The only way for a police and court action to arrest and convict people to work is if there's a government present willing to do that work. The Taliban was funding and sheltering al Qaeda as well as murdering and oppressing the Afghan people. By removing that government and bringing the rule of law to that land, whether under a Western-style democracy or not, is the only way police and courts can do anything to the criminals there.
Yep. It's not a easy situation. But if the US goes in and kills innocents in its attempts to bring down the regime there, the US automatically compromises its moral standing. Blowing up villages is not likely to win the hearts and minds of the people there. The average man, woman, and child in Afghanistan cannot be automatically considered "guilty" simply because they have been oppressed by the government there and could do nothing about it.
But like I said, the mess that is Afghanistan is the direct result of how the US handled things -- or not -- during the last Cold War. Again, the average person there is not to blame for that.
Better approaches? How about working with the neighbors of Afghanistan to improve conditions there over time? It would be messy, it would be slow, but at least you don't put yourself in the position of slaughtering innocents.
Or better yet, just not making such mistakes in the first place!
Yep. All over Osama bin Laden, or so we are told. The very man formerly propped up by our own CIA, during the cold war between the Soviets and the US, where Afghanistan was simply a pawn, caught between two powerful factions, and left to fester afterwards.
And you are surprised they would be so inclined to flay a couple of planes into our buildings? That's nothing compared to the damage the US and the Soviet Union has done to that country over the decades.
Just saw Charlie Wilson's War. My understanding is that most of it is pretty on target about the story, but I'll admit it probably glossed over pieces. The general gist though, that the U.S. supported the Afghans up till the U.S.S.R. pulled out, and then Charlie was unable to support even a miniscule fraction of the money to build a school and help rebuild the country, is properly summed up by the quote used on the ending Title Card of the movie:
"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world...and then we fucked up the end game." - Charlie Wilson
The U.S. has never learned much about the "End Game", China thinks ONLY of the "End Game".
Yep. The US can't think past the next election. China is into long-term planning. Who will be better positioned to seize the future?
Like I said, it's time to start learning Mandarin!
You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
Actually I don't watch CNN. I lost my patience with cable news around the time that they decided Britney Spears was more newsworthy than the Iraq War. I get my news from the internet, PBS and the occasional newspaper (mostly for coverage of local events)
If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to
death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
I'm sorry but I think we are done here. You are drawing conclusions about me that are completely unsupported by my statements. You have no argument to make besides the emotional one. Think of the children!
Tell the other hippies on the commune that Shakrai said hello and that they need to stop bogarting the pipe;)
We are indeed done here. Especially if your only reaction to children being killed is "you're just using an emotional argument."
Alas, I don't have the time to pull up the research, etc. to be more cogent, especially in this forum.
But yes, what is wrong with considering the children and other innocents? What about our high-minded sounding principles of "innocent until proven guilty?" Let's throw it all to hell, because the US never really stuck by these principles, anyway.
I am not saying that we should do nothing when the troops start marching across our borders. But that hasn't happened to us in a very long time. The last time it came even close to that was Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii wasn't even a State at the time. Some seem to think that Truman or whomever was president at the time deliberately did things to provoke the Japanese to attack us so we would have a reason to jump into the war.
I don't know where the real truth lies, and I don't care. If we humans don't catch a clue, we will be our own endangerment; our own undoing. Technology is progressing much faster than human sensibilities, and we are not far from the point where anyone can brew up something dangerous to mass populations in their garage.
I apologize for getting 'emotional' with you. I guess kids really don't matter. I suppose innocence is irrelevant.
The more "sinister" side of myself sees humans as a collection of mindless nodes that are just executing "programming", forming a vast dynamical system that has taken on a life of its own. In that view, the individual nodes are irrelevant. I truly despise that view of humanity, but more and more it seems to be an undeniable fact of the species.
And you know what? Considering some of the reactions I've seen here, maybe my sinister side is correct. And truly a sad epitaph for the species.
It is finished. I never should have gotten involved in politics. Should have just stuck to my mathematics, science, and computers. Silly me, to think I could even put even a dent in the nature and dangerous proclivities of this errant species. Go have your wars, your economic crises, your corruptions, your oppressions of the innocent. I'll just finish the work I began and move on. Good night.
The problem lies with the individual acquiescing individual sovereignty to the State. There would be no "vacuum" if individuals would insist on what is right and not allow for excuses.
If you are innocent and are killed, it does not matter if it were "by accident" or by intent. And besides, firebombing civilians is no "accident". And just because "everyone else is slaughtering innocents" is no accuse to commit atrocities yourself.
How are they "innocent" if they just acquiesced their sovereignty to the state? In a total war civilians contribute at least as much (if not more) to the war effort as the military does. They are legitimate targets. That fact may make you squeamish but war isn't supposed to be pretty.
Me squeamish? Tell that to the nuclear shadow of a little girl playing with her ball the instant the nuke went off in Hiroshima. Yeah, maybe I am squeamish. I hate seeing children vaporized. I hate seeing children with limbs blown off by bombs. To that child, it does not matter which side dropped the bomb.
But hawkish and callous attitudes such as yours is precisely why we may never get beyond these atrocities. If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
One who can see a better way.
If you want the "better way" then I suggest you stop focusing your energies on the United States and start focusing them on the true evils in this World.
The US is just as much a part of that "true evil" as the others. You just don't see it from those who suffered through the atrocities the US has committed around the world over the decades. You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
The United States didn't even have a standing army until fairly recently. The United States was content to hide behind our geography until technology made that geography a moot point.
And now the US has seen fit to join the club of power and oppression.
As far as "Peace by means of MAD", we come perilously close once or twice to hitting that MAD button. And now we carry this insanity out into space?
Convince Russia and China to get rid of their nuclear weapons and I'll support the United States getting rid of ours.
Why would they want to given the foreign policy of the US over the decades?
Like them or hate them nuclear weapons successfully deterred the Soviet Union.
At what level of risk? Sure, you can win sometimes at Russian Roulette...
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
I didn't say you should stop giving a damn. I just think you should be a little bit more realistic. It only takes one Adolf Hitler to render every single idealist such as yourself a moot point. Frankly I'm glad the United States has the power that we do.
Oh, I am being very realistic. At the same time, I will not ever excuse the killing and death of innocents for ANY reason. Children are not targets, and even the adults are fed from the propaganda organs of their own government, just as we are from our own. Putting the shoe on the other foot, those responsible for 9/11 can also claim that the deaths of 3000 or our "innocents" was justified because of the horrible US foreign policies over the decades. Or because they elected Bush.
I guess killing innocent children is OK as long as it's not our own children. If that's the case, than we are all to be damned.
(2) I never said the Cold War wasn't real. But don't you find it rather odd that the government ALWAYS seem to have one bogeyman or another to waive in our faces?
(4) I hope you're right.
(5) It doesn't matter. They will get their acts together when it matters enough to them.
Russia and CHina strong Allies! BWAHAHahqahaha.
And if someone one day before the fall of the Iron Curtain said the Iron Curtain will collapse?
Clearly you don't know jack about their history and regular fighting along their border.
Actually, I know plenty. I also know that what you know can blind you to what could be a sharp turn that can catch everyone unawares. Beware of Black Swans.
