Deeply embedded in our evolutionary story is the urge to protect people you have something in common with (and I suppose this works the other way around as well). How easy would it be to hack this trait and increase the chances of world peace by consciously exploiting it on a global scale? Think of it as next-gen UN, but instead of focusing on top-down conflict resolution, we would work from the bottom up and search for things we're passionate about and can connect with people from across the world to collaborate on. Rule #1: teams should not be divided on a country by country basis.
I don't think I agree. It's great for individuals and countries to be friendly, but I see two problems with a one-world-government system:
1. It concentrates an extreme quantity of power in the hands of a few people. Power has a potential of corrupting those who hold it, and I believe that potential increases on an exponential (or at least an algebraic) scale, not a linear scale.
2. If an evil personage gains power (think 20th century dictators), a single world country would suffer significantly. But having countries separated provides a limit and a check on the potential fallout of that dictator's actions.
I agree that power corrupts but it doesn’t follow to me that power corrupts more at the top than at the bottom. I’ve heard some horror stories about small towns in Texas. I’m sure there are similar stories everywhere.
An explictly evil person or group dominating the world seems like the greater evil in terms of outcome. That would literally be hell on Earth. When you look at probabilities, there's tons of examples in history, across thousands of years, of evil people inevitably rising to power when the system allows for it. Meanwhile, there are relatively few examples of humanity going extinct due to self-inflicted environmental damage.
Isn't federation one of the main checks and balances that keeps evil dictators from taking over the world?
Go here, wait there, if your life is in danger, return the danger back at them.
Your comment also reminds me of a phrase from one of the last surviving British soliders from WWI, Harry Patch: "If two Governments can't agree give them a rifle each and let them fight it out. Don't lose 20,000 men. It isn't worth it."
The propaganda borrowed key elements, most notably the babies pulled from incubators and left to die on the hospital floor.
War cannot be waged without soldiers, and no one is born a soldier.
This requires the cultural de-glorification of soldering-as-profession. Millions of tax dollars are spent on advertising to ensuring it remains, and many companies are complicit in furthering it (priority boarding, discounts, et c). I shop elsewhere whenever possible.
Boycotting companies for extending a few minor courtesies to the troops is ridiculous and ineffective. If you want to make a difference then get active in politics.
Second, those who don't have soldiers can still die by someone else's soldiers.
War is a tool of diplomacy.
Both of these men were simply professionals doing their jobs. The one attacking, the one defending. It's unlikely they ever hated each other or even really thought a great deal beyond how to accomplish their respective missions at the time.
Deeper than that is identity. In fact, after basic needs are met, your identity (cultural, ethnic, religious, and yes, even national) is one of the most important aspect of your humanity. Every nation in the world, has very tight immigration policies and border controls. That's not a coincidence.
>Rule #1: teams should not be divided on a country by country basis.
How should they be divided? How does a global government look like? Liberal Democracy with a market economy? You sure everyone is OK with that?
Also, we live in a world where even 'regular' nation states number in tens or hundreds of millions of people. There is already an issue of the disconnect between the population and their representatives. I'm not sure how this would work if added another 1 or 2 levels up the hierarchy. Can you imagine how disconnected and 'elitist' representatives of your one-world government would be? Yieks.
Remember, 200 years ago most European countries only existed in a proto form of what we recognize today.
One thing that really slows this progress is the nationalization of the news and specifically internet. It's much easier to keep the "us vs them" narrative going when the news outlets are controlled by the state.
It’s media and government propaganda stoking fear of the other for their gain which actively thwarts it. — up to the point which it can live organically once again in the greater populace.
But that’s just like, my opinion, man.
There are conflicts for which a resolution would require one or both sides to compromise on a position they hold, sometimes that they've held for a significant time. Those conflicts are much more thorny and the stories of reconciliation are usually much more personal even though it's clear that the underlying cultural conflict remains. Probably the most obvious is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but for America, those unresolved internal conflicts that are unlikely to rise to war but just as fraught linger, regardless of the innumerable personal bonds between parties.
I.e. it's generally an economic interest for separatists rise to power, and I wonder if we could stymie that by making it legal for parts of countries to secede under a certain set of terms (paying "damages" to the parent country, obligating parent country to allow free travel and similar for a preset duration of 10 or 20 years).
