Re: Asimov Site

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

Paul Schlyter wrote:

>
> > I do walk in my neighborhood - on sidewalks.
>
> Sidewalks are parts of public streets, aren't they?

No.

>
>
> > And down to the park that is less than a quarter mile away and on
> > the trails in the park.
>
> At what time does that park close for the night?   <g>

That city park does close down at nightfall.

>
>
> ... or any other war someone feels very motivated to fight.  It's
> just a matter of spreading enough propaganda to justify the war.  The
> first victim in every was is the truth.

Statements that include the word always or every when referring to human activity are very
suspect. So if Sweden was invaded by Germany tomorrow, and the Swedish defense forces fought
them, then they would be liars wouldn't they?

>
>
> >>> Twice in this century we
> >>> pulled western Europe's chestnuts out of the fire, and spend our wealth
> >>> keeping a third war from starting. Meanwhile, Sweden traded with the
> >>> Nazis and the Kaiser and made big bucks off of the deaths of millions.
> >>> Nice country Sweden.
> >>
> >> Do you consider yourselves heroes in Viet Nam too ????
> >
> > Yes, I do. We tried to protect the people of Viet Nam so that they
> > could have a government that they elected,
>
> Don't you think it's quite hypocritical to support a dictator and then
> claim that's what the people have "elected" ???
>

President Thieu was elected in a fair election. I wish his predecessor had won - Primer Ky at
least hated corruption.

>
> > not one that was forced on them by more tanks than Hitler used against
> > France in 1940. Sadly, the war was so badly bungled that we really did
> > need to get out.
>
> So you think it's OK to fight a war as long as you don't use tanks but
> instead airplanes and napalm bombs?

You are an idiot aren't you? South Vietnam was reunited to North Vietnam, not because the South
wanted it, but because four Corps of Armor invaded and forced on them a government that they
didn't choose. The North Vietnamese army was larger than Hitler's when he defeated France. Did
France choose to be ruled by the German's?

> A US politician once said he wanted
> to "bomb Vietnam back to the stone age" --

Name him. I suspect that that was one of those urban legends.

> is that your idea of freedom?
>

I smell cheap propaganda techniques here.

>
>
> >> Or those dictatorships in South America which the US actively
> > supported.....
> >
> > That was considered necessary in the face of a greater threat. I think
> > it was a cop out.
>
> It was a product of US fear of Communism,

The Soviet Union had five times as many tanks as the United States, and three times as many
fighter aircraft. The Germans had tried to use Mexico against us, and the legitimate fear was
that if enough Latin American countries came under Soviet control, we would be too bogged down
fighting in the Americas to defend Europe from Soviet aggression.

> which I think was less about the
> political systems themselves and more about fithting for world rulership.

Now that we are the only Superpower, how are we ruling the world? Other than throwing our weight
around in Yugoslavia, with the approval and support of the Brits, French, and Germans?

>
>
> >> There is plenty of blood on your hands too......
> >
> > Too. That was my point. You like to point the finger at the US, and all
> > I've been trying to do is remind you that even your nation has not
> > always been what it claims to be.
>
> I never claimed anything else -- please feel free to point that out as
> much as you want.  Nationalistic propaganda quite often doesn't correspond
> to reality.
>
> >>>> THINK before you post, will you?  Our "long history" as an "aggressor nation"
> >>>> in Europe ended more than 250 years ago,
> >>>
> >>> And Sweden was an ally of Napoleon, and latter, when the winds shifted,
> >>> joined an alliance against him. If you are an ally of an aggressor, that makes
> >>> you an aggressor.
> >>
> >> Interesting -- during WWII, the US and UK were allies of Josef
> >> Stalin, one of the worst mass murderers of the 1900's.
> >
> > Yes, and it was done, again, against what was thought to be a greater threat.
> > I'm not so sure. How do you decided who was worse, Hitler, Mao, or Stalin?
> > The latter two killed more people each than Hitler. They killed people so
> > they could, so they said, make the world a better place. Hitler, in large part,
> > because he was a racist. Which one would you rather have murder you? Or your
> > family? Frankly, I think we'd have been better off destroying both, but I doubt
> > that we could have taken on Germany, USSR and Japan.
>
> The reason you (= not you personally, of course) fought Hitler but neither
> Stalin nor Mao was quite simple and had nothing to do with the number of people
> they killed:  Hitler wanted to occupy the whole world, while Stalin and Mao
> were content ruling their respective countries.

LOL tell that to the people of eastern Europe. Once Stalin had them under his thumb, he and his
successors never let them go, until the empire's core collapsed. And as for Mao - ask the
Tibetans what good neighbors Mao was, or the Indians, who have lost lives and territory to Mao's
army. You are far too naive, or far too uninformed. BTW, Hitler didn't want to try to rule the
Americas, so we could have stayed nice and save here with the Atlantic between us. The same was
true with the Japanese. We could have stayed out of the war, and stayed safe. But we like and
try to support democracy, and try to fight tyranny. No, we aren't consistent in that, but we
try. Where was Sweden when her neighbors were in trouble? Making big bucks off the Nazis, who
might well have funded their purchases from the gold stolen from the Jews. Well, it's easy to
criticize others, when you stay on the sidelines and make money from the deaths of millions.

