Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/01/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi George, I am not a historian. To me, if I look at recent history, it is rare for democracy to be successfully imposed externally. Even when it has been successfully imposed (Japan, post-WWII), democracy was transformed. Democracy is very malleable and can be instantiated in many different forms which some people may not classify as democracy. :) Nathan, Walls never work. The Great Wall didn't work. The Maginot Line didn't either. We are dealing with a global clash of cultures and religions. My opinions only of course. :) But we are drifting way off topic so this is my last comment on this topic here. To get back to Leica photography, this (need-to-be-rescanned-now-that-I-have-IT8-target) picture (K64/M4P/35 pre-asph Sumicron) near Passu on the Karakoram Highway in the far northern part of Pakistan. The peaks across the valley are quite high, probably around 6000-7000M high. The road you see curving around the bottom is the KKH, the main, and only, road to China built at a cost of approximately one life per kilometre. It is, at best, a 2-lane road. <http://www.aotera.org/tmp/Scan-070514-0057.jpg> Regards, Spencer On Jan 3, 2010, at 13:36, George Lottermoser wrote: > Thank you for your thoughtful and real observations Spencer. > > Do you think it realistic > for outside cultures (British, Russian, now U.S.) > to arrive uninvited > and attempt to deliver democracy (or any other form of governance) to > these areas > (with guns in hand)? > especially when you point out the previous failures. >