What are some debatable accounts of history? - Page 21

On February 11 2011 05:50 PiousMartyr wrote:


I do think that the US wanted war, but I don't think they wanted a suprise attack on their home soil. Japan wanted to invade the Philippines, which was a US commonwealth state at the time. If they invaded the Philippines first and fought the US troops there, the US Navy would have time to come to their aid.

Instead, Japan destroyed half of the US's battleships located at Perl Harbor and damaged the rest. They destroyed several destroyers and damaged some cruisers as well. The very next day, they invaded the Philippines. By smashing the US navy before it had a chance to move out they could attack the Philippines without fear of being flanked by the US Navy.

The war economy did wonders for the economy of the US and it provided them with the military to remain one of strongest (if not the strongest) military forces in the world. They wanted war, but they didn't want to lose a huge chunk of their navy or the Philippines.




Hmm, true, I forgot that most of those countries were communist.

Japan also wanted to invade the Philippines, which was a US Commonwealth state. They would have wanted to defend that, since it was still technically US soil. It's not like the US had nothing to lose by letting Japan expand.

The embargo was supposed to force Japan into surrendering. Instead, Japan went to war to restore their oil imports.

On February 11 2011 05:47 SonuvBob wrote:

Read the first link... hard to tell how bad it was from that.

Barely started on the second.. holy shit, that is fucked UP.

On February 11 2011 05:34 RoosterSamurai wrote:

Actually the Japanese had great respect for the dead bodies of even enemy soldiers, which is why it upset them so much when the Americans did the exact opposite.

On February 11 2011 05:55 PiousMartyr wrote:


Read about The Rape of Nanking.

The Japanese soldiers at the time were not respectful. They murdered children, raped women, brutalized and mutilated people.

Here, read about how nice the Japanese were

On February 11 2011 05:55 HeavenS wrote:
9/11 is extremely debatable i think. Theres a ton of information on why the collapse of the buildings wasnt possible and i know there was a debunk on alot of claims but that debunk was debunked as well. im not gonna get into it all but in all honesty You know if it were just crazies and uneducated people saying these things then i might brush it off to just conspiracy theory, but when you have architects and engineers very meticulously looking at data and analyzing it and coming up short of the official explanation, there is something wrong.

i dont wanna get into this too much because these discussions go on forever but if you want to read up on what certified architects and engineers and respected professors from well known universities have to say then go here http://www.ae911truth.org/. its architects and engineers for 9/11 truth.

if you wanna keep dismissing these educated people as crazies then go ahead but in my opinion it would be a disservice to this country to not revisit and launch an independent investigation into it all. theres no reason not to do it.

http://www.ae911truth.org/ GO!

On February 11 2011 05:40 Falling wrote:


Political figures left buildings, but if we are to call into question written documentation on the history of Jesus, then we have little confidence of any other historical document.

That is, if one could prove that the writing's purpose was to convey 'what happened,' which from the writings themselves you could determine it. Then it's a matter of, was the meaning corrupted over time- that's where you run into problems.

To be accurate, you'd want quantity of manuscripts and also the earliest possible sources. (To prevent the telephone game effect.)

New Testament 5686 Greek manuscripts- earliest manuscripts within 100 years (conservative guess, some place it earlier.)
Julius Casar's conquest of Gaul 10 copies- earliest manuscript 1000 years from the time it was written.
Tacticus- 20 copies, 1000 year gap

The best one is Homer 600 copies- 500 year gap

Herodotus- only 8 copies, 1300 year gap.

So as far whether the meaning was distorted over time, we'd have to call into question every other historical written document as they do not have near the quantity, nor quality of manuscripts.

So then you'd have to go with the writers themselves are liars, madmen, delusional, etc. I don't really feel like dealing with that argument as I don't really want to derail this too much.

Just look at the number of manuscripts and the gap between origin and earliest copy. Those other historical documents we assume to be true unless proven to be false. The New Testament is generally assumed to be false no matter how much historical accuracy it contains and continues to be considered false unless every single point and historical detail can be verified.

On February 11 2011 05:55 HeavenS wrote:
9/11 is extremely debatable i think. Theres a ton of information on why the collapse of the buildings wasnt possible and i know there was a debunk on alot of claims but that debunk was debunked as well. im not gonna get into it all but in all honesty You know if it were just crazies and uneducated people saying these things then i might brush it off to just conspiracy theory, but when you have architects and engineers very meticulously looking at data and analyzing it and coming up short of the official explanation, there is something wrong.

i dont wanna get into this too much because these discussions go on forever but if you want to read up on what certified architects and engineers and respected professors from well known universities have to say then go here http://www.ae911truth.org/. its architects and engineers for 9/11 truth.

if you wanna keep dismissing these educated people as crazies then go ahead but in my opinion it would be a disservice to this country to not revisit and launch an independent investigation into it all. theres no reason not to do it.

http://www.ae911truth.org/ GO!

