What a bizarre viewpoint. The Taliban are Afghan men. Afghan men drove the Russians out of their country. Why are you trying to denigrate Afghan masculinity? It would actually be better if Afghanistan was less of a macho society.
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BBC got this info a bit too late. This is a huge problem for India.
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Chilling. But we should remember that they have always been around, at times in minority oppositions, and at times in power, either veiled in the clothes of democrats, or totally unveiled. It depends which country we look at.
Itās not as if we should regret the āold good timesā of the sixties, seventies or eighties btw. In reality, when one looks precisely at what went on during these times, it was abject, even more so than the current times.
In absolute terms, yes. But thatās like saying that life was worse in the ninth century than the nineteenth.
In relative terms, the āaverageā person is far worse off compared to the āeliteā than at any point in history since the Middle Ages.
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I wasnāt so much referring to wealth and the rich/poor wealth ratio, but rather to what went on politically.
Only focussing on Europe: during the cold war, you had half of Europe under a Communist tyranny. The other half had a bit of everything. The whole Iberian peninsula was officially fascist. There was a small amount of democratic countries forming the so-called āfree worldā with their overlord the US.
Looking at the world more generally, it was a shit-show of utter proportions: China was far worse off than today, the whole of South America was under the rule of military dictators (all installed and favoured by the US), Africa had almost no country without a dictator, and almost the whole of Asia was led by dictators as well, India being the big exception.
Today is still a shit-show as we know, but not exactly as ruthless, violent and costly in human lives.
But the slope was better then. A lot of things seem to be progressing, that doesnāt feel like it is the case now. Are we better off now than we were at the turn of the century? I donāt think we are.
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Yeah indeed, when compared to 2000, I can accept that there is a slope downwards. But thereās still a big margin to go in order to reach the state of the world during the seventies for instance.
Do you really feel the war in the east of Europe is that insignificant?
Itās reforming that wall that caused so much trouble in the sixties and seventies, no?
As I said previously: the number of official dictatorships in the world was staggering at the time. Add in the war in Vietnam, as well as a global cold war in the world (symbolized by the Berlin wall), menacing at every moment to degenerate into a full-fledged nuclear war. That was the terrifying prospect hanging over everyoneās head.
Iām not saying that the war in Ukraine isnāt significant btw, and Iām not saying that our world today is perfect, far from it. But one needs to put things in perspective at times. No way the post-war era was better or more pacific than ours. As Arminius said, there was a perceived upwards slope though, because of the abysmal lows after WW2.
Whatās more preoccupying is the current tendency to the worse, a bit everywhere worldwide. Itās a bit like a storm brewing up progressively. Nobody knows how strong it will be before it gets better again.
The levels of destruction and potential harm caused by these stupid neo-conservative ideas are staggering. The current rise of fascism a bit everywhere is one of the major side-effects of their worldwide spread over the last thirty years.
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Quite a lot of countries tried democracy before and failed in the process as well. The problem with democracy is that people need patience with it as well. There will be irresponsible leaders elected. There will be demagogues elected , but if there is no sticking to the principles behind what democracy essentially isā¦ Then it becomes tricky.
US tried and failed so many times with their intent of establishing democracy across various countries in the world.
Look at countries throughout the world whoāve dabbled with democracy and then reverted back to the old status quo
To continue , people need to get behind the concept of a democracy by and large in order for democracy to work. India isnāt a perfect democracy by any stretch of the imagination. There were plenty of problems with it and still are. What worked in Indiaās favour was that democracy was something that India chose when it got independence and not something that was foisted on them.
Thatās because their efforts were always more on keeping influence on governments and ressources (when not establishing outright dictatorships) than a genuine attempt to promote democracy.
The truth is that they couldnāt care less about the state of democracy outside of their frontiers, despite their incessant talk about it.
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Democracy is under the effect of entropy. If you dont continually work to keep the entropy from taking effect then democracy will slowly be undermined
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The conflict between what they do internationally and what they say they value is easier to square when you remember the USā view of democracy at home isnāt entirely democratic either.
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Where? South Korea? Philippines? Indonesia? Thailand? Bangladesh? Pakistan? Iran?
Pakistan , Afghanistan , Iraq for starters.
Even most of the military dictatorships propped up by the US in South America were after the democracies (imposed by the US) started working against American interrsts
Bangladesh works as a democracy now because the govt and their people made w conscientious decisions to go as a democracy
Similar in a lot of ways to India.
Just look at Pak and their continuous flip flops from democracy to dictatorship as what happens when the US (or other countries) start to dictate terms
Well said. Phrased it better than I would