So why did you tell him that he has to live with reality...

You may talk about lifestyles, maybe. I talked about the mechanism by which power that leads and influences a state is being projected, and legitimated. And here the madness of allowing political party policies overruling the interests of the whole community, the massive lobbying and the inextricable sleaze of politics and industry, the turning of democracies into effective plutocracies (US) or ruling of (corrupt) bureaucracies under heavy PC and socialistic influence (Europe) hardly can be seen as the shining democratic alternative that it claims to be. And the EU: when observers and insiders say that every member of parliament in Brussel is being workd on by a mean of roughly two dozen lobbyists, then you may think that democracy may still be there and is immune to that massive attack on it. I don't - and see that proven in the way the EU has developed over the last 5-10 years, if not longer. these gremias are not elected by the european people, but nevertheless forge rules which elected governments are expected to follow. If such governments (like Merkel said it for Germany) are accepting to obey rules that are outlined to them, without having the ability to reject them, that this turns the idea of elections and democratic procedures on national level into an absurdity, and probably in most European countries also violates constitutions, constitutional rights for sovereignity, and puts these constitutions very much out of effect. All this because of bureaucratic bodies that are not elected, and are not democratically legitimised. There must be a reason why founding fathers of the early EEG (EWG), namely Helmut Schjmidt and Giscard d'Estaing, today are talking so bitterly against the course the EU has set in the past years. Schmidt say it very clearly: this is not the Europe the intentionback then was aiming for, and the accumulation ofunlegitimised power in Brussell's institutions is highly threatening for the national democracies of europe. He also does not hide that in his opinion the new idea of what the EU shall be is doomed to fail, and will become obsolete and inefficient. Quite some old politicians who had resposnebility in the late 70s and 80s agree with that view. The EU is being turned into a dictatorship of bureaucrats who outsit the coming and going of politicians and governments, having the power to influence the process of turning political goals into realities by hindering or helping them when processing them in the internal bureaucratic procedures. that is nothing else than ursurping of power, to a degree that compares to the dominance of the courtly bureaucrats and minstre in acnient china who very much hollowed out the institution of the emperor and turned him into their puppet. It led china to a century-long status of stagnation, in which the country almost got suffocated and prooved to be unable to flexibly respond to the new challenges of changes when the Westerners arrived. Thus it was overthrown.

Then I recommend you throw out Germany of NATO and the EU.

And btw, NATO has no obligation whatever to accept every Peter and Paul as a member - simply because Pauls wishes to become a member, btw. His wish is not NATO's command. The West, and Russia are two huge political spheres, and I also say that the US compares to the historical examples of empires (I mean that as a fact-oriented argu,ment, not a provocation). Empires do not simply stop at this artificial line on a map, or that river. the power and influence they project degrades, the farther away you are from their centre. Beyond the teritory they claim to be theirs, they nevertheless project some influence: border traffic, trade traffic, habits of people living in "the outback", languages being spoken, knowledge of their habits and laws affecting local conditions outside their territories, but close to the border, currency, etc. Between two such spheres or empires therefor it is wise to have a bufferzone of territories not officially belonging to any of them. Else every movement of the one necessarily will immediately affect and force to react the other. the margin for misunderstabndings or errors becomes extrmeely thin that way. Best example: the iron curtain through europe. thatwas such a no-bufferzone-contact between two huge blocks.
Your rephrasing is pathetic in choice of words, but you know that yourself - you picked it nevertheless, because suggestive phrasing like this serves your cause.

I am sure that after the example of cuba - Nicaragua, Honduras, San Salvador, Peru, Chile and Argentina, Panama were doomed to become very lethal, incredible threatening challenges for the mere existence of the US, and the West. Reason enough to launch hidden wars, direct interventions, and support dictatorships that costed the lifes of hunrdeds of thousands. Not to mention the Souteastasian domino... Well, Vietnam was lost. And still we have not Neo-USSR-like nations in that region. Northkorea is an artefact from even earlier times.

A weak reply. :down: NATO is a bright-weathert alliance. Go arguing with that in the face of the political rifts about Afghanistan and troop contributionsd for it.

