China preparing for war

[Lord Khyron]

The roman empire brought BATHS, Architecture, all sorts of refinement.<p>When it collapsed, and the Middle ages/Dark ages came to be..<p>People didn't take baths. They smelled! Queen Victoria said her first bath in 30 years was great.<p>I'm sorry, But being clean is important.<p>If the ROman expansion allowed baths and being clean, It was good!

[Benoit]

Those baths were only for the wealthy romans, no?

[Gipper]

Little, "powerless" countries faight for their independence from a big, unbeatable superpower? Something about that reminds me of the years 1776-1783.

[Siren]

No, the poor and wealthy shared the public baths.<p>Now, I agree too that people should form their own oppinions, and use critical thought to decide. I see so many people that go on election day and vote for someone, not for their oppinion of their political platform, but because they "saw them on the news once and they stuck to their guns."*<p>I'm quite young, and so many people my age just don't give a shit. They just flunk their way through school so they can work a low-class job to get the money to buy alchahol for their week-end party lifestyle. Our society promotes the "party-hard, get laid" lifestyle, rewards stupidity and generally frowns on intelligence and success. <p>I don't consider myself overly intelligent, but I <i>do</i> give a shit about my world, and the best thing I can do is educate myself; if you know the situation, you can react accordingly. <p>*someone actually said that

[ROMeo]

<blockquote><i>Originally posted by Lord Khyron</i><br>If the ROman expansion allowed baths and being clean, It was good! <br></blockquote><p>** The ROMan expansion? Uhmm yeah! Of course I did allow baths and being clean, what kind of ruler I would be if I didn't? :p

[Lord Khyron]

Roman society was Utopia compared to the middle ages..<p>No wonder people didn't talk about sex or any intimate things..<p>Do you know how smelly it would be?!<p>Thank god we live in a time with baths! So we can all smell nice and clean..<p>

[Lassic's Chllun]

Wow. This thread's been off track...<br>anyway, I think the baths in Rome were free, but they had no soap. ~0

[Monocromatico]

Rome became an utopia indeed. After the fall of the last Caesar, the name "Caesar" became the synonym for any ruler from that point on: Kaiser, Czar, for example. The first Turks arrived in Middle East 600 years after the fall of Rome, and still they named their new country Rum, a turkish word for Rome.<p>The romans were quite clean, as pubic baths were something like night clubs for us in that age. Most romans didn´t eat meat, it was too expensive for most of them. The richest, though, could get a good... donkey beef for dinner sometimes.

[OpaOpaJr]

whee baths! fftopic: only rome had baths, the rest of the world back then was dirty! only america was really involved in ending WWII, we had to fight 3 fascist countries all by ourselves while carrying the rest of the world on our backs! yay! see how much fun cultural myths are? :p <p>seriously, it's as if the greeks never bathed (yeah right!), neither the israelites (yeah right), persians (yeah right!), egyptians (yeah right!), carthaginians (yeah right!), etc. it would be definite news to them. rome brought excellent architecture and a strong realistic/grounded sensibility, but the rest of the world brought major gifts to rome as well. and the 'assimilation' was nowhere near as 'complete' as people assume (dude, ignore the movie gladiator, it's pretend). at most it was acculturation, but there were serious cross pollination all over the place. it was definitely not one way benefits, white-man's burden nonsense. and each time people cite that first million city, remember that was an aftereffect of incredibly bad civic policy of essentially breads and circuses - one of the major factors in the beginning of the end of the roman empire. they made empire unsustainable by disregarding the rural areas and glorifying one city at the rest of the empire's expense. sounds good as a fact quoted out of context, in reality it was a colossal mistake.<p>and WWII had america not getting involved for *years* because they didn't want to get caught up in it. the leaders of america were striving to find a way into the war and desperately spur the people into it. but even before we got into the war the war tide turned against the axis; many regarding the turning point being a particular battle in russia right before our entrance. in fact, most military historians note how poorly the allies western front played out, bloated from lumbering tactics of attrition, whereas russia was seriously pushing germany back. and even in the pacific theater we see america freaking out at the speed of the russian roll-over over manchuko and gobbling up so many japanese territories. we were afraid of stalin controlling most of china they were moving so fast. far too often the american version of WWII is sadly a glossy illusion. canada, australia, britain, russia, etc. hardly get the credit they deserve for their involvement. i, too, was guilty of this when i was younger. once again such a fiction helps to build this one-way direction, this america's-burden, delusion. it isn't healthy.<p>and about korea. we didn't win, it's still in effect (armistice), and was highly unnecessary due to poor diplomatic savvy waaaay before the north/south war (roughly our presidents passed up wonderful chances). there was also a huge advantage to squiggle in between the sino-russian relations, they really had a huge cultural gulf. the same applies to vietnam, horrible war, stupid and thoroughly unnecessary. one of the most unbelievable parts is that ho chi minh actually was interested in detante with america just to show their independence. instead we were interested in helping our european friends to regain their empires (which caused horrors in greece, reestablished the fascist bastards in security positions in japan and italy, and several other horrors). the horrors we deal with now has a lot to do with the bad decisions of our past, nothing idly goes away.<p>that said, this china situation is relatively easily avoided, and cheerleading in the sidelines that we, america, can do it all and are always right to get involved abrasively (if not militarily) just does us a world of bad. there's a way out of this. i just wonder if that option will be chosen.

