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Post by Jason Thompson on Mar 7, 2007 7:34:34 GMT -4
Think about it. Six windows in one area, all with visible fire. Two windows in another area, both visible with fire. Hundreds of windows in another area, none of them with visible fire.
Is that logical?
But I can't see hundreds of windows on the south face, only the ones that the smoke cleared from long enough to make them visible. What about the others?
And however you try to wave it away with logic, the fact remains that large fires could be burning inside the building where you can't see them from outside. I cannot accept your assertion that there are no fires on the south face until and unless you can show every window to be devoid of fires.
Yes, that is an unreasonable standard of proof, but it is no more unreasonable than saying there can't be any fires there when you can't even see most of the windows.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Mar 5, 2007 12:29:45 GMT -4
And the windows that do become visible past the smoke show no fires.
Again, the building is HUGE! Why do you expect windows to show fires? Why do you think that proves there is no fire when there are vast areas of building well away from the windows that could be raging infernos but hidden from view from the outside?
Air currents around the building will have no trouble confining the smoke to one face of the building. Or, probably more likely, clearing it away from one face (since we cannot see the other two I cannot comfortably say that smoke is only coming from the south face). Why would smoke from the ground be any more likely to cling to one face than smoke from inside? Surely that should be blown away from the building before it got anywhere near the top floor?
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Post by Jason Thompson on Mar 2, 2007 5:48:47 GMT -4
So your whole argument is that there were no fires inside WTC7 because there are none visible from the windows?
So what is your answer to the perfectly valid question about the size of the building making large areas of it invisible from the outside? How do you know those sections nowhere near a window or on the other side of the building were not on fire? Over the road from where I work we routinely see smoke pouring from a small wooded area. We see no fire unless we go to a particular location where we can see it through the trees.
If there are no fires, where is all the smoke pouring out of the building coming from?
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 26, 2006 11:17:56 GMT -4
Champagne lifestyle my foot. Von Braun and his team were incarcerated in a POW camp on arrival in the US, and they were held as working POWs for several years, with heavy restrictions on what they could do and where they could go.
I see it in a totally different way
And you still don't appreciate the full significance of the dictatorship, the war, the whole basis of von Braun's life. You want evidence that he was working at gunpoint, you show us evidence that he had some choice about the matter and was free to leave Germany at any time.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 23, 2006 8:41:21 GMT -4
Before I dare judge them in a negative light you mean,it seems perfectly fine to judge them hero's.
Can we just clarify right here and now that no-one here is judging von Braun a hero. You seem to think that is the default position of anyone who defends him. It is not.
I don't consider von Braun a hero precisely because of his Nazi associations. At the very least he associated with a bad regime in the interests of furthering his own interests. But I'm not going to attach excessive significance to something that formed only a part of his life and disregard everything else.
I don't know and don't really care how many snuck about with Von Braun
Ah, in other words you've made up your mind and couldn't care less how ill-informed your judgement may be. Well, thanks for clearing that up.
but 5000 makes him sound like Moses, and we know thats ideologically impossible.
Do we? Why?
The author of that book may have been writing in leg spin on that page.
Or Phantom may have made a typo and added an extra zero. According to my information (which consists of stuff from books, before anyone asks for a bloody url) the number was nearer 500.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 23, 2006 4:37:14 GMT -4
So Von Braun is a beaten wife now !
Stop being so literal. It was an analogy to point out that, as lofty as people's ideas can be, it is not as easy to get oneself out of a difficult and unpleasant situation as people who have never been in such a situation seem to think. As I said, von Braun was undertaking what was considered vital war work, and therefore stopping work on the V2 for any reason would be considered treasonous behaviour and punished accordingly. Again I draw your attention to the fact that he was arrested and imprisoned for merely considering alternative applications for his rocket technology, and only a personal appeal to Hitler by Albert Speer regarding his indispensibility to the war effort at this stage secured his release. Silly me I thought those dudes in the Deaths-head caps were the very ones doing all the dominating,intimidating and exterminating.
Don't be naive. That is an absurd generalisation. Von Braun was not in charge of an extermination camp organising the systematic genocide of entire ethnic groups. There were many SS members who were working in such camps who absolutely despised what they were being ordered to do. Some of them refused and got shot. Some of them disobeyed orders. Some of them tried as hard as they could to minimise the number of people killed. Some of them lacked the courage to stand up to the regime, seeing first hand what it was capable of, did what they were told and hated themselves for it. Now do we tar them all with the same caricature of sneering sadists? Is that fair?
when you join that particular club that Von Braun was in I think you exclude yourself from a presumption of innocence at the very least.
