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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.
Many Canadian troops outwitted the Germans during WWI by urinating on a cloth and holding it over their face to neutralize the effects of chlorine gas.
Our troops are awesome!
It's just too bad that we can't give the same respect to our "leaders".
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
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
Cept the germans used it in ypres, Belgium - so they should of stayed the fuck out of Belgium and gassed themselves?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Greek fire is arguably a chemical weapon and well known.
National Geographic has a nice article about the long history of chemical (and biological) weapons,
The real difference in the modern era, it has become an economical form of warfare as well as more effective (higher rate of casualties) than older chemical attacks.
If you don't want to get gassed, stay the fuck out of our country.
When the Germans first gassed the French, the French were not in Germany. The Germans were in France.
I just hum 'Kumbaya'.
I really annoys people.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yes, that's true, but it was the first successful attack.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Fritz Haber was an interesting guy. He won a Nobel Prize for synthesizing ammonia from atmospheric hydrogen and nitrogen. This was the basis of nitrogen-rich fertilizer that basically fed the world by making crop lands more productive. But he also developed the chlorine gas for the german govt and advocated for its use. Two weeks after the first chlorine gas attack his wife killed herself with his service revolver after an argument over its use.
look at how much a modern day Germany produces mainly from within its own borders through using innovation and well-compensated laborers.
All it took was ten years of total war (WW1 + WW2), 46 years of occupation (1945 - 1990) and massive societal changes that were imposed at gunpoint. All that to civilize a mostly western country with whom we shared a common history, language, and religion. I wonder what it will take to civilize the middle east?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
To you he may be a hero, but to Southerners, he is a mass murderer of women and children
I'm guessing Black Southerners have a different opinion of him.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
id like to take time out of my busy day to remind slashdotters that before the invention of poison gas warfare, wars themselves would drag on forever. Sure, you had trenches and all that but disease was still a slow and tedious way to get to the point. machine guns might have been a teriffic improvement, but nothing is quite as effective as a good gas attack against "the enemy." Anyhow thats just my two cents, and i really need to be going as ive a full itinerary ahead of me. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan...heck im not sure how ill make it to most of these African destinations but i sure people forgive my tardiness.
--Sincerely,
Death, the reaper
Destroyer of worlds.
P.S. im not sure what all the fuss about modern patriotism is. I've always supported both sides of the war.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The second you approve of a policy that restricts action X based on moral grounds, you have defined a vulnerability that a less ethical enemy will exploit.
Furthermore, when you're in a war, it's chaos. Bad stuff happens. Collateral damage happens. You certainly don't plan to inflict 1000 civilian casualties, but you can predict that in a city of 1 million people undergoing an all out conflagration, there will statistically be civilians killed, displaced, wounded, orphaned, starving, etc. You don't stop a war just because you're better at math.
War also isn't the first choice of a rational society. Diplomacy, negotiations, sanctions, pressure, demonstrations, all these kinds of activities are intended to solve the problem before it degenerates into war. But there is always another side, and if it degenerates to war, it's because at least one side was acting in bad faith. ISIL isn't even acting as a rational society. They don't negotiate - they enter an area, kidnap and rape the girls and take them forcibly as wives, and kill, conscript, or indenture the males. They use civilians as human shields, betting that an opposing force won't bomb their headquarters if they have them located in a schoolhouse full of children.
An outside society can do two things: allow the continued expansion of slavery and genocide, or attempt to stop it. If non-military resolutions fail, what would you have them do? "Sorry, you can't fight those insurgents because they duct-tape kidnapped children to the front of their vehicles." "Right, we'll just let them continue on their homicidal path because we can't place those children at risk."
It's not like anyone in the West wants civilian casualties. The moral high ground may not be perfect, and it may not be absolutely 100% civilian casualty free, but you can't claim a millimeter of moral high ground if you let the atrocities continue unchecked.
John
Most chemical weapons were not invented to be weapons at first, but during the era when chemistry evolved, many compounds were created to be used in chemical processes, to produce things like poly vinyl chloride (for the old folks modern 12" LPs are made of this)
Phosgene for example. Till today is produced in tons and tons and tons. And this very day today you had a 100% chance to touch things or ingest things(medicine) were produced using phosgene or familiar compounds.
Not weapons kill people, people kill people, but this is not ment as a let go for engineers and scientists to use this as an excuse.
No, that was not the plan. It is a result of poor planning and short-sightedness. We give the people who put us in these messes far too much credit. We'd prefer to believe that they planned it, as opposed to simply not planning anything at all or simply not caring at all.
Not that the West needed to be involved to make the Middle East unstable. If we left the place alone, it would be just as unstable. Tribesmen and various empires have been fighting over that area for centuries. Oil has just made it worse.
I guess it depends on how much everyone learns from history or example. Of course, it's been joked that those who study history are condemned to watch others repeat it... :-(
http://www.historyisaweapon.co...
Those changes to Germany came from the values of a 1930s/1940s USA.
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/2...
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place? The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans."
