#31
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I might sound a bit cold myself, but I'm afraid Osama Bin Ladin was correct where he said that people respect, follow, admire, whatever, a "Strong horse" over a "weak (or dead) horse." Putin is a vile person, don't get me wrong, but he is more of a strong horse or at least stronger than what we have in the West, although I think he wheels might be starting to come off I was thinking about this as I was going through my 1980's era textbook on psychology when I had that class in 1985/86 as a college freshman. I kept it because ity had a lot of good articles, especially on Charles Manson and Malcom X (aka Little). As good guys, we are bound by basic morals and ethics where we cannot use evil or bad methods to appeal and manipulate people and evens, even if we are a strong horse. Dictators, psychopaths, terrorists, etc., are not bound by that so they use anything and everything over and underhanded to manipulate and control people and events or at least try to. Manson, Putin and Bin Ladin are these types of people to one degree or another. Same with criminals like Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz and people who do Ponzi schemes and so forth. I do understand the objections to my hope of getting all parties to the peace table. How to do it is the $64,000 question. Still we must try. We need somehow to deal with Putin and throw him a bone, just a bone, but not cave in to him. Like it or not, we have the deal, he is their PResident but he won't be in forever and we need to hope the next guy or gal will be a strong horse but with much better morals and ethics. I still believe we lost a lot of opportunity to get Russia more to our side in the 1990's but again who really knows, playing "what if" is a tough game. You need three things to fight a war, manpower, willpower and weapons. We lack all three, but the most important is willpower, if you don't hav e that, the other two really do not matter much.
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#32
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I think at some point the downward trend in population will reverse, how, when an d why, I can't say. My guess is that the "powers that may be" of countries will encourage large families to fill the demand for labor, military and so forth. West Germany had "Kindergeld," Child Money to encourage growth but it did not quit work. I think for that to work, you need a more desperate situation. The ideal population is 2.1 kids per family, weak growth as well as the 0.1 being there to replace losses of early child death due to things like auto wrecks and cancers.
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#33
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TEch, my guess then if I had to remember my 1984 self is that by now, we'd have PC's that would be much like a Pentium II or III with 32 or 64 megabytes and we'd still be using modems and/or things like Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, etc. Fidonet would still be king, the electronic BBS Pony Express.
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#34
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1) If it is true what you say (Good guys are bound by rules) then why do we have in wikipedia entries like Allied warcrimes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied...g_World_War_II Shouldnt allied soldiers after receiving such orders (Chuck Yeager wrote in his book that he received such orders) told their CO to forget it and not execute those orders? Or they would go their superior officers to file charges against their fellow soldiers if they commit warcrimes? There is a latin law principle that states that one injustice doesnt legalize another injustice. And why were they excempt from prosecution? To give you one example: A german who was in the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre had to file charges in London because german judges are forbidden from prosecuting allied soldiers. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ist-spies.html 2) If you want to get Putin to come to a peace agreement then I think the only way is 100% truth. Nothing more, nothing less. I looked around the internet and found the following: Ukraine had an elected government but that was ousted by a revolution, e.g. therefore the new government was not elected and therefore illegal. There was a treaty signed but according to a statement by Ms Merkel, then chancellor of Germany, it was meant as a way to buy time for re-armarment of Ukraine. Sources: (and they are not Putin-friendly pages) https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Putin-gi...e23774842.html Quote: "das Abkommen von 2014 sei unterzeichnet worden, um der Ukraine "Zeit zu geben", und Kiew habe die Zeit genutzt, "um stärker zu werden" The treaty of 2014 was signed to give Ukraine time and Kiev used this time to get stronger. https://www.fr.de/politik/von-putins...-92037711.html Quote: "2015 hätte Putin die Ukraine leicht erobern können, die Nato-Länder aber hätten kaum so viel tun können, um der Ukraine zu helfen, wie sie es jetzt täten. „Angela Merkel hat recht in diesem Punkt“, erklärte später Hollande dem „Kyiv Independent“: „Die Minsker Vereinbarungen stoppten die russische Offensive für eine Weile." Putin could have easily taken the Ukraine in 2015 and the NATO countries couldnt have much done to help Ukraine as they could do now. Angela Merkel was right said Hollande (former french prime minister) to the newspaper Kiev Independant. The Minsk agreement stopped the russian offensive for a while. In the areas now occupied by Russia the current government of Ukraine forbade the use of russian language and a short time ago they declared the orthodox church to be illegal. Can you imagine that the US government would forbid the Amish to use their language Pennsylvania Dutch, Swiss German and not be attacked? Or if they forbade their religion? If I bring up this points I am always directly accused of being a Putin sympathizer. If wanting to know the entire truth, nothing but the truth and only the truth - then so be it. But I want to state these points and ask: "Are they the truth - yes or no?". And to the last point - willpower- I agree with you. |
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