The link, provided in reference 5, looks good in my article. It ends with .html

But the URL that appeared on my screen (when clicked on this link) was corruped; the "/p" was added at the end. I deleted that junk and the browser had no trouble in opening the webpage. Sorry, I have no idea what caused it.

by Ludwik Kowalski (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 133 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:23:45 AM

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as populations increse it will get worce, as men fight for resources,which are the root cause of almost all fighting--look at what is reported about bushes reign--a million dead in iraq--urainium hardened weapons which will kill for a long time to come even though they have exploded already. as long as we fight who we are,what we are ---animals or created beings by god--we will struggle what to do-----if  we are animals we will fight forever,for that is in a animals instinct--that is what all animals do-if we are created beings,then we must wait for the creator to come and show us----to accomplish peace on our own is impossible--whether animal or created

by TRADESMAN (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 335 comments [40 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 7:26:07 AM

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That is an interesting observation, Skiidogs. Does it mean that genocides would become less likely if the world population could be kept at the same level as about 70 years ago? It was close to 2 billion when I was in highschool; it is over 6 billion now.

by Ludwik Kowalski (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 133 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:31:23 AM

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Of course wars and genocide are preventable.

there is just no genetic or environmental inevitability of to violence. Violence ALWAYS occurs from very specific situations.

the only thing needed to  prevent wars (or to end them within a generation or two) is an educational system and a family and social structure that develops and reinforces behavior that is based on developing children's creativity, problem solving skills, and that encourage conflict and collaboration.

One of the biggest damaging aspects of most cultures is the aversion to allowing children to express emotions in situations of conflict. learning how to learn from conflict and then not attach negative emotions to those the conflict occurs with. Conflict allows for rapid learning and growth, as long it is embedd in a context of love and support.

How long it will take for this type of understanding to be put into practice in enough of the world to end wars and genocide and destructive violence is not something I could guess. 

by Tony Duncan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 58 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 1:00:46 PM

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I have emailed these comments to Prof. Kowalski, and posted then on this page:

 click here

by Grover Furr (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 1:35:48 PM

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Thanks for replying, Grover.

In my opinion, forced collectivization, resulting in millions of deaths, was one of the Stalin's doctrinal mistakes. I am not an economist but I worked in several Soviet collective farms (as a hired 12-year-old worker, during W.W.II). For every bag of  potatoes, collected behind the plow, they paid us with one to take home. Here is what I remember about this problem; I have no history books at home.

a) As in other European countries, peasants in Russia were serfs, until the feudal system was abolished. In the 19th century they became rural proletariat (working for landlords).
b) Peasants supported Lenin's revolution because it promised redistribution of land. After the revolution they became owners of plots of land.
c) The revolution, the civil war that followed, and nationalization of factories created a deplorable food situation in towns. The policy known as "War Communism" was established at that time. It consisted of military-like assaults on peasants (large scale confiscation of grain and farm animals).
d) Disastrous consequences of War Communism were recognized by Bolsheviks. The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced by Lenin, saved the country from immediate collapse. It was a state-controlled market economy. Differentiation among peasants started to appear; some of them became more productive than others. Prosperous peasants were called kulaks.
e) A large number of city dwellers also benefitted from NEP; they were called Nepmen.
f) Stalin decided to eliminate NEP. The policy of fast industrialization (the first 5-year plan) was introduced at essentially the same time as forced collectivization of agriculture.

Collective farms were not sufficiently productive. I think that Soviet economy would have been in much better shape without forced collectivization, and without sending kulaks to gulag camps. Let me repeat, forced collectivization, resulting in millions of deaths, was one of Stalin's doctrinal mistakes. Is this not obvious? Consequences of this mistake are described on page 89 of my book. "About 28% of the Soviet agricultural production [1979 data] was from small private plots of private citizens. These plots represented less than 1% of the cultivated land."

P.S. 

Excerpts from my new book on Stalinism, to which Grover refers, are at

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/excerpts.html

The book contains many controversial topics. I would be gladd to discuss them on this thread.

by Ludwik Kowalski (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 133 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 2:07:47 PM

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as long as no one particpates in such things.

by shadow dancer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1115 comments [121 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 4:22:07 PM

