Posted on 02/14/2006 8:38:23 PM PST by presidio9
The scandal with the publication of Prophet Muhammad caricatures in European newspapers has outlined a few rather interesting details. First of all, the world has become open as the West wanted it to be. Secondly, the multi-cultural aspect of Europe has become more than just obvious. The scandal with the cartoons is a very important lesson that Russia needs to learn.
Western politicians have been urging the whole world to become more open. According to the Western point of view, globalization is an inevitable and positive process. It therefore means that the so-called global openness should replace national sovereignty.
The idea of the globalized world has returned to the West as a serious blow. Production centers were moved to remote parts of the world long ago. The Western economy has lost its erstwhile power of competition. More importantly, the world’s biggest oil reserves are located outside the zone of the “gold billion.” To crown it all, the Western civilization has been declining steadily against the background of the propaganda of consumption and personal extra-comfort that have become norms in the Western lifestyle. Having children has become something like atavism in the West which causes too much discomfort and trouble to people's professional careers and personal development. Unlike the “highly developed Western civilization,” Asia , Africa and Latin America suffer from the overpopulation crisis. Western nations gradually lose their cultural identities giving way to undemanding enduring and charismatic nations which in their turn continue their invasion in the West by its own permission.
Indeed, the West has been successfully using the phenomenon of globalization for many years pursuing its selfish needs and minimizing negative consequences. Western countries interfere in other countries’ sovereign affairs, conquer foreign markets, control cash flows, attract cheaper labour force, etc. One has to acknowledge that the Western world has accomplished a lot at this point. On the other hand, every action has a reaction. The world, which the West has been ruthlessly transforming for years, has started to transform the West in return.
American and European politicians promote democracy as the ultimate social structure that should reign in the whole world. They should probably enjoy the victory of Hamas at the democratic elections in Palestine . The West thinks that it has a right to observe and control the fulfillment of democracy all over the world and endorse Western standards in other countries’ cultures. In return, the West has to witness global riots caused with a publication of several drawings in a provincial European newspaper. If the US or the EU administration believes that it is entitled to run a military action against a sovereign state, it means that many Americans may fall victims of a terrorist attack at any moment.
The Western standards have made the world look a fright. Social and political technologies may eventually play a malicious joke with the West. Many respectable politicians acknowledge nowadays that massive immigration may destroy the Western civilization in the end. Immigrants continue to conquer the world promoting their own needs and values. They play a serious role in Europe's political life already. It brings up the idea that they will become a powerful election force in both the USA and Europe in 10 or 15 years.
As a rule, immigrants preserve their national identity, which gives them a reason to defend their rights and needs. They express their protests when a European government bans the wearing of hijab headscarves in European schools. They put Paris in chaos burning thousands of cars and smashing windows. They demand respect for their traditions when European newspapers publish the controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. They do not seem to care about the multicultural paradise on the globe which the West propagandizes so violently.
Immigration has become a serious problem for the USA too. Non-white Americans have become much more socially and politically active than they used to be in the past. There are US experts who think that immigrants and their growing families will eventually create one of the most serious problems for the USA ’s internal security in the 21st century.
It gives up the idea that there will not be a notion of the “Western world” in the future. Those nations which turn down their authenticity to the benefit of the myth about the globalized world will inevitably lose their viability under the pressure of alien aggressive cultures. The nations, which created the Western civilization decades ago and defended its standards and values throughout many bloody wars, do not feel at home in their own lands nowadays. They may continue to fight for homosexuals' rights and explore the nature of women’s orgasm, but they may also defend a right for lethal injections.
The Russian government must pay as much attention as possible to all of the above-mentioned problems. The Russian authorities need to develop a thought-out national policy and identify strategic national goals. Russia already suffers from regional separatism, the ongoing war in Chechnya, the growing extremist sentiments, etc.
American and European officials have perfectly exercised the groundbreaking power of propaganda and PR technologies. Their impact has overthrown empires, tyrants and even international associations. The West has managed to turn whole nations inside out without using missiles and bombs. The uncontrollable distribution of Islamic extremism in the world – the number one concern for the globe – and the growing popularity of such sentiments that leads to the establishment of terrorist networks originally spring from well-known Western political technologies. It is an open secret that the USA launchws several of such projects to struggle with the USSR during the Cold War era.
One may only hope that the global protest against the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons is just a single occurrence, or a result of a provocation that will never repeat again in the future and will not take the shape of a global anti-Western movement. It is obvious though that the world is changing right before our very eyes. If events like this continue to occur, the West may fall into a snake pit that it has dug out itself.
You're so right. This statement coming from a Russian newspaper is laughable. Russia was the very first nation on earth to legalize abortion, and it was from Russia that this horror spread itself over the world.
Terms "racist" and "xenophobic" could be badges awarded by liberals and multiculturalists. Something like Purple Hearts accrued by an enemy.
Accepting your point, it is precisely their closed culture that makes them so strong. I wouldn't presume to bring our own obnoxious baggage into their land, but instead to assimilate.
As things are now, pop-Japanese culture is plenty in love with Western concepts, and the Indian work ethic is, "how do you say, PLEASE HOLD WHILE I CONNECT YOU, MA'AM..."
"Yeah, but the Asians are smart enough not to let too many foreigners in."
Then we must incentivize their coming here. At least in bigger numbers than the present usurpers we face.
Here's hoping it won't come to that anyway. Even as strictly operational allies, they will be important, failing the exchange of our population as some desperate experiment to save ourselves...
I am neither. Also, the Japanese economy has been a mess for 15 years. They are going to continue to experience similiar growing pains to our own.
India, not China is the most likely to replace us as the global economic leader. But this will still take several generations.
Nothing would make the Russians happier than if they could stay neutral while we fought it out with Islam. They are allies of convenience and nothing more.
You get tired of all this freedom stuff and long for the times when we were all ruled by tyrants and overlords.
Yup, who needs freedom. Apparently the rest of the world doesn't....... < /sarcasm off >
F the sheetheads!!!
If they are real men then they would not be sending women and children to do the dirty work while they hide IED's in the dark.
Come on you wimps- fight us face to face.
Ready and waiting for your chicken&h!t a$$e$...
I agree - we've used them too ! I think we have them in a pickle on Iran. The Russians aren't stupid.
Another post above said "Never trust a Russian". I agree with that comment too. But, I'd rather split booty in the end with Russians then Muslims
In WWI deals were cut for the spoils of the Ottoman Empire before the "Great Game" was started. I'd bet there's some positioning going on right now.
Russia has never fought us directly, in the open, so to speak.
Instead, The USSR, and now Russia is content to let others do their bleeding for them. It would not be beyond the behaviour of the Soviet Union, (in the 'bad' old days?) to pit the forces of Islam and the Chinese against their old 'cold war' enemy.
Deniability exists should we prevail, plus the opportunity to pitch in "on our side" and share in the spoils of conquest.
Failing that, the mutual destruction of all potential adversaries by one another would leave Russia in a great position to take advantage of that weakness and establish global or nearly global hegemony.
I do not expect to see them in this fight directly, but in the background pulling strings.
I may be wrong, but unless they are directly threatened they will largely keep out of it, except to goad potential adversaries and facillitate their mutual animosities.
Putin is no stranger to Soviet era Strategy, he is 'ex' KGB.
"Russia has never fought us directly, in the open, so to speak."
My post didn't say we'd ever fought them directly. It said "Russia has always fought WITH U.S. in the end"
I agree with all the posts that say they'd love to bleed us and I doubt we are stupid enough to let that happen.
It may well but not along lines of race or religion. \
Given the technically uncreative nature of the Muslim culture, congenial neither to capitalism nor science, one shutters to think of the future world. But it must be more than the narrow rationalism of the past, which has produced men helpless before the will of the 'conquered."
Unfortunately, our universities are filled with those who have been taught that we are guilty.
I agree with the author. However, I feel most of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of some shortsighted representatives.
We truck our produce and other goods across country, import foreign produce and other goods, send our children off to school on buses and then we have the unmitigated gall to scream that it's someone else's fault that oil is in short supply and we need to tear up Alaska to find more.
Currently, I'm observing the plains states complaining about their water tables that have been reduced by lack of conservation. HA! What will California do if the Colorado River dries up? I know. They'll attempt to purchase it from Washington state...but that's been tried before...by Enron.
And now Bush is selling off the forest to lumber mills. How many more houses will have to be built to accommodate all the immigrants?
The Bible tells of the last days at Rev. 6:3-8 and we're in them.
It was only after Hitler had broken the non-aggression pact that we ended up on the same side.
After that war, they served as advisors to our enemies, supplied them with arms, and in general, fought us by proxy in Korea and Vietnam. They supplied the missiles which the Cubans aimed at us, not to mention their own strategic forces.
They have not been 'with' us since WWII, and then only united against a common enemy who had betrayed them.
Please, give that another think. They are in it for the Rodina, first, last, and always.
The writer talks as though Russia was NOT part of the "WEST"!
While some of what is written has a few grains of truth in it, the hyperbolic rest of it, is laughable.
"... never trust a Russian."
I think that should be qualified. I happen to know some Russians immigrants in this country who are hardworking, ordinary (except for their broken English) kind of joes. I think you mean the high-ranking Russians are the ones not to be trusted.
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