----- Original Message ----- From: Wojtek Sokolowski To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 7:44 AM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] SPIEGEL on Dresden
> SPIEGEL ONLINE
>
> The Destruction of Dresden:
> A Multimedia Overview of the Firestorm
>
<...> Is there a rational position on this issue other than the trite anti-war slogans? I do not think so, but then again, humans are not rational (at least not fully) and the only rational thing is to accept that.
Wojtek <...>
Rational? Look at the people who think these events can be classified 'rationally' Eichman thought so... So did Robert "Stranglove" McNamara.
Very calculating, rational people. Well respected men.
The only truly rational thing to do is keep storming the walls. http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1415031,00.html McLibel Two win legal aid case Tuesday February 15, 2005
Two campaigners known as the "McLibel Two" should have been given legal aid by the British government to defend themselves against a libel action by the food giant McDonald's, Europe's highest court ruled today.
The ruling by the European court of human rights is a huge victory for the pair, David Morris and Helen Steel, and a pleasing end for them to the 15-year McLibel saga. It is being scrutinised by the government, which may now be forced to change the libel laws. Campaign groups welcomed today's verdict.
The McLibel Two lost a libel case against McDonald's in 1997, in which the relatively penniless environmental activists famously represented themselves against the firm's expensive lawyers. The firm had sued them for libel because of leaflets the two Londoners had distributed, but not written, entitled: "What's Wrong with McDonald's". <...>
Earlier, speaking ahead of the outcome, Mr Morris told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that he still had concerns about McDonald's. He said: "I don't think they can change because they are an institution that exists to make profits and to increase their power.
" We can see the effects of not just what McDonald's is doing but what all multinationals are doing to our planet. We believe there's an alternative where people and communities have control over decision-making and resources." <...>
[Letter to SPIEGEL... on Dresden.] ----- Original Message ----- From: Leigh Meyers To: spon_feedback at spiegel.de Cc: spon_leserbriefe at spiegel.de Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 9:01 AM Subject: Feedback+SPIEGEL's+Daily+Take:+Dresden+Remembers,+Neo-Nazis+Suffer+Bad+Amnesia+(ID:+341717)
~
"The loonies accuse the Allies of having committed "war crimes" in Dresden and propagate propaganda from the National Socialist era that at least 200,000 were killed in the fire bombing. Serious scientific investigations have concluded that a total of 35,000. Now that's what we call fuzzy math."
Hello,
General Curtis LeMay and friends carefully studied the outcome of standardized ratio of kills per ton, and decided it would work quite well in Vietnam as well.
The type of math used to calculate the atrocities of Vietnam, Iraq, World War II... is a dysfunctional math that provides no solutions.
No matter who does the calculating, the results are fatally flawed.
Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com ~~~~~
We all need to give serious consideration to the possibility that you can't really have a rational discussion with people that talk about these issues with clinical detachment.
Perhaps a myopic, single-mind focused world view mimics certain behavioral patterns that resemble, or we have been taught to believe, is rationality.
<...> April-May 1972 White House transcripts of Richard Nixon talking to Henry Kissinger about "this shit-ass little country":
NIXON: We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack....
I'm thinking of the dikes.
KISSINGER: I agree with you.
NIXON: ...Will that drown people?
KISSINGER: About two hundred thousand people." <...> Tom Hayden, The Nation March 8, 2004 http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/18052 =========
Take it easy... But take it. L
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