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United States of America allow their political leaders to break their word against starting them. Perhaps if we had a United States of the world we could have a sufficiently broad system of checks and balances. One world government is probably the only alternative to wars between states because of the stupidity of the citizens in states. Two issues arise: what form should that government take, and how do we ge there from here. The idea of one world government horrifies many Americans because they fear they would loose their existing privileges. A meritocracy scares the living daylights out of those who know they don't own their current standard of living to merit. Humanity will require at least one more major war (like a world war) with large scale loss of life in most of the major population centres in order to enlighten and remind effecting ordinary citizens enough. There are plenty of intelligent individuals in all countries that could form organisations like the United Nations and write Constitutions like the US Constitution but in the problem is that the existing good is the enemy of the great. The United States gives pretty much everyone of adult age the ability to vote and to particupate in their government - and that is good in so far as it goes, the stupid self interest of groups and individuals are counterbalances by the stupid self interest of others WITHIN the same system. But the stupid self interest of all Americans to screw foreigners who aren't represented is irresistable to Americans. To balance the religious craziness in the US you need more religious crazies from the religions that are most despised brought into the one system. When the nutters have to deal with each other they get less nutty. What happens curently is that, because the checks and balances don't extend globally, foolish, greedy, parochials breed and train their children to foolish, greedy and porachial until the foreign policy that the generation practices gets so bad that another war with that generation is necessary to teach that generation that peace between humans is a privilege that only cooperation and toleration and intelligence can bring. There will always be wars until there is one system of government that spreads around the power of the people in the world well enough to allow merit to rise wherever it occurs. We can't have equality of outcome in our civilizations because citizens aren't equal in abilities but we can have systems in which merit is not left with less power - and nature will ensure that eventually we do or all or us will die. If the United States continues its war on terror it will destroy itself because it is fighting a war of terror. It is creating groups of people who have no choice but to accept second or worst class status with respect to Americans or to fight Americans. There is more human merit and talent and potential outside the tent, outside of the USA, in the 95 percent of the population that isn't American, then there is in it. So the smart capable victums of American foreign policy outnumber the smart capable villains that are American politicians and religious leaders etc. The fundamentalists of all religions are effectively storm troopers willing to give their lives for their team. For every moronic christian fundamentalist in the USA there is potentially 19 moronic fundamentalists outside of the USA. Smart people outside of the USA will have 19 more thralls to turn into killers than smart people inside the USA. So there will be wars and terrorism which are essentially struggles for freedom and acts of politics depending on whose point of view one takes. But eventually, if the environment doesn't kill all of humanity together, one system will emerge in which there is quite a lot of tolerance for things, for differences, that don't ultimately matter and almost no tolerance for things that do - like murder. On current rates of progress humanity might be a thousand years away from being smart enough to have a united States of the world and none of us living today will see that promised land. Moreover it is quite possible because so many of us are so ignorant that most of us will kill each other in particularly nasty wars involving newer technologies. We don't really have the technological capacity to destroy the planet (not even with nuclear weapons - never did, even if we did our worst and craziest, we wouldn't kill all life on earth) we do have the technological capabilty to knock our own populations down to near extinction levels though. Ultimately, we humans can and will avoid war because all the fools will die or become less foolish through painful lessons, but we have a heck of a long way to go in terms of human generations to die before we get a good system of global checks and balances. The stupidity of Americans in the Bush administration era in not impeaching Bush shows that.

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 1308 comments) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 6:17:57 PM

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i agree,  one world order is the only answer. if we are animals one government--if we are created beings--led by jesus

by TRADESMAN (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 335 comments [40 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:21:13 PM

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If the system of checks and balances had been populated by citizens and representatives enlightened enough America MIGHT have succeeded in showing the world surprising greatness. It would have sucked the wind from the terrorism recruiting programs.

I saw a cartoon in an Australian newspaper where followinging the election of Obama middle easteners or perhaps black sommalian muslins were looking at the statute of liberty - and the statue of liberty was black! The implication being oh sh*t how can we propagandise against that!  ;-)

The symbolism of a black President is good public relations but the people of the world aren't completely stupid. Individuals may be racist but the people of the world as a whole are not racist. There have been plenty of tyrants in the history of the world of all colors. What people want to see is not that some token can rise on merit (perhaps by selling out - think of Obama and the FISA immunity issue) but that merit anywhere can rise.

No one in there right mind would consider the loss of the established principle and law against aggressive invasion (in the UN Charter -ratified in accordance with US Constitutional law to be domestic law too) was a worthwhile trade for the world just to get a symbolic black President.

Never before in United States history has a speaker of the house of representatives deliberately turned a blind eye to impeachable offences as serious and harmful to the social fabric as torture and aggressive invasion simply to get her own party into power.

All of Pelosi's excuses really amount to exactly the point that I am making. She didn't have the numbers to do the right thing because there aren't enough Americans that put the maintainence of the prohibitions against torture and against aggressive invasion higher on their list of personal priorities then their own short term gain.

Pelosi could have, I think should have, tried to lead. She had an oath of office of her own to uphold. But she gambled that Americans would let her break her oath in some places - and she gambled right. Pelosi defeated Cindy Sheehan.

Meanwhile the attorney general candidate running in Vermont (possible the most progressive population cluster in the US) couldn't get elected with her promise to appoint Vincent Bugliosi as a special prosecutor who would prosecute George W Bush for the murder of Americans.

The case was there on the intellectual merits. Bush is as guilty of murder as anyone that knowingly causes people to illegally kill. Bush was as constrained by US law as anyone else when it come to not being allowed to break the UN Charter's prohibition against aggressive invasion.

All of these things amount to the same thing. In large populations of people you don't get majorities that can follow long chains of reasoning. They don't have that much patience. The chains of reasoning have to be as short as the concentration span and the reasoning ability of the average voter or political agent in that society if it is a democratic society. If the chain of reaoning is too long the population just shrugs off the overcomplexity and gets on with being opportunistic.

