Military Coup in the offing

Chabon 19 wrote:
....lobert.... wrote:
Chabon 19 wrote:
lobert, the Singaporean **** for Brains wrote:
Chabon 19 wrote:
....lobert.... wrote:

snipped

and you Chabon will live like a Carbonic dumbass , a saddest tale you
have ever known.
That is true when one thinks of the idiots like you that share our
world!

Carbonize dumbass
Did you succeed to buy a mirror for your toilette? I guess that
explains it! And now - **** for brains - **** off in direction to
TEMASEK - good nite arse hole...

Carbonized already, too dark to be seen on mirror.

Yep we all see that from your dumb answers...


Hi Carbonized Crappy ! What dumbest answer is that?

John Kerry = American Jew hidding behind the Catholic faith ..

Pan wrote:


Yes, it was a close election, and close enough to be manipulated. No,
it wasn't the closest in U.S. history.

Ok I'll take your word for it. Anyways, out of curiosity, which
presidential race was closer?



If a country was communist, it's people suffered [which AFAIK
is true] and the U.S. prescribes democracy. The US projects an image of
being the greatest advocate of democracy.


I don't think the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world. But not
counting all the crap that's gone on for the last 6 years, it's just
one model of a republic: A presidential system with a bicameral
legislature elected from geographic constituencies in a federation.
There are advantages and disadvantages to various models of elective
government.


Think you misunderstood, I meant greatest advocate of democracy. As to
the rest, I cant really comment because I am not familiar with the finer
details of a democratic and a republic model.




Some countries wallow in
democracy and flip flop between democratically elected idiots that dont
seem to improve their lives at all. Witness Phillipines and Indonesia.


Heck, witness the number of dunderheads who've been president of the
US!


But still your country is progressing. It has managed to retain it's
ranking of superpower for the past few decades. It's still an economic
powerhouse. So basically what I'm saying is, a democratic system works
in the US because it's citizens are suited to such a system, i.e. a
large percentage of voters have the necessary knowledge and education to
make a pretty good choice. Eventhough some of the presidents chosen
might have turned out to be 'not so good' [depends on who's supporters
you ask], they have yet to elect someone who completely detroyed the
economy or is a blatant kleptomaniac. And dodgy presidents are usually
exposed in no time at all, which means that the safeguards of the
democratic model works pretty well in the States. These safeguards don't
work in many other countries which leads to my opinion that not every
country is suitable for democracy. In the long run, democracy is the
best...but timing of when to impose democracy is important. I learned
that playing Sid Meier's Civilisation 1,2,3 and 4 hehe

Now you compare that to 3rd world countries, those in South America,
Africa and those in Phillipines and Indonesia, and you have to wonder
whether the people are ready for democracy. Are their voters equipped to
make the best choice? Look at the farce in Phillipines, Estrada was
voted in by the masses simply because he was a movie star they had grown
up with. The voters couldnt even tell the difference between real life
and the movies.


Whereas if their one of the stronger leaders, i.e. Ramos had clung on to
power with undemocratic means, he might have improved the country.


Or not.


Now moving on from my comments above, I have to ask you, with the
benefit of hindsight, if you were Ramos, would you have amended the
constitution so that you could stay for 2 or more terms? Whilst in power
you could further improve the nation so that its people would be better
equipped to select a better leader in future. Or would you do what Ramos
did, the honourable thing, and step aside and let it fall into the hands
of Estrada whom you knew would then proceed to bankrupt the nation and
set it back a few decades? Causing untold misery to millions of filipinos.


Ok,
that opens up a whole can of worms but, looking back, I just can't help
thinking what might have been if ...


That's always an interesting mental exercise.


I mostly agree with the things you say about democracy, but frustrating
and infuriating pretty much sums up what I think about democracy when it
comes to SE Asia.


That's no different from the experience of the opposition in every
country with an elective system of government. Get used to it.

Well I don't have much of a choice, do I?


You don't, I don't, none of us do. Except for evildoers who would
presume to wrest power illegally.

