Open Thread, Friday, August 7, 2015
Hiroshima at 70: Why attitudes are changing about the first atomic bomb
On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped one of the world’s first atomic bombs on the seaside city of Hiroshima, killing anywhere between 66,000 to 150,000 people.
At the time, a vast majority of Americans believed it was the right thing to do: A Gallup poll from that year shows that a full 85 percent of the US public said they approved of the use of “Little Boy” on Japan. Only 10 percent disapproved, while the rest said they had no opinion.
But times and attitudes may be changing – a gradual shift that experts say is due largely to both dimming memories of the nightmare that was World War II, and growing awareness of the consequences of nuclear weapons.
Hiroshima marks 70 years since atomic bomb
Residents in the Japanese city of Hiroshima are commemorating the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb being dropped by a US aircraft.
A ceremony, attended by PM Shinzo Abe, was held at Hiroshima's memorial park before thousands of lanterns are released on the city's Motoyasu river.The bombing - and a second one on Nagasaki three days later - is credited with bringing to an end World War Two.
But it claimed the lives of at least 140,000 people in the city.
Hiroshima: Grief, horror of atomic bomb remembered 70 years on
Hiroshima, Japan (CNN) - In the center of Hiroshima, yards from where the world's first atomic attack bomb exploded 70 years ago, stands a dome-shaped bell tower of modest proportions. It is decorated with the bronze statues of three children.
Their slender arms reach out, spreading wide towards the sky. It looks like a dance of joy. But it leaves me choking back tears.
The bombing of Hiroshima is a dark and difficult chapter in U.S. history. As an American wandering past the bronze pixies dancing so close to what was ground zero, I cannot help but feel profound guilt.
Comments
now your chosen music makes me cry ...
music is so powerful. I recently met someone I hadn't seen for 28 years and we both remembered another person, who passed away long time ago, we both knew intimately and I told her that I remember a song that that beloved person, who passed away, had always sung. It was in a language I couldn't understand, but often sang to my son when he was a baby. It was a sad song, but a most beautiful one. Then I tried to tell her how some of the words sounded in that song in that language/dialect I couldn't understand and she then recognized the song and started singing it, immediately breaking out in tears. Then we cried both together. Shit.
oh, it's an open thread, right?
don't post "offenisve images" to express your feelings over how disgusted you can be about things happening at the gos. Even without saying the words, they hide-rate and warn you. Losers.
Beautiful
Your choice of music today is perfect and so beautiful. thank you.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
hiroshima
survivors, as age prepares to take them, are passing their stories on, one-to-one:
The denshosha sort of like how Ray Bradbury envisioned keeping alive burned books, in Fahrenheit 451.
Man, does that Christian Science Monitor article about
the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki bounce around the truth or what. They say even though 56% of American
Idiots still believe it was necessary, it's gradually changing "due largely to both dimming memories of the nightmare that was World War II, and growing awareness of the consequences of nuclear weapons."
And there explains why 56% of the American sheeple still believe it was necessary, because rags like that refuse to tell the truth that the
bombs weren't necessary because the fucking war was basically over and they dropped them basically as a warning to the Soviet Union and the
world that America was now the King of the Hill. They killed hundreds of thousands of people because they could.
That's why people are waking up, because they've learned the truth after all the years of lies.
Dude, we are still doing that
We are killing thousands of innocent people because we can. And we continue to hear the drumbeat for more war with Iran, of all places. I am honestly scared of the idiots who sit in Congress like Chuckie (Wall Street) Schumer who is pushing for us to go to war with Iran. This is insanity personified.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Well, it's many millions now. The hundreds of thousands
was just in Aug 45 when the war was basically over.
Far as I can tell there isn't a single U.S. politician that isn't on board with the false narrative and lies concerning Iran.
There isn't a single one questioning why we're making Iran accept a "deal", not a single one telling the truth that it's all
been WMD lies started by the neocons and Zionists in the Bush administration.
So it doesn't matter individually whether they vote for the deal or against it, they're all backing the imperialist lies.
The idiocy of drones
I had a beer debate about the death penalty and my debate partner spit out, "If somebody harmed my family, I want retribution". I said, now you know why people around the world hate America. We kill their families from little flying robots.
