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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (134718)	5/28/2004 1:02:32 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

I know in advance what your response will be. When force fails, your one and only solution, is to use more force. Actually, no.. Using creative force, and being willing to spend as much time and money to create an alternative economic and political model, and then to market and sell it to the people, is the means by which to oppose the totalitarian revolutionaries. We could have supported various factions within the communist movment, including the Mensheviks. There were several fundamental differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Mensheviks wanted to follow a more evolutionary path, as opposed to revolutionary, and did not want to overthrow the current government. They sought to improve the existing conditions. This mostly Proletariat party had some intelligentsia, but was mass based for the most part. Unlike the Bolsheviks, this was truly a party of the Proletariat, not over them. The Mensheviks were much more alligned with the ideology of Marx, in comparison to their opponents. Both Marx and the Mensheviks recognized the the need for a capitalist revolution in order to achieve socialism. Lenin, however, felt that he could forego this requirement since Russia was neither an industrialized country, nor had she experienced full-blown capitalism, something that Marx said was necessary in order for a revolution to occur. The Mensheviks wanted a Parliamentary Bourgeoise run by capitalists(socialists). This would, however, take quite a while since a long run of capitalism was necessary. Not surprisingly, the Bolsheviks were able to seize power and control. campus.northpark.edu mmmfiles.com Once again, we see that had the Allied powers been proactive in seeking to influence and support less militant factions in the Russian revolution, rather than merely supporting the Tsarists, we might, just might have been able to decrease the influence of the Bolsheviks and avoid 70 years of global terror and repression.. And Russia might be a tremendous international economic power, and not the diseased (but well armed) terminal patient it became... Kind of the same thing that we could have done in Iran prior to the Shah's overthrow.. We must have some element of influence with various factions, preferably moderate and progressive.. And this is what we must seek in the Middle East as well.. Hawk

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (134718)	5/28/2004 4:59:31 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<"Forward defense", and "preventive wars" depend on an ability to predict the future, an ability nobody really has.> Jacob, it's true that predicting the future is difficult and prone to be wrong, but it's almost a defining characteristic of humans and a dominant purpose of our great big brains. Even though we are not all that good at it, we don't have a choice but to predict the future and hope we are right. We generally expect to live 70 or 80 years, which is a lot of future. People say "Live for today", but those who take that glib slogan seriously, all too often don't get to live tomorrow. Nature is merciless to those who don't correctly predict the future, which is why we have become reasonable at it. I think we can predict the future quite well. Not only that, but we create the future as well as predicting it. What I do is figure out what future I want and then make it happen. I'm getting long in the tooth and have had quite a lot of success. So it works! The key to success is to ensure that what one wants is compatible with laws of physics, human nature and objective reality. Mere fantasy and tilting at windmills is not the way to create the present. There are four types of people: 1....Those who watch things happen. 2....Those who predict what happens. 3....Those who make things happen. 4....Those who wonder what happened. Mqurice