In the end, I don't think we'd end up with a gazillion small countries, because there is value in having a larger market and freely moving people, even if it might start off with a spike in new countries being established.
A possible model for Israel like situations is both parts become part of some larger body like Eire and NI both joining the EU. I know that's changed now but it did quite a good job of stopping the troubles.
Maybe something like the earlier EU were you get free trade and human rights courts but without the latter attempts at a single currency and political integration.
After they are done, the formerly parent country could introduce visas for travel across the border, and as someone mentioned, all the income for people living outside the Wall Street would still be taxed by residency, as is the case today.
Of course, the rules would need to be carefully worked out, and it would disincentivise some but not others to secede (just like today). The goal should only be to avoid armed conflict in reaching the same state.
Basically, we all accept that killing someone is illegal if you disagree with them, but there's this sudden jump when countries declare war on each other and now it's ok to do exactly that.
Basically, it's double standards, and it should be a criminal act to declare war on anyone.
My point was not to make UN the policeman, but to get countries to agree to change the founding principles of UN (which is exactly the sovereignity you mention). The cost involved should be big enough to discourage everyone and their uncle to claim a new state, obligations of signing all the UN resolutions and declarations should be present. Basically, I think it would discourage many smart people from wanting to separate in the first place: eg. if Catalonia decided to secede, they'd have to be willing to accept Barcelona to secede as well, and suddenly that is not as tempting economically.
FWIW, I am a Serbian myself, and the Serbian people have been at both ends of the bargain: they've stopped from seceding from Croatian and Bosnian territories for UN border reasons, but Kosovars are also not fully separated from Serbia because of UN ruled (though de facto both Bosnian Serbs and Kosovars have separate "states"). I am convinced that if such framework existed prior to 90s, we'd see much fewer wars (if any), since nationalists wouldn't have a way to rise to power. I don't even think we'd see much splitting up of Yugoslavia even, or at least not in any meaningful sense (maybe all states would have joined EU as independent states at the same time to make it EUgoslavia :).
I haven't worked this out in detail, and I am sure there's a bit of psychology to deal with too (people do need a bit of us vs them, which we are trying to substitute with sports), but I am sure that if we had a bunch of smart people on finding a way to make seccesion fair, we'd at least get a reduction of violent conflicts.
UN was created to stop wars like the WW1 and WW2 happening again, but while one could argue it was successful in that (I believe other factors have come into play, mostly increased standard of living), it has anything but stopped separatist conflicts.
To me the UN sounds like the right place to extend the goal to stop wars even further: it's where countries come together and agree on shared values, goals and rules.
I don't care if it's UN or anything else, if we are worrying about corruption, we'd need to design for that too because it is inevitable in any organization.
While he doesn't dwell on it or let it consume him, if you ask then he will reveal that he still resents them for bullying and war crimes over 25 years later.
And in my view that was a relatively mild conflict compared to others like Israel and Palestine for example.
Serbs and Croats were massacring each other, mass rape, torture, executions, quasi-genocide. It's far worse than anything in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict at least on that level.
It's been pretty quiet down there for at least 20 years. You can literally walk over the border near Vukovar in some places without even seeing a border guard.
In Palestine people have a giant wall and are forced to go through humiliating border checks just to get to work. And it's been going on for longer than I've been alive.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a33658771...
For those who are not sure whether to click on the link or not, here's a little pearl from the former Commander in Chief:
"I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, how good is this plane? They said, well, sir, you can't see it. I said, yeah, but in a fight — you know, a fight — like I watch in the movies — they fight, they're fighting. How good is this? They say, well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to it, it can't see it. I said, that helps. That's a good thing."
British soldiers heard German troops in the trenches singing carols and patriotic songs. They started shouting messages to each other. The next day, soldiers from both sides met, exchanged gifts, took photographs and played football.
> In 1998, Thompson and Colburn returned to the village of Sơn Mỹ, where they met some of the people they saved during the killings, including Thi Nhung and Pham Thi Nhanh, two women who had been part of the group about to be killed by Brooks's 2nd Platoon. Thompson said to the survivors, "I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did." He reported that one of the women they had helped out came up to him and asked, "Why didn't the people who committed these acts come back with you?" He said that he was "just devastated" but that she finished her sentence: "So we could forgive them."
