Pot and kettle anyone?

[wil]

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

there are about 100 American military trainers in Georgia now and have been there since 2005. Germany, France and Israel also have trainers in the country.

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Western trainers (including Coast Guard, for their fledgling Boarder Patrol agency), have been in Georgia since before 1998. I know first hand.

Originally Posted by Quahom1

The Georgians for their part, took drastic measures to get the world's attention, however were brilliant in their Spartanic maneuver, of drawing the Russians into the "canyon" as it were, then screaming for the neighbors to come look at what was being done.

It appears Miss Rice in Georgia July 9, and then Karl Rove and Blair and Saakashvili met in Yalta...Shades of the meeting between our Ambassador and Saddam prior to Kuwait.

So maybe 200 years ago Russia absorbed Georgia, and these border provinces which are mostly Russian, not Geogian, don't wanna be with Georgia, hence their separation..and the west it appears has now encouraged Georgia to move a pawn, and if Russia were to advance a knight, we'd back up with some bishops and rooks. The chess game is afoot yet again.

I can think of another land who absorbed a bunch of area in the past 200 years....overtaking people with their own language and society.

Pot and Kettle is right.

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by wil

It appears Miss Rice in Georgia July 9, and then Karl Rove and Blair and Saakashvili met in Yalta...Shades of the meeting between our Ambassador and Saddam prior to Kuwait.

So maybe 200 years ago Russia absorbed Georgia, and these border provinces which are mostly Russian, not Geogian, don't wanna be with Georgia, hence their separation..and the west it appears has now encouraged Georgia to move a pawn, and if Russia were to advance a knight, we'd back up with some bishops and rooks. The chess game is afoot yet again.

I can think of another land who absorbed a bunch of area in the past 200 years....overtaking people with their own language and society.

Pot and Kettle is right.

Yeah, you and I call it "home"

I should know better...

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

I can think of another land who absorbed a bunch of area in the past 200 years....overtaking people with their own language and society.

Pot and Kettle is right.

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Yeah, you and I call it "home"

I should know better...

Ah, the ills of Western Civilization.

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by wil;

I can think of another land who absorbed a bunch of area in the past 200 years....overtaking people with their own language and society.

Pot and Kettle is right.

indeed, Wil, which is why i urge most beings that i meet to get involved with the Save Tibet project. if you've got some time check out the site and see how you can help.

metta,

~v

[Dogbrain]

Originally Posted by Pathless

If only. President Bush is simply applying selective morality. It's nothing new; he's been doing it for the past seven years. Hell, the country's been doing it for much longer than that, and Western Civilization as a whole has been doing it for centuries now. Change? Doubtful.

You're wrong. Western Civilization has not been doing it for centuries.

ALL OF HUMANITY has been doing it for MILLENIA. Western Civilization doesn't have a lock on it, by any stretch of the imagination.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by Dogbrain

You're wrong. Western Civilization has not been doing it for centuries.

ALL OF HUMANITY has been doing it for MILLENIA. Western Civilization doesn't have a lock on it, by any stretch of the imagination.

I maintain that Western Civilization, or European culture, has a special knack for it. Much of humanity has been participating, and yes, other cultures besides the currently dominant European one have been successful at empire-building through violence; but none to the world-dominating extent of the expansionist and ever-progressive Europeans, driven by the mission of Christianity and then, to a lesser extent perhaps, scientific progress.

[Vajradhara]

Originally Posted by Pathless

I maintain that Western Civilization, or European culture, has a special knack for it. Much of humanity has been participating, and yes, other cultures besides the currently dominant European one have been successful at empire-building through violence; but none to the world-dominating extent of the expansionist and ever-progressive Europeans, driven by the mission of Christianity and then, to a lesser extent perhaps, scientific progress.

have you heard of the Mongols?

metta,

~v

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

have you heard of the Mongols?

metta,

~v

Yes, of course I have, Vajradhara. But maybe you could enlighten me as to how the Mongols compare to a culture that has ethnically cleansed an entire "New World," or enslaved and killed millions of Africans, crusaded in the name of God against infidels and murdered untold millions of people. Perhaps you could enlighten us all as to how the scale of Mongol dominance equals the scale of destruction and dominance of the technologically depraved and spiritually bankrupt culture that perverted Christ's teachings into a militarism and a denial of anything Earthly and of the body, and which has ravaged the Earth, the bodies of untold animals (including humans), and enslaved the spirits and wills of untold numbers of people--all in the name of Christ and "progress".

Somehow I think you'll report that they still come in 2nd.

[Pathless]

What I don't understand is this:

It seems to me that many people can look at history and say, "Oh that was so horrible what the Nazis did." And of course it was. Or, like Vajradhara just implied, "The Mongols, now that was horrific! That was an empire, too!" Which is true. Huge empire, the Mongols, and bloody. People can look at the Aztecs, who we really know so little about, but people are still able to look at them and see the human sacrifice and recognize that, gosh, that was grizzly.

