How "not" to win friends and influence people

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind". R Kipling

It has been suggested we are a superpower and no one can stop us. According to the story below, it looks like the rest of the world may think differently. How low will the dollar go???

Dale Carnegie wrote a book in 1935, "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Presidential candidates and State Department officials should be required to pass a test on the little book.

We can see men going to the negotiating table. First they are equal. Then they become competitive, then they become argumentative, then they go to war. To be agreeable and keep on talking makes them look feminine. Men want action and results, not dialogue.

I think all negotiations between states should be done by 10 year old girls! Imagine if we could take some five year old Palestinian girls and some five year old Israeli girls and put them together in a secular school where they were only taught skills and science instead of why one is a chosen people, and other myths. A few years later these girls could find a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflicts.

How much earlier would the war between Japan and the United States have ended if 10 year girls living in fire bombed Tokyo and 10 year old girls living in the U. S. had been negotiating peace terms?

Since Putin is standing up to the U.S., it is only a matter of time until he is labeled a "Rogue Regime", or part of the 'axis of evil'.

Charles Tolleson

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer October 16, 2007

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn't pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren't backed by regional powers.

At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations' territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. was planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran.
"We are saying that no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state," Putin said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also underlined the need to keep outsiders away from the Caspian.

"All Caspian nations agree on the main issue - that all aspects related to this sea must be settled exclusively by littoral nations," he said. "The Caspian Sea is an inland sea and it only belongs to the Caspian states, therefore only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here."

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.
Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow's strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.

Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini and Nasser Karimi contributed to this report.