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Post by fumobici on May 20, 2019 17:52:51 GMT
That's why I used the qualifying "almost" Charity is, of course, great but it can't effectively deal with issues like student debt and tuition fees -- or medical debt -- without a political solution, and often one very popular with the electorate. To the extent that charity misleads people into thinking that large, systemic issues can ever adequately be addressed through it, it can absolutely create harms as well.
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Post by questa on May 21, 2019 1:11:54 GMT
Unfortunately charities cannot fix the social problems, they can only try to alleviate them. It takes change in the whole way Governments take responsibility for the conditions that create the problems.
Parts of my country are in severe drought with all the attendant problems...unemployment, bank foreclosures, businesses going bankrupt, kids leaving school and family breakdowns, suicides.
Meanwhile a study of water use along our major river systems shows ignorance, theft of huge amounts of water and lack of management. The results of the study have been shelved. If the recommended plans for dams had been followed the effects of the drought would have been less severe.
The same mentality seems to be in use for all problems...throw money at it and we won't have to DO anything.
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Post by onlyMark on May 21, 2019 12:40:30 GMT
One of my daughters sent me a photo taken on her phone of a certain street, why is not important. I looked on Google Street View and sent her back a photo of the same one from where she would have been standing, but showing the opposite direction. She asked me how I'd done that. I told her it was possible when you use a modern phone to manipulate the properties embedded in the photo by adding "180" to the title line and it will show the view facing the other way.
Apparently she's tried and it doesn't work for her, so I've told her to ask her friends to see what she's doing wrong. No doubt I'll get a kick the next time I see her.
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Post by Kimby on May 21, 2019 14:04:49 GMT
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Post by mossie on May 21, 2019 15:03:22 GMT
I am not allowed to see your links Kimby. Also am not following closely the Daks over Normandy event. I do have strong memories of the day, my mother took us to a special church service to pray for success. We had had months of our area being used as a training ground and for the assembly of the mock army to fool the jerries.
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Post by lagatta on May 21, 2019 17:27:20 GMT
Thanks Kimby. That plane had to fly a hell of a long way even before the Atlantic crossing. The Daks have their own website. www.daksovernormandy.com/ But shouldn't this be moved to a topic more closely related to historical events?
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Post by onlyMark on May 21, 2019 19:36:35 GMT
Just to mention, these are the planes my father flew for his RAF career. By the time he'd qualified WWII was all over by a matter of weeks.
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Post by Kimby on May 22, 2019 2:09:11 GMT
Probably right, lagatta, but if people can’t open the links, maybe it will just die a quiet death here...
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Post by kerouac2 on May 22, 2019 4:22:54 GMT
It just concerns us Europeans.
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Post by lagatta on May 22, 2019 9:25:55 GMT
It is the 75th anniversary of D-Day, which sadly is probably the last significant anniversary when there will be any number of veterans around.
More generally, where do we put historical topics on this site, especially when they involve more than one continent?
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Post by onlyMark on May 22, 2019 10:36:22 GMT
In probably most of our lifetimes we will live in a world where there is nobody alive that fought in a major, multi-national conflict. I think the Korean War was the last. It is good that we have had a long period of relative peace, but having nobody alive with first hand experience of the horrors of that kind of war is a loss.
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Post by patricklondon on May 22, 2019 10:45:30 GMT
I realise more and more how very lucky I have been not to face those situations - but I have to say with some gloom "Give it time". Even if there's no 1914-style series of miscalculations around the various current flashpoints, the long-term pressures of climate change on resources and the dislocation of people that could, and probably would, follow make for a grim prospect. My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
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Post by questa on May 22, 2019 10:45:43 GMT
Lagatta , there is a thread called "remembering the wars" in Free Trade zone...mainly pictorial rather than history
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Post by questa on May 22, 2019 12:36:48 GMT
Hi Mark. Do you not count Vietnam as a major, multinational war or were you just meaning wars UK was not involved in? North Vietnam was aided by China and Cuba with Laos and Cambodia sucked into the storm unintentionally by US planes bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail The South had US, south Korea, Oz, France and other groups.
