Did the Nazi attempt to kill all the Jews warn mankind against ever trying again, or does it serve as a pilot project, to be improved upon next time? Must it even be an either-or thing? Maybe the Germans learned one thing, and the Islamists - the other? The one things that's certain is that mankind did not learn from the Holocaust to desist from genocide.
The Economist reports that a growing club of countries is sending its strongmen to Sri Lanka to learn how to destroy a terrorist threat. Inevitably they've got Israel on the list, but if you set that aside, it's an important but depressing development.
Many of us wish the trajectory of the human story was away from warfare and violence. Too many people, however, also believe this is reality, not merely a wish. Similar to the question about killing all the Jews, it may even be both: certainly in non-Balkan Europe, violence and warfare are utterly out of fashion - but not in the rest of the world, Not at all. This is probably not a blip, or an aberration, but a reflection of age-old human nature.
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No matter how much I hope you were right I wouldn't bet too high on non-Balkan Europe either - give the thumb screws one twist too many and some insignificant event somewhere can open the first fissure in the damn. After that everything becomes possible.
all these visitors to Sri Lanka should read Churchill - first the Malakand field force - step no. 1: destroy the harvest ... plus ca change ...
but there is one - in my book - vital difference to 1897 there are unimagineably more people, fighters and civilians, around and a recent report told me that the AK 47 is better for Afghanistan than the US standard model - so how would a repeat of the battle of Omdurman look today?
Silke
Yesaterday the government of the Slovak Republic threatened Hungary with war because of a new controversial Hungarian citizenship law. They are close to the Balkan but belong to non-Balkan Europe...
BTW apart from the Hungarian and Slovak media full blackout...
Of course, Slovakia going to war over a 4% Hungarian minority is not news, but Israel being an "apartheid state" to its 20% Arab minority is splattered all over the front page.
Ridiculous.
the last war between Slovakia and Hungary is more than 5 years ago so the likelihood of it coming about is about zero ;-)
- at least that's what the superbrains who came up with the models for LTCM considered enough to base predictions on. - You, Peter and Bryan, certainly don't want to imply that you know better than economy Nobel Prize winners.
and worst of all, recently Yaacov demanded that pundits remember as far back as 1996, that's 14 years - it's about time these oldsters learnt a bit of Zeitgeist ;-)
Goldberg has an interview with a woman from California nutcasing about the Naqba which made me think what would the refugees from Poland have done to the Poles, if they had been allowed their hearts' delight after a bit of recuperation after the war. All this righting past wrongs is going more and more into overdrive. It seems the more helpless they feel when confronted with today's dilemmas the more they want to right wrongs of the past and in order to get funds for their campaign(?) enlarge them out of all proportion.
Silke
Just Journalism on the source of the statement that Israel is considering the 'Sri Lanka' option.
http://www.justjournalism.com/media-analysis/view/international-crisis-group-stands-by-flimsy-anti-israel-evidence
I wonder if the Economist would care to back up their claim?
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