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nuclear weapons are, i feel, meaningfully distinct from mass conventional bombing raids
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Jul 26, 2023 22:03
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galagazombie posted:Well yeah that’s what I’m saying. I find any complaining about Hiroshima and Nagasaki suspicious because it’s really about defaming nuclear power in favor of the fossil fuel industry(whether knowingly or as a patsy). If it’s all war crimes all the way down there’s no need to point out those two cities while suspiciously never mentioning the other completely obliterated cities. hell yeah dude saying nuclear warfare is bad is fossil fuel industry propaganda
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Jul 26, 2023 22:05
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anti-nuclear energy people hissing: breeeeders
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Jul 26, 2023 22:20
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Cuttlefush posted:anti-nuclear energy people hissing: breeeeders
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Jul 26, 2023 22:25
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Some Guy TT posted:ive never heard this hypothetical before because it just sounds incredibly silly on its face the japanese were blockaded and literally starving to death because theyd lost access to all of the stuff they needed to keep the country running how the gently caress were they going to rearm to any degree in a situation like that just to be clear I dropped an intervening clause for brevity that made it unclear out of context, the argument goes "we needed to nuke japan because it was the least bad way of forcing an unconditional surrender, and without an unconditional surrender japan would have rearmed"
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Jul 26, 2023 22:29
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It's interesting to try and figure out what Japan was offering from their internal communiques, post-war statements and other documents but as far as I know they never made any sort of offer to the Allies so it's kind of moot? And negotiating with the Soviets was all well and good but the Soviets told them "the best you can get is unconditional surrender" and they still refused to offer peace. The Soviet declaration of war was something the US had been asking for; at Yalta I believe the Soviets agreed to declare war on Japan within 90 days of Germany's surrender and they held up theirpart of the deal.
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Jul 26, 2023 22:37
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StashAugustine posted:just to be clear I dropped an intervening clause for brevity that made it unclear out of context, the argument goes "we needed to nuke japan because it was the least bad way of forcing an unconditional surrender, and without an unconditional surrender japan would have rearmed" lol that this is the countervailing narrative for why we needed an unconditional surrender when the actual political situation of the post war years was the united states saying come on japan rearm pretty please we need help to fight communism well give you blood money and japans response was consistently no
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Jul 26, 2023 22:41
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Let's go to someone who was there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCYcgOnWUM
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Jul 26, 2023 22:53
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vyelkin posted:The American justification for the second bomb was "what if they don't believe we have a big stockpile of these and they think it was one and done, we'd better blow up another hundred thousand civilians just to show we can" Gotta blow up a city to show you could blow up other cities if you wanted to.
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Jul 26, 2023 22:58
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christmas boots posted:boy sure seems like the cia toolkit of assassinating political leaders and inciting insurrections might have come in handy there. the only group capable of inciting an insurrection in 1945 japan was the japanese communist party and I'm sure the OSS was just dying for them to overthrow the emperor
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Jul 26, 2023 23:26
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vyelkin posted:hell yeah dude saying nuclear warfare is bad is fossil fuel industry propaganda Correct, The attempt to muddle the waters by conflating those two bombings with the doomsday arms race was intentional fossil fuel industry propaganda. Me not wanting ICBMs pointed at the world is an extension of me not wanting any other weapons pointed at it. The anti nuclear movement has always spent the vast majority of its time trying to shut down plants. Even Salt was just Nixon and Brezhnev doing détente rather than anything the anti-nuclear movement did.
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Jul 26, 2023 23:30
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Azathoth posted:The atomic bombs get actual attention as war crimes because (1) almost nobody's fathers and grandfathers dropped atomic bombs but a whole lotta guys dropped incendiaries and other bombs on children and (2) it was an effective strategy for the anti-nuclear movement to paint anything nuclear as evil and regular bombing didn't have an ongoing political fight outside of the larger war/peace political dynamic. No they get attention because it's incredibly obvious to anyone in the world that a nuclear bomb is not something you should use, so nobody ever did, except the Americans. With everything else, they can at least try to claim that they're not the only ones so it can't be that evil (or deny it ever happened, like biological weapons of mass destruction). It has nothing to do with nuclear power. The atomic bombs got "actual attention as war crimes" from the moment they were dropped and there was no anti nuclear power movement until the 60s.
