I don’t think the crowd’s reaction was out of line.

The crowd, according to the writeup on plastic.com, started chanting "Leave our country". If they think that that is her only option apart from supporting George W Bush and his oil-fired adventurism, then they're more disenfranchised than she is.

Peter

Er, except maybe Ian Paisley.

Kinda funny that you mention the only member of Parliament I'm familiar with. He used to come speak at the college I went to (Bob Jones University.) He's certainly a powerful speaker.

I guess it would make sense that (who I assume to be) the most radical conservative member of Parliament would speak at arguably the most radical conservative university in the US.

yeah...it was a radical party dude!

EDIT:
arguably the most radical conservative university in the US

Certainly one of the two or three largest "radical" conservative Christian Universities...and the one that gets the most publicity for their outspokenness.

It's funny how each person defines radical relative to their position. They would term you to be radically liberal.

Er, except maybe Ian Paisley.

Kinda funny that you mention the only member of Parliament I'm familiar with. He used to come speak at the college I went to (Bob Jones University.) He's certainly a powerful speaker.

That's for sure. Fortunately, the other 649 members of Parliament aren't like that -- otherwise you'd probably be able to hear most debates all the way from Bob Jones University without needing amplification...

I think it was the Mary Whitehouse Experience that had a great sketch in which Ian Paisley wanders round the supermarket reading out his shopping list... they got the cadences of his firebrand speeches just right as well as the accent, and the sketch culminated with him hollering at the vein-popping top of his voice, thumping his palm at each syllable, "Two! Tins! Of! Tomatoes!"

Peter

All right, I’ll confess to not having read the story (no link provided and I was being lazy) so I shouldn’t really defend the crowd. I will say I would take a person’s protest against the flag to be meant against the United States, not against the policies of whoever was president at the time. The U.S. flag represents our country, not a person or party, or even current actions in which it’s engaging. I’m understanding (though I still haven’t read the article) that this girl’s purpose was to denounce the current actions of the U.S., not to say that the U.S. as an institution is bad. However, it is at least reasonable to see how someone sitting in the crowd would take her actions to be protesting the country that has provided her a great deal of freedom and thus think of her as ungrateful.

(who I assume to be) the most radical conservative member of Parliament

Yes, I guess, although Northern Ireland politics is so utterly polarised by the Northern Ireland question itself that those parties seem to be seldom plotted on the same axis as the right/centre/left of mainland politics. That was a slightly throwaway joke about Paisley and Union Jacks, although like other hardline Unionists in Northern Ireland his enthusiasm for Britain is colossally greater than Britain's enthusiasm for itself, and you'll see more Union Jacks on display in any one loyalist street in Belfast than you will in the whole of London. Plus royaliste que le roi, je pense.

Peter

At school for some reason I had no teaching at all with regards to the Northern Ireland conflict which until last week left me pretty much clueless to who/what the basic people were and what they stood for! OK, I know who's who and what they want but I didn't know *why* or, for instance, that the Potato Famine was a key point in the history.

I spent a morning reading up and found some good sites with good "potted" histories:

http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/irehist.html
http://members.tripod.com/~JerryDesmond/index-2.html

Gareth

I found it very disturbing when I discovered that Dr Paisley holds two of the top three slots at http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?currsection=topstuff

We (the US) have more weapons of mass destruction than anyone, and we're not too concerned about disarming ourselves. We're no too worried about disarming lots of other countries, either

There was something signed by every country years ago (including Iraq) - I think it was called the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty or something. It basically said that every country already with nukes could keep them, but countries without them couldn't get them.

Wearing a peace t-shirt is aparently a crime now.

I think the crime was trespassing. If someone is on your property and you tell them to leave for whatever reason, they have to.

If someone is on your property and you tell them to leave for whatever reason, they have to.

In Texas, it's perfectly legal to shoot someone if they are trespassing. That could definitely stain someone's peace t-shirt. - trs

I think it was called the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty or something

The treaty on the non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was put into effect in the 70's. That treaty also calls for the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons. But, since we re-initiated the process of manufacturing plutonium pits in 1997, and have been assembling new batches of nuclear weapons since 1998, it's pretty apparent that we don't hold much regard for the ideas outlined in that treaty.

One thing that concerns me is the fact that the President is acting as a Dictator. He is not allowed to declare war. It takes an Act of Congress to do so.

Congress have already given him carte blanche to wage war:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2318785.stm

>We don't use chemical or biological weapons,
>and have used nuclear weapons twice, when it was the last option.

Eh? Which revision of history did I miss there?

Oh, right, just when the Japanese navy was reduced to a couple of floating bathtubs and being faced down by a mere dozen or so USA carriers..Facing imminent death from two Sushi chefs with chopsticks, the brave USAians decided their last option was to level two large cities in Japan.. ?

