Subj: Traveller-digest V1999 #1389
Date: 11/23/99 3:46:20 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: owner-traveller-digest@lists.imagiconline.com (Traveller-digest)
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Traveller-digest Tuesday, November 23 1999 Volume 1999 : Number 1389
(R)1996. Traveller is a registered trademark of FarFuture Enterprises.
All rights reserved.
The following topics are covered in this digest:
Re: Revolutions (was: Re: Traveller Navigation and Gunnery)
RE: Weapons of mass destruction (Was: Traveller Nav, Gun...)
Re: Which Traveller? (uh-oh)
Rimward Survey Group Expulsed
Re: Re Loans and Indentures
SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Superpowers
Re: Superpowers
Re: Tourism in the Marches (much ado about Whanga)
Re: Rimward Survey Group 45-A37/b.90411-PTW.43288.42-dag
SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Weapons of mass destruction
Re: Revolutions (was: Re: Traveller Navigation and Gunnery)
Re: Inevitability of government failure
Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1387
re: OT Origins of Christianity and Roman Rumors
Re: SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Superpowers
Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1387
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 19:45:03 +0000
From: Mark Watson
Subject: Re: Revolutions (was: Re: Traveller Navigation and Gunnery)
On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Glenn Goffin wrote:
> (The far off topic question: Do we
>consider Russia 1985, and China since Deng Xiaoping to
>be bourgeois revolutions?)
>
I guess a classical Marxist, trying to explain the collapse of communism, would
say that the original revolutions in Russia and China were premature, since
they occurred in pre-industrial societies. Under communist rule, they became
more or less industrialised (less so as yet in China's case), and when the
economic system in Russia was relaxed to permit capitalism, bourgeois
structures asserted themselves as a matter of course (ie the answer is probably
yes). Taking the same view a similar thing would happen in China, when
capitalism became sufficiently mature.
And eventually a "proper" socialist revolution would also follow, at the point
where capitalism in turn implodes (this point has yet to be demonstrated
empirically ;-))
- --
Mark Watson, markw@antares.demon.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:33:29 -0600
From: "Moody, Danny M."
Subject: RE: Weapons of mass destruction (Was: Traveller Nav, Gun...)
> From: shadow@krypton.rain.com [mailto:shadow@krypton.rain.com]
> As would various non-"explosive" means of boosting it. Including, now
> that I think of it, making the "bullet" fit a bit tighter in the
> "barrel" and using a spark plug to ignite a fuel air mixture!
>
> Sheesh! An A-bomb with a *real* spark plug!
Brought to you by ACME! Makers of 'A-bomb in a Box' (tm)
ACME. Purveyors of Instruments of Fine Vargr Mayhem for over 3000 years.
William Edgar Coyote, CEO
-- vargr1 UPP-8D9B85 --
The three principle virtues of a good programmer | dmoody@bridge-dot-com
are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. | vargr1@jcn1-dot-com
** Omnia dicta fortiora, si dicta latina. **
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:40:00 -0600
From: Eris reddoch
Subject: Re: Which Traveller? (uh-oh)
C Michael wrote:
> > Help a newbie (sorta)
> Um... too late! Somebody should have warned you before you asked that in
> open forum. Now you have rekindled the wildfire that is "the version
> question". By the time it is over you will have more information than you
> ever wanted and the entire list will have reached critical mass.
> Well, I guess I'll start things off: I suggest you get a copy of the T5
> playtest material and fiddle with that until the full version comes out next
> year. ;-)
Hey, follow a heretic's lead!
They are all Traveller and
All Travellers are good!
Each version is different, but
Difference is spice.
Embrace the differences!
There are many settings.
Marvel at the settings.
Make the settings your own!
All Traveller is good and
We are *all* Travellers!
> (Note to list: considering the fact that I run an OOP Traveller
> online store, I think that I showed great restraint by not suggesting that
> he run right over to The Traveller Trader http://www.downport.com/ttt/ and
> snatch up one of the two boxed sets of MT that I have listed, especially
> since I am still running the 15% discount to list members until the end of
> the month.)
Now, if you included a complete set of errata to go along with them,
I'd say that's a very good deal.
