Right, my "pathetic attempt to redefine" it that also just happens to be in line with the definitions Nezumi found.


*sigh*

The entire home invasion side conversation came up because YOU claimed they weren't common or dangerous, or at least because you heavily implied it. You pointed out that random school shootings are statistical anomolies (as you may recall), I agreed and asked why they were still used as emotional appeals to justify gun banning, and you replied by laughing about how home invasions weren't that big a deal, either.

In response, I stopped talking distinctly about gun crime, and started talking more specifically about home invasions. When I said "armed," as such, I just meant armed. Period. I never said armed with a firearm. That was YOUR biais showing up, equating an armed criminal with a gunman. You can insist I'm backpedaling all you want to, but the simple fact is I never said -- or meant to somehow imply -- "armed with a gun." The possibility of all these armed home invaders toting guns was YOUR statement, not mine.




You said "nice try, but unless your definition of 'home invasion' is..." I replied with -- ta da! -- what my definition of home invasion was. That definition just happens to also be the definition everyone else in the world but you uses, but never mind that. I was obviously up to no good, verbal sneakery, and various clever tricks!



So when I'm taking the time to link to the statistics I find, you imply that I make the statistics up. When I DO post a link to some statistics I find, you insist the statistics are worthless anyways. Wow, you're TOTALLY worth talking to.


Please show me a single time where I switched a standard or definition, ever. Honestly. Find me a single example in this thread where I've defined something, and then redefined it later.

All I've done is clarify my standards and definitions in attempts to make it more clear where I'm coming from and what I'm talking about, in an attempt to bridge whatever massive communication gap might be leading to this level of hostility and disagreement. I'm used to talking about this stuff with Group of People A, and all of a sudden on Dumpshock I'm talking about it with Group of People B. When confusion or disagreement over a term has reared it's head, as such, I've clarified and expanded upon my arguments and terms in order to get us all "on the same page." And, in fact, the one time I've done so -- with the disagreement about what a home invasion consisted of -- the definition I was using was right in line with the definitions found all over the web by another poor bastard dragged into this conversation.

You being the type of person that takes that as me changing what I'm saying, switching things around, etc, says more about you than it does about me, I think.

Actually, they meant occupied in contrast to abandoned. Someone lives in the house. Whether the occupant is *PRESENT* is a different matter. I searched in four different places for definitions (well, five, really), and only dictionary.com specified the owners being present. The Michigan law quoted by the legal dictionary, for instance, does not make any such statement in their definition - only that the house be owned by someone who generally lives at that address. None of the definitions (including dictionary.com) specifies a confrontation with the homeowner.

You've added two more sources for definitions (thank you!) Both of them do specify the resident being home and directly threatened. So it's clear there's a cultural divide which is causing this misunderstanding. I believe, and Critias can correct me if I'm wrong, that his understanding is any case where someone, without permission of the owner, breaks into a person's residence with intent to commit a crime (regardless as to whether the owner is present or aware of the intrusion). Critias didn't try to redefine the word, it's just you're both coming with your own definitions.

If we accept this, then your (Sengir's) numbers don't follow. Someone breaking into my house, while armed, in order to pee on my couch, and who then leaves without threatening me, would not fall under the category of a violent crime. i.e. - being armed does not imply the crime is violent. For you to get the proper numbers, you would have to focus of all instances of criminal trespassing on residential property, which you have not brought up yet, and note in which cases are the person armed. I do not know that an armed cat burglar would register as a violent crime, even though it meets Critias's definition. edit - which is complicated by the fact that whether one is armed may change in the process of the invasion itself. A person who picks up your kitchen knives to steal them has, under the Michigan law quoted, just gone from being an unarmed home invader to an armed one, even though that was not his intent. But really, since people can kill one another with their fists or soft pillows, I really don't know that it's worth arguing the point.

No, that is what the word "dwelling" says


And it would also not show up in the DOJ statistics about armed criminals, which he claimed to be his source. Those statistics only register armed violent crime.

And I might again point out that this statistic constantly gets referenced (just google one of the sentences from the original posting) as "the DOJ says", but nobody gives a better source, let alone provides the actual statistic

BTW-The statistics can be apple and oranges then cause the definitions and methodologies for collecting it may not be consistent.