Basically all the media is in the bag. They are corporations guided by the profit motive. Most media is owned and controlled by the 1%. The addled minded lap it up. I guess that makes our politicians addle minded, bought or both.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
They know the deal. They know Iran isn't developing
nukes, hasn't been developing nukes, and hasn't aspired to developed nukes. It's common knowledge now and for them not to know they'd have to have had their heads in the sand for years. I seriously doubt it. They also know Israel has hundreds.
"Senators pushing the false idea that Iran is a nuclear threat but indicating they will vote to support the agreement precisely in order to counter that threat: 16
(Tammy Baldwin, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Angus King, Patrick Leahy, Chris Murphy, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Bernie Sanders, Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren)."
http://warisacrime.org/content/which-us-senators-want-war-iran
Here's the key to their keeping with the lies.
"If both proponents and opponents of the agreement depict Iran falsely as a nuclear threat, the danger of a U.S. war on Iran is going to continue, with or without the deal."
And those who are not killed are turned into refugees
The refugee situation in the world is monumental, people who have lost everything but their lives running from terror.
To thine own self be true.
Would the discussion of this at DKos
bring up the old rationale: "It saved American lives." It's a lie. Like Jon Stewart says, "don't accept their bullshit."
It was a massive diabolical war crime. The death toll doesn't include the horribly wounded who would die later on.
Thank you Joe for the memorial.
To thine own self be true.
Have had and seen that exact discussion on DK.
By the same people that are lining up to vote for Hillary Clinton. In retrospect, they're completely despicable. Anyone who
tries to justify that is despicable.
There are still thousands of people affected today.
"Red Cross Still Treats Thousands of Survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki Atomic Bombings"
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940514000993
Yes, the genetic damage should be considered too
and the US doubled down and did a repeat atomic bombing, knowing how massive the damage would be.
There are the same names over and over again who support the unsupportable issues and what they have in common is a strong streak of authoritarianism.
To thine own self be true.
the time,
it is a-changing in North Korea.
On August 15, the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in WWII, North Korea shall establish a new time zone, "Pyongyang time," pushing its current time-reckoning back 30 minutes.
Korea's counting of time has heretofore been yoked to Japan's, a thing forced upon Korea in 1910 by Japanese occupation forces.
Sez the Korean Central News Agency:
There is a long history of the Japanese behaving wrongly to Koreans. In the late 16th Century, for instance, Japanese "warriors," having failed to conquer Korea, sailed home with 200,000 noses they had sliced off Korean faces.
North Korea also has a unique calendar. It is the Juche calendar, introduced in 1997, and counts time from the birth-year of Kim Il-sung. It is thus currently the year 104 in that nation.
Who's birth is the calendar based on?
The one that everyone else currently uses?
Probably a unicorn from some remote and superstitious fable seeped in religious discrimination and prejudice….
No doubt bloody wars are still being fought over this and other primitive no-tech fables, right now, on the Planet of the Apes.
I vote for a modern secular scientific starting point. Like a meteor fall or comet. Or precise carbon-dating data. Or the birth-year of Kim Il-sung, in a pinch. Anything that is clearly time-based in reality works for me.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
you mean
the Chinese calendar? ; ) There have been a lot of these. Chinese calendars have traditionally been based on various unicorns; the Yellow Emperor unicorn most recently most often the Chosen One. And yes, presently the Chinese pursue planet-of-the-apes war against the people of Tibet, and the people of Xinjiang, both of whom use different calendars. The Vietnamese also use a different calendar, but the Chinese have managed to restrain themselves from invading that nation since 1979, which is saying a lot, since the Chinese, on hundreds of occasions, over thousands of years, have reccurently proved unable to stop themselves from pouring over the border into Vietnam. By at least one accounting, half of the ten deadliest planet-of-the-apes wars in all human history, began in China.
Then there are Hindu calendars. There have been a lot of these, too. Rather than unicorns, these have most often been governed by astronomical factors, standardized in a long-ago written work that is now lost. (The Chinese Yellow Emperor unicorns last invaded India in 1962.)
The Islamic calendar dates from when the Mohammad unicorn schlepped from Mecca to Medina. It is currently the year 1436 among people who believe in that particular unicorn.
The Discordian calendar has us placed squarely in the year 3181 YOLD (Year of Our Lady of Discord). In this calendar there are five 73-day seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath. Each week consists of five days: Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange. Every year begins with a Sweetmorn.