But, sadly, that USA and its values effectively no longer exist 70-80 years later. Today's USA has different values -- some are better (less racism and sexism overall, more respect for the environment), others are worse (less respect for workers, the "two-income trap", policies that promote a greater rich/poor divide, and more meddling in other nation's affairs which may produce profits for some connected few but produces huge costs for the whole USA let along the disrupted countries).
The real issue may be, like Gandhi is claimed to have said when asked by a journalist: "What do you think of Western civilization?", he said, "I think it would be a good idea."
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2...
At this point, as US citizen, I'm much more concerned about what the US government does both abroad and at home (including stuff like supporting a repressive Saudi Arabia, other actions abroad that make terrorist blowback more likely, domestic cage-like "free speech zones", domestic rulings saying border patrols can operate in a constitution-ignoring way up to 100 miles inland, etc.) -- than what people in the Middle East cradle of civilization do. And I remain always aware there are large numbers of nuclear weapons still ready to fly on short notice...
http://politics.slashdot.org/s...
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/2...
So, what will it take to civilize the USA? A basic income might be a start...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
WW1 was not a land dispute.
It was definitely a land dispute. France wanted their land back that they lost to Germany in 1870. The Germans were remembering Frederick the Great, emulating his land grabs. The British offered territory to Italy to join the fight.
No one cared much about Serbia: even Austria didn't care too much. To think that the war was about the assassination is to overlook a lot of history. The assassination was merely the trigger so many people were hoping for.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Furthermore, there was no requirement to stay in the union when the US was formed
You've never read the Articles of Confederation, have you?
Your argument is basically, "The South held slaves, the North were angels trying to swoop down and protect the helpless slaves from their Southern oppressors. Sherman's killing of civilians is perfectly OK in that context."
Nope. My argument is that it was a total war and Sherman destroyed targets of military value. He didn't directly kill civilians; he rendered some civilians homeless, which is a difference that is apparently lost on you. The wanton killing and aimless destruction that you're imagining is a figment of Southern imagination. Special Field Orders No. 120, emphasis mine:
IV. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten day's provisions for the command and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass, but during a halt or a camp they may be permitted to gather turnips, apples, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock of their camp. To regular foraging parties must be instructed the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road traveled.
V. To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.
VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, etc, belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Germans seems to *always* be in France whenever there's a war on.
Not always. Before 1871, the French used to go to Germany. Especially this guy.
Table salt contains chloride, not chlorine. Chlorine is dangerous because it has a very high electron affinity. It will happily steal electrons from your lung tissue if you inhale it. Chloride is basically chlorine that already has stolen an electron, so it's quite harmless.
Tribesmen and various empires have been fighting over that area for centuries. If we left the place alone, it would be just as unstable.
The same could be said for every square inch of the earth yet we've managed to create very large and powerful countries. The oil wealth in the Middle East may be just the thing that one or two nations need to overcome the other factions and create a large stable influential nation rivaling the US, or China.
And those men like Robert E. Lee weren't traitors
He served in the United States Army, before the war, as a Commissioned Officer, which by definition means he swore an oath to preserve and protect the United States. If you're worried about your State one day needing to leave the Union then you probably shouldn't be swearing oaths to preserve the Union.
The only difference between them is that most in the South say themselves not just as Americans, but ultimately as Virginians, Georgians, Mississippians, etc.
Parse this part of the 14th Amendment:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
You do realize the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution AFTER the Civil War, in 1868, right? And that ratifying it was one of the conditions imposed on the Southern states during reconstruction. So there was nothing in the Constitution that prohibited what they did. Also, but 1898 Congress generally removed disabilities incurred due to the 14th Amendment by those involved in the Confederacy. Lee's citizenship was also restored retroactively to June 13 1865, but that didn't happen until 1975. Davis got his restored in 1978. So no, they are not traitors.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
That song, "Peter Paul and Mary: Because All Men Are Brothers", reminds me of the new movie "Senn" which we watched last night. Specifically, the PPM lyrics of: "My brother's fears are my fears, yellow white and brown. My brother's tears are my tears the whole wide world around."
"Senn" is an impressive movie, especially considering it was produced supposedly for only US$15000. That goes to show what modern technology and an internet-connected gift economy can do nowadays.
http://sennition.com/
This is a bit of a spoiler, but the connection is because of a key aspect of the movie's plot relates to humans' feeling each others emotions and how that changes how they behave, especially in a corporate context.
Which also reminds me of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
"In addition, Iacoboni has argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy."
And some people labelled sociopaths or psychopaths may not have much of these feelings or may feel them more selectively.
"Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch"
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
Yet many of our corporate and political leaders at these point may fit that description...
And what do you do with various criminals who often engage in psychopathic behavior? And by whose definitions? Put your "brother" in jail?
And in a big city, given out current economic paradigm, people may also need to learn to switch off or decrease empathy in some way just to survive thousands of interpersonal encounters an hour when walking down the street...
On this plane of existence, there seems to be a complexity of human (and other) life existing in practice at a middle ground between chaos and stasis, competition and cooperation, fire and ice, meshwork and hierarchy, and so on.
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/me...