In world wars one and two the loss of family members and property educated large amounts of the survivers. They didn't need to be taught about the need for UN Charters and US Constitutions etc in school, they had has some personal experiences of consequences.

What the world needs now is for contemporary Americans to experience some consequences to enlighten them again.

If Obama had been elected President when Bush was in 2000, perhaps a smarter US President, one knowledgeable about constitutional and treaty based law, could have avoided the illegal invasion of Iraq.

But Obama wasn't. And now the system is broken. There is a precedent now of a UN permanent security council member nation (two in fact) breaking their word and invading without UN approval. When other countries (perhaps China, perhaps Russia) feel they can get away with doing the same they will be able to look at the American (and British) experience and say - what they hell, we'll break the UN Charter and weather the bad publicity for a while.

And so the tool, the confidence, is lost. Obama can't put all the pieces together again. He can't put trust back because he is just one person.

To trust America the world needed to see America repudiate the breaching of the UN Charter. Only America had a peaceful way to do that repudiating.

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 1308 comments) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:55:29 PM

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on war. I tried hard not to influence them, and I encouraged them to think for themselves, as I always do. This was not long after we went to war with Iraq. I think they give the answer to the title of the article here, and speak for the human race in general. The prerequisite is that we put children first and offer adequate education:

Becoming president means to be responsible, to think about the people first, and to make the right decision, and in this case Bush made a bad one. If I got to ask George one question I would ask him is it worth it? Is it worth losing lives over war?

The war is just killing people and there dreams. George Bush is making a big mistake by leading us into a bigger war.

I don’t like the war at all. Everytime I hear there is war it makes me want to cry. Sometimes at night I would have nightmares. I would dream that my dad got sent to war and that he got killed. What we need in the world is Peace, not wars. If I was in the war I wouldn’t fight I would help the injured people instead of fighting for something stupid.

I don’t like wars because it makes everybody sad and angry... I think Bush and Saddam Hussein are acting like two persons from kindergarten and they are fighting like kids. The children in Iraq are seeing their mother and their father dying. Some of the children in America are waiting for their father and they don’t know if their father will come home or die.

I don’t think we should go to war because all you grownups are telling us that fighting is not how to solve problems but there you grownups are going to war.

We should not take the lives of innocent people that have nothing to do with it. I think Bush just wants to be powerful and I also think he want to start wars with everyone who does not like him. How I feel about the war is angry and I also think it is useless. If I were president I would try to get along with all the countrys and not start wars!

I’m so sad about this war against Iraq. I’ve experienced difficulties in a war because I was born in Somalia. I hate wars because young children see their mothers and fathers die and the children die of hungry. People’s homes burn and they have to leave their families, friends and jobs. Sometimes I pray to God that the war will stop. Sometimes I think if little kids can have a truce why can’t Saddam and Bush?

I think that there should be no war because there is no point. At the end of the war all George Bush will have is a group of died people. I think he lost his mined. He has no proof of Sadam Hussan or Osama ben laden being friends. He has no proof of WMDs. I feel sad because the solgers in Iraq and the USA all mite die and their family and friends are going to cry and they are all going to be missed.

I believe George W. Bush is starting to become a bully... Why is George W. Bush just charging in? He is the problem. He doesn’t have any evidence that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction.

I want the people to stop the war. It’s not just me a lot of people in world wants to stop the war. I’m so sad for those children who lost their parents and those women who lost their husbands. President Bush is making a lot of reason for war. He says that Iraquians are making weapons. If they really are then why they are not using it?

Nobody knows the reason why there is war. If George Bush wants to get revenge with Saddam Hussin they why doesn’t he get revenge by himself. The world needs peace instead the world is having no peace.

The President thinks we want Osama bin Laden but really what we want is peace. The US is all about peace. But why don’t we have Peace? “In God we trust” I said to myself one day but I think the President doesn’t know that. If the president knew that we wouldn’t fight.

What’s the difference? Me and my family got away from Somalia because of all the war. Now come to America. Sometimes my mom waches the news to see what’s happening. When I wach it with my mom it make me wish that I never wached it. I see bomb going from every direction and mistals flying around. I pray to my God hoping the wars will stop soon. I think we are all one wrold. If me and my enemies can get along why can’t Saddam and Bush?

I think the war is stupid and meaningless. Even if we win, what are we going to get as a feedback? What is the point of this war? My opinion is that George W. Bush is a stupid brainless, dumb guy that can’t settle this thing with Iraq in a peaceful way. Why don’t George B go to war too?

I really want to tell you how kids feel about the war. We feel unsafe and scared. We feel like Bush doesn’t care about us, he only cares about himself... It is horrifying when you see bombs and missiles hiting a building. Parents should ask their kids if they are scared about the war. If they are, don’t make them talk, listen and watch things about the war. Let them do their homework and watch T.V. Do something that will take it off their mind. [I promised this girl we would not talk about the war any more].

by Daniel Geery (26 articles, 95 quicklinks, 126 diaries, 912 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008 at 8:40:14 PM

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