Here it is: it served it's purpose well duzring the cold war, but with the end of the Soviet Union it failed to reach agreement on it'S future role - the one camp wishing to turn it into a deputy helping to push global ambitions of the major dominant player in the team, the other camp allowing to be intimidated by that demand, but passively refusing to support that by substantial contributions, blocking that agenda indirectly. The age of self-deception sooner or later must come to an end. Really, the Afghanistan controversy is telling much. and as a matter of fact, countries like France, Germany, Italy, probably Spain as well, and smaller ones hiding behind these, will never support a global role for NATO in deeds, not just words. That is diplomacy: to say No, without using the word.

Please don't tell us you are surprised that he has not.

Yes, I wish that we in the United States would learn to take criticism better.

I also wish that we hadn't gotten involved in the worlds problems, mainly in 1917, and that little European stink in 41, since that wasn't 'our' war anyway.

Can't the world take care of itself without us? Get rid of the imperialistic WTO and World Bank, as well as letting the UN move to Brussels....

Lord knows, we always just screw everything up, and everything would be so much better if we would just stick to bad movies and McDonalds.... and letting the EU run our court systems.

I'm sorry, but taking lessons in how the world should work from a former KGB agent is something that I find a bit difficult.

I wanted to say something but Skybird has already said everything. It's wonderful to operate under the assumption that one's vision is better than others', but let's not forget that we aren't dealing with a 'Soviet Empire' of any sort here. Russia is perfectly willing to work with the west so long as its interests are respected. And as I see it, some of you seem to have some sort of ideological block to respecting them.

(in high falsetto voice) "Oh, Skybird you have already said everything that could be said about this problem" Kiss, kiss :roll:

I'm sorry I just couldn't resist it CCIP ... Please forgive me, but come on your an intelligent sort of guy you can come up with something ... :p

My second guess about Putin getting all worked up about the USA is that he is trying to drag Germany and the
EU in agreement to align themselves against us.

Russia's well known investment in Iran is the real reason as our warships steam torward the Persian Gulf.
Just like France stood to lose billions of dollars if we attacked Iraq and they let everyone know they
were against that confrontation.

Putin is a chess player and after thinking about why Putin would say,
"Bush is a nice man to do business with",
I realized he was talking third person to President Bush, saying hey Mr President
were not too happy about your intentions, "Lets make a deal"

Putin has the US Congress on his side ... No one in the majority wants to start a war with Iran, right?
They don't even want us to finish the preventive maintence war we are in right now.

Mr. Bush can't convince the Congress to fund a war ...
all that leaves is for Iran to make the first move and the US Navy to finish it ...
the whistle on tea pot is going to start blowing and
somebody better get out of the way.

This many ships in and around the Persian Gulf means someone has
already thought out a battle plan ...
Now see why Putin is tooten?

May I remind you that, as with Iraq, whatever investments Russia may have in the 'enemy', it will end up being a big winner should a war break out - as it was with Iraq (where it lost what Saddam owed them, but gained oil sales and a bunch of contracts too - net result well in the positive figures). Anything that threatens middle eastern oil is in fact great news for Russia. I would attribute much of Russia's economic upswing lately to the effects of instability in the Middle East on oil prices.

CCIP,
You are right about that.
In less than 2 years, we will have a new "leadership" in the US. I hope they will know history and have a little better understanding of Islam and the need for national self interests.

FFS, why are some of you Americans so eager to make enemies???? :hmm:

Simple. The John Wayne, cowboy mentality of some of our conservatives forces them to ignore opinions that are contrary to their "beliefs". As a matter of faith (defined as certainty without the necessity of having facts to support your position) they believe they are right, and everyone else is wrong, or at least misguided.

Sorry if i hurt someone but at least here i can say that.

Putin put out your tong from Iraq a@s and stop make fool of our self :down:

No, a radar blip on the radar screen that can be distingushed between sea return and a patrol boat ... ala 1964.

Which was a sad day in American history, but enlisted men just fight em ... The higher ups start em.