People do all sorts of illegal things to get voted in democratically too.


Sure. Any system can be manipulated, too.

Michael

If you would like to send a private email to me, please take out the NOTRASH. Please do not email me something which you also posted.

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:56:24 +0800, alex®
wrote:



Pan wrote:


Yes, it was a close election, and close enough to be manipulated. No,
it wasn't the closest in U.S. history.

Ok I'll take your word for it. Anyways, out of curiosity, which
presidential race was closer?

In terms of the electoral college map or popular votes? Anyway, I'd
suggest Kennedy-Nixon among others (another manipulated election, that
time by the Democrats). Carter-Ford was also very close.

If a country was communist, it's people suffered [which AFAIK
is true] and the U.S. prescribes democracy. The US projects an image of
being the greatest advocate of democracy.


I don't think the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world. But not
counting all the crap that's gone on for the last 6 years, it's just
one model of a republic: A presidential system with a bicameral
legislature elected from geographic constituencies in a federation.
There are advantages and disadvantages to various models of elective
government.


Think you misunderstood, I meant greatest advocate of democracy.

Well, not under G.W. Bush. Considering that Bush was selected - um, I
mean elected - twice by denying a large number of black voters the
right to vote and have their vote count, Bush advocating democracy is
rather like the Mafia advocating honest business practices. They'll
support those only to the extent that it benefits them.

As to
the rest, I cant really comment because I am not familiar with the finer
details of a democratic and a republic model.

Fair enough.

Some countries wallow in
democracy and flip flop between democratically elected idiots that dont
seem to improve their lives at all. Witness Phillipines and Indonesia.


Heck, witness the number of dunderheads who've been president of the
US!


But still your country is progressing. It has managed to retain it's
ranking of superpower for the past few decades. It's still an economic
powerhouse.

That's partly because we've had some excellent chairmen of the Federal
Reserve. There are a lot of other reasons for it. But it doesn't
retroactively make the dunderheads smarter.

So basically what I'm saying is, a democratic system works
in the US because it's citizens are suited to such a system, i.e. a
large percentage of voters have the necessary knowledge and education to
make a pretty good choice.

I don't agree. I think that we've so far muddled through despite the
low quality of many if not most of our presidents, and that part of
the reason for the high popular support for people like Reagan and
G.W. Bush is the decline of the educational system.

Eventhough some of the presidents chosen
might have turned out to be 'not so good' [depends on who's supporters
you ask], they have yet to elect someone who completely detroyed the
economy or is a blatant kleptomaniac.

Hmmmm...

My mother got this from the Aliran list. Have a look:

See Dick Loot

By Dahr Jamail

03/08/06 "t r u t h o u t" -- -- Halliburton and its subsidiary
Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) have been making hay in the burning
Iraqi sun for years now. It is, of course, no coincidence that the man
sitting as vice president played a key role with his influence in
obtaining the lion's share of contracts in Iraq for the company he was
CEO of prior to his self-appointed position. Yet none of this is news.

What is news, however, is that the ties that bind Cheney to
Halliburton also link him to groups with even broader interests in the
Middle East, which are causing civilians on the ground there, as well
as in the US, to pay the price.

Cheney had much more at stake than pure altruism in making sure
Halliburton/KBR obtained so many no-bid contracts in occupied Iraq.
Despite his claims of not having any financial ties to Halliburton,
the fact is that in both 2001 and 2002 he earned twice as much from a
deferred salary from his "old" company as when he was CEO.

But that wasn't the beginning. When Cheney was US Secretary of
Defense in the early 1990's under Big Bush, Halliburton was awarded
the job of studying, then implementing, the privatization of routine
army functions such as cleaning and cooking meals.

Following this study, when Cheney was finished with his job at the
Pentagon, he scored the job as CEO of Halliburton, which he held until
nominating himself for the position of Little Bush's running mate in
2000. Remember, it was Cheney who was given the task of finding a
running mate for Bush. After searching far and wide across the US,
Cheney ended up generously offering his own services for the job.