Eris
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:54:49 -0600
From: "Robert Eaglestone"
Subject: Rimward Survey Group Expulsed
To: Chief Scribe to the Shugiili General of Makhid Ziru Karun, Survey Department
From: Chief Shugiili to the Scribe General of Karun Sirka Makhid, Results Department
Re: Imminent expulsion of Survey Group 45-A37/b.90411-PTW.43288.42-dag
In accordance with survey nonintervention and material nonadjustment regulation
24-36-76-a4/b.1, Survey Group 45-A37/b.90411-PTW.43288.42-dag is hereby
expulsed from the ZS Survey General Assembly and removed from all Seats of
Bureaux Honorable, for the reason of tampering with official ZS recording
equipment with willful intent to disrupt the stability of Pax Sirka via the propogation
of so-called nouminal content, which violates said ZS regulation lemmae concerning
fabrication and/or postcollected manipulation of recording devices with intent to
deceive for purposes of disruption of Pax Sirka or any of its collateral processes.
Said individuals are to be detained and imprisoned pending appropriate legislative
discovery and/or creation and all related materials confiscated and managed by
the ZS Bureaux Department of Reclamation immediately.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:00:16 -0700
From: Bruce Johnson
Subject: Re: Re Loans and Indentures
William F. Hostman wrote:
>
> Hmm, when I was looking at getting a loan for a house, the application
> terms were rather specific: The loan was in default if any of the following
> occurred:
> 1) The house was not occupied by at least one of the cosignators as their
> primary residence
> 2) Either of the cosignators lost their job and didn't find a new one in 30
> days
> 3) any payment was more than 10 days late
>
> This was through a low-income housing project, but it clearly requires that
> both cosignators work, and that you must reside there; failing either, you
> get evicted.
Hmmm. my mortgage, a more conventional one, had nothing whatsoever in it
about automatically defaulting if someone lost their job. (Though
thinking about it, it does require us to live there; it's a residential
loan, not a commercial one)
Thinking of it, that a purely stupid, needless clause to put into a
mortgage unless the bank _likes_ reposessing houses. If you lose your
job, yet still pay the mortgage...what should the bank care?
If you don't pay the mortgage, then the late payment thing kicks
in...It's clearly simply a punitive clause; what happens in our
WONDERFUL, CAPITALISTIC, FREE society; if you're poor you're worth less,
and treated as such. Or is it worthless? (Jeez, my mortgae says I'm in
default if I miss a payment, whcih means a month, and that's not
automatic if I tell the mortgage co.
I have a friend who ran into some bad times (he learned the really hard
way what can go wrong if you're a _partner_ in a law firm :-( who was
something like ten months behind...he was working with the bank, though,
and managed to keep the place. It generally results in a loss for a
mortgage company to have to foreclose, by the time they go through the
associated costs of forclosing, repossesing and reselling the property;
even more so in bad ecom=nomic times.
(Sorry but there have been some _particularly_ trollerific jingoist
posts today that I'm REALLY telling myself 'I will not reply...I will
not reply'... already I've trashed three or four ones that didn't get
sent.)
> Ob trav: I can seem many ship loans having useage clauses: you have to be
> engaged in making money, or else! Similar to subbies. One crew thought htey
> were getting a deal when they only had to pay 10% down, until they realized
> they had to spend 3 months per year on a back and forth run. The world
> issuing the loans needed J2 traders to reach the main trade route, so they
> subsidized type A-2's, 16 of them... at any given time, 4 are on route.
> When the PC's showed up 2 days late for their "Duty", they found out about
> the skip clause... Add either 1 year of run duty, pay off the ship
> completely, or forfeit the ship.
>
> Such indentures make for interesting moral, ethical, and play-ballance
> issues for a group of PC's.
Yes, a subsidized merchant _is_ going to have many restrictions on
it...make things more interesting: As the PC's go on they realize there
are two classes of sub traders in this system. A few mega's are getting
cheap, subsidized ships, and oddly, they seem to flout the rules that
the PC's have to follow...
Any number of scenarios go on from there from whitle blowing to the
local version of 60 minutes, to organizing the smaller subbies into
striking for fairer terms, to running with the ship (and looking over
their shoulders for the Repo man. The life of a Repo man is always
interesting.).
A ship loan in general is going to be a business based loan, though, and
you have to have a detailed business plan, and some estimate of earnings
in general to get a business loan, no matter what the business. It's
going to be different than a loan for a residence.
We're about to get into that in the AKUS game...we have a ship outright,
but there are some rather significant holes in it that will cost a few
megacredits to fix
Charlton Heston Mode/
(damn you Eris!!! ;-)
/
(In both senses of the name!)