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Jul 27, 2023 07:06
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Cuttlefush posted:lol what
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Jul 27, 2023 07:09
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galagazombie posted:Correct, The attempt to muddle the waters by conflating those two bombings with the doomsday arms race was intentional fossil fuel industry propaganda. Me not wanting ICBMs pointed at the world is an extension of me not wanting any other weapons pointed at it. The anti nuclear movement has always spent the vast majority of its time trying to shut down plants. Even Salt was just Nixon and Brezhnev doing détente rather than anything the anti-nuclear movement did. A Buttery Pastry posted:you should write "the american regime" not "america", when talking about the state no
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Jul 27, 2023 07:11
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you should write "the demon cracker nation" not "the american regime" when talking about the state
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Jul 27, 2023 08:51
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Cerebral Bore posted:you should write "the demon cracker nation" not "the american regime" when talking about the state "the great satan" is also acceptable
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Jul 27, 2023 09:18
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Cerebral Bore posted:you should write "the demon cracker nation" not "the american regime" when talking about the state
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Jul 27, 2023 09:19
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galagazombie posted:Well yeah that’s what I’m saying. I find any complaining about Hiroshima and Nagasaki suspicious because it’s really about defaming nuclear power in favor of the fossil fuel industry(whether knowingly or as a patsy). If it’s all war crimes all the way down there’s no need to point out those two cities while suspiciously never mentioning the other completely obliterated cities. galagazombie posted:Correct, The attempt to muddle the waters by conflating those two bombings with the doomsday arms race was intentional fossil fuel industry propaganda. Me not wanting ICBMs pointed at the world is an extension of me not wanting any other weapons pointed at it. The anti nuclear movement has always spent the vast majority of its time trying to shut down plants. Even Salt was just Nixon and Brezhnev doing détente rather than anything the anti-nuclear movement did. are you for real?
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Jul 27, 2023 09:22
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A Buttery Pastry posted:no, because a nation is not a state, but a people. the demon cracker nation is the people who identify with white america you should write "the unrepentant spawn of yakub" not "the demon cracker nation" when talking about the people who identify with white america
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Jul 27, 2023 10:53
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Cerebral Bore posted:you should write "the unrepentant spawn of yakub" not "the demon cracker nation" when talking about the people who identify with white america
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Jul 27, 2023 11:25
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just call them all yankees. especially if they're from the south.
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Jul 27, 2023 11:51
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Orange Devil posted:Gotta blow up a city to show you could blow up other cities if you wanted to. Gotta nuke something
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Jul 28, 2023 03:37
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As an American I feel like we have big "if you build it you better use it otherwise it's a waste" mentality. What, we're going to do the Manhattan project, invest allll those resources, and then NOT use the ultimate weapon to unleash untold horror and suffering on our enemies? Ridiculous. Which is why we should never develop even more destructive world ending technologies.
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Jul 28, 2023 04:02
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has there been anything about the likelihood of japan accepting potsdam before olympic launches if the bombs aren't dropped? i've been wary of the soviet entry alone being enough because of the transfer of the kwantung army to the home islands for the decisive battle, which to me reads as accepting the risk of losing manchuria in favor of defending the home islands
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Jul 28, 2023 04:06
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Raskolnikov38 posted:has there been anything about the likelihood of japan accepting potsdam before olympic launches if the bombs aren't dropped? i've been wary of the soviet entry alone being enough because of the transfer of the kwantung army to the home islands for the decisive battle, which to me reads as accepting the risk of losing manchuria in favor of defending the home islands you should write "the japanese regime" and not "japan" when writing about the state
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Jul 28, 2023 04:08
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Raskolnikov38 posted:has there been anything about the likelihood of japan accepting potsdam before olympic launches if the bombs aren't dropped? i've been wary of the soviet entry alone being enough because of the transfer of the kwantung army to the home islands for the decisive battle, which to me reads as accepting the risk of losing manchuria in favor of defending the home islands how would they even transfer the Kwantung Army to the Home Islands? by August 1945 the IJN was so depleted that American fleet boats were down to shooting sampans with deck guns to score tonnage
