Re: Yet Another Roswell Thread

Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Jul, 01:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

It appears that throughout most of history societies were indeed
extremelly concervative. Think about it, you may be familiar with the
movie "300." But when the Greegs fought the Persians they found out
that theyr traditional shields were stronger, theyr traditional spears
were longer. That gave Greeg foot soldiers a clear edge over the
standard Persian foot soldier of the time. Decates later, that gave
Alexander the Great the confidence that a much smaller Greeg army
could defeat the Persian empire. In the meantime there had been no
change whatsoever in the Persian armoury. Just a litle example.

It appear to me that humanity would indeed have stagnated again for
long periods, like during the stoneage, if there haden´t been for the
periodic influx/invations of new people´s who replased the previous
ones. Innovation what happened appears to have often been driven by
such events.

In ancient times it appears people were really reluctant, far more
than can really be understood by the modern man, to change. They did
stay with what they knew, what theyr forfathers had used, and in most
cases it took the influx of a fresh group of people to make a change.

That doesn´t mean there was no communication, after all trading
relations were widespread and regular going right back to the late
stone age. Sometimes people did actually innovate but such events
usually were hundreds of years apars.

Something genuine has happened in Modern Times. A change as
fundamental as the change which occured between 50 and 60th. years
ago. Nowdays people are far, far more responsive to change, to the
adaptation of something new, that before and it´s such a huge change
that it needs to be called a transformation. It didn´t happen all at
once, one can trace the first seeds perhaps back to the 15th. century
Itali. But since the industrial revolution began in 18th. century
Britain the pace of change has been gathering steam and gathering some
more steam right since then and there appears to be no going back.

I think this is to an extent due to increased communication.

I think not. It does not matter how often you communicate if you are
not responsive to the foreign idea(s). Something has changed which has
made people far more prepared than ever before to try out new things,
to give new ideas a chance. It´s like you heard nothing I said.
Societies have been exchisting side by side for more than thousand
years, yet the whole time maintaining regular contacts, still each
persisting with theyr own thing even though one was clearly gaining on
the other.

The big change is people´s readyness to adopt a new thing, when pryor
societies had a deep reluctance to do that.

I really don´t see how the difference could simply be more frequent
communication. Now, one can see ideas travel and being adopted, but
before people heard about them, knew others were operating in
different ways, but still it remained to them unthinkable to try out
these different ways. That´s IMO is the real difference between
modernity and the past.

Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Jul, 01:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

When people vote on ethnic or religious lines, that can create a most
unfortunate situation. Africa has seen many such cases, often ending
in tears. It´s a reason behind much of the instability there, i.e.
different ethnic or religious groups compete for the control of the
state organs, any way they can. When they gain control, they often
used that influence to enrich or benefit theyr own group, usually to
the detriment of the other groups. Typical in Africa is that an
election results in the rule of the largest single ethnic/religious
group, if there is another ethnic/religious group or groups with a
sizeable population(s), then what has number of times happened is that
members of that group engineer a hostile takeover of the gowernment,
i.e. a coupe. What then may follow is a series of coups and counter
coups, leading to either of the two: a) higly repressive despotic
police state under the control of a single ethnic/religious group or
b) civil war. Africa has seen a great number of coups, many repressive
despots and many civil wars.

Interesting is how blind the Bush' regime was to the fact that Iraq
had a similar history and hence was likelly to follow a similar
pattern over again. The regime of Saddam was one of the two logical
outcomes, now that Bush has ousted him the second logical outcome has
occured instead. Mind you, African history does also show that such
civil wars are not without end, but usually it takes years for them to
be resolved in some manner.

There is an addage that a country gets the government it deserves.
Only a strongman can rule a united Iraq. What was in fact needed was
another Baathist who was more susceptable to international pressure
than SH.

That would have been the pragmatic thing to do. Bush was told by the
Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington who also is an old Bush family
friend to do just that.

Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Jul, 01:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

To what extent do people follow these norms?

