The American way or the highway (funny one)

[sliver]

Get ready, world. Managed mass democracy and market capitalism are coming. It'll be good for you. We promise
Don't you dream of the day when Iraqis, South Ossetians or whoever - Africans? - can have the plenitude of blessings that democracy brings? I know I do. I have a dream that one day international media conglomerates will poll Iraqis in Anbar province on the latest "gaffe" of Nouri al-Maliki. Won't that be liberating? I dream of a Fox News affiliate in the Caucuses that informs the South Ossetians on what South Ossetians think of Mikhail Sakashvilli's neckwear choices. I wake up thinking: If these poor and variously swarthy mouth-breathers could get just a taste of Sarah Palin's Lipstickgate, they would understand the inferiority of totalitarianism.

That's why I'm so happy about the astounding and inspiring unity of purpose in foreign policy among America's two ruling parties. On the question of Georgia, both of America's ideological factions bravely committed themselves to democracy over the truth. In the centre-left New Republic, David Greenberg lamented: "Many liberals took pains to find fault on both sides, rather than focusing on Russian aggression." The centre-right pundit Robert Kagan said it better: "The details of who did what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not." That's right. Don't let the facts confuse you, just remember Hitler. Now, let's roll!

This unity reaches up to presidential politics and extends to the Middle East. Bush, after declaring near-victory in Iraq, announced a 5% reduction of American forces there. "USA! USA!" He then proposed a "quiet surge" in Afghanistan. So Barack Obama called for a much louder one. "It is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency," the "anti-war" Obama says. Right on, Barack! What's a surge without a sense of urgency?

You might ask, has the surge worked? And you might be a traitor who wants dictators to gas little children and puppies. But I'll humour you. In this matter, I defer to the wisdom of Donald Rumsfeld: There are unknowns and knowns, you know. Does the Iraqi government have legitimacy? Unknown. Will the Sunni Awakening hold together? Unknown. Do both major party candidates agree that the surge has worked? Known. One of the requirements of the surge was to ensure domestic support for the war. On that score the surge, like, totally worked.

So get ready, world. Managed mass democracy and market capitalism are coming your way. Just wait until commercial homebuilders bulldoze the horrifyingly particular - and therefore strange - features of your landscape and put cable television outlets in every room for you. Surely in gratitude you'll abandon any weird and ancient religious scruples. We prefer religion that comes from television. Or religion that is television. Here's a bonus: once you get hooked up, your elite class can quote Marshall McLuhan, while ignoring everything he says.

And let's get something straight: You'll have free trade. It won't really be free trade. What we mean by this is an exchange. We'll right up a several-thousand-page agreement that gives incumbency to preferred businesses in both countries. Then you will sell your natural resources, and we'll sell your new class of speculators our debt. If you can produce children with nimble fingers, well, they can sew our boots. You'll get a McDonald's, which means we will never attack you. Unless you are Russia.

Sometimes the "hidden hand" of the free economy feels a little … violating, I know. But that's just its adolescent fumbling. Your inhibitions - or local economy - need to be dropped. Take a deep breath. If it hurts, just lie back and think of England. Or take this pill. We're going to do a little role-playing here. It'll be kinky. I'll be America, and I'll start: "Now, open your markets, bitch! I'm going to liberate you so hard."

Michael Dougherty
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/16/usforeignpolicy.republicans
русский перевод http://www.inosmi.ru/translation/244080.html

[RiverRock]

We're going to do a little role-playing here. It'll be kinky. I'll be America, and I'll start: "Now, open your markets, bitch! I'm going to liberate you so hard."

That is funny.:lol::lol:

[Lucker]

You got it in one , Marlon
It is a typical Guardian romp --- they had a blank space and just filled it . The Guardian is read by only 400 , 000 and used to be an attempted organ for the Left .
He wants to point out that political problems are now so complex and world ranging that any solution looks quaint .
He poses whether managed democracy is better than Authoritarianism with a token speck of democracy .
Just good fun unless you live under a modern Hitler type figure .

[Lady_An]

It would be funny if it was not so sad

[sliver]

rr, fairy tales for ignorant people. like soviet union the west has stuck in ideology that just are tools for achieving other aims. aren't you personally tired of speaking about it?
"policy is concentrated economy"

[RiverRock]

Lady_An: It would be funny if it was not so sad

How dare Mcdonalds and cable TV be spread to countries around the world. How much sadder could you get.

The guy in the article's use of satire and sarcasm was so intelligent and so meaningful that it makes me want to turn communist and move to North Korea.

