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Do-It-Yourself Electronic Enigma Machine
Radio Shack Robot writes "The Enigma-E is a DIY Building Kit that enables you to build your own electronic variant of the famous Enigma coding machine that was used by the German army during WWII. It works just like a real Enigma and is compatible with an M3 and M4 Enigma as well as the standard Service Machines. A message encrypted on, say, a real Enigma M4 can be read on the Enigma-E and vice versa."
Well, no. You should be modded down as an anti-soldier bigot.
There's a very good chance that your country has soldiers engaged in a military action that others see as warfare against an ethnic group. Presumably those soldier continue their action because they have promised on their honour to uphold their country's decisions.
What a specious argument -- while I disagree with the war in Iraq, I can tell the difference between that and Hitler's invasion of Poland (and then France, and Russia, and.... ). Anyone who claims there's a general moral equivalency between American soldiers and Nazi war criminals has either decided to jettison decency in order to make a point, or simply has no real grasp of the historical realities -- or is a despicable troll.
Son, if you can't distinguish between American soldiers defending their country and Nazi members of the SS invading Germany's neighbors, if you can't tell the difference between decent soldiers and war criminals, then no amount of argument on my part is going to make you see the light.
I don't begrudge Germany's common soldiers getting a small pension, even if their service was in Nazi aggression. Yes, some of the Waffen-SS were "common" battlefield Soldaten -- but some were war criminals.
But I have to ask why slave laborers get no more that about $7000 total, when some former SS get that much in a year.
And I have to draw the line at war criminals. Germany giving pensions to Nazi war criminals is just a slap in the face to Germany's victims and to all Americans who sacrificed to bring an end to Hitler's Reich -- it's those American soldiers I'm standing up for.
I don't think those American veterans would call me a bigot for thinking they're not the moral equivalent of Nazi war criminals.
I won't ask that you apologize to me, but I do ask that you apologize to the American soldiers you've compared to Nazis.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
What about the allied soldiers from other countries?
Yeah, honestly I considered substituing "Allies" for Americans, but I was worried that
1) as an American I should speak only for Americans, and
2) Allied soldiers in World War II included the Soviets, and the Soviets did commit war crimes -- most notably, the Katyn Forrest massacre of 11,000 Polish officers (which was for a long time blamed on the Nazis) and lots of brutal rapes and murders of German civilians at the end of, and immediately after, the war.
So as to not muddy the message, I just wrote about "American soldiers". But I do not mean to minimize the sacrifices of our Allies -- indeed, had it not been for the stalwart British as led by Mr. Churchill, America might never have been able to take the war to the German homeland.
Poster also did not compare American soldiers to Nazis; he just pointed out that soldiers are paid to follow orders....
He (FFFish (7567)) explicitly said "There's a very good chance that your country has soldiers engaged in a military action that others see as warfare against an ethnic group. Presumably those soldier continue their action because they have promised on their honour to uphold their country's decisions.
What that ignores is that fighting against enemies predominantly of one ethnic group, as for example, America fighting against Italy in WWII, is very different than targeting one ethnic group, as the Nazis did with the Jews, the Slavs, and the Roma ("Gypsies").
The two are not at all morally equivalent, and it's pure sophistry to conflate Nazi-style genocide and "normal" warfare as practice by America.
And before anyone objects, yes, there were some war crimes committed by Americans, and yes, there were some "good Germans" who avoided or actively opposed Nazi criminality. The difference is one of policy and intent: U.S. soldiers aren't trying to commit genocide; the Nazi Einsatzgruppen were trying and succeeding at genocide. And that's why FFFish (7567)'s comment is so objectionable: because it sees no difference between these two very different kinds of soldiers.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The majority of *rich* Singaporeans are Chinese, but the majority of Singaporeans are Malays, and the great majority of them are Muslims.
But no worries, the ones you'll get laid by are Chinese, and they're hot.