Pravda: George W. Bush betrays his nation

[PhilipShore]

Pravda
George W. Bush betrays his nation
Front page / World / Continents / America
01/30/2006

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/16816_Bush.html

When George W. Bush was delivering his inaugural speech a year ago he emphasized the priorities of US policies during the second term of his presidency. The US President said that he would take efforts to struggle against tyrannical regimes all over the world. Brushing aside the debate about the notion of tyranny in the modern world, one can see that the US administration has achieved very little progress to keep the promise of US president.

The definition of democracy and totalitarian regimes has been a pet subject in the science of politics for ages. There is still no common opinion on the matter. One should choose a certain rough notion of democracy and tyranny to estimate the efficiency of the US-led foreign policies. Let us assume that democracy is a way of governing a nation which guarantees and observes human rights and gives people an opportunity to participate in the process of political decisions. Tyranny implies the concentration of power in the hands of only one person, while the rights of his nationals lose value absolutely.

The White House continues to proceed from the national interests, like any other state during any other historical epoch. Defending democracy in the whole world is not a priority for Bush and his administration.

Egypt, for example, held parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005. Washington is not likely to suspend the process of establishing a highly profitable cooperation with Egypt just because of the fact that an ardent fighter for democracy, Ayman Nur, has been jailed for five years there. Ayman Nur and a group of his followers were trying to create a democratic opposition for Egyptians, who see only one authoritarian leader in their country - Mubarak - and do not imagine anyone else at his place. Mr. Nur was propagandizing advantages of democracy with the help of the money that he received from the West, including the USA. If the Egyptian leader is waiting for a message from Condoleezza Rice in jail, he is definitely wasting his time.

[democrattruth]

1. Make sure not quote from Pravda

if you want to score political points in the US.

[PhilipShore]

2. I am a liberal Democrat in the US; they will always hate me...

regardless of what I say or do, or how I qualify my points. I wish more liberals in the USA--would be aware of this fact.They wrongly think only -- Limbaugh -- hates them.

[Bridget Burke]

3. We're not exactly "quoting" from Pravda...

Just reading an article of interest. What lies did you catch?

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Is Your Needle Stuck?

The Professor

[dusmcj]

4. Russians have their own agenda, use salt liberally

The Russians are wannabe Werld Roolers, except they have their shit going on even less than the US. The same sad, sagging suspects are gathering at the table now that the duality of the Cold War looks to be irretrievably eliminated. They are the same perverts, power players and slaveholders who foisted the first world war on the world 90 years ago. Or rather their ideological descendants. Giving first priority and the power to overrule all other considerations to the maintenance of a socioeconomic status quo which supports upward flow of wealth from the productive classes to the exploitative classes (them), they corrupt human society and civilization to sustain an unnatural situation where the least capable members of the species retain a hold on power via lying as opposed to useful activity.

This is old European tradition, the negative flipside that goes along with all the advances in civilization in terms of philosophy and reason that came from there. Like stupid animals, they bargain and negotiate with those they recognize as their fellows to ensure that they maintain their places first in line at the sloptrough, since if they didn't they would be busy killing each other, as they have at various times when some of them got too greedy.

The Russian version of this, dating from the time of the czars, and passing almost unchanged through the Soviet era to the present corruptocracy, is a resentment of the comparatively more functional west coupled with ambitions to control the Eurasian landmass. The current marketing ploy for this is an old one, resurrected precisely from the time of the first world war and the heyday of European colonialism, namely "spheres of influence". This is actively championed by hardline Russian nationalists such as the pig Zhirinovsky, but since Putin has taken up ostensible common cause with them for his own survival, it is becoming de facto Russian policy as well. The Russian notion of spheres of influence would have the world carved up more or less like an orange, only with very odd-shaped segments. The US would control small parts of the western hemisphere, western Europe would control Canada, south America, Africa and Europe up to some barnyard in Poland, while Russia would control eastward from there and leave southeast Asia and the Pacific to the Chinese.

This is none other than nostalgia for a more gracious age, where the gilded classes sat in their drawing rooms, drank tea according to proper rules for social decorum, decided how the world should be run, and graciously allowed the poor to rifle their garbage without having them whipped. At least some of the time.

While we have enough of our own of this ilk (Ken Lay and his bag wife come to mind) we should not look to the Russians too longingly as allies. The enemy of my enemy may be just as big a shitbag.

[PhilipShore]

5. Believe it or not--my ancestors came over from Russia...

around 1904. Their Russian names were Slutsky, and Borosofsky.

I read the Russian Constitution -- after the fall of Communism, it seems well written, with many good principles of liberalism, that liberal Democrats value in the USA.

____________________________________________

The Constitution of the Russian Federation
Ratified
December 12, 1993

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/constit.html

[dusmcj]

9. individuals fail the system there too ?

And yet, if we consume and believe the media reports available to us here, those who assume leadership in Russia have and are disastrously failing their people, and the principles espoused in that document. This is nothing new; we see our own Constitution being used as toilet paper by people unworthy of laying eyes on it.

Maybe we are still in the transition state between absolutism and egalitarianism, where the mass public has not yet understood the cost of pursuit of self-interest without corequisite enlightenment. It is a question of values, but the conservative parties who make the most noise about same are their least effective propagators.

I wish you and your distant relatives well, may we all succeed in creating better governments for ourselves.

[Bridget Burke]

7. Everyone has an agenda.

Reading most of the media in The Land of The Free also benefits from copious salt....

[dusmcj]

10. you betcha. nt

although we do gently note that the Repubicans' favorite tactic is to squeal "you're just as bad as we are" when criticized. We don't want to use our own failings as an excuse or a coercion not to point out those of others. It's not about the individual and shame; it's about what works and what doesn't. Your point in that detached sense is well-taken.

[dusmcj]

8. corrections and cite

I found the cite I recalled: http://evrazia.org/index.php?newlang=english and specifically http://evrazia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1886

Under this plan, the US actually gets all of the western hemisphere, plus Great Britain and Australia, and it's called the Anglo-American zone (maybe this guy spent time in East Berlin). Europe gets the closest thing to an orange slice, including western Europe minus those disruptive language-bigot Brits, Africa, plus the Arabian peninsula, Israel and Jordan. Bordered on the east by a line through Finland, barnyards in Byelorus and Ukraine instead of Poland (the Poles will be happy to be sanctioned to be Europeans) and the Bosporus and the Persian Gulf. Next we have the Pan-Eurasian zone (greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere ? Oh, nevermind, wrong century) extending down through central and south asia and controlled by Russia, and finally China gets something too, with a border running somewhere around a barnyard in Bangladesh and up through some yurts in Mongolia and over to graciously include the Koreas and the Japanese, and down through the Indonesian archipelago, carefully again avoiding those pesky Anglo-Saxons in Australia.

If this does not remind you of effete clowns in Victorian drawing rooms laying out plans for world domination via cartography, what will ? (US policy in southwest Asia ? Oh, but I digress.)