Leaderboard

Generations of Americans were abused using the Christian Bible to justify the acts of morally bankrupt men. It's become a hallmark that lets them embrace their inner sinner and get away with both sanctimony and sexual abuse. When I think about most church leadership in this country, I picture a corrupt, hypocritical man exhorting everyone else to be better. So actually, I think the Bible is the perfect weapon for TFG to wield. He's a rapist, lots of rape justified by churches in the US, and there's always a way to support the patriarchy if you use the Bible. And this Bible has extra irony built right in by including a copy of the Constitution, knowing the purchaser will never make it to the part about separation of Church and State!

You could probably start with some of these: Reader discretion is advised, especially for Judges 19-21 (it's rather graphic).

I've read the Bible several times, while I don't memorize it I do recall passages where the rape of girls who haven't "known" a man is allowed as spoils of war.

IC, a bit of a sensational title for an actual discussion, poisoning the well I think. While I think Trump, IMHO, is accurately described as a rapist it is my opinion his "Bible sales" is nothing but a another grift and I find it odd that Christians in general don't find it tantamount to a slap in the face but rapist Bible?

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan did so in August 2023 while dimissing a counterclaim by Donald Trump for defamation in the E.J Carroll case. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump-rape-language-e-jean-carroll Kaplan had already outlined why it was not defamation for Carroll to say Trump raped her. “As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.” The title of my post was satirical - (one reason it was in quotes), and took aim squarely at the rampant hypocrisy of a grifter and moral imbecile like Trump attempting to wrap himself in the American flag while hawking overpriced GBA themed bibles in the middle of holy week.

Given that politics includes moral philosophy, I think one should consider that the actual use of a WMD tends to open up a tactical (and utilitarian) conversation that can drown out the moral one. For example, justification on the basis of saved lives is not always a compelling argument in other aspects of human life. A worldwide totalitarian regime which forced contraception on every person on Earth could save billions of future lives. Worldwide tobacco ban and death penalty for growers would save millions. And so on. Humans are not really utilitarians, for the most part. What is your moral sense of what America became, by using a nuke on civilians, and likely accelerating an international arms race? And based on that, what should we do NOW?

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the plan was to cripple the US Pacific fleet for just long enough to allow Japan to seize control of other southeast Asian countries such as British Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies, and consolidate them into their ‘Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere’. The Japanese hoped they could force the USA to negotiate a political settlement from a position of weakness that would validate Japan’s seizure of these territories, and leave them in control on much more favourable terms than existed in the 1930s. Perceptive Japanese strategists like Admiral Yamamoto who planned the Pearl Harbour attack knew full well that Japan could never defeat the USA in a prolonged war of attrition - so a negotiated diplomatic ending to hostilities with the allies was always a key part of the original Japanese war plan. It went wrong from the outset because the Japanese failed to destroy the 3 main US aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbour (they were all at sea). The US carriers subsequently inflicted terrible damage on the Japanese fleet at the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Meanwhile the USA’s war aims became the total destruction of the Japanese military machine, and the unconditional surrender of their nation. In the summer of 1943, Japanese Navy chiefs asked Admiral Sokichi Takagi who was one of their best strategists to carry out an independent survey of the course of the war. His report concluded that Japan must sue for peace if the USA captured the Solomon islands. The Japanese subsequently lost control of the Solomon Islands at the end of 1943, but the Japanese Army leadership defied all warnings from the Navy and carried on fighting - refusing to countenance any possibility of diplomatic negotiation or surrender.

