@newtboy and @Dragen_Jager

My main point is just in agreement with Hayden, that given a grossly illegal and unpalatable order like targeting women and children just because of who they are related to is something that America's current top brass would say no to.

That said, in existential wars there is no such things as a war crime any more. Or at the least, the definition will be written by the victors(Fire bombing Dresden and Tokyo, or nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Furthermore, what is approved in a 'black ops' sense has IMO always been something that America and every other nation has done, and again with the only meaningful rule being that it be effective and secret and/or deniable. Hence my ask the CIA quip,

These days, you can cross the river Elbe in Dresden on foot and your balls won't even touch the water...

Uh... WTF? Have you seriously never heard of the Dresden and Hamburg firebombings? In the Hamburg case the U.S. actually set up a fake German village as a test run just to see how many houses they could burn down. The fact that entire mock village was destroyed was seen as a massive success, not a reason to go back and figure out a more humane way to do it.

As far as Japan goes, even today a large part of Japan's economy depends upon small to mid-sized businesses that often double as people's homes. The government didn't "place" them there, these were people's day-jobs. Just like in the U.S., factories that once produced consumer goods were forced to make military materials to support the war effort.

The U.S. used firebombs for two reasons: first, firebombing meant precision bombing wasn't needed so the planes could fly at a high altitude out of shot of anti-aircraft fire and second, they knew damn well they'd be roasting Japanese people alive. Nobody cared. The war had gone on for so long that the U.S. was willing to do anything to end it quickly, particularly when they saw Russian swooping in to consolidate Eastern Europe. After Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, the bitter island fighting in the Pacific, the kamikaze attacks, and the stories of escaped or freed POWs, it's pretty safe to say the American military wasn't looking at the Japanese people as humans anymore, just enemies to be defeated by any means necessary--including nuclear weapons.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Dresden-Dolls-Coin-Operated-Boy

Beer Activated Girl (spoof of Dresden Dolls song) has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.

The Dresden Dolls - "Coin Operated Boy" has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.

I found this discussion very interesting and I agree with many points made.

The first thing I thought of about these drone strikes is:

drone strike vs Dresden, Germany end of the WW2.

Drones are technology that is keeping "some" people alive that would be obliterated by indisciminant bombing.

Other than that one little idea of avoiding an entire city/village being flattened, I do not see how anyone can win in these tough situations.

It's a messy world. I wish we had some real solid positive choices but I'm not sure we do.

This is really crap.

This imperialist fuck's argument amounts to this:

1) The US will need to defeat Japan through military means
2) The US wants to avoid "another Okinawa" (with a quote from Truman)
3) The US needed to drop the atomic bomb

So, lets look first at that Okinawa analogy. Okinawa, as with other pacific islands, were particularly brutal because of both their strategic importance to the Pacific front as well as their terrain. Both because of they needed to be seized in order to cutoff mainland Japan (and isolate it) and their small, heavily dense terrain caused warfare to be at times hand-to-hand, the battles here were desperate and ugly.

This leads us to the next point: the whole presupposition with the imperialist fuck's argument is that there was no other way but occupation, in the form of Okinawa, to end Japan's empire.

This is false. The US had other options to end the war. Occupation of Japan wasn't a strategic necessity in the way occupation of the pacific islands was. The US could have maintained a bombing campaign while getting the rest of the world to pursue political/diplomatic talks with Japan.

The reason the US dropped the bombs wasn't to end the war (which was already war, de jure shit aside). It was to a) ensure supremacy over Japan (which isn't the same thing as ending a war) and b) to ensure global imperialist hegemony.

Amerikkka doesnt give a shit about saving lives. What about all the people firebombed in Dresden? What about all the imperialist adventures before and after WWII? Don't give me some ethical crap about a country, at least 1/4 of which was still under apartheid conditions, that wants to save lives because it respects human life so it drops atomic bombs on an already defeated people.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'amanda palmer, radiohead, cover, creep, ukulele' to 'amanda palmer, dresden dolls, radiohead, cover, creep, ukulele' - edited by brycewi19

Poolcleaner, you basically voiced the same sentiments as the Dresden Doll, Amanda MacKinnon Fucking Gaiman Palmer with your confession, please recite 23 Hell Merrys' and 666 Far Others.

You'd be the person that went to her show when she came to yer town and perhaps host her entourage, provide food, etc. and she'd have no problem with you downloading her content from resources available, thus fulfilling the mechanism of community she is creating around her-No harm, no foul in however you replace energy to the grid-

I've been a fan of hers since Dresden Dolls, got her first solo album as well. I like how artistic she is, I like her music. I don't like armpit hair...why is that a fucking issue? I'm fine with a nice 70s bush but I don't like armpit hair dammit I can't have my own fucking preferences you fuck. Fuck off!

>> ^Sagemind:

the next day 55,000 forest fires were discovered to have started overnight - officials are considering the idea that the two events may be connect.
in other news...


LMAO I thought the same thing. Dresden all over again!

@cosmovitelli

Tried to untangle that mess of comment strings into something that looked right, but gave up ...looks like a big jumble for what comes out of it.

Anyway I was referring to my wondering if authors and such try to ignore other mediums covering their material so they don't end up changing their perspective on their writing/whatever. TVs and movies in particular strip away a lot of the nuanced stuff in the stories to give you the core in a more "actiony" way.........but that's not what the original fans liked about the books (maybe)....so being influenced by the movie you might overlook the nuances.

Game of Thrones tv show does a really good job on the books, but those things are massive...there's just a lot of stuff happening in the books that would make the TV show too hard to follow since it's not conducive to stop and go back over and over to remind yourself whose who and what's what. Hell with how dense the books are, you can't be sure of what they are leaving out until you get further into the season....to see if they wrote around a character or place. I've been wondering if the Tv show production hasn't changed Martin's writing in the last book and maybe even the book before it..because they were very slow and not very good in comparison to prior books which fit a lot more happenings into one book than he had in two massive books.


Or Dresden Files, I don't know if Jim Butcher ever watched the TV show on it or listens to the audiobooks that Marsden narrates. But Marsden reading Dresden books really changes the book for me versus just straight reading it. Often wonder if he writes with Marsden in mind since he's so popular as a narrator or if he ignores all that stuff.

One of my favorite books of all time. The movie version wasn't bad, it's such an eccentric book that I thought they would ruin it but I enjoyed it.

FWIW I have read that others estimate the number killed in Dresden as being closer to 25,000.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'vonnegut, dresden, fire bombing, bbc, war, slaughterhouse five' to 'vonnegut, dresden, fire bombing, bbc, war, revenge, slaughterhouse five' - edited by calvados