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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (219901)	2/20/2005 9:05:03 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572644

Check out this article from Friedman. Interesting viewpoint: When Camels Fly By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: February 20, 2005 It's good news, bad news time again for the Middle East. The good news is that what you are witnessing in the Arab world is the fall of its Berlin Wall. The old autocratic order is starting to crumble. The bad news is that unlike the Berlin Wall in central Europe, the one in the Arab world is going to fall one bloody brick at a time, and, unfortunately, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade union are not waiting to jump into our arms on the other side. Advertisement No one is more pleased than I am to see the demonstration of "people power" in Iraq, with millions of Iraqis defying the "you vote, you die" threat of the Baathists and jihadists. No one should take lightly the willingness of the opposition forces in Lebanon to stand up and point a finger at the Syrian regime and say "J'accuse!" for the murder of the opposition leader Rafik Hariri. No one should dismiss the Palestinian election, which featured a real choice of candidates, and a solid majority voting in favor of a decent, modernizing figure - Mahmoud Abbas. No one should ignore the willingness of some Egyptians to demand to run against President Hosni Mubarak when he seeks a fifth - unopposed - term. These are things you have not seen in the Arab world before. They are really, really unusual - like watching camels fly. Something really is going on with the proverbial "Arab street." The automatic assumption that the "Arab street" will always rally to the local king or dictator - if that king or dictator just waves around some bogus threat or insult from "America," "Israel" or "the West" - is no longer valid. Yes, the Iraq invasion probably brought more anti-American terrorists to the surface. But it also certainly brought more pro-democracy advocates to the surface. Call it the "Baghdad Spring." But we have to be very sober about what is ahead. There will be no velvet revolutions in this part of the world. The walls of autocracy will not collapse with just one good push. As the head-chopping insurgents in Iraq, the suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia and the murderers of Mr. Hariri have all signaled: The old order in this part of the world will not go quietly into this good night. You put a flower in the barrel of their gun and they'll blow your hand and your head right off. I write all this not to suggest that we are on a fool's errand in Iraq. I write it to underscore that we are on the first step of a long, long journey. The fact that the extremists and autocrats have had to resort now to unspeakable violence shows how much they have failed to win the war of ideas on the Arab street. But the emerging progressive forces still have to prove that they can build a different politics around united national communities, not a balance of sects, and solidarity from shared aspiration, not a shared external enemy. There is still, throughout the Arab world, a very weak notion of statehood and citizenship. And there are still very few civil society institutions outside the mosque, and little historical experience with a free press, free markets or real parliamentary democracy to build upon when the walls fall. Overcoming that challenge was what Rafik Hariri, an imperfect but progressive soul, stood for. And that is why so many people, particularly young Arabs, are so upset by his murder. He represented a break from the wasteland that has been Arab politics for the last 50 years, and if you want to know how much many Arabs want a break read just one editorial - the essay last Friday in Lebanon's leading newspaper, An Nahar, by Samir Kassir. Tell me when you've read something like this in an Arab newspaper under Syrian occupation: Throughout history, Beirut's streets have been reserved for the "defense of pan-Arab causes," wrote Mr. Kassir. But with the funeral for Rafik Hariri, Arab nationalism has taken on a new aim, he declared: "Today, the nationalist cause has shrunk into the single aim of getting rid of the regimes of terrorism and coups, and regaining the peoples' freedom as a prelude to a new Arab renaissance. Thus hundreds of thousands of free citizens walked in Rafik Hariri's funeral - while only a paltry cortege mobilized by the single party and its intelligence apparatuses walked in [former Syrian President] Hafez al-Assad's funeral a few years ago. [With the Hariri funeral] Beirut was the beating heart of a new Arab nationalism. ... This nationalism is based on the free will of citizens, male and female. And this is what the tyrannical [Syrian] regime should fear more than anything else if it tarries about ending its hegemony over Beirut and Lebanon."

To: RetiredNow who wrote (219901)	2/20/2005 9:46:05 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572644

However, I believe China has a history of being peaceful since WWII. Well if you exclude the civil war the country had until 1949, when the commies won and the KMT took the treasury and moved to Taiwan, exclude the annexation and destruction of Tibet in 1959, exclude some border wars with India (they still haven't agreed where the borders are), exclude the war with Vietnam in the late 1970s, exclude Chinese support for North Korea during the Korean war, and exclude the internal chaos of the Great Leap Forward, I guess you're right.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (219901)	2/20/2005 4:41:18 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1572644

However, I believe China has a history of being peaceful since WWII. They are expanding their influence right now, almost exclusively through financial warfare, because they are growing into an economic might and they want to continue that trend. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just perceived as a bad thing because the U.S. is worried about their communist roots, and we are being beaten at our own economic game right now. I actually welcome a China willing to flex its muscle to bring countries like North Korea to bear. And I welcome an economically competitive China, because that will force Americans to get off their hedonistic, lazy asses, and start getting lean, educated, and competitive again. Right now, we're fat, culturally backsliding, wealthy to the point of complacency, and power-corrupt. We need a good counterweight to get us back to our roots. I might add that the Chinese make a strong merchant class and have a strong penchant for business. Consequently, its not surprising to see them turn a communist dictatorship into a capitalist economy. Peter suggests that may be backwards........that political freedom should come first. Whether that's true or not, I suspect political freedom for the Chinese will not be far behind. And like you, I welcome any economic counterbalancing they can provide the world. I have seen now that its very possible for the US to elect a president who is not good for the world. Economic counterbalancing effectively can reduce the political impact and influence of future bad American presidents. ted