>> ^Payback:
In war, the object is to kill the enemy. As many of them as you can. As swiftly and decisively as possible. That is what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing more.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea.
Forgive my bluntness, but this lesson was forgotten after the end of WW2. War has become "kinder, gentler" and therefore more likely to happen. It has become a tool, part of foreign relations. War needs to be unthinkable. It demands to be unforgivable. If only to stop it from happening again.


The war then was a different war then the war now in that we needed to stop the war. Every one, even the enemy.

The wars now are for prophet, and for those in power to ensure that they still have jobs, because all they know is how to steal liberties under the false banner of democracy.

Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither - ben franklin.

In war, the object is to kill the enemy. As many of them as you can. As swiftly and decisively as possible. That is what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing more.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea.

Forgive my bluntness, but this lesson was forgotten after the end of WW2. War has become "kinder, gentler" and therefore more likely to happen. It has become a tool, part of foreign relations. War needs to be unthinkable. It demands to be unforgivable. If only to stop it from happening again.

I've been to Peace Memorial Park and stood a few feet from the building (still standing) above which the bomb detonated. We sang the Japanese National Anthem in the square in front of a large crowd of Japanese people. Very powerful experience. We then walked through the museum there. I fought back tears the whole time.

Here's some perspective: As a result of the attacks, 74 times as many people died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as did on September 11, 2001.

Chilled, best way to go...

Favs: Nagasaki (good+awesome looking bottle) and anything from Sho Chiku (smooth as silk). Both will sneak up up on you if you are not careful ~_^

This guy cant even say, Nagasaki right.

Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic
community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to
calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and
re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a
different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with
the present.

We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or
anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically
or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as
retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.

Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of
being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular
manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased
by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal
aggressors.

Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a
number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's
speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the
unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season

Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the
centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and
effect
Reject mediocrity!

Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given
for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the
diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative
symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed
pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but
with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.

Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN,
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITHE, LOURDE, WHITMAN,
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ,
SIDDHARTHA,
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GUARDSIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER,
HOLIDAY,
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE,
RACHMNINOV,
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHOWAY, HENDRIX, KUTL, DICKERSON, RIPPERTON,
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI,
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING,
FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERONE, MARLEY, COSBY,
SHAKUR, THOSE STILL AFLAMED, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full
of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down
supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for
today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies
into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,
crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain

>> ^furrycloud:
I wish I was old enough to remember a time when the President of the United States was a respected position...


Clinton wasn't so bad. But if you're older than 8, that means you're not into Bush or Clinton. If you don't like Bush you probably don't like his dad or Reagan. Then maybe Jimmy Carter was the last respectable president? If he's not good enough for you, then you probably don't like Ford, Nixon, or LBJ. Kennedy was a big war hawk like Bush, with the bay of pigs fiasco and other attempts to set up puppet governments in foreign countries. And kennedy escalated the vietnam war. Eisenhower raped Iran and replaced its growing democracy with the Shah because of the red scare. Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So.... Maybe you think FDR was the last respectable president?

I personally think Clinton was OK. At least his hawkish foreign policy worked and didn't get us into any long-term quagmires. He made some mistakes:
1. Failure to veto COPA
2. Failure to veto DoMA
3. Falure to veto DMCA
4. The welfare-to-work bill.

Thanks for the heads up. Noted and changed.

In reply to this comment by moonsammy:
I would argue with calling this the "deadliest" display of nuclear power - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each *far* deadlier. This is bar none the most impressive nuclear blast, but I'm not aware of it having killed anyone (directly at any rate).

I would argue with calling this the "deadliest" display of nuclear power - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each *far* deadlier. This is bar none the most impressive nuclear blast, but I'm not aware of it having killed anyone (directly at any rate).

Move on? Is that what you tell someone when they tell you their mother or grandmother was killed in a concentration camp? Is that what you tell someone when they tell you their family died in the blast at Nagasaki? Is that what you tell someone when you learn that his father died on the beaches of Normandy or Okinawa? Grow up and stop being a troll.

