Where is the world going?

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Fri Oct 11, 2002 5:46 pm

Originally posted by Virgil57
Small tactical nukes may fall into the hands of lesser developed nations, but the likleyhood of an underdeveloped nation aquire both potented nuclear technology and the means to launch it around the world?
. . . .

Even if you look at the nations that posses nuclear technology the long range nukes still are only held by nations that are developed. Ziare ofr example does not have the tech. to build anything on the scale of an ICBM and I believe that it will be some time before it will.

What makes you think it is necessary to build the scale of ICBM to use nuclear weapon? Also, why do you think people need to launch around world with them? If, for example, Saddam decides to use them, he doesn't need to launch missiles to London or Washington; he will attack Israel and the US bases in the region. How about North Korea? It cannot attack NYC, but can the US bases in Japan and South Korea. The Hiroshima style bomb may be too old for modern technology, but it still does the job. It was good enough then to kill 120,000+ people (the number is from BBC, btw), and STILL COUNTING. If someone really determined, they will just carry the bomb, hijack an airplane, and smash into a building with it.

Originally posted by Virgil57
I think that everyone who has ever lived through either WW2/Cold War or learned about it can relize the danger that such weapons can cause.

When there was a conference in NYC to limit the number of nukes during the hight of cold war, there was an exhibition of Hiroshima&Nagasaki for the first time (I think it's in the 70s). An American delegate saw photos, and appaarently said, "Wow, they are amazing. They look so real." Those are words from a military expert who SHOULD know better than others. I do not believe ordinary people know about the result of those weapon, and don't care what real impact they could cause for years. People say they do, but only when they might be the next target.

ruined letters · Post by **ruined letters** » Fri Oct 11, 2002 5:47 pm

I only have direct experience with one part of the globe, and I know that it is in no way become more right wing. The place that I live is left wing and is in fact becomming more democrat/left wing every day. In fact, there is a major issue in the election for governer coming up because of this. Basically the democratic candidate is a poor leader and nobody really likes him. But the other one is Republican, the voter turnout is going to be extremely low because of this, nobody really knows who to vote for.

Virgil57 · Post by **Virgil57** » Fri Oct 11, 2002 11:21 pm

"Wow, they are amazing. They look so real."

Well, I for one am saddened to hear that. You would think that at least OUR experts would know the scale of what they had on their hands.

If someone really determined, they will just carry the bomb, hijack an airplane, and smash into a building with it.

This is true. Hostility from from terrorists and erratic countries will always be a concern. The point that I was trying to make (and perhaps was not clear enough) is that I do not believe the senerio of a global nuclear doomsday will occur. I hope that we have at leas learned that much, although your quote about the US military is far from inspiring

I think that the nuclear aggression/tension between the major nuclear powers of the world isn' really there any more. However, IMO a terrorist is the scariest thing of all. You don't need nuclear power if you have a bunch of people willing to sacrifice their lives, just to cause harm.

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 8:47 am

~Bump~

I bring this up to see if anyone else shares my immense feeling of sadness at the moment, whenever my mind turns to concerns outside my locality...

Why are bad things happening now?

Why is it that the most positive thing I have heard on the news for a week is that it's gonna be the strongest winds for 10 years in England?

Is it a coincidence that everything is going wrong in the world?

Can we not just agree to start again. Stop the world for a day or two. Calm down. Share out the money evenly...Human rights for everyone and a democratic government in every country?
Wouldn't the whole world agree? Can't we all just get along??

garazdawi · Post by **garazdawi** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 9:10 am

Originally posted by frogus
~Bump~

I bring this up to see if anyone else shares my immense feeling of sadness at the moment, whenever my mind turns to concerns outside my locality...

Why are bad things happening now?

Why is it that the most positive thing I have heard on the news for a week is that it's gonna be the strongest winds for 10 years in England?

Is it a coincidence that everything is going wrong in the world?

Can we not just agree to start again. Stop the world for a day or two. Calm down. Share out the money evenly...Human rights for everyone and a democratic government in every country?
Wouldn't the whole world agree? Can't we all just get along??