As if Cheney didn't already have enough conflicts of interest, it
is important to note that he assisted in founding the neo-conservative
think tank, the "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)," whose
goal is to "promote American global leadership," which entails
acquiring Iraqi oil. Complimenting this, Cheney was also part of the
board of advisers to the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA) along with John Bolton, Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz (all PNAC members) before becoming vice president. JINSA,
self-described as a "nonsectarian educational organization," does
things like nominate John Bolton for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and
works to "explain the role Israel can ... play in bolstering ... the
link between American defense policy and the security of Israel."

Their Mission Statement adds, "The inherent instability in the
region [Middle East] caused primarily by inter-Arab rivalries and the
secular/religious split in many Muslim societies leaves the future of
the region in doubt. Israel, with its technological capabilities and
shared system of values, has a key role to play as a US ally in the
region," which happens to be quite similar to the stated goals of the
PNAC for the region, but I digress.

By the end of 2002, Cheney owned at least 433,000 unexercised
Halliburton stock options worth over $10 million. And that was before
the invasion of Iraq, when the games really began.

In March 2003, the month the invasion began, Halliburton was
awarded a no-bid contract worth $7 billion from the Pentagon. The
blatant awarding of this "reconstruction" contract to Halliburton even
led Representative Henry Waxman to comment, "The administration's
approach to the reconstruction of Iraq is fundamentally flawed. It's a
boondoggle that's enriching private contractors."

Of course the invasion and occupation of Iraq aren't only about oil.

Remember, it was Cheney himself who, at a VFW convention in August
2002, said "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear
weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge."

Cheney then, solely in the interests of protecting the American
and Iraqi people of course, made sure the US would go into Iraq and
take care of that nuclear trouble-maker Saddam Hussein.

Just to be safe, Halliburton was paid $40 million for providing
housing and transportation for teams searching for non-existent
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For with each contract
Halliburton is and was awarded, Cheney's bank account grows.

The one place where there were remnants of a nuclear program in
Iraq, albeit over 20 years before the 2003 US invasion, was the Osirak
Nuclear Research Facility on the outskirts of Baghdad. US-made Israeli
warplanes bombed it back on June 7, 1981, and when I visited the place
in January 2004, all I found were empty warehouses which the American
military wasn't concerned about enough to prevent from being looted.

Villagers in nearby al-Tuwetha, ignorant of radioactive waste
stored in old drums, looted them in the chaos following the invasion
and had been using them as water containers - thus irradiating the
entire village.

One example of what it looks like on the ground in Iraq when
Halliburton fails to fulfill its contractual obligations is the life
of Adel Mhomoud. The 44-year-old beekeeper in al-Tuwetha told me, "I
have cancer, and I know I'm dying. My white blood cell count is
14,000, and I don't have enough red blood cells. We are all sick; our
joints ache, my hips are killing me, and my blood is bad. But nobody
will help us here."

Certainly not Halliburton.

Cheney, who received no less than five military deferments during
the Vietnam War despite being a supporter of that war (Sound
familiar?), had shamelessly told the veterans at the VFW, "Simply
stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our
friends, against our allies, and against us."

So that was the door Cheney took to bring Iraq his Halliburton.

And of course, once through that door, Halliburton promptly went
to work.

Aside from the aforementioned awarding of no-bid contracts worth
billions of US taxpayer dollars, as early as December 2003, the US
Army found out Halliburton was overcharging the government $61 million
for fuel transportation and $67 million for food services in Iraq. I
remember being in Baghdad when this occurred - seeing the enormously
long gas lines at petrol stations whilst knowing Halliburton, not only
failing to provide Iraqis with their own petrol, was even charging the
US taxpayer three dollars per gallon for fuel that local companies
could have imported for under one dollar.

But that was barely the beginning.

Let's take a brief glance at some of the more recent
Halliburton/KBR rogueries:

* 27 February 2006 - US Army decides to reimburse KBR nearly all
of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver
fuel and repair equipment in Iraq, despite Pentagon auditors
identifying over $250 million in charges as "potentially" excessive.


