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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:16 
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I've never heard of that! White poppies?!

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:16 
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Lave wrote:
Shin wrote:
No your not alone there. What annoyed me in school was the fact that we studied Arab Israeli conflicts and suchlike in depth and not this-I mean...why not? Shouldn't it be taught in History as standard and go 'in depth' and do papers on it? Or was that just my school being shit?

edit: Took me ages to get that in-someone done gawn and broke the thread


I don't understand WW I either. And learning about it now would know doubt reveal insights in all the bickering we have between states now days.

But I don't think it's an either/or case. The Arab Israeli conflict is probably the biggest source of global conflict today. I think it's pretty essential that the public is as informed as possible about it.

If their is a Last World War. The people living in mud huts and buying goods with pop caps will no doubt be confused how it started but know it was somehow linked to Israel & Palestine.

Which kinda fits with how WW I lead to WW II, which lead to Israel which has lead to a lot of our conflicts to day (which would probably have been a world war by now if it wasn't for nukes).

Ooh ooh ooh ohh! This is almost turning into a real life opportunity to use my degree in International Politics and Strategic Studies (similar to International Relations). For the first time since 1999 when I graduated!!

And they said I did a pointless and irrelevant degree... pah. I shall refer "them" to this thread ever after.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:17 
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I suspect it's related to the white feathers thing, with a mark of shame being adopted by pacifists for their own purposes. Bloody pacifists.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:17 
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myoptika wrote:
markg wrote:
Tell you what I thought was a fucking excellent idea, this:

http://www.artfund.org/queenandcountry/index.php

It should be in everyone's face, every day and not just a dewey-eyed set of news reports and silences once a year about something that happened far enough in the past that it feels safe, like history. The Royal Mail won't get involved though because they fear that it is somehow more subversive than a simple remembrance.


Do you know anything about the white poppies? I've seen a few people wearing them. Are they some kind of namby-pamby, 'I'm a pacifist and against wars, but still want to remember the dead' kind of poppy?

Not a clue.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:18 

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My dad has an uncle (or great-uncle, not sure which) that died in WWI. My brother recently managed to find out whereabouts in France he's buried, so we've often said we should go and visit the grave since we strongly doubt that anyone from our family ever has before.

I used to like Remeberence Day when I was a store manager - standing at the tills with half the customers standing in silence while the other half keep trying to get served at the tills, or ask questions and not understanding why you're just ignoring them. Despite the fucking great big signs we'd have up everywhere pointing out that we're respecting the two-minutes silence.

My understanding of the reasons for WWI were simply that Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian empire, got assassinated in Serbia, the Austrians made some ridiculous demands to the Serbians for compensation, the Serbians were unwilling/unable to comply with all of them so the Austrians declared war. Next thing you know, there's a domino effect of alliances that mobilise and all of Europe is suddenly fighting each other.

WWII is much easier to study and arguably would never have happened were it not for WWI.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:18 
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markg wrote:
Not a clue.


FFS, I'll do my own research then, shall I? Some people... ;)

http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/
http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/
http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/

Looks like I was right - go me!

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:19 
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Myfinger wrote:
Ooh ooh ooh ohh! This is almost turning into a real life opportunity to use my degree in International Politics and Strategic Studies (similar to International Relations). For the first time since 1999 when I graduated!!
I knew you'd be chuffed to bits :DD


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:20 
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myoptika wrote:
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
From a military history point of view, though, WWI is fascinating. Some of the people fighting in it were Boer War veterans who trained with cavalry, sabres and muskets; as I said earlier in the thread, it's barely more than twenty years after the Wild West period with repeating shotguns and six shooters. And yet by the end of WWI, the vast armies had tanks, aircraft, modern artillery, and telephones. What a collossal shift in how wars were prosecuted.


Also remember that without wars, our technological advances would have been much slower.

I often hear this repeated but struggle to see how it is knowable. You can point to things that the military funded but even before the wars it must have been a tremendously exciting time to be alive in terms of new technology.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:20 
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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
They weren't evil monsters, like you could argue the footsoldiers of the Nazis were. Just regular guys, being told to go and sit in a trench and shoot at other regular guys for no fucking reason at all.
This was true of a hell of a lot of German soldiers in WWII of course, mind you. Very few frontline soldiers were Nazi party members, for example.


