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By Shempatolla (registered) - website | Posted December 13, 2010 at 15:35:24
Maybe if the west placed more conditions instead of less on the aid it dished out to the "developing world " we might see some better results for our investments. Qualification for this money has to amount to more than "we're poor, give us money". We can argue till the cows come home about regimes with human rights abuses and who supported them.
And I'm sorry but there is a right and a wrong, and it is important to remember which is which and who is who. How many former east bloc nations elected to stay aligned with Russia after the fall of the iron curtain? Poland, The Czechs AND Slovaks, the former East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine have all lined up to sign trade, travel, airspace, and defence treaties with the west. Most of them want to enter NATO.
With respect to Cuba and its living standards. If things are so rosy, why won't the Castro brothers have free and open elections? Why is property ownership forbidden? Why are resort workers searched daily when they leave? Why do every year thousands of Cubans try to flee( in ramshackle rafts and boats overloaded to the point of sinking ) across the 90 miles of sea to Florida?
China has had confrontations with both India and Russia, threatens Taiwan with invasion oh every other week, does little if anything to reign in that wack job Kim Jong Il, has grown increasingly aggressive in the use of its navy in claiming the Spratly Islands. Bejing has exported ballistic missile technology to Iran, large arms sales to Sudan, and generally stirs the pot whenever and where ever it can to make things difficult for the US.
Russian "democracy" has take a big step backward with the media tightly controlled, journalists murdered and disappeared, businessmen imprisoned on bogus tax charges and their companies seized and merged with state owned oligarchies, and business and organized crime rolled into one big hybrid of the wild west and Capone's Chicago. The Russians have brually prosecuted a civil revolt in Chechnya with tens of thousands killed.
The wackos that run Iran, despite the increasingly vocal civil disobedience continue to persecute it's gay and lesbian population, there is no such thing as freedom of speech, Iran continues to defy the international community in it's pursuit of nuclear weapons, is involved in financing terrorist organizations in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
During the Pax Romana, the Pax Britannica, and the last century the Pax Americana the majority of the world saw long periods of relative peace. It did so because each of those imperial powers exerted vast influence in the world, had well established organized and structured colonial systems with defined rules of conduct and corresponding trade systems which brought prosperity to large portions of the known world. Each of those powers limited or eliminated the possibility of large scale wars by involving itself regionally where required and yes in sometimes brutal and predatory fashion. This served both its own aims and the greater aim of relative peace. We've seen a disintegration of this to some degree because of a combination of many contributing factors including but not limited to poor policies, the expansion and access to multimedia by everyone, the general decline in the willingness of western societies to defend their principles and interests in the world.
The world is probably a more dangerous place now than it was at the height of the cold war. It will be interesting to see what happens. It is far from the fault of the United States.
Cheers
Greg Galante
Hamilton
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