- --
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 05:34:34 +1100
From: "David Healey"
Subject: SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Superpowers
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 12:34:04 -0500
From: Kurt Feltenberger
>
>A superpower in contemporary times means a nation that
>can effectively exert its will anywhere in the world
>in a very short time, without any other power's
>cooperation. The United States is presently the only
>nation with that capability.
>
>Please bear in mind I'm *not* on a Yank-bash here.
>
>Based on that definition alone, would the US really be a superpower
>? Could they have exerted their will in Kosovo or Kuwait without the
>co-operation of any other power ? I submit that these are only military
>examples of exerting a nation's will, and that there are many other ways
>(cultural, economic, ideological to name a few) of doing so. If your
>friends and enemies alike (of whatever nation or state) decide they don't
>like what you're doing, it ain't gonna get done, no matter who you are.
Depending on the force mix, it could have been launched from the US (B-1,
B-2, B-52) or by Naval Aviation off of carriers in the Adriatic. Not quite
as practical, but doable.
Oh yeah. Militarily doable. Politically ?
My point sort of was that if everyone else had said "We don't want you to do this" and then the US had gone and done it, what would the consequences have been ? In order for a nation to successfully exert it's will, it *must* have the co-operation of other powers. In the case of both Kuwait and Kosovo (and others) when that will was exerted, it was with both the explicit and implicit compliance of other states. If the pre-requisite for a superpower is that it must be able to exert it's will with or without the co-operation of other nations, then no-one has, as yet, achieved that status.
ObTrav : If we're using the above definition *solely* as the basis for deciding who is a superpower and who is not, then I suspect most of the major (and a couple of the minor) governments would qualify. 3I, Consulate, Hierate, etc. Even possibly Arden and Darrian would qualify.
Dave
!
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:00:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Glenn Goffin
Subject: Re: Superpowers
>From: "David Healey"
>Please bear in mind I'm *not* on a Yank-bash here.
>Based on that definition alone, would the US really
>be a superpower ? Could they have exerted their will
>in Kosovo or Kuwait without the co-operation of any
>other power ?
Yes, the US could have exerted its will in Kosovo or
Kuwait without the cooperation of other powers. It
would not have gotten the same results, but the lack
of cooperation would not have been able to stop it
from bombing targets, landing troops, and inciting
insurrection.
Lack of cooperation is different from active
opposition. No superpower would be able to remain one
for long if all or most of the other countries were
actively opposed to its acts and policies.
>>Another key difference between the recent past and
>>the Far Future is that no one in the Far Future has
>>a real and immediate ability to destroy all life
>>everywhere.
>I submit, sir, that no-one has ever seriously had the
>will or desire to do so on Earth.
I will agree that no one with the power to do so has
ever really had the will or desire to do so.
>I also submit that no-one has ever had the ability.
Here we disagree. The Cold War was not a bad dream.
Both sides did have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out
all life on earth several times over. Actually, that
capability still exists, but the reason for having it
(that mutual destruction would be assured) does not.
- --Glenn
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 14:09:36 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Tourism in the Marches (much ado about Whanga)
In mail you write:
> Ethan Henry wrote :-
>> Yeah, true. I suppose a planet is a pretty big place, even a measly
>> size 6 one. I don't have the stomach to calculate how much "stuff"
>> there would be after a few centuries of tourism, but it would be
>> pretty manageable, sure.
>
> Ballpark figure : average 200 grams per person, per day of solids and
> 1.5L of liquid. The big volume in sewage is the water used to flush the
> stuff away.
> The big problem is going to be with other trash, in terms of quantity.
> Fusion torches really simplify waste disposal though, IMHO.
Yes and no. Anybody dealing with a more or less "closed" ecology is
*not* going to run perfectly good "complex organics" thru a fusion
torch. They've got *way* too much time and energy invested in that
"complexity" to turn it back into raw elements without a *really* good
reason.
But with "waste heat" from a fusion reactor, extracting the the water
from sewage and producing a dry, sterile "sludge" is fairly simple.
Well, actually, you cheat a bit on the "sterile" part. Either from the
reactor, or from a radioisotope source you expose the stuff to enough
gamma radiation to kill anything in it.
The result is damn good fertilizer, or at least the first stage in
making such.