To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
That's a noble sentiment but a naive one. Allowing Al Quada a sanctuary to continue plotting and executing attacks on our civilian population would be completely unacceptable. When should we have intervened? When 10,000 of our citizens were killed? 100,000? 1,000,000? How many zeros does it take before we should have gone in?
Are we so damned weak that we can't prevent a small group of people from wreaking the same havoc again? How pathetic we must be. Those 16 or so individuals that made 9/11 happen caught us with our pants down. What would we had done if it were 16 US citizens? Recall the Oakholoma(sp) City Bombing. Was that done by Arabs? Nope.
Also, if you've been paying attention, what the US did to Afghanistan did not stop Al-Quada. If anything, it has inspired even more to join up.
Anyone who thinks the "war on terrorism" is something that can be "won" by aggression and violence is in for a rude awakening. The more of their innocents you bomb, the more you whip up the fevor and hated of the United States, and the more will be galvanized to give their lives in the "great cause" to stop the "Western Imperialists" or however they think of us.
I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army
How about the individuals that trained them, supported them and ordered them to carry out the attacks? They shouldn't be brought to justice? They should remain free to plan future attacks?
Yes, bring them to justice! But bombing their villages out of existence is NOT how we do justice in the US, unless we're just as bad as they are! Find the individuals responsible and bring them before a tribunal, convict them on the evidence, and punish them. Last I heard, this is how Justice is supposed to be done. Last I heard, that is the American way.
But something sinister about the human species is afoot. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. It's a sad fact that has been true throughout all of human history. And worse: once the oppressed becomes the oppressor, they usually more times than not oppresses a wholly new innocent group, not those that oppressed them.
I for one would like to see this blight in humanity done away with. Because otherwise no one can claim the moral high ground. No one.
"...And the Germans kill the Jews and the Jews killed the Arabs and the Arabs killed the hostages and that is the news. Is there any wonder that the markets are confused?" -- Roger Waters, Amused to Death.
That I consider all governments problems when it comes to the individual. Yes, Japan committed many atrocities and I don't excuse that. Yes, China has some serious human rights issues. Nobody has clean hands. But I live here in the US, and I am concerned about what the US does, and just to say it's "OK because the others are worse" is not acceptable to me.
The old adage of "nature abhors a vacuum" is a misleading one. The problem lies with the individual acquiescing individual sovereignty to the State. There would be no "vacuum" if individuals would insist on what is right and not allow for excuses.
If you are innocent and are killed, it does not matter if it were "by accident" or by intent. And besides, firebombing civilians is no "accident". And just because "everyone else is slaughtering innocents" is no accuse to commit atrocities yourself.
I am not an "idealist", but a realist. A realist who can see beyond the placid "excuses". One who can see a better way. One who also knows that the transition from what we have today to what we could have will not be an easy one.
As far as "Peace by means of MAD", we come perilously close once or twice to hitting that MAD button. And now we carry this insanity out into space?
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
Roger Waters hit the nail on the head in his "Amused to Death" album. I was hoping he was wrong, but I fear he may be right.
I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another
We didn't make a deal with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Stalin came into the war because of something called Operation Barbarossa [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps you've heard of it? Once the Soviet Union was involved in the war it would have been pretty stupid of Churchill and FDR not to coordinate efforts with them.
According to what I read in the book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union", deals were made after the war. Have you not heard?
And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
We do the same as Hitler? Really? I'm sorry but I just can't take you seriously anymore. You can point out hypocrisy in US policy until the cows come home (there's certainly a lot of it to go around) but a comparison to Adolf Hitler? I don't think you understand what true evil really is.
Um, what was the Vietnam war all about? Where the US forces slaughtered, by some estimates, 2,000,000 Vietnamese, including children, villages? Just for defending their home turf?
Not to mention firebombing innocents and nuking others in Japan. And then there was the Korean war...
Oh, but I suppose slaughtering innocents en masse is "OK" if the US does it, but it's "Heinous" if done by someone else. Not to mention the very recent and despicable tortures the US conducted in Iraq and their base in Cuba.
Just gotta love double standards.
We just won't be as relevant to the rest of the world as we once were
So what? I'm not a particularly big fan of our interventionism. I'm just a realist about it -- as long as the United States remains a Great Power it will do what Great Powers have always done. Do you really think any other country in our position would be acting any differently? I'm just thankful that it's the United States and not China or Russia. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we'd wind up ceding our position as a super power while retaining our freedom and our nuclear deterrent. We'd be in the same position as the UK or France. Big fucking deal -- and not too likely to happen for a few decades in any event.
So biased. If you were Chinese, you'd rather the Chinese do it. If you were Russian, you'd rather the Russians do it. Why? Because you are not on the receiving end of the stick.
Clearly we have a number of challenges that we need to address. Energy, education, health care, blah, blah, blah. What I find interesting is that you are ignoring the challenges facing China and Russia. The former has hundreds of millions of rural poor that they need to pull out of poverty. The latter can't even meet the replacement rate for it's population and just had the rug pulled out from under it's primary revenue source
I ignore nothing. But I do know that the US ranks very low in the arena of education; sucks in its attention to the global environment issues, and has a plethora of human rights issues of its own. Like, for example, how divorced dads are treated in court. Woman can get away with just about anything, but dads gets the shaft no matter how good he is.
But I digress
The real problem is that we have governments that have gotten away from what is best for the individuals, the people, everything expect perpetuating their own existence and forcing us all to be dependent on them. There is nothing "great" about being a "Great Power" that uses that power to control, manipulate, subjugate, and kill innocent individuals.
But all "Great Powers" eventually fall and crumble back into the dust from whence they came. The real problem is that new "Great Powers" rise up to replace them.
And that is only possible because Individuals have lost their self worth and is far too willing in acquiesce without question or critical judgment. And those in power knows this, and take advantage accordingly. Occasionally some go just a bit too far and get "found out", but nothing truly changes.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
You misunderstand. I see them as human. I just don't see it as being the job of the United States to spread freedom and democracy. Even if it was our job I'm sure you'd admit that spreading democracy at gunpoint into a culture with no history of the concept isn't likely to be particularly successful.
Our mission in Afghanistan should be the creation of a Government that will work for their culture and be able to control the extremists that wish to use that country as a staging area for attacks on the West. If that Government is a liberal democracy then so much the better -- I don't just see that as particularly likely in a country where only 28% of the population is literate.
I agree that "democracy" should not be rammed down throats at gunpoint! Especially since there are ways to proceed that are better than "democracy" -- the majority beating up on the minority.
I question whether the US should've gone to Afghanistan at all. I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army. The US has slaughtered many innocents there, probably many more that died as a direct result of 9/11. To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
I find it odd that you see China as a threat but don't seem to think we should do anything about it. They have been quietly closing the gap with us, and when attention is drawn to it, they downplay it.
Unfortunately for them, they can't seem to keep their generals and admirals quiet. Every so often one of them boasts about how this puts them on track to catch up to us militarily.
They are currently building a very large Navy, but downplay the significance. They are testing anti-satellite missiles, but downplay the significance. They are blatantly stealing our secrets (military and industrial). And your suggestion is that we should not respond because it might make them, I dunno, try to catch up to us militarily?
You can be the boiled frog if you like, but your fatalism doesn't interest me.
If China is a thereat, it's because they are annoyed with US hegemony, and are taking steps to ensure they remain free of it.