It appears that in older times they really were adered to pretty much
in general. In older times people lived the way theyr grandfathers had
done. People didn´t expect anything ellse.

The generational difference in ideas and life experiences that has
exchisted in the modern period is generally unique to that period.

Modern times are really, really very different...more like a
transformation of the human experience at quite a fundamental level.

Brought about by communications.

Try not to fixate on a single idea as an explanation for everything.

For some reason communication more often results in an adaptation of a
new idea in modern times. In past times, people learned about a thing
but did not adopt that thing. Clearly communication can´t be
explanation for that difference, i.e. people´s reluctance to change,
theyr choise to stay with what was familiar instead of adopting the
new thing they were hearing about, the inherent reluctance to change
which used to be the norm.

In the absence of this readiness to change, it may not make much
difference though communication becomes more frequent and easyer at
the same time.

Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Jul, 01:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Putin is running on empty. Defense spending is 2.7% of a rather small
GDP.

Theyr GNP is a bit over trillion dollars. Smaller than it used to be,
but not small. Big enough to make Russia about the 10th. largest
economy.

Still, Russia could be a house of Kards. It depends very narrovly on
the tremendously large energy sector which now is in the hands of Putin
´s cronies. Those appear to be underinvesting in oil and gasfields,
and overinvesting in headquarters and other nonproductive stuff like
that. Apparently the largest growing sector of the economy is the
state, with thousands of people joining its ranks every year. I have
heard it said that the number of state officials has doubled under
Putin. You literally can´t get anything done unless you bribe some
official. Which means that the leaches on the economy have been
getting more numerous. But a small business man can experience his
business being literally taken away from him with forged documents, if
someone ellse say a competitor has given higher bribes. This kills
naturally small business. This is a vicious circles.

The alternative worry is a second collapse of Russia in a few years
time.

Ian Parker wrote:
On 16 Jul, 01:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hmm, in this light it´s perhaps not surprising how difficult it has
been to decrease Palestinian extremism. After all, Israelis have
clearly been going at it the wrong way. Think about it, they have
since the so called second Palestinian 'Intifada' began punished
Palestinian in ways which has been detrimental to Palestinian economy,
which has made the jobs situation ever more hopeless seeming.

As a result, it´s really not at all strange that instability and
extremism has been growing among Palestinians. As far as I can see
Israelis have been shooting themselves in the foot. The more they
punish the Palestinians, the more they destroy theyr lifellyhood, the
more extremist factions gain power. Yet, Israelis appear completelly
blind to that quite obvious thing, despite the parallel with Germany
of the 30s they ought not have forgotten.

This I think also illustrates something else. Israel is behaving in
the way she is because there is no answer to insurgency other than the
imposition of a lock down on society. Society cannot be prtected in
any other way. This illustrates the analogy of cavalry in WW1. What is
needed is urgent work on an answer. If no answer is found it calls
into question the utility of conventional forces.

An insurgency can only be defeated by a hearts and minds approach and
economic progress. How do you reconcile this with the security of
Israel. I feel though it is also true to say that a lot of security is
imposed punitively, is really for show and in the end is counter
productive. The Israelis for example could perfectly well take down
their Arab-Arab checkponts in the West Bank. They seem to me to be
purely punitive.


- Ian Parker

The only way for peace is the acceptance by both parties they have a
right to be where they are at the present time. That means
Palestinians have to give up the hope of pushing Jews into the ocean,
and also at the same time Jews have to stop pushing Palestinians off
theyr land with theyr settlement policy.

Along with the peace plan the economic situation has to be dealt with,
as far as I can see the only other way to reduce the power of the
extremist factions is to make the overall situation of the Palestinian
people less bleak.

With current policies Israel is constanty deepening the hole in which
the overall situation appears stuck. With most Palestinians being out
of work, extremists have got an allmost limitless reqruitment pool.
That has resulted in a growing instability among the Palestinans. That
reqruitment pool of out of work young people needs to be shrunk
rapitly as possible as a part of the overall peace settlement strategy
so may have any hope whatsoever of success.

Cheers, Einar

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