Canada RULES!

Yankees go home!

i´m sure you´ll understand that not all peoples think like you. "they", "us" those words have little sense because it depends of the side where you´re looking from.

the object of war cannot be to kill as many as you can. if war has an object that has to be to end as fast as possible. that´s the only line of argumentation i can understand for the attomic bomb.

Yankees go home!

Mike lived in Zaragosa for four years in the early 80's because both his parents were stationed there with the US Army. He told me why US troops were stationed there, but I've kinda forgotten.... something about Franco (??) being overthrown, Spain joining NATO and as part of the agreement having to have US troops stationed there. (Please correct me if I am wrong. It has been awhile since he told me and he was only 9-13 when he lived there, so he may have remembered wrong.) Anyhow, he has a picture of a building with that phrase spray-painted on it. From living outside of the US, especially with the military, he has a good grasp on why most of the world dislikes Americans. Living my entire life in the same state and never venturing out of the country (except to Canada and last month to Holland) I had no idea how the rest of the world perceived Americans....and it never occured to me that anyone would resent having American troops on their soil. I always assumed that people would be grateful to have America butting into their affairs. And I think most US citizens believe this too. We grow up learning that America is the biggest and the best, that we are the answer to everyone's prayers, that we are the police of the planet. But we live in a bubble. We are a contained society, separated and protected from the rest of the world by oceans east and west, and friendly neighbors north and south. We don't worry about entire armies invading our land or trying to take over. We live for the most part wallowing in wealth. I can't tell you how shocked I was to expericence some of the things that Mike talked about while living in Europe, when we went to Amsterdam. It was also the first time I felt what it was like being a foreigner, even though a lot of the people there were foreigners to Holland.....they were still European. I am not sure really where I am going with all of this and if I don't stop now, I could go on forever. I have being thinking about all of this for awhile now and even more so since we returned from our trip.....I have been needing to get some of it off my chest. So I congratulate you if you have stayed with this post.

wow! that was a very good autocriticism exercise

i couldn´t have said it better.

yes, not all ppl sees americans as americans do. not that in Europe we hate americans; i think most of ppl sees americans as "good friends": we admire their athletes, we like Star Wars and their cinema in general, we learn English (and i must recognize that´s not because of Shakespeare) and we´re more familiar with them than with any other country (i guess that´s because of Hollywood mainly)...

... but we have our own sport heroes, we have our own cinema (well, Spanish cinema is not that well, but France, Italy and England have very good cinema), we have our own language, and our own history: centuries and centuries of history.

I think those things are what make us laugh when we see your President Clinton (or any of his predecessors) talking of US as the world savern and the guardians of peace. Yes you have the best army and you can be powerfull allies, but you will always be you and we, we. Your interests will never be the same of us. And we´d like to deal with our own affaires although finally would have to be helped by you.

Actually, our army isn't as great as it used to be. It's pretty weak compared to the other branches of military. Why do you think there are so many advertising campaigns and signing bonuses right now?

Here I go again:

This year in school I had a class thought by two of the most brilliant people in the world. We spent the year studying history and our world while thinking about everything without the "We and They" lense in our eyes. We and They is what we dubbed the concept of biases, prejudices, Americanization, etc all rolled into one, and it was incredible. I no longer look at the world as "We": white Americans of the middle class with a computer in the house and well educated, and "They": everyone else. Because this bias is mostly gone from my mind, at least when I try, I feel I can give my opinion in this little debate in the most honest and open way possible for me.
Quickbeam, you list numbers that are irelevant. The results of those bombs go on forever, not only because of all the unborn children and grandchildren (that's normal war, sadly), but because they were atom bombs, which don't give up. You also make the Japanese look stupid. Sure, the army didn't care about the people, that's usually how it works. Quite frankly I think they'd mind having a lot of military stuff destroyed more then all the population that didn't help the war effort.
My father fought in Vietnam, I know more about that then he really ever wanted to discuss, to be sure, so I won't push more. WWII I know about from first hand accounts as well, and I still think the bomb was wrong, understandable why we dropped them, yes, but still not acceptable. I will understand it, I try to forgive, but I will NEVER accept it.

Welcome back Tater!

Hollywood. FM, that is right where I left off. Government propaganda machine.