Example: Cit A wields gun against crook b. Crook B runs away. Cit A does not report incident as that would be more trouble than it is worth (He may get more hassle than the crook).

Example: Cit A wields gun against crook b. Crook B gets shot when he does not back down. Would get reported.

Example: Cit A wields gun against crook b. Wife of A gets shot when scuffle ensues. Would get reported.

So if this was the case, based on gun use statistics then 50% of the time a gun was used defend onself the wife gets shot. Also trying to argue a POV based on stats usually leads to one side or the other picking and choosing the numbers that best supports their case.

Regardless, here in the US, we have the right to defend ourselves enshrined in many state constitutions and laws and arguably the 2nd amendment as well. This is not the case in the rest of the world where YMMV. This was a result of the founding fathers realizing the a free state has to have means to defend itself from tyranny. This includes foreign and domestic enemies of that freedom.

This bit, I've mentioned before, is what lot of non-US folks don't grasp.

A lot of Americans, especially our founding fathers, specifically distrust authority.

Our Constitution isn't so much a governing document as it is a list of Things Our Government Isn't Allowed To Do.




-karma

Well... this was a result of 1) your founding fathers believing that a free state has to have means to defend ... [snip] ... and then 2) implementing that belief in ways with which, as you point out, others do not agree, and 3) that ideology being as indoctrinated into your cultural mindset as the opposing ideology has been indoctrinated into others' belief systems.

Yes, I know. But every once in a while I have to go post-modern, too.

Yeah, I now that is a U.S. perspective-especially being the libertarian that I am. But then again we are the center of the universe.... .

I laugh every time the UN says that the number of small arms in the world should be strictly controlled. When you have workshops in the tribal areas of pakistan and other areas making modern firearms by hand (of various quality though)---and corrupt offficials selling off military surplus weapons to organized crime syndicates rather than destroying them, you realize that gun control is pretty much futile in its stated goal of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals/terrorists.

The UN wants more control of international gun trafficking, not limitation of national gun sales/ownership. The average civil war is not fought with homemade muzzleloaders, but rather with the officially destroyed weapons you mentioned

No, the United Dictators wants to prevent their people from being armed too. It's hard to organize a good pogrom when the targets can shoot back.

Nah, that's just the agenda of the reptiloid fraction, but so far the South Pole Nazis have vetoed it

While I wouldn't go so far as to assume the UN wants to actively rule these countries, their disarmarment attempts have allowed for mass genocide. Really, third world countries (IMO) are the LAST place I'd want to institute firearm restrictions, because those people have the least recourse from government violence, and are the most likely to face it.

A fascinating article on the topic here:
http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Foreign/gun-ba...nd-genocide.htm

One of those moments when you don't know whether to laught or just shake your head...if the army shoots civilians, it's because civilians are civilians. Riiiightt...


The walking pharmacy that must be that guy's bloodstream sure sounds interesting, but I wouldn't let him own anything more dangerous that a cake spoon

Of course, anyone who disagrees with you must be on drugs, right?


Good thing it's not up to you to decide who has the basic human right to self defense then, huh?

No, nowadays most wars are fought with AKs (China sells to any dictator, dictatorships have alot of government corruption and lost shipments). Their cheap, reliable and easy to find. BTW-home made AK's do exist.


PS:How do you average a civil war??

...and when those AKs should be destroyed because the current dictator has made the usual promises of peace, they end up in the hands of people who could not even buy them in China.


And I'm still fascinated by the idea of this Kopel guy...just have the noncombatans form an army and they can legally be killed, no massacres on civillians any more. Just like piracy around Somalia would disappear if we just declared war on them, taking prizes is fully legal then

Sengir, don't be an asshole. There is no need to deliberately misconstrue someone's arguments. There are other avenues of attack (some of which are horrifically racist, others not so much).

It is a common tactic for governments to selectively enforce weapons laws to enable the persecution of unpopular minorities. They don't have to directly participate in the persecution themselves. They usually don't, not directly. But they implicitly condone it.