If they want to build up their navy, so what? Or maybe you now can understand how the rest of the world sees the US, now that the US has a very powerful rival that may be inclined to start flexing its own hegemony.
After all, they've had very good teachers for decades.
Well, it's time to start boning up on my Mandarin!
Effectively, your point is: "They are getting more powerful so we should let them get more powerful, or else they might get more powerful."
Huh?
I think you may have misread something. Besides, it's not so much that they are getting "more powerful" as it is the US getting weaker, and that weakness was only hastened by Bush's silliness over the past 8 years, but this downward progression has been going on for some time now.
China is effectively waging a one sided cold war against us. Bush wasn't paying attention, and he was distracted by conflicts with petty dictators.
I voted for Obama primarily due to him not being oblivious to *China's* challenge.
I don't think China is waging a cold war against us so much as forwarding their own agendas, which, of course, makes the US a bit nervous.
I mean, they DO have the US by the balls, so the US is not a credible threat to them. However, at the same time, they don't want to be subjected to the same bullying the US has done to so many other countries.
If China wanted to sink the US, all they would have to do is dump the US dollar and dump the US bonds. They may take a hit, but they'd be around to see another day. Meanwhile, the US would plunge into utter chaos.
As I said, the US was stupid for allowing itself to become so dependent on funding from abroad. The US is weak where it counts -- education and long-term planning. Now, it's too late, and what'cha gonna do?
As long as resources are limited, there will never be peace. That's human nature. Get over it.
Spoken like a true fatalist. As long as you are willing to settle for "it's just human nature", you never see the other possibilities, the better things human nature can become.
In other words, "human nature" is not written in concrete, boys and girls. I already see ways things can be improved. The problem now is to come up with a workable transitional plan.
Maybe you didn't know this, but space is already "militarized".
Not really. Not to the extent I fear could happen.
2. Searching for friends and enemies is also human nature. There is no need for some kind of conspiracy theory. Politicians just say what the people electing them want to hear.
True, but I never said anything about a "conspiracy theory".
4. Probably, but the pentagon is not the government.
It's an organ of the government, which makes it the government. Not all of the government, mind you. But it's certainly not civilian!!!!!
5. Yes, China has the US by the balls, but the funny thing is China's economy need the US market and would crumble at exactly the same speed as the one of the US if they decide to bite.
Have you been paying attention? Already the US is experiencing negative growth, whilst China is upset because its growth rate sunk to 9% down from 11%. You forget that the US is not China's only market. China is its own market. Then there's Europe and South America. The US is significant, but not a big a factor as it used to be in the past. You are thinking, apparently, with 20th-century notions in the 21st century. Wake up and smell the coffee.
As for your insight about China becoming the next US rival... That's what everyone is saying for the past 20 years. What next? You will predict that if we continue to emit CO2, methane or some other gas then maybe this will make an effect you will name "global warming"?
Oh, and you really suspect Russia and China might become allies? What makes you think that? Is it because it was the news a few years ago when they did their first joint military exercises?
They share a common headache -- the US, and they have been doing other things besides military exercises over the years. And your flippancy will not serve you here.
It seems that not only was I wrong, I was very naive.
Get ready to be wrong about a lot of things concerning The One.
If only you had turned your razor sharp analytical skills on Obama. But, no, you swallowed his song and dance whole.
Yeah, I expect to see a lot of posts like this from you and the Obamanuts
Well, I was never an Obama "nut". In fact, I am a dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian that despises both the Democrats and Republicans. In fact, I think the entire system of "democracy" is flawed at the fundamental roots and we need something better.
I would not have bother to vote at all except Sarah Palin scared the hell out of me with her caviler attitude towards geopolitical issues, in particular, the Russians. It seemed as though she saw nothing wrong with going to war with Russia, and McCain was a crass idiot for picking such a crass idiot as a running mate.
So my vote was really a "save the planet" vote.
And now, I truly wonder how likely we really are to save the planet from human conflict that could escalate into nuclear war. I would put the odds of such at being higher than I feel comfortable with. Obama is not looking to *really* clean up foreign policy to lessen the chances of this based on what I've seen so far.
Oh, but Obama has become this nation's "Big Black Hope", as supposing that by mere dermnal chromatics alone will be all the "change" needed to make the "change", whatever was meant by that.
And now NASA will probably become more militarized than it ever has been. The thought sickens me.
Obama also is not interested in disbaning Homeland Insecurity, but is keeping it around. That too sickens me.
Impressed by what? He hasn't done crap. His change consisted of installing mostly Clintonites in his incoming administration, including the Ice Queen herself.All he done is make proclamations behind his bullshit 'Office of the President-Elect' podium like a kid who wants everyone to think he is special.
I think the next 4 years will be a living hell unless something happens to Obama early on.
And as far as NASA falling under the military, they have been doing that for years already. Besides, if it means more money for space exploration, then I am all for it. We should have had a permanent moon base by now. Just as long as those 'Global Warming is Man Made' whackos are gone from the NASA administration, this looks like the one intelligent idea Obama has actually had.
I don't want to see space militarized. I don't want the moonbase to be a military one. My hope is that all the peoples of the world can participate in mankind's next step in its evolution: going to the stars. Well, the planets, anyway. The realities of physics puts star travel nearly out of our reach, and wormholes and space warps will most likely remain the stuff of science fiction.
But I digress.
I realize the ongoing relationship between NASA and the Military, which I wish to see decoupled, not strengthened. But, alas, that's what governments do.
So space will need to be taken up by private enterprise. It would be nice if you, I, anyone could take a holiday on a lunar resort in the next 20 years. More importantly, I'd love to see some serious scientific research conducted on the moon. Living and manufacturing that can be done independent of Earth support. These goals would be laudable, and not something you can expect from government interests. Getting to the moon just to beat nation X, as we have already seen, is not politically nor financially sustainable. But we never seem to learn this very basic lesson.
Umm, Afghanistan != Iraq. You do remember why we are over there, right?
Yep. All over Osama bin Laden, or so we are told. The very man formerly propped up by our own CIA, during the cold war between the Soviets and the US, where Afghanistan was simply a pawn, caught between two powerful factions, and left to fester afterwards.
And you are surprised they would be so inclined to flay a couple of planes into our buildings? That's nothing compared to the damage the US and the Soviet Union has done to that country over the decades.
Afghanistan != Iraq? You bet!!!!!
The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while.
I don't think the populations of the countries that were effectively annexed by the Soviet Union thought of them as a mere bogeyman. The Cold War came about when the Soviet Union refused to honor her wartime agreements and decided to annex Eastern Europe. It didn't come about because our Government needed a bogeyman to distract the population.
Ah yes, the Cold War. Well, the US and England made some shady deals with Stalin allowing him to annex parts of Europe in exchange for its efforts against another megalomanic, Hitler. I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another? And you are suprised that Devil didn't keep whatever promises? "Oh, you can have this much of Europe, but not that much?"
Surely I am not the only person on the planet to see the irony and hypocrisy in this.
US Foreign policy is the problem, and it's been the problem all along. And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
but this demonization will only hurt relations
So we should turn the other check when they oppress human rights and just keep doing business with them as usual?
This is not about "turning the other cheek", but understanding what led up to the events of 9/11, -- decades in the making. And if these lessons are not learned, it'll happen again.
