Posts by Simon Grigg
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The bear has definately escaped the cage. The question now is how hungry it is.
What astounds me, 17 years after the wall came down was how quickly the much touted single hyper-power era came to a close.
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Anyway, Russia is back, and it looks more like the Russia of the Tsars, with the sort of expansionist foreign policy that was constantly being checked by the British Empire, than the fear-driven policy of the Soviets.
Yes, agreed, and much emboldened by the US failures in Iraq and stalemate in Afghanistan. Georgia will be seen as a major blow to US ambition and foreign policy too, as a much weakened Georgia with likely a new leader is a probable end game here.
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As such it the analysis of the Belgravia Dispatch that the war is an isolated incidence entirely generated for the benefit of the Republican candidate John McCain by neoconservative conspritators?
Thanks for the background Angus, but I really didn't get that from The Belgravia Dispatch story at all. In fact quite the opposite:
This being said, if the horrors inflicted on varied Abkhazians, Ossetians and Georgians this past week (by both sides) must be seen from these provincial, grossly self-interested shores merely through the lens of the U.S. Presidential election, let me chime in very briefly within these contours.
His tack seemed to be more that McCain is both out of his depth and leaping onto this for political advantage.
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Asked and answered. Despite his recent Berlin speech, Obama is running for POTUS not POTW.
Yep, but wouldn't it be a pleasant change just for once for whoever is POTUS not to have to find ogres to placate some US national desire to have enemies everywhere.
The world is not a Marvel Comic.
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THE IMPENETRABLE BAMBOO CURTAIN??!!
Ha, I've not heard that phrase for a decade or two. I guess I'm lucky to come from a family who has travelled (both my parents were briefly in China in the late 50s) and a I spent a part of my youth in Asia, but I guess for many of Keith's generation being in China is almost unimaginable and the ignorance (innocently held) of how much the nation has changed is something you encounter fairly often, and its trans-generation too.
That said, when I first drove in, I was saying to myself over and over again "I'm in China, I'm in China". It was an extraordinarily exciting thing.
It is an incredible thing to behold and nothing quite prepares you for it.
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All working together to do what's best for us with none of those petty distractions of western-style democracy.
With all due respect Rich, why should any country feel the need to introduce "western-style democracy" to keep westerners such as yourself happy. Democracy does not have to be as defined in the Western hemisphere..I though we were past this semi-colonial attitude.
In Java for example, things are often decided at village level, including who the village will support up at the vote for the next level. It doesn't fit into the narrow box of "western-style democracy" but why should it.
It's worth noting that as a nation China has, without any real help, pulled itself out of a century long hell-hole largely the result of Western & Japanese intervention and it's aftermath. It's got a way to go but boycotting anything is little more than a slap in the face to that and to the Chinese people.
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Whether that is due to lack of concern for New Zealanders' rights outside New Zealand or just sheer laziness on the part of the MFAT is in question.
Hasn't there been a tightening of all business visas and associated requirements. I'd be keen, as a person who may require such a thing in the near future, to know where you and Emma think that may be going in the period after the games?
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"Although I can (in some cases) understand why, it seems a shame that the country is not yet confident enough to relax and be itself in front of strangers."
probably I'd say because, from a distance, many of those strangers are more comfortable writing their own script, like this rather half baked little rant.
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Damn, am I forced to play the 'some of my best friends are Chinese' card?
No not at all and my finger was not pointed specifically at you but there is an element of we we know best (that is also found in that link that I posted when Craig introduced Churchill into the thread) that is found in many Western ponderings and stands over China. It is paternalistic and, dare I say, often not welcomed. I'm in a country right now which get the same from, mostly, Australia (population 25 million; Indonesia 240 million) and I'm suprised that more Indonesians don't wear the T-shirts I saw in Jakarta with one raised finger pointed at Australia as that is the prevailing attitude to the advice.
I'm not sure if the elections in China are a way to prepare it for democratic change any more than the EFA is a way to ease NZ into nu-Stalinism (although there are those who would argue otherwise). We have to be very careful not to enforce and demand democracy as narrowly defined in the Western European tradition, (which includes the US, which is after all really just a European extension) on the rest of the world.
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isn't exactly in full swing there's a less flattering reason why folks might be a wee bit reluctant to offer their candid opinion to an Al-Jazeera reporter bearing photos of 'Tank man'.
there actually was a reason proffered in the story, and that is that he is a Western icon, not a Chinese one, for reasons, firstly because of the suppression of the imagery in the years afterwards, and later, because when the imagery became more available, China had moved beyond it. Maybe they are right, maybe you are Craig but its an interesting point that he remains a purely Western rallying point.