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Citizens of all countries ought to tell their governments that Olympics is a zone reserved exclusively for the people, completely demilitarized and depoliticized. Governments must simply forget about banning their people from attending the world’s greatest people-to-people celebration.
Few subjects set off explosions of national rage in Turkey like the fate of one and a half million Armenians in the darkest days of the First World War. First, some background: Armenians insist they were victims of the first mass genocide of the 20th century, driven from their homes in eastern Anatolia; only a few hundred thousand made it to Syria and Mesopotamia, today's Iraq. Turks, while acknowledging that many Armenians died in 1915-17, have always denied the genocide, despite widely reported evidence of massacres.
We have to accept that we live in an era of intellectual rip-offs, tactics sold as policy and instant strategies broadcast live on TV. The show on the plastic box and talking-head spin-meisters will do the thinking and planning for us all. Accordingly, we lower expectations and shall not be surprised when we see childish games are sold as a mimic of statesmanship. His Excellency, the president of a superpower, is now demanding that the world forget what it knows and listen to his version of stories.
America and its economy are at a significant crossroads: uncontrolled asset inflation, massive consumer debt and a large budget deficit have converged on a structural fault line (not to mention the impact of its military endeavors and political isolation.) Baby boomer consumption is slower, a new generation is taking over and American demographics are moving toward a Hispanic majority within the next two decades.
The U.S. economy is also making up an ever-smaller proportion of world GDP, and that’s a trend we should get used to. The euro zone is now the world’s top economic producer (with a GDP of about $16.3 trillion), while China, India and the returning Russia are all enjoying fundamental growth.
Has any of this gone unnoticed by the rest of the world? No. But Americans carefully and intentionally avoid these fundamental issues as topics of conversation. American politicians and presidential candidates divert the debate to 9/11 (now six years ago), foreign policy, Iraq and the armed forces.
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