I disagree. Circumstances change rapidly during war. Von Braun joined the SS prior to war breaking out. He was directed to take charge of a construction facility that used slave labour. He did not seek the job, nor do I see any sign that he enjoyed it. He did not advise the use of slave labour to build the V2s. That decision was made and foisted upon him to speed production. And what could he do once there that would not get him shot? As he himself correctly observed, had he resigned in protest, someone else would have replaced him and the camp would have continued unchanged. Putting your life on the line for lofty ideals is all very well, but what's the point if it won't change anything except how history will view the man? Had I been in such a situation I doubt I'd have put how history will view me over my own life and an opportunity to make up for things at a later point. When things all went to pot, was von Braun concerned only with his own skin? No. He organised the safe evacuation of his staff and led them through SS checkpoints to surrender to the Allies, without losing anyone. Isn't that worthy of some praise? Or does his brief time running a facility that used slaves overshadow everything he ever did afterwards?
Essentially, as far as I can see, von Braun found himself in a situation that was highly unpleasant, and so far the criticism of him seems to be based mostly on the fact that no-one saw any public signs of remorse. Would we aqcuit him if he had turned into an emotional wreck afterwards and spent all his time crying his heart out at the appallingly inhuman conditions he was obliged to work in? It seems all too easy to equate a lack of excessive and obvious emotional response to being completely callous. It's happened to me on numerous occasions. Von Braun did not cry his heart out about the use of slave labour in his construction facility, therefore he must have enjoyed or at the very least not cared about it. Well, that's just ludicrous in my view.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 22, 2006 10:48:27 GMT -4
I have see no signs that he regretted his decision.
Another point to consider: what signs would you expect to see? Publicly sobbing his heart out on national television about his tainted past? How do you know he was not constantly haunted by visions of the slaves dying in the camp? How do you know he didn't cry to his wife every few nights because he was ashamed of his role in a slave labour facility? As I said earlier, a public apology/confession/whatever would still be regarded with distrust and suspicion by people, so why waste time agonising over the past and bringing it all into the open when it would be more productive to put it behind him and get on with things as they were?
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 22, 2006 10:44:34 GMT -4
What I object to is not the fact that Von Braun was a member of the Nazi party and the SS but the fact that there was an attempt to erase it from history.
No such attempt was made.
Or if not erase it to at least put a large spin on it.
That's called politics, and the blame for that lies squarely with the US military and government services. The fact is that the US wanted certain services from Von Braun and he was willing to offer them. However, there was always the perceived risk that others may object to working with him given full information about his past, and that would have been pointlessly counter-productive. That this is so was adequately demonstrated by the failure to launch a US satellite ahead of a Soviet one: one of the objections to using von Braun's rocket for the purpose was the fact that it was designed and built by a group of ex-Nazis, and this might harm national pride.
There was a fourth option for Von Braun and the rocket team, to remember the Oath they took when they joined up, when Hitler was making promises they were promising back. Grab a gun and defend the fatherland like a good Nazi.
In developing a ballistic missile capable of bombing Britain from the European mainland I'd say that was precisely what they were doing right up until the point where it became apparent that Germany had lost the war utterly.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 22, 2006 6:03:37 GMT -4
But he wasn't a battlefeild commander
That still doesn't mean they had time to play around with pomp and ceremony every time he was promoted. Promotion does not necessarily mean a big dress-up ceremony with bands and medals. Yuri Gagarin got promoted while in space. I doubt he put on his uniform while floating in Vostok to accept it.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 22, 2006 6:01:35 GMT -4
no one in Germany was under any illusions about the Nazis.
Yet they were voted into power. Does that mean everyone was a Nazi? Does that mean everyone who did not actively oppose the Nazi’s was a war criminal, or at least approved of everything they did?
The Nazi regime was simultaneously the most evil and most genuinely popular political regime in history. In an episode of The World At War, a German man made possibly the best point I have ever heard on this issue. Anyone who has not lived through the total economic collapse of their country and the increasingly ineffective measures of the new democracy cannot appreciate how wonderful it is to hear someone promising to make the country strong again, and seemingly delivering on those promises. Anyone who has not lived in a dictatorship with such total media censorship cannot appreciate how easy it is to start believing the propaganda simply because no conflicting reports are allowed into the country. Anyone who has not been through what the Germans of the post-WWI period had cannot appreciate how, in the desperation to see things get better, it becomes alarmingly easy to convince yourself that the atrocities you hear about are exaggerated, isolated incidents or mere rumours. This man joined the SS, and really believed he was on the right side. Only afterwards did he realize what a mistake he had made. And remember there was never any official word about the use of slaves or the extermination camps. Most of the general population never knew about the death camps until the Allies liberated them and then paraded the civilians through to show them what the Nazis had done. It is quite conceivable that von Braun had no idea that slave labour was going to be used until he got to the camp, by which time he really was stuck.