Yeah, you don't even need to 'argue' it. The Nazi army wasn't evil. It wasn't filled with evil people. It was filled with people who thought they were good honourable people that were making the world a better place.

I really hate terms like 'evil monsters' and crap like that because it hides us from the bigger problem. What is it about humans that means that good honest nice people can do what the nazi's did?

In the same way that we consider ourselves 'good honest people' but in one 113 year olds person life away in the future, they may well be talking about how all of us in the west were evil monsters for the way we exploited the rest of the world for our comfortable lives.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:21 
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Mrs Squirt's great-great-uncle won a posthumous Military Medal on the first day of the Somme, which we still have. We're planning to go up to the Kew archives one weekend and find his medal citation. My great-great-uncle won a Mention in Dispatches for something he did on a Q-Ship at some point, so I'd like to see that as well. It's sad that I know so little about my family only a few generations back.

I think WWI started in a fairly "dull" way really - a crisis occurred, and different countries tried to leverage some advantage out of it. Most of the nations involved had no significant differences as such - they were just trying to grab a bit more power or land when the only way was to take it from someone else.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:21 
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Um....I'm sure I'll get yelled at for this but:

If you don't want to wear the normal poppy to show respect etc for rememberance day and you don't believe in the war and you buy another poppy....isn't that just like commercialism? I'd just not wear one

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:22 
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Mr Chris wrote:
I suspect it's related to the white feathers thing, with a mark of shame being adopted by pacifists for their own purposes. Bloody pacifists.

It was interesting to watch the Ian Hislop programme last night talking about consciensious objectors in WWI and how attitudes have very much changed in the intervening 90 years. What was seen as rank cowardice and deep shame on the family is now seen as standing up for what you believe in, in the face of the mob. Interesting indeed.

I don't suppose anyone thought we would "give the damned Iraqis a bloody nose" when we went into the Gulf in the 90s like they did in 1914 when it was about "giving the Hun a bloody nose and show him who's boss".

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:22 
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I think good/evil has always got some kind of subjectivity to it. Obviously when it comes to someone like Mugabe in Zimbabwe then it's absolute, but for a crap analogy look at Star Wars...

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:22 
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Zio wrote:
My understanding of the reasons for WWI were simply that ... there's a domino effect of alliances that mobilise and all of Europe is suddenly fighting each other.
What you summarise is my understanding too. It's how that domino effect went down that baffles me, and understand those alliances is what requires the knowledge of hundreds of years of history before this happened.

Also, MF, your degree has not been useless; it has educated and entertained me through many a drunken eve.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:23 
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markg wrote:
myoptika wrote:
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
From a military history point of view, though, WWI is fascinating. Some of the people fighting in it were Boer War veterans who trained with cavalry, sabres and muskets; as I said earlier in the thread, it's barely more than twenty years after the Wild West period with repeating shotguns and six shooters. And yet by the end of WWI, the vast armies had tanks, aircraft, modern artillery, and telephones. What a collossal shift in how wars were prosecuted.


Also remember that without wars, our technological advances would have been much slower.

I often hear this repeated but struggle to see how it is knowable. You can point to things that the military funded but even before the wars it must have been a tremendously exciting time to be alive in terms of new technology.


it is true, as there is not a push to replace kit unless there is a war. The sheer cost of devolping military hardware is ignored unless you need to replace the stuff

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:24 
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There was a good bbc story *searches* here recently, about how Stalin is somehow considered a bit of a fashionable icon thesedays, despite being technically as evil as Hitler ever was.

Stalin fun fact: How many pictures of him do you see where he's using his left arm? Not many, his arm was almost entirely useless.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:26 
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ComicalGnomes wrote:
Stalin fun fact: How many pictures of him do you see where he's using his left arm? Not many, his arm was almost entirely useless.

So was his army! Ho-ho-ho!

Oh, wait...


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:27 
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It's because a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich cos he was hungry.

Yes, I will be watching that Blackadder tonight. And quite possibly All Quiet On The Western Front (whoever wanted a WW1 film, there you go).