The one thing that you'll see on ships and in closed environments is a
seperation between OWW (Organic Waste Water) and IWW (Industrial Waste
Water). And a lot of *household* stuff goes in the IWW category. Either
that, or there will be *severe* restrictions on what you can dump down
the drain and what you can use as a "cleaning compound".
This is because lots of chemicals *really* screw up reprocessing.
Especially strong acids/bases, bleaches, and even a lot of detergents.
They "poison" the sludge so it's not useful for fertilizer, except in
*massive* artifical marsh type sewage treatment systems.
>> Terraforming the place with it is an interesting
>> idea... (ski mount Crapmore!)
> The sewage will be full of 'friendly' micro-organisms. Consider it a
> 'low-tech nanite' approach to terraforming - spray the stuff everywhere.
Alas, it'll also be full of *unfriendly* ones. Like all the diseases
and parasites that any visitor may have had. That's why you sterilize
it and *then* inmnoculate it with the organisms you *want* it to have.
>> My only open question is that I wonder if the agricultural worlds of
>> the Imperium notice the loss of biomass over time?
> The only real problem, over the very long term (millenia, as planets are
> BIG places) will be the loss of phosphorous from the biosphere. Enormous
> reserves of nitrogen are in the atmosphere, and tectonically active
> worlds will have carbonate-CO2 cycling.
> Phosphate containing rocks could be mined or imported. Again, fusion
> torching makes material processing and purification relatively easy.
Still, it tends to be cheaper/simpler to just dry, sterilize and ship
the "sludge" that isn't needed/wanted locally.
- --
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 16:08:01 -0700
From: Bruce Johnson
Subject: Re: Rimward Survey Group 45-A37/b.90411-PTW.43288.42-dag
Robert Eaglestone wrote:
>
>
>
> To: govcom.ziru-sirka.vland.vland.province4521.45-A37b.90411-PTW.43288.42-dag
Now we know the _real_ reason the ZS fell...communications ground to a
halt because the bureaucrats were too busy typing out 388 character
e-mail addresses, and replying to the people who had sent them mail in
error by typing a D instead of an S in the 376th place...;-)
- --
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 05:45:58 +1100
From: "David Healey"
Subject: SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Weapons of mass destruction
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 12:43:54 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Whoa!
You appear to be suffering from a common misconception. It's not
*possible* to keep things like nukes "secret" if they *ever* get used,
and it's fairly unlikely even if they *don't* get used.
The scientific method ensures that if you ask the universe a question,
you get a truthful answer. So, once you *know* something can be done, a
research program *will* find out *how* it can be done. Period.
I'd have to say I agree with the first of the above statements but not the second. Two different (and seperate) entities seeking the solution to the same problem will come up with two seperate solutions. Witness the response to AIDS several years ago. When it first appeared in NY and San Francisco roughly simultaneously, doctors in both places came up with different solutions for keeping their patients alive, and explained the cause and transmission differently.
It may be that one group/individual who happens to be a leading light in the field has decided that 'it' can't be done. As he/she/it/they are the acknowledged expert, the rest of the population goes "Oh, well, fair enough" and 'it' doesn't get done. So, there may have been an enterprising Vagr scientist
The *only* reason the Germans didn't get the bomb was that (depending
on who you believe) either a research dropped a couple of decimal
points when calculating critical mass from the results of an early
experiment, or he *deliberately* fudged the result. Either way, they
wound up thinking that it'd take *tons* of material to go critical. So
they figured a bomb was impossible. Anybody who *knows* bombs are
possible would take one look at that result and recheck the figures and
find the mistake.
Please note that of the more than a dozen countries with nuclear
capability, the evidence points to every single one of them succeeding
in getting a working bomb on the *first* try.
Nukes are incredibly simple, and anybody that knows the physics behind
a fusion reaction can figure out that a fission reaction is possible,
and enough of the parameters to start research on building a reactor or
a bomb. And given a reasonable amount of time and resources, they'll
*succeed*. It only takes massive resources if you are in a hurry.
So anybody over TL 5 or 6 (too lazy to check the books :-) can build a
nuke. It's no more "restricted" a technology than gunpowder and other
explosives.
In fact, nukes are likely seen as merely a bigger bang, with some
unfortunate side effects. They may actually get used (along with damper
tech "clean-up") in some large civil engineering projects.
I expect that the "no nukes" rule in warfare is actually no "weapons of
mass destruction". No taking out cities just because there was an
observation post in it.
!
!
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 19:45:03 +0000
From: Mark Watson
Subject: Re: Revolutions (was: Re: Traveller Navigation and Gunnery)
On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Glenn Goffin wrote:
> (The far off topic question: Do we
>consider Russia 1985, and China since Deng Xiaoping to
>be bourgeois revolutions?)
>
I guess a classical Marxist, trying to explain the collapse of communism, would
say that the original revolutions in Russia and China were premature, since
they occurred in pre-industrial societies. Under communist rule, they became
more or less industrialised (less so as yet in China's case), and when the
economic system in Russia was relaxed to permit capitalism, bourgeois
structures asserted themselves as a matter of course (ie the answer is probably
yes). Taking the same view a similar thing would happen in China, when
capitalism became sufficiently mature.
And eventually a "proper" socialist revolution would also follow, at the point
where capitalism in turn implodes (this point has yet to be demonstrated
empirically ;-))
- --
Mark Watson, markw@antares.demon.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 19:53:31 +0000
From: Mark Watson
Subject: Re: Inevitability of government failure
On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Glenn M. Goffin wrote:
>> From: dadams@parracity.nsw.gov.au
>
>This sort of Marxist analysis suggests some questions. What conditions
>would indicate that the forces of production in the Imperium are being
>maximized? What internal contradictions are being experienced now,
>compared to those described by Marx? How much of a threat to the status
>quo would an efficient communist or anarchist world be? How much of a
>threat would it be perceived to be?
>
Not much of a threat overall, assuming they stayed on the right side of the
Megacorporations. As long as they support the Pax Imperium, and allow Tukera
and company to operate freely (including resisting the temptation to
nationalise megacorporate assets) they're OK - you can see from looking at the
UPP data for the various sectors that the Imperium isn't really concerned how
authoritarian particular governments are. But the megacorporations are stronger
than individual worlds, so they also get a strong say. To that extent the
Imperium is a corporatist state along the lines propounded by Mussolini and his
chums.
Note this is for worlds with longstanding internal arrangements. How does the
Imperium respond to local revolutions?
In terms of the tendency of individual worlds to revolution, and looking at the
way the Imperial economy worked, you'd have to look at those worlds which
combine high exploitation (ie responsible for a lot of manufacture) with a high
level of immiseration (represented by a low tech level?). On those lines,
Industrial worlds with low tech levels would be bearing the brunt of Imperial
era capitalism, and be most prone to periodic revolutions. If those revolutions
disrupted supply to other local worlds, or threatened strong off-world
interests (back to the Megacorps) then the Imperium might be tempted to
intervene.
M
- --
Mark Watson, markw@antares.demon.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 18:39:30 -0500
From: "DaveShayne"
Subject: Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1387
>From: "Chris Seamans"
>On most points though, it seems like a continued discussion would simply be
>a matter of us going through the motions, with me pushing the culturalist
>line and you pushing the utilitarian individualist line.
>
>I'd be lying if I said the discussion wasn't fun though. ;)
I agree.
David Shayne
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Old version - Build a better mousetrap and
the world will beat a path to your door.
New version - Build a better mousetrap and
some @$*% will build a better mouse.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 23:11:44 +0000
From: SD Mooney
Subject: re: OT Origins of Christianity and Roman Rumors
At 14:35 -0500 23/11/99, Kiri Aradia Morgan wrote:
>On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, SD Mooney wrote:
> > ISTR that there is was also a belief amongst contemporary Romans that
> > Christians (1) drank human blood and flesh in their ceremonies and
>
>This has been said about every oppressed religious or ethnic group since
>time began, and shouldn't really be taken seriously... Christians used to
>say this about the Jews, too.
I accept the point but the crux of the Christian service is the wine
/ bread re-enactment of the Last Supper ('this is my body', 'this is
my blood') which is shared between the participants. This could be
easily misunderstood/misrepresented. And - although the justification
came later - attendees at the service would claim that the bread and
wine were transubstantiated into the body and blood, supporting any
suspicions.
>This is one of the reasons that I can't personally accept Christianity
>based on Scripture. There was a hell of a lot of Scripture that got
>thrown out; the Bible Christians have today was heavily edited and revised
>by many committees hundreds of years after the death of Jesus and none of
>the Gospels were actually written down sooner than 100-200 years after his
>death, though they may have been transmitted orally. And as these were
>not primarily oral cultures, I don't particularly trust oral transmission
>from the Jews, Greeks and Romans of that era.
