March 9th-10th 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Meetinghouse. A U.S. air raid in which the densely populated city of Tokyo was firebombed and around 100,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, died extremely painful deaths similar to the ones of this young mother and her small child, both of whom might still be alive today if not for humanities failure to avoid this conflict via diplomacy guided and backed by a free press and freethinking citizens.

Just think of all they and the millions more who also died in WW2 missed these past 70 years and what they might have been able to contribute had their lives not been cut so short.

The purpose of this post is to remind/inform people of this tragic historical event and that even in a world without nuclear weapons we humans are fully capable of inflicting massive damage upon ourselves and the planet with conventional ones. Therefore as we work towards reducing the worlds nuclear and conventional arsenals we must strive to strengthen the foundations of peace so current and future disputes never deteriorate to the point where war becomes even a remote possibility.

This can be done by encouraging people to think freely and to climb out of the narrow wells of partisanship, nationalism, and superstition that the minds of many still occupy in order to get an overview of the situation here on planet earth. This will help more people realize that we’re all one species living within one fragile biosphere, that we all share the same need for clean air, water, land, and a stable climate, and that we’re more likely to achieve these things by working together than we are by killing each other.