Do you believe that the various upheavals in the Middle east are heading for peaceful resolution or will they keep on shooting and bombing because that is all they have ever done?
I agree with you about the loss of the old veterans and their witness to the horrors in wars. Since Vietnam there are thousands of docos, movies and books showing the futility of war and post war damaged people. Very few movies today are like the heroic, make-believe, cleaned up movies of WW2 era.
Patrick has a good point when he notes that climate change and the loss of water and arable land will cause wars. An aboriginal elder told me that this century will be 'wars over water' as last century was over oil reserves. This was back in 1980s. 'When will they ever learn'
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Post by kerouac2 on May 22, 2019 13:24:58 GMT
There are some good aspects, perhaps not of forgetting but of letting bygones be bygones.
When I first arrived in France, one would constantly hear that Germany was shamed for all eternity and that the younger generation of Germans should continue to apologize at every possible opportunity and that those who did not feel personally guilty were wrong. Of course, it was nearly exclusively older people who were saying that. Now that they are nearly all gone, the French feel that the Germans are just like us and that it is a great improvement. Past events will always be in the history books, but it's time to let go of certain memories. Jeez, when I think that there are still some radical Christians who come out with "Jesus was killed by Jews" to justify their antisemitism, it shows that some of this crap can continue for 2000 years or more if you let it.
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Post by onlyMark on May 22, 2019 13:29:54 GMT
The Vietnam war could well fit, I'm no expert, it just seemed the Korean War had a far bigger variation of countries. Involvement by the UK is not a factor in thinking that. Australia and NZ were involved in Vietnam, NZ very reluctantly I think. France also, but more European countries and more of the rest of the world contributed to the Korean. I think anyway.
There will never be a peaceful resolution in the Middle East, especially not since the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 was implemented, which is one reason. Not until you remove all religion, all traces of religion and do a Men in Black type memory scrub to before religion was ever thought of - plus tribal conflict is a factor, corruption, power hungry grabbing idiots and dictators are allowed to rule, education improves, selfishness, bullying and jealousy are eliminated etc etc. Plus in the near future, unless it really rains a lot, there will be conflict over water resources, as has been said.
There will be no lasting peace in my lifetime or my chidren's children's lifetimes. After that I doubt it also. There has never been a prolonged time when there hasn't been conflict (any historians please correct me) it's only nowadays we lob more effective ways of killing people at each other rather than being restricted to close quarter fighting as per centuries ago. That just means more people die for every aggressive act.
Edited to add - I may have been less than subtle with my comments just above. Somewhat forceful. Let me put my view in a more diplomatic way - there'll never be true peace in the Middle East while I've got a hole in me arse.
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Post by questa on May 23, 2019 0:26:26 GMT
The Korean War was classified as a UN "police action" to protect a member state (S. Korea) from invasion by those pesky Commies. Having bitten off more than they could chew, the UN has come to the current "Cease fire" agreement with the North, however the state of war still exists, with fingers on buttons and sabre rattling on both sides.
V/N was different in that the US leaders, spooked by the non-existent "domino theory", backed the wrong side in the South and found themselves fighting a guerrilla war against an enemy who, as the Viet Minh, had been using these tactics for 30 years against the French. In an attempt to validate the war with the UN, the US called for countries with whom it had security pacts, to send troops to make it appear to be an international response.
Well, we all know how THAT turned out. Today the united Vietnam is a powerhouse of industry, tourism, medical advancement and arts..
Sadly, wars may become necessary if the population keeps increasing. So will deaths from natural disasters, new pandemics and famines. We have become too good at staying alive when, if left for Nature to decide, the planet would have chosen otherwise.