When the Catholic King James II came to power in Britain he attempted to disarm all the Protestants while arming the Catholics, because he was Catholic himself (this was a monumentally stupid idea because the Protestants had the advantage in numbers alone and it directly led to the Glorious Revolution). After the Glorious Revolution, Parlament passed a Bill of Rights guaranteeing all Protestants the right to bear arms ut systematically disarmed the Catholics.
In the American South before and during the Civil Rights movement, what gun control laws existed tended to be enforced primitively against blacks. Gun control laws that didn't exist also sometimes tended to be enforced against blacks. Meanwhile, KKK members and other murders were routinely acquitted even when the evidence against them was overwhelming.

Disarm your hated minorities and let implicitly endorsed paramilitaries handle the problem. It gives you plausible deniability. That's exactly what's happening in Darfur. That's what's happened in a lot of places throughout human history. It's a classic because it works. The great thing is that it doesn't even cost much money, since the racist paramilitary forces are doing their thing pro-bono. You just have to look the other way.


Can arming persecuted civilians help? Most certainly, racist paramilitary organizations tend to suffer from morale issues when faced with armed opposition. It's very easy to pick on the weak and helpless. It's far more difficult to pick on someone your own size (or someone far smaller than you who has an Ak-47). The fact of the matter is that arming potential targets does make racist paramilitary organizations avoid those targets most of the time.

Now, can arming persecuted civilians make things worse? Hell yes, and this is the argument you should be going for instead of beating on a cardboard cutout of a strawman. Genocides in Africa aren't a matter of bad guys attacking defenseless good guys. Each side is usually no better or worse than the other. Genocides in Africa are a matter of primitive tribal societies that still believe that totally annihilating the other tribe is a valid goal in warfare before forced into the modern era at gunpoint and then abandoned with insufficient infrastructure and no supervision. Giving weapons to the victims of genocide in such situation might just (probably will) result in them forming genocidal paramilitary groups of their own and slaughtering civilians whose ethnicity they don't like.

Oh FFS, the UN gun control thing came up.

Here is my pre-emptive blurb on that subject....



http://www.sociocide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55173

There's still the concern of unintended consequences. The UN may not be interested in domestic arms sales in the US, but that doesn't mean the resolutions will be worded such that it avoids ramifications there. And given that the UN has participated in large-scale gun confiscations in other war zones without providing the resources necessary to then protect those unarmed civilians, resulting in those civilians being literally massacred, seems to imply that, regardless as to their intentions, UN firearm resolutions may still be worth opposing.

Unless I got something wrong, the argument is "if everybody was armed (as opposed to just the rebel groups who allege fighting for the region/ethnicy), there would be no genocide".
Critias said I shouldn't assume that the guy is just high, so I assumed he did not mean that there would be world peace the instant everyone is armed. I mean, we are talking about Afrika, and who in his right mind would talk about Afrika and at the same time claim that different armed groups will not go at each other's throats?
That leaves just one option, the one I suggested: The killing does not stop, but it's not a genocide anymore. *thumbs up*

@Ronin: Oh come on, the reason is kinda obvious: Lobby organizations need to keep up the impression that they are actually doing something, ie. there is something they oppose and they are (successfully) working to stop it. So what do you do if no threat exists? Create one, get worked up on it, and when the imaginary threat does not materialize because it was just imaginary claim the credit for that

Well I always thought the UN stuff was "out there", but even without a UN boogeyman the NRA fulfills a legitimate political function for people within the US who don't want more gun control laws. This is because even though gun control legislation seems less popular than ever there are always a few politically powerful people, like Nancy Pelosi, or Mayor Bloomberg, who for whatever reason seem committed and determined to creating more gun control laws. As long as you have a lobbyist one way you need a counter-lobbyist to balance things out.

As an side the NRA is actually a very moderate organization as far as gun control laws go, in the sense that it actually supports a certain amount of gun control laws. There are other lobby groups that are more extreme than the NRA in that they lobby for less gun control laws. The NRA is kind of like the big generic centrist gun lobby that everyone can sign onto and support.

