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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.

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. The Lazarus Effect Full Movie by danielsunusa · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The Lazarus Effect Full Movie Download https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  2. How long? by jdavidb · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    There's a reason I play this song to my kids a lot:

    How many roads must a man walk down

    Before they call him a man?

    How many seas must a white dove sail

    Before she sleeps in the sand?

    How many times must the cannonballs fly

    Before they're forever banned?

    The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

    The answer is blowing in the wind.

    How many years must a mountain exist

    Before it is washed to the sea?

    How many years can some people exist

    Before they're allowed to be free?

    How many times can a man turn his head

    and pretend that he just doesn't see?

    The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

    The answer is blowing in the wind.

    How many times must a man look up

    Before he can see the sky?

    How many ears must one man have

    Before he can hear people cry?

    How many deaths will it take till he knows

    That too many people have died?

    The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

    The answer is blowing in the wind.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld6fAO4idaI

  3. Also, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? & Butle by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    A Pete Seeger song, likewise covered by Peter, Paul and Mary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    http://www.metrolyrics.com/whe...
    ====
    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Young girls have picked them everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the young girls gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the young girls gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the young girls gone?
    Gone for husbands everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the husbands gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the husbands gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the husbands gone?
    Gone for soldiers everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the soldiers gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the soldiers gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the soldiers gone?
    Gone to graveyards, everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the graveyards gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the graveyards gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the graveyards gone?
    Gone to flowers, everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?

    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Long time ago

    Where have all the flowers gone?
    Young girls have picked them everyone
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    Oh, when will they ever learn?
    ===

    See also on the Bob Dylan backstory for "Blowing in the Wind": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
    http://www.npr.org/2000/10/21/...

    And for another part of that picture, from a US Major General Smedley Butler :
    http://www.ratical.org/ratvill...
    "WAR is a racket. It always has been.
    It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
    A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
    In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
    How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
    Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
    And what is this bill?
    This bill r

    --
    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.