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100 Years of Chemical Weapons
MTorrice writes This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first large-scale use of chemical weapons during World War I. Sarah Everts at Chemical & Engineering News remembers the event with a detailed account of the day in 1915 when the German Army released chlorine gas on its enemies, igniting a chemical arms race. Read the diaries of soldiers involved in the first gas attack. By the end of WWI, scientists working for both warring parties had evaluated some 3,000 different chemicals for use as weapons. Even though poison gas didn't end up becoming an efficient killing weapon on WWI battlefields—it was responsible for less than 1% of WWI's fatalities--its adoption set a precedent for using chemicals to murder en masse. In the past century, poison gas has killed millions of civilians around the world: commuters on the Tokyo subway, anti-government demonstrators in Syria, and those incarcerated in Third Reich concentration camps. Everts profiles chemist Fritz Haber, the man who lobbied to unleash the gas that day in 1915.
Chemical weapons are essentially pesticides for humans.
Anyone else find it a little disturbing there's a chemical weapons magazine?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
For those who don't know, it is quite common (even standard procedure) in military operations to allow a certain quota of "collateral damage". In other words, governments not only "OK" the killing of innocents -- they expect and plan for it.
You expect it and plan for it so that you can minimize it. Battles themselves if not whole wars, are fought over resources (whether they be towns/land/populations, gold/oil/lumber/diamonds, or even simply political capital in the case of wars-"our economy sucks and people are mad at our political party, let's invade someone!"-like the Faulklands War) and there are usually civilians found in these areas. It is not immoral to expect and plan for civilian deaths. Immorality occurs when you do nothing to mitigate those potential deaths, or even worse intentionally seek them out. Detonating a bomb in a crowded marketplace is immoral. Using precision ammunition to target a bunker underneath an apartment building or mortars/rockets in a school instead of carpet bombing them so you don't destroy surrounding buildings is not. Often, those who hide behind civilians benefit more from the deaths of those civilians than they would protecting them and will even go out of their way to ensure greater civilian casualties.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I might support that, as long as the rest of the social safety net gets radically drawn back (particularly minimum wage, pension funds, and health insurance subsidies). Otherwise it's just more spending without the revenue to support that spending.
As somebody with no health insurance, working slightly above minimum wage, go fuck yourself, in the nicest way possible. Nothing personal against you, but we as a nation need basic income, for all the people who are, and will be out of gainful employment (and lack to credentials to receive it, really meaning, people without a college degree) in the near future. In general, you personal finance, fiscal responsibility types like to make issues far more complicated then they are. Your suggestion that increasing the social programs in one specific way requires slashing all the other ones, makes me wonder if you ever met the people who depend on these programs. One of the largest problems with our current welfare system, and the one I see my coworkers struggle with everyday, is commonly known as the doughnut hole (The term is technically designated for health insurance benefits, but slang terms are regularly repurposed). /., I really don't think most of the site has.), I'll attempt to explain it.
For those with no experience here (And given some of the responses I've seen on
x,y,z are scalar variables.
They make $x at work, and need $y for housing, food, fuel, etc. The maximum income for welfare benefits is $z. $x can go up to a finite value, (Generally to ($z + 1))., or down to zero. $y is fixed, unless their children eat hot-dogs every night, or they turn the heat off (It's winter here in the Northern Hemisphere.), and is some value slightly above $z or (2*$x), whichever is lower. So in effect, they must make less than they need, to actually get enough to live on. If jobs paid a living wage (Around (1.5 * $y)), or welfare minimums were increased by $10000 dollars, this hole wouldn't exist. But because it does, people I know actually work less hours then they possibly could, because it would put them over $z.
The problem is not entitlements or interest rates, or any other random financial problem you can think up. People need more money. Not encouragement to start a small business or a waiver to try and start a new career at 45. Economics are zero-sum, unless you own a means of production, or your labor is worth anything (And for many it's not). You're worried about not having the revenue, but forget that we are beyond due for a tax hike on the higher brackets, and closure of the loopholes. Cutting back social services would still put people in the exact same position they are now, and not fix the problem. Either the business need to pay a livable wage, or the government has to, but know this; Unemployment will increase with the onset of automation, and greatly so. People who know a useful repetitive skill will have no means of support their family and the most dangerous man is one with nothing left to lose. Social change is coming, either by progress or violence, but it is coming.