Gyroscopic Investing

MediumTex wrote: If I was an average Iranian citizen I would be pissed.  I would want to know why my government was engaged in all of this foreign intrigue rather than trying to improve the quality of life in Iran for people like me.

BearBones wrote:

MediumTex wrote: If I was an average Iranian citizen I would be pissed.  I would want to know why my government was engaged in all of this foreign intrigue rather than trying to improve the quality of life in Iran for people like me.

Same for US or British citizens? My point was that we should look at ourselves in the mirror before calling someone else ugly.

Medium Tex wrote:Harry Browne asked rhetorically after 9/11 why the terrorists weren't targeting Switzerland.

dualstow wrote: I do wonder, though: can every nation afford to behave like Switzerland? It just doesn't seem practical or possible to me. To put it another way, as long as there are places like, let's say North Korea, I don't know if neutral Switzerland could exist without some nations that are vastly different from Switzerland. Am I wrong?

BearBones wrote:

dualstow wrote: I do wonder, though: can every nation afford to behave like Switzerland? It just doesn't seem practical or possible to me. To put it another way, as long as there are places like, let's say North Korea, I don't know if neutral Switzerland could exist without some nations that are vastly different from Switzerland. Am I wrong?

Doesn't Switzerland have a military? Whether or not this is the case, couldn't a military be used for self defense rather than imposing an agenda on another country. Couldn't a country walk softly and still carry a big stick?

BearBones wrote:

dualstow wrote: I do wonder, though: can every nation afford to behave like Switzerland? It just doesn't seem practical or possible to me. To put it another way, as long as there are places like, let's say North Korea, I don't know if neutral Switzerland could exist without some nations that are vastly different from Switzerland. Am I wrong?

Doesn't Switzerland have a military? Whether or not this is the case, couldn't a military be used for self defense rather than imposing an agenda on another country. Couldn't a country walk softly and still carry a big stick?

dualstow wrote: In a perfect world, yes. But, what happens when a country outside Switzerland is invaded, and is unable to defend itself?... I think there are times that third parties should intervene, even at the risk of bad blood down the road.

Pointedstick wrote: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/north_south_korea

dualstow wrote:

BearBones wrote:

dualstow wrote: I do wonder, though: can every nation afford to behave like Switzerland? It just doesn't seem practical or possible to me. To put it another way, as long as there are places like, let's say North Korea, I don't know if neutral Switzerland could exist without some nations that are vastly different from Switzerland. Am I wrong?

Doesn't Switzerland have a military? Whether or not this is the case, couldn't a military be used for self defense rather than imposing an agenda on another country. Couldn't a country walk softly and still carry a big stick?

In a perfect world, yes. But, what happens when a country outside Switzerland is invaded, and is unable to defend itself? Costa Rica, which lacks an army altogether. Poland, which was overrun pretty quickly by a superior military. Kuwait. I suppose Switzerland could keep saying "Not my problem" until the world consists of Switzerland and a really big nation we can call Not-Switzerland. I think there are times that third parties should intervene, even at the risk of bad blood down the road.
(In the case of Iran, it would be too late if they nuked another country, but I certainly don't think that's going to happen).

stone wrote: Like I said before, personally, I think a people determined to be unconquorable can be unconquorable simply by using Ghandi style non-violence but I realise that that is a more contentious idea.

dualstow wrote: @stone:
Since a popular topic on this forum is SHTF scenarios, I want to ask you if you think a non-violent response to an armed militia would be helpful. To me, the idea is so ridiculous that I'm afraid the question comes off as flippant, so I'll try to rephrase it:
Does non-violent resistance fail to work in the absence of some kind of international law? If the answer is yes, then what precisely is it that makes non-violent resistance work? What makes the aggressor give up?

Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow.
Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down. When every one of the first column was knocked down stretcher bearers rushed up unmolested by the police and carried off the injured to a thatched hut which had been arranged as a temporary hospital.
There were not enough stretcher-bearers to carry off the wounded; I saw eighteen injured being carried off simultaneously, while forty-two still lay bleeding on the ground awaiting stretcher-bearers. The blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood.
At times the spectacle of unresisting men being methodically bashed into a bloody pulp sickened me so much I had to turn away....I felt an indefinable sense of helpless rage and loathing, almost as much against the men who were submitting unresistingly to being beaten as against the police wielding the clubs...
Bodies toppled over in threes and fours, bleeding from great gashes on their scalps. Group after group walked forward, sat down, and submitted to being beaten into insensibility without raising an arm to fend off the blows. Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance....They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police....The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.[7][8]

Pointedstick wrote:

stone wrote: Like I said before, personally, I think a people determined to be unconquorable can be unconquorable simply by using Ghandi style non-violence but I realise that that is a more contentious idea.