[Lady_An]

rr, fairy tales for ignorant people. like soviet union the west has stuck in ideology that just are tools for achieving other aims. aren't you personally tired of speaking about it?
"policy is concentrated economy"

The less you speak, the more you listen. The more you listen, the more you hear (not necessarily applicable to all, though). And the more you hear.. the more you come to understand that there was in fact very little (if something at all) to talk about.
Living in nowadays informational society we better make sure to put one high quality filters for the incoming information.

[Lady_An]

How dare Mcdonalds and cable TV be spread to countries around the world. How much sadder could you get.

The guy in the article's use of satire and sarcasm was so intelligent and so meaningful that it makes me want to turn communist and move to North Korea.


How much sadder? If GULag camps and NKVD troika practice was spread around (or, if you like, their North Korean equivalents, probably they've got some).

"Other people's things are more pleasing to us, and ours to other people". (Publilius Syrus)

[RiverRock]

Lady_An: How much sadder? If GULag camps and NKVD troika practice was spread around (or, if you like, their North Korean equivalents, probably they've got some).

"Other people's things are more pleasing to us, and ours to other people". (Publilius Syrus)

After re-reading your posts I think we are on the same page and the same side. :)

I thought you were saying the spread of freedom was sad, but you were saying that the article itself was sad. Correct?

[Lady_An]

The spread of so-called "freedom" instead of freedom is sad (as well as the process of spreading "bright communistic future" idea and others were in their days).
And the article is trying to smile through tears.

[Lonewolf74]

How much sadder? If GULag camps and NKVD troika practice was spread around (or, if you like, their North Korean equivalents, probably they've got some).

"Other people's things are more pleasing to us, and ours to other people". (Publilius Syrus)

North Korea has ..."special camps" where you can find, among others, mentally retarded, disabled persons, etc...
That info is available in all the reports from NGO's on the Human Rights field.

I think Syrus was talking about women.... :rolleyes: (j/k)

[Lady_An]

How can you still keep your positivism if the Sword of Damocles is barely hanging now?
;)

[Lucker]

[QUOTE=Lady_An;9250]The spread of so-called "freedom" instead of freedom is sad (as well as the process of spreading "bright communistic future" idea and others were in their days).


The spread of Freedom can never be sad .
I think you may be confusing the thought of Personal Freedom with other ideas trying to grapple with group Freedom ( a Rule of Law) , and all competing with ideas affecting Group growth ( a Political framework).
Usually people get sad when they muddle these three areas or come up with lazy ideas about how systems make life " Too complex"

[pouffe]

all is blabla bla, except the fact somewhere in a 3th world country a child walk now with a wood leg because an innocent worker of the 1st free world has made a mine, another innocent salary sold it to the army of a friend country, an innocent soldier hide it ....
This child was just going to catch the water he drinks from the spring near his village, but walking by the path...
Now nobody go again to the spring, the water is polluted, happily UN send to the village a huge amount of plastic bottles of water bought to an occidental firm.
There will be better time for the people of this village, soon they will learn how to make artificial legs with the recycled plastic from the bottles.

[Lady_An]

[QUOTE=Lady_An;9250]The spread of so-called "freedom" instead of freedom is sad (as well as the process of spreading "bright communistic future" idea and others were in their days).


The spread of Freedom can never be sad .
I think you may be confusing the thought of Personal Freedom with other ideas trying to grapple with group Freedom ( a Rule of Law) , and all competing with ideas affecting Group growth ( a Political framework).
Usually people get sad when they muddle these three areas or come up with lazy ideas about how systems make life " Too complex"

Freedom - not, but "freedom" - yes.
The thing is: do you know the difference? Or just happy with "simple enough" life withing the system?

[Lucker]

:confused:all is blabla bla, except the fact somewhere in a 3th world country a child walk now with a wood leg because an innocent worker of the 1st free world has made a mine, another innocent salary sold it to the army of a friend country, an innocent soldier hide it ....
This child was just going to catch the water he drinks from the spring near his village, but walking by the path...
Now nobody go again to the spring, the water is polluted, happily UN send to the village a huge amount of plastic bottles of water bought to an occidental firm.
There will be better time for the people of this village, soon they will learn how to make artificial legs with the recycled plastic from the bottles.


So , instead of Posting something we all feel already , get involved Politically and do your best to get a system changed .
Everybody dislikes the worst outcomes and sometimes we are horrified and disgusted .But don't forget there are many , many good things also going on .
Your Post is the type that can be inserted into almost any Political Topic and it is precisely because of that we try to go to the next stage and not just stand there wringing our hands and shedding tears .

[alpine-frolic]

:confused:


So , instead of Posting something we all feel already , get involved Politically and do your best to get a system changed .
Everybody dislikes the worst outcomes and sometimes we are horrified and disgusted .But don't forget there are many , many good things also going on .
Your Post is the type that can be inserted into almost any Political Topic and it is precisely because of that we try to go to the next stage and not just stand there wringing our hands and shedding tears .

Be sure to choose the good way.

[Lucker]

Alpenis
You are just as bad .
You extol us to always take the good way , but if we re- conquer you , you then start bleating about Human Rights and self determination .
You want to make up your mind .
Do you want Teacozy or do you want a British Passport ?

[alpine-frolic]

Do you call conquest this time when lost soldiers even left by their kingdom , wandering in our south because climate is not so bad here, searching for some food and occasionally burning some young virgin who refused to give them their precious intact feminity even against one million of sterlings?

[statajack]

Personal freedom is border control. Political freedom is a commodity, and economic freedom is a myth.

There is no freedom, it's just a meaningless word that begins with "f".

[alpine-frolic]

Ramon, with such a christian name i wonder if you are really a britt. I suspect your ancestors were Comte de Toulouse and you are perhaps the Vlll; but you have taken the wrong carriage.

[kentuckydan]

How can you still keep your positivism if the Sword of Damocles is barely hanging now?
;)

Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of being shot in the morning.

[Lucker]

My Father wanted Raimund but settled for the conventional Raymond
With Carthaginian and Merovignian blood coursing through my veins , I suspect that I am a direct relation of Jesus of Nazareth .
As FBI Bob will tell you , Jesus , his wife and children came into the south of France after Joseph bought his body from the Romans and they all escaped .

[alpine-frolic]

My Father wanted Raimund but settled for the conventional Raymond
With Carthaginian and Merovignian blood coursing through my veins , I suspect that I am a direct relation of Jesus of Nazareth .
As FBI Bob will tell you , Jesus , his wife and children came into the south of France after Joseph bought his body from the Romans and they all escaped .


That is sure, some blood of MariaMagdalena in your veins, we already have seen.

[Lady_An]

My Father wanted Raimund but settled for the conventional Raymond
With Carthaginian and Merovignian blood coursing through my veins , I suspect that I am a direct relation of Jesus of Nazareth .
As FBI Bob will tell you , Jesus , his wife and children came into the south of France after Joseph bought his body from the Romans and they all escaped .

yeah, sure, and Saint Clair is your last name..

[alpine-frolic]

yeah, sure, and Saint Clair is your last name..
Clair from latin clarus, never a name has been so badly given.
Saint Clair died in Rouen, strange coincidence.

[alpine-frolic]

It's amazing to see how Ramon is able to make any subject talking finally only about him.

[sliver]

The spread of so-called "freedom" instead of freedom is sad (as well as the process of spreading "bright communistic future" idea and others were in their days).
And the article is trying to smile through tears.

yes, any spread doesn't bring freedom. it brings someone's system or someone's values.. it's obtruding, not freedom. freedom is free choosing ;)
i agree, ideologists of western world uses soviet union strategy of spreading of the world revolution.. guys, you have stuck in the former century and old communist political technologies.. to increas areas of influence and control others.. shame on you :rolleyes:

[Sveta's Hero]

yes, any spread doesn't bring freedom. it brings someone's system or someone's values.. it's obtruding, not freedom. freedom is free choosing ;)
i agree, ideologists of western world uses soviet union strategy of spreading of the world revolution.. guys, you have stuck in the former century and old communist political technologies.. to increas areas of influence and control others.. shame on you :rolleyes:


If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black.:eek:

[sliver]

Newsweek", USA, Owen Matthews, 20 September 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/160069

Georgia's president is a man after the Republican nominee's heart. That's what worries some advisers.

Mikheil Saakashvili, his eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness and his face caked with television makeup, summoned his closest advisers into his office above Tbilisi's Old City. It was 2 a.m. on Aug. 12, and columns of Russian tanks were rolling down the highway toward the Georgian capital. "I am never going to flee," the president told his team. "I will not live my life regretting that I abandoned my own country at war." Then he sent them home to change out of their suits and ties so they could fight the invaders. Swigging a can of Red Bull, Saakashvili grabbed a phone and called the trusted friend and mentor he had turned to every night since Aug. 8, when the war began: John McCain. A source close to the Republican standard-bearer, asking not to be named discussing a private conversation, says McCain voiced support for diplomatic and political pressure against Moscow. "Hang in there," the senator said, according to a Saakashvili aide on condition of anonymity. "We are not going to let this happen … We are doing everything we can to stop this aggression."

