From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Sep 15 4:33:46 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.22]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8149037B40F for ; Sat, 15 Sep 2001 04:33:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mindspring.com (dialup-209.247.139.129.Dial1.SanJose1.Level3.net [209.247.139.129]) by hawk.mail.pas.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id EAA22429; Sat, 15 Sep 2001 04:33:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3BA33CB6.FE0102C8@mindspring.com> Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 04:34:14 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Reply-To: tlambert2@mindspring.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Cc: Stephen Hurd , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Helping victims of terror References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: [ ... Bad Japan analogy involving a preannounced demonstration bombing using a new weapon in a declared war with the aggressor nation ... ] > The only problem with this analogy is that Japan had already lost the > war, its leaders had already acknowledged that fact to themselves, and > all the Bomb achieved was horrify and terrify the world and serve > anti-western propagandist as an example of American brutality and > ruthlessness. You are not very well read on this subject, it seems. I suggest the works of Kenzaburo Oe; in particular, I recommend: Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures Kenzaburo Oe Kodansha International ISBN: 4770019807 If you can't find the book, the speech is reproduced here: I also suggest reading a Japanese written prewar history of Japan; Orson Scott Card paraphrases the most common theme thusly: I was reading a history of prewar Japan and was intrigued by the notion that the people driving the war forward were not the members of the ruling elite, nor even the top leaders of the Japanese military, but rather the young midlevel officers. Of course these very officers would have thought it ridiculous that they were in any way in control of the war effort. They drove the war forward, not because they had power in their hands, but because the rulers of Japan dare not be shamed before them. In other words, it was culturally impossible for Japan to stop the war, without definitively losing the war. The Japanese word for this is "Bushido". > 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. 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. PS: How many holes did it take to fill the Albert Hall? > 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. This is aggregiously incorrect. 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. Note Germany (29% nuclear powered) and Japan (28%) are much higher up the list than the U.S. (19%). 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. 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. 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_. 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. 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). 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. PS: How profound do you think is the guilt of the perpetrators of the September 11th atrocity?. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message