From We CAN Change the World via http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/048.html:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00311JUGK
> Across the line, still brandishing his binoculars, Old Horseflesh [a hard-liner] shoves a rifle into Green's hands. "Take a steady aim," he commands. Dodger aims well above Coburg's head, and the lieutenant dives into a handy shell hole. Catching on, the German machine gunners let loose a burst well above the opposite trenches.
From Silent Night:
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2014/chiu-war
Unwillingness to die is really common in war
Francis Gary Powers was no doubt stunned to find his U2 spyplane tumbling from the skies in 1960 thanks to what I can only imagine is inherent bias in the war room against the enemy. Its also worth noting the Tupolev TU95 bear left Washington scratching its heads for nearly a decade, furiously revising the numbers for speed and range. https://web.archive.org/web/20081211055010/http://www.aviati...
in 2006 china managed to tail a US aircraft carrier and emerge in torpedo range with a Song 039 type submarine, a generation behind the US, which was previously thought incapable of such an operation. https://thediplomat.com/2015/11/closest-encounter-since-2006...
Those unfamiliar with history text might also recall the day when Iran not only detected but casually landed a sophisticated US military drone at one of its airbases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
I also grew up thinking a Stealth Fighter could never be shot down. It's invisible. No way.
The alternative version of that story is that the Carrier Group commander was quietly commended for not giving away how far out they detected the submarine.
Yeesh, I guess they must have done something right with that plane.
The U2 has been flying for literally decades, even to this day, relatively unencumbered. The performance ratio is way in the favour of 'confident war room'.
Also - it's hard to say anything about submarines, they're so clouded in secrecy, I think the truth tends not to come out until a couple of decades after the fact.
It became obsolete in 1960. That doesn't mean it was no longer useful anywhere.
I just finished listening to The Doomsday Machine audiobook (https://www.amazon.com/The-Doomsday-Machine-audiobook/dp/B07...) and it's had a profound effect on how I see our military leadership's nuclear strategy. While the book delves primarily into the 1950s-80s, as far as the author is concerned (he worked as a consultant on nuclear strategy,) the policies have not materially changed since then. Some examples of some things that were eye-opening to me:
- The military deliberately hid their nuclear war strategy from the secretary of defense (and thus the president, etc.) for years.
- US Presidents often invoke the threat of nuclear attack to force nations to bend to its will - to this day, democrats and republicans alike.
- The gov't has done a good job of selling that only the president can order a nuclear strike, but in practice there's a lot more people involved that can launch a nuclear attack without requiring clearance (in years past, this was due to potential communication issues, but even to this day these remain in order to counter potential 'decapitation' attacks. This delegation system means we're one person's mistake (or mental illness) from starting a world-ending cascade of nuclear strikes as other nations respond in kind.
I'm under no delusion that the world can do away with nuclear weapons, but maybe we should stop threatening to use it first like it's no big deal. It seems that our military leadership historically isn't exactly in that 99% group of folks who want to live and get along.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stan...
In short: Russian early warning system operator sees 5 minuteman ICBMs coming towards them. He does not have time to go check with someone. If they are to retaliate, he has to just launch now. No such thing as "waiting for the president to decide to launch". He didn't. Turned out reflections of the sunlight off clouds set off their sensors.
Beyond that, during the Cuban Missile Crisis the US warships harassed Russian subs that (unbeknownst to them) had nuclear torpedos. These subs thought the US ships were trying to sink them, and as a result they nearly launched their nukes as a last resort.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnX5HXbRbcA
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigle...
His older brother was on the USS Phoenix, a US light cruiser that was in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. His brother survived that, but eventually succumbed to sickness in the war and died.
My Dad started digging into the history of the ship later in life, and learned that it was ultimately sold to the Argentine Navy, where it became the ARA General Belgrano. The Belgrano was sunk during during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine Conqueror with 323 lost.
Wanting to keep digging more, my Dad got in contact with a man who had been on board the Belgrano, and they became pen pals.
And digging more, he eventually struck up a friendship with a sailor from the Conqueror as well, and they too became pen pals.