* 17 February 2006 - KBR executive hired to fly cargo into Iraq
pleads guilty to inflating invoices by $1.14 million to cover
fraudulent "war risk surcharges."


* 6 February 2006 - KBR employee in Iraq, speaking on condition of
anonymity, says "We pay our locals [in Iraq] $5 to $16 dollars a day
and you can see where [KBR] put it down [on the military requisition]
as $60 a day." Military requisitions reveal KBR to be paying between
$5-$16 per day in wages to third world laborers in Iraq whilst billing
US taxpayers between $50-$80 per day.


* 30 January 2006 - Bush administration settles dispute between
Pentagon and Halliburton by agreeing to pay company $199 million in
disputed gasoline charges in Iraq. To date KBR has been awarded nearly
$16 billion in total revenue from Iraq contracts.


* 23 January 2006 - Halliburton fails to alert American troops and
civilian contractors at US base in Ramadi that their water was
contaminated. Despite allegations which came from Halliburton's own
water quality experts, the company denies there was a contamination
problem.


* 27 December 2005 - KBR, linked to human trafficking-related
concerns via its work in Iraq (such as forced prostitution and labor),
Halliburton benefits from Defense Department's refusal to adopt policy
barring human trafficking.


* 1 December 2005 - UPI reports KBR workers in Iraq ("third
country" nationals) found to be paid as little as 50 cents an hour.


* 5 November 2005 - UN auditing board finds that US should repay
Iraqi government $208 million from Iraqi oil revenue for fraudulent
contracting work.

Then there is how these "policies" Halliburton is following in
Iraq affect US soldiers and contractors, including its own employees.

With contracts in Iraq now worth up to $18 billion, there is
nothing stopping Halliburton from abusing the lack of oversight and
obvious conflict of interest between their free reign and their ties
to the vice president.

An example of this is Jim Spiri, who was hired by Halliburton/KBR
in January 2004 to work as a logistics coordinator. Sent to Camp
Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, he worked the flight line handling passenger
movements, as Spiri had 20 years of aviation experience.

"During my time there, I assisted nightly with medevac [medical
evacuations] operations and was highly respected among all military
medical folks," he told me this week. "I had a good name throughout
the theatre."

But problems were immediately apparent to him.

"I witnessed much alcohol abuse, in an environment where alcohol
is strictly prohibited. I made note of this and reported it to my
superiors, who actually were the ones abusing the system. It was
obvious that the fox was guarding the hen house, so to speak."

He told me his entire flight line operation was "run in a
gang-like manner" and "the work was never done in an efficient
manner." Instead, according to Spiri, the motto was, "Do as little as
possible for as much as you can, for as long as you can."

On February 5th of this year, while working the night shift which
he had for the last two years, Spiri witnessed something that made the
thought of continuing to work for KBR intolerable.

After watching a fallen soldier loaded onto a plane without the
proper ceremony of honor, Spiri told me he "wrote an account of what I
experienced that night." After this, "It was published, and ... all
hell broke loose about 36 hours later."

Spiri was fired by KBR after writing an article detailing the
event and criticizing Halliburton's policies in Iraq.

Now he wants to shine light on how KBR operates in Iraq. "What
they don't want to let out is the type of workers they have over
there, that it's the largest gravy train operation, it's the largest
welfare system I've ever seen in my life. It's pathetic," Spiri said
in a recent interview while adding that over half the people KBR
employed in Iraq were "grossly under-qualified and highly over-paid."

His work entailed three people, but by the time he left there were
10 people on his team, most of whom "sat around listening to their
iPod's and DVD players."

Yet firing an employee for raising awareness about corruption and
his questioning of policy is minor compared to the treatment of Iraqis
meted out by the company.

When I was in Amman last May, I met Ahlam al-Hassan, a young Iraqi
woman who had worked for KBR in Diwaniyah.

Two gunshots by assailants who attacked her for collaborating with
occupation forces left her blind, and her former employers would not
return her calls or requests for assistance.

