Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘D’ Correspondence

Continued from Mailing List ‘AF’ 117:

November 27 2009

Re: Third ‘wife’

RICHARD: As chemical warfare existed long before nuclear warfare (the 17^th century Strasbourg Agreement banned the use of ‘perfidious and odious’ toxic devices; the 1899 Hague Declaration, and the 1907 Hague Convention, forbade the use of ‘poison or poisonous weapons’ in warfare), as well as biological warfare (the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of ‘Bacteriological Methods of Warfare’), there is adequate historical reason to assume that humankind will continue to show such restraint in regards to both the radio-active fallout (ionising radiation) and the substantial explosive capacity of nuclear weapons.

RESPONDENT No. 17: According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists The Doomsday Clock is still set at five minutes to midnight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

RICHARD: So? Whatever arbitrary setting it is, which the directors of the ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ choose to put Mr. Hyman Goldsmith’s 1947 ‘Doomsday Clock’ at, it makes no difference to the historical fact that, despite chemical weapons being available for hundreds of years, biological weapons for more than a hundred years and radioactive weapons for over half a century, human beings have not destroyed every man woman and child on the planet. On the contrary, humankind has shown a truly remarkable restraint despite being reactively driven by blind nature’s instinctual passions.

Even more to the point: the percentage per population killed in wars has been steadily decreasing; the democratisation of nations has been progressively increasing (and democracies rarely, if ever, go to war against each other); that hyped-up catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (which nowadays influences those director’s doom and gloom opinions more than chemical, biological and radioactive weapons) is increasingly being revealed to be more about scientolism than the scientific method (and that is putting it politely); and talk of technological threats has been around since the Luddites in the early 1800’s.

RESPONDENT: Interesting article that could add to the debate about democracies going to war. That is if there is a debate... http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm

RICHARD: I have read each and every email posted to this forum and I have seen no debate at all about democracies going to war ... are you wanting to start such a debate, then?

If so, it would be to your advantage to be cognisant of the (parenthesised) qualifier in that post of mine which my co-respondent selected the further above paragraph from. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘... as it is an historical fact that democracies do not go to war against each other (with minor exceptions depending on the way war is defined and how a democracy is structured) there is reason to foresee a world-wide peace (cessation of warfare) in the not-too-distant future as the democratisation of nations gains more momentum’. (List D, No. 12, 27 Nov 2009)

That (parenthesised) qualifier was specifically inserted because there is usually some smart-alecky lurker who pops up briefly, during talk about democracies going to war on other forums, with a link to that article ... which article you noncommittally say is [quote] ‘interesting’ [endquote].

Never let it be said you expressed an opinion, eh?

*

What I find interesting is the mind-boggling lack of interest in the hereto unprecedented politico-social developments of the twentieth century ... to wit: the rapid democratisation of so many nations worldwide and what it can mean in terms of health, wealth, leisure, pleasure and safety, for the average citizen, on a scale which is equally unprecedented in human history.

Things we take for granted – ranging from ice-cubes to a literal smorgasbord of foodstuffs – were things only autocrats (kings, emperors, pharaohs and the ilk) could enjoy in the past.

Yet all you can do is quibble – via a proxy at that – about what is already qualified in my post anyway.

Oh well ... c’est la vie, I guess.

Regards, Richard.