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Post by onlyMark on May 23, 2019 14:50:47 GMT
As regards water, let me just mention it has another use rather than for irrigation and human consumption. An obvious one, making electricity. No matter that the future seems dire for many countries in that they'll fight over water for human consumption and farming, another factor will be power generation where the facility exists. One of my old countries, Egypt, really has the shit end of the stick in that whilst only about 13% of it's power generation comes from water power, without it the country would have big difficulties - and different schemes to dam the Nile further upsteam would create great difficulties also for them, never mind they have been, are now and always will be at the mercy of countries further up the Nile River to let them have their fair share for farming and power. It'd be double blow for them and even when I was there, there were power cuts - never mind water supply cuts as 97% of the country's water supply comes from the Nile.
In Zambia we are lucky in that it is possible to obtain water by digging a well or a borehole - at least until the groundwater level sinks too far, which it does at times. Mains water is often cut off but us middle class and higher always have our own borehole, I know my landlord does to supply us. But - power generation in the country is a big problem - and relies by 90% on hydropower. The mines in the north have agreements in place, that apparently can't be broken, for preferential treatment so they are always the first choice to get electricity. Why am I mentioning all this now? Because the government electric company, Zesco, that supplies everyone, has just had a meeting and announced that as from 1st June, everyone will have a 4 hour power cut every day because there isn't enough water in Kariba Dam to give us a full supply every day. We are used to what they call 'load shedding' and at the moment I'm using the computer powered by electric from our generator, as power cuts are the norm and usual no matter the time of year.
As always, blame is given to nature for not giving us enough rains. You can easily have the impression southern Africa/Zambia is covered in lots of rivers, green forests and stuff - but it all relies on a short period of rains at the end of one year and the beginning of the next - a period that even whilst I've been here seems to be getting shorter and shorter. More likely this is less than half the story as unprofessional management of the resources, corruption, favouritism, poor maintenance and many other factors give the answer to the foreign experts as to why there isn't enough water and electric when they do all their sums as regards the amount of rainfall, catchment areas, river flow, consumption and so on and come to the conclusion that there should be plenty, so where is it going?
Anyway, something that may seem obvious to us regarding water is that the further downstream you are, the less you'll get because others are taking it before it gets to you. I have difficulty believing that people don't understand that, yet it must have a basis in truth because a cooperation between a German development agency and various other bodies felt the need to educate many about it. They made a simple model and took it round loads of villages to illustrate their point, and the point that conservation of what you do have or get is paramount. This is it, you can take a few minutes to view it if you are of the mind to do so -
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Post by kerouac2 on May 23, 2019 15:03:52 GMT
Los Angeles gets most of its water from the Colorado river, which is nearly dry before it reaches the ocean at the Gulf of California. It is just one of many cities that might disappear before the end of the 21st century.
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Post by bjd on May 23, 2019 15:06:35 GMT
Isn't that part of the plot in the movie Chinatown?
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Post by Kimby on May 24, 2019 2:38:22 GMT
I’ve started a thread called Daks Over Normandy on the Port and Starboard part of Any Port. Here’s the first post. The 75th anniversary of D-Day is being celebrated June 5&6 with a squadron of restored C-47s and DC-3s crossing the English Channel and dropping paratroopers over Normandy. A C-47 that’s been in a museum in Montana for the past 18 years has been completely refurbished by volunteers over the past year and is now on its way across the Atlantic via Newfoundland/Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland to Scotland. We in Montana are so proud of “Miss Montana” and her crew. It’s so nice to have a positive and inspirational news story to follow in these divisive times. “ newstalkkgvo.com/miss-montana-pilot-recounts-flight-from-missoula-to-east-coast/?fbclid=IwAR1LBS7RGTjcQnJOWndjNkPQBnTwuiuRUGsfam_t_N8vIbKyVXn5TXzWaQQMiss Montana Pilot Recounts Flight from Missoula to East Coast Peter ChristianMay 21, 2019 KGVO News spoke with Bryan Douglass, pilot of the famed Miss Montana C-47 