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The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever

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ZoeB:

--- Quote from: Akima on 11 May 2013, 03:37 ---The Chinese space-mission they cut out of that movie (along with the Indian computer scientist), in the book flew a spacecraft named after Tsien Hsue-shen, who actually was working in the American rocket program in 1941,
--- End quote ---
Along with the British post-war persecution of Alan Turing, the German persecution of Albert Einstein, the hounding of Qian Xuesen out of the USA were the three greatest pieces of countries shooting themselves in the foot that I can think of.

Xuesen was the chief debriefer of one SS-Sturmbannführer Werner Von Braun. He was the closest thing to the head of a US Space Program at the time. He was accused of being a Communist in one of the Red Scares. At first they wanted him deported as a useless threat, then someone with a working braincell realised how valuable he was and detained him when he tried to leave as the idiots wanted...

Fortunately there were those with working braincells in China, and despite being an intellectual, he wasn't sentenced to "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution.

Not the USA's finest hour.

Method of Madness:
If an item is found in a particular country, does it necessarily belong to that country? If it was owned by a government that ceased to exist, why does the current government that happens to be in the same place have any claim, unless they found it themselves?

Rimwolf:

--- Quote from: Akima on 11 May 2013, 03:37 ---Specifically a unique piece of Ming porcelain that was in the British Museum (how did it get there in the first place? The looting of the Summer Palace perhaps? Might the Chinese government have been trying to get it repatriated? Who cares? Not anyone in the story, that's for sure) was obtained by some corrupt means so that the British (again, who cares about China, right?) might not be upset by its disappearance and make a fuss, and then dangled as a prize to persuade a wealthy physicist to work on gravity control.
--- End quote ---

I don't think it would have made a material difference to the story or to the moral status of the actions if the artifact in question had been the Mona Lisa or the Venus of Willendorf. (Or, say, Vermeer's "The Concert", stolen in 1990 from the Gardner Museum in Boston along with other priceless works, including three Rembrandts and a Shang Dynasty gu, presumably for a "private collector".)

Loki:

--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 11 May 2013, 07:39 ---If an item is found in a particular country, does it necessarily belong to that country? If it was owned by a government that ceased to exist, why does the current government that happens to be in the same place have any claim, unless they found it themselves?

--- End quote ---
There is such a thing as "legal successor" in regards to states.

For example, after the downfall of the USSR, Russia went and said "we are the legal successor of the USSR. If anyone has any outstanding business with the USSR, come to us", and mostly everyone agreed, I suppose because Russia was where the orders were coming from anyway.

Similarly, the Federal Republic of Germany is the legal successor of the Third Reich, which in turn would probably be consider the legal successor of the Weimar Republic.

Method of Madness:
I guess I've never thought of it like that. Interesting. But the Russia/USSR thing poses a new question, because the USSR's borders stretched beyond Russia's current ones.  If a Soviet artifact (if something that new can be considered an artifact is mere semantics) is found in a former Soviet country, who does it belong to?

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