Well, lets hope that "blip" will not be the beginning of a other sad day for American history. :hmm:

No offence taken

Putin doesn't need to make fools of 'our self' as I believe the American leadership has that ground firmly covered :/\\x:

Very good point, and I'd like to make it a point for distinguishing Putin (and why he's liked in his country, quite aside from "cult of personality") - I see the US conservatives acting largely out of principles and idealism, whereas Putin tends to act pragmatically and with concern for specific & real (rather than ideological) interests.

Again, though I'm not a fan of Putin, I sincerely wish we could have a world where pragmatic forces seek a balance than a world of great ideological struggles between "good and evil" that the American leadership is trying to build a frenzy around. This is why I think Putin is very right in that speech. :hmm:

Putin can't really be accused of personality cult. If we took the usual criteria used for actual valid accusations, some of them would fit, but I think there are two fundamental conditions without which a personality is not a valid target for the accusation:

1. To hinder or to have hindered communism.
2. To actually be a ruling personality, to become a King.

Putin fits neither. He's not doing anything to hinder communism and as far as I'm aware he's not planning to remain personally in power forever, nor does all power concentrates on his person.

True, it's a paradox. He's the most popular Russian politician ever, or at least appears to be, or we believe him to be, or all of them were, while he's not using this popularity to perpetuate his person on power. But that's of the nature of the accusation itself. Somebody has to sit in the head chair and he'll have a name and will be a person, like him or not.

Thus my use of it in quotations (it was brought up in the thread before).

You're quite right, except that I should note that Russians are quite used to having one choice of leader so I wouldn't say his popularity is massively out of proportion (paradoxical though it may be, many Soviet-era leaders were relatively popular; Yeltsin, perhaps Russia's worst leader ever, even had overwhelming popularity for the early part of his career).

But that does bring me back to the question of elections. Putin has stated that he will not be running in 2008, but then he made some rather ominous remarks that he is not planning to step away from public/political life afterwards.
My personal prediction is Ivanov, in which case I think we can safely expect him to continue along Putin's lines, and even perhaps more forcefully.

The other way of looking at things is that maybe Russia thinks that Nato hasn't any power. Say America invaded Iran? Would Nato really be able to do anything about it?

Or maybe Russia thinks that Nato is America because America is the most powerful nation in it.Therfore Nato moving into Eastern Europe is a threat to Russia.

I think that there are some good points raised here on both sides, the one thing we can't dispute is that Russia is arming up, question is why?

My God ! in the time it took me to write this you lot have gone bonkers! Page two already!

Hope it still makes sense.

I know. (where's the "attempting to hold grin" smiley?) I brought it up! :rotfl:

And when I say some criteria would fit, it is implied but perhaps it's best to make it clear that whoever sits in the leading chair will always fit into something. Even if a head of state rejects attention or attempts to hide his figure, which probably means political suicide, this would still be a display of an individual personality. The damn thing is inescapable. It goes round and round :ping: and never reaches anywhere.

Reading this thread has only reinforced my isolationist tendencies.

Where's this president again?
http://www.bvml.org/webmaster/patton.html
Shame such a president doesn't exist.

the U.S ever since it has been created needed war to survive, they were created from the civil war, they needed to "re-invent " themselves so they stay a superpower, and to stay a superpower they created their disgusting foreign policy(which i spit on:down:) and all the wars they been at, ww1,ww2, korean, vietnam, somalia, yugoslavia, cold war, gulf war 1, gulf war 2, aghanistan , "war on terror:roll::roll:" there never wudda been extremists if america wa never so violent in the first place, obviously theywudda been there but not america haters, then 9/11 never wudda happened:roll:, so i spit on NATO, UN and NAFTA, UN for being puppets and not even trying to punish america for their crimes, NATO for not trying to stop america and being puppets, and nafta for taking away jobs and giving them to lousy illegal aliens who dont have the balls to back to their country and legally get a passport.

FINALLY SOMEONE SAYS SOMETHING THAT 10000000000000~% should be U.S right now, then there wud be no kosovo crap, no tearaparts of countries, no iraq problem , no north korea proble, no iran problem etc.. all these problems go away lol :doh: