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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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The most peaceful conflict around. Perfect model. The Canadian and Danish military take turns visiting the island and raising their flags and the Danes leave the Canadian military a bottle of Schnapps and the Canadians leave the Danes a bottle of good Canadian whiskey. Now thats a great way to negotiate disputes. I'll drink to that! How does the song go: Ein Prosit - gemuetlichkeit! https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/w...-schnapps.html
The most peaceful conflict around. Perfect model. The Canadian and Danish military take turns visiting the island and raising their flags and the Danes leave the Canadian military a bottle of Schnapps and the Canadians leave the Danes a bottle of good Canadian whiskey. Now thats a great way to negotiate disputes. I'll drink to that! How does the song go: Ein Prosit - gemuetlichkeit! https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/w...-schnapps.html
Good one Hans. I was unable to read your post (paywall), but I was curios. So I found this on youtube.
In my view, whether a country is democratic depends on the integrity of its electoral system. I think such system must be fair, accessible and unbiased.
Is there any organization that ranks countries in terms of the extent to which they meet the definition of "democracy"?
Secondly, is there agreement that all governments of the world suffer some extent of corruption? If so, does the fact of corruption make a country not democratic, if it does not affect the voting system?
Thirdly, in some countries (All?) the representative electoral system is such that the media plays a big role in the choice of the electorate. As a result, to be successful and win, you must be independently wealthy, or become indebted to wealthy individual and corporate donors, to run a media campaign. This seems true in Canada and USA, for example. Does this disqualify them from claiming to be democratic?
This is the result of a debate with two of my friends on this issue!
~ Bob A (T-S/P)
Democracy and corruption. It's often a battle between which small group will get rich off of the resources. And that has been the case in "democratic" Ukraine.
Reading from Wikipedia.
There has always been a political struggle between pro-European and pro-Russian parties/ trade blocs. The communist party was banned in 1991, but came back in 1994. Ukrainian oligarchs were getting rich and funded political parties to get them richer.
Julia Tymoshenko was a leader of the Orange Revolution, wanted to join NATO, and became Prime Minister in 2005. She lost the election in 2010 by 3.5% and was imprisoned (She was second in 2014, and third in 2019). the new President Victor Yanukovych wanted Ukraine to be a neutral state, gave up their weapon-grade uranium, accepted Russian as an official language, and allowed Russia to continue their naval base in Crimea. And struggle with a huge IMF debt. His not signing the agreement with the EU (approved by parliament but opposed by Russia) led to his overthrow. More than 50% of his ministers were from his eastern state of Donbas, and 46% of the budget for economic and social development went to Donbas. It's claimed that from his political career he had developed a net worth of $12 billion.
In the 2019 Ukrainian election 73% voted for Volodymyr Zelenskyy for President, the centralist peace candidate, and only 1-2% for the neo-fascist leader. Yet the neo-fascist Azov continued to murder and loot those in the eastern provinces. The new party, Servant of the People (the name of a TV show starring Zelenskyy as President of Ukrainian. He was also the voice of Paddington Bear), had 254 seats, while the second party was the pro-Russia Opposition Platform - for Life with 43. I like their parliamentary idea of half of the seats for ridings, and half for a party list of vote by rep. But have pro-Russian ridings been targetted for violence?
The new President stated that they were getting rid of the symptomatic corruption of former governments. Yet, the new government with it's Libertarian ideals was selling off national resources like farmland. To those who worked there, worker co-ops or local communities or even oligarchs? No. To big foreign companies.
In October 2019 Zelenskyy and Putin negotiated a peace deal but the Ukrainian militias continued to fight. Since 2014 the war in eastern Ukraine had killed 13,000.
Russia, with the claimed goal of de-miltarization, have destroyed airports and military bases, yet Ukraine has so many more weapons than ever before that Russians can't drive into cities. Russia, with the goal of de-nazification, have hit the Azov base in Mariupol, but have more Ukrainians hating them than before, and neo-nazi leaders can easily escape to Poland.
Today we have the Ukrainians dug in till their death - no surrender! Russia - no withdrawal! And millions will die by bomb or starvation.
In the 2019 Ukrainian election 73% voted for Volodymyr Zelenskyy for President,
Democracy & Propaganda
We are all watching the brutal invasion of Ukraine. It is obvious Zelenskyy is a popular democratic leader and Putin is an authoritarian dictator.
Zelenskyy has democracy, Putin has propaganda. You can debate semantics if you want, but not too hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys here.
The core issue, IMHO, IS: among the various types of government across the world, past and present, which type of government seems best to you for Canada in the future? Is there a problem with our “Representative” style of government, when the political units are so large? What form in other nations, if different, do you admire?
At the moment, participation in the thread seems to be relatively high and constant for a non-chess thread. Will this discussion continue for a while longer?
I agree Brad.........and I think the world economy will also be majorly divided into two halves across the globe, given sanctions, and Russia's allies..
So Putin invades Ukraine, and the world finds itself in a hot war that threatens to expand into WW3.
With the internet and social media, we have a corresponding propaganda war.
The knee jerk reaction is for all to increase defence spending.
But a win for global survival depends upon winning that propaganda war.
Putin tells the Russian people that they are under attack from the evil West.
It is way too easy for him to point to military spending.
Paradoxically to win the propaganda war and encourage Russians to overthrow Putin is to reduce military spending.
I don't mean immediately. We need to support Ukraine.
But can the West successfully argue for reduced military spending once the immediate threat is over?
Last edited by Bob Gillanders; Saturday, 12th March, 2022, 10:37 AM.
To date, this thread participation has seemed to stabilize after 3 weeks. Will this discussion continue for a while longer?
The core issue, IMHO, IS: among the various types of government across the world, past and present, which type of government seems best, to you, for Canada in the future? Is there a problem with our “Representative” style of government, when the political units are so large? What form in other nations, if different, do you admire? What are the key features of the type of government you like?
Among the various types of government across the world, past and present, which type of government seems best, to you, for Canada in the future? Is there a problem with our “Representative” style of government, when the political units are so large? What form in other nations, if different, do you admire? What are the key features of the type of government you like.
I will not be posting here again, unless I find a particularly good post on human governance that might generate some discussion again. In that case, I might resurrect the thread, since the topic is an important one.
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