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Jul 28, 2023 04:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:how would they even transfer the Kwantung Army to the Home Islands? by August 1945 the IJN was so depleted that American fleet boats were down to shooting sampans with deck guns to score tonnage i'll have to dig up hell to pay but IIRC the transfers occurred in early 1944
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Jul 28, 2023 05:15
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as i recall they did transfer out units to more important theaters once the war really started going south, but im p sure that the kwantung army still had over half a million dudes stationed in manchuria in 1945
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Jul 28, 2023 05:28
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hmm welp Hell to Pay is one of the books i left in california so there'll be no digging it up.Cerebral Bore posted:as i recall they did transfer out units to more important theaters once the war really started going south, but im p sure that the kwantung army still had over half a million dudes stationed in manchuria in 1945 one of the arguments i recall from the book is that in 1945 it was basically the kwantung army in name only. the best units and equipment had been sent to the philippines, home islands, island chains, or burma and replaced with militia conscripts from the japanese settler population
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Jul 28, 2023 05:34
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Raskolnikov38 posted:hmm welp Hell to Pay is one of the books i left in california so there'll be no digging it up. is this your book https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=5AA7E06F227BCA62562B947BC725438B
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Jul 28, 2023 05:36
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yea, but its not like they just took the whole army and stuck it on the home islands, most of the units they transferred out went elsewhere and as such would either have been destroyed or were just as stuck with no way back as the actual kwantung army was in 45
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Jul 28, 2023 05:37
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Cuttlefush posted:is this your book yes. you know this could have saved me some money on moving costs two years ago
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Jul 28, 2023 05:42
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Dead tree books are still better because you'll still have them even after the internet goes away
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Jul 28, 2023 05:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:Dead tree books are still better because you'll still have them even after the internet goes away i only do digital books. never cared for paper. when the internet goes away it will no longer be time for reading.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:53
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Cuttlefush posted:i only do digital books. never cared for paper. when the internet goes away it will no longer be time for reading. *steps on glasses*
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Jul 28, 2023 06:05
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It's not fair. There was time now,! Time to poorly paint minis I presume
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Jul 28, 2023 09:21
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Raskolnikov38 posted:has there been anything about the likelihood of japan accepting potsdam before olympic launches if the bombs aren't dropped? i've been wary of the soviet entry alone being enough because of the transfer of the kwantung army to the home islands for the decisive battle, which to me reads as accepting the risk of losing manchuria in favor of defending the home islands imo losing Manchuria was way less important than losing the possibility of negotiating a peace via Moscow.
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Jul 28, 2023 11:44
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Found a fun Wikipedia article for this thread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children
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Aug 5, 2023 03:07
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Found a fun Wikipedia article for this thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariam_Nabatanzi drat, retired but could have absolutely crushed the record
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Aug 5, 2023 04:31
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On April 9, 1976, President Gerald Ford was in San Antonio, Texas, touring the Alamo, when someone gave him a tamale on a plate. Ford gratefully shoved the tamale, husk and all, into his mouth. According to some accounts, he began to choke. AP images of the event show Ford with the tamale, husk and all, in his mouth. “The president didn’t know any better. It was obvious he didn’t get a briefing on the eating of tamales,” said Lila Cockrell, the mayor of San Antonio at the time. The moment became known as the “Great Tamale Incident,” and that year, Jimmy Carter won the election, taking all of Texas’ electoral votes. It was the last time Texas went blue. On April 9,1976, President Gerald Ford started to stuff a tamale into his mouth without first removing its corn husk wrapper. He soon began to choke. | AP Photo Ford had actually eaten tamales before. A Fort Worth Star Telegram article dated August 22, 1976, recounted that Ford had eaten tamales often at CBS anchor Bob Schieffer’s mother’s home. But, the Telegram reported, they had been pre-shucked. But from now on, the article said, guests at the Schieffers’ would peel their own tamales. “You can’t be too careful