"Dave Hall" wrote in message
...

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 19:49:34 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


Yes, but I learned it as a scientific principle as part of physics.
Nuclear fission could be explained as a domino effect in a very short
time frame.

"Domino effect" is a generic term for any sequential series of events. If
you lost your job, you could say there was a domino effect which resulted
in
your credit rating being hosed for a period of time. "Domino theory"
applied
specifically to a geo-political idea.

Now you are arguing semantics.

No. I'm helping you realize that in trying to appear informed on the subject
my mentioning its common everyday meaning, you are instead making yourself
look silly. Drop it already.



Considering the imperialistic nature of many communist states, we were
justified in much of our concern. Many countries were pulled behind
the iron curtain against their wills, and we tried to prevent it as
much as possible.


We did exactly the same thing, as I'm sure you recall. Think Africa, and
Central & South America. Think Iran-Contra.

When have we EVER taken over another country (Other than Puerto Rico)
and subjugated the people to OUR rule? Where is that extra tax money?

Dave

Other than Eastern Europe and later, Afghanistan, the USSR did not
explicitly march into countries and take over.

There were a LOT of small countries in Europe that were sucked under
the iron curtain, and NOT by choice.


They exerted extreme
influence in some places, as did we.

The type of influence was a lot different.

Not it wasn't.



Sometimes, we did it by using
legitimate private companies as surrogates, which almost completely
financed
the local government, thereby controlling it.

That's called capitalism. They had the choice to reject these "private
companies", but they would rather lose some local control, in exchange
for a much higher standard of living for the people.

It's a trick perfected over
several hundred years by England, France, Portugal, Holland, Belgium (as
in
"Congo"), Spain and Italy.

Trick? That's the way business is done. If your enemy is capitalism,
then you start to look like a communist, and your sympathy for N.
Vietnam, China, and the USSR makes more sense.

A branch of Xerox in Germany or Hong Kong: That's healthy capitalism. But,
when a company sets up shop in a small country, uses slave labor or
maintains hideous working conditions, and pays off local officials to look
the other way, that's a bit different. Here are some examples:
http://www.seen.org/pages/human_rights.shtml

Since you will say the source is suspect, I'll describe another for you.
When I worked for PaineWebber in the late 1980s, Occidental Petroleum put an
issue up for a vote at one of its stockholder's meetings. In was in the
prospectus. I read it. We discussed it over lunch many times. The issue:
Whether to continue using slave labor in one of the South Asia countries.
Might've been Indonesia. The stockholders barely passed a resolution to stop
the practice. The board of directors was split on the subject.

If you think local officials were not bought & paid for, you are fill in
the blank.



Incidentally, if you really believe what you say about the need to fight
Islamic fundamentalists, then you cannot comment negatively on Russia's
foray into Afghanistan, particularly in light of what they've been dealing
with lately.

Ah! The ultimate dilemma. Do we side with the enemy we know, and have
been fighting with for years, or do we side with the enemy we don't
yet know we have? Maybe we made the wrong choice in hindsight. But we
didn't know what would happen back then. That's why hindsight is
always 20/20.

Dave


Perhaps, but some people feel we can learn from the past and have 20/50
vision in the future, rather than assume the past offers nothing to learn
from.