[Monocromatico]

But the germans and huns were filthy :^)<p>I mentioned Rome as an example of how a big country conquering smaller countries may be good in a way, since the whole occidental world was built over the roman legacy. In a way, we are all here doing what we do because Rome once controlled the largest empire of the world for 600 years. It fell, of course, and from inside, but that´s how everything ends anyway. I´m expecting this to happen to Russia before I die, as well.<p>I should have used a better example, though. My favorite empire of all is the Achaemenid Persian Empire (the one Alexander the Great battled against, if you don´t know what I´m talking about but saw the movie). Cyrus, Cambises and Darius started a whole new model of civilization that was based more on improvements and benefits to the conquered peoples than by taking them down by force. To give an idea, when Cyrus went to take over Babylon, most of the babylonians switched sides and joined him, because at that time it was aknown fact that the persian rule was bringing more progress than trouble to the conquered. He was practically invited to take over the city and implement his policies.<p>Because the communist revolution in China is relatively recent, the Taiwanese still hold grudges and would probably resist to the formal chinese rule, but I don´t think China would throw such a prosperous land in the trash bin.<p>I like this topic a lot.

[Lord Khyron]

Opa.. You do realize that Stalin purged some 3 million people before hitler invaded, Uncluding the majority of his military officers. Hell, Stalin's military and the Russian planes were destroyed long before the germans entered Russian Territory. <p>When the Germans got to Stalingrad((Leningrad, I am sure it was the latter), it was house to house fighting. The Russians lost more men than the allies together. <p>Winter has always stopped Russia from being conquered, And also the massive amounts of people.<p>Russia survived, because Stalin threw the masses against hitler. House to House fighting.<p>If you believe Russia wasn't horrible, you need to re-read histories and journals. <p>Russia was some of the worse fighting in the war.."Enemy at the gates" can show this, Although it is possibly fiction.<p>Russia deserves credit for how long it held out, They fought harder than us Americans ever could. <p>Russia only survived because Stalin had millions of people to throw to the germans, to hold off till Winter. <p>You can't seriously call the sacrificed of tens of millions of people as "Pushing back".<br><p>[size=small][Edit by Lord Khyron on [TIME]1111472324[/TIME]][/size]

[Malakai]

The roman empire brought BATHS, Architecture, all sorts of refinement. <br>When it collapsed, and the Middle ages/Dark ages came to be..

<p>Rome did not procure many of its presently known wonders from the genius of its own people. The Romans above all else were a conquering civlization. The emperor didn't care about the luxuries that society could have, he wanted to expand his empire! 'But then how did they get all that neat stuff that we read about and see in the postcards?' Well, the Romans weren't so great of fools to destroy everything in their paths. When they conquered a civilization, they took very good observations about the country that had just fallen into their hands. Then they took the things they liked and incorporated them into their own society. Obelisks and swimming pools are great examples of this.<p><blockquote>only america was really involved in ending WWII, we had to fight 3 fascist countries all by ourselves while carrying the rest of the world on our backs!</blockquote> <p>Except for the part when England intervened at many critical turning points in the war. And don't forget the people that helped out the famous Lawrence of Arabia. they were probably Arabs. Oh and the Russian might have helped out a little bit.<p><blockquote>Rome became an utopia indeed.</blockquote><p>Quite the contrary, rather. Have you ever read any of the writings of the ancient Roman Senate like Cicero, Titus, Senecus, etc.? They describe Rome as anything but a Utopia. The Romans had more problems with its internal than its external. What, did somebody say Nero's name? I rest my case.

[Lassic's Chllun]

Sorry if I repeat something, I just skimmed the last few posts.<p>Russia survived the war because General Robert Lee gave the Axis a "Trojan Horse", which was opened and the plague spread across Germany, where Czar Nicholas the Second was being accused as a traitor for the British against America. The Czar escaped and assasinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which eventually started the Crusades <p>LMAO...stupid Hitler

[Malakai]

One of the main reasons Hilter lost to Russia is because he had forgotten his geography. Hitlter entered Russia not really considering how big it was, because after the battle of Stalingrad he finally saw that his troops were far too spread out and that he couldn't sweep the country. Enter the famous Battle of the Bulge - and by then it was too late and Hilter's campaign of Russia ended, and shortly thereafter also the War.

[LaconianShot]

Not only because of geography, but because of campaigning conditions. Hitler was ill-prepared for the conditions in Russia... tanks were seizing up from the cold, troops were starving and freezing, etc. There's many reasons, really... it was a very poorly executed campaign.<br>