Also, keep in mind that China already has the US by its financial balls in a very assymetrical fashion, and I'm not sure what that would portend. But it does give China a lot of leverage over the US.
How do they have us by the 'financial balls'? They could dump their holdings of US Treasuries and pull the rug out from under that market -- but that would hurt them (and the rest of the World for that matter) at least as badly as it would hurt us. They have 400,000,000 people they need to pull out of poverty. That isn't gonna happen if they undermine their biggest trading relationship.
Um, have you been paying attention to recent events lately? China may be hurt *some*, but the US will be hurt much more. And eventually China will no longer have need to hold US bonds, in which case they'll just dump them anyway.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The financial place the US has in the world is slipping, and with the current crisis, that place will slip even faster.
Of course, no one seems to be asking the question how the US could allow itself to slip into this precarious financial dependency, anyway. Oh wait -- it's because it wants to meddle in the affairs of all countries around the world, and needs a big military budget to do it! The same meddling that has led to 9/11, and who knows what else to come?
What would you do if you were China right now? Think. It's not hard to figure out, unless you are blinded by US arrogance.
I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century
They may well become our rival. We'll see. We aren't without our own streng
This is gonna sound cold but I really don't give a shit about Afghani schoolchildren or women. I give a shit about seeing a Government come to power in Afghanistan that can keep their own fanatics from flying airplanes into our buildings. I don't believe that such a Government has come to power yet -- hence we need to remain there.
All the talk about building Democracy really kind of misses the point, IMHO.
This is sad. They are human, just like you are. And it's attitudes like yours that will keep the foreverwar going. Same old story with Israel and Palestine. Isreal kills innocents in Palestine, Palestinians kills Ireeali(sp) innocents, and on and on for years, decades, centuries.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
And until we do, there is simply no hope for the human race. None at all.
I voted for Obama because I was hoping he was pro-peace.
It seems that not only was I wrong, I was very naive.
I was already concerned about his wanting to send more troupes to Afghanistan, but now this????
Once again, the push to go to space is for all the wrong reasons. I don't want to see space militarized, and yet that's exactly what we're seeing.
The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while. Then when the walls came down and the USSR went bust, various domestic issues became the bogeyman, including a way over-inflated "danger" of child kidnapping and all the "dangers" of the Internet. Let alone the so-called "drug war", etc. Then it was "terrorist threat", ushered in by the events of 9/11. And now that that issue has fallen out of vogue, China is now going to be the next boogeyman.
There will be a major culture clash between NASA and the Pentagon whilst they become "linked". The openness of NASA is at direct odds with the secrecy of the Pentagon, just for starters.
Eventually, the Pentagon will push for more and more control and influence over NASA, and "reasons" will be created to "justify" the further militarization of NASA.
China is a wildcard in all this, but this demonization will only hurt relations, and lead China to escalate its efforts. Also, keep in mind that China already has the US by its financial balls in a very assymetrical fashion, and I'm not sure what that would portend. But it does give China a lot of leverage over the US.
Many years ago when everyone was so busy with 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the like -- and even before 9/11, I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century. And it would seem I was correct in that assessment.
I also say something else: keep an eye on the relationship between Russia and China, as I suspect they will become strong allies in the years and decades to come, as a counter to the US and the EU.
My 2 cents' worth of analysis of the geopolitical situation. Take it for what it's worth. Oh, and stay tuned.
It depends on your definition of complex system. Is it any system wherein linearity no longer holds true or is a predictive facet that defines a system or function as complex? I've always found it advantageous to not rush to judgment.
My informal definitions of:
"Complex System": A system or 3 or more components that interact in nonlinear ways.
"Complex Dynamical System": Everything in the prior with the added property of components altering their mode mode of interaction with each other.
"Complex Dynamical Adaptive System (CDAS)": Everything in the prior with the added property of being able to alter the dynamics of interaction to produce greater efficiency in the embedding environment -- to "adapt".
"Self-Organized Criticality (SOC)": A CDAS that organizes itself to a critical point where a sharp drop in "efficiency" (avalanche) may occur at the behest of the slightest perturbation. Generally resist predictability.
"Evolutionary Humpty-Dumpty: : An CDAS that archives SOC in such a way that the usual external control and regulatory influences fail to produce the usual reactions. Case in point: current global financial meltdown where "all the King's horses and all the King's men" (government policies, regulations, and bureaucrats) " cannot put Humpty back together again! (cannot halt the avalanche).
Well, that's my take in a nutshell.
And as I said; until I hear the financial "experts" speak in these (or similar) terms, I'll never be convinced they have even the slightest clue.
It really annoys me when people make a mistake but still try to run with it anyways.
No so much a "mistake" as it is an 'understatement'. Or more to the point; I really meant much more, but didn't spend the time to reword it perfectly. Oh well... point taken.
The article doesn't mean 'linear' in the sense of 'linear dependence on a set of variables', but rather 'linear' as in 'sequence of events that follow one another as a direct consequence of the previous one'.
I know, and even there I still maintain that any assumption of a simple causal relationship in a complex system with so many interconnected parts is also silly. Simple causal relationships are the exception, not the rule.
You sound like the author of the "Black Swan". You are both:
- correct on almost all points
- speaking in language that makes it hard to distinguish jargon, allegory and hyperbole
- going to be ignored
Such a shame.
Thanks, I think.
I compressed a lot down into a single post, stuff that would require a book or two to really treat it properly.
And even then, people wish to cling to their fantasies about how the market works. They want illusion, not truth. They do not want to consider the implications for their own investments.
Yes, there is some allegory and perhaps a touch of hyperbole in what I am saying. Worse, the jargon pulls from a couple of disparate fields, and if I were serious about that post, would pull from many more disparate fields that would probably loose most people. Economists are not physicists, physicists are not necessarily well verse in chaos theory (though some are), and physicists and chaos experts are not necessarily well versed in the language of finance. So, you are correct; I would be ignored.
And even worse: none of the above would know one whit about Transcendental Sets, because I have yet to publish anything substantive on that outside of a blog or two.
And if I, of course, try to use simpler language, the flavor would be lost. Allegories and analogies are never perfect,.. well, you get the idea.
The population distribution in most of the US is simply not geared toward passenger rail except possibly at the local level (i.e., subway/light rail). This isn't Europe, and you can't necessarily repeat the same things that work in Europe and expect them to work here also.
That's only because the current US landscape has been shaped by the government building lots of highways that only encourage the use of the auto over the train, and thus lead to the sprawl we have today.
Bullshit. Highways shaped only the relatively local landscape, which the grandparent properly points out is served by light rail and subways. What TFA is talking about is medium and long distance intercity rail - and as the grandparent point out, the population of most of the US is simply distributed very badly for that type of transportation, and that distribution predates highways.
Au contraries! (See? Much more sophisticated than your "bullshit"!:-))
Highway construction is the direct cause of people spreading out more, which created the "suburbs" quite a distance from the city center. I imagine the auto industry lobbied heavily against the construction and investment in public transportation for many decades. And now, today the auto industry have inculcated the notion of "freedom" and "independence" as a direct tie-in to their products. It's a perversion of what freedom actually is, but it doesn't matter. People today will fight you tooth and nail for their "god-given right" to own and operate an SUV. And some study I came across some years back suggested that those who drive SUVs have certain attitudes to match.
But I digress.