EDIT: Oh, as long as we're on this subject, I really think something happy and positive should come out of this subject. I'm going to link to an Oleg Volk photo gallery featuring beautiful athletic naked women (actually two forum members from bullshido.net) and their firearms; NSFW obviously. Sengir, are you European? As I understand it in European culture sensual nudity is more socially acceptable than in the US. http://olegvolk.net/gallery/friendsandstrangers/fighters/

EDIT 2: I actually know a fellow who was a refugee who fled to the US after a major war. He witnessed the victorious side in that war wholesale massacre people from the losing side. He told me about having to hide and the absolute terror of having to hide from groups of armed people who want to kill you. Because of this today he is very pro-gun-ownership. I think that being helpless, being forced to hide, and waiting to be executed is one of the most mentally cruel states a person can endure. You can also read about this in Dostoyevsky novels; Dostoyevsky had been subjected to a mock execution and seeing as that specific experience seems to come up in his writing it's obvious that he was profoundly traumatized by it. I think that psychologically speaking most people would say, "If I'm going to die anyway I'd rather die fighting than hiding and unable to help myself in any way."

But the US already pretty much ignores anything the UN says that it doesn't like. For example, the US is one of the few industrialized nations that didn't sign onto the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I believe this was in order to avoid any sort of liability on the part of the federal government if there were an instance where the directives of the Convention weren't adhered to within the US.

That's why while UN disarmament, carried out by loaner peacekeepers from developing countries, could arguably be bad news for potential genocide victims, I really don't think the UN would be able to make something happen in the US that large numbers of US citizens would be completely outraged over.

As an aside, when I was a little kid I actually went to a UN school. As a child they were teaching me all about the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We used to sing UN songs and everything. So for years I couldn't understand why the US didn't sign the convention, but I believe that I understand now, and don't really have a problem with it anymore.

It doesn't really look good that everybody but Somalia and the US has signed it, though.

Yes, some of the Committee's decisions are boneheaded (no spanking your kids?), but much of it makes sense.

I agree. Like I said it took me years to understand. Probably it makes most non-Americans spit their coffee if you tell them while they're drinking their coffee.

The most concise answer I'd be able to give someone if they asked me about it would be, "The US has a very litigious society and signing a legal document, treaty, or something similar can have tremendously burdensom and complex impacts on government liability and internal legal issues, unlike a lot of other places where it would be easy for a government to sign that convention and then completely ignore it later."

Sure, that's what lobby orgs do and certainly completely legitimate. I only have a problem with people who define their work exclusively by opposing X all the time, which naturally means that if no X is in sight they need to make up something.

That's the nature of the beast. Once you have a mechanism set up and funding and all that kind of thing it's hard to close up shop. Actually that is probably true of a lot of things besides for lobbyists.

Although IMO at this time if there's anyone who should close up shop due to being irrelevant, it'd more likely be the US gun control lobby, seeing as they are less popular than ever, and seeing as after all these decades they still apparently don't know any more about firearms than they did starting out. (LOL @ "assault weapon".)

There is also the fact that the NRA isn't primarily a lobbying organization. The NRA was founded by a couple of Civil War officers (and Colonel and a General) who were extremely disappointed by the fact that many of their troops couldn't shoot straight. It was created to promote shooting sports as a means of education and training. Education and training is still it's primary concern. The political lobbying came much later, 104 year after its founding, in response to reactionary groups like Handgun Control Inc. and the extremely strong anti-firearm sentiment in government at the time.

My personal opinion is that now the NRA is very promienent and successful in lobbying, but not so much in bringing shooting sports and love of guns to places where it didn't exist before. They need to do more of the latter to assure long term success.

So basically you're arguing from racism. I can understand that. You're assuming that Africans will make stupid non-optimal decisions.

He's just saying that armed people aren't easy targets and they aren't safe targets and thugs tend to go for easy and safe targets. That's just the nature of thuggery. Civilians get slaughtered because it's easier to slaughter civilians than it is to hit military targets. If one group of civilians is armed then the thugs will ignore them and go for another unarmed group. Arm all civilians and the thugs might just decide not to bother at all as the personal risk is too high and even if they don't the civilian can damned well shoot back and potentially win.