There is an entire chapter devoted to this subject in The Fall of Japan (1968) by William Craig [Ch.3 ‘The Diplomacy of Defeat’ ]. There were some covert attempts made by high ranking Japanese officials to initiate diplomatic contacts in great secrecy with the Soviet foreign minister Molotov by passing messages between Jacob Malik the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo, and Naosoke Sato - the Japanese ambassador in Moscow. The idea was first raised by Emperor Hirohito in person on 22 June 1945 within hours of the death of General Ushijima on Okinawa. This initiative stalled when Malik the Soviet ambassador failed to respond. The Emperor Hirohito offered to send Prince Fumimaro Konoye to Russia as his personal envoy to meet with Molotov in July 1945, but the Soviet leadership who were preparing for the Potsdam Conference failed to provide any opportunity of a meeting with Molotov. Stalin had already privately decided to declare war on Japan at a moment of his choosing very soon after the conference ended, and he regarded the Japanese initiative as moot. On Monday 6th August 1945, the very day that Hiroshima was bombed, Shigenori Togo the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs sent an urgent telegram to ambassador Sato noting that Stalin and Molotov had just returned to Moscow that very day. Togo instructed Sato to demand an immediate meeting with Molotov and seek a definitive reply from him as to whether the Soviet Union would help broker a peace deal with the allies. Before Sato could reply, Togo sent another even more frantic telegram - he had just received an eye-witness report that said “The whole city of Hiroshima was destroyed instantly by a single bomb”. Ambassador Sato sent a telegram back to Togo on the 7th August to say that Molotov had finally agreed to meet the Japanese diplomats the following day at 17.00. This meeting duly took place on the 8th August 1945, and Molotov used it to declare war on Japan. [see The Fall of Japan ch.5 for the timeline and full texts of the diplomatic cables].

There is a detailed discussion of most of the points you raise in an article by the military historian and Pacific War expert Richard B. Frank called ‘No Recipe For Victory” available on the website for the National WWII Museum New Orleans https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/victory-in-japan-army-navy-1945 There had been a long standing division of opinion since January 1943 between the chiefs of the US Navy and the US Army over how best to achieve the unconditional surrender of Japan. The US Navy favoured a blockade that would have involved starving the Japanese population into surrender. The US Army favoured an invasion plan called operation Downfall subdivided into two parts: - i. Operation Olympic to seize control of the southern island of Kyushu which was scheduled to begin in November 1945 ii. Operation Coronet to invade the Tokyo region on Honshu about 1 March 1946. The argument over whether to go with a naval blockade or an amphibious invasion of the archipelago was settled in favour of the Army’s invasion plan at the Honolulu Conference in July 1944. Doubts then arose because of the massive casualties sustained during the invasion of Okinawa in May 1945 (49,000+ with 12,000 killed including the 4-star general in command of the operation). Admiral Nimitz privately said he could no longer support the invasion plan in the light of this, and even more concerns were raised by fresh military intelligence that Japan had moved such large numbers of troops and aircraft into Kyusuhu, that the US landing forces would be in a 1-1 combat situation with no numerical advantage there - a scenario described as “a recipe for a bloodbath”. The main problem with a naval blockade was that it would have taken a very long time to complete. The US Navy’s own estimates suggested that the Japanese would not collapse until 1947 at the earliest. Critics pointed out that the high level of social control traditionally found in Japanese society along with the ruthless suppression of dissent by the Japanese military government would have led to the prioritization of feeding those involved in sustaining the war effort, while leaving millions of civilians to starve to death - a prospect that even the most hawkish supporters of a blockade were reluctant to discuss in detail. There was also considerable concern in the USA about a possible loss of will to carry on fighting an endlessly protracted war in the Pacific against an enemy with no history of military compromise or surrender. Finally there is the question of the intense firebombings that began on 10 March with the 279 plane Meetinghouse raid on Tokyo which levelled 2 square miles of eastern Tokyo, and probably killed over 100,000 civilians. The Meetinghouse raid was quickly followed by similar raids against Nagoya on 12 March, Osaka on 14 March , Kobe on 18 March, and Nagoya again on the 19 March. - These raids were deemed a military success by Major Curtis Lemay who was in command of the USAAF strategic bombing campaign - and yet these raids had had largely ceased by May 1945 - why ? i. The USAAF had run out of incendiary ordnance. These raids had depleted their entire stock. ii. From May 1945 onwards the USAAF had to urgently redeploy southwards to support the US invasion of Okinawa which had run into unexpectedly intense opposition including sustained kamikaze attacks. iii. These fire-bombing raids had no discernible effect in weakening or deflecting the resolve of the Japanese leadership to carry on fighting to the bitter end - regardless of the civilian casualties sustained. As a matter of fact the Japanese government did not begin to consider any diplomatic solutions to end the war until the morning of 6 August just after the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and when they did, the first Japanese diplomatic overtures were made towards the Soviet Union in the hope of enlisting their help in brokering a cease-fire - hopes that were promptly dashed when the Soviet Union belatedly declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria.