So, it’s all very well for you to sit in judgement of him, but since you have never come close to experiencing life in the kind of economic and political background he has, I would be very careful about it.
perhaps he could have invented an excuse to visit Sweden or another neutral country.
What kind of excuse do you propose? Germany at the time had one of the best industrial frameworks in Europe, if not the world. Everything he needed to do his war work on rockets was available within the Reich. What possible reason could he come up with for visiting a neutral country that would not cast further suspicion on him? Remember, he was arrested and imprisoned for merely suggesting possible alternative applications for his rocket, which was twisted by certain SS officers into constituting sabotage because he was not devoting his full attention to the application of the V2 as a weapon of war.
There are also no signs he in anyway objected to the treatment of the prisoners or did anything to improve it.
But in some ways this is a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation. If he kicked up a stink about the facilities he used, he would be in deep trouble with his superiors. If he didn’t, later people might judge him harshly on it. A choice between getting into real trouble that could have him executed or imprisoned in the here and now, or possibly facing some tough questions and judgements later on… Well, maybe he just didn’t have the moral conviction or simple balls to put his life on the line. Was that wrong? Quite possibly, but I see no reason to condemn him too harshly for it.
Got away from whom? I’ve seen no evidence he was in danger of being detained by the German’s again.
Lol! Simply stopping what he was doing and trying to escape was treason. He was not in danger of being detained, he was in danger of being summarily executed! Even in the ‘good guys’’ armies desertion during wartime was a crime punishable by death. During WWI conscientious objectors, men who refused to fight, were vilified and sometimes detained or shot, frequently humiliated in public, and often shunned by their peers once they declared their pacifist intentions.
In short, if you work for a war-related industry, especially in a dictatorship but often even in a democracy, stopping work was seen as betrayal and punished accordingly. Von Braun may not have had SS squads waiting outside his door to arrest him if he so much as sneezed, but that doesn’t mean he was free to stop what he was doing and make an escape.
He got out because of Operation Paperclip.
Yes, which put a nice Allied force close at hand and gave him a good chance of being found by them before being found and shot for desertion by his own superiors.
He should at least have been detained, questioned and investigated for his role in crimes against humanity.
According to everything I’ve seen, he was. You seem to think he just got flown into America and put to work straight away. All his team were kept in a POW camp and interrogated regularly for months or years, at the same time as being co-opted to work on the captured V2 hardware and educate the Americans about it.
Did he ever speak out against what the Nazis had done? Did he ever express any regret for having cooperated with them?
Would it have mattered if he had? Opinion would still be sharply divided over whether he genuinely meant it or was just saying it to make himself look better. Words won’t change deeds.
If I were in his situation and didn't care one way or the other about what the Nazis were doing I would have worn my uniform every day.
‘If I ran the zoo’ fallacy. Von Braun was under no obligation to behave as you would in his situation, and I still maintain you or I cannot fully appreciate his situation.
I hope that if I was in the same situation as Von Braun I would have the courage not to serve a Nazi like regime.
High hopes are one thing, but unless you’ve been there I fail to see how you can judge effectively the actions of another man.
1) Move to another country and try to do rocket research there.
Rocket research in Germany was the best in the world. Hermann Oberth was in Germany, and he was widely regarded the world over as one of the highest authorities on the subject. Why go anywhere away from the best in the field if you want to study?
2) Stay in Germany and do something else.
He wasn’t interested in anything else.
he had already cast his lot with the Devil and I have see no signs that he regretted his decision.
Many people say regrets are pointless, as they won’t change what happened. Von Braun made some decisions that put him in a bad position. He could either spend the rest of his life apologizing for them or just put the past behind him and get on with his new life. I know which I’d rather do.
Was he an evil person? Probably not, but best case scenario his dream of achieving spaceflight and ambition allowed him to cooperate with one of the most evil regimes in World history.
