From: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Subject: Re: Hats off to Meggy
Followup-To: soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.british
Reply-To: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Organization: UC Berkeley IC CAD Group
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 20:16:52 GMT

(I redirected follow-ups to  soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.british, as they
seemed the most appropriate; I also replied to three, related messages in one
to save bandwidth).

In article <1992Aug13.114932.29652@cs.hw.ac.uk>, neilp@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil
Postlethwaite) writes:
>In article <1992Aug10.200736.5950@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
>luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno) writes:
>>
>>England tried to do exactly the same thing in Northern Ireland. Send in the
>>army to stop the "bloodshed" (at least this was the official motivation). It
>>did not work, and now there are even various reports about a "shoot-to-kill"
>>policy being unofficially applied by the army itself...
>
>Usual complaint about Britain being not just England...., sigh !!

Ok, sorry...

>Shoot to kill policy. A unofficial and non-sanctioned by the Government.
>If members of the forces do things by them selves, stop trying to blame
>the UK as a whole. Do the LAPD have an unofficial  'kick the shit out of
>blacks' policy, or was Rodney King just unlucky with the police who arrested
>him. Same argument !!

Exactly. My point was that violence (sending in the army, or starting the so
called "war on drugs" here) only produces more violence.
I was not commenting on UK policies as being particularly bad (as should have
been clear from my final comment). I was just using it as an example.
In any case, there are reports that the policy, while not officially sanctioned
by the government, was nevertheless approved by it.
Kind of what the CIA, Col. North and so on have been doing for a while here in
the US. No official approval, but (most likely) support from the Presidency.

[...]
>>P.s. my main purpose in this, like in other postings, is NOT to bash Ms.
>>Thatcher (or the UK, or anybody else), but to try to put her seemingly
>merciful
>>words into the right perspective. So that when it comes to try to stop the
>>bloodshed we do not start on an even worse course of action.
>>Remember the "war to end all wars" !
>
>Either that, or the fact she may just be RIGHT ?!

She may be right (as a recent posting commenting on the successful intervention
of Russian paratroopers in Moldavia seems to hint).
But certainly she is not merciful and motherly, as the posting I was replying
to seemed to say.
Why did you take the posting as an attack to your country, by the way ?

>In article <1992Aug10.200736.5950@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
>>luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno) writes:
>>
>>England tried to do exactly the same thing in Northern Ireland. Send in the
>>army to stop the "bloodshed" (at least this was the official motivation). It
>>did not work, and now there are even various reports about a "shoot-to-kill"
>>policy being unofficially applied by the army itself...
>>
>
>P.S. As opposed to an *official* shoot and bomb TO KILL policy of the IRA ??

I already coomented on this point in aprevious posting. No matter what
terrorists do, authorities in a democratic country can (should ?) NEVER
trespass the law.

>In article <1992Aug11.031027.6133@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
>>mb2p@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Marco  Bertamini) writes:
>>
>>England has always been too ready to intervene in foreign
>>countries. Think about Argentina or Ireland for that matter. Serbia
>>can claim Bosnia just as England can claim the Faulkland (sp?) islands.
>>(I know there are big differences, but just think about the principle).
>>
>
>And America isn't !!!

Who said that ? Certainly not Marco...

>Ha-ha.
>
>Greneda, Panama, El Salvador, Gulf war, Bay of Pigs (Cuba), Korea, Vietnam.
>
>Dust off your history books, you have a very strange view of who is and isn't
>good at invading places.

Nobody has ever tried to say who was good and who was not. Adding examples of
botched attempts to sort things out by sending in the troops only strengthen
our (Marco's and mine) point (with the caveat above... assuming the situation
in Moldavia remains good, post-breakaway Russia can establish a reputation as
an ethnic trouble quencher...).
Ciao !
Luciano

-- 
Luciano Lavagno            luciano@ic.Berkeley.EDU            +1-510-642-5012
Dept. of EECS, 207-69 Cory Hall, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish