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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 07:35pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4171 of 4185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Mankind's Inhumanity to Man and Woman - As natural as human goodness? http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7b085/0 Please read to posting 2 or later. There is something on rape, and other mistreatment of women.

I'm going to take a while to respond further. Your angers and fears are worth knowing about, and understandable.

We want to craft relations where we can REALLY deal with each other, productively and safely, as human beings. With incentives and threats balanced.

almarst-2001 - 08:22pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4172 of 4185)

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?224@@c04b@.ee7b085/4

"Men are physically more powerful than women"

Robert,

I believe you missed the point. I think the rape occurs not because the man is physically able and fit to do it. But because he is inclined to do it.

Just as any other kind of abuse - the mistreatment and taking advantage of an obviously weaker one - the woman, the child, the pet, the small nation - this is a manifistation of a deep internal dissatisfaction with own position on a piramid of power and dominance. future on, the abused child will most likely become an abusive adult, unless succeeded to gain a more "legetimate" power position (with possibly even worst consequences to many more people).

It is my believe the physical abuse is commited mostly as a substitution to other "legitimate" types of abuse or power projection, permitted and even cherished by a society but unreacheble or denied from this particular individual.

almarst-2001 - 08:26pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4173 of 4185)

Sorry for the strange question: Can someone point me to the most popular in white middle class America fairy tales and the most popular and cherished fairy tale character? If there is such a thing.

rshowalter - 08:34pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4174 of 4185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick is a much better source for your literature questions -- which are interesting ones.

You seem to be connecting to a VERY good question -- which is

Why does America act so crazily?

I'm not questioning the importance of the question for somebody looking at nuclear and conventional military balances.

But I'll not answer for something like another twelve hours.

almarst-2001 - 08:48pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4175 of 4185)

rshowalter 5/23/01 7:35pm

"We want to craft relations where we can REALLY deal with each other, productively and safely, as human beings."

The stable relations need firm understanding about the most basic and prevealing morals and motives of each party. "What are you really stand for and why? How easily can it change and at what circumstances?"

Such a firm understanding, if accomodatable, can build the trust for possible cohabitation. If rejected, can cause the deep anymosity. If liked, can create the friendship.

I may be wrong, but it seems there is a huge divide in the way those questions can be unswered by a WASP and even the Russian intellectual or liberal.

The idea of Domination is one of the most hatered one in Russian mentality, as far as I understand.

I would still like to do the fairy tailes analysis.

rshowalter - 09:14pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4176 of 4185)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Will try about the fairy tales -- and I'll try to say a little about movie fictions, too -- but I'm hoping for help from Dawn - who is better as some of that sort of thing.

Would add - before I sign off for the night, that all societies have plenty of domination, one way or another.

Russia included.

almarst-2001 - 10:14pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4177 of 4185)

National Public Radio interview - http://freshair.npr.org/dayFA.cfm?display=day&todayDate=05%2F23%2F2001

"RETIRED GENERAL WESLEY K RETIRED GENERAL WESLEY K. CLARK. He commanded the NATO troops during the Kosovo conflict, the first and only NATO war. His new memoir is "Waging Modern War" (PublicAffairs books)."

In this, Gen. confessed that the cornerstone of the US military doctrine since WWII was and still is the concept of a "strategic bombing". Or, simply stated, the mass-murder and merseless terror of civilian population.

Isn't it the reason, the US does not like the idea of International Criminal Court for a war crimes? Or, better stated, an exemption from a such?

How does that fits the moral society?

almarst-2001 - 10:28pm May 23, 2001 EST (#4178 of 4185)

rshowalter 5/23/01 9:14pm

"all societies have plenty of domination, one way or another.

Russia included. "

May be so. But the differences I sense are big. The Russia dominated many of its neighbors. But the Russians always tried to build a human relations with them. And they never did it out of a "psihological need to dominate".

Just read the Russian folklor and the classical literature and poetry.

By the way, I just came back visiting the Moscow. And guess who holds great many restorans and retail operations in exact center of the Russian Capital, including the one huge night club and the restoran neighboring the State House? The Chechenes. Just several hundred meters from the bombing sight of the underground passage, attributed to... Chechens. All the while, the Chechens sloughter the Russian civilians in Chechnia daily to the common knowlege.

What would we see happening in US in the similar circumstances? Honestly?

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