Mmmm...

USAians?

Well, until the USA comes up with a geopolitically accurate name for it's inhabitants, USAians is the only term I know of to use. Yankees is really an Eastern USA term, isn't it?

Cheers

Yankees is really an Eastern USA term, isn't it?

Well sort of.
Being a Yankee New Englander myself, for me it would not be an innacurate label.
But it has been used by other countries to label us as a whole in the past. Yankee go home, yanquis go home, etc. etc.
The "yankee go home" phrase did originate after the northerners defeated the south during the civil war, but its been used in vietnam, south america, the phillipines, etc.
I know for instance there were banners in Japan with that slogan during the US occupation in the fifties, and I dont think they were referring to just us New Englanders.
I think if you were to refer to americans as yankees we would get the gist if it.
The southerners might not like it, but they dont really count anyway.
.
..
...
heh, just kidding you guys.

Within the US, Yankees would refer to northeasterners (basically New England plus New York, New Jersey, and maybe Pennsylvania. Outside the US, Yankee seems to be able to refer to any US citizen (``Yankee go home'', etc.).

Just to round out the post, the term comes from the fact that the northeastern US used to be home to a lot of Dutch immigrants, and they were referred to indefinitely as Janke, a common Dutch first name. This degraded into Yankee and expanded from there to incorporate anyone from that general area.

the brave USAians decided their last option was to level two large cities in Japan.. ?

There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity. The immediate psychological impact of the atomic bombs crippled the Japanese in a way that no amount of fire-bombing or land attacks could have. The Japanese Navy was indeed out of the picture, but Japan was not ready to surrender, and the loss of Japanese life from the two A-bombs was nowhere near what it would have been with continued firebombing.

I'm curious as to what your ideal end to the fighting in the Pacific Theater would have been... More loss of life from firebombing? A Japanese victory?

Mark - however, to all the men who fought hard & saw plenty of comrades killed in fierce battles like Iwo-Jima, it may not have been as clear as you put it. If the Japanese soldiers fought that hard for some distant rock, how hard would they have fought on their own soil? I don't disagree that both sides can be argued, but I think your comment doesn't really reflect view the decision makers saw at the time. The Japanese fought VERY hard.

-Zeke

Many, many more men on both sides would have died in an invasion of Japan. Dropping the bombs actually spared life.

The number people who died as a direct result of the bomb was approximately 200,000. Do you think 200,000 people would have died as the result of an invasion?

- trs

The number people who died as a direct result of the bomb was approximately 200,000. Do you think 200,000 people would have died as the result of an invasion?

Three times that many French people were killed in the war, admittedly by two invasions, one in each direction, but this in a much less populous and much less well-defended country than Japan. And that doesn't count the soldiers of other nations who died in France. Large-scale land invasions against determined resistance are pretty frickin' messy affairs.

Peter

Do you think 200,000 people would have died as the result of an invasion?

Yes. Some claim that as many as 3.5million Japanese (soldiers and civilians) and 500,000 US soldiers would have died in an attempt to take the Japanese home islands.

Some sources:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/invade.htm
http://hnn.us/articles/181.html
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/1995/September/ERsept.18/9_18_95nuclear.bomb.html

Admittedly, some of these sites are attempting to justify dropping nukes on Japan. 200,000 seems low (to me) for any WW2-era invasion, Japan or otherwise.

The number people who died as a direct result of the bomb was approximately 200,000. Do you think 200,000 people would have died as the result of an invasion?

Conservative casualty figures for just the battle for Okinawa exceeded 150,000. To invade mainland Japan and force a Japanese surrender? Easily half a million.

Yikes!

I wonder - out of curiosity - about the per-capita civilian casualty rate in either of the two scenarios.

I wonder - out of curiosity - about the per-capita civilian casualty rate in either of the two scenarios.

Well, the numbers I quoted counted both military and civilian casualties. Some of Roger's links above will probably give you a more detailed breakdown on the Japanese side. It's important to note that the distinction between civilians and soldiers is a bit tough to make when talking about the country being invaded, because if you come to invade my land, I'm going to grab a gun and sign up with the nearest military division. This is all a bit before my time, but my understanding of the Japanese fighting force is that there were a lot of conscripts who weren't really soldiers, but would have fought against any American invasion of Japan. Would you count them as civilians or soldiers?

Anyway as I mentioned above, the civilian death rate due to firebombing in places like Tokyo was just as high as that of the nuclear attacks. The only difference was the psychological impact of a brand new weapon with such massive power.

Yes - all very good points.

By the way there, Tony, um... yeah... I heard there was a problem with your TPS reports. Umm... yeah... you're gonna want to go ahead and file that new coversheet along with the report. Yeah...

Yeah, I got the memo.