Ahh, but non-violence is not a method to avoid being conquered. It is a method to free your people once you have already been conquered, hopefully by a democratic entity that responds to public pressure. Preventing conquest to begin with requires diplomacy and/or force of arms.

Pointedstick wrote: Aha stone, you you acknowledge that nonviolence doesn't work in the face of ice-blooded psychopaths? I agree with you that the concept of an army entirely made up of psychopaths is a bit laughable, but certainly one could imagine a squad within it that are, or perhaps an armed militia that attracts or selects for only the most cold-blooded butchers People with humanity are one thing, but surely nonviolence in the face of those who have no human compassion will fail, right?

Reub wrote: That's a totally pie-in-the-sky position. What if those ruthless murderers were coming to kill your family and you could stop them with a weapon? Would you instead stand in front of their vehicle and try to reason with them?

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.

Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.

Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 0623 hours, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 0626, a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect. (This suggests that when they heard that there had been a burglary, the police must have felt that they had a promising lead on a culprit.)

Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 0633, five minutes after they arrived.

Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 0642 and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers.

Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. At knife point, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._ ... f_Columbia

On April 22, 1974 Pierre, Andrews, Roberts and three other men drove to a Hi-Fi store on Washington Boulevard, Ogden, in two vans just before closing time. Three of the group then entered the shop brandishing handguns, while Roberts and another man remained with the vehicles. Two employees, Stanley Walker, age 20, and Michelle Ansley, age 18, were in the store at the time and taken hostage. Pierre and Andrews took the two into the store's basement and bound them. The gang then began robbing the store. Later, a 16-year-old boy named Cortney Naisbitt arrived to thank Walker for allowing him to park his car in the store's parking lot as he ran an errand next door. He was also taken hostage and tied up in the basement with Walker and Ansley. Later that evening, Orren Walker, Stanley's 43-year-old father, became worried that his son had not returned home. Cortney Naisbitt's mother Carol Naisbitt, also arrived at the shop looking for her son, who was late getting home. Both Orren Walker and Carol Naisbitt were taken to the basement and tied up.

With five people now in the basement, Pierre told Andrews to get something from out of their van. Andrews returned with a bottle in a brown paper bag, from which Pierre poured a cup of blue liquid. Pierre ordered Orren to administer the liquid to the other hostages, but he refused, and was bound, gagged and left face-down on the basement floor.

Pierre and Andrews then propped each of the victims into sitting positions and forced them to drink the liquid, telling them it was vodka laced with sleeping pills. Rather, it was liquid Drano. The moment it touched the hostages' lips, enormous blisters rose, and it began to burn their tongues and throats and peel away the flesh around their mouths. Ansley, still begging for her life, was forced to drink the drain cleaner too, although she was reported (by Orren Walker) to have coughed less than the other victims. Pierre and Andrews tried to duct-tape the hostages' mouths shut to hold quantities of drain cleaner in and to silence their screams, but pus oozing from the blisters prevented the adhesive from sticking. Orren Walker was the last to be given the drain cleaner, but seeing what was happening to the other hostages, he allowed it to pour out of his mouth and then faked the convulsions and screams of his son and fellow hostages.

Pierre became angry because the deaths were taking too long and were too loud and messy, so he shot both Carol and Cortney Naisbitt in the backs of their heads. Pierre then shot at Orren Walker but missed. He then fatally shot Stanley before again shooting at Orren, this time grazing the back of his head.

Pierre then took Ansley to the far corner of the basement, forced her at gunpoint to remove her clothes, then repeatedly and brutally raped her, after telling Andrews to clear out for 30 minutes. When he was done, he allowed her to use the bathroom while he watched, then dragged her, still naked, back to the other hostages, threw her on her face, and fatally shot her in the back of the head.

Andrews and Pierre noted that Orren was still alive, so Pierre mounted him, wrapped a wire around his throat, and tried to strangle him. When this failed, Pierre and Andrews inserted a ballpoint pen into Orren's ear, and Pierre stomped it until it punctured his eardrum, broke, and exited the side of his throat. Pierre and Andrews then went upstairs, finished loading equipment into their van, and departed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Fi_Murders

dualstow wrote: Not all members of a seemingly ice-blooded army are ice-blooded psychopaths, but mob mentality can be a factor. On a small scale, we can look at young women being assaulted at, say, the annual Puerto Rican Day parade in NYC. (I am not making a commentary about Puerto Ricans. This is simply a well-known and chronic problem that can be googled). On a larger scale, if your fellow soldiers are driving the tanks or shooting people just standing there, you might be more likely to go through with the same. (And, I think we're supposed to avoid delving further into this topic, but isn't that what happened in WWII? Shooting non-resisting humans standing in front of pits?)
Another factor to consider: The British never meant to exterminate the Indians, but only to make them submit to their rule, right? That might be a necessary ingredient to Satragraha your would-be conqueror. Do you agree?