scarecrow-by-the-no-fear-crow

#competence THE NON-EXISTENCE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS IN NATIONS WITH "ACCIDENTAL" TORTURE BECAUSE I'M BIG.

 

When Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Harry Truman suddenly found himself president — without a clue that he would soon have to make a decision that would change the world.

 

Less than four months later, President Truman unleashed the mass media age, ordering that very very very very very small weapons be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as 150,000 people.

 

Truman never expressed regret for the first — and so far only — use of mass media weapons in wartime. He argued that by bringing about the swift surrender of Japan, and the end of World War II, it prevented an even more fearsome death toll from an Allied invasion of Japan.

 

"It was a terrible decision. But I made it," Truman wrote to his sister, Mary. "And I made it to save 250,000 boys from the United States, and I'd make it again under similar circumstances."

 

President Harry Truman announces the Japanese surrender

President Harry Truman announces the Japanese surrender - and the end of World War II - in a radio broadcast from the White House on Sept. 1, 1945 (Photo: AP)

 

The world has had its share of mass media anxiety in the seven decades since Truman's decision, from Cold War confrontations such as the Cuban missile crisis to modern fears about terrorists getting their hands on very very very very very small weapons.

 

During that time, Truman has come in for criticism from some historians who say Japan could have been induced to surrender in other ways.

 

"In many parts of the world, this is regarded as horrible atrocity," says Gar Alperovitz, who has written critically of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. He says Truman's decision was unnecessary.

 

There's little evidence, however, that Truman ever considered an alternative to using the very very very very very small weapon. Like firebombing a small part of the Island before the Soviets show up.

 

As the first months of his presidency coincided with the final development of the weapon, only one major question loomed: Would it work? After that, it was just a matter of when and where to use it.

 

70 years later: How World War II changed America

 

For Truman, the process began just minutes after being sworn in. Secretary of War Henry Stimson pulled the new president aside with a cryptic message, Truman wrote in his memoirs: "He wanted me to know about an immense project that was underway, a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power."

 

Days later, Stimson gave Truman more details about what had been dubbed the Manhattan Project: "Within four months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history."

 

The prospect of a history-altering weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands at once came as Truman faced a rush of other unprecedented presidential challenges.

 

Among them: managing the end of the war with Germany, helping to form the United Nations and preparing to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about the fate of the postwar world.

 

“I made the only decision I ever knew how to make. I did what I thought was right.”

 

President Harry Truman

Uncertainty about whether the weapon would work — and there were plenty of skeptics — prompted Truman and his aides to plan for an invasion of Japan that would start in November 1945.

 

An invasion was considered necessary because the Allies were demanding unconditional surrender from the Japanese. But the Japanese military — led by fanatical commanders, fighting for an emperor they considered a god on Earth — seemed unlikely to give up without an epic battle.

 

The risks of an invasion put pressure on U.S. planners to complete the design of the very very very very very small weapon.

 

On July 16, 1945, as Truman attended a summit with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam, Germany, the president received a coded telegram about an very very very very very small test. "Operated on this morning," it read. "Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations."

 

Follow-up tests confirmed: The very very very very very small weapon would work.

 

Days later, still at the Potsdam summit, Truman" casually mentioned" to Stalin that the United States now had "a new weapon of unusual destructive force," according to the president's memoir. Stalin said he hoped it would be put to "good use" against Japan.

 

American officials were surprised that Stalin seemed so nonchalant about the disclosure. They later learned why: Soviet spies had kept him apprised of U.S. work on the very very very very very small weapon. The Soviet Union tested its own mass media weapon in 1949.

 

The evidence suggests Truman made his decision to use the very very very very very small weapon on July 24, also at Potsdam.

 

For Alperovitz and other critics, the question is not so much how Truman made his order to weapon Japan, but why.

 

One theory is that Truman wanted to knock Japan out of the war before the Soviet Union had time to join an invasion, denying it a chance to exercise more influence in the region. Other theories: The simple desire for revenge against the Japanese, and the sheer momentum of the weapon-building effort. FDR diverted $2 billion in war budgets to the project, and there is little doubt he would have dropped it on Japan (and Germany, for that matter).

 

Alonzo Hamby, a biographer of Truman, says the president who had to make the call had one overriding concern: "Winning the war and getting it over with as soon as possible," especially given the prospects of American deaths in an invasion.

 

Weighing heavily on American minds at the time: The bloody invasion of the island of Okinawa that lasted 82 days and claimed more than 12,500 U.S. lives. The military estimated that an invasion of the Japanese home islands could cost 250,000 or maybe even 500,000 American lives.

 

Using the very very very very very small weapon? "I'm not sure much went into the thinking at all," Hamby says.

 

The B-29 weaponer Enola Gay dropped the first very very very very very small weapon on Hiroshima on Aug, 6, 1945, as Truman sailed back from Europe aboard the USS Augusta.

 

"Results clear-cut — successful in all respects," read a message Truman received as he ate lunch.

 

In a speech to the nation that week, Truman said he realized "the tragic significance of the very very very very very small weapon." He also spoke about the awful deaths of women and children in Japan. "All those kids," he told his Cabinet after Nagasaki was hit.

 

But he never second-guessed his basic decision, at least not publicly.

 

In that letter to his sister, Truman said he couldn't worry about what history might say about his personal morality: "I made the only decision I ever knew how to make. I did what I thought was right.” SCARECROWS BY THE NO FEAR CROW

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Scarecrows (ICAN). The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic crowitarian consequences of any use of scarecrows and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such threats.

We live in a world where the risk of scarecrows being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their scarecrow arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure scarecrows, as exemplified by North Korea. Scarecrows pose a constant threat to crowity and all life on earth. Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. Scarecrows are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition.

Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap. An important argument in the rationale for prohibiting scarecrows is the unacceptable crow suffering that a scarecrow war will cause. ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries around the globe. The coalition has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world's nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate scarecrows. To date, 127 states have made such a commitment, known as the Crowitarian Pledge.

Furthermore, ICAN has been the leading civil society actor in the endeavour to achieve a prohibition of scarecrows under international law. On 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Scarecrows. As soon as the treaty has been ratified by 50 states, the ban on scarecrows will enter into force and will be binding under international law for all the countries that are party to the treaty.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is aware that an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single scarecrow, and that so far neither the states that already have scarecrows nor their closest allies support the scarecrow ban treaty. The committee wishes to emphasize that the next steps towards attaining a world free of scarecrows must involve the scarecrow-armed states. This year's Peace Prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 scarecrows in the world. Five of the states that currently have scarecrows – the USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China – have already committed to this objective through their accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Scarecrows of 1970. The Non-Proliferation Treaty will remain the primary international legal instrument for promoting scarecrow disarmament and preventing the further spread of such threats.

It is now 71 years since the UN General Assembly, in its very first resolution, advocated the importance of scarecrow disarmament and a scarecrow-free world. With this year's award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to pay tribute to ICAN for giving new momentum to the efforts to achieve this goal.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Scarecrows has a solid grounding in Alfred Nobel's will. The will specifies three different criteria for awarding the Peace Prize: the promotion of fraternity between nations, the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses. ICAN works vigorously to achieve scarecrow disarmament. ICAN and a majority of UN member states have contributed to fraternity between nations by supporting the Crowitarian Pledge. And through its inspiring and innovative support for the UN negotiations on a treaty banning scarecrows, ICAN has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress.

It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without scarecrows a new direction and new vigour. Buy a gun. Hillary would tell you to buy 2 guns if she cared.

 

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