aircraft on Tuesday morning not long after the aircraft landed at Oxford Connecticut, on their way to Normandy, France to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in 1944. Douglass said the first day of flying proved to be tough. “We were planning to stop at Rapid City, (South Dakota) but the weather there wasn’t cooperating, so we stopped in Miles City and got some gas. I don’t know if anybody noticed, but we flew over Mann Gulch after we left Missoula, as a tip-of-the-hat to that event,” said Douglas. “We then flew to Wichita and spent the night there. We saw some really nasty weather coming, so we loaded up and headed to Rogers, Arkansas and then to Tri-Cities, Tennessee and from there we flew up to Oxford, Connecticut where will remain for the day.” Douglass said because they missed the New York flight on Saturday, they planned to fly up the Hudson River after departing from Oxford. “We’ve invited CBS News to come along,” he said. “They should be arriving in about a half-hour. We’re hoping they’ll want to come along on the Hudson River flight. Then we’ll take the rest of the day off and tomorrow head for Goose Bay, Labrador in the morning with a stop in Presque Isle, Maine.” Douglass said the trip over the Atlantic must be carefully planned, with an eye on the weather. “We’ll leave from Goose Bay on Thursday if the weather allows, make it to Greenland and then one to Iceland in the same day,” he said. “I think five planes have already made it to Reykjavik. From there we will be flying into Scotland, weather permitting. We’re not allowed to go to Duxford, England until June 2 when they open the field to all the Dakotas, and following that there will be some scenic and practice formation flights and jumps, and on June 5th is the big event when we’ll go across the English Channel and drop our jumpers into Normandy.” Douglass said Miss Montana is purring like a kitten. “I’ve gotta say, she is just performing flawlessly,” he said. “She’s just purring, and everything is working as we hoped and we couldn’t be happier.” Following the D-Day commemoration, Douglass said Miss Montana has been invited to take part in similar ceremonies in Germany to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. Then, it’s back to England for some much needed maintenance. Then, they’ll look for a good weather window, fly back over the pond and head home.”
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Post by questa on May 24, 2019 4:42:19 GMT
May Miss Montana, Douglass and all connected with this event stay safe, have fair weather and happy landings.
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Post by rikita on May 27, 2019 23:22:53 GMT
the handle things on my bike kind of started coming apart last year (i mean the covers, this foamy stuff you put your hands on), but i left it like that, just kept planning to replace them. recently, i finally did replace them, now each time i ride my bike, at some point i suddenly notice how they are new and not crumbling unter my hands, and it makes me a bit happy just to notice that ...
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Post by kerouac2 on May 28, 2019 3:27:19 GMT
Yes, those handlebar grips make all the difference in the world. Whenever I take a municipal bike and one of them is missing, it is extremely annoying.
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Post by mich64 on May 30, 2019 17:14:05 GMT
Yesterday was my father-in-law's 89th birthday. The family gathered at the restaurant down our road to celebrate. I noticed him sharing smiles with my mother-in-law and he said to me, "this means everything, I just love being together and listening to each of you."
For the little things that mean a lot, my brother-in-law got him the most thoughtful gift, he found a website that sells military memorabilia where he purchased a baseball cap with a Sabre plane. He used to work on those planes during his military career and is his absolute favourite. He found it on-line on Sunday and quickly ordered it hoping it would arrive in time and it did yesterday morning.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 30, 2019 18:39:14 GMT
Many happy returns for your dear father-in-law, Mich. It sounds as though you all had a lovely gathering. Great thinking on the part of your brother-in-law. Thank goodness it arrived on time!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 14, 2019 13:18:40 GMT
After a three year battle, my mother's nursing home finally broke down today and returned her rings to me.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 14, 2019 13:33:18 GMT
Oh, Kerouac -- that is wonderful! It's horrible that they hung on to them that long, but what a relief that they didn't claim they were "lost" forever.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 14, 2019 13:44:52 GMT
Actually, the administrator said she had been give the order to destroy them.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 14, 2019 13:46:23 GMT
Good grief! What was that logic ~ if they couldn't have them, no one could?
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