Again, I'd use the other argument. Not that armed groups will always fight each other, but that it is necessary to create a stable balance of power to prevent the victims from becoming the abusers and that's damned hard to do.



Yes, they really need to attack the problem at its foundation, the ignorance (and racism) of big-city liberals. Even though there are legal obstacles to creating youth and family shooting programs in the areas that need them the most (LA, Chicago, DC, New York City and cities of similar size) they should be putting a great deal of effort into it. Partnering with public schools would be a big help as it allows one to teach children before hardcore anti-gun sentiment has set in.
Their Don't Touch and Get an Adult program is great for what it is, but it is inadequate for producing a gun-positive generation.

Sure, because I was talking about races and mindsets of particular ethnics all along...

At least you get a cookie for the worst attempt of a Godwin-ish argumentation I've seen in the last couple of years. Which is a quite respactable archievement, applause please!



Civilians get slaughtered because the point of a genocide is to kill the genos and not just the people wearing uniforms.



...because if there is one thing history has taught us, it is that two armed states (or similar entities) would never, ever go at each others throats in this weird hypothetical thing called "war"...

So do you think that if someone is trying to kill me for any reason, that I should lie down and die and pray the UN saves me, for the greater good of not having two people shooting at each other?

That's the United Dictators story and they are sticking to it.

Oh, for heaven's sake, people.

Just out of curiosity, when was the last time (post-antediluvian) that "you want damsels in distress, Jews and cute fluffy animals to just accept their fate passively!!!!!!!!!11111111" argument had any factual basis?

It seems like a legitimate question. How should we equip civilians so they are prepared to deal with attacking militias of thugs?

Maybe before talking about the "how" we should talk about the "why".

Genocides don't happen because a bunch of thugs with too much energy are looking for an easy target to vent their frustration. They are the result of a long history of animosities leading to "us vs. them" mentalities, dehumanization, scapegoating and so on. In many cases, a genocide is just the culmination of centuries of armed conflicts between two groups....which brings us right to the second point:
Unless you want to hand out nuclear deterrents to everyone, shipping arms into areas of ethnic conflict is like selling coal to Newcastle. Both sides of the conflict are usually armed to their teeth and not too picky about their choice of targets.

In short, shipping weapons into conflict regions doesn't say "hey, we care for you", it says "we don't fucking care about who is killing whom this time, just let the savages sort out their thing and when they're done we'll strike a Coltan deal with the winners as usual". It's a cheap excuse for not doing anything, while handing out a few profitable government contracts. If somebody really cared about it we'd do an armed intervention, but that is hard to do on a national level ("why should our boys die in the middle of nowhere?") and even harder internationally (some major player will always prefer the status quo).

Okay, so that settled the "why" (that you asked yourself). How about answering the question someone else asked you, now?

What? So we are a little OT.....

So do we just stand by and say stop killing them, saing pretty please with sugar on top?

Like it or not our world is full of hypocrisy and contradictions. Arming all sides or non at all (an impossibilty since some of the actors in genocide are governments) is the only two logical choices for an outsider to intervene with. If two sides want to fight they will, for whatever stupid reason they come up with, regardless of our wishes. Arming both sides however makes the choice more costly for both sides, and less likely for them to want to start something.

Sending in peace keepers only works when both sides want it to work. Also name one place where peace keepers have finnished their mission and gone home.

Right, after we have figured out that doing X would be pointless we immediately appoint a committee that will establish a taskforce to create a preliminary draft of a requirements document for a POC wich will showcase the possibilites of doing something completely pointless. Sounds like the newest plan from upstairs...