Once again, Tater, I respect your opinion and don't think less of you for it. I just refuse to be spooked by the fact that we used nuclear weapons. Your position would hold water only if our use of the bombs had kicked off a new age of nuclear warfare. Fifty-five years have passed, and no one has used those kind of weapons again, perhaps in part because the world saw the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was something no rational person would ever want to repeat. But the circumstances at the end of WWII were also unique, because it was the only situation where only one country HAD nuclear weapons. There was no threat of reprisal for what we did, as there would be for anyone who used such weapons now. It would be very hard to imagine a set of circumstances arising today where the use of nuclear weapons would be the best option. Under those circumstances, to me the lives that were saved are by far the most important apsect of the end of WWII. The WAY those lives were saved and the war was won is secondary to me. I wish it wouldn't have HAD to happen, but I don't regret that it did.

Now you're talking to the right boy. I did a complete term paper on nuclear bombs.

First, 300 000 persons killed in the first wave! Almost as much killed by the radiation in incredible suffering.

Then you think nobody used them after that!?! AH let me laugh out loud that one.

2000 more test were conducted since Alomogordo (Trinity test). On that 700 are from the US. The "power" of the Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs were 12 and 10 kilotons(kt) of TNT. Now standard for nukes are 1 mt(megatons)... 100 times nagasaki. During the cold war, there was enough nuke to kill EVERYONE on the planet 10 times!!!

The soviet even tested a nuke that was 56.8mt... 56800 kt!!!

But then, the radiations that comes from those 2 bombs are there for at least 250 years, cause they were small.

But I must however agree that this was probably the best way to end that war. That's sad. But then the japs were just too stubborn to let it go.

Anyway to come back to canada, yes i am a frog. Say what you want but you didn't make peace with me. Anyway, would you nuke Canada, that's what would happen: Power would be cut for you and for us for a couple of days, all electronics thingys would be destroyed on a radius of about 2000 km. Then the wind would carry half of the radiation particules onto YOUR territory, and you would suffer the radiactive winter as we would.

Anyway, if you are to nuke Canada, I don't mind only if you direct that on anglo-Canadian and spare us from Québec...(we could even help you in the process...)

I like this guy, he has the info I wanted
One thing though, the term japs is very dissrespectfull.

Sorry, didn't meant any offense by calling Japaneses "Japs"
Where I live, it's not really considered disrespectfull so I didn't tought I could offense someone with that. In fact, I was in kind of a hurry, so I just started to use short terms...

As they say Mea Culpa

I'll try to watch my tongue...

When I said 'no one has used those kind of weapons again', I meant 'used them as a weapon'. Obviously there have been many tests, but nuclear weapons have not been used by one party against another to cause death and destruction since Nagasaki. That was all I meant. Sorry I didn't say it more clearly.

Nobody has used them since Nagasaki as a weapon... that's true.

But it doesn't mean were not close to a new use of it. Remember last year (Or was it 2 years ago?) India and Pakistan each developped nuclear tech. They respectively made 6 and 5 nuclear testing. Those two country are at war!!!

At least, it's far from here!

Salut ti-gars!
Ca s'rait difficile de nuker les anglos du Québec sans nous nuker aussi!
De toute façon, on les aimes trop nos anglos... non?

"Ca s'rait difficile de nuker les anglos du Québec sans nous nuker aussi!"

That, juntel, is what we call a lose-lose situation.

In English, please?

thrawn, we were just saying that you were right all the time, but that it was hard for us to admit it.
So we say it in french...

Er, yes, that's exactly what juntel was saying.

juntel!! OMG that was funny! :rollin:

Here is some background information that I thought all you ents out there may be interested in. Some of the highlights of the nuclear weapons age

-Operation Sandstone, Eniwetok(200mi W of Bikini). This tested technologies to enable doubled yields from the same amount of plutonium, increasing efficiency and the ability to stockpile. 3 events, among them shot Yoke, of 49 KT. This new design rendered the Fat Man implosion device obsolete (by 194 .

-Sandia, in 1949, brings assembly-line techniques and mass production to nuclear arms (and btw, many of the employees were women).

-August, 1949, 1st detonation by USSR

-Operation Greenhouse(gotta love that name )- four shots in 1951 on Eniwetok, of which 2, to me, were notable:
shot Item, 45.5 KT and first test of the tritium boosting principle
shot George, 225 KT, the first thermonuclear event

-Ivy-Mike, 10 megatons, first full-scale test of a hydrogen device, marking the entry into the thermonuclear age. This shot swept the test islands clean, leaving only a deep crater

-Castle-Bravo-largest device used in US atmospheric testing; it significantly increased its' projected yield by two and a half times, to 15 megatons. This test released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, exposing and contaminating numerous servicemen, native islanders and the crew of a japanese fishing boat(the fact that I think the latter were spooks is beside the point). This event brought the idea of fallout firmly to the public attention.

-Operation Wigwam, 500 miles off the coast of San Diego, to test effects of a submarine detonation on submarines. This event was only 30 KT, but still larger than Fat Man.

1956-1st aircraft-deliverable, high-yield US device-3.8 megatons. The Soviets already could deliver such a device by bomber.

-Operation Plumbbob, 24 tests in Nevada, including the Hood event, the largest atmospheric detonation OVER THE US-74 KT, at 1500 feet. Some of the footage I have seen of this event seems to suggest that the DOD put soldiers on the ground during this one to accelerate its' training in the effects of nuclear warfare, although I cannot confirm this. Also there was the Ranier event, which was the first fully-contained underground event by the US. 3KT, but at 790 feet below Ranier mesa it was sufficient to vaporize rock into a molten bubble 100 feet wide. After the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, underground testing was the only permissible sort, which also conveniently hid further testing from prying eyes.

1957- high altitude tests Teak and Orange, which were carried aloft by von Braun's Redstone rocket(see, it carried more than Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom). Teak yielded 3.8 megatons and created a violent magnetic disturbance in the atmosphere that silenced radio transmissions for nearly 8 hours and damaged electrical circuits from Hawaii to New Zealand.

1961- USSR's 57 megaton Monster Bomb. This horror was based on a design for a 100 megaton aircraft-deliverable weapon.

Operations Dominic, Nugent and Styrax. Nearly 100 tests in all, many results of which, using the Polaris and Swordfish missiles, are still classified, but are known to have been in the multi-megaton range, dropped from B-52s.

And just to make your day a little more surreal, my husband just gave me this tidbit that he ran across. Now I do not advocate that you get involved with the petition that this site is pushing (after all, that would be a personal thing for each of you, and none of my business), but some of the statistics are just charmingly grim: you enter your zip code and the site generates a listing of all of the weapons (and their country of origin) that are known to be trained on your community. I make no guarantees for the validity of this data, but I will guarantee that a look at the yields of your particular piece of Heavy Metal will make you shiver. For those who are interested in checking out this link, here it is:
www.protectamericansnow.com/showzipinfo.cfm

As far as my personal opinion of these things goes, I don't like them. I feel this way because it seems that those who use these things have not given them the proper respect and responsibility from day one. There are so many instances of unexpected effects apparent in the testing data. And now that old governments are falling and new ones rising, I am afraid that these choice nasties are going to fall into the wrong hands. I fear that if these things are ever used in anger again, we will wish that a few million more dead in WWII had been all we had to deal with. The US is currently the only nation to have wielded the nuclear weapon in anger. Regardless of how necessary or unnecessary this may have been, I do not think that this act will be forgotten. Had I been on the receiving end of Fat Man and Little Boy, I don't believe that I could ever forget that my nation had been so humbled. And in some way or another, I would want revenge. I don't say that the Japanese are gunning for us now, don't get me wrong. But I find it hard to believe that we will now be made to pay for this act at some point in the future. Call it Karma, call it fate, call it whatever you want, this is what I believe.
And as far as the charge of tree-hugging goes: since none of us and certainly none of our weapons of mass destruction would be here had we not had such a grand and splendid Earth to give us birth, you bet I'm a tree-hugger. If we damage our Mother Earth irreparably, we will not have to wait for the revenge of a mere nation: our world will take care of the job in short order and we will have the chance to walk the same path as that walked by the dinosaurs.

Have a nice day

cars, electronics, etc...
that's their revenge...

(oh, and also those weird manga's, including pokémon...)