The Lathe of Heaven (as another spoiler) has a section where the protagonist wishes for "world peace", and it is accomplished by the appearance of an alien invasion of the moon, which unites all humanity in opposition...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
So, while we should be careful what we wish for, and things are complex, still, there are so many possible environmental menaces that more cooperation is in order, IMHO. But it is never quite so simple as "all men are brothers". After all, sadly, even "brothers" sometimes fight each other like in the US Civil War.
Still, our culture may shape how competition or aggression is expressed or channeled into more positive directions. Like Mr. Fred Rogers' sings: "What do you do with the mad that you feel?" As with Haber, a chemist can figure out a way to feed billions of people with nitrogenous fertilizer, or they can figure out how to kill large numbers of people with poison gas, or, in Haber's case, a chemist can even do both. The irony is that Haber's doing the first (to feed people) made doing the second (to kill people) unnecessary -- except that politics has taken a century to catch up with the potential of his (and others') inventions.
Likewise, even now, imagine what we could have had if the USA had invested three trillion US dollars on fusion energy research and better batteries and solar panels and energy efficiency -- instead of incurring that much and more on the Iraq war. Carter had the right idea, but he was not re-elected, even though (or perhaps because) he said:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americ...
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of f
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The second you approve of a policy that restricts action X based on moral grounds, you have defined a vulnerability that a less ethical enemy will exploit.
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."
Wars are not won by brutality. They're won by being smarter than the enemy or as Winston Churchill once uttered:
"Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter".
History is filled with the destruction of empires built on brutality. Even the most successful ones barely outlasted their leaders (Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun) where as the generals we remember the most were the most innovative and intelligent of their time (I.E. Julius Ceasar, Sun Tzu). Anyone who thinks they can bludgeon their enemies into submission are simply setting themselves up for a fall.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Overripe Camembert Mortars? Munster grenades?
Excuse my nit picking, but the Nazis hardly used gas chambers in concentration camps. Mostly, they built special camps dedicated for murdering (mostly Jews, but it depends on the camp), and gas chambers was mostly used in those. These are, generally, refered to as "Extermination camps".
There were gas chambers in some of the concentration camps as well, but their use there was relatively marginal. Most people who died in concentration camps died from the cold, starvation and diseases, as well as direct murders (i.e. - getting shot).
Shachar
A basic income is like social security payments every month regardless of your age or whether you work. A minimum wage is the smallest amount an employer can pay you if you work. The two are completely different things, even though both benefit the poor in different ways. A basic income benefits (almost) everyone though, regardless of your wage.
Despite the AC post that is a sibling of this suggesting both a basic income and a minimum wage are needed, I tend to agree with the grandparent poster who suggests that with a basic income we can dispense with a minimum wage and other similar protections in exchange. A basic income is far, far better than a minimum wage. Economically, a minimum wage is only going to accelerate the automation of most jobs as well. That may not be a bad thing by itself, but automation is bad for many people without a basic income when people need a job to survive in our society.
That's one of the appeals of a basic to conservatives, and a reason something like a basic income was passed by the US House (but failed barely in the Senate) around 1970 in the USA. It was defeated in part by some liberal Senators thinking the proposal was not good enough (also with some conservative opposition), and sadly it has not come up again significantly since. Senator Daniel Moynihan wrote a book about the politics of a basic income back then.
With a basic income, most people can be more choosy about where they work, which is going to put pressure on companies to voluntarily adhere to better labor standards. Should that be a problem in practice, other labor protections could be revisited -- and a working populace with a basic income would have more time for political engagement about all that. Frankly, the benefits of the basic income politically for most people are probably one reason it has been back-burnered for so long.
However, that said, I also feel universal health care (at a minimum, Medicare for all) should also be part of any basic income program -- along with other health care reforms (like Andrew Weil or Joel Fuhrman or Blue Zones talk about) to focus more on prevention especially through good nutrition as well as things like promoting exercise, social interactions, music, meditation or similar, yoga or similar, and so on.
The reason why these questions of economics and a basic income and jobs and health care and so forth all matter in the context of chemical weapons of mass destruction is that whether countries go to war often hinges on all these factors. Socio-economic factors often drive war, for multiple reasons, including war is a convenient way to get a populace distracted from focusing on other domestic economic failings of leadership. A populace that is reasonably happy as-is may be less likely to support war for things like "lebensraum" or "oil profits" or whatever. And if citizens are not kept busy with make work, they would have more time to participate in the democratic process as well as educate themselves about current issues including war profiteering and the true cost of war. Citizens would also have more time to invent the next breakthrough to further prosperity, whether hot or cold fusion, useful domestic robots powered by free and open source software, new information management tools, innovative new products and materials by observing nature like how we got Velcro, and so on. They of course also would have more money on a regular basis (regardless of the ups and down of "employment") to actually purchase products produced locally. That might mean business (guided by steady-state non-expansive economic theory based on reliable demand given a basic income) might have less incentive to look abroad for "markets" and so to foster a militarism that enforces the openness of such markets at gunpoint (as with, say, the Opium war of the USA and Britain and such again China to force acceptance of Western-supplied narcotics into China, or with various more recent US interventions abroad related to oil profits or natural gas profits).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.