auschwitz day jews. v nazis

[easytiger95]

I don't think climate change is glib, I think your assumption that genocide is unavoidable because of it is.

I think it is too easy to blame geopolitical or increasingly climatic factors whilst ignoring very human and at times, evil choices. I'm not religious by any means, but I do recognise man's capacity to do evil, quite apart from any external factors. Which is why I think it is hugely important that the holocaust is not down played or forgotten - because, climate change etc not withstanding, every human has a choice to participate or not participate in horrors such as the Shoah. Remembering it is a way of preventing it.

I wasn;t talking about the causes of the war - I was talking about the causes of the Holocaust, which are two very different things. For instance, if the Allies had not taken up arms after Poland's invasion, I think the Holocaust would still have occurred.

The reasons I differ with you on the oil question is 1 - it wasn't the cause of the Hitler's downfall, in fact if you were going to pinpoint economic reasons for their loss, you'd be far more likely to pinpoint the destruction of Germany's capacity to manufacture armaments by the Allied bombing campaign. Stalingrad was lost because of over reach and a fatal tendency by Hitler to meddle - even up to the end he was refusing Paulus permission to break out, which was still possible.

2 - there is tendency to link back in history to reinforce modern viewpoints - eg WW2 was lost because of oil, Nazis were evil. American forces invaded Iraq for oil, American's are evil. Not saying that you are doing that, but the tendency to say that every war is the same is not valid in my opinion. And in saying that we risk dooming ourselves to accepting that war will always be with us, when, in fact, the world is a far, far more peaceful place than it has ever been.

[seafoid]

I don't think climate change is glib, I think your assumption that genocide is unavoidable because of it is.

I think it is too easy to blame geopolitical or increasingly climatic factors whilst ignoring very human and at times, evil choices. I'm not religious by any means, but I do recognise man's capacity to do evil, quite apart from any external factors. Which is why I think it is hugely important that the holocaust is not down played or forgotten - because, climate change etc not withstanding, every human has a choice to participate or not participate in horrors such as the Shoah. Remembering it is a way of preventing it.

I wasn;t talking about the causes of the war - I was talking about the causes of the Holocaust, which are two very different things. For instance, if the Allies had not taken up arms after Poland's invasion, I think the Holocaust would still have occurred.

The reasons I differ with you on the oil question is 1 - it wasn't the cause of the Hitler's downfall, in fact if you were going to pinpoint economic reasons for their loss, you'd be far more likely to pinpoint the destruction of Germany's capacity to manufacture armaments by the Allied bombing campaign. Stalingrad was lost because of over reach and a fatal tendency by Hitler to meddle - even up to the end he was refusing Paulus permission to break out, which was still possible.

2 - there is tendency to link back in history to reinforce modern viewpoints - eg WW2 was lost because of oil, Nazis were evil. American forces invaded Iraq for oil, American's are evil. Not saying that you are doing that, but the tendency to say that every war is the same is not valid in my opinion. And in saying that we risk dooming ourselves to accepting that war will always be with us, when, in fact, the world is a far, far more peaceful place than it has ever been.

I think food security is taken as a given and it shouldn't be. We are a very shortsighted species. Look at Asian population growth post ww2.
There were 300m people in the Raj when Mountbatten took down the flag in 1948. Now between Pak, India and Bangla it's close to 2bn.
 
It doesn't matter how things are now - it's about what sort of risk is building up in the system and what happens when the models break down.
Surely that is the Irish lesson from 2008.

150m people in India depend for food on an aquifer that is running down.

And limiting the damage to that assumes climate is stable.
Climate change is going to change the flow of water into the Ganges. What sort of planning in India doing to manage this? None.

Iraq and Syria are also about climate change and resource allocation.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/06/water-supplies-shrinking-threat-to-food
Today some 18 countries, containing half the world's people, are overpumping their aquifers. Among these are the big three grain producers – China, India and the US – and several other populous countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Mexico.


They way Dalits are treated in India- do you think they'll be looked after when the shit hits the fan ?
Genocide is always possible under the right conditions.   

[easytiger95]

Not really worth arguing about Seafoid - my beef on the thread was with people belittling the Holocaust, which certainly wasn't you, IMHO.

Still, and all, i do think you have a fairly Hobbesian, depressing view of the world. My own view is that, just as the Nazis choose to do the evil things that they did, mankind, as a whole, can choose not to, and take a different path. And if you look around at the evidence, wars are down, life expectancy up, inequality between countries and continents actually decreasing (which may well have benefical population consequences) - in general there has never been a better time to be alive.

[seafoid]

Not really worth arguing about Seafoid - my beef on the thread was with people belittling the Holocaust, which certainly wasn't you, IMHO.

Still, and all, i do think you have a fairly Hobbesian, depressing view of the world. My own view is that, just as the Nazis choose to do the evil things that they did, mankind, as a whole, can choose not to, and take a different path. And if you look around at the evidence, wars are down, life expectancy up, inequality between countries and continents actually decreasing (which may well have benefical population consequences) - in general there has never been a better time to be alive.

It is a great time to be alive but I think tail risk is a huge weakness and I don't see anyone doing anything about it.
I think that is why the global economy is such a mess. We need a different system that takes these things into account.
Maybe it will happen.

Wars are edging up as well. Not in Europe.