For her three months of work for KBR she was paid $475, having
taken the job to support her family. "My two bosses at KBR, Mr. Jeff
and Mr. Mark, were very good and gentle with me," she explained to me
in Jordan, "They told me it wasn't dangerous to work for them." But
after spending months in hospitals for what happened to her on her way
to work, "After this, they have made no attempts to contact me."

Note that on May 31, 2004, an Army Corps of Engineers email
revealed that Cheney's office "coordinated" Halliburton's
multi-billion dollar Iraq contract. Cheney, like most common
criminals, denied having anything to do with the no-bid contract.

More recently, on January 26th of this year, Halliburton announced
that its 2005 profits were the "Best in our 86-year history," as all
six of its divisions posted record results. Halliburton stock price
doubled in the last year, and Dick Cheney's tax returns indicate that
he earned $194,862 from his Halliburton stock in just the last year.

Loot Dick, Loot!

Is that clear enough?

All of this begs the question: Do you approve of your tax dollars
being used in this fashion?

If not, then what are you willing to do about it?

And during the Reagan administration, we had the savings and loans
scandal, which involved a bunch of bankers getting away with the gross
theft of people's pension plans to the tune of hundreds of billions of
dollars, all told. Another member of the Bush family, Neil, was
involved.

And dodgy presidents are usually
exposed in no time at all,

I wish that were true. It still isn't generally acknowledged that
Reagan had alzheimer's while in office.

which means that the safeguards of the
democratic model works pretty well in the States.

I understand what you're doing; you're making a comparison. Yes,
things can be much worse; agreed.

These safeguards don't
work in many other countries which leads to my opinion that not every
country is suitable for democracy.

I think that's a perverse way of looking at things. The solution is
not to maintain dictatorship but to increase the efficacy of those
safeguards. If the government is more powerful, that makes publicity
about its mistakes and misdeeds _more_ and not _less_ important.

In the long run, democracy is the
best...but timing of when to impose democracy is important. I learned
that playing Sid Meier's Civilisation 1,2,3 and 4 hehe

Is that a video game?

I think the point is that what's often called "civil society" is
needed for a democracy to function well.

Now you compare that to 3rd world countries, those in South America,
Africa and those in Phillipines and Indonesia, and you have to wonder
whether the people are ready for democracy.

How do you feel about the voters in Costa Rica and Botswana? Haven't
they done a decent job? I think you're being pretty patronizing toward
people in those parts of the world.

Are their voters equipped to
make the best choice? Look at the farce in Phillipines, Estrada was
voted in by the masses simply because he was a movie star they had grown
up with.

Like Reagan.

The voters couldnt even tell the difference between real life
and the movies.

Just like folks in Harlem voted for Reagan even though he cut their
food stamps, because it was "Morning in America."

Whereas if their one of the stronger leaders, i.e. Ramos had clung on to
power with undemocratic means, he might have improved the country.


Or not.


Now moving on from my comments above, I have to ask you, with the
benefit of hindsight, if you were Ramos, would you have amended the
constitution so that you could stay for 2 or more terms?

He couldn't have done that unilaterally. Ramos, as the first president
after the People Power revolution, could not have successfully turned
into a dictator. The process was important.

Whilst in power
you could further improve the nation so that its people would be better
equipped to select a better leader in future. Or would you do what Ramos
did, the honourable thing,

Precisely.

and step aside and let it fall into the hands
of Estrada whom you knew would then proceed to bankrupt the nation and
set it back a few decades? Causing untold misery to millions of filipinos.

George Washington refused an offer to become King of America. It's
because of the process he agreed to, which allowed freedom of speech
to his opponents and under which he retired and presided over a
peaceful transfer of power, that the U.S. is what it is today.
Sometimes, it's important to look at the long view. The Philippines
has been a disaster because of dictatorship and corruption. More
dictatorship is highly unlikely to be a solution for the Philippines.

Michael

If you would like to send a private email to me, please take out the NOTRASH. Please do not email me something which you also posted.