in politics.” It’s possible Ford was just ending a long day of campaigning and wasn’t paying attention. But still, his gaffe, and the explanation for why he made it, signaled something deeper — Ford was out of touch. He was an elite who had his tamales pre-shucked. And how could he represent a nation if he didn’t know how to eat the food of the people? In the decades since, eating on the campaign trail has become even more scrutinized and even more loaded politically. In 2010, food writer Matthew Jacob wrote for CNN, “Every election cycle, candidates have learned that how they eat — not just how they vote — can become part of the debate.” In a year when an election is heating up, this pageant reaches its zenith during state fair season. Politicians line up to down corn dogs, flip hamburgers and pretend to like everything on a stick. It’s a grotesque parade of deep-fried pandering. From Pete Buttigieg eating pork chop on a stick to Tom Cotton eating pizza from a beloved Iowa gas station chain, each bite is meant to tell viewers that the candidate is an everyman, the kind of guy (or woman) who can roll up his shirtsleeves and dig into the most depraved American concoctions without regard for his waistline or cholesterol count. Why? Because throughout U.S. history, Americans have connected certain foods with authenticity. Today, both parties are still desperate to convey their working-class bona fides with food. So as this fair season wraps up and transitions into all-out campaign season, here’s the politician’s guide to eating. A champagne glass with facial hair and a monocle looking down at a spilled beer mug goofing off on the floor The cultural associations of certain foods have long been used as a tool in politics. In A Rich and Fertile Land: A History of Food in America, historian and author Bruce Kraig pointed to the election of 1840 between Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison as the first where food was invoked as “a signifier of class and social differences”— specifically “to appear of the people,” he wrote. Why did food become so culturally loaded at the time, according to Kraig? In 1840, America was experiencing a massive shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. The upheaval left many Americans out of work and hungry, surviving on cheap, long-lasting food. Additionally, out in rural America, shipments of shelf-stable cheap consumer goods kept settlers alive — flour, sugar, salt, lard. This is what Americans ate: protein and rough cornmeal-based breads. They drank beer, cider and corn-based liquor. When the Whig party nominated Harrison, the campaign planned to depict Harrison as a man of the people. Whig newspaper images of Harrison’s home, a log cabin, showed a barrel of cider in front of it, because Harrison, his supporters wanted to suggest, drank cider like a real American. As Kraig writes, Pennsylvania congressman Charles Ogle gave a three-day speech in the House of Representatives about what he considered the excesses of Van Buren’s administration. In the speech, Ogle, a Harrison ally, called the White House a “Presidential Palace” that outdid even “the grand saloons at Buckingham Palace.” He launched into a description of Van Buren’s dining room table that had become commonly described and exaggerated in the Whig press, with turtle soup, duck, foie gras and champagne. Yes, Harrison himself was a rich boy from Virginia. But Ogle successfully smeared Van Buren as a man who ate oysters off a golden spoon, and Harrison went on to win. For years, with Donald Trump in the White House, eating and serving fast food, Republicans were the ones better able to project the image of the party that was aligned with what average Americans ate, and as a result, whom average Americans were. Despite Barack Obama’s frequent discussion of the traditional Hawaiian plate lunch, it was an off-hand remark about expensive arugula to farmers that got him branded an elitist. Later, observing how often Obama struggled to finish French fries and waffles in diners, Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times that he was “clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites.” Trump, on the other hand, with his love of Big Macs and well-done steak with ketchup, was seen — despite his inordinate wealth — as a man of the people for both his food choices and his average-for-an-American BMI. President Donald Trump talks to the media about the table full of fast food in the State Dining Room of the White House Trump, with his love of Big Macs and well-done steak with ketchup, was seen — despite his inordinate wealth — as a man of the people for both his food choices and his average-for-an-American BMI. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo There might be a shift coming in the partisanship of food, though. Recently, in the Pennsylvania race for Senate, Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate, made a video taking President Joe Biden to task for the rising rate of inflation. The video shows Oz in the incongruent outfit of dress pants and a Henley, mispronouncing a grocery store name and buying raw asparagus and pre-made guacamole for a “crudité” platter. The video went viral when it was shared by Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, raised over $500,000 in the 24 hours after his campaign posted a video mocking Oz’s grocery-store elitism and selling stickers that read, “Let them eat crudite.” Today, the cultural signifiers for the average American are now domestic beers and overly processed fast foods. How did unhealthy food come to be seen as more American? Clare Brock, assistant professor of political science at Texas Woman’s University, connects this change to post-World War II America. Government propaganda married the idea of Americanism to buying mass-produced and shelf-stable food supplies. The U.S. government encouraged Americans to preserve and can their own foods to aid with the war effort in posters and