Dear Connecticut...

[Dave W]

I've always said that the Japanese never truly ended WWII.  They just found a much more effective approach to taking over the USA - just buy it.

I think some Japanese companies regret that now. Sony has had heavy losses for several years and Panasonic and Sharp are in worse shape.

[Denis]

hasn't occurred for a few years...but my daughter visited the balkans a couple years ago, and she said it felt like it was about to go up in smoke...

Another trouble spot. You have to figure that if the Germans had trouble with the Balkans, then it has trouble in it's blood.

[uwe]

I'd say that our former rule there wasn't the most benign, we did terrible things, but the region has had issues ever since the Osmanic Empire went down. In hindsight, the turn of the century decision of the Western Powers to work towards the fall of the Osmanic Empire (with regional nationalism doing the rest) has created more problems than it hoped to solve.

Never cheer too loudly when your opponent falls as Russia's retreat from Afghanistan has proven as well.

[dadagoboi]

Last Balkan flareup was directly related to religious beliefs, big surprise.

[uwe]

Yes, and they were not murdering each other under Communist rule either - Tito for all his corruption and cracking down on dissidents saw to it that Serbs would not be smashing the heads of muslim infants against concrete walls or vice versa, they should build him statues all over in former Yugoslavia for that.

Democracy doesn't automatically make people's lives safer.

[Pilgrim]

Democracy doesn't automatically make people's lives safer.

True!

And socialism doesn't make their lives better.  Or safer (I gather that over time, Stalin was a much greater mass murderer than Hitler.)

You can pick your "ism" and find things it doesn't do.

[patman]

I'm sure you hear all different stories, but she says the Serbs are pretty frightening, and that they will gobble up the region as soon as they get a chance, (if they ever get one).

[uwe]

True!

And socialism doesn't make their lives better.  Or safer (I gather that over time, Stalin was a much greater mass murderer than Hitler.)

You can pick your "ism" and find things it doesn't do.

I wasn't advocating non-democracy! But Tito, certainly no democrat, wasn't Stalin. And probably more a Titoist than any other "...ist". But he has my respect for preventing in his years that hatred flared up like it did after he died.

Stalin or Hitler?  When Sturmgewehr comes to Kalashnikov, I prefer Stalin. For the simple reason that more Germans survived under Stalin than Russians under Hitler. Easy math: 2/3 of Russian POWs died in German captivity, but only 1/3 of German POWs in Russian captivity - and that after we had raided, marauded and scorched their country for no other reason than that crappy "Lebensraum" nutcase idea.

[Pilgrim]

Difficult math to stomach, isn't it??

The history that the human race has inflicted on itself gives one pause.

[uwe]

"Difficult math to stomach, isn't it??"

It sure is, but there are different shades of evil as well not just of good.

And I'm eternally thankful to Uncle Joe that he busted Hitler's ass. Someone had to, it was high time.

[dadagoboi]

By the end of the 16th century Christian Europeans had slaughtered 60 million Indians in North and South America.

[uwe]

Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?

[dadagoboi]

Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?

Yep.

[Highlander]

Bugger... that's me done for...

[drbassman]

I guess we can excuse anything that we believe in, even murder, because we believe someone else did it better.  Mass murder is mass murder, I don't give a shit who did it or how many, and I love to see you guys acting like the numbers somehow make one instabce better or worse or more rational than the other.  Geez, moral relativism knows no lows!  It's all morally reprehensible, but I'm some how wrong or stupid because someone, using data from the 16th century census and body count almanac to show how 60 million murders is worse than 40 million, or 30 or 50.  Since it's all about the numbers, I'll stay out of this since it's gotten way over my head.