>
>
> >> Conclusions?
> >> Use the same logic as you used in the previous sentence....
> >>
> >>> BTW - the US was a nation at that time,
> >>
> >> The US celebrated 200 years as a nation in 1977, i.e. you're now 223 years old.
> >> Which means you were not a nation 250 years ago....
> >
> > We weren't independent. We were thirteen individual colonies. All (mostly) self
> > governing. Are you saying that Armenia wasn't a nation even though they weren't
> > an independent nation until recently?
>
> Is Corse a nation?  And the Basque provinces in Spain?  Kurdistan?  Kosovo?
> Lapland?  The indian preserves in the US?

As a matter of fact, the Native Americans are called Nations. And though they were granted US
citizenship some time ago, the states in which the reservations exist have VERY limited
authority in them.

But again, you don't deal with the issue, you try to divert from the fact that the settlements
on the eastern seaboard were self governing, and when the Revolution came we had had a century
and a half of democracy here, and Sweden wasn't. We were the first democratic republic, and we
are the oldest democracy on the face of the earth. Top that.

>
>
> What's the precise definition of "nation"?  Yes, there are many regions in the
> world where people want an independence that's denied to them, and you cannot call
> all of these regions "nations".
>
> >>> and we had self governing communities here since the early 1600s - almost 400
> >>> hundred years.
> >>
> >> 400 years --- WOW !!!!  JUST INCREDIBLE !!!!!!      <big grin>
> >
> > Yes, 400 years ago, self governing democratic communities. And what was Sweden
> > 400 years ago?  You see Paul, in 1776, there was a tradition of free elections
> > and self government that was over 150 years old. That's one of the reasons our
> > founders weren't about to let the British run rough shod over their rights.
>
> Why didn't Canada do the same thing back then?  And Australia?  They must have
> known about this tradition too.

Canada, and Australia benefited from the Revolution. After it was too late, the British
government offered the united States of America (no typos there) what would be known as Dominion
status. If they had offered it in 1775, we'd still be subjects of the Crown.

>
>
> >>>> before your country even existed.
> >>>> It ended when our king of that time, Karl XII, was defeated by Russia and
> >>>> then shot to death, probably by one of his own people.
> >>>>
> >>>>> perhaps Paul doesn't have the experience to know what it like to be attacked.
> >>>>
> >>>> If you automatically view a disagreement as an "attack", and start to
> >>>> invoke Swedish kings who acted like dictators some 300 years ago just
> >>>> because of that, I think you have a problem.
> >>>
> >>> Tell that to the hundreds of dead men still trapped in the Arizona.
> >>
> >> I think you'll have to elaborate on that a little -- I cannot read your mind.
> >
> > Japan had a disagreement with the US - over a thousand American sailors are
> > entombed in the Battleship Arizona on the bottom of Pearl Harbor because of
> > that disagreement.
>
> Oh -- I though you meant the state of Arizona.  Anyway, isn't Perl Harbor
> on US territory?

Pearl Harbor is in the state of Hawaii. Survivors of the Arizona have the right to be buried
with their shipmates. Every year or so there is a funeral service and Navy frogmen take a body
down into the hull.

> If so, why don't you just go and pick up your men?
> (but now it's probably too late -- human bodies dissolve in water in just
> a decade or so.  No human remnants were found on the Titanic, for instance)

The ship is their tomb, and an honored one. Though, my son-in-law informs me that when he and my
daughter were on the Memorial, Japanese tourists were laughing and joking. I'm surprised they
don't get thrown into the shark infested waters of the harbor.

>
>
> >>>>>> (which of course is correct, but it appeared he thought of it as a
> >>>>>> disadantage rather than mutual care), and then he concluded that he
> >>>>>> preferred to remain on his own land
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Land, in English has more than one meaning. I do prefer my land, that
> >>>>> is, my country, to any other that I know of. There is more freedom here,
> >>>>> as I value it, than in any other country.
> >>>>
> >>>> You're not referring to the freedom to hike out in the woods, are you?   <g>
> >>>
> >>> I'm a boy scout leader. I've done a lot of hiking. On public land (of which
> >>> we have a lot)
> >>
> >> ...but most public land closes at sunset, doesn't it?
> >
> > No. Depends. I've camped many nights, as a Scouter and on my own on public
> > land. I've also hunted on it. And when you are hunting you don't have to
> > quit until 30 minutes after sundown, and you can begin shooting at 30 minutes
> > before sunup, which, of course, means you get to where you will hunt a good
> > 30 minutes or more before that - and slowly freeze solid while waiting for
> > the sun.
> >
> >> If the rangers find you there at night, won't they chase you away....
> >
> > Depends.
> >
> >>
> >>> and private land (after getting permission first - it's only polite.)
> >>
> >> Large groups of people need to get advance permission too in Sweden to
> >> have activities on private land.
> >>
> >> I agree with you that it's polite to ask for permission first, but
> >> one must be reasonable.  What if you have no idea of who owns the
> >> land -- who should you ask?
> >
> > It's usually easy to find out who owns the land - they usually live on
> > or near it.
>
> If the piece of land is small, and you're staying there for awhile, it
> may be easy.  But if the piece of land is large, or if your just
> passing by, it may be more difficult.

