Friday night I marked 9 years of sobriety thanks to AA. If you don't like it don't go there. We aren't banging on doors looking for recruits. You can keep drinking if you want for all we care.
Posts by JeffT
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8Sunday's NA meeting
by Pistoff inshe begins:.
i have never spoken before in a meeting, and i am nervous.
i am one week away from having 6 months clean.. at sunday nights meeting, millie spoke for the first time, and it made me consider again the merits and pitfalls of belief.. me, i have been in recovery since the mid 80s and have recently begun attending na meetings again, just to feel more sane and to be there for newcomers; i know how great it was to have people at meetings with time when i started going.. halfway through her sharing, she said:.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
Good comment Hamsterbait. Add to those questions this one: what if it isn't your life but its someone elses? Or hundreds, thousands, or even millions of someone elses?
One of the options for the fall of 1945 has not yet been discussed, we've focused on the Bomb vs peace talks vs invading Japan. The US Navy was convinced they could bring about a Japanese surrender with a close blockade of their home islands. They probably could have, but how many Japanse would have starved to death before they saw the light?
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An important message from a PRACTICING Jehovah's witness
by Sparks inhi, i am also a practicing jehovah's witness and very proud of it,to say the very-very least..!
i am a middle-aged man with many decades of being a witness of jehovah god in england.. this important letter is personally to you, just as many of the bible's 88 letters are to be taken personal by you the reader.
i am writing to you to urge you to take stock of your life, think what your future holds for you.
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JeffT
This important letter is personally to YOU, just as many of the Bible's 88 letters are to be taken personal by YOU the reader.
Sparky, the letters in the Bible were (according the Watchtower) written by God. I see you are following the example set by the GB and confusing yourself with God.
I'm not disfellowhipped. I suppose you could say I was stumbled - by the Governing Body. I left when it became clear they have no special connection with God. With that, there was nothing left in the Organization for me. As they say, a fish rots from the head.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
Band, if you have not already read it, you would like "Japan 1941" by Eri Hotta. It is a very well researched history of events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The War Lords you mention seemed to be as intent on fighting each other as they were their perceived Western enemies. Many of them expressed private doubts about starting down the road to war, none of them wanted to be the guy suggesting that in meetings, as they would be branded a coward. Much the same thing happened regarding ending the war.
Edited to add: recent research suggest Hirohito had more power than was earlier assumed.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
New Hope, you are basing this on one side of the argument, here's one from the other side of the argument.
Baby in the bombed out remnants of the Shanghai rail road station, 1937.
I thought of posting a bunch of other pictures but decided they were inappropriate for this board. As I said previously, research the Rape of Nanking. Google images will yield pictures of Japanese bayonet practice with living prisoners, and other prisoners being beheaded or buries alive. "Rape" is literal in this historic event, sexual assault in China was widespread and brutal. Iris Chang's book contains a picture of a dead Chinese woman with a stick in her vagina.
I don't know if the use of the Bomb was moral or immoral. I do understand the thinking of those what wanted to put a complete and total stop to what the Japanese had been doing in the rest of Asia. Incidently, the scale of these atrocities was known to the Allied comand by 1945, although probably not to the puclic, at least not in full. The liberation of the Phillipines in particular would have provided proof of the brutality of the Japanese occupation forces.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
So when McDilda, who didn't particularly know what an atom bomb was
There were lots of rumors going around which is what McDilda (thanks for finding that, I couldn't remember his name) repeated. He said the bomb had a lot of pluses at one end and minuses at the other, separated by a lead wall. The bomb detonated by melting the lead wall and allowing the pluses and minuses to collide with each other, producing the explosion.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
A question I have always wondered, is why didn't they surrender after the first bomb?
Then again why did they so quickly surrender after the second? Did they really think we had the ability or the will to nuke the entire island? I heard we had maybe one more oporational weapon and then would have taken months before we could make more.
They didn't surrender right after Hiroshima because they didn't know quite what had happened to the city, only that something American destroyed it. Truman announced the attack sixteen hours later, I don't know if the Japanese believed what he said. Somewhere in this time frame (it may have been after Nagasaki) a captured American pilot told them told them we had hundreds of bombs just like it.
Probably the factor that really forced the surrender was the fact that the bombs knocked Hirohito's head out of his butt, and he recognized that he was cult leader not a God. His decision to end the war, and actions to bring that about were THE factor in the Japanese surrender. It's worth noting what he said in the Imperial Rescript announcing the decision " the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest." Understatement to say the least, but it illustrates the Japanese viewpoint at the time. Incidently, he read the speech in an anachronistic court Japanese, most of his subjects had no idea what he was saying. They also had never heard his voice before.
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
We should learn from history and not do things that excuse or strengthen dangerous ideologies.
Of course, but who gets to decide what constitutes a "dangerous ideology?" Hitler (and many ordinary Germans) beleived Judaism, Communism and western liberal thinking to be dangerous. Mao and Pol Pot saw themselves as fighting Western ideas destroying their counties. Currently we're watching ISIS trying to destroy what it sees as dangerous ideologies.
Robert Heinlein put it very well: "No one sees himself as the bad guy."
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108
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness insorry for such a depressing question, but i was moved by a picture i saw of the consequences.
( a woman carrying her child) and i realised:-.
a) it was a civillian population.. b) i don't see how a nuclear holocaust can ever be right.. c) they could have bombed tokyo where all the generals lived but chose hiroshima.. d) the irony after the bombing america conceeded to many of japans terms.. your opinion would be valued..
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JeffT
OK a few points.
Roughly 10 million chinese civilians died at Japanese hands during the war ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties ). This averages out to Hiroshima or Nagasaki every month from 1937 to 1945. If you can stomach it, read "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chan for details.
The idea of demonstrating the bomb was dismissed for the simple reason that nobody thought the Japanese would pay much attention to it. If they wanted to know what the US could do to them, they needed only to look out the window. Fifty-seven square miles of Tokyo had been destroyed by the time of the atomic bombings. (Source "A Torch to the Enemy" Martin Caidin)
It is hard to sort out the so-called peace feelers. Some attempts were made, but the US could not determine if they were individual efforts or officially sanctioned. There was a sizable military faction that wanted to continue the war, one group even tried to overthrow the government after the atomic bombings and after Hirohito recorded his surrender message (source "The Last Mission" Jim Smith and Malcolm McConnell)
Was the bombing an atrocity? I don't know, everything that happened between 1937 and 1945 was an atrocity, its hard to apply in sort of logical scale to what went on during those years. It seems very probable that, had the war with Germany continued long enough, Dresden would have been the first A-bomb target, that's why it wasn't bombed until late in the war. I'm looking for sources on that, I picked it up from a friend that works in military think tank.
PS: Neither Chruchill nor Roosevelt wanted war with Japan. England had its hands full with Germany and and Roosevelt wanted to help. If Hitler had not delcared war on the us on Dec 11, 1941 England and Russia would have been fighting him alone. Had we known the Japanese were coming we would have ambushed them, that would have been a better outcome for both Roosevelt and Churchill. (source "Roosevelt's Secret War" Joseph E. Persico)
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What did ants evolve from?
by Pinku inan ant's brain is very minuscule when compared to a chimpanzee, yet it is capable engineering!
(not to mention its ability to support 5,000 times their body weight before losing their heads.
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/5970/20140210/ants-support-5-000-times-body-weight-before-losing-heads.htm).
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JeffT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/science/key-to-ants-evolution-may-have-started-with-a-wasp.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/evolution/digging-up-ants-evolutionary-origins/
Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean that only God could do it.