I dunno, in Rwanda the Radio des Milles Collines stirred up murderous hatreds very quickly where previously by all accounts there weren't any attempted genocides in recent memory. Rwanda was also a classic case where the UN dithered while people were systematically killed. While I was in college and studying this in a class I remember a very poignant interview with a Belgian peacekeeper who described how he knew that the moment he left the people he was protecting would be executed, but he had to leave because his government didn't want to carry the political baggage of maintaining peacekeepers in Rwanda. Then while the genocide was occuring lots of nation states in the UN tried to deny what was happening so they wouldn't in any way be obligated to intervene. So, I would argue that you don't necessarily need a long or inter-generational history of hatred for a genocide to occur; more to the point is contemporary politics and mass media, and stuff like this can happen faster than expected. Indeed, many historians write off the, "it's endless tribal warfare, we white people can't possibly intervene effectively" line as a political excuse not to intervene while a genocide clearly was fermenting and taking place. One statistic I remember was how the Rwandan government ordered enough machetes from China for every third adult male and everyone chose to ignore this or write it off as insigificant. (If you recall the machetes were eventually used to systematically execute people.) Rwanda demonstrated that what passes for armed UN intervention is usually crappy, stupid, and political, and I hardly think that the possibility of such an intervention can overcome a philosophical argument that individuals have the right to self-defense, or that legitimate use of violence may exist outside of government action.

Did you read Nezumi's article link?

Spoiler'd for disturbing content.



Please read the article for many examples of what you're asking for: http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Foreign/gun-ba...nd-genocide.htm

I don't know why you're so convinced it must be some kind of fantasy occurrence.

Seriously, read at least the basic history of stuff you are trying to argue about.


Yep, that is the problem. Not the lack of guns for the people


Like I said: Genocides don't happen because some armed thugs try to vent some steam, they happen because people want to destroy another enthnic group. And if that ethnic group is armed, then so what?




I don't have time to pick apart this load of bullshit piece-by-piece, so I'll just concentrate on the higlights:

The prohibitionists also insist that there is no human right for people to possess the means of self-defense, such as firearms.
Because outside of the US, which just happens to be the majority of the world, this view is mostly unheard of.

The genocide in Darfur, Sudan, is the direct result of the types of gun laws
Yup, let's just ignore the complete history of this part of the world....far too complicated anyway, and it's not like those savages have any meaningful history or need one to go at each others throats, right?

which the United Nations is trying to impose all over the world.
The UN does not "impose" anything, if some country chooses not to ratify an agreement the UN can't do jack about it. Another prime example of the paranoid schizophrenia surrounding an alleged "UN world government"...most of the time the next sentence will contain some rant about how the UN is useless and paralyzed by internal bickering and byzantine power plays.

The practical application of the gun laws is different. If you are someone the government wants to slaughter—such as all the black Africans of southern and western Sudan, regardless of their religion—then you are absolutely forbidden to possess a firearm.
So, the government is systematically discriminating against parts of the population...maybe this could be the problem and not the question of gun ownership?

The Sudanese resistance movements, although able to acquire some arms for their own operations, did not have the resources to protect the many isolated villages in the vast nation.
Blatant disregard of facts, part 345872354: The Sudanese Liberation Army is a well-equipped militia which has been able to make several advances deep into government-controlled territory, including the capture of several military garrisions. Their equipment includes air support and they make extensive use of satellite communications to faciliate coordinated attacks against strategic assets.
Of course that does not fit into the picture he is trying to paint, so away with the annoying facts.

In 2003, Sudan ratified the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide—and went right on committing genocide in Darfur.
The United Nations has done nothing meaningful to stop the genocide in Sudan
Well, it was more than one sentence but here we go, the "the UN is paralyzed and ineffective" rant. Not that I would disagree with him, but it's kinda ammusing to see this right after claims that the evil UN world government is trying to impose this and that on the poor people of this planet

One reason for U.N. inaction is the Chinese, Russians, and French—each of whom have Security Council veto power—are apparently determined to protect their own lucrative commercial and oil development relations with Sudan’s tyrants.
Good thing the USA and GB never, ever try to protect their interests related to certain dictators.

. Would every one of the Janjaweed Arab bullies who enjoy raping African girls be brave enough to dare trying to rape a girl who was carrying a rifle or a handgun?
Maybe he should talk to some Red Army vets about their experience as POWs in Germany. The fact that hey were carrying rifles or handguns did not exactly help them...

The requires universal gun registration, complete prohibition of all civilian-owned semi-automatic rifles
...and if somebody arms one half of the population and sends them to kill the other half, this has to do what with said treaty?

If one side has guns and the other doesn't, it genocide. If both sides have guns, it's civil war.