I really really want a copy of this.

Though I don't have a poppy this year, I've got poppy wallpaper on my work PC and appeared to be the only person in my office who stopped work and went silent at 11am today. Not impressed.

However, that's not as bad as a few years ago when I worked in tech support for BT and advised a customer that our managers were asking that all calls be put on hold to observe the silence. The asshole actually laughed at this, so I hung up on him.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:27 

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Another Zio-family war fact - my great uncle served as First Officer of the HMS Norfolk in WWII (but apparentely he was third in command as the ship carried an Admiral). He apparentely served in both World Wars having lied about his age in order to enlist in the Navy for the first one, the raving mentalist.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:27 
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Shin wrote:
Um....I'm sure I'll get yelled at for this but:

If you don't want to wear the normal poppy to show respect etc for rememberance day and you don't believe in the war and you buy another poppy....isn't that just like commercialism? I'd just not wear one


Read this before jumping to conclusions maybe?

It's from back when the poppy was more politicised than it is now. They were proposing to remember all the dead, and for an end to all war. As such they felt that a red poppy associated with the victors undermined those goals.

Which makes perfect sense to me.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:28 
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Not realling knowing much about the Great War I recently flicked through Gordon Corrigan's 'Mud, Blood, and Poppycock'. It's a revisionist take on the war, essentially arguing that much of what we think we know of the conflict is war or ill-informed, but I can't really assess his arguments despite their plausibility.


(rainforest link here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mud-Blood-Poppycock-Military-Paperbacks/dp/0304366595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226406315&sr=8-1 )


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:28 
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Kovacs Caprios wrote:
it is true, as there is not a push to replace kit unless there is a war. The sheer cost of devolping military hardware is ignored unless you need to replace the stuff

But that assumes that unless in the employ of the military all those great engineers would have just sat around doing fuck all, which is clearly bollocks, as evidenced by the fact that before WWI they were making huge strides in all sorts of areas. It also assumes that progress made because of the war might not have been somewhat offset by nations all spending several years and their entire GDPs on trying to slaughter another.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:29 
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Lave wrote:
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
They weren't evil monsters, like you could argue the footsoldiers of the Nazis were. Just regular guys, being told to go and sit in a trench and shoot at other regular guys for no fucking reason at all.
This was true of a hell of a lot of German soldiers in WWII of course, mind you. Very few frontline soldiers were Nazi party members, for example.


Yeah, you don't even need to 'argue' it. The Nazi army wasn't evil. It wasn't filled with evil people. It was filled with people who thought they were good honourable people that were making the world a better place.

I really hate terms like 'evil monsters' and crap like that because it hides us from the bigger problem. What is it about humans that means that good honest nice people can do what the nazi's did?

In the same way that we consider ourselves 'good honest people' but in one 113 year olds person life away in the future, they may well be talking about how all of us in the west were evil monsters for the way we exploited the rest of the world for our comfortable lives.

I think we've had this conversation before on here, about good and evil as sweeping generalisations. And I do see your point, really I do.

But there certainly were a lot of people in the German armed forces, and elsewhere, who were entirely and happily complicit in the evils that the German state got up to. Does that make them evil? Well, for want of a more wishy washy term, yes. It does. SS soldiers who happily gunned down Jews were evil. Administrators who ran slave labour factories were evil. They may have thought they were acting for the greater good of the Fatherland, but that doesn't excuse what they did. Nationalism isn't a moral soap.


Sorry if that offends a sense of relativism and understanding, but there we are.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:29 
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Eddie Izzard has a good sketch about it, but on a serious note, Russia's WW2 fatalties are somehow overlooked. I hear a lot about the British and French that died, but fuck me, 25 million Russians? Imagine if half the population of the UK was wiped out in the war. Obviously Russia has more people, but still, jesus.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:30 
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Ahhh, right! For some reason I didn't see the links Myp gave first of all :S

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:32 
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Mr Chris wrote:
I suspect it's related to the white feathers thing, with a mark of shame being adopted by pacifists for their own purposes. Bloody pacifists.


Talking of pacifists. The family story is that my surname didn't exist until the Crimean war. When my great grea... dad decided he didn't want to die and deserted.

