Humility & Remorse Can Repair What Anything Else Can't...

One of the important lessons I learned from the WWII: President Obama is right, to take minimalist and not maximalist positions, when stakes are high should negotiations fail. When France remained firm on demands what to Germany, itself reeling from devastations caused by WWI, were near astronomical amounts of war reparations, Hitler was able to rally the Germans they're being unreasonably pressured allowing him to build up a war machinery (and use that) that later changed the course of the history of Europe. Germany later conquered France (France actually surrendered).

More recently, when the Shiite government in Iraq excluded or at least not labored to share power with the Sunni or Kurd minorities - the mayhem of epic proportion in that country ensued and only now that it is abating (and also that ISIS is losing ground, literally and all) after war-level damages and losses to the entire country of Iraq (that saw Iran & the US discretely working to help save the day for the country and in a bigger region).

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The Dragon in the South China Sea to Other Claimants: 
Complain All You Can, As I Make More Artificial Islands & Super Structures in My Frontyard

Mandela did not organized a body to hunt, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of crimes against humanity during the apartheid era in South Africa. Among the practical benefits: an entire class of scientists and highly educated professionals not deserting the country affording it conitunued economic development with its already most advanced and prosperous economy in Africa with advanced capabilities in science and technology (It's nuclear weapons development program that the White government dismantled roughly 2 decades ago was more advanced than in present day North Korea).



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My frail body was full of bruises from the frantic and violent twitching and hard pinching of my very religious grade school teacher. For nearly an hour, I stood there in front of all my classmates as I was subjected to the endless humiliation & physical abuse, not even thinking of trying to run away. I came home without ever telling my single father or anyone. 

That trauma I suffered at age 10 did not created in me a dislike of teachers and school. Before that, once, at age 7, I was bullied by a gang of classmates after school hours. They destroyed my school materials -  I was dirt poor and it's not easy to prevail upon my single-father (of 8 of us) to buy me some of it... This teacher's son later became one of my closest friends. It was about a lie an adult neighbor asked me to make... 

Misbehavior in school by kids from well-off families then were either ignored or simply shrugged-off by the teachers and school officials. I earned a lot of medals (ribbons) and citations for my good behavior and school performance (academic and all) even as I attended school mostly on empty stomach in such an environment, nevertheless.

Now I know that a combination of culture, economic or so discrimination, the tendency of some teachers to pick on the weak or powerless pupils from poor families when they're in bad mood & personal character all contribute to such an atmosphere. Impunity afforded then to teachers in far-flung rural areas, where they were esteemed by the community next to priests - also contributed. I was malnourished my entire grade school & early high school years.