Depends. I was thinking of one farm of 320 acres that I hunted on, and another of about 450
acres

>
>
> >> And what if hundreds or even thousands
> >> of people enter your land daily (that's the situation of Erstavik,
> >> the largest private land in the vicinity of Stockholm and a popular
> >> recerational area for Stockholmers) -- would you, as a landowner, be
> >> willing to spend all your day saying "yes" or "no" to all those
> >> requests?
> >
> > Most farms, for instance, have no trespassing signs, which means you
> > need a note from the land owner to go on the land, if you have that
> > the rangers won't hassle you. Part of their job is protecting
> > landowners from poaching on their land (You'd be surprised how upset
> > a farmer can get when someone kills a nice Holstein "deer")
>
> Killing animals counts as destroying....

No, it counts as herd management. Wildlife are "owned" by the state. Deer are nothing more than
giant field mice who destroy crops and when there are too many of them, they die of disease,
hunger and getting hit by cars and trucks while they search for food. Keeping the herds of a
manageable size reduces such, and is therefore humane.

>
>
> >>>>> The sad thing is that it is gradually being taking away, as government
> >>>>> takes more and more control of our lives, to protect us from ourselves,
> >>>>> as though we were children.
> >>>>
> >>>> Are you here referring to efforts towards increased gun ownership control?
> >>>> Yep, it's indeed terrible to not have the freedom to shoot your fellow
> >>>> human beings.....  <g>
> >>>
> >>> With three semi automatic 7.62.39 mm rifles, two semi automatic .22 rifles,
> >>> three bolt action 7.62x51 mm rifles, a 12 ga shotgun and a 9 mm pistol,
> >>> strange that I've never had a "chance" to shoot a fellow human being....
> >>
> >> Others have though -- once or twice a year, some schoolkid gets pissed
> >> off at his fellows or teachers, then borrows his parents' gun and shoots
> >> them.  Never heard that in the news?
> >
> > Sure. And why aren't those guns or ammo locked up?
>
> Because there are some people who are irresponsible.  And just saying
> "Every gun owner should be responsble for how it's used" won't change
> that.

That's there are laws for punishing irresponsible people.

>
>
> > My guns aren't locked up - but my ammo can't be gotten at, and a gun
> > without ammo is just a heavy club - a baseball bat is better as a club.
>
> So I can steal your gun and then get ammo elsewhere .....

Not too likely. My shotgun is in my bedroom - and an ounce of birdshot from 15 feet will really
ruin your evening. My pistol is elsewhere - and a 9 mm doesn't tickle. Besides, my dogs aren't
THAT friendly.

>
>
> Or I can steal your gun and sell it on the black market ....

Since our president doesn't enforce those laws - yes, you could try that.

>
>
> A gun without ammo isn't more harmless than a baseball bat, because
> you can get ammo elsewhere and then shoot people with the gun.  Even
> with ammo, you cannot shoot people with a baseball bat.

?

>
>
> So you lock up your ammo but not your gun.  Perhaps some other person
> locks up his gun but not his ammo, arguing "...but my gun can't be
> gotten at, and ammo without a gun cannot even be used as a heavy
> club...".  Now, suppose the both of you have kids who are friends,
> and that these kids get sooooo pissed off at someone in school they
> want to shoot him.  They both go home and see what they can find --
> your kid finds a gun, and his friend finds ammo, and then they meet.....

In this country kids can't legally buy guns or ammo. And while your scenario is possible, so is
an invasion from Alpha Centauri.

Nearly all murders are crimes of passion. In fact, many, if not most assaults are the same. And
while the whole world has heard of the shootings at schools, what is never mentioned are the
nearly one million times a year that a gun is used, but not fired to prevent a crime. Nor is
mentioned the millions of kids who have guns, and have never killed or threatened another human
being. We have had mass murder here, once, about ten years ago, by someone using a sword. A few
years before than the deliberate use of a car to run people down on urban sidewalks. Crowded
sidewalks. How many murders do you hear of from Switzerland? Where nearly every household has a
fully automatic rifle and ammunition? Hmmm? And though you do hear of killings in Israel, it
isn't as bad as one might expect when Israeli men and women walk through the streets with fully
automatic submachine guns on their shoulders.