Everything will go on as it alwys have until all of human kind get soemthing to unite aginst that is so different that they cannot relate to it. Robots with complete AI and aliens spring to mind as examples. Then we'll put away all our grudges and focus on another enemy. We as humans need someone to blaim and who else then some1 who is very different from us who we don't understand. Just my 5 cents

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 9:14 am

Why are bad things happening now?

What leads you to think there has ever been a time when they didn't occur? The atrocities of past years may be poorly delineated after a certain point, but they're around: massacres, hatemongers, unilateralist ideologues, dictators stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, politicians ra-ra'ing the love of country and pointing their youth at a neighbor, who is doing the same--read about WWI. The Crimean War. The Opium War (that's a good one). The British invasion of India. The Third Crusade, and the sacking, torching and slaughter of Constantinople by the Forces of Righteousness. The Aztec bloodletting horrors visited on their neighbors, and the Spanish bloodlettings visited on the Aztecs.

CM · Post by CM » Sun Oct 27, 2002 9:20 am

Good god. The American people did not deserve to die at the WTC. Its like saying that the iraqi people brought saddam upon themselves for not fighting against him. Nobody DESERVES such attrocities. And i thought i was tactless.

Where is the world going? To hell and very quickly.

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 11:15 am

CM, I agree with you. Only I can't think of a worse place than where we are now to be honest. At least its warm in hell and you get lots of company.

And it'll get worse. Only when people have had their taste of hell will they realise just how bad it is and step back. Only its too late then and newer generations forget - or don't know in the first place. Then they have to fnd out for themselves.

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 12:06 pm

Originally posted by frogus

Why is it that the most positive thing I have heard on the news for a week is that it's gonna be the strongest winds for 10 years in England?

Well, this was the most positive new until I discovered that a woman was crushed to death in her car in the centre of town today when a tree was blown over....

Sorry for spam.

Nothing good is happening.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 6:07 pm

Originally posted by Gruntboy
And it'll get worse. Only when people have had their taste of hell will they realise just how bad it is and step back. Only its too late then and newer generations forget - or don't know in the first place. Then they have to fnd out for themselves.

Got that right, unfortunately. For every generation that returns battle-scarred, half-dead, and aware just how ugly war is, it takes another two living in blithe ignorance, forgetting the lessons of the past, before everybody is willing to jump on an ideologue's bandwagon and kill people for the sake of Something. Untold misery, in the name of the latest Patriotic Idea. (I'm not anti-war. Hell, there were damn good reasons to fight WWII against the Axis powers, and the Korean War against N Korea. But by and large, wars are fought by politicians using people as forms of ammunition--whether their own, or the latest enemy's.)

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 8:48 pm

I don't think you can look at the world today and say it's so much worse than it was in the past. Since people came together and established different civillizations and cultures encountered each other, there have been conflicts. Look at the Roman Emipre for instance. Many people point to this as a kind of golden age of civillization, but I would be willing to bet the territories conquered by the Romans didn't veiw it that way. IMO, the fact is that basic human nature is the cause of all of it. And as I see no way to change that, I don't see a way that we can eliminate conflicts.

As far as terrorism goes, everyone I talk to around my area seems to think it's something that has only been pre-dominant in the last century or so. This isn't the case. Napoleon, Ghengis Kan, are just a couple of examples of people who at times in their campaigne committed atrocities that would rival what we are seeing today.

As far as why isn't anything good happening, well, to be honest, good news does not make for good ratings. You'll likely never see any of the things that simple, everyday people do for their fellow man, because from a news standpoint, it ain't news.

If you want to see what is going good today as comapred to the past, look at some things like slavery. For the vast majority of the human age, men have owned other men in some form or fashion. You don't see this today. You don't have major world powers attempting to conquor and subjugate the rest of the world on the scale you did just a couple centuries ago.

You can argue the case that nations are trampling all over the rights of other nations simply because they can, and you'd be right, but that isn't new either. Just look at what happened to the Native Americans. Look at the way any civillization dating back to the Eygyptians forwarded their own agendas simply by national might.

Are their things that we could do to make things better? yes, of course there are. But looking at the way things stand, in a lot of ways, things are better than they used to be. In a lot of ways, they are not. But I don't think that taken as a whole, it's safe to say that things are worse than ever. Humans are by nature aggressive. and by nature, we are territorial. I don't think it's any different now than ever before. We just live in an age with a higher population, resulting in increased likelyhood of conflicts arising.

