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Post by la3ar on Feb 11, 2011 19:43:05 GMT -5
U.S. official "didn't come to pass on warnings"
SKOPJE -- A U.S. State Department official says his country "does not interfere" in the name dispute negotiations between Greece and Macedonia.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Thomas Countryman made the statement on Thursday in Skopje, saying he "did not come to pass on warnings to prime ministers".
He added that "meetings held between the Macedonian and Greek PMs, who personally discussed the issue, are welcomed. The United States still hopes that this process will result in a solution, but we cannot predict things and don't meddle in the negotiations."
Countryman said that his visit to Skopje was part of his Balkan tour and that he has not come to pass on warnings to prime ministers but to discuss the rule of law, media freedom, and other issues as two friendly countries.
Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said before meeting Countryman that his party VMRO-DPMNE has not yet taken a decision on early elections, but that it is ready to face the people.
After his statement, some media carried unofficial reports that early parliamentary elections were possible, and that Gruevski might announce them immediately after his return from an official visit to Washington next week.
Countryman said that his talk with Gruevski also focused on his visit next week to Washington.
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Post by la3ar on Feb 11, 2011 19:44:52 GMT -5
how is this the USA's business ?
I think the United States of America should change their name.
The Americas are the south, central and northern all together. The United "states" of the Americas, are all countries west of the Atlantic.
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Post by laughingriever on Feb 11, 2011 21:52:05 GMT -5
I don't know where you get this cute idea that the US controls everything. I am sure they would like to but the fact is it does not.
I saw it earlier too in the posts about Mubarak, as if egyptians were puppets dancing to the tune of American strings. I think most places and most people in the world are outside of the US sphere of influence and even less in the sphere of control.
My opinion of course, not a personal challenge to you.
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Post by la3ar on Feb 11, 2011 22:05:02 GMT -5
My point is how the USA believes they can comment or even tell another president what to do.
What has happened in Egypt is a perfect example. This was not a natural revolution, it’s pretty obvious strings are being pulled.
Mubarak was president for 30+ years, and no one complained until now. The USA was his major allie for that period, up until now. What happened? What did he do ?
I saw on CNN the other night, Anderson cooper was talking about “Tyranny” Mubarak has caused Egypt. Such audacity. This “Tyrannical” man was the Americans allie for his whole term.
I’m not trying to nail the USA for something I am not certain about, I am just raising questions I haven’t heard yet from anybody.
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Post by terroreign on Feb 12, 2011 2:40:37 GMT -5
You living under a rock for the past 50 years? America is world police....
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Post by laughingriever on Feb 12, 2011 12:37:10 GMT -5
^ A common misconception often directed at the US. Maybe somewhat true during the cold war era, now long gone.
But we live in a new world. It's a big place with lots of different players. Is the US playing police to Russia? China? India? Do you srsly think the US could ever try to "police" China, which would just refuse to buy the bonds the US would need to finance the "police" action in the first place?
Is Kim Jong Il, Chavez or Ahmedinajad following the lead of the Americans? Is the US snapping its fingers and resolving its Middle East problems?
Have they policed Iraq and Afghanistan so well that every time the worlds most advanced military machine goes out in convoy to shoot third world peasants it doesn't get an IED blow up in its face? Karzai - part US puppet, part warlord and heroin trafficker?
Is Turkey obeying its US master by calling off its alliance with Israel and doing deals with Iran to enrich their Uranium?
So you see, friend, if you took some time out from boiling bunnies in Kosovo to ethnically clean the area from the bunny colonizers, you might actually begin to see the US is not king of the hill anymore.