But how about this novel concept: how about you create a society that allows equal participation in government by all "sides," and then the costs of ethnic conflict exceed the benefits. Civil war is an economic decision, people have to believe they'll be better off by risking their lives to kill the groups they dislike. Change the economic calculus and you change the level of violence. Guns don't create peace, they might turn genocide into civil war, but the only thing that creates peace is economics.

Genocides happen because angry armed thugs think that exterminating an entire ethnic group is a good way to vent some steam and there is a power imbalance sufficiently large to allow them to do so with relative impunity.

I'll never understand how the groups that get the most shrill about "human rights" are the same ones that acknowledge no basic right of self defense. It's a thought process I just can't wrap my head around.

I like where you are going with this, Larme. I do, however, question your categorical statement that the only thing that creates peace is economics.

To create or change something, you need the power to do so. There is a huge body of literature discussing the sources of power in society. Michael Mann's influential work argues that these can be broken down into four broad categories, political, military, ideological and economic, and he places political power at the forefront. Others (such as in my field, archaeology, Johnson and Earle) argue that political power is derivative of the other three. This competing model tends to put economics as 'first among equals', providing the raw material for other forms of power to act... wealth to buy bodies or build stuff.

One example for an alternative would be the Christian church in Europe in the middle ages. Truly wealthy, politicized and militarized, it used its position as final arbiter of God's will as the ultimate source of its authority, and drew on that to enrich itself and control political affairs for centuries. As far as peace goes, an overarching religious system both helped maintain civil relations among those who ascribed to it, and fueled hatreds towards those who differed in their beliefs (see the Crusades, and Northern Ireland below).

My favourite example of ideology (again) being the original source of change, is King Kamehameha, ruler of Hawaii at the time of Cook's explorations there. Kamehameha was the third son of a great chief on the main island. When dad died, he left half of his chiefdom to each of the first two sons. The two pointedly suggested Kamehameha take a hike. He did, taking with him the only thing dad left him, the statue of the War God. In local ideology, this gave him a direct line to and favour from said deity. Kamehameha parlayed that connection into a job as war chief elsewhere on the island. He started winning battles, naturally, according to many, because of his connection. We might assume that he was simply a good warrior and general. Eventually, his warriors looked to him for leadership and with loyalty. It wasn't the chief who was keeping them alive and stocked with plunder, it was Kamehameha and his buddy the War God.

That's when Kamehameha took over that chiefdom for himself. Then he turned conquests into more land (wealth to finance conquest) and more warriors (military might). Soon he came to the borders of his brothers' chiefdoms and won there, too, conquering the whole island. The brothers weren't exiled, they were killed, along with their heirs. A 'cleaner' break than the one they gave to him. Having the whole island under his power, Kamehameha set his sights on the other islands, but could never gain a foothold. He couldn't concentrate enough force to do so.

Then along came the British explorer, Cook. He had ships and cannons, and Kamehameha had amassed luxury goods and exotic foods to trade. A deal was struck, and Kamehameha had bought the military might necessary to conquer the rest of the islands, and become the first ruler of the entire archipelago. The peace that ensued was the kind Genghis Khan brought to Asia, or Great Britain to the British Empire. And it all started with having that statue.

If we wanted to search closer to modern times, we might look at Northern Ireland, where two enemies divided by ideology set their differences aside in the name of peace. As far as I can tell, economic and political equality came after a belief in change.

I would agree with you, Larme, that lasting peace between parties such as those in Darfur or in Northern Ireland requires a relative balance economically, otherwise a peace won through other means may very well degenerate.

Like I said...history is too complicated anyway, so why bother?

I can understand you don't have the time to formulate a complete argument to justify your position to a bunch of random internet people. However, I do notice that of your 9 points, only 3 seem to contradict what the author writes, one of which is an attack against his rhetoric, and another is sort of tangential.

[deleted, because it's not worth the bother...]

history happened that's why its worth bothering to study and understand for current events. Most events have happened before. Only physicists and the insane think doing the same thing many times could have differant effects each time.

This should be the name of the thread...

Seriously, we had Nazi comparisons on, what, page 2?
Why is anyone still pretending this is a discussion?