Walsingham

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So you're basically saying that the real reason the Americans deployed the bomb was to keep Stalin in check? That's a bit of an over-simplification. If I've learned anything from history it is not to expect things to be simple. I'm saying that I can accept there may have been alternatives solutions to the Japanese problem, but it was an effective one certain to work AND at the same time a solution to the Soviet problem. Indeed the only solution to the Soviet problem.

I'm going to go at your comments backwards, if I may. You end by stating that American Democracy does not suit everyone, and I would agree. Fundamentally it is concentrated on hog-tying and hamstringing the state as far as possible. But in most developing countries a weak state isn't the damn problem. Most 'despotism' is carried out by neighbour on neighbour. Nor is it easy to engage in democracy where information and education is scarce and of poor quality. Both being features of large countries with little or no infrastructure, and concentration of media control in the hands of a tiny few. The American Democratic process is based on a lot of profound philosophical thought and reason. It's in many ways how democracy ought to work. But it doesn't work because it's unstable in the face of real lazy avaricious human beings. This links back to my initial point about violence. As long as we have diversity (and I think we can assume this is good) of needs and views about how the world should be we will have conflict. Conflict can be argued rationally and negotiated - which I assume you advocate. But it can also be decided on the basis of a contest of violence. The crucial point is that succumbing to argument and negotiation is optional. Succumbing to a rock on the head is not. Your aspiration to achieve a world without violence is fine as a direction to point towards. But expecting to arrive at it, and worse PLANNING as if you will ever get there, is dangerous and in a government would be abuse of their mandate. The example you give of Ghandi is often used, and I think that where a government is bound by law and reason it is fine. BUt you will note that Ghandi himself remarked that against any other colonial power it would not have worked. They would simply have killed him.

I know more than most, but still very little about the command architecture in the Japanese court. So i shall stand aside for someone else to acst light on this. I think where Hitler is concerned it's a complex question and would depend a lot on the timing, and the context. I doubt he would have used it on Britain before 1944, but oddly enough might have done against the USA. He would quite certainly have used it against Soviet Russia. *thinks* No battle of Stalingrad. The wehrmacht just rolls into the debris. Of course they'd get sick pretty quickly from the radiation. *wakes from reverie*

*Impressed*

Monkey smuggling is a serious crime, St Jimmy. Monkeys belong in the jungle, not on the heads of hippies. I'm not sure how I feel about the question of monkeys hidden inside afros.

Scientifically I agree, obviously, when you say that we can't say with certainty. However historical analysis is not science. It is very likely that the bombs saved lives. I also think that compared with the damage done by the firestorm use of conventional weapons they weren't 'excessive'. And not wanting to be rude, but you're ignoring my earlier point about deterring Stalin. I think it's fairly evident from many sources (best collected in The Court of the Red Czar) that Stalin would cheerfully have pressed on into Europe without his fear of the bomb, and without a practical demonstration he would not have grasped its significance. I agree that military necessity had waned in the shadow of political momentum. Dresden for me is a far better example than H&N.

True, but it's amazing what they do with irrigation. Even if most of it was blown up or filled in during the Soviet occupation.

I don't understand your first paragraph. But I agree with the second.

Azarkon, much as I'm enjoying our debate, I think we're going off topic. The point iirc was that: 1. The use of the bomb on H&N was justifiable by modern rationales. Even with the benefit of hindsight. 2. The US administration at the time was better than other comparable states. And that the use of the bomb does not make this untrue. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Probably for similar reasons!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6936533.stm I rest my case.

They're not much more furry than Aram's avatar.

A totally disinterested foreign policy would result most likely in teh country piling everything it had into the Cote D'Ivoire and the other bits of the former Belgian Congo. Or Myanmar. The effort would cripple and economically destroy the donor nation in a couple of years and teh eventual benefit to the receiver would be nil. no-one criticises doctors for taking payment for their services. They're seen as lovely.

Colrom has a point. Robot armies would greatly enhance the risk of a combatant using bio-weapons, since the attacking army wouldn't have to worry about friendly fire. I hate to say it but I think we need to look seriously at this issue worldwide. I know from informal contacts that the British Army is fundamentally opposed to the use of independent robots, but the MoD may have other ideas based on cost. As one officer told me. "it's terribly tempting. I can send a squad of soldiers over a hill, or a squad of robots. If I send the robots I know I won't have to visit any parents and wives when I get home."

