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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.
I have no choice but to disagree with David Ignatius’ recent column comparing recent events in Pakistan to the run-up to the Iranian Revolution. Recent events do not resemble that era or its atmosphere.
Three decades ago, about 30 million Iranians simply wanted to have the most basic democratic opportunity: to elect their own leaders and parliament and pursue independence within their own borders. The Indian model might serve as a good example. No Iranian wants (or ever wanted to be part of) a machine to wreak random violence or to let proliferation of hate and terror originate from Iran.
The Current Discussion: With Castro gone, will Cuba become America's 51st state?
The question is about as old as the anti-Cuba sanctions themselves, and the short answer is: hardly! Washington has been drumming for full capitulation by Cuba as a pre-condition. American media reports its summary judgement on Cuba by the age of cars seen in Havana. And when was the last time that a meeting put American and Cuban citizens in touch to scratch the surface?
No Cuban is going to forgive or forget the collective punishment scheme of sanctions, no matter how ineffective they’ve been. Exiles in Miami are fed up with insincere talk therapy. Exiles and residents are independent-minded people and they recall the words of James Bovard: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” In the meantime, the administration in Washington will simply coin yet another “road map” tactic series with preconditions, and hollow vocabulary will be mixed with mushy Freedom Fries and talk to mimic policy.
It is an odd time to poke an old stick in the Balkan beehive. Significant problems are tangled with an ill-conceived plan which is contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. A summary amputation of territory from a sovereign nation will create an unwanted precedent, torpedo international law and plough through multilateral organizations. But I will not be surprised if busting through these organisations is the real aim and Kosovo is used as the tractor.
The Current Discussion: New York State governor Eliot Spitzer admits he hired a prostitute. Should people care, and why?
The election process is about public trust as well as law and order. The public invests its trust in a legally defined bond with that person to carry out the duties spelled out in the law and compliance with it. The case of Mr. Spitzer and his suspected involvement in aiding the interstate sex industry, a crime under American laws, is a stark reminder of limits that test the abuse of trust. Unlike Bill Clinton, it seems that Mr. Spitzer did in fact inhale!
The situation in Zimbabwe is not a new development. It is a festering matter put on the low or no priority list of international debate. The actions of the President Mugabe are a mere repeat of playbooks of strongmen in the same league -- Pakistan under President Musharraf, Serbia run by Mr. Milosevic, and the early days of the Ugandan Idi Amin come to mind.
Most powerful countries have tried to encourage change on the cheap. This exercise to isolate Zimbabwe has produced talk and hollow posturing, but hardly any tangible help for ordinary people there. The economic implosion of Zimbabwe -- once known for its humming agricultural and mining sectors, a respectable education system, and hard working people -- is the net product of disengagement. For the time being, local institutions are in the spotlight to see if the intended functions and independence of state bodies are effective. Election commissions, demands for recount, and courts are running the course.
The problems in Zimbabwe have accumulated over four decades. Mr. Mugabe’s self-indulgent ways have markedly accelerated ever since he has found support for his views on “independent African politics”-- in South Africa and predominantly from President Mbeki. But the present impasse is an artificial and hollow craving for unlimited power that flies in the face of independence movements in Rhodesia. In turn, this drive for power is stripping all democratic institutions to a carcass of the original goals. Blends of populist methods have eroded economic, and thus national, security in this odd experiment.
A contrarian I might be. But I am all for finding a place and a power "pole" for another super power and changing the current structure of world power to a multi-polar world order, for the reason that, and as evidence suggests, the era of post-Cold War period has not been stable.
The Current Discussion: What's the next likely target of Russia's reassertion of power?
In the first reading of the tea leaves, we can recall the famous line from the White House-- all options are on the table. However, the options have different meanings to different countries around the world.
The Current Discussion: In their campaign, should Barack Obama and running mate Joseph Biden advocate a clean break in U.S. foreign policy, or should they rely on continuity and experience?
America’s polarized party politics of the last decade is a churned cocktail of often-conflicting ideology and erroneous ideals that, in turn, have damaged America’s national interests and its world standing. Both parties raced to come up with new ideas and fill the post-Cold War vacuum, set a direction, define an ideology, and chart a new course for America. In this confusion, the master plan process was influenced by skewed and narrow visions, spun by foreign lobbies, or hijacked for acrimonious purposes.
The Current Discussion: What's the first thing you hope Barack Obama does as President-Elect?
Today will inevitably turn into a day of expectations, forward presumptions and various kinds of games, guesses and guarded spin. It will not be a surprise to read forecasts about the next election in 2012, even though Job Number One for the president-elect will be damage repair.
The Current Discussion: Today is "Genocide Remembrance Day "in the Armenian community, a particularly strained time of year for Turkey and Armenia. What's a realistic first step forward toward reconciliation for each of these countries?
Bad blood has always been part of human history, in folk stories or epic tales with two sides to an event repeated in, say, ancient Greece and their Trojan Wars. However, Greek society eventually graduated towards philosophy and rationalism to search for roots and causes of tales, myths, reality and behavior. About 12-13 years ago, the Turkish Republic emulated this historical graduation towards a search for rationalism and a rethink of its relations with Greece, albeit out of necessity to appease Greece during its (now aimless) EU candidacy talks. Those talks closed the book on differences and abrasion during the days of the Ottoman rulers. And it might now be time for Turkey to duplicate that realization for Armenia, and work towards yet another duplication of Entente cordiale and a change of heart about events that happened prior to the birth of the Turkish Republic.
Concurrently, Armenia must fast-forward to the 21st century, where all Armenians must understand that the history of the region is dotted with violence and atrocities: the invasion of Persia by Turkic or Arabs, Crimean Wars, The Russian Civil Wars, and two World Wars. All conflicts eventually end, and Europeans have managed to set aside the seas of blood between them and converge their common values into a framework of co-existence. History proves that insisting upon a certain version of tales told eventually fades away.
To this regional observer, however, the genocide issue seems to be a mere frame and a probable starter for Armenian émigrés from Anatolia to revisit their more contemporary sufferings in living memory and the losses that they experienced during the Turkish civil war in 1960s and 1970s. This is likely to be the hidden agenda of an eventual a la Turca mock-up of an Entente cordiale.
And what can Mr. Obama, the hyper-advertised Zeus but really a beleaguered Messiah, do about an age-old conflict in far and away places as part of his charm offensive in Islamic lands? Precious little in all probabilities, for the true and fundamental reason that such steps do not yield votes in Kansas for an American politician. Thus it might be best left to the locals to let them solve their problems and let Europeans nudge the sides towards a discussion table and a forum to chew the fat.
As the world has observed in Palestine and the Arab-Zionist conflict, the Pakistani Picnic, the Darfur case, the Bosnia stalemate, the Rwandan carnage or the Cambodian cull, the Washington spin on the issue tends to trump facts as the hype rises to headlines and skewed interpretations via lobbies and spin meisters transform it all to a Friday night high school football skirmish, away from reality and truth. Hence, the American president might be well advised to skirt Herculean motions and shallow multi-tasking endeavors, especially where it deals with history far from the attention span of the electorate.
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