Posts by JohnAmiria
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I found the following video from what seems to be Georgian TV. Nothing fancy, no voiceover for most of it, and really, really depressing to watch:
Don't be depressed Russell, the Russians are merely assisting the South Ossetians with their dreams of self determination. It's Democracy in Action! Once North and South Ossetia declares itself a united sovreign nation peace will prevail and the Russians will pull out. Unless they're asked to stay by the newly installed Ossetian government.
BTW, John, don't you think it's just a wee bit racist (and hellishly arrogant and presumptous) to presume "we" can handle democracy, but those funny foreign types can't without "inevitable" civil wars?
Don't project, Craig. When did I talk about "those funny foreign types"? I stand by my view that if China were to sudddenly switch to a democratic system ie grant universal suffrage to it's citizens, it would lead to civil war. Which modern society/nation has moved smoothly from non-democracy to democracy? There needs to be a transistion to democracy [as is possibly (hopefully) happening in Zimbabwe as we speak] and perhaps that is what China is doing now with the 'elections' Simon is referring to.
I find much of the concern for China and Chinese downtroddenness a tad racist and paternalistic.
Damn, am I forced to play the 'some of my best friends are Chinese' card?
I was one of those people who was certain that the apartheid regime and Soviet domination of Russia would only end in equally "inevitable" civil wars of mind-numbing ferocity. Don't know about you, but I'm pretty glad that my pre-cognitive abilities were zero-for-two there.
Well I'm glad you were wrong but then unlike you I wasn't one of those people who thought the end of apartheid would bring civil war to South Africa in the first place. Oh yes, they had a 'transition' to democracy too didn't they?
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Fark, the runner up was waaaay better than the winner. Were the judges drunk?
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I dunno, I've just got this thing about Civil War.... it never seems to do much good for the civilian population....
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you'd really want to defend a employee covertly taping staff meetings? Really?
I would if that boss was telling his staff to go all out and solicit more investors into the Mortgage Fund, because the Mortgage Fund is insolvent and they need more deposits to cover their outgoings.
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Despite the wide western perception, we are not looking at an equivalence to either Stalin or Hitler in 2008.
I never thought such a thing, and as I noted earlier the current Chinese Communist party is quite different to Mao's. If China were to institute 'western'-style democracy it would inevitably end up in civil war as each province/state decided to go their own way. Which may explain why the West want China to have 'democracy' -- it's the only way to fracture a bloc 1 billion strong. I also agree that the 'western' idea of democracy is flawed too. Everyone in the US has the right to vote and yet they remain a 2 Party state - you'd think that after all these years they'd have done a bit better than that.
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Doh! That should have been:
Is it Political correctness gone mad? Yes.
Is it an election year? Yes.But that doesn't make it Political correctness gone mad in an election year
Kinda spoiled my point, eh?
Damn you, Preview/Post Reply!!
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Maybe her name was Carolyn Mann?
Is it Political correctness gone mad in an election year? Yes. Is it an election year? Yes.
But that doesn't make it Political correctness gone mad in an election year.
Nice song, nice video, but I don't think the two actually match up together anyway.
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enjoying their new Full HD Freeview tuner built-in 32" Sony W-Series
Yeah, do you think Sony coulda let us know that was coming to market sooner? Like maybe 3 months ago when I bit the bullet and bought a big screen plasma (Sharp) to enjoy the Olympics?
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It really highlights a common view in the West that the leadership in Beijing doesn't enjoy the free and willing support of the Chinese public...
Well they are a one party totalitarian regime aren't they? Some free and fair elections, with democratic choices would solve the leadership issue surely?
But if you're talking about the Olympics then yes, of course, the Chinese people are all for it. You'd get more opposition (proportionately) here in NZ to the RWC2011 when compared to Chinese opposing Beijing2008.
Chinese communism isn't even a 100 years old. And the modern Chinese communism is nothing like that of Mao's communism. As my Chinese friends often tell me: China was doing all sorts of 'civilised' sh1t while we (europeans) were still painting on cave walls and running around in bearskins. An exaggeration yes, but I take their point. Many of them see Chinese Communism as merely a bump on the road of China's 8,000 year old history. A bump that given time will be trodden flat.
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I watched the British version of the opening ceremony, and the commentators did allow themselves some snide commentary on how China...
Watching the opening ceremony all I could think of was throwing my hands up and surrendering now. China will rule the planet one day. Possibly in my lifetime.
from this morning's SideswipeThe 20 most spoken languages in the world:
Mandarin 873 million, Hindi 450 million, English 341 million, Spanish 320 million, Arabic 250 million, Portuguese 177.5 million, Bengali 171 million, Russian 170 million, Japanese 122 million, German 100 million, Punjabi 88 million, French 79,572,000, Wu 77.2 million, Javanese 75. 5 million, Korean 74 million, Vietnamese 67.4 million, Marathi 68 million, Telugu 69.7 million, Tamil 66 million, Italian 61.5 million.
(Via Wikipedia's List of languages by number of native speakers)
(They speak Portugese in Brazil, hence it's high ranking)