But if you are found to have deserted you are killed so he took the name of his captain. Changed it slightly and used it as his surname.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:32 
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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Zio wrote:
My understanding of the reasons for WWI were simply that ... there's a domino effect of alliances that mobilise and all of Europe is suddenly fighting each other.
What you summarise is my understanding too. It's how that domino effect went down that baffles me, and understand those alliances is what requires the knowledge of hundreds of years of history before this happened.

You're talking about a time when full out war was not seen as totally destructive to your own country and economy. It was a cost burden and a tool or result of foreign policy but little more. People died, but they were largely professional soldiers or criminals who did so at their own risk or as a result of their actions. WWI proved so shocking since it was crippling to all nations involved and destroyed the old world order of European monarchic powers. It was also one of the first (after the US Civil War) conflict to have modern armaments used with Victorian tactics. The lack of imagination or ability from the generals was simply a result of everything being so new and different than before. This is where Blitzkreig, paratroopers, strategic bombing etc from WWII come from. The realisation that huge infantry units would simply nullify each other to the point that someone went home (US Civil War battles) or ran out of men/money (Germany in WWI)

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Also, MF, your degree has not been useless; it has educated and entertained me through many a drunken eve.

:)

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:32 
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markg wrote:
Kovacs Caprios wrote:
it is true, as there is not a push to replace kit unless there is a war. The sheer cost of devolping military hardware is ignored unless you need to replace the stuff

But that assumes that unless in the employ of the military all those great engineers would have just sat around doing fuck all, which is clearly bollocks, as evidenced by the fact that before WWI they were making huge strides in all sorts of areas. It also assumes that progress made because of the war might not have been somewhat offset by nations all spending several years and their entire GDPs on trying to slaughter another.


Why would you as a private company develop a fighter jet, if the military was not going to buy it.

You will find that the military will pump a lot more money into R&D if there is a war coming.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:34 
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Sorry for derailing your thread, folks.
Get one of those lazy mods to tidy it for you :kiss:

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:35 
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markg wrote:
Kovacs Caprios wrote:
it is true, as there is not a push to replace kit unless there is a war. The sheer cost of devolping military hardware is ignored unless you need to replace the stuff

But that assumes that unless in the employ of the military all those great engineers would have just sat around doing fuck all, which is clearly bollocks, as evidenced by the fact that before WWI they were making huge strides in all sorts of areas. It also assumes that progress made because of the war might not have been somewhat offset by nations all spending several years and their entire GDPs on trying to slaughter another.

Agreed, isn't this because war produces a result of pumping big% of your GDP into projects which inevitably bear fruit, where otherwise it would have been small%?

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:37 
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Kovacs Caprios wrote:
Why would you as a private company develop a fighter jet, if the military was not going to buy it.

You will find that the military will pump a lot more money into R&D if there is a war coming.

Well you wouldn't. You could build something more useful instead.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:37 
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Right, I'm off now. Employee Relations isn't going to learn itself you know. Fucking professional exams....

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:37 
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Mr Chris wrote:
Lave wrote:
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
They weren't evil monsters, like you could argue the footsoldiers of the Nazis were. Just regular guys, being told to go and sit in a trench and shoot at other regular guys for no fucking reason at all.
This was true of a hell of a lot of German soldiers in WWII of course, mind you. Very few frontline soldiers were Nazi party members, for example.


Yeah, you don't even need to 'argue' it. The Nazi army wasn't evil. It wasn't filled with evil people. It was filled with people who thought they were good honourable people that were making the world a better place.

I really hate terms like 'evil monsters' and crap like that because it hides us from the bigger problem. What is it about humans that means that good honest nice people can do what the nazi's did?

In the same way that we consider ourselves 'good honest people' but in one 113 year olds person life away in the future, they may well be talking about how all of us in the west were evil monsters for the way we exploited the rest of the world for our comfortable lives.

I think we've had this conversation before on here, about good and evil as sweeping generalisations. And I do see your point, really I do.

But there certainly were a lot of people in the German armed forces, and elsewhere, who were entirely and happily complicit in the evils that the German state got up to. Does that make them evil? Well, for want of a more wishy washy term, yes. It does. SS soldiers who happily gunned down Jews were evil. Administrators who ran slave labour factories were evil. They may have thought they were acting for the greater good of the Fatherland, but that doesn't excuse what they did. Nationalism isn't a moral soap.


Sorry if that offends a sense of relativism and understanding, but there we are.


Oh i totally see where you are coming from too. It's just it doesn't help me understand those things and so I feel it prevent humanity from stopping those things happening again. It wasn't comic book villains that did the actions you described, it was real people. I want to understand why a man who considers himself a good person can get up in the morning, kiss his wife on the cheek and then go do those horrific things.

This also reminds me of that Mitchel and Web nazi sketch. "Do you think we're the bad guys?"

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:40 
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Lave wrote:
I want to understand why a man who considers himself a good person can get up in the morning, kiss his wife on the cheek and then go do those horrific things.


In the same way that paramedics can deal with horrible injuries, police officers with hardened criminals, and soldiers with the horrors of war. They have to get used to it, and find a way of coping.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:42 
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Lave wrote:
Oh i totally see where you are coming from too. It's just it doesn't help me understand those things and so I feel it prevent humanity from stopping those things happening again. It wasn't comic book villains that did the actions you described, it was real people. I want to understand why a man who considers himself a good person can get up in the morning, kiss his wife on the cheek and then go do those horrific things.

This also reminds me of that Mitchel and Web nazi sketch. "Do you think we're the bad guys?"

I think the problem is that some consider "evil" as somehow an innate characteristic, and although inadequate it still makes some kind of sense when applied to serial killers for instance. But to apply the same term to a large segment of a population obviously has difficulties. I think there you need to differentiate between the people being evil and them being driven to commit evil acts.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:47 
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markg wrote:
Kovacs Caprios wrote:
Why would you as a private company develop a fighter jet, if the military was not going to buy it.

You will find that the military will pump a lot more money into R&D if there is a war coming.

Well you wouldn't. You could build something more useful instead.


I see your point, but most engineering companies will only develop stuff if some one will buy it. Else it is a lot of money wasted.

For example why develop a jet, if you can make money building and selling spitfires..

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:49 
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Because it would be useful and lucrative to do so for civilian transport.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:51 
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Master of dodgy spelling....

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markg wrote:
Because it would be useful and lucrative to do so for civilian transport.


How is a 1 seater fighter good for civilain transport. The same with any military style vechile and tech.


It will feed back into civilian use, in the same way that F1 motor tech does. But that is a secondary feature

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 13:56 
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Eh? I'm saying that the jet engine would have been invented regardless of the war but the driver would have been passenger aircraft. Aviation was a phenomenally popular new thing before WWI kicked off, it really stirred the popular imagination. I doubt that without wars it would have simply been forgotten about. Indeed much of the basis for the fighters of both wars came from civilian air racers and the like. Without the wars who is to say what direction it would have gone.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:00 
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markg wrote:
Eh? I'm saying that the jet engine would have been invented regardless of the war but the driver would have been passenger aircraft. Aviation was a phenomenally popular new thing before WWI kicked off, it really stirred the popular imagination. I doubt that without wars it would have simply been forgotten about. Indeed much of the basis for the fighters of both wars came from civilian air racers and the like. Without the wars who is to say what direction it would have gone.


I agree, but teh military can put a huge cash injection into something, normally more than a private industry can. As you don't have to worry about shareholders and profits.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:02 
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I can see where you're coming from Mark, but I don't agree, unfortunately. The sheer amount of funds that the military get from the government to pour into R&D is astronomical, and puts even the largest of private companies to shame.

-edit- To use the jet engine example, you're right that it would've been invented had their not been wars is correct, but it would've taken years longer to be able to be used for civilians.

Remember that during war, troops are expendable; if the technology wasn't 100%, they'd still use it anyway, as the benefits would outweigh the potential problems if it blew up in midair. You couldn't do that with passenger planes.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:06 
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I think that wearing the poppy and having the silence is important. You can argue that rat faced mouth breathers of today or ten year's time won't understand the reason for them, but if, in 100 years time, enough people are asking, "Why are we wearing these poppies and having this silence?" then the reasons will be remembered.

