realjohnboy wrote:Back to the name calling now. Whose turn is it next?
I'll be happy to oblige next time again, since you apparently consider calling people on their erroneous statements or lies "bashing each other" and "name calling". (I wrote you a PM about that last time, but you never replied.)
No offence, but I think I had a teacher like you ... On primary school, before the liberation and happier times of high school came, I was bullied quite a bit. Now some teachers react to bullying with passivity; others intervene forcefully and in time. And then there are teachers who take another kind of tack. Let's say, kid A bullies kid B in the schoolyard. When kid B tries to fend for himself at best as he can, and a ruckus thus ensues, the teacher comes out and admonishes "all you kids" to finally behave and "stop pestering each other". Quiet ensues for the moment, except kid B remains intimidated, knowing now that if he defends himself he'll be punished, while kid A and his friends breathe in triumphantal relief: they now know they can get away with stuff, as long as they keep the overall sound down.
We're not kids anymore? True, but this stuff doesn't stop at that point alas. It's replayed on sometimes grotesque scales - just remember Bosnia. Serbian militants, armed and funded by Serbia proper, launch an armed insurrection, which quickly derails into brutal ethnic cleansings, with thousands of people dead or homeless. The Muslims are initially pushed back into ever closer quarters, before they eventually start lashing back in return. The international community? It ignored President Izetbegovic's initial desperate calls for intervention. When the man eventually dropped his save-our-multiethnic-state approach and started having his people hit back from an ever more specifically Muslim identity, it basically opted for the "behave, you kids" approach. It announced an arms boycott against "both parties", which initially yielded an extreme additional benefit to the Serbs, who could still access the Yugoslav National Army's supplies and support from Serbia proper, marginalising the Muslims even further (until they eventually turned to dubious Middle-Eastern support). The upshot of it all? The fair teachers Vance and Owen, calling all "you kids" to account, brokered a peace deal that would definitely legitimize the Serbs's conquests, divvying up Bosnia-Herzegovina into ethnic bantustans, and offered international troops as "peace-keepers".
Its almost enough to make one a neoconservative, and a sad story especially in light of the worse still deal that in the end
did actually end the war, in Dayton, after the US had finally shaken the "neutral" EU teacher by his shoulders and said, goddarnit we're going to intervene on the part of those who've been done wrong.
Some associative thoughts from the nimh, who's a bit obsessive about justice ... no justice, no peace.