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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (56805)	10/2/1999 11:39:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 108807

Pricks do tend to beget pricks. I think the salient point was the one that X was making - that the US does not have an inalienable right to declare proxy war on a country simply because we don't like their form of government. There are obviously exceptions: if there is significant intervention by an outside power, if there is a real and immediate threat to American or regional security, or if massive human rights violations are taking place. But even in these cases intervention should be open and not covert (though US covert operations don't generally stay covert for very long) and not, unless in truly desperate straits, unilateral. I was not at all surprised that jla dove into insult mode rather than addressing the point. I just picked up a copy of Jeane Kirkpatrick's book on the subject; you'll probably know when I'm reading it. I'll be in a foul mood for a few days.

To: Ilaine who wrote (56805)	10/3/1999 12:50:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The United States, the most advanced country in the world, has an incredibly corrupt government. I'm feeling contentious tonight, so I'd like to take on both halves of that sentence. I am not at all sure that 1) the United States is the most "advanced" country in the world. Most "powerful," yes. But most "advanced"? In which respects? Nor would I say that it has an "incredibly corrupt government." By world standards, it really is not that corrupt. Most places in the world, people take corruption for granted, and shrug their shoulders about it, unless the civil servants and policemen and suchlike that they have to pay off all the time get just too greedy. At lower levels, our civil service is, by world standards, incredibly honest. I would say the same of most local governments -- and even of most police forces. For example, when I tell people from the former Soviet Union (is that one-fourth or one-sixth of the world's surface?) that I have never paid -- or received -- a bribe in my life, they don't believe me. The trouble is mostly at the top. But then, the top is always being investigated. (We do have laws that people are expected to obey.) That is why we know the specifics of the corruption. And much of it is pretty penny ante stuff, compared to the Bank of New York scandal, the Marcos family, etc., etc., etc. And seems to me that much of the corruption is connected with fund-raising for political campaign. And here, the corruption is pretty much built into the system: another argument for radically, completely overhauling campaign financing. Joan

To: Ilaine who wrote (56805)	10/3/1999 12:41:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The United States, the most advanced country in the world, has an incredibly corrupt government. I don't believe that at all. How do you measure "corruption?" IMO most public employees are extraordinarily law-abiding. I've known thousands of professors at public universities handling budgets of billions of dollars. I've known (of) two who were convicted of embezzlement (or the equivalent)-- close calls from what I heard. Of millions of government employees a few hundred are convicted of corruption in a year. More lawyers steal from trust funds in a year than that.