That’s a very nebulous phrase. Co-operate can mean anything from actively helping the Nazis to simply not objecting openly to their policies. The difference between the two is quite marked, and therefore so is the level of culpability that associates with them.
Should he have been tried as a war criminal? Probably not, but I’m not sure.
He was interrogated. But you can’t interrogate the entire population of a country. Von Braun was not alone in failing to oppose the Nazi regime. Trying everyone who shared that fault would have been impractical.
The real question is would it have been productive to try him and have him locked up or executed, or to have him put his expertise to better use. As I said, the initial work was done effectively in a POW camp. He wasn’t brought in to the US, given freedom and citizenship, and given free reign to do as he wished.
Does he deserve to be venerated as a hero? Not in my book.
Who venerates him as a hero? Seriously, who aside from space enthusiasts even knows who he was? Most people can’t name any astronauts besides John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, never mind any other people involved in the space program.
Von Braun was a genius who had a regrettable past. I see no reason to detract from his achievements and his contribution to the space program because of it.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 21, 2006 7:18:07 GMT -4
Many German intellectuals chose to leave Germany during Hitler’s reign he chose to say and cooperate with the Nazis and use concentration camp slave laborers.
Most of those intellectuals left Germany before war broke out. By the time von Braun was using slave labour to build his rockets, leaving wasn't really an option for someone in his position. He only got out at the end because the entire country was collapsing under a combined Allied assault from all sides and there happened to be some conveniently close American forces for his team to surrender to. What do you think his chances of getting out of Germany before then were? At the time most of Europe was under Axis occupation, and his facility was almost smack in the middle of it.
I don't want to defend his actions too much, but his later life indicates he was certainly not active in Nazi ideology, and he gained the respect and friendship of a large number of people. I think that counts for far more in the long run than the circumstances he found himself in under Nazi rule.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jun 21, 2006 7:10:46 GMT -4
Its pretty hard to imagine someone being promoted three times while refusing to play dressup in the scary deathshead uniform.
Even in the middle of a war? They were a little busy at the time.
I see little reason for von Braun to have lied about the number of times he wore his uniform when his promotions would be a matter of record anyway. Since he could not hope to conceal his rank in the SS, why would he bother to lie about the number of times he wore the uniform?
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Post by Jason Thompson on Apr 12, 2006 8:37:47 GMT -4
One of the classic stories of American Tactics during WWII was during the Battle of Monte Cassino. They sent over a flight of B-17's, 130 of them to bomb the monestry where the German's were holed up.
If I remember the relevant episode of The World At War correctly, it turned out that the Germans had not, in fact, been holed up in that monastery at all. Allied intelligence was that they were around there somewhere, and because that monastery sits on top of a hill affording a grandstand view of the entire area (and therefore meaning anyone there would see an advancing army long before they came into weapons range) the assumption was that they were there. They promptly bombed it to bits, thinking they were taking out the majority of the opposing force.
Unfortunately, their intelligence and assumptions turned out to be wrong. The Axis forces were not in the monastery originally. Then when the Allies advanced, they found that the Germans were now holed up in the convenient rubble pile that they had created. Unfortunately the rubble was easier for the Axis forces to defend than the intact monastery would have been (little risk of being trapped in a faling building, or isolated in a room or two), so the battle was far more protracted than anyone had hoped.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Oct 24, 2005 10:15:42 GMT -4
BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry (got a first, and am still rather jazzed about that!) in 2001, with a number of years' experience in protein structure research. Currently I'm doing something completely different developing blood diagnostic devices.
I took A-levels in chemistry, biology, physics and mathematics, and aced them all. While that doesn't provide me with in-depth technical knowledge, it does provide an adequate background to recognise a fair amount of scientific and technical BS when I see it (such as David Groves's experiments, tucked away in the appendices of Dark Moon).
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Post by Jason Thompson on Jul 25, 2005 18:38:05 GMT -4
>>No, Nasa buffoons say wide angle lens is useful to see obstacles close to Spirit. But Spirit can see at 360 degrees around and up and down and does not need fisheye lenses.<<
But using a wide angle lens gets the greatest extent of vision in the fewest possible images. Spirit does not relay video, therefore you cannot simply pan around and observe the surrounding ground in one smooth pass. With the narrow view 'normal' camera you would have to pan down, then take a picture, move across a few degrees and take another, and so on and so on. Then the images must be relayed to Earth, downloaded, analysed by the people in mission control and acted upon. With the wide angle lens this process is quicker because fewer images need to be taken and transmitted to cover the entire 360 degrees.
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