Magister colin leslie dean proves Kants Critique of Pure Reason is shown to be a failure and complete rubbish As stated https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/kant2.htm “The Critique of Pure Reason is unified by a single line of argument involving just two or three central ideas, which, in spite of a certain complexity and obscurity in its development, can be fairly summed up as follows: Kant poses the question, "How is synthetic, a priori knowledge possible?"” a priori knowledge is https://www.britannica.com/topic/a-priori-knowledge a priori judgments are “Latent in the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori for Kant is the antithesis between necessary truth and contingent truth (a truth is necessary if it cannot be denied without contradiction) The former applies to a priori judgments, which are arrived at independently of experience and hold universally).” kants notion that mathematics and euclidean geometry is a priori is shown to be rubbish thus his claim that mathematics and euclidean geometry is synthetic a priori is rubbish thus Kants Critique of Pure Reason is shown to be a failure and complete rubbish http://gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/wp-content/uploads/Kant.pdf or www.scribd.com/document/690781235/Commentary-Kants-Critique-of-Pure-Reason-is-shown-to-be-a-failure-and-complete-rubbish-criticisms-epsitemology-ontology-metaphysics-synthetic-a examples 1)from number theory 2) from geometry example 1) from number theory from mathematics let x=0.999...(the 9s dont stop thus is an infinite decimal thus non-integer) 10x =9.999... 10x-x =9.999…- 0.999… 9x=9 x= 1(an integer) maths prove an interger=/is a non-integer maths ends in contradiction-thus mathematics cant be a priori with mathematics ending in contradiction you can prove anything in mathematics ie you can prove Fermat's last theorem and you can disprove Fermat's last theorem you only need to find 1 contradiction in a system ie mathematics to show that for the whole system you can prove anything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion In classical logic, intuitionistic logic and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion (Latin: ex falso [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from falsehood, anything [follows]'; or ex contradictione [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from contradiction, anything [follows]'), or the principle of Pseudo-Scotus (falsely attributed to Duns Scotus), is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction.[1] That is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (including their negations) can be inferred from it; this is known as deductive explosion thus thus mathematics cant be a priori thus Kants Critique of Pure Reason is shown to be a failure and complete rubbish 2) from geometry A 1 unit by 1 unit √2 triangle cannot be constructed-mathematics ends in contradiction proof mathematicians will tell you √2 does not terminate yet in the same breath tell you A 1 unit by 1 unit √2 triangle can be constructed even though they admit √2 does not terminate thus you cant construct a √2 hypotenuse thus you cannot construct 1 unit by 1 unit √2 triangle thus geometry ends in contradiction-thus geometry cant be a priori thus Kants Critique of Pure Reason is shown to be a failure and complete rubbish you only need to find 1 contradiction in a system ie mathematics to show that for the whole system you can prove anything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion In classical logic, intuitionistic logic and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion (Latin: ex falso [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from falsehood, anything [follows]'; or ex contradictione [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from contradiction, anything [follows]'), or the principle of Pseudo-Scotus (falsely attributed to Duns Scotus), is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction.[1] That is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (including their negations) can be inferred from it; this is known as deductive explosion thus Kants Critique of Pure Reason is shown to be a failure and complete rubbish