iaink

Constant exposure to political propaganda and the flash, comfortable lifestyles of the glitterati.

Might be as simple as "Monkey see, monkey do"...even if they have to go into debt to afford the latest iPod or upmarket car or whatever other crap is advertised between the brain sucking fodder that passes for programing.

Perhaps there should be a "tongue in cheek" smiley

Tableland

I don't disagree with some of this, but this is not what causes wars.

iaink

No. Greed and Bigotry cause wars ...this is going nowhere, not that that comes as a surprise after posting here for a while.

Bigotry...I don't know you but I don't like you and I'm going to take your land, or be frightened you are after mine, or expoloit the fear of you I know other people have so I can start a war for financial / political gain.

Greed...Lets have a war in order to increase political power/ control, or make a buck taking their stuff / enslave them and using there labour / sell weapons to both these unstable regimes / invade an oil producing company and raise the value of my nice stable oil production reserves, and then award big fat contracts to my friends to rebuild what our military destroys.

Its not rocket science.

Tableland

I think what I am saying is that greed and bigotry are human emotional reactions, and are intrinsically reactive in their nature. Conflict is caused when the national interest of a state is challenged, and has little to do with conspiracy theories about media moguls. Murdoch might be able to manipulate the general public, and to a certain extent influence politicans, but states behave as they do because of their relative systemic position. And MUrdoch, et al are a product of that position.

Tableland

Most of what you are saying here outlines the orthodox position on state behaviour. Oil, for example, is a good example of states acting in their own interest. Remember, Murdoch is a tool to be used by the state, not the other way round. Sovereignty, and the legitimacy of force are issues way out of the control of Rupert. An example of states acting in their own interest against the will of the Murdoch-manipulated masses is the Iraq War. Most of Britain was, and is against this intervention, but it went ahead on the say so of the British cabinet alone. This conflict was therefore made using sovereignty as its justification, but it was not sovereignty itself that caused this war. What caused the war was clashes of material (oil) and ideological (radical Islamic fundamentalism) interests. Somewhere floating round in all that are newspapers spouting an editorial line invented in Murdoch's bathtub, I'll accept.

iaink

Murdoch's media empire transcends mere states, It has influence across Europe, The US and Australia, and Asia too for all I know. Fox media probably has far more influence on US government policy than for example the UN. but anyway, that was a tongue in cheek remark thats been taken a bit too seriously.

No nation will go to war, unless a large number of the individual people want to. Its a complex business obviously, but I believe it comes down to...well, you know what I think. Nations are made up of people, and nationalist feelings are driven either by the delusional belief that one group is better than another and somehow deserves some reward for that, or more likely fear that another group is out to get them, and those feelings can more often than not be traces back to...Oh, whats the point.

Tableland

Nationalism is something else all together..... but I disagree with the comment that the majority of people are needed to wage war. Look at the British opposition to the Iraq intervention. Just a few men and women in suits are enough to wage war and commit hundreds of thousands of people to battle. But can you imagine the alternative? A referendum every time a Suez of Falklands or Iraq popped up?

Elvira

How about just listening to public opinion - including all the wise men and women who pointed out that the Iraq was (a) unjustified, and (b) a Very Bad Idea?

iaink

I edited that as you were replying as I realised a majority was not in favour in the UK, However it was far from a clear cut landslide

On the other hand, where is the demonisation of Islam coming from if not bigotry, and what is driving the war in Iraq if not greed.

iaink

The vast majority of the general public are uninformed idiots, they are the last people you want to listen to when hard decisions have to be made!

Well, maybe not idiots, but mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed shit. Look at all the misinformation flying around before the Iraq invasion started. You cant make an informed decision without good information, and relying on gut feel is just asking for peoples baser prejudices to do their thinking.

Fortunately in the last 50 years or more, people have far greater access to information in general and are becoming more informed and generally less prejudiced. Also material wealth has increased enormously, so the driving forces for a lot of local conflicts have been reduced. Lets hope it stays that way.

Immigration from one nation to another is also a lot more common, and while excessive immigration might be seen as a threat and a cause for unrest, moderate immigration means everyone is more exposed to other races and cultures, and its harder to demonise any particular group if most people know a couple of them already and can see through the bull.

Madmac

Translated into my working environment: 'Intel inside, Idiot outside."

Elvira

Which is why I added my comment about the wise men and women.

A wise government pays attention not only to public opinion, but also informed opinion. If memory serves me right, the balance of the latter was firmly against the war in Iraq.

iaink

You are right....a wise government would have

dbd33

That's what they do in Switzerland. It complete hamstrings the government, they can't pass laws, enrich themselves, launch invasions, change anything, basically they're impotent.

I like that.

Souvenir

I don't know how to split quotes, so excuse me if this gets messy.

I didn't know about the earlier attempt at integration, so thank you for that information. Regardless of whether or not airbrushing has taken place, you can't deny that, apart from civil wars resulting mostly from the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc, Europe has been relatively war-free for the last 60 years. NATO played a role in that, certainly, but military might by itself is no guarantee of peace. What European integration has done is to integrate individual nations to the point that most of the pre-conditions for war are not available.

Not one citizen of one European country ever approved an increase in personal income tax, either. The UK, and I imagine the other members, joined the community following a referendum. We also hold elections, where we appoint people to make decisions on our behalf. They are representatives, not delegates.

"Wars are caused because of material or ideological conflicts of interests". Yes; you're essentially saying what I meant. Wars happen at the national level. European integration has made that less likely to happen.

Power is indeed increasingly concentrated in Brussels. There can only be two possible reasons for this. Either Belgium has an enormous stockpile of WMDs and is holding the rest of Europe to ransom, or Brussels is just a city where EU governments meet to talk and make joint decisions.