to engage militarily,and yet what are we seeing?obama traveling the political circles to promote the march to further violence.

syria is no threat to the united states.
the humanitarian argument to fight violence with violence is a canard,its bullshit.
this has nothing to do with saving lives nor preventing further violence.

the international community needs to band together and put pressure to cease and desist.this is the moral path to take.
this is the path that will garner results quickly with far less bloodshed.


i fear this is not what is going to happen.
right now as i wrote this the obama administration is putting political pressure on all fronts.
i fear this is going to end badly.
i fear that this may domino and drag opposing nations to a conflict where the death toll will be catastrophic.

i hope i am wrong.

thanks for responding bc.i know we disagree politically on some issues and its always a pleasure discussing issues with you so i can see things from a different vantage point.

The "conspiracy" portion of our show has been brought to you by the framers of the system. The perpetrators either lauded with appointments or hidden, blameless to a large degree due in large part to the somnambulant and intellectually-challenged who are incapable or otherwise unwilling to see beyond the smoke and mirrors of a lifetime of delusional shit-think.

For me it's simple: I see firsthand the casualties of a pathetic education machine in recent university graduates but more-so the idiots pouring-out high-schools in the U.S. like bilge water. The US produces not critical thinkers or civilized humans, but an increasingly larger number of robots who regurgitate shit they've been told or heard (incorrectly) like trivial pursuit card quips and who are best-suited for the "real" world of wage slavery and compliance with authority when they "graduate."

Education/Indoctrination for the masses and rabble provided by the state, for the good of the machine...which is terminally broken.

OMG nostalgia! I lived not even 20 minutes from there when I was a kid. I almost got killed in the parking lot there on the 4th of July once when a firework exploded right after launch and sent fiery fragments out into the crowd (one of them smashed the windshield of the car next to me). I also remember totally wanting to go on the Cannonball loop but my parents wouldn't let me (in hindsight probably a good decision on their part).

Motorworld there was awesome--it was across the street from Action Park and I think run by the same people. They had these cage-enclosed go-karts tanks equipped with compressed-air tennis ball cannons and sensors that stopped the tanks temporarily if they got hit by a tennis ball. You could pay to drive the tanks around inside an enclosed arena or you could also shoot at the tanks from the outside of the arena using air-cannon turrets that required quarters to operate. Tons of fun.

Mostly, though, I went to the water park, which according to Wikipedia had the most casualties. I got a fair amount of scrapes from the waterslides and I can totally see how people could get seriously injured on some of them.

@ghark
@notarobot

I recall news reporting just prior to military intervention in Libya was suggesting that Gaddafi's forces were approaching Benghazi and there were expectations of massacre if they were to reach it.

Wikipedia for what it's worth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya

"9 March 2011: The head of the Libyan National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, "pleaded for the international community to move quickly to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, declaring that any delay would result in more casualties".[38] Three days later, he stated that if pro-Gaddafi forces reached Benghazi, then they would kill "half a million" people. He stated, "If there is no no-fly zone imposed on Gaddafi's regime, and his ships are not checked, we will have a catastrophe in Libya."[39]"

"17 March 2011: The UN Security Council, acting under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, approved a no-fly zone by a vote of ten in favour, zero against, and five abstentions, via United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The five abstentions were: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Germany.[49][50][51][60][61] Less than twenty-four hours later, Libya announced that it would halt all military operations in response to the UN Security Council resolution.[62][63]"

Just for reference: the plain number of casualties at Omaha beach was comparatively small. Fighter-bombers caused higher numbers of casualties among motorised columns of German divisions in Normandy in a single day than the initial invasion or even the encirclement at Falaise.

If I remember correctly, the approach to the bridge of Oissel alone -- one of two bridges across the Seine in that area -- saw more deaths within a few hours at the end of August than Omaha Beach. All without any Allied ground forces present, just P47s, Typhoons and bombers. Same for the roads leading to Rouen and Elbeuf.

no casualties? Maybe burned alive and still alive

Radium has a half-life of 1600 years and stops glowing after about 20-It's behind glass (watch crystal) so one was shielded from direct bombardment-The casualties from the process came with the paint girls in the preparation and assembly of the illuminated faces and hands, who used lippointing (brush-lickers) to straighten their brushes....that we're dipped in radioactive paint-Nasty bone cancer of the jaw in worst cases.

200 old watches in a display case isn't anything to worry your testicular function over, but you don't want your cat lying on a pile of em...

The writhing pit of motorcycle cliff casualties begs the question: "why?"

The camera zooms out.

On a more general note: These sort of videos are what they are; one side of the argument. Nothing more. Nothing less. This shows a very direct incident. The problem with other methods of energy creation (mainly burning fossil fuels) is that the majority of the casualties are from indirect incidents. Pollution causing a loss of fertility in the breeding population would be a good example of where a population could be massively affected, but it wouldn't be obvious what was happening and there wouldn't be the opportunity for such an attention grabbing video.

No-one is saying these wind turbines are perfect, but despite what we see in this video we'd need data from both sides of the equation to make an informed decision. What might ave been catastrophic for that bird may actually be the saviour of the species.

In the same way there are people who have been permanently deafened by airbags or injured or even killed by tem going off accidentally in cars. But I'm pretty sure no sane person would argue that they are a harmful addition to a car as they have demonstrably saved many, many thousands of lives. What we're seeing in this video is the equivalent of watching an airbag go off when it shouldn't a causing a crash. It's a terrible thing for sure, but without the overall figures you can't say it means airbags are bad (or good).