(I admit there may be bigger international players behind the scenes, I am just speaking with regard to the entity that is the USA)
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Post by laughingriever on Feb 12, 2011 13:06:53 GMT -5
@ la3ar I think you are right in the sense that the US likes to stick its nose in places where it doesn't belong. But that hasn't worked out very well in the past, has it? A quick look at the record in Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, South America and anywhere else the US was involved directly, covertly or by proxy have yielded limited results at best and I would count them as failures in the long term (with few exceptions). As far as the situation in Egypt, I don't think the US was trying to pull Mubarak down at all. I think the people had come to the point where they had enough and wanted Mubarak to step down, a 30 yr dictator with 40 billion in Swiss banks as a retirement fund. www.businessinsider.com/mubarak-swiss-bank-2011-2I don't see how it's how it's in the US interest for Mubarak to go down like this, he was a key US ally in the Middle East, damn if the US really cares he was a "dictator" to his own people. But things having started to go down the way they did, the US govt has to take a side, if it sits on its ass and says nothing it risks looking weak, so it has to punish one side and promote the other. In this case, it seemed like Mubarak was going to lose so the US takes the populist approach and spouts off the usual bullshit about freedom and democracy and the rights of the people. Again, my opinion and faulty analysis.
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Post by la3ar on Feb 12, 2011 16:58:01 GMT -5
I appreciate your response, as I am enjoying this discussion with you. You are absolutely correct when saying the USA doesn’t have a clean record in getting involved in foreign issues. If anything, they made the situation worse. Do you believe Vietnam was meant to be on? Many people outside of “government” made a killing of a profit of past wars, including the recent ones. Have you noticed the sequences of “revolutions-fight democracy” across the world? Yemen and Algeria has just recently. Coincidence ? Perhaps, but when it comes to politics and the technology in communications we have today, its hard to still believe in coincidences. The USA or any other major power of the world doesn’t care for the people, their main concern is to have someone in office who will be obedient and go with the flow, without disrupting the tide.
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Post by laughingriever on Feb 12, 2011 21:38:09 GMT -5
I pretty much think that all foreign interventions are bound to make things worse for the natives or at least some faction of them. By its very nature I suppose, the intervening power wants to gain something for itself and justifies its actions in the name of regional stability or democracy. Stability has always been a key word because the "goods" must flow to prop up capitalism. And so it is with the US.
Vietnam was a complex conflict - the vietnamese had been fighting for over a century - but as far as US involvement it was about containing communism, the great evil of the time, if I recall my college history correctly. A geopolitical chess. I don't think it worked out too well for the average Vietnamese and Cambodjan.
What's more is that wars are pretty good business if you are a government. In an extremely cynical view, war is a faster way for governments to destroy and deprive private property than through taxes. If you are in the government loop, then you know where the conflict is going to be and have the capital to invest in selling arms beforehand and in the companies that are going to be rebuilding after wards. Profit at both ends.
As for the chain of revolt that is sweeping north africa and the middle east, it's hard to say. I have no special inside knowledge, no wikileaks, to base my judgments on. Although in political back scenes there are few coincidences, meaning if things happen one way its because some one with power made it go that way, there are also grassroots forces that are difficult to predict or control. I think this is mostly the case here, people are fed up and want things to change and they want it badly enough.
Because of the fact that some of these new goverments might not be friendly to the west, I am leaning towards thinking that the US is not involved in instigating them. In the case of Egypt, why risk the Muslim Brotherhood coming into power when Mubarak had been serving their interests well enough? Why risk the Suez canal and endanger the reliability of the oil supply and the spike in oil prices? But who knows, sometimes governments have a very long view of events that an average person can't comprehend.
In the end, that is what my writing here has been, I am just a grad student, science major, with and an amateur interest in world history, so I advise people to take everything with a grain of salt.
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Post by la3ar on Feb 12, 2011 21:48:24 GMT -5
My main purpose on this thread especially, is to bring out questions. I do not claim to have any inside information at all; actually I am only going by what I am observing. Yet, I do have certain beliefs on how certain things work. Using logic as my basis. (It can only make sense, that money and corruption is behind these revolutions). Given the same token, sure it’s possible that this is a natural occurrence. After 30 years of “tyranny”, the Egyptians got fed-up. Now we’re moving on to Yemen and Algeria. - I am not really a history buff, because I view history as just a story from someone's perspective. I do enjoy discussions on current geo-political events. Which is why I am here
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