blessed britons

On 27 July 1943, the RAF killed 50,000 people in Hamburg. Reflecting on this barbarity, nuclear physicist Freeman Dyson who was then a clerk for Arthur "Bomber" Harris wrote that the Nazis "had sat in their offices, writing memoranda and calculating how to murder people efficiently, just like me. The main difference was that they were sent to jail or hanged as war criminals, while I went free." Eighty percent of all the bombs in World War II fell in the last ten months of the war during which the British, for instance, decided to bomb residential areas with the argument that this would foreshorten the war. The US borrowed this logic at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but only after the USAF firebombed Tokyo on 8 May (General Curtis LeMay who directed the operations, said "we knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done"). On 13 February 1945, the RAF killed 100,000 in Dresden; on 6 August 1945, the USAF killed 100,000 instantly in Hiroshima (another 100,000 died over the course of the next year).

— Vijay Prashad

mad world

...in addition to the much trumpeted $100 million Billg has donated to India's fight against HIV, he's funding the Microsoft jihad against Linux to the far more impressive tune of $421 million. That means that Linux is more than four times worse than AIDS to Billg and his happy Redmond family.

— Thomas C Greene

The Register

guilt

forgiveness

Submitted by antarchi on June 22, 2007 - 02:56.

How should we respond to wrongdoing? Is it possible - or desirable - to forgive people who don't even acknowledge responsibility? It obviously is, if you love someone unconditionally. But apart from that? And should we aim to 'forgive' everyone - whether or not we love them unconditionally and whether or not they acknowledge responsibility (let alone guilt)? Do we have the right to do so? And would it be a better world if we could?
----------
'I forgive you for pretending to be what you are not'
'But I am what I pretend to be'
'Well I still forgive you'.
- - -
'I forgive you for defrauding the taxpayer.'
'I intend to do it next year'
'I shall forgive you next year as well'
- - -
'I forgive you for burdening me unjustly'
'I did nothing to burden you'
'But I forgive you'
-----------
Please don't, I say. It ceases to mean anything and only expresses a patronising attitude: who are you, after all, to 'forgive' me for something for which I disclaim any responsibility.
Forgiveness is only a response that we want to meet if we feel some degree of responsibility ourselves, and therefore guilt. It is appropriate, very important, and actually helps (both sides) in such a case. But I would slap someone who 'forgave' me for something I think I didn't do. How dare they. And I would go on (not) doing it harder, just to show I don't desire their moral patronage.
That doesn't mean we have to condemn someone for life, just because they slip-up once - and even if they fail to acknowledge it. But it means that forgiveness is a precious emotion which we do not throw about here and there. It is reserved for special cases where (I think)...
1. The offender actually wants forgiveness
2. We are in a position to forgive (not everyone is)
And we need to realise that in putting ourselves in a position to 'forgive' we are (temporarily) acting as benefactor. We are raising ourselves above the other person. That is something we shouldn't do lightly.
In fact, failing to acknowledge a slip-up is a fairly good sign that an offender doesn't want forgiveness, at all (and you might end up with a slap in the face). I really wonder whether forgiving, in this case, is something we want to encourage as a response. Forgetting, maybe.

part of the human universe

Submitted by antarchi on June 22, 2007 - 03:05.

His world was a cold world, where eyes of death stared accusingly at him, a world littered with corpses and graves - graves of the unknown dead, dismembered or blown-up bodies. But for all the horrific singularity of his acts, de Kock was a desperate soul seeking to affirm to himself that he was still part of the human universe.