I personally commute 120km every day in my car to work. I would just love it if I could hop a high-speed rail from, say, Nashua to Boston and get there in the same amount of time it takes me to drive that distance. Alas, I have no such options.
Silly and Pollyannish as this might sound, but "build the rails and they will come." By careful long-term planning the population will redistribute itself to take advantage of a rail system that will get people to work on time, faster, and more hassle-free than having to drive the distance.
It will NOT happen overnight. This is something that will take decades to do. Alas, to say that political will in the US is myopic would be an understatement. Boston spent $15 Billion and many years constructing the Main Artery Project, more popularly known as "The Big Dig". What a waste of money. The traffic situation along that main artery has not improved one whit, and now Massachusetts is in dire straights looking for ways to pay off this failed project. Debates are going on know about whether to raise tolls or gas taxes.
But where is the ROI for this "Big Dig"? If it had a true ROI, Mass would not have to raise taxes to pay for it, no? And if there were never a real ROI to begin with, then why do it at all?
As long as government employ short-sightedness, pork, and no accountability for the devastating waste of your tax dollars, we will continue to have these shocks to the system that will only increase in severity over time.
But if we don't pay our taxes, government holds a gun to our heads and strips us of all possessions to satisfy their thirst for our pound of flesh. But when it comes to justifying the use of our tax dollars stolen from us, the theatre is conspicuously silent, so silent its deafening.
Slashdot Mirror
The only way for a police and court action to arrest and convict people to work is if there's a government present willing to do that work. The Taliban was funding and sheltering al Qaeda as well as murdering and oppressing the Afghan people. By removing that government and bringing the rule of law to that land, whether under a Western-style democracy or not, is the only way police and courts can do anything to the criminals there.
Yep. It's not a easy situation. But if the US goes in and kills innocents in its attempts to bring down the regime there, the US automatically compromises its moral standing. Blowing up villages is not likely to win the hearts and minds of the people there. The average man, woman, and child in Afghanistan cannot be automatically considered "guilty" simply because they have been oppressed by the government there and could do nothing about it.
But like I said, the mess that is Afghanistan is the direct result of how the US handled things -- or not -- during the last Cold War. Again, the average person there is not to blame for that.
Better approaches? How about working with the neighbors of Afghanistan to improve conditions there over time? It would be messy, it would be slow, but at least you don't put yourself in the position of slaughtering innocents.
Or better yet, just not making such mistakes in the first place!
Just saw Charlie Wilson's War. My understanding is that most of it is pretty on target about the story, but I'll admit it probably glossed over pieces. The general gist though, that the U.S. supported the Afghans up till the U.S.S.R. pulled out, and then Charlie was unable to support even a miniscule fraction of the money to build a school and help rebuild the country, is properly summed up by the quote used on the ending Title Card of the movie: "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world ...and then we fucked up the end game." - Charlie Wilson
The U.S. has never learned much about the "End Game", China thinks ONLY of the "End Game".
Yep. The US can't think past the next election. China is into long-term planning. Who will be better positioned to seize the future?
Like I said, it's time to start learning Mandarin!
You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
Actually I don't watch CNN. I lost my patience with cable news around the time that they decided Britney Spears was more newsworthy than the Iraq War. I get my news from the internet, PBS and the occasional newspaper (mostly for coverage of local events)
If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
I'm sorry but I think we are done here. You are drawing conclusions about me that are completely unsupported by my statements. You have no argument to make besides the emotional one. Think of the children!
Tell the other hippies on the commune that Shakrai said hello and that they need to stop bogarting the pipe ;)
We are indeed done here. Especially if your only reaction to children being killed is "you're just using an emotional argument."
Alas, I don't have the time to pull up the research, etc. to be more cogent, especially in this forum.
But yes, what is wrong with considering the children and other innocents? What about our high-minded sounding principles of "innocent until proven guilty?" Let's throw it all to hell, because the US never really stuck by these principles, anyway.
I am not saying that we should do nothing when the troops start marching across our borders. But that hasn't happened to us in a very long time. The last time it came even close to that was Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii wasn't even a State at the time. Some seem to think that Truman or whomever was president at the time deliberately did things to provoke the Japanese to attack us so we would have a reason to jump into the war.
I don't know where the real truth lies, and I don't care. If we humans don't catch a clue, we will be our own endangerment; our own undoing. Technology is progressing much faster than human sensibilities, and we are not far from the point where anyone can brew up something dangerous to mass populations in their garage.
I apologize for getting 'emotional' with you. I guess kids really don't matter. I suppose innocence is irrelevant.
The more "sinister" side of myself sees humans as a collection of mindless nodes that are just executing "programming", forming a vast dynamical system that has taken on a life of its own. In that view, the individual nodes are irrelevant. I truly despise that view of humanity, but more and more it seems to be an undeniable fact of the species.
And you know what? Considering some of the reactions I've seen here, maybe my sinister side is correct. And truly a sad epitaph for the species.
It is finished. I never should have gotten involved in politics. Should have just stuck to my mathematics, science, and computers. Silly me, to think I could even put even a dent in the nature and dangerous proclivities of this errant species. Go have your wars, your economic crises, your corruptions, your oppressions of the innocent. I'll just finish the work I began and move on. Good night.
The problem lies with the individual acquiescing individual sovereignty to the State. There would be no "vacuum" if individuals would insist on what is right and not allow for excuses.
If you are innocent and are killed, it does not matter if it were "by accident" or by intent. And besides, firebombing civilians is no "accident". And just because "everyone else is slaughtering innocents" is no accuse to commit atrocities yourself.
How are they "innocent" if they just acquiesced their sovereignty to the state? In a total war civilians contribute at least as much (if not more) to the war effort as the military does. They are legitimate targets. That fact may make you squeamish but war isn't supposed to be pretty.
Me squeamish? Tell that to the nuclear shadow of a little girl playing with her ball the instant the nuke went off in Hiroshima. Yeah, maybe I am squeamish. I hate seeing children vaporized. I hate seeing children with limbs blown off by bombs. To that child, it does not matter which side dropped the bomb.
But hawkish and callous attitudes such as yours is precisely why we may never get beyond these atrocities. If you don't mind innocent children with limbs blown off or burned to death or vaporized, well, you must be some kind of person.
One who can see a better way.
If you want the "better way" then I suggest you stop focusing your energies on the United States and start focusing them on the true evils in this World.
The US is just as much a part of that "true evil" as the others. You just don't see it from those who suffered through the atrocities the US has committed around the world over the decades. You are "safe" in your absolutist arm chair, seeing only the propaganda you are fed on CNN.
The United States didn't even have a standing army until fairly recently. The United States was content to hide behind our geography until technology made that geography a moot point.
And now the US has seen fit to join the club of power and oppression.
As far as "Peace by means of MAD", we come perilously close once or twice to hitting that MAD button. And now we carry this insanity out into space?
Convince Russia and China to get rid of their nuclear weapons and I'll support the United States getting rid of ours.
Why would they want to given the foreign policy of the US over the decades?
Like them or hate them nuclear weapons successfully deterred the Soviet Union.
At what level of risk? Sure, you can win sometimes at Russian Roulette...
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
I didn't say you should stop giving a damn. I just think you should be a little bit more realistic. It only takes one Adolf Hitler to render every single idealist such as yourself a moot point. Frankly I'm glad the United States has the power that we do.
