Nicely said Troll.

To those who believe we all live in "Camberwick Green"

The "Club" as LH refers to it, were going quite a way down the road to divest themselves of nuclear weapons. Their development by both India and Pakistan put the brakes on that.

LH you say that you are convinced that I TRUST those at the top - No, but I have faith in the system that elected them and by which they were elected. The goals you are seeking will evolve through that system - that I do believe, but it will not happen overnight. Those who belive it can happen overnight are being unrealistic, irresponsible and dangerous.

That the strong will always govern the weak is a law of nature, common to every species alive on this planet, or that has ever lived on this planet. In terms of the human race, how benign that governance is depends upon the philosophy that drives it.

At the moment, western civilisation is viewed as being all powerful, with America as its leader in a multitude of ways. From the lessons of history it should be asked just how and why that came to be. Older civilisations in the Middle East and in Asia were far more advanced, their knowledge was greater, their cultures a great deal more sophisticated. So how did the cave dwellers clinging to the western extremities gain their current position in the face of such competition?

Initially through local struggles a system of government evolved and from this evolution an imperfect but workable form of democracy came into being (it didn't happen anywhere else). With the fall of Eastern Roman Empire a flood of knowledge swept westwards. The Roman Catholic Church tried its best to control the dissemination of that knowledge but was unsuccessful. A great many people found that what those in authority told them as fact was both untrue and unjust and their natural reaction was to question and experiment.

About ten years ago while working in the Far East, I was told how young and primitive our society was in comparison to the East, of how in the East they had invented gunpowder while we were still using clubs. My reply to that was to comment that all they had done with that knowledge was to create fireworks to entertain an Emporor, while our poor primitive society had thaken that and sent a man to the moon and back. And therein lies the difference, we take it as natural that, we question, we challenge and in so doing we advance. Because we live in a society where that is not only allowed to happen - it is actively encouraged across the complete spectra of human endeavour. In our society the days are long gone when a religious leader can tell us what we can, or must, think and do.

Superiority? or sense of superiority? depends on how it is viewed and in what context it is taken. The answer to the straight question "Is the west superior to the rest" - NO. Do we have superior systems and technology to respond to the challenges posed by a rapidly changing world - YES, because that is our past, that has been our learning curve. The best example, to date, of a multitude of the world's people gathering together and working as a community for the good of all is America. You might not like that, those who describe America as the "Great Satan" definitely do not. Not because America IS the "Great Satan", it is because the example shown by America is the greatest challenge to the hold they have over the people and populations they wish to control.