other propaganda. “Here was this whole advertising campaign that depicted what a patriotic and prepared housewife would have in her pantry, and it’s all these canned foods,” Brock explained. When the war ended, canned foods had become a staple of the American diet by design. The American food industry, which had been making rations for soldiers, now marketed those shelf-stable products to American women. Advertising campaigns suggested processed foods, Betty Crocker cake mix and canned pineapples, could be used as a shortcut for homemakers. Pillsbury’s instant mashed potatoes and cakes were advertised as “a woman’s secret.” This era formed the link between processed, unhealthy food and relatability long before Obama’s arugula gaffe. Today, processed foods are less about patriotism and more about necessity. According to the USDA, about 19 million people in America live in a food desert, which is defined as a place where “a third of the population lives greater than one mile away from a supermarket for urban areas, or greater than 10 miles for rural areas.” The USDA also notes more than 38 million people, including 12 million children, in the United States are food-insecure. Shelf-stable foods, fast foods, processed foods — these are the foods keeping Americans alive. Having access to fresh foods and vegetables is a sign of wealth and the free time to cook it. Sure, it’s a simplification, but in America, politics has never been about nuance. Today, a politician can be quickly branded an elitist if they like foods that are minimally processed. A woman eats miniature hotdogs with a fork and knife. In 2019, as a columnist for my local paper, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, I attended the Iowa State Fair and noticed how the female candidates populating the Democratic field were careful to avoid phallic food — hot dogs, corn dogs — and instead opting for sandwiches and pork chops on a stick. If this was intentional, no one was going to say it out loud. When it comes to food, female politicians are in a double bind: Their bodies are scrutinized more than those of men, but they also — perhaps more than men — need to prove their authenticity partly through what they eat. As a result, they have to show themselves eating the highly processed and fried foods that American voters like but have to do so without gaining weight. A female candidate has to act like someone you could get a beer with but look like someone who eats only vegetables and water. They have to know how to make food, but look like they rarely consume it. It’s an uphill battle for politicians of color, too. Despite the rising number of immigrants and people of color in America, politicians aren’t in a rush to be pictured eating bibimbap with chopsticks. “Normative assumptions about ‘American Cuisine’ erase ample historical evidence of generations of ethnic American at the center of defining foodways,” sociologist Alice P. Julier has written, “and in the process conflates mass culture with national identity, despite the fact that the two have never enjoyed an easy relationship.” These race and gender components of political eating are particularly challenging for Democrats, Brock notes, who have a more diverse base. “It’s harder to eat for your base when your base is so broad,” she says. Some unhealthy foods stand on a podium accepting medals. The first American state fair was held in Syracuse on September 29 and 30th, 1841. It combined livestock exhibits with speeches and displays of goods and manufactured foods. State and county fairs became a way for farmers and their families, isolated on their farms, to gather to eat and compare farming methods. And of course, wherever Americans gathered, there a politician would be to give a stump speech. Before broadcast radio, and even widespread literacy that would make newspapers more effective, politicians would stand on street corners, shout from the back of railroad cars or speak at fairs to get their message to the people. As America shifted from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, fairs changed, too. As well as a celebration of the American agrarian ideal, state fairs became a way to introduce new products and innovations to the American people, who were spread out across a vast country, connected only by railroads and the muddy ruts left by wagon trails. And they also became carnivals, with rides, attractions, shows and the spectacle of food. While fairs have history of introducing new foods to Americans, they are also a rarified environment where the concept of food is turned topsy-turvy. Fair food is a grotesque spectacle and a humorous sendup of all that is American. If Americans eat meat — and we do — why not bread it and fry it and put it on a stick? We eat Oreos? Then, bread them, fry them and put them on a stick. Do we eat pickles? Wrap them with salami and cream cheese, bread them and fry them. Fair food has no pretensions: It’s silly, imaginative, disgusting and delicious. The majority of people in congress are millionaires, and the majority of Americans are not. When a politician goes to a fair, they are not just watching the spectacle; they are part of the spectacle, forced to sweat alongside everyone else as they stand in line for an egg on a stick or to see the butter cow. (Butter cows, as carvings made of huge amounts of butter, are themselves a spectacle of excess food.) Maybe that’s why Americans love a fair and the sight of a politician gorging him or herself on fair food. It’s a funny gastronomical gauntlet, turns our politics upside down, gives us a low-stakes laugh, and forces the people that rule us to be subject to our rules — the rules of the fair. That might be why we love scrutinizing politicians’ food so much in general: It’s our way of exerting some power over people who have so much control over us.
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Aug 10, 2023 22:21
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