COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Love those glasses. Man, those are cool.
ReplyDeletePakistan is one of the countries worst hit by the current global financial and economic crisis.
ReplyDeleteSome pessimists fear it is about to implode. If that happens, all hope of stability and security in the entire region will disappear for at least a generation.
Meanwhile, it will be a tragedy if the protracted misadventure in Iraq is to be succeeded by a longer and larger misadventure in Afghanistan. But that is exactly what looks like happening.
Tragedy in the Making?
Always back to Pakistan and the ISI, that's were the trails always seems to lead.
ReplyDeleteThe old "Hole in the Wall Gang" was nothin', not when compared to Pakistan.
"Pakistan has hijacked the US foreign policy in the whole region ...
ReplyDeleteThey have delivered zilch ..."
The notion that democracies in general, and America in particular, are at a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble world of geopolitics must be jettisoned. The skills we need are all well known to President-elect Obama.
ReplyDeleteIncorporating these most American of concepts into our foreign policy may offer the new president some surprising advantages for coping with an unfamiliar new world.
America, it turns out, can handle the end of the unipolar moment.
World of Hurt
Somehow my poster dealy got all screwed up. Isn't like it was.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, those are Idaho Grouse Hunting Glasses, Sam. Used them all the time. Didn't know they'd gone international :)
So I'm trying another post to see if it's back like it was.....
Roger. It's back.
ReplyDeleteIndia has been wracked by bomb attacks the past three years, which police blame on Muslim militants intent on destabilizing this largely Hindu country. Nearly 700 people have died.
ReplyDeleteSince May a militant group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has taken credit for a string of blasts that killed more than 130 people. The most recent was in September, when a series of explosions struck a park and crowded shopping areas in the capital, New Delhi, killing 21 people and wounding about 100.
Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
82 Dead
At Obama's press conference today, a reporter asked him how he reconciled his campaign promise of change and new vision with his appointment of so many Washington insiders. Obama replied: "Understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost—it comes from me.
ReplyDeleteMy job is to provide a vision of where we are going and to make sure my team is implementing it." He added that his aides had to be smart enough to advise him on that vision and experienced enough—knowledgeable enough about the way Washington works—to put it into effect.
By that standard, Robert Gates is an excellent choice.
Staying On
He added that his aides had to be smart enough to advise him on that vision
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping he's got some damned good aides.
j willie closed a thread describing Mr Rubin, at Citibank, as being as catastrophic as Mr Bush at the White House.
ReplyDeleteRubin's rule in his world (financial) has been just as catastrophic as Bush's rule in his world (political).
To start, I suggested many threads ago, that Mr Rubin had been a "good" Treasury Secretary. The case for which can certainly be made.
This was never meant to be a general commendation of Robert Rubin nor his stewardship of Citibank. But an acknowledgement that during the time he spent at Treasury there was not a finacial meltdown. Despite the problems in Mexico and Russia, which he and his team dealt with.
While the seeds of the current crisis were planted and nutured during his tenure, subsequent Treasury Secretaries never weeded the garden. In fact they did not see the weeds, for they'd become the garden.
And the entire financial elite bought into the fiction that liabilities could some how become assets.
The Rubin Economic Team, it is on its' way to DC, to serve in the administration of Barack Obama.
Without Mr Rubin.
The Senate will confirm their appointments.
Citibank has been rescued, nationalized, for our own good.
Mr Rubin remains, there at Citi.
A company I have no stake in, but for a $40 billion preferred stock position, that we US citizens hold collectively through the Federal Treasury.
$40 billion, in non-voting shares.