Re: Barack Obama Pits Space Explorers Against School Children

On Dec 13, 7:40 am, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 12 Dec, 22:16, Quadibloc <jsav...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But I'm very firmly convinced that the developed Western countries do,
in general, have a pretty good grip on what it means to be a society
where people aren't living in constant fear of being accused of
being... nonconformists.

A developed Western country instituted a régime which proceeded to
comit genocide. This is a matter of the record.

I'm talking about developed Western countries like the United States
and France and Britain. Not Nazi Germany, or even Russia. Nazi Germany
doesn't illustrate anything about the United States or Britain or
Canada that needs fixing.

If we follow sensible policies in the Middle East we will neither have
to fight a nuclear war or surrender.

There are many nice people in the Middle East, and we should be nice
to them. But being nice to people doesn't control their actions. Those
people who are not nice will do what they want, no matter how we try
to be nice to them. This is why we have police to catch criminals and
put them away.

Terrorism doesn't have a "cause" in the sense that it's *our* fault
that we did something bad to the Muslim world, and if we stop doing
it, terrorism will go away.

There are people out there who will not settle for less than driving
Israel into the sea. They must be stopped so that they will never hurt
anyone again. As for the rest of the Islamic world, it can get with
the program.

Being nicer to another part of the world, trying to understand them
better, only happens when there is an utter and absolute absence of
violence against us from that part of the world. Once that is not the
case, the focus is on stopping the immediate violence completely. Even
if the process of doing so results in some unfairness to uninvolved
people in the area.

If the Islamic world can reassure *us* that they don't share the
mentality of the terrorists, and the terrorists are their enemies too,
then it will not be at risk of sharing the terrorists' fate. This is
how things work in the real world. Since America is the one with the
large defence establishment, people should be worried about getting
the Americans' backs up.

We would be able to see for example the steps that would have to be
taken to ensure secular development and a closing of the technology
gap with Israel.

Technology gaps are good when they mean a military power gap between
the untrustworthy and the peacful.

First, the Arab world has to prove it has no violent intentions
towards Israel. Then we will cautiously allow it access to more
technology.

Israel has already been on the receiving end of violence from the Arab
world. This is the fact you seem to be ignoring.

To get that to happen, of course, it won't be called surrender. We'll
just give up some sovereignity to a World Government - a sort of
coalition government - but the plans will be in place to ensure the
police and army ministries are in the hands of the pro-dictatorship
faction. The way Russia ate Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary
after World War II.

We have to have a World Government. This last paragraph is one that
really frighens me. In the long term a World Government is essential.
Will it come about though one country writ large, or will it come
about though a common pooled sovreignity. If America tries to write
itself large a nuclear war really is in prospect. Is a space colony
going to be there to prevent World Government? If that is part of its
role I think we should all know about it. This is what I said. A
colony is the sword of Damocles.

I don't want the U.S. to conquer the world. But the only kind of World
Government I would consider tolerable is one where it results from a
coming together of democracies - with _no_ tyrannical governments like
those of North Korea, or Zimbabwe, or even, say, Libya as they are now
becoming part of it. And even with only democratic countries, very
careful thought will have to be taken to ensure it cannot be
subverted.

Also, once space *is* colonized, a planetary government will no longer
be a government over *all humans everywhere*, which reduces the danger
in case of failure.

Fundamentally if Los Angeles and New York were going to be nuked
America would back down. There is one other thing about a space
colony. It is not invulnerable.

No, not invulnerable, but I think that your average Third World
country or terrorist organization has no way of sending a WMD all the
way to Mars, for example. It's invulnerable to the people against whom
it needs to be invulnerable.

If I was attacked by Amerca I would
make sure that any colonies were well and truly destroyed before I
even started on New York and LA. America after all only attacks small
countries that can't hit back.

The United States is not an aggressor. But it does not want to be
attacked. If there had never been any attacks on the United States
from the outside, on Israel from the outside, on South Korea and South
Vietnam from the outside, on Kuwait from the outside, what wars would
the United States have been fighting?

John Savard
.

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