Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 19:13:01 +0100
To: revs@csf.colorado.edu
From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber)
Subject: RE^2: Racism ... remember?

Hello to all:

Here I want to lose some words regarding the comments of Mark he sent around
Feb 8, 96.

Mark wrote:
 > The mistake people always make is to see 'war crimes' in their own terms:
 > they may have butchered some of us, but we butchered some of them. They feel
 > quite radical when critcising their own government for being 'as bad as the 
 > rest'. 

Is it really a mistake if people on this forum - not only Alan Spector -
reminds us of war crimes and other offences against humanity that were
committed by their own governments or societies? No nation should ever forget
those dark incidents in its history. It's an essential supposition for possibly
creating a livable future. Not enough? 

 > The point is to challenge that arrogance of the Western powers who believe
 > they have  the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whoever
 > they want. 

Right. But who are the 'Western Powers'? You may say the U.S., Great Britain,
Germany, France, who else? It's neither you nor me. So can someone show me
THOSE persons of the west who overbearingly do whatever they want, who believe
to have at their disposal hundreds of thousands of young men and women and by
demand the whole of nations. Who wants to persuade us of something like a
'right to war'? Who has the last authority to decide what is a 'war crime'?
The UN Organization wouldn't be able to. (Let me refer explicitly to Andrew
Varvel's "Genocide and International Law" he posted in Oct 95 to REVS list). 

 > For example, the Japs were bombed at Hiroshima and Nagosaki because
 > they were 'monkeys'  in the eyes of the US and Britain, not because the
 > techonology 'distanced' the bombers or  the generals from their victims,
 > as some have said in this forum. 

Sorry: 'Japs'? I cannot assess the dimension of hatred among the combatants at
that time. But for sure you cannot say 'the U.S.' or 'Britain' saw  the
Japanese as 'monkeys'. Nevertheless in the U.S. particular military and
governmental circles act regardless of the freedom and health of unknowing
civilians and soldiers. Warfare related experiments were done in former days as
well as nowadays. The location of such crime seems to depend on the most
suitable opportunity to perform, not on a 'selection' of a dedicated country or
race. Experiments are run inside and outside the USA. The first atom bomb was
blasted in Nevada, the following two were 'tested' in Japan under 'real war
condition'. Today they continue by computer simulations. For what? However,
there has been a very confusing development of things in the history which led
at last to that horrible end of the U.S.-Japan war. I'm just reading a book
"Heller als tausend Sonnen" ("Brighter than a thousand suns") written by Robert
Jungk in 1964. The author describes the lives of the atom researchers at those
days from the twenties over the years of WW2. A truly seizing and amazing
story. They played the key role in developing atomic weapons. At the same time
they became victims of a fatal concoction of pioneering scientific discoveries,
political intrigues and racism. A lengthy chain of human misunderstandings and
false political estimations preceded the disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

I'd like to discuss more about these issues.

That's all for now,

 Stephan Leineweber