Oh, I am being very realistic. At the same time, I will not ever excuse the killing and death of innocents for ANY reason. Children are not targets, and even the adults are fed from the propaganda organs of their own government, just as we are from our own. Putting the shoe on the other foot, those responsible for 9/11 can also claim that the deaths of 3000 or our "innocents" was justified because of the horrible US foreign policies over the decades. Or because they elected Bush.
I guess killing innocent children is OK as long as it's not our own children. If that's the case, than we are all to be damned.
(4) I hope you're right.
(5) It doesn't matter. They will get their acts together when it matters enough to them.
Russia and CHina strong Allies! BWAHAHahqahaha.
And if someone one day before the fall of the Iron Curtain said the Iron Curtain will collapse?
Clearly you don't know jack about their history and regular fighting along their border.
Actually, I know plenty. I also know that what you know can blind you to what could be a sharp turn that can catch everyone unawares. Beware of Black Swans.
To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
That's a noble sentiment but a naive one. Allowing Al Quada a sanctuary to continue plotting and executing attacks on our civilian population would be completely unacceptable. When should we have intervened? When 10,000 of our citizens were killed? 100,000? 1,000,000? How many zeros does it take before we should have gone in?
Are we so damned weak that we can't prevent a small group of people from wreaking the same havoc again? How pathetic we must be. Those 16 or so individuals that made 9/11 happen caught us with our pants down. What would we had done if it were 16 US citizens? Recall the Oakholoma(sp) City Bombing. Was that done by Arabs? Nope.
Also, if you've been paying attention, what the US did to Afghanistan did not stop Al-Quada. If anything, it has inspired even more to join up.
Anyone who thinks the "war on terrorism" is something that can be "won" by aggression and violence is in for a rude awakening. The more of their innocents you bomb, the more you whip up the fevor and hated of the United States, and the more will be galvanized to give their lives in the "great cause" to stop the "Western Imperialists" or however they think of us.
I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army
How about the individuals that trained them, supported them and ordered them to carry out the attacks? They shouldn't be brought to justice? They should remain free to plan future attacks?
Yes, bring them to justice! But bombing their villages out of existence is NOT how we do justice in the US, unless we're just as bad as they are! Find the individuals responsible and bring them before a tribunal, convict them on the evidence, and punish them. Last I heard, this is how Justice is supposed to be done. Last I heard, that is the American way.
But something sinister about the human species is afoot. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. It's a sad fact that has been true throughout all of human history. And worse: once the oppressed becomes the oppressor, they usually more times than not oppresses a wholly new innocent group, not those that oppressed them.
I for one would like to see this blight in humanity done away with. Because otherwise no one can claim the moral high ground. No one.
"...And the Germans kill the Jews and the Jews killed the Arabs and the Arabs killed the hostages and that is the news. Is there any wonder that the markets are confused?" -- Roger Waters, Amused to Death.
Well maybe I should stop giving a damn and let homo sapiens eradicate itself from existence due to their own stupidity and refusal to put behind them the sad tribalism of their evolutionary past and think with the neocortex that evolution graced them with.
Roger Waters hit the nail on the head in his "Amused to Death" album. I was hoping he was wrong, but I fear he may be right.
I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another
We didn't make a deal with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Stalin came into the war because of something called Operation Barbarossa [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps you've heard of it? Once the Soviet Union was involved in the war it would have been pretty stupid of Churchill and FDR not to coordinate efforts with them.
According to what I read in the book "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union", deals were made after the war. Have you not heard?
And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
We do the same as Hitler? Really? I'm sorry but I just can't take you seriously anymore. You can point out hypocrisy in US policy until the cows come home (there's certainly a lot of it to go around) but a comparison to Adolf Hitler? I don't think you understand what true evil really is.
Um, what was the Vietnam war all about? Where the US forces slaughtered, by some estimates, 2,000,000 Vietnamese, including children, villages? Just for defending their home turf?
Not to mention firebombing innocents and nuking others in Japan. And then there was the Korean war...
Oh, but I suppose slaughtering innocents en masse is "OK" if the US does it, but it's "Heinous" if done by someone else. Not to mention the very recent and despicable tortures the US conducted in Iraq and their base in Cuba.
Just gotta love double standards.
We just won't be as relevant to the rest of the world as we once were
So what? I'm not a particularly big fan of our interventionism. I'm just a realist about it -- as long as the United States remains a Great Power it will do what Great Powers have always done. Do you really think any other country in our position would be acting any differently? I'm just thankful that it's the United States and not China or Russia. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we'd wind up ceding our position as a super power while retaining our freedom and our nuclear deterrent. We'd be in the same position as the UK or France. Big fucking deal -- and not too likely to happen for a few decades in any event.
So biased. If you were Chinese, you'd rather the Chinese do it. If you were Russian, you'd rather the Russians do it. Why? Because you are not on the receiving end of the stick.
Clearly we have a number of challenges that we need to address. Energy, education, health care, blah, blah, blah. What I find interesting is that you are ignoring the challenges facing China and Russia. The former has hundreds of millions of rural poor that they need to pull out of poverty. The latter can't even meet the replacement rate for it's population and just had the rug pulled out from under it's primary revenue source
I ignore nothing. But I do know that the US ranks very low in the arena of education; sucks in its attention to the global environment issues, and has a plethora of human rights issues of its own. Like, for example, how divorced dads are treated in court. Woman can get away with just about anything, but dads gets the shaft no matter how good he is.
But I digress
The real problem is that we have governments that have gotten away from what is best for the individuals, the people, everything expect perpetuating their own existence and forcing us all to be dependent on them. There is nothing "great" about being a "Great Power" that uses that power to control, manipulate, subjugate, and kill innocent individuals.
But all "Great Powers" eventually fall and crumble back into the dust from whence they came. The real problem is that new "Great Powers" rise up to replace them.
And that is only possible because Individuals have lost their self worth and is far too willing in acquiesce without question or critical judgment. And those in power knows this, and take advantage accordingly. Occasionally some go just a bit too far and get "found out", but nothing truly changes.
There is a better way. But only if you want it.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
You misunderstand. I see them as human. I just don't see it as being the job of the United States to spread freedom and democracy. Even if it was our job I'm sure you'd admit that spreading democracy at gunpoint into a culture with no history of the concept isn't likely to be particularly successful.
Our mission in Afghanistan should be the creation of a Government that will work for their culture and be able to control the extremists that wish to use that country as a staging area for attacks on the West. If that Government is a liberal democracy then so much the better -- I don't just see that as particularly likely in a country where only 28% of the population is literate.
I agree that "democracy" should not be rammed down throats at gunpoint! Especially since there are ways to proceed that are better than "democracy" -- the majority beating up on the minority.
I question whether the US should've gone to Afghanistan at all. I mean, we are only talking about the actions of 16 or so individuals; not an entire army. The US has slaughtered many innocents there, probably many more that died as a direct result of 9/11. To me, shedding innocent blood for innocent blood shed is just plain wrong, and only makes matters worse in the long run.
I find it odd that you see China as a threat but don't seem to think we should do anything about it. They have been quietly closing the gap with us, and when attention is drawn to it, they downplay it.
Unfortunately for them, they can't seem to keep their generals and admirals quiet. Every so often one of them boasts about how this puts them on track to catch up to us militarily.
