[Tolik]

...This year's August upheaval coincides, probably not coincidentally, with the world's preoccupation with that charade of international comity, the Olympics. For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremony featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi's 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film "Triumph of the Will," has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.

A worldwide audience of billions swooned over the Beijing ceremony. Who remembers 1934? Or anything.

 

[Tolik]

Nailed It!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about). Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Incredibly insightful article and articulated as well as he thinks.

I usually find a few points of contention with Mr. Will.

But I must say I agree with everything in this article. We are at a major crossroads and America better be awake and vigilant ready for a long fight.

$4-a-gallon gasoline is a drop in the gas bucket compared to what Putin wants to do to America economically, which is his primary pay-back scheme, to prove that communism is — even after Reagan's stunning economic victory — the superior economic system.

But at the heart of it is the same old Russian bully, whether Czar or Bolshevik or Stalinist or Putinist (learning from the ChiComs to accept an amalgamation of whatever works, even limited free markets in order to maintain totalitarianism).

The reason behind the seemingly mysterious and accidental August recurrence, is simple Mr. Will. It is at the threshold of winter. The Russians do very well controlling their enemies in the winter. It is their best opportunity to dig in like a tick into the scruff of their enemies and prey.

[xzins]

My sense is that agreements were made at Yalta. Georgia will not be defended. If it comes to it, neither will the Ukraine.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Clinging to the Obama campaign's talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama's zest for diplomacy, and that America should get the U.N. Security Council "to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint." Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the U.N. for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.

Ouch!

[McGruff]

McCain...favors expelling Russia from the G-8, and organizing a league of democracies to act where the U.N. is impotent...

Sounds like a plan.

[fatez]

The real beneficiaries are the Red Chinese. Moscow is flexing it's muscles, but her long term prospects are very dim. China is watching how the West is reacting and planning accordingly. Taiwan has got to be watching this nervously (probably even Japan).

Putin has just proved what lots of Freeper’s have said over the years, NATO no longer serves a purpose. The pretense of shared defense does not work if your partners are not armed and dangerous. Does anybody fear Brussels?

[Law is not justice but process]

I do not know if this was exactly the point George Will was trying to make, but it finally dawned on me that we Conservatives should really stop bemoaning the ineffectiveness of the United Nations. What is far more frightening than an ineffective UN is an effective one. Imagine an organization where the votes of totalitarian Russia and China count exactly the same as that of the United States. Or an organization where the huge democracy of Brazil could be voted down by Venezuela and Cuba. Voting members of the UN include Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and [insert the name of your least favorite repressive foreign regime here]. I finally realized that the last thing we would want is an effective UN. A UN that could really galvanize itself into action would have intervened in Iraq - to restore Saddam Hussein. An effective UN would come to the US and take away our guns and SUVs, no matter what the American electorate or Constitution might say. An effective UN would be dedicated to preserving the right of tyrannical governments to violate the human rights of their own people.

Thank God for an ineffective UN. I will vote for the candidate who says he (or she) will make any and all efforts to insure the UN remains impotent.

[hinckley buzzard]

favors expelling Russia from the G-8, and organizing a league of democracies to act where the U.N. is impotent, which is whenever the subject is important.

Not a bad idea but good luck getting the European democracies to agree to take decisive action against a primary energy supplier with superior will. And speaking of Will I watched the 1934 Nazi party congress recently and was also struck that if you take away the technological gloss, Beijing may as well have been Nuremburg.

[happygrl]

The comparisons keep coming: 1956 Hungarian Uprising, The Guns of August (1914), August 1939 and the phony war of September 1939.

Sooner or later a miscalculation will occur and we will deal with the horrific again.