Bear in mind that the split which occurred during the reformation
drove the Catholic and Othodox wings of the Church deeper into
sacramental tradition, whereas the reformed Church focused on
Scripture over the Sacraments. Both sides lost something...
BTW I thought that Mark's Gospel was recorded somewhere around the AD
70s/80s, before the others?
Dom
- ----------Dom Mooney---dom@cybergoths.u-net.com------------
MiB - Marines in Battledress
"Protecting the Imperium from the Scum of the Galaxy"
Rob Prior's Mac software @ http://www.bits.org.uk/
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 23:01:04 +0000
From: SD Mooney
Subject: Re: SEC : UNCLASSIFIED - Re: Superpowers
At 14:35 -0500 23/11/99, Kurt Feltenberger wrote:
>Unless the waters are restricted, they should be international and cleared
>for free movement of shipping, and the carriers and their battle
>group. I'm not saying it is how it should have been done, only that it
>_can_ be done. The US based air power if it were to be used would have to
>fly quite a roundabout route, and the only pinch point would be at the
>entrance to the Med, at Gibraltar.
I agree, but the point that I was making was that projection of power
in such situations does rely on the co-operation of local states,
without which the operation could not take place without a high cost
in men and material.
>Again, it would not be the ideal way to do it, but it could be done. I
>know that were _I_ in charge, I would not force three to six CVBGs into the
>Adriatic.
Surrounded on three sides... I think it wouldn't be a good move.
Dom
- ----------Dom Mooney---dom@cybergoths.u-net.com------------
MiB - Marines in Battledress
"Protecting the Imperium from the Scum of the Galaxy"
Rob Prior's Mac software @ http://www.bits.org.uk/
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 18:50:01 -0500
From: "DaveShayne"
Subject: Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1387
>From: Mark Watson
>I think modern research on German post-WWI reparations is along the lines
of:
>
>- - Germany refused to pay reparations *and* repudiated the loans they had
used to
>pay reparations up to that point, *and* added to the problem by a massive
>currency devaluation, and if you add up the numbers then in fact they
>didn't pay much reparations at all to the victorious powers
>
>- - Reparations still had to be made, in the sense that someone had
>to pay for the infrastructural damage of WWI, final result being that the
>countries which had suffered war damage paid for it themselves
>
>- - Germany was never occupied during WWI, and for all the loss in manpower
had
>suffered very little damage on the home front, so effectively it ended
paying
>far less reparations than most of the other European belligerents, in the
sense
>that its own recovery was cheaper.
>
>The end result of the supposed enfeeblement of Germany was that by the
1930s
>it was once again a superpower, capable of massive rearmament programs,
>intervention in Spain and elsewhere, and ultimately the initiation of a
series
>of conflicts culminating in global war.
>
>And the second result is that Germany was able to engage in these
adventures in
>part because it was surrounded, in the West, by those countries which were
>genuinely enfeebled by the cost of the previous war, and in the East by a
>subdivision of Austria Hungary into a series of statelets which could
>individually offer neither threat nor resistance to a revitalised Germany,
but
>which on the other hand acted as an protective buffer zone for Germany
against
>the Soviet Union as Germany recovered.
>
>Lesson being, "once they're down, make sure they stay down" (NB that
doesn't
>necessarily mean repression - for example one of the things not
countenanced in
>Wilson's redrawing of the European map in 1919 was substantive division of
>Germany, other than anomalies such as Danzig and East Prussia).
I haven't seen any recent interpretations of this question so I won't
dispute them.
My point was that germany was required to pay reparations which made alot
of germans angry with the peace for that reason. Then the depression hapened
and one of the things that depened the depresion in germany was the
reparations
payments. Which led to civil unrest and the virtual coups that installed the
Nazi
regime.
The second point I had was that *if* germany had been occupied after ww1
things
might have worked out differently. My oppologies if I failed to make myself
understood.
David Shayne
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Old version - Build a better mousetrap and
the world will beat a path to your door.
New version - Build a better mousetrap and
some @$*% will build a better mouse.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>- --
>Mark Watson, markw@antares.demon.co.uk
>
------------------------------
End of Traveller-digest V1999 #1389
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