They are currently building a very large Navy, but downplay the significance. They are testing anti-satellite missiles, but downplay the significance. They are blatantly stealing our secrets (military and industrial). And your suggestion is that we should not respond because it might make them, I dunno, try to catch up to us militarily?
You can be the boiled frog if you like, but your fatalism doesn't interest me.
If China is a thereat, it's because they are annoyed with US hegemony, and are taking steps to ensure they remain free of it.
If they want to build up their navy, so what? Or maybe you now can understand how the rest of the world sees the US, now that the US has a very powerful rival that may be inclined to start flexing its own hegemony.
After all, they've had very good teachers for decades.
Well, it's time to start boning up on my Mandarin!
Effectively, your point is: "They are getting more powerful so we should let them get more powerful, or else they might get more powerful."
Huh?
I think you may have misread something. Besides, it's not so much that they are getting "more powerful" as it is the US getting weaker, and that weakness was only hastened by Bush's silliness over the past 8 years, but this downward progression has been going on for some time now.
China is effectively waging a one sided cold war against us. Bush wasn't paying attention, and he was distracted by conflicts with petty dictators. I voted for Obama primarily due to him not being oblivious to *China's* challenge.
I don't think China is waging a cold war against us so much as forwarding their own agendas, which, of course, makes the US a bit nervous.
I mean, they DO have the US by the balls, so the US is not a credible threat to them. However, at the same time, they don't want to be subjected to the same bullying the US has done to so many other countries.
If China wanted to sink the US, all they would have to do is dump the US dollar and dump the US bonds. They may take a hit, but they'd be around to see another day. Meanwhile, the US would plunge into utter chaos.
As I said, the US was stupid for allowing itself to become so dependent on funding from abroad. The US is weak where it counts -- education and long-term planning. Now, it's too late, and what'cha gonna do?
As long as resources are limited, there will never be peace. That's human nature. Get over it.
Spoken like a true fatalist. As long as you are willing to settle for "it's just human nature", you never see the other possibilities, the better things human nature can become.
In other words, "human nature" is not written in concrete, boys and girls. I already see ways things can be improved. The problem now is to come up with a workable transitional plan.
Maybe you didn't know this, but space is already "militarized".
Not really. Not to the extent I fear could happen.
2. Searching for friends and enemies is also human nature. There is no need for some kind of conspiracy theory. Politicians just say what the people electing them want to hear.
True, but I never said anything about a "conspiracy theory".
4. Probably, but the pentagon is not the government.
It's an organ of the government, which makes it the government. Not all of the government, mind you. But it's certainly not civilian!!!!!
5. Yes, China has the US by the balls, but the funny thing is China's economy need the US market and would crumble at exactly the same speed as the one of the US if they decide to bite.
Have you been paying attention? Already the US is experiencing negative growth, whilst China is upset because its growth rate sunk to 9% down from 11%. You forget that the US is not China's only market. China is its own market. Then there's Europe and South America. The US is significant, but not a big a factor as it used to be in the past. You are thinking, apparently, with 20th-century notions in the 21st century. Wake up and smell the coffee.
As for your insight about China becoming the next US rival... That's what everyone is saying for the past 20 years. What next? You will predict that if we continue to emit CO2, methane or some other gas then maybe this will make an effect you will name "global warming"?
Oh, and you really suspect Russia and China might become allies? What makes you think that? Is it because it was the news a few years ago when they did their first joint military exercises?
They share a common headache -- the US, and they have been doing other things besides military exercises over the years. And your flippancy will not serve you here.
It seems that not only was I wrong, I was very naive.
Get ready to be wrong about a lot of things concerning The One.
If only you had turned your razor sharp analytical skills on Obama. But, no, you swallowed his song and dance whole.
Yeah, I expect to see a lot of posts like this from you and the Obamanuts
Well, I was never an Obama "nut". In fact, I am a dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian that despises both the Democrats and Republicans. In fact, I think the entire system of "democracy" is flawed at the fundamental roots and we need something better.
I would not have bother to vote at all except Sarah Palin scared the hell out of me with her caviler attitude towards geopolitical issues, in particular, the Russians. It seemed as though she saw nothing wrong with going to war with Russia, and McCain was a crass idiot for picking such a crass idiot as a running mate.
So my vote was really a "save the planet" vote.
And now, I truly wonder how likely we really are to save the planet from human conflict that could escalate into nuclear war. I would put the odds of such at being higher than I feel comfortable with. Obama is not looking to *really* clean up foreign policy to lessen the chances of this based on what I've seen so far.
Oh, but Obama has become this nation's "Big Black Hope", as supposing that by mere dermnal chromatics alone will be all the "change" needed to make the "change", whatever was meant by that.
And now NASA will probably become more militarized than it ever has been. The thought sickens me.
Obama also is not interested in disbaning Homeland Insecurity, but is keeping it around. That too sickens me.
Well, it was said by Who:
Welcome to the new Boss! Same as the old Boss...
So we did get fooled again...
Impressed by what? He hasn't done crap. His change consisted of installing mostly Clintonites in his incoming administration, including the Ice Queen herself.All he done is make proclamations behind his bullshit 'Office of the President-Elect' podium like a kid who wants everyone to think he is special.
I think the next 4 years will be a living hell unless something happens to Obama early on.
And as far as NASA falling under the military, they have been doing that for years already. Besides, if it means more money for space exploration, then I am all for it. We should have had a permanent moon base by now. Just as long as those 'Global Warming is Man Made' whackos are gone from the NASA administration, this looks like the one intelligent idea Obama has actually had.
I don't want to see space militarized. I don't want the moonbase to be a military one. My hope is that all the peoples of the world can participate in mankind's next step in its evolution: going to the stars. Well, the planets, anyway. The realities of physics puts star travel nearly out of our reach, and wormholes and space warps will most likely remain the stuff of science fiction.
But I digress.
I realize the ongoing relationship between NASA and the Military, which I wish to see decoupled, not strengthened. But, alas, that's what governments do.
So space will need to be taken up by private enterprise. It would be nice if you, I, anyone could take a holiday on a lunar resort in the next 20 years. More importantly, I'd love to see some serious scientific research conducted on the moon. Living and manufacturing that can be done independent of Earth support. These goals would be laudable, and not something you can expect from government interests. Getting to the moon just to beat nation X, as we have already seen, is not politically nor financially sustainable. But we never seem to learn this very basic lesson.
...
Umm, Afghanistan != Iraq. You do remember why we are over there, right?
Yep. All over Osama bin Laden, or so we are told. The very man formerly propped up by our own CIA, during the cold war between the Soviets and the US, where Afghanistan was simply a pawn, caught between two powerful factions, and left to fester afterwards.
And you are surprised they would be so inclined to flay a couple of planes into our buildings? That's nothing compared to the damage the US and the Soviet Union has done to that country over the decades.
Afghanistan != Iraq? You bet!!!!!
The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while.
I don't think the populations of the countries that were effectively annexed by the Soviet Union thought of them as a mere bogeyman. The Cold War came about when the Soviet Union refused to honor her wartime agreements and decided to annex Eastern Europe. It didn't come about because our Government needed a bogeyman to distract the population.
Ah yes, the Cold War. Well, the US and England made some shady deals with Stalin allowing him to annex parts of Europe in exchange for its efforts against another megalomanic, Hitler. I mean, making deals with one Devil to defeat another? And you are suprised that Devil didn't keep whatever promises? "Oh, you can have this much of Europe, but not that much?"