And then he got the two of them to start talking to each other. It took a while to get them talking but it ended up being very cathartic, in particular for the British sailor, who had felt great guilt for what they had done. All three still share letters and emails to this day.
There's a PS to this story in a way. Ever the digger my Dad also got an introduction to a gentleman who was a Japanese pilot at Pearl Harbor. My Dad eventually flew to Japan to meet him.
> There’s so much misunderstanding in the world resulting in unnecessary sorrow. Having the Danis—a positive, joyful family—in my life has altered my perspective. It may sound trite, but if only there were a way for all the religious, cultural, and ethnic groups of the world to meet and get to know one another in a meaningful way—the way Zoltan and I have—how could we ever go to war again?
I'm curious as to how such a huge oversight in the design of the craft made it to production, since it's widely known that 90 degree angles is a surefire way to get instantly detected on radar.
The USAF reused the route packages and the shooters knew the approximate location and timing of the flight. A Serbian asset tipped off the shooters that the normal SEAD assets would not be present. Without SEAD the shooters were able to keep transmitting long enough to see the plane. There were 3 F-117 in the flight, only one had its doors open long enough for the shooters to acquire.
Different routes, randomized timing, SEAD presence, better stealth hygiene and it would have been just another night.
The Serbian commander comes across as skilled, creative, and diligent. The USAF comes across as lazy and sloppy that night.
Do you work in military aircraft production? (just curious of your background)
The thing is if the aircraft gets to the point of releasing bombs or missiles it has pretty much done its job. You won't get that far without being stealthy.
However, from what I've read, it sounds like radar reflectons from the doors themselves are dwarfed by radar signals bouncing off the upper bulkhead of the bomb bay. If they made the side bulkheads of the bomb bay at 90 degrees to the upper bulkhead, then an incoming radio wave bouncing off both the upper and side bulkheads will leave anti-parallel to its incoming direction... right back at the sending radar. (This geometric identity is used on the laser reflectors left on the moon. They send the laser right back at the sender without having to track the Earth.)
Though, maybe the reporting I've read is just imprecise, and maybe the doors do have a larger radar cross-section than the bomb bays themselves.
Only in the worst kind of situation is it acceptable to lose an aircraft like this, especially when you have control of the airspace. In most cases, stealth aircraft should be detected so late that you can't mount an initial defense, or an effective counter attack while the aircraft is returning to base.
...but I'm also not an aircraft designer.
It also talks about how Rickenbacker didn’t want to kill the people in the airplane he shot down (well it got bitter after Lufbery died). He just wanted to shoot down the airplane and accomplish his mission.
I think fighter pilots don’t have a hatred for the others across the line. They study their skill to have an advantage over the enemy’s systems. It’s not all athleticism. It’s science. As Rickenbacker said “Fighting in the air is not a sport. It is scientific murder.” I would assume the same goes for the SA-3 Low Blow operator.
I'm not casting any doubt, and I realize that one is a first name while the others aren't. It's still interesting.
He was a submariner in WWII, was at pearl harbor that Sunday morning when the attack started, and through the war with many difficult and dangerous submarine tours (he was nearly killed and received the purple heart in this incident during the 7th war patrol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saury_(SS-189) ). After he got better he was part of the occupation of Japan after the war.
My knowledge of him, from him, started many years later after he "retired". Like many like him he never really retired, working as a Sergeant at arms in the Colorado capitol building through most of his Golden years. When young, I would ask him things about the war, his submarine, what he did and saw. He always obliged, but in a way that I have only come to truly appreciate myself until I was well into adulthood. He told me the stories, but always with a jovial, deliberately glass is half full way. I would ask why we're we fighting with them, and he would say things like "they had bad leadership", or "the bad man in charge made them". He would laugh and have a great time telling the parts of the story he did.
I've since come to realize through conversations with my Mother and research I myself have done that there was far more to these stories, none of it appropriate for a young child to grapple with, and all of which completely unknown to me until I was "old enough" (are we ever old enough to process such things as happened in WWII? Perhaps I should just say old enough to better grapple with).
A watershed moment for me was hearing the song "The War Was in Color" by the band Carbon Leaf. In it, a young man comes across his grandfather's chest of old black and white photos from the war. He asks questions, was it in color? The grandfather replies "trust me grandson, the war was in color". And goes onto describe the vivid details of war. My grandfather never did. Instead he shared with us what he learned living in Japan, he taught us how to use chop sticks, he would cook Japanese dishes he learned to prepare while there, he shifted the focus from war. I never once heard him say a disparaging word about anyone, any nationality, especially those with whom he fought.
I knew not what I asked. My grandfather, Irv to those who loved him, had every right to answer my questions. He didn't, he gave me the pieces he knew I needed at that time to build a world view in me that he hoped for our future. A world view where we respect and love eachother for our differences rather than our similarities. Thank you grandpa.
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/an-in-depth-analysis-of-how-...
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/why-is-the-retired-f-117-n...
“I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it"
-was the famous "apology for shooting down the airplane" that appeared in the news the next day *-Serbs are know for their strong dark humor
It's the same than politicians or policemen who don't respect lockdown.. of course they HAVE to say to the population to respect. it's their job and if they say the contrary many people will die. But they are also people so kinda OF COURSE some are not going to respect it.
That doesn't make them hypocrites actually. It makes them humen.
Except that the blockade began 3 years after hostilities between the US and Germany ended.
I do seem to recall that the Berlin airlift more than any other event was what turned the inhabitants of the western zones around from seeing the Allies as occupants to, well, allies.
But what I was hoping to find out was how the identifies of each party was discovered, presumably by the documentary maker?
I wonder if it’s any good now. Haven’t looked at it in years.
Not sure this administration can make that happen, but I hope eventually it will be achieved.
Soldiers are effectively tools of a nation and most of them understand that. They were both doing their jobs and why should they take it personally? They both came out the other side and if their roles had been reversed they would have done the same thing.
It's also a mistake to think that every time a soldier shows an ounce of humanity, they're only doing it to "help their conscience". Soldiers are usually not the tortured individuals Hollywood portrays them to be. Why should these two men's consciences bother them? NATO troops thought they were defending the oppressed, and Serbian troops thought they were defending their sovereignty.
This aspect of war is really sad - giving kids and young adults guns and sending them off to shoot people is widely glorified. It is estimated that 70% of conflicts involve child soldiers, though any measurement is hard due variable definitions and the difficulty in measuring.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_military
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/child-sol...
Certainly there's propaganda that goes into recruiting naive young people in the US, but it's quite a stretch to equate that with child soldiers. I chose to enlist and so did everyone I served with. The vast majority of us do not regret it or feel that we were conned.
The American war machine has a lot of white supremacy elements built into it. Not just camps named after Confederate war criminals but actual common training refrains like "if they's brown, shoot them down" were taught during the invasion of Iraq which played at least some role in the war crimes at Mahmudiyah and Falluja. The Mahmudiyah murders and rapes were most eggrigious especially attempting to cover it up and lay the blame on Al Qaeda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were war crimes involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi.[1] The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Five U.S. Army soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment were charged with rape and murder; Specialist Paul E. Cortez, Specialist James P. Barker, Private First Class Jesse V. Spielman, Private First Class Brian L. Howard, and Private First Class Steven D. Green[2]).
Lets not forget that Trump also pardons these kinds of criminals.
The US doesn't recruit child soldiers.
The very few who actually sign up when they are 17 are almost all 18 before they go to bootcamp, and of the extremely rare ones who aren't they are 18 before they go to their first command or do anything at all. They are not allowed to deploy outside the US or participate in any hostilities until they are 18.
It would bother me, so I'm projecting.
But good points. I am also more inclined to understand this as a case of people "just working here". Like Germans were.
In retrospect, I realize that guy was probably much like me. A young guy, full of testosterone and looking for adventure, with notions of being part of something grand and heroic (repelling an invader) and a certain naivete about the larger forces and agendas that were using him. We'd probably get along if we met now.
Awhile back I saw a conversation on Reddit between an American soldier who fought in Ramadi (or maybe Fallujah, I can't remember) and an Iraqi soldier who was there at the same time fighting against the Americans. There was no ill will at all, just storytelling and reminiscing, and talking about the courses of their lives, families, and careers since then. The fact was that these guys had almost everything in common about that time in their lives, and had similar motivations for taking part in it. The only difference was that they happened to be on opposite sides.
I think the sibling comment to yours is a better explanation.