Great post, Lurch. May we all remember those who came and went before us that stared into the face of death so that the Red, White and Blue may fly freely.

'"Umm no, actually the war was over. The Japanese had already agreed to surrender but the "official" surrender ceremony hadn't happened yet, somewhat like the British with Dresden (of course they don't teach any of this ACTUAL history in US classrooms, they prefer the Disney version where everything is black and white).

Intelligent historians all believe that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing really to do with Japan, it was a warning to the Russians, "We have the bomb and we're not afraid to use it!"'


And I'm dating Jessica Alba.



"The continent was named after Amerigo Vespucci, and the first recorded settlers (the true discoverers) came tens of thousands of years before."


Tens of thousands of years ago, and it's recorded, eh? Neat! Didn't think that was possible, but neat!

"I think your historical references don't really pan out here, the US hasn't nuked anyone since World War II. And that was to end a world war, the last time I checked."

Umm no, actually the war was over. The Japanese had already agreed to surrender but the "official" surrender ceremony hadn't happened yet, somewhat like the British with Dresden (of course they don't teach any of this ACTUAL history in US classrooms, they prefer the Disney version where everything is black and white).

Intelligent historians all believe that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing really to do with Japan, it was a warning to the Russians, "We have the bomb and we're not afraid to use it!"

Get YOUR history straight before trying to correct others.

Happy Veteran's Day to my Granny....gramps was Army Air Corps, 1941-44, mechanic
and to Dad, all dad's brother's, who served Marine Corps and Army. One uncle stepped off a transport plane in Nagasaki, a couple months after the Bomb, being transitioned during leave....the only 1st hand account I have ever heard in person, of the devastation.

We were originally in Japan post WWII, but have since established several large bases there (the island of Okinawa) because of it's strategic advantage. The entire 3rd Marine division is in Okinawa (there's only three, 1st in CA and the 2nd in NC)
They might also not like us because of the location - find Oita, Japan on a map. Then find Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

continued...

Togo sent Ambassador Sato to Moscow to feel out the possibility of a negotiated surrender. On July 13, four days before Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met in Potsdam to prepare for the end of the war (Germany had surrendered two months earlier), Togo sent a telegram to Sato: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. It is his Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war."

The United States knew about that telegram because it had broken the Japanese code early in the war. American officials knew also that the Japanese resistance to unconditional surrender was because they had one condition enormously important to them: the retention of the Emperor as symbolic leader. Former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and others who knew something about Japanese society had suggested that allowing Japan to keep its Emperor would save countless lives by bringing an early end to the war.

Yet Truman would not relent, and the Potsdam conference agreed to insist on "unconditional surrender." This ensured that the bombs would fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It seems that the United States government was determined to drop those bombs.

But why? Gar Alperovitz, whose research on that question is unmatched (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Knopf, 1995), concluded, based on the papers of Truman, his chief adviser James Byrnes, and others, that the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union. Byrnes advised Truman that the bomb "could let us dictate the terms of ending the war." The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia."

There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that "terrible political repercussions would follow in the US" if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be "crucified" if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that "Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson," all of whom were willing to relax the "unconditional surrender" demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.

Of course, political ambition was not the only reason for Hiroshima, Vietnam, and the other horrors of our time. There was tin, rubber, oil, corporate profit, imperial arrogance. There was a cluster of factors, none of them, despite the claims of our leaders, having to do with human rights, human life.

We face a problem of the corruption of human intelligence, enabling our leaders to create plausible reasons for monstrous acts, and to exhort citizens to accept those reasons, and train soldiers to follow orders. So long as that continues, we will need to refute those reasons, resist those exhortations.

wiki: Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is an American historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller, A People's History of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

Howard Zinn served as Second Lieutenant and bombardier, U.S. Army Air Corps where he flew combat missions in Europe, 1943-45.