Surely I am not the only person on the planet to see the irony and hypocrisy in this.
US Foreign policy is the problem, and it's been the problem all along. And until it's fixed, there will be more wars where more innocents will be piled up like core wood. We scorn Hitler for doing this, and yet we do the same.
but this demonization will only hurt relations
So we should turn the other check when they oppress human rights and just keep doing business with them as usual?
This is not about "turning the other cheek", but understanding what led up to the events of 9/11, -- decades in the making. And if these lessons are not learned, it'll happen again.
Also, keep in mind that China already has the US by its financial balls in a very assymetrical fashion, and I'm not sure what that would portend. But it does give China a lot of leverage over the US.
How do they have us by the 'financial balls'? They could dump their holdings of US Treasuries and pull the rug out from under that market -- but that would hurt them (and the rest of the World for that matter) at least as badly as it would hurt us. They have 400,000,000 people they need to pull out of poverty. That isn't gonna happen if they undermine their biggest trading relationship.
Um, have you been paying attention to recent events lately? China may be hurt *some*, but the US will be hurt much more. And eventually China will no longer have need to hold US bonds, in which case they'll just dump them anyway.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The financial place the US has in the world is slipping, and with the current crisis, that place will slip even faster.
Of course, no one seems to be asking the question how the US could allow itself to slip into this precarious financial dependency, anyway. Oh wait -- it's because it wants to meddle in the affairs of all countries around the world, and needs a big military budget to do it! The same meddling that has led to 9/11, and who knows what else to come?
What would you do if you were China right now? Think. It's not hard to figure out, unless you are blinded by US arrogance.
I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century
They may well become our rival. We'll see. We aren't without our own streng
This is gonna sound cold but I really don't give a shit about Afghani schoolchildren or women. I give a shit about seeing a Government come to power in Afghanistan that can keep their own fanatics from flying airplanes into our buildings. I don't believe that such a Government has come to power yet -- hence we need to remain there.
All the talk about building Democracy really kind of misses the point, IMHO.
This is sad. They are human, just like you are. And it's attitudes like yours that will keep the foreverwar going. Same old story with Israel and Palestine. Isreal kills innocents in Palestine, Palestinians kills Ireeali(sp) innocents, and on and on for years, decades, centuries.
All because one side refuses to see the other side as human.
And until we do, there is simply no hope for the human race. None at all.
It seems that not only was I wrong, I was very naive.
I was already concerned about his wanting to send more troupes to Afghanistan, but now this????
Many years ago when everyone was so busy with 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the like -- and even before 9/11, I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century. And it would seem I was correct in that assessment.
I also say something else: keep an eye on the relationship between Russia and China, as I suspect they will become strong allies in the years and decades to come, as a counter to the US and the EU.
My 2 cents' worth of analysis of the geopolitical situation. Take it for what it's worth. Oh, and stay tuned.
It depends on your definition of complex system. Is it any system wherein linearity no longer holds true or is a predictive facet that defines a system or function as complex? I've always found it advantageous to not rush to judgment.
My informal definitions of:
Well, that's my take in a nutshell.
And as I said; until I hear the financial "experts" speak in these (or similar) terms, I'll never be convinced they have even the slightest clue.
It really annoys me when people make a mistake but still try to run with it anyways.
No so much a "mistake" as it is an 'understatement'. Or more to the point; I really meant much more, but didn't spend the time to reword it perfectly. Oh well... point taken.
Besides, I always thought those photo frames were a bit silly, anyway.
The article doesn't mean 'linear' in the sense of 'linear dependence on a set of variables', but rather 'linear' as in 'sequence of events that follow one another as a direct consequence of the previous one'.
I know, and even there I still maintain that any assumption of a simple causal relationship in a complex system with so many interconnected parts is also silly. Simple causal relationships are the exception, not the rule.
If anyone assumes linearity in complex systems, it only shows they have no clue. In complex systems, linearity is the exception, not the rule.
You sound like the author of the "Black Swan". You are both:
- correct on almost all points - speaking in language that makes it hard to distinguish jargon, allegory and hyperbole - going to be ignored
Such a shame.
Thanks, I think.
I compressed a lot down into a single post, stuff that would require a book or two to really treat it properly.
And even then, people wish to cling to their fantasies about how the market works. They want illusion, not truth. They do not want to consider the implications for their own investments.
Yes, there is some allegory and perhaps a touch of hyperbole in what I am saying. Worse, the jargon pulls from a couple of disparate fields, and if I were serious about that post, would pull from many more disparate fields that would probably loose most people. Economists are not physicists, physicists are not necessarily well verse in chaos theory (though some are), and physicists and chaos experts are not necessarily well versed in the language of finance. So, you are correct; I would be ignored.
And even worse: none of the above would know one whit about Transcendental Sets, because I have yet to publish anything substantive on that outside of a blog or two.
And if I, of course, try to use simpler language, the flavor would be lost. Allegories and analogies are never perfect,.. well, you get the idea.
Bullshit. Highways shaped only the relatively local landscape, which the grandparent properly points out is served by light rail and subways. What TFA is talking about is medium and long distance intercity rail - and as the grandparent point out, the population of most of the US is simply distributed very badly for that type of transportation, and that distribution predates highways.
Au contraries! (See? Much more sophisticated than your "bullshit"! :-))
Highway construction is the direct cause of people spreading out more, which created the "suburbs" quite a distance from the city center. I imagine the auto industry lobbied heavily against the construction and investment in public transportation for many decades. And now, today the auto industry have inculcated the notion of "freedom" and "independence" as a direct tie-in to their products. It's a perversion of what freedom actually is, but it doesn't matter. People today will fight you tooth and nail for their "god-given right" to own and operate an SUV. And some study I came across some years back suggested that those who drive SUVs have certain attitudes to match.
But I digress.
I personally commute 120km every day in my car to work. I would just love it if I could hop a high-speed rail from, say, Nashua to Boston and get there in the same amount of time it takes me to drive that distance. Alas, I have no such options.
Silly and Pollyannish as this might sound, but "build the rails and they will come." By careful long-term planning the population will redistribute itself to take advantage of a rail system that will get people to work on time, faster, and more hassle-free than having to drive the distance.
It will NOT happen overnight. This is something that will take decades to do. Alas, to say that political will in the US is myopic would be an understatement. Boston spent $15 Billion and many years constructing the Main Artery Project, more popularly known as "The Big Dig". What a waste of money. The traffic situation along that main artery has not improved one whit, and now Massachusetts is in dire straights looking for ways to pay off this failed project. Debates are going on know about whether to raise tolls or gas taxes.
But where is the ROI for this "Big Dig"? If it had a true ROI, Mass would not have to raise taxes to pay for it, no? And if there were never a real ROI to begin with, then why do it at all?
As long as government employ short-sightedness, pork, and no accountability for the devastating waste of your tax dollars, we will continue to have these shocks to the system that will only increase in severity over time.
But if we don't pay our taxes, government holds a gun to our heads and strips us of all possessions to satisfy their thirst for our pound of flesh. But when it comes to justifying the use of our tax dollars stolen from us, the theatre is conspicuously silent, so silent its deafening.
Extremely unprofitable? You bet!