But dare to point out and force people to look at the bloody history of their own culture, the much venerated and much apologized for Western Civilization, the truly civilized, and they can't do it. They seem to inevitably turn away from the horrific legacy of the Christians and the empires that they spawned, such as the British Empire and the current American-dominated global empire. It's just not polite form to say, "Hey, look at the blood!! On our hands!" People make excuses. Well, the Mongols did it. The Communists did it (by the way, the Communists are part of the heritage of Western Civ). Well, the Japanese were doing it with Hitler.

Okay. Yes, history is ripe with slaughter.

What I insist on is that we look full-on at the horrors that our own cultures have spawned. If you are descended from Europeans, don't confuse the issue by assigning blame to the Orientals, or to the Muslims, or whoever you might dig up. Damn!

"A being" can make itself feel superior and smug in all sorts of ways: denying or minimizing its own history, playing the in-group/out-group game, getting involved in pet causes, but until beings are able to look clearly at the legacy of their own cultures, I don't believe those beings have any right to patronize or demonize other cultures.

[seattlegal]

For some perspective: It's not just 'The West'
(Possibly) The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other:

1. 55 million Second World War 20C
2. 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine) 20C
3. 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4. 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5. 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6. 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7. 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8. 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9. 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10. 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11. 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12. 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13. 15 million First World War 20C
14. 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15. 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
16. 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
17. 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
18. 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C
19. 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
20. 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C
21. 3 million French Wars of Religion 16C

[China Cat Sunflower]

It's just like bible prophecy, man. It's coming to pass. The bear, the eagle, the wombat. Oh lordy, all the horny beasts...



Chris

[wil]

Listening this morning, the news from the two states which wish to leave Georgia and become part of Russia are claiming attempted genocide on the side of the Georgians and US involvement. There were reports of house to house killings of civilians, numbers vary 500-5,000...

We've now got the third story from locals which coincides with a Georgia attack on the seperatists and Russia coming to their defense. This is exactly contrary to what has been portrayed in US news reports and much more inline with what Russia has been saying all along.

So if this is the beginning of a new cold war, it is not apparent yet that Russia is the instigator.

[Dogbrain]

Originally Posted by Pathless

What I insist on is that we look full-on at the horrors that our own cultures have spawned.

No, you are not. You are wallowing in the neurosis of "we're so much WORSE than anybody else EVER WAS". It's a bizarre sort of egotism that certain elements of pseudo-intellectuals seem to adore.

"A being" can make itself feel superior and smug in all sorts of ways: denying or minimizing its own history

Or wallowing in the "Look at me! I'm so superior to YOU because I veritably flow disdain for my own culture. Look how much more sophisticated I am than you are."

[bananabrain]

personally, i'm not terribly keen on the "ooh, this comes from x in western culture" argument, because eventually, someone will point out that both jesus and marx were jewish, so perhaps we ought to blame the jews. oh, hang on.... what am i doing......?

i too find the "ooh, we're worse than everyone" argument rather self-defeating. the point should surely be that we realise what is going on and are prepared to do something about it hopefully.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i too find the "ooh, we're worse than everyone" argument rather self-defeating. the point should surely be that we realise what is going on and are prepared to do something about it hopefully.

b'shalom

bananabrain

That is fair enough. Where I get hung up I think is that from my perspective, people don't seem wiling to look at what is going on, what has happened. And when we seriously start to think about what we can do about it, I think the solutions are radical prescriptions that go beyond Marxism (I put this here because you mentioned Marx in your post) or any other reforms, as those do grow out of the failure of Western Civilization. And it has been a failure, in many respects. We have plenty of gadgets and distractions, way too little leisure and nature. If that is the fruit of western progress, it is rotten.

I realize that my arguments yesterday were a little bit falacious here:

Originally Posted by me

It seems to me that many people can look at history and say, "Oh that was so horrible what the Nazis did." And of course it was.

because the Nazis, who revered a certain type of Christ after all, and were Aryans, are quite definitely part of the Western Civilization that I am endlessly prattling on about and, to quote Dogbrain, "wallowing in". The holocaust and both world wars, and the current globalized war on terror, can all be seen as the suicidal death-throes of an unnatural, unsustainable, and crazed way of life: the subjugation of nature and its sacrifice in the name of some abstract "progress," or capital, or more archaically, in the name of a bibilcal war god.

Hopefully we can do something about it, but to do something about it we have to recognize how deep the pathology runs, and that the historical mission that Europeans--along with any other empire-building civilization--have embarked on is quite simply a wrong approach to existence and being alive in the world.