2016, you couldn’t resist, could ya? Ron Glass puts you over the line, you’re dead to me.
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he would have been flying the North American AJ Savage
Conan too?
In other news, Generallisimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
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oooh, new favorite unit. “President Trump fucks up 3.5 Imperial Fucktonnes of…”
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This could be summed up as; “Both wishes granted.”
Britain too. The White Army was basically our invention.
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May further World Wars be impossible since the collapse of European imperialism? I’m sure we could manage some pretty big conflicts, but without direct rule over much of the world by foreign powers, there is much more likelihood of a multiplicity of views and positions rather than two monolithic ‘sides’.
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Interesting fact - the ‘resorty’ areas on the North coast between Havana and Varadero were partly developed by (and infrastructure built by) the Mafia, who intended to create a super-Vegas outside of US jurisdiction. Fidel kicked them out, and that’s why the CIA found the Mafia so willing to help out with their dumb assassination attempts.
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Thanks, Obama!
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AD Skyraider, sound guess though
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Aren’t “Imperial” and “tonne” contradictory, though?
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I disagree. They called world wars, rather than techno wars or some such thing. So I frame them in terms of how much of the world is involved in the conflict. That’s why I am dismissive of people calling a possible war between Russia and the US a world war rather than a typical war between two countries. It may have also been the case during the Cold War, but it appears more limited because imperialism has become more corporatized.
I find that trend really annoying, and it’s why I posted above that WWIII was a long time ago. The notion that conflict would obviously involve nuclear weapons seems like an exercise in simple fatalism to me, with no reasoning to back it up. It’s of course possible, but there doesn’t seem to be much of an incentive. Like in dealing with children, I like pushing for conflicts to have workable goals and methods of achieving them.
I do think that’s a Eurocentric way of viewing world wars, though. As if power only comes from one place. I don’t think that’s the case, especially now with China’s economic growth in the past few decades, among other things.
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That’s true, although a new direct colonialism hasn’t yet developed; postcolonial power seems to have more wiggle room.
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I have confidence that American and Asian imperialism can take up the slack.
OTOH:
Even when you include the mass slaughter of the industrialised wars, the 20th century was the least homicidal in human history.
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and his remains will be cremated, in accordance with his will
Maybe. Mao and Ho wanted to be cremated too, but they wound up pickled in a glass box, just like Lenin, Stalin (for a while) and Kims 1 and 2.
Hey, at least it beats going out like Nicolae and Elena did.
Not everyone agreed with his findings, though. The Guardian was pretty keen:
Scientific America was more skeptical:
And this one at Truth Out even less so:
I haven’t got around to reading it, though. So, I can’t say either way.
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It was generally convincing to me, although the speculation about the causes of declining violence are less well established than the observation that it is.
There’s always critique within the research community about any pop-psych/pop-sociology book, and there are always at least a few dodgy citations or somesuch to be found. Most of the criticism of the book on Wikipedia appears to be theologically based (along with a bit of character assassination via out-of-context quotes).
Note that the SciAm critique was basically just “sure, we aren’t killing each other at the rates we used to, but we’re still spending megabucks on the military” and “why are relative rates more important than absolute rates?”.
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