The Gregorian calendar is a refinement of the Julian calendar, which grew to seriously discomfit various be-robed individuals because within it Easter was "drifting." Some people Hated the Gregorian change—primarily Eastern Orthodox unicornians—and so continued to use the Julian calendar. Both calendars are anchored in myths involving the Jesus unicorn.
The switchover from the Julian to Gregorian calendar involved the abolition of time: ten whole days—October 5 through October 14 of 1582—would never exist. They would be non-days, never born. October 4, 1582 would be followed by October 15, 1582. The common people throughout Gregorian-land went wild, regarding this as simply a ruse to rob them of a week-and-a-half's rent. The church was always about ripping them off; now the thing was actually abolishing whole days, just to steal their money.
The Gregorian calendar also directed that January 1 be devoted to honoring the circumcision of the Jesus unicorn. This means that New Year's celebrants, rather than drinking heavily and getting into car crashes, should instead be filleting foreskins, in honor of the Skinning of their Lord.
Interestingly, all of the days of the week, and most of the months, in the Gregorian calendar, are named after "pagan" unicorns.
Bishop James Ussher used the Julian calendar, the bible, and math, to determine that all of time and space began at nightfall on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC.
The Hebrew calendar is ruled by the moon.
The cat calendar is ruled by when dinner is served.
Your suggestion—"I vote for a modern secular scientific starting point . . . Anything that is clearly time-based in reality works for me" is a good one. Except problems arise when it is apprehended that "time" isn't actually real. Neither, for that matter, is "reality."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LpQUnh7jmM]
My Peace Vigil
My local weekly Peace Vigil has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks because one of our members had to be rushed to the hospital after he collapsed from the heat. I was out of town at the time when it happened and I am hoping we will resume when the weather cools a bit.
Each year, one of our members places on the courthouse lawn a beautiful wooden memorial he made for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This weekend would be the one in which we would have the memorial as part of our Peace vigil, but sadly, I doubt that we will meet.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
peace-vigil people,
like you, are important.
In the town down the hill, a weekly peace vigil was established by three pacifist women in 1960, and it's still going. The three founding women all lived into their 90s, and even in their 90s made the weekly trek. They are gone now. But then again, they're not.
This group is in its 13th year
I have only been with them for three of those years. They originally had 35 people when they began, but many stopped once Obama was elected. There were four left plus one dog, Buddy the Peace dog, when I joined them
Things started to go downhill, when our 92 year old had to quit because he could not make the walk from his car to the courthouse. Two weeks later, we lost Buddy. Then we lost another member around Christmas. He had been very close to our 92 year old. He also had to drive quite a distance so I guess he just gave it up. That left the three of us core members. Don who is 86, Bill who is 80, and me, the youngster at 68. All three of us want to continue, but Bill's health is a concern. I hope we can start back up once the temps stay below 80 degrees.
It is all about the conversations that we have with people who pass by. And we have had some wonderful ones in the past. Even some very conservative people have been kind enough to talk with us and have a civil conversation. I try to find common ground with them and with few exceptions, we can.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Good day Tim and All c99er's
Great music and OT Tim,
For the longest time there was a peace vigil across the street, it's faded away.
Fu*k Chuck and all war mongers. I hope this costs him the Senate leadership.
Schumer - one idiot bigger than another
Well my windows upgrade was a 75% success. Working fine on the dell desktop. My Lenova Yoga 3 and Windows 10 aren't the best of pals. My screen starts to blink. If I screw around shutting down, changing displays, closeing the browser, I can get it to stop. It is stopped right now. The blinking will come back because it has three times already. If it continues and I can't get it to stop, I may have to reset it back to 8. My grandson has the same laptop. He upgraded his. I'll have to check in to see how his is working.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
It's probably...
driver related. A Dell computer will usually come pre-loaded with most drivers that you'll need for Windows operating system, the Lenovo probably doesn't. My guess from what you're describing, you need to update your graphics driver on your Lenovo, either a graphics card or on-board graphics. Drivers allow the software to "talk" to the hardware, the wrong driver and the software and hardware wont interface properly. Open up your Device Manager and if there is any conflict with any drivers they should show up there.
This is good to know
because my laptop is also a Lenovo.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy