The only thing that could have possibly stopped this war was presence of a bigger bully . The erstwhile USSR did serve a useful purpose. Today there is no one in the world who can talk back to USA the way Khrushchev did at the time of Cuban missile crisis

My knowledge of the Cuban missile crisis is more or less limited to what my Dad told me as a teenager – but a cursory reading on the web confirms most of the things.

More saddening is the fact that some of the local media and politicians are using this as an opportunity to rattle their sabres and rankle up communal passion.

There still is hope for this world?

  • That bully does exist.

    In the wake of September 11, Arab money, collectively worth US $200 billion, was turned into Euros. Make that a Trillion USD, and the USA is finished as a commercial superpower. Long before that final conversion takes place, Bush will have resigned, and the USA will be begging for mercy. In fact, many people speculate that this, more than anything else, is the reason for the war.

    Bush is gambling that this wont happen, but like it or not, the US$ is already worth less than the Euro, and continues to sink. If more countries follow the Arab lead (and it would be prudent to do so), then that bully you are looking for is the Euro.

    • Yes this is true.. I actually saw this anti-us boycott in action when I was in UAE last summer… McDonalds and KFC outlets were deserted in the evenings and weekends .. when normally there would have been huge crowds.. sadly no one was boycotting M$FT and Intel/AMD.

      But the problem is that most of the governments in the Middle East are controlled by the US. The US has military presence in every single country in the region except iran/iraq/syria and jordan … who naturally end up in the Axis of Evil.

      What is the