On 10 Mar 2006 05:59:45 -0800, "Tchiowa" wrote:


Dave Baker wrote:
On 7 Mar 2006 03:30:21 -0800, "Tchiowa" wrote:

I didn't make up the voting pattern, nor the analysis.

You didn't make up the voting pattern but you certainly made up the
analysis.

Yawn - go & get yourself one of those pretty red & blue maps.

Yes the people on the East Coast and some of the West Coast
voted more Democratic.

Oh, funny - now you want to agree?

Given your history I expected ....

..... given your history I had no expectation that you would answer my
question. I knew full well you'd fly off on a tangent! :-)

Dave

"Dave Baker" wrote in
message
...
On 10 Mar 2006 06:06:01 -0800, "Tchiowa"
wrote:

I haven't seen any figures to back this up. Have
buffalo sales
doubled? Toyota King Cab sales doubled? Isaan girls
to Patpong halved?

Childish stereotypes indicating the snobbery of your
elitist view on
life.

My investments tend more towards the "elitist" side
based on your criteria.

However, it's a well known fact that your area of
expertise extends no
further than Isaan girls & water buffalo! :-)

Dave

*****Ahhhhhhhh Titchy........Someone else has your
measure.

;-)

alex® wrote:
Pan wrote:


Yes, it was a close election, and close enough to be manipulated. No,
it wasn't the closest in U.S. history.

Ok I'll take your word for it. Anyways, out of curiosity, which
presidential race was closer?



If a country was communist, it's people suffered [which AFAIK
is true] and the U.S. prescribes democracy. The US projects an image of
being the greatest advocate of democracy.


I don't think the U.S. is the greatest democracy in the world. But not
counting all the crap that's gone on for the last 6 years, it's just
one model of a republic: A presidential system with a bicameral
legislature elected from geographic constituencies in a federation.
There are advantages and disadvantages to various models of elective
government.


Think you misunderstood, I meant greatest advocate of democracy. As to
the rest, I cant really comment because I am not familiar with the finer
details of a democratic and a republic model.




Some countries wallow in
democracy and flip flop between democratically elected idiots that dont
seem to improve their lives at all. Witness Phillipines and Indonesia.


Heck, witness the number of dunderheads who've been president of the
US!


But still your country is progressing. It has managed to retain it's
ranking of superpower for the past few decades. It's still an economic
powerhouse. So basically what I'm saying is, a democratic system works
in the US because it's citizens are suited to such a system, i.e. a
large percentage of voters have the necessary knowledge and education to
make a pretty good choice. Eventhough some of the presidents chosen
might have turned out to be 'not so good' [depends on who's supporters
you ask], they have yet to elect someone who completely detroyed the
economy or is a blatant kleptomaniac. And dodgy presidents are usually
exposed in no time at all, which means that the safeguards of the
democratic model works pretty well in the States. These safeguards don't
work in many other countries which leads to my opinion that not every
country is suitable for democracy. In the long run, democracy is the
best...but timing of when to impose democracy is important. I learned
that playing Sid Meier's Civilisation 1,2,3 and 4 hehe

Now you compare that to 3rd world countries, those in South America,
Africa and those in Phillipines and Indonesia, and you have to wonder
whether the people are ready for democracy. Are their voters equipped to
make the best choice? Look at the farce in Phillipines, Estrada was
voted in by the masses simply because he was a movie star they had grown
up with. The voters couldnt even tell the difference between real life
and the movies.


Whereas if their one of the stronger leaders, i.e. Ramos had clung on to
power with undemocratic means, he might have improved the country.


Or not.


Now moving on from my comments above, I have to ask you, with the
benefit of hindsight, if you were Ramos, would you have amended the
constitution so that you could stay for 2 or more terms? Whilst in power
you could further improve the nation so that its people would be better
equipped to select a better leader in future. Or would you do what Ramos
did, the honourable thing, and step aside and let it fall into the hands
of Estrada whom you knew would then proceed to bankrupt the nation and
set it back a few decades? Causing untold misery to millions of filipinos.


