Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 02:41:54 +0200 From: Piet Delport <siberiyan@mweb.co.za> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, Stephen Hurd <deuce@lordlegacy.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Helping victims of terror Message-ID: <20010916024154.B57021@athalon> In-Reply-To: <3BA33CB6.FE0102C8@mindspring.com> References: <NFBBJPHLGLNJEEECOCHAMEFMCDAA.deuce@lordlegacy.org> <xzpelp9s9ga.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <3BA33CB6.FE0102C8@mindspring.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable [ disclaimer: I'm a South African with no official training in ] [ socio-politics, aside from what i glean from observation, and ] [ reading the occasional book and/or other piece of literature. ] [ So this is mainly an armchair opinion. ] On Sat, 15 Sep 2001 at 04:34:14 -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: [snip] > > Likewise, I was in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, and you have no > > idea how hard it was - as a descendant of the "winners" - to stand > > in the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Ged=E4chtniskirche knowing that the > > carpet bombing of Hamburg, Berlin and other major German cities from > > 1943 and onwards, in which the church was destroyed, served no > > military purpose other than maybe boost British morale and allow > > Allied Bomber Command to pat eachother's backs and congratulate > > eachother about their cleverness. >=20 > I'm certain that, had the Germans pointed out a more direct route to > defeating them, including precisely the targets to concentrate on in > order to make them lose, the Allies would have been very happy to undo > the one bolt that held everything together, instead of maniacally > blasting away with a shotgun. So, to paraphrase, it was Germany's fault that the Allies carpet-bombed their cities, because Germany didn't conveniently point out to their enemies where all their most important military targets are instead? Expecting the country you're at war with to conveniently reveal all their key military weak spots to you is absurd, and taking the fact that they (obviously) didn't do so and using it as a moral excuse to carpet bomb their cities and civilians is just as absurd. The fact is that thousands of civilians died in those bombings, and while war in general is a Bad Thing, i think the mass-killing of civilians like that is one of the worst examples of it. Whether it's the Allies, the Germans, or even Bin Laden's terrorists that do the said killing doesn't make it any less wrong. > PS: How many holes did it take to fill the Albert Hall? >=20 > > What's even harder to swallow (and quite humbling) is the sense that > > many younger Germans (most I've had a chance to talk to, in fact) > > still harbor deep feelings of guilt about World War II. Americans, > > however, don't seem to think much of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the > > carpet bombings; history is obviously written by the winners. >=20 > This is aggregiously incorrect. >=20 > The U.S. is so guilt-ridden over the use of atomic weapons in Japan > that it eschews nuclear power with a fear verging on a true phobia. > In order of percentage of power generated via nuclear energy, the U.S. > ranks 10th. In order of most to least (Source: "Energy Studies > Yearbook, United Nations, 1995"), the top 10 are: France, Belgium, > Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Ukraine, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, > United States. >=20 > Note Germany (29% nuclear powered) and Japan (28%) are much higher up > the list than the U.S. (19%). >=20 > California PG&E customers pay a fee on their bill each month to > support the decommissioning of existing nuclear plants -- and this > decommissioning is occurring _despite_ a large enough power crisis > that rolling blackouts were occurring alost daily for months on end: > we were so afraid of nuclear power, we were getting rid of the > reactors, despite having to cut power to homes, schools, businesses, > and, in some instances, vital services on which peoples lives may > depend. >=20 > We do this _despite_ the fact that one half of the Diablo Canyon > facility generates 1.8 times the electricity that would be generated > by all the wind turbines in California running at full speed, > constantly -- assuming we could force the wind to blow sufficiently > fast, everywhere at once. >=20 > We do this _despite_ the fact that natural gas powered plants generate > the vast majority of the green house gas CO2 that is generated in > California -- very close to all other sources of the gas in the state > _combined_. >=20 > We do this _despite_ the fact that nuclear waste can be held safely > until it is itself safe, while the chemical waste from coal-fired > plants _does not break down_ -- it is dangerous _forever_. In the > worst case scenario, you mix the waste with the tailing from the mine > you extracted it from, and put it back -- and then it's _safer_ than > what you took out in the first place. These are indeed many excellent examples of how Americans want to get rid of nuclear power plants, despite their superiority in every way over older technologies. However, i sincerely doubt that they has anything whatsoever to do with guilt over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More likely is that this is because a large number of Americans (statistically speaking) perceive nuclear power as dangerous to *themselves* (cue cancer scares, and public paranoia of reactors melting down a la Chernobyl). [1] Even besides that, what do electricity-generating nuclear _power plants_ (which Americans are opposed to) have to do with nuclear _weapons_ (which you hardly even mention) in this context? > We use standard fission plants, unlike Japan and France and most other > countries, which use breeder reactors -- making nuclear a > self-renewing fuel everywhere but the U.S. (in the U.S., there are > only two breeder reactors, and they are only used to generate nuclear > weapons). If Americans are so soul-struck with guilt over their bombing of Japan, why isn't there an outcry over the fact that even more nuclear weapons are being manufactured? =20 Why aren't they trying to get rid of the *bombs*, instead of civilian reactors? > So you are an idiot if you don't think that America does not suffer > _profound_ guilt over the use of nuclear weapons in the Japan > conflict; it does -- to the point of abandoning money, working lights > and heat, efficiency, and rabid environmentalism... all to assuage > that guilt. Guilt over the past use of nuclear weapons and irrational fear of civilian nuclear reactors are two entirely separate things. I doubt *anyone* paying that fee to support the de-commissioning of existing reactors are thinking about Hiroshima/Nagasaki when they do so. Instead, are there any public memorials dedicated to the tragedy, any public days of mourning, or anything like that which would indicate real guilt? (This is an honest question, i really haven't the faintest idea.) > PS: How profound do you think is the guilt of the perpetrators of the > September 11th atrocity?. Even less than the guilt of Joe Average American over America's own atrocities, i imagine. [1] The foolishness of this is a whole other, unrelated, rant. --=20 Piet Delport <siberiyan@mweb.co.za> Today's subliminal thought is: --WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE7o/VSzRUP82sZFCcRApoQAKCEHYAIE8BgvPaj9K8PSRtBjD5xUQCfUaEF iy0gAXE+a51z4EkIcrBINXw= =QyHt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010916024154.B57021>