Quickly, Colrom, I don't see your point, and invite you to try again. My friend and I are opposed to the US Government. One of us shoots and kills the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the other shoots and kills a mom on her way back from soccer practice. Equivalent? St Jimmy, I'm going to try and keep it short, because one problem with these threads is that as they get deeper they get unweildy and people stop reading. Apologies in advance if I over-simplify. 1. We certainly do have a responsibility as civilised people to try and escape violence as far as possible. But it will never be totally removed or can be forgotten. I see it rather like bacteria. As civilised people we should try not to live in filth. But equally we should not try to remove them entirely. After a certain point are efforts are hopeless and may even harm us. My point here is that violence cannot be acceptable in the hands of the individual and the criminal by any standards. It inevitably tends towards the worst excesses. 2. I apologise if I gave the impression I thought you were directly condoning terrorism. But I stand by the principle that any intellectual justification provides covering fire for terrorist activity. This is not to say that we shouldn't understand terrorist motivation. But there is a difference between understanding and sympathising. 3. Robert Mugabe bulldozes whole neighbourhoods opposed to him, and his security forces routinely pick up, beat, and abuse reporters and politicians who oppose him. I want to be sure you are genuinely arguing his corner before I go to the trouble of pulling together articles to support my contention that he is an a-hole, and his side-stepping of democracy has ruined a once successful country. 4. While I accept and have seen the farcical output of some developing democratic countries I do not think they prove democracy is not for everyone. Who precisely are you saying cannot handle democracy? Coloured gentlemen? Muslims? Luton? The benefits of having a say in the laws which govern us are universal in both the avoidance of abuse, and the elevation of the human spirit.

I just realised that a far more important question is "Do they have the funk"?

This thread is even better if you replace the concept of 'game' with 'secret military mind control lasers'.

*still laughing after ages* Good idea. If anyone from **** Obsidian is reading this then May I suggest a name change? Why not use it in all game names. This alone would surely guarantee commercial success! I too find radical feminism mental. HOw could one not? But at the same time I don't find it as daft as, say, animal extremism. Women really HAVE been denied the same rights and freedoms as men in human history. More importantly there is a lot of persecution and violence against women all over the developing world. In parts of Africa and Asia rape is not even seen as rape by many men. But these salon radicals don't do anything about that, oh no. They think they've got cojones if they swagger about Brighton beach and be terse at ice-cream salesmen. I also draw the line at ANY doctrine that tells me someone is better than I am by an accident of birth.

It says it mostly in the thread header. Afghan grain harvest this year expected to be 4.6 million tonnes, resulting in a shortfall of half what it was under the Taliban. Afghans have been given new and more reliable seed strains, plus they now have access to foreign markets and *gasp* machinery. Other crops also on the rise as export material. I find this tremendously heartening, as Afghanistan was once regarded as a fruitful country. Indeed it used to grow the best wines in the world, even if now the grapes are only used for raisins.

Quite. Let's erase all trace of the music of Giuseppe Verdi, the poetry of kipling, the cooking of the American deep south. Let's remove all trace of the understanding of our surroundings ...on the offchance that rocahes are better than we are.

I believe there is a conspiracy, and the govt dispatches loonies into the general populace to discredit the theory.

Pfah. Venus Bluegenes any day. A real (genetically engineered) woman. If any of my girlfriends can't breathe chlorine gas and know how to operate a satchel charge it's going to be a real short date.

Set point to Azarkon. I still prefer the American system to the current British fashion of simply working out acronyms. Take FRES, for example, the new family of armoured vehicles. In the old days we'd have called them 'Comets', 'Centurions', 'Devastators', or 'Black Princes'. Now it's Future Rapid Effects System. *Looks disgusted on an atomic level.* Bloody war by paste-brained civil servants.

Laudable moderation, Azarkon. Things are less clear cut. Yet while the leaders may be less distinguishable* the systems have grown far more distinct. The USA of today has had the civil rights movement, and the rise of public education and welfare. Not to mention spending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. Similar thinsg could be said about Great Britain. While Russia is sliding back into the pit, which China never left. *Leaving aside Vladimir Putin, for my money. The ex-KGB secret policeman, architect of Russia's disastrous Chechen adventures, and ruthless abuser of the legal system to seize personal control of almost all crucial Russian industrial assets; not to mention probable instigator of the murder of political opponents.**