[Eamonnca1]

"Capital must be destroyed in order for liquidity to be usefully deployed once again — especially if it is to deliver investment returns.Hence, why wars are so hugely useful for dealing with economic depressions. They permanently and effectively destroy capacity. Not just the surplus capacity that plagues the system, but core capacity, which serves a genuine economic need. Indeed, it's the need for the capacity to be reinstalled that in many ways justifies a return on investment again.
The foundation of Friedman's corrupting principle is that the investor (money to be more precise) has no duty, obligation or covenant to anyone or anything."

And when the war is over reconstruction is great for business.

You could be onto something there. You know why the trains never run on time in England? Because the system is full of bottlenecks that are all but impossible to sort out. There's always an ancient cathedral or housing development in the way. Germany's network was obliterated in the war and they got to rebuild theirs from scratch according to the needs of the emerging modern Germany, which needed more lines running East-West as opposed to the old North-South lines before. The British network wasn't hit so hard and they're pretty much stuck with what they built during the industrial revolution.

[omaghjoe]

I don't think climate change is glib, I think your assumption that genocide is unavoidable because of it is.

I think it is too easy to blame geopolitical or increasingly climatic factors whilst ignoring very human and at times, evil choices. I'm not religious by any means, but I do recognise man's capacity to do evil, quite apart from any external factors. Which is why I think it is hugely important that the holocaust is not down played or forgotten - because, climate change etc not withstanding, every human has a choice to participate or not participate in horrors such as the Shoah. Remembering it is a way of preventing it.

I wasn;t talking about the causes of the war - I was talking about the causes of the Holocaust, which are two very different things. For instance, if the Allies had not taken up arms after Poland's invasion, I think the Holocaust would still have occurred.

The reasons I differ with you on the oil question is 1 - it wasn't the cause of the Hitler's downfall, in fact if you were going to pinpoint economic reasons for their loss, you'd be far more likely to pinpoint the destruction of Germany's capacity to manufacture armaments by the Allied bombing campaign. Stalingrad was lost because of over reach and a fatal tendency by Hitler to meddle - even up to the end he was refusing Paulus permission to break out, which was still possible.

2 - there is tendency to link back in history to reinforce modern viewpoints - eg WW2 was lost because of oil, Nazis were evil. American forces invaded Iraq for oil, American's are evil. Not saying that you are doing that, but the tendency to say that every war is the same is not valid in my opinion. And in saying that we risk dooming ourselves to accepting that war will always be with us, when, in fact, the world is a far, far more peaceful place than it has ever been.

I think food security is taken as a given and it shouldn't be. We are a very shortsighted species. Look at Asian population growth post ww2.
There were 300m people in the Raj when Mountbatten took down the flag in 1948. Now between Pak, India and Bangla it's close to 2bn.
 
It doesn't matter how things are now - it's about what sort of risk is building up in the system and what happens when the models break down.
Surely that is the Irish lesson from 2008.

150m people in India depend for food on an aquifer that is running down.

And limiting the damage to that assumes climate is stable.
Climate change is going to change the flow of water into the Ganges. What sort of planning in India doing to manage this? None.

Iraq and Syria are also about climate change and resource allocation.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/06/water-supplies-shrinking-threat-to-food
Today some 18 countries, containing half the world's people, are overpumping their aquifers. Among these are the big three grain producers – China, India and the US – and several other populous countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Mexico.


They way Dalits are treated in India- do you think they'll be looked after when the shit hits the fan ?
Genocide is always possible under the right conditions.

Seafoid what are you going on about? This thread is supposed to be about the holocaust and you are back talking about food shortages that water table in India?

We have already discussed the perpetual food shortage mirage in great depth here
http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=25245.75

[Eamonnca1]

The last line of his post makes it clear what the connection is. He's on topic.

[Mike Sheehy]

The last line of his post makes it clear what the connection is. He's on topic.

the last line of which post ?

[omaghjoe]

He's not really Eamonn
TBF The connection is based on jumping from one assumption to the next, with a few irrelevant facts thrown in.

[seafoid]

He's not really Eamonn
TBF The connection is based on jumping from one assumption to the next, with a few irrelevant facts thrown in.

Joe

Did anyone around Omagh die during the Famine ?

[omaghjoe]

He's not really Eamonn
TBF The connection is based on jumping from one assumption to the next, with a few irrelevant facts thrown in.

Joe

Did anyone around Omagh die during the Famine ?

Yes

[Eamonnca1]

He's saying that genocide tends to happen when the right conditions are in place, such as a lack of food or water security.

[seafoid]

He's saying that genocide tends to happen when the right conditions are in place, such as a lack of food or water security.

The other big one is where land ownership is suddenly contested when a power system breaks down ie the Armenian genocide 

[omaghjoe]

He's saying that genocide tends to happen when the right conditions are in place, such as a lack of food or water security.

The other big one is where land ownership is suddenly contested when a power system breaks down ie the Armenian genocide

There is some serious telepathy going on here guys :-)
The causes of genocide are almost always caused by political instability and propaganda fueled tribalism.

WWII Germany

Rwandan Civil War

Indian Partition

Collapse of the Ottoman Empire

Historically it has very little to do with food supply

In fact most famines and food shortages world wide have been caused and used by war not the other way around.
Why? Because the biggest threat to food supply is not the production of food but in disruption to the distribution network.