Who remembers with me the impact of the horror reading Erich Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”? That did it for me for the rest of my life!

truedigger3:  I suggest you send your comment in to Wikipedia and see if it will pass muster with their researchers and be incorporated in the Wiki article I was quoting. (My personal opinion is that the real cause of all wars is stupidity, but nobody wants to admit that because wars stimulate the production of billions of dollars worth of weaponry and stupid people don’t think twice about making money out of killing people.)

bernhiem: I think you overstate the case regarding humanity’s lack of ability to benefit from accumulated knowledge, and relating that to Manning and Assange.  It is precisely because the government fears that American people (and indeed, people worldwide) DO have “the ability to benefit from the WikiLeaks revelations” and become wiser about what goes on behind the scenes, that they rush to try to indict Manning and Assange. Anytime anyone documents evil, that person can expect retribution—and the need arises for masses of people to rise at once to the defense of heroes.

Just further proof that humankind is incapable of benefitting from accumulated knowledge of any but that of a frivolous or greed driven nature. How else to explain the current persecution of Bradley Manning as well as Julian Assange? Also, we concoct scurillous and irrational reasons for the ever worsening conditions scene throughout the world and never address the ultimate cause of humanity’s woes, namely an unbridled and insane growth of the world’s population with all of the destruction it portends! Oh, and please spare me all of the theological BS as arguement against this reality. Don’t for a moment believe that those clerical parasites out there think a whit about the fate of humanity beyond maintaining their priveleged status as arbitors of all things “spiritual”!

Re: By gerard, March 1 at 4:47 pm

gerard wrote quoting wikipidia:

“historians from the same culture have been shown to come to differing conclusions on the causes of the war.”
———————————————————————-
gerard,
For each war there is the real cause and there is the bullshit cause.
The real cause for the WWI was that Germany at that time, was a rising formidable industrial, scientific and military power and with its poor diplomacy scared and antagonized everybody.
What more atagonized everybody of its colonial neighbors aka the British, French and the Russians is that Germany demanded a share in the loot from the colonies.
It was very easy for the British with their superb cunning diplomacy to unite almost the whole of Europe against Germany.
The US sided with the British and their allies because if Germany would win, then the US will have to confront in the future a united Europe under the Germany with more population and resources from the colonies.

gerard the flu epidemic started at a supply dump /troop transfer point called etaple in france in late 16 or early 17. i think it actually ended in 23-24 at least in scotland. in canada where i live 100000 natives are thought to have died of the flu in the twenties no one was counting or treating it on the reserves or in northern canada, so anecdotal evidence is used to make this estimate, grave yard numbers and interviews.

Brief summare from Wikipedia:  “In attributing causes for the war, historians and academics had to deal with an unprecedented flood of memoirs and official documents, released as each country involved tried to avoid blame for starting the war. Early releases of information by governments, particularly those released for use by the “Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War” were shown to be incomplete and biased. In addition some documents, especially diplomatic cables between Russia and France, were found to have been doctored. Even in later decades however, when much more information had been released, historians from the same culture have been shown to come to differing conclusions on the causes of the war.”

“In 1918 an international influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I.”  I still remember the gold-framed sepia photograph of proudly-uniformed Cousin Laurence on the enamel mantel over the fireplace in the livingroom of what was once his home. He lived through the war, but died of “flu” before they could ship him back to the States.

THE SPARK…A LITTLE MAN WITH A LITTLE PISTOL…HISTORIANS ARE STILL
PUZZLED WHY THE MURDER OF AN ARISTOCRAT WOULD LEAD TO A WORLD
WAR…A GUESS COULD BE THAT WHEN A STATE RELIGION BECOMES
MILITARISM AND FASHIONABLE…THIS INFECTION CAN SPREAD AND EASE
INTO WAR…HYPNOTIZED…

another stunningly informative article, thanx

the british royal family was of german origin ,hanover , haps-coburg.they changed their surname to windsor in 1917, because of their suspected german ties.