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 9:20 pm

@BS, there still is slavery in the world, or at least something very close to it. In many 3rd world countries, people (including children) are forced into slave labour. Who hires the slave owners? Multinational companies, like Nike and Adidas. In Pakistan, children are bought from their parents for under $10, or sometimes even outright stolen. They are forced to make products. In China, workers are paid 16 cents an hour. They must work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and then they must also log unpaid overtime hours. No overtime? They get fined. Miss a day? They get beaten and fined.

Sadly, slavery is still around.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 9:39 pm

That may be true, but at the same time, there has been progress. There are organizations also that are trying to further the conditions of those people you are talking about. You don't see the global buying and selling of people on the scale that you once did. Things are far from perfect, but you do have people working toward that end. In the past, for the most part of it anyway, it was globally accepted as the general right of the powerful to own those that couldn't stop it. The idea of people as indivuduals and not property is still, in the timeline of human civillization, a very new concept. It doesn't seem that way to any of us who haven't dealt with it, but it is something that we are just dealing with.

Even when slavery was aboliched in the US, you could argue that even now, it isn't totally gone. It took years to get blacks and whites to the point that they could live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same school, eat at the same resturaunts, and so forth.

But you have to admit, just from the fact that people are concerned avbout this, and that many people and organizations are trying to fight the kinds of things you mentioned, that in itself shows we have come a long way in a realativly short span of time

garazdawi · Post by **garazdawi** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 10:25 am

Originally posted by Bloodstalker
I don't think you can look at the world today and say it's so much worse than it was in the past. Since people came together and established different civillizations and cultures encountered each other, there have been conflicts. Look at the Roman Emipre for instance. Many people point to this as a kind of golden age of civillization, but I would be willing to bet the territories conquered by the Romans didn't veiw it that way. IMO, the fact is that basic human nature is the cause of all of it. And as I see no way to change that, I don't see a way that we can eliminate conflicts.

We cannot because we thik that we are so different from each other. There is no denying it. Can anyone honestly say that they identify with someone that lives an the otherside of the globe and speaks a languge that you think makes as much since as a bird singing in a tree. You cannot. I dare soemone to say it and not coem up with a phony excuse like my mother was chinese so I identify with them.

What we really need to do is to see how alike we really are. We cannot really compare ourselves with animals as they are way smarter then we are. But if we come to meet an alian who does exactly the same stupid things that we have done. Then we will see how truly alike we are and put our petty differences between us.

I think I already said this once in this thread but here is a bit more detail as per an answere to BS's quetion. THIS IS MY VIEW and no one else's. I made this theory up myself. Theremight be soemone else out there who said the same thing but who cares if I just reinvented the weel.

Nightmare · Post by **Nightmare** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 3:55 pm

@BS, point taken. I'll admit to the fact that things have changed, and things are better, although not nearly as good as we'd like.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:02 pm

Originally posted by garazdawi
We cannot because we thik that we are so different from each other. There is no denying it. Can anyone honestly say that they identify with someone that lives an the otherside of the globe and speaks a languge that you think makes as much since as a bird singing in a tree. You cannot. I dare soemone to say it and not coem up with a phony excuse like my mother was chinese so I identify with them.

What we really need to do is to see how alike we really are. We cannot really compare ourselves with animals as they are way smarter then we are. But if we come to meet an alian who does exactly the same stupid things that we have done. Then we will see how truly alike we are and put our petty differences between us.

I think I already said this once in this thread but here is a bit more detail as per an answere to BS's quetion. THIS IS MY VIEW and no one else's. I made this theory up myself. Theremight be soemone else out there who said the same thing but who cares if I just reinvented the weel.

There are many people who not only honestly say that they identifiy with people from different nations, but they also prove it with their actions. Money is raised everyday from normal, everyday citizens to send to nations suffering effects of famine. There are groups, including a group in my area, which every year gets together a group of people and goes to different counties for the sole purpose of trying to help the citizens of that country try and better their life in some way. Carpenters, mason, etc all go and help the people build and in many cases teach local craftsmen ways to work their trade. They go, they are not paid, and they do not live in motels or resorts while there. They live in any room offered by the people they are visiting, they eat what their hosts eat, and live in the exact same conditions their hosts live for most of the summer. You no not have to speak the same laguage to identify someone as a human and to feel compassion for them. But, again, things like this never make the news, so no one ever hears about it, and most of the people whp go simply don't think it's anything to make a big deal about, so they don't attract attention to their work.

As to animals, I am not sure what you are saying here. If you are basing your observation about animals being smarter than humans on the fact that animals live with each other much more cordially than do humans, then that is a false assumption. The vast majority of animal species are territorial, and will defend their marked territory in often violent ways. Males of species move into anothers territorry, and challenge for the rights to rule that territtory, and usually, a fight of some sort follows. The loser is in some cases wounded, in some cases dead, but in all cases, driven out of the victors territory. Also, the fact is that many species practice cannibalism, mostly in the form of the father of the offspring attempting to kill and eat the young. This is why many females drive off the male after mating. Once the young are grown, in most cases the male young are driven off by the father. The only difference is, animals do not possess the skill or the level of reasoning to create and use weapons for the most part. It's all based on survival instincts, the availability of resources (in this case, food or suitable females with which to mate) There is no inate nobility among animals any more than there is among humans

garazdawi · Post by **garazdawi** » Tue Oct 29, 2002 10:31 am

Originally posted by Bloodstalker
There are many people who not only honestly say that they identifiy with people from different nations, but they also prove it with their actions. Money is raised everyday from normal, everyday citizens to send to nations suffering effects of famine. There are groups, including a group in my area, which every year gets together a group of people and goes to different counties for the sole purpose of trying to help the citizens of that country try and better their life in some way. Carpenters, mason, etc all go and help the people build and in many cases teach local craftsmen ways to work their trade. They go, they are not paid, and they do not live in motels or resorts while there. They live in any room offered by the people they are visiting, they eat what their hosts eat, and live in the exact same conditions their hosts live for most of the summer. You no not have to speak the same laguage to identify someone as a human and to feel compassion for them. But, again, things like this never make the news, so no one ever hears about it, and most of the people whp go simply don't think it's anything to make a big deal about, so they don't attract attention to their work.

But these paople only identify with the people that live in that specific part of the world. If you identify with an african (not correct term but wanting for better I'll use it) then you most probably don't identyfy with a asian. And if you identify your self to a social standard of the africans (not saying that africans are poor, just that in my biased eyes I see them as poorer then me. Might be wrong or right not sure yet.) you don't identify your self with the like of Bill Gates. So there is always ONE other kind of humanity that you do not identify yourself with.

This is why we (including me unfortunately) have to experience true difference before we can put all our grudges aside and see how alike we are.

(I might have some of the issues mixed up as I wrote this at the top of my head so plz bear with me if something doesn't make sense to you)

Originally posted by Bloodstalker
As to animals, I am not sure what you are saying here. If you are basing your observation about animals being smarter than humans on the fact that animals live with each other much more cordially than do humans, then that is a false assumption. The vast majority of animal species are territorial, and will defend their marked territory in often violent ways. Males of species move into anothers territorry, and challenge for the rights to rule that territtory, and usually, a fight of some sort follows. The loser is in some cases wounded, in some cases dead, but in all cases, driven out of the victors territory. Also, the fact is that many species practice cannibalism, mostly in the form of the father of the offspring attempting to kill and eat the young. This is why many females drive off the male after mating. Once the young are grown, in most cases the male young are driven off by the father. The only difference is, animals do not possess the skill or the level of reasoning to create and use weapons for the most part. It's all based on survival instincts, the availability of resources (in this case, food or suitable females with which to mate) There is no inate nobility among animals any more than there is among humans

This was just a spur of the moment, I can now see that I was wrong about the animal thing, well partly anyway. I hadn't had time to look deep into the issue. So thx for enlightening me

RandomThug · Post by **RandomThug** » Tue Oct 29, 2002 11:59 am

I know where the worlds going.

Its going to be just like the Terminator movies I tell you. My buddy Matt figured it out, its all gonna be like the terminators.