There are several March 16, 1979 that can be called upon and now of them are good.
Washington D.C., March 16, 2020 - (click here) During the Cold War, false alarms of missile attacks were closely held matters although news of them inevitably leaked. Today the National Security Archive revisits the false alerts of the Jimmy Carter administration when on four occasions warning screens showed hundreds and hundreds of Soviet ballistic missiles heading toward North America....
The Old Communist Guard is finding new legs in a far different world.
India and the Soviet Union today (click here) demanded “an immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Chinese troops from the territory of Vietnam.” A joint communique issued at the end of the Soviet Premier, Alexie Kosygin’s six-day official visit, also stressed that the “two sides considered it necessary to exert further efforts in the interest of strengthening peace in the Asian continent, of developing cooperation among all Asian countries on the principles of sovereign equality and independence, non-use of force, inviolability of frontiers, territorial integrity of states, no interference into internal affairs and on other generally recognised principles of inter-state relations”. The two sides also favoured a “comprehensive and just settlement of the West Asian problem on the basis of the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from all Arab territories occupied in 1967, the securing of the legitimate rights of the Arab people of Palestine, including their right to establish their own state as well as the ensuring for all states in the area the right of independent existence and development”....
A defending USA figure skating champion is replaced by a Russian.
Vienna - Vladimir Kovalev of the Soviet Union (click here) regained the world figure skating title tonight after Charles Tickner of Littleton, Colo., the defending champion, gave a brilliant exhibition of free skating but failed to make up ground on the leaders....
NATO is used to the culture of the Atlantic, most of which are victories and peace. The complete opposite of that is the Pacific with Asia and war. The Pacific is a far different theater than the Atlantic. The folks from NATO are used to the idea of peace being the pinnacle of a society's victories. To have a country like Russia under Putin, come into the peace and prosperity of the Atlantic is unconscionable. But, to the Pacific cultures there are long standing wars that have yet to meet with victory. Peace is not a culture in Asia.
I find it a bit laughable that China still considers Japan an aggressor country so much so that it has radar for missiles. Japan was disarmed for decades following WWII. It's society and culture are completely different under a democracy instilled there by the USA after the war. One of the industries during reparations by the USA Japan was given whaling. Whale meat is full of PCB and all sorts of ocean pollution because of the blubber, but, it is still considered a delicacy in Japan. That was a method of returning an economy to Japan. The country really needs to stop the silliness of hunting endangered species. But, as far as an aggressor country? Japan? It has developed a national defense, but, aggression is not in it's vocabulary anymore.
Democracy is a fairly new concept, but, war definitely is not. So, for countries far older than the USA settled by Europeans, war is a mainstay. Putin finds it helpful to reach back in Russian history to stake a claim for the future and his legacy. Rather than having a legacy of freedom and democratic principles in governing, Putin rather be remembered in the shadows of Lenin in bringing about war. But, Lenin wasn't about war, he was about revolution. That is a completely different paradigm.
The entire world has a problem and it is about the communists in the Pacific and their resistence to democracy, peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity go together, but, war robs the people of a greater prosperity and quality of life to compensate the national defenses of any country. If North Korea were to give up it's nuclear prusuits it could feed and educate many more people. Nukes are expensive and completely irrelevant for life on Earth.
Nukes = Fear, Fear = Control, Communism = Control, hence, fear is good.
Putin is deploying nuclear missiles within months. He means it. The West needs to decide about Putin and Russia and their nukes. Just because the Russian military made a poor showing in Ukraine, doesn't mean the nukes are something to ignore.
What the USA sees in expansionism of democracy isn't about destroying land and killing people. It is about business and Wall Street. Since the time of Nixon it was about business and never about taking over China. I do not remember a race for president of China whereby an American was a candidate. As we honor the Ukrainians and their survival in the face of genocide, that same principle holds true for all countries. Ethnics are important and no one wants to kill Russians or Chinese. It would be genocide if that was the ideology of the democratic West. Maybe the leaders of Russia and China don't 'get it.' As a matter of face, they absolutely don't get it, otherwise there would have been no violence in Hong Kong or threats to Taiwan and border threats to Post-Soviet Countries.
Freedom and democracy are not about control. They are about happiness. They are about food, blankets and clothing that fits the season of the year.
Democracies invest in learning and education. They love new ideas and investigation for those new ideas. They like big ideas at a societal level. There is very little a democracy is interested in that is controlling except whatever malady brings about illness or suffering.
The current political right wing of the USA is about control and that means trouble for democracy. Their interest in control is based in greed and that is a princple that does not play well in democratic societies. I have no doubt Republicans like less taxes, until there are threats of war and God help our enemies. So, to justify the end of social programs and allowing hunger for the sake of a political experiment to expose laziness there is no space for that in a democracy concerned with every vote being as powerful as every other vote. Anything other than that is corruption.
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