It's not surprising that Saakashvili, 41, known to Georgians by the nickname Misha, would turn to McCain at a moment of crisis: their decade-long friendship is among the closest McCain has with any foreign leader. Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, traveled to Georgia in 2006 with a delegation led by McCain. He says Saakashvili saw the Republican nominee "as a man of greatness … on a different level" from the other legislators. And it's clear why McCain would admire the Georgian president. In many ways he's McCain's McCain—a passionate and unorthodox reformer, and a stalwart freedom fighter ranged against the Russian bear. Saakashvili's stint as Georgia's justice minister ended abruptly at a cabinet meeting in 2001 when he brandished a dossier of photos showing top ministers' lavish country homes, slapped it on the table and demanded that his colleagues be prosecuted immediately. "We are similar in many ways," Saakashvili says. "We agree that you can't compromise your beliefs."

That's exactly what worries some of McCain's many foreign-policy consultants. As the two presidential candidates prepare to debate foreign affairs and national security this Friday night, the Republican nominee is widely assumed to have an edge: polls consistently show that voters think he's better prepared than Sen. Barack Obama to be commander in chief. His relationships with leaders like Saakashvili contribute to that reputation. Yet McCain's affection for Misha runs counter to the instincts of many Republican foreign-policy "realists." (GOP moderates use the term to distinguish themselves from the party's neoconservative wing. McCain's chief foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, a former Saakashvili lobbyist, is identified with the neocons.) The candidate likes Saakashvili's sense of moral absolutes, says Dimitri Simes, founding president of the realists' home think tank, the Nixon Center: "I understand how someone who takes this posture would appeal to Senator McCain, who also does not tend to see international relations in shades of gray."

The concern, according to a McCain adviser and former Republican administration official, who did not want his name linked to criticism of the nominee's positions, is this: "When you personalize these issues, you lose sight of some more basic national interests." Saakashvili's tough talk about Moscow may ignite McCain's imagination, but his brinksmanship in August led to the rout of Georgia's armed forces and the worst U.S.-Russia standoff since the cold war. Simes says that "a number of leading Republican realists have shared their reservations with Senator McCain regarding Saakashvili and blind U.S. support for Georgia."

It's hard not to like Saakashvili. He's engaging, unaffected and ferociously smart. He laughs at his own jokes. Like McCain, he has an easy relationship with the press. He sends text messages to visiting reporters from his private mobile phone (without hiding the number) and invites them to spontaneous 3 a.m. dinners. His wife, Sandra, admits he's "impulsive," but says, "That's a good thing. He needs to grasp every opportunity. He wants things done fast." For the most part, though, Saakashvili is remarkably poised, fluently chatting in English, French, Russian and Ukrainian in a loud, deep voice. When speaking of his deepest beliefs—like the virtues of freedom and the evils of communism—he does so with a conviction that is neither glib nor scripted.

It was thanks to McCain's hatred of totalitarianism that he first met Saakashvili. As chairman of the nonpartisan International Republican Institute, a pro-democracy organization founded by Ronald Reagan, McCain directed a search for potential leaders in the former Soviet republics after communism's collapse. He was host at an IRI-sponsored gathering in Washington attended by Saakashvili in 1995. The young Georgian, a graduate of Columbia University and George Washington University Law School, had just decided to give up a career with a New York law firm to go home and enter politics. Their friendship grew when McCain visited Tbilisi in 1997. Saakashvili, by then a parliamentary deputy working for judicial reform, impressed McCain with his enthusiasm for what Saakashvili calls "universal principles, not just American principles, of fairness and realizing your potential."

McCain stood by his friend during the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to the presidency in 2003. The young Georgian was running for his country's top job when McCain returned to Tbilisi with a senior U.S. delegation to encourage the incumbent candidate, Eduard Shevardnadze, to respect the voters' will. (According to Saakashvili, McCain also foresaw trouble: "He told the … [U.S.] military attaché to be sure to give me a flak jacket.") That didn't stop Shevardnadze from trying to rig the results. After Saakashvili and his supporters occupied Parliament in protest, McCain called Shevardnadze—also a longtime friend—urging him to step down peacefully. Shevardnadze eventually did so. "It was a time of great optimism for the friends of Georgia," recalls a senior U.S. official who was in Tbilisi at the time (he asked not to be named because of his job). "Amid all the dysfunction of the old Soviet empire, suddenly you have this young, smart guy charging in to clean house."

Straight out of the gate, Saakashvili fired 80,000 state employees, including 90 percent of the old KGB-trained security force and every last member of the country's notoriously corrupt traffic police. Since then three Parliament members, 16 prosecutors, 45 judges, 400 police and even a serving cabinet minister have been indicted and jailed for graft. And bypassing Georgia's old ruling class, Misha filled his cabinet with young, Western-educated former NGO staffers. "Only young people had the enthusiasm to change the country," says Georgia's state-security secretary, Alexander Lomaia, 50, the cabinet's oldest member. (The defense minister is 29.)

continuation below

[sliver]

But in the years since, the president has lost patience with dissenters. His government is now a one-man show, former allies complain. "Misha is the only one making decisions in Georgia," says former foreign minister Salome Zourabichvili, now an opposition leader. "He was alone when he made a decision to start the war, and he is alone now. The world needs to beware."

The ugliest moment came last November, when baton-wielding riot cops put an end to five days of antigovernment protests that turned violent. Within hours, 250 Georgian Special Forces soldiers raided Imedi TV, a pro-opposition station. "On the stairs to the first floor, a person in camouflage pointed a gun at my forehead," says Imedi's news director, Giorgi Targamadze. "I could see my colleagues lying face down on the floor." More than 500 people were hospitalized, but Saakashvili stands by the crackdown. "Crowds attacked the police, and we did what any other European country would do," he says. The phone consultations with McCain continued as always. "Senator McCain made clear that he wanted full freedoms restored, internationally monitored free elections and greater institutionalization of political reforms," says the source close to McCain, again asking not to be named discussing a private conversation. Still, many opposition leaders say Saakashvili thought his Washington friendships would insulate him from criticism.

A confrontation over Georgia's breakaway regions has been brewing for a long time. Moscow first sided with separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the chaos that followed the Soviet collapse, and tensions have soared in recent years. According to a source close to the Russian administration who spoke on condition of anonymity, the diminutive prime minister Vladimir Putin was stung to hear that Saakashvili privately called him "Lilliputin." But nothing has upset the Russian leader more than Georgia's desire to join NATO. After Saakashvili got a partial green light for eventual membership at the alliance's April meeting in Bucharest, the Kremlin began preparing for war, says Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based military analyst. Russian troops began a series of exercises inside South Ossetia, and Russian military engineers repaired a strategic railway into Abkhazia, allowing the rapid deployment of armored units.

Even so, in the end it was Saakashvili who gave the order to fire first. The Georgian president says he made the decision after receiving intelligence reports of massive Russian convoys crossing into Ossetian territory. "We had no choice," Saakashvili says. "I could not sit back while my country was being invaded." But by shooting first, he allowed the Russians to claim that they were merely intervening to keep the Georgians from committing "genocide." Saakashvili denies doing anything to provoke Russia. "Putin is a hooligan in the courtyard who is going around breaking windows," he says. "There was nothing we could do to 'provoke' the hooligan: he had chosen his victim."

Russia plainly wanted to lure Saakashvili into a war he couldn't win. So why did he take the bait? "There has always been a section of the Georgian leadership who believed the only way to internationalize this problem was to start a fight," says a senior U.S. official who's not authorized to speak on the record. "We've been telling them all along: Don't do it!" One senior Saakashvili adviser saw the showdown coming a year ago and told friends he was close to quitting in frustration. "They're going to start a war in order to lose it," the aide warned two colleagues, who spoke to NEWSWEEK on condition of anonymity. Nevertheless, Saakashvili denies any intention of dragging Georgia's allies into war. "I absolutely don't want Europe to fight for us," he says. "But Europe faces a choice: to stop [Russian] aggression here or wait for it to claim its next victim."

Still, GOP realists aren't sure his version of events can be trusted. Some natives of the breakaway regions say Georgian troops targeted civilians—as Moscow has repeatedly argued. "What worries me is that Senator McCain did not talk to senior Russian officials," says Simes. "I always thought if you're a combat pilot, you'd want to understand the enemy. But neither he nor his advisers are interested in getting the Russian side of the story."

Nonsense, says Scheunemann. "Senator McCain is completely aware of Russian positions and actions," the foreign-policy aide says. "That is why he has expressed concern over Russian policies for so many years." The former administration official shares Simes's concern, but he's … realistic. The final weeks of a presidential run are "not the optimum situation to have a foreign-policy seminar," he says. "I have no doubt that if and when he's president, [McCain] will want to listen to different perspectives and take balanced decisions."

[Lucker]

Ramon, with such a christian name i wonder if you are really a britt. I suspect your ancestors were Comte de Toulouse and you are perhaps the Vlll; but you have taken the wrong carriage.

Alpenis
You invited my comment .
I certainly did not initiate .
My natural fighting style was always that of a counter puncher .