Ok,
that opens up a whole can of worms but, looking back, I just can't help
thinking what might have been if ...


That's always an interesting mental exercise.


I mostly agree with the things you say about democracy, but frustrating
and infuriating pretty much sums up what I think about democracy when it
comes to SE Asia.


That's no different from the experience of the opposition in every
country with an elective system of government. Get used to it.

Well I don't have much of a choice, do I?


You don't, I don't, none of us do. Except for evildoers who would
presume to wrest power illegally.

People do all sorts of illegal things to get voted in democratically too.


Sure. Any system can be manipulated, too.

Michael


Benjamin Franklin (I think it was) once said, in paraphrase, that
"Democracy is a suitable form of government only for those who WANT to
be ruled by it. For all others, it is wholly inadequate".

I think that, in the end, the type of government that the people of any
country accept is one that reflects their values. Thus Representative
Republicanism reflects the values of freedom and self-determination
(America, Great Britain, Australia and the like). Those people who rule
others by tyrannical domination will in the end accept that type of
rule themselves--witness Congo, Zimbabwe and the like.
Despotism--benevolent or otherwise--is successful only in places where
patriarchism is inbred into the culture (Saudi Arabia, etc.). And so
on.

In the end America works because it reflects the values of the American
people. To be sure, this is never unanimous nor even in most cases
clearly defined. But the process allows for that value to be more or
less paramount. It is not a clear guarantee against evil, incompetence
or profiteering. But it DOES work--to the extent that no matter how
much or how unfairly America is vilified, "the shining city on a hill"
is still an irresistable draw to much of the rest of the world. America
does not have border guards to keep people in, after all.

Liam

Pan wrote:


George Washington refused an offer to become King of America. It's
because of the process he agreed to, which allowed freedom of speech
to his opponents and under which he retired and presided over a
peaceful transfer of power, that the U.S. is what it is today.
Sometimes, it's important to look at the long view. The Philippines
has been a disaster because of dictatorship and corruption. More
dictatorship is highly unlikely to be a solution for the Philippines.


You seem to know a lot more about this than me, so I'll rest my case
here. It's hard making any arguments when I don't know anything about
the scandal affecting Cheney, nor about the situation in Botswana and
Costa Rica.

I'm not entirely convinced by your points but you've given me some
material to chew on. ta-ta for now.

Michael

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On 14 Mar 2006 03:37:31 -0800, "Liam" wrote:

Benjamin Franklin (I think it was) once said, in paraphrase, that
"Democracy is a suitable form of government only for those who WANT to
be ruled by it. For all others, it is wholly inadequate".

I think that, in the end, the type of government that the people of any
country accept is one that reflects their values.

Dictatorship precisely _does not_ take into account the interests or
values of the people. The people may or may not support a dictatorial
government, but face very strong coercive pressure not to speak out or
take other action.

Thus Representative
Republicanism reflects the values of freedom and self-determination
(America, Great Britain, Australia and the like). Those people who rule
others by tyrannical domination will in the end accept that type of
rule themselves--witness Congo, Zimbabwe and the like.

Where do you get off blaming the people of the Congo and Zimbabwe for
being misruled? And when you bring in the Congo, are you aware of its
history of being raped and murdered by Western imperialists (King
Leopold et al.) and the extent to which that devastation made it very
difficult for the land to recover? The Congo is one of the most
egregious examples of genocide and largescale theft of resources in
history. And now, it's somehow the people's fault that gangs have guns
and shoot them. As for Zimbabwe, there's plenty of resistance to the
depredations of the Mugabe regime, but so far, the coercive power of
the state has staved off the opposition through brutality and
election-rigging.

Despotism--benevolent or otherwise--is successful only in places where
patriarchism is inbred into the culture (Saudi Arabia, etc.). And so
on.

Absolute rule until fairly recently was a universal phenomenon in
state societies.

In the end America works because it reflects the values of the American
people. To be sure, this is never unanimous nor even in most cases
clearly defined. But the process allows for that value to be more or
less paramount. It is not a clear guarantee against evil, incompetence
or profiteering. But it DOES work--to the extent that no matter how
much or how unfairly America is vilified, "the shining city on a hill"
is still an irresistable draw to much of the rest of the world. America
does not have border guards to keep people in, after all.

That's mostly because the economy is still much stronger than most
other economies. We hear less about immigration to relatively
impoverished Costa Rica, though its democracy arguably functions
better than America's.

I do think that you make some good points, and you write well, but you
are overgeneralizing, and apologies in advance if I'm being unfair,
but some of your remarks seem to me to smack of the racist concept of
"Oriental Despotism" as inherent of the "Orient," which is according
to that fabrication ipso facto inherently backward and never subject
to attaining the level of "Western Civilization." There is nothing
inherently "non-Western" about despotism and nothing inherently
"Western" about democracy, though in the latter case, I would readily
admit that inspiration for today's concepts of democracy does mostly
originate from Athenian democracy, the Roman Republic, and writings by
people like Locke -- "Westerners" all.

Michael

If you would like to send a private email to me, please take out the NOTRASH. Please do not email me something which you also posted.

Asians are more attuned to being feudalistic which is inimical to democracy.


"Pan" wrote in message
...
On 14 Mar 2006 03:37:31 -0800, "Liam" wrote:

Benjamin Franklin (I think it was) once said, in paraphrase, that
"Democracy is a suitable form of government only for those who WANT to
be ruled by it. For all others, it is wholly inadequate".

I think that, in the end, the type of government that the people of any
country accept is one that reflects their values.

Dictatorship precisely _does not_ take into account the interests or
values of the people. The people may or may not support a dictatorial
government, but face very strong coercive pressure not to speak out or
take other action.

Thus Representative
Republicanism reflects the values of freedom and self-determination
(America, Great Britain, Australia and the like). Those people who rule
others by tyrannical domination will in the end accept that type of
rule themselves--witness Congo, Zimbabwe and the like.

Where do you get off blaming the people of the Congo and Zimbabwe for
being misruled? And when you bring in the Congo, are you aware of its
history of being raped and murdered by Western imperialists (King
Leopold et al.) and the extent to which that devastation made it very
difficult for the land to recover? The Congo is one of the most
egregious examples of genocide and largescale theft of resources in
history. And now, it's somehow the people's fault that gangs have guns
and shoot them. As for Zimbabwe, there's plenty of resistance to the
depredations of the Mugabe regime, but so far, the coercive power of
the state has staved off the opposition through brutality and
election-rigging.

Despotism--benevolent or otherwise--is successful only in places where
patriarchism is inbred into the culture (Saudi Arabia, etc.). And so
on.

Absolute rule until fairly recently was a universal phenomenon in
state societies.

In the end America works because it reflects the values of the American
people. To be sure, this is never unanimous nor even in most cases
clearly defined. But the process allows for that value to be more or
less paramount. It is not a clear guarantee against evil, incompetence
or profiteering. But it DOES work--to the extent that no matter how
much or how unfairly America is vilified, "the shining city on a hill"
is still an irresistable draw to much of the rest of the world. America
does not have border guards to keep people in, after all.

That's mostly because the economy is still much stronger than most
other economies. We hear less about immigration to relatively
impoverished Costa Rica, though its democracy arguably functions
better than America's.

I do think that you make some good points, and you write well, but you
are overgeneralizing, and apologies in advance if I'm being unfair,
but some of your remarks seem to me to smack of the racist concept of
"Oriental Despotism" as inherent of the "Orient," which is according
to that fabrication ipso facto inherently backward and never subject
to attaining the level of "Western Civilization." There is nothing
inherently "non-Western" about despotism and nothing inherently
"Western" about democracy, though in the latter case, I would readily
admit that inspiration for today's concepts of democracy does mostly
originate from Athenian democracy, the Roman Republic, and writings by
people like Locke -- "Westerners" all.

Michael

If you would like to send a private email to me, please take out the
NOTRASH. Please do not email me something which you also posted.