If you take the line that these things are just meaningless gestures, and insist on removing them, then there won't be something to remind people, except a determination to keep the memory alive. We can't tell if that works too well- for every event that it didn't, we don't remember it.

I'm guessing that most young children don't know why we have Bonfire Night. I think everyone comes to learn the part of history it commemorates, though. Who would care about a handful of Catholic terrorists hundreds of years later? You can argue that we shouldn't remember the 5th of November, but the success, in terms of the national memory, of Guy Fawkes Night, is something to bear in mind for the potential success of the poppy and silence of remembrance.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:09 
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myoptika wrote:
I can see where you're coming from Mark, but I don't agree, unfortunately. The sheer amount of funds that the military get from the government to pour into R&D is astronomical, and puts even the largest of private companies to shame.

-edit- To use the jet engine example, you're right that it would've been invented had their not been wars is correct, but it would've taken years longer to be able to be used for civilians.

Remember that during war, troops are expendable; if the technology wasn't 100%, they'd still use it anyway, as the benefits would outweigh the potential problems if it blew up in midair. You couldn't do that with passenger planes.
So you don't think that the wholesale slaughter of a large section of the working population of some of the most advanced nations during that time might have had any negative impact on progress? All I'm saying is that pointing to examples of things that were developed during the war as evidence of how much further we got because of the war is a bit spurious and is mere speculation.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:11 
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Shit. Think of all the bright young talent wasted on the battlefields, when they could have been making their dreams a reality. :(

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:14 
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As Zardoz alludes to, I don't think most of the slaughtered were the Einsteins of this world. :(

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:15 
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Zardoz wrote:
Shit. Think of all the bright young talent wasted on the battlefields, when they could have been making their dreams a reality. :(

Or getting into binge drinking fights in Blackpool.

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:16 
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myoptika wrote:
As Zardoz alludes to, I don't think most of the slaughtered were the Einsteins of this world. :(
Um, I think it might have been a rare moment of sincerity. Or maybe not, I'm not sure.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:20 
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Progress in wartime gets channeled into very specific areas, I guess. Radar and sonar were hugely invested in in WWII, for instance, but anything without a direct military use will be utterly sidelined. I doubt much progress was made in the treatment of cancer, or very much money was spent on the upkeep of school buildings.

Even though most of the poor Tommy Aitkens who bled to death in Flanders or died of thirst in Mesopotamia probably weren't world changing geniuses, maybe one or two were. Most were probably people who would have made a significantly larger contribution to the world than shooting some Turks and then dying, even if it were "only" building houses or growing food or sweeping streets.


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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:20 
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Master of dodgy spelling....

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markg wrote:
myoptika wrote:
I can see where you're coming from Mark, but I don't agree, unfortunately. The sheer amount of funds that the military get from the government to pour into R&D is astronomical, and puts even the largest of private companies to shame.

-edit- To use the jet engine example, you're right that it would've been invented had their not been wars is correct, but it would've taken years longer to be able to be used for civilians.

Remember that during war, troops are expendable; if the technology wasn't 100%, they'd still use it anyway, as the benefits would outweigh the potential problems if it blew up in midair. You couldn't do that with passenger planes.
So you don't think that the wholesale slaughter of a large section of the working population of some of the most advanced nations during that time might have had any negative impact on progress? All I'm saying is that pointing to examples of things that were developed during the war as evidence of how much further we got because of the war is a bit spurious and is mere speculation.


we develop Mil R&D between wars, but they then get tested in a very very harsh environment sometimes to destructions.

We would probably end up with the same net product but it could take longer as there is not a need for it.

For example - passenger planes don't need to break the sound barrier, as the speed is not such an issue. Concorde was the only one and it was never replaced, but teh military war engine, produces fighters that can fly further and faster

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 Post subject: Re: 11.11.11
PostPosted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 14:21 
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markg wrote:
myoptika wrote:
As Zardoz alludes to, I don't think most of the slaughtered were the Einsteins of this world. :(
Um, I think it might have been a rare moment of sincerity. Or maybe not, I'm not sure.


I'm glad I'm not the only one who can't figure that out. :)

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