On February 11 2011 04:54 RoosterSamurai wrote:

China deserved to be declared war on.
YELLOW RIVER FLOOD (1938)

During the Sino-Japanese war, as Japanese forces moved west towards the railroad junction of Chengchow, there to meet up with other Japanese units advancing on Hankow, the Chinese Nationalists blew up the flood dykes of the Yellow River. The resulting flood inundated three provinces and forty-four counties. Between four and five thousand villages and eleven towns were flooded. A total of 3,911,354 people were displaced. Altogether 893,303 lives were lost through drowning. The Chinese Nationalists blamed this atrocity on the Japanese.

If that's not enough for you, you can brush up on your pre-Mao era Chinese history here.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM

Then you'll realize that China killed, literally, more of it's own citizens than Japan ever did.

On February 11 2011 05:48 Treemonkeys wrote:


Yeah but how would you even know? Like the US is going to come out and say "hey everyone we won the war so BTW here's all the fucked up shit we did during the war...". The only reason we know about what the germans and japansese did is because they were defeated so of course the allies want to make them look like the bad guy.

On February 11 2011 05:40 Falling wrote:


Political figures left buildings, but if we are to call into question written documentation on the history of Jesus, then we have little confidence of any other historical document.

That is, if one could prove that the writing's purpose was to convey 'what happened,' which from the writings themselves you could determine it. Then it's a matter of, was the meaning corrupted over time- that's where you run into problems.

To be accurate, you'd want quantity of manuscripts and also the earliest possible sources. (To prevent the telephone game effect.)

New Testament 5686 Greek manuscripts- earliest manuscripts within 100 years (conservative guess, some place it earlier.)
Julius Casar's conquest of Gaul 10 copies- earliest manuscript 1000 years from the time it was written.
Tacticus- 20 copies, 1000 year gap

The best one is Homer 600 copies- 500 year gap

Herodotus- only 8 copies, 1300 year gap.

So as far whether the meaning was distorted over time, we'd have to call into question every other historical written document as they do not have near the quantity, nor quality of manuscripts.

So then you'd have to go with the writers themselves are liars, madmen, delusional, etc. I don't really feel like dealing with that argument as I don't really want to derail this too much.

Just look at the number of manuscripts and the gap between origin and earliest copy. Those other historical documents we assume to be true unless proven to be false. The New Testament is generally assumed to be false no matter how much historical accuracy it contains and continues to be considered false unless every single point and historical detail can be verified.

On February 11 2011 05:49 RoosterSamurai wrote:

You are responsible for disproving them, which you have yet to do. So far, in this entire debate, I am the ONLY person to post a single supporting link.
I grant you permission to use any search engine you want. Go ahead and get some evidence to refute my evidence, or support your claims.

On February 11 2011 06:05 RoosterSamurai wrote:
Wow, just got done reading about the Belgian Congo story. I feel rather stupid, as this is the first time I've ever heard of this. Honestly, up until now I've always kind of thought of Belgium being a rather benevolent country...But wow. Still trying to wrap my head around what they did to the people of the Congo...

On February 11 2011 06:15 mcc wrote:

Do you know how it works ? You claim something factual , the burden of proof is on you. If you propose hypothesis than there is disproving. You cannot prove hypothesis, and you cannot require disproving of facts. That said I actually pointed out arguments that you chose to ignore.

But since I also kind of claimed something , here you go : let's assume the number you provided 11mln for german-caused deaths (if necessary we can go up to something like at least 50mln killed in the wars caused by germany, just so we have some upper limit). Now let us consider Soviet-caused deaths. The biggest contributors will be Ukrainian famine (if we count it) which is about 4mln (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor). Second will be probably Gulag-caused deaths : about 1.3 mln between 1934-1953. Other causes are smaller by an order of magnitude : purges, Katyn, Finland war, occupation of baltic states, occupation of Poland,...
The sum is a lot lower than even the 11mln for Germany.

On February 11 2011 06:18 Elegy wrote:


Well, I do feel that its necessary to point out that King Leopold was a megalomaniac monster that was a brilliant manipulator of public opinion as well as extraordinarily talented as a statesmen. The guy single handedly orchestrated himself an entire empire.

Paraphrasing from Hochshild's book...

"The Belgian experiment surely wasn't unique. In Berlin, there aren't any monuments to the slaughtered Hereros, nor are the French or Portugese known for their own similar slashing of population in French and Portuguese Africa.

The Congo is one of the great silences in the general public knowledge of the crimes of humanity. Ironically, only a few years after Leopold's death, the British and later Americans used "brave little Belgium" as a rallying cry against the Germans in WW2, with the allegations that the Germans had crucified Belgian babies and other propaganda."

The burning of state records from the period also contributed greatly to the forgetting of the Congo, that and, of course, WW1 put the events there as a footnote in history that is often forgotten or simply never taught in public education.

On February 11 2011 06:22 Elegy wrote:
Woops, meant WW1***

Yeah, the irony is that Belgium is portrayed as the innocent little child in Europe attacked by the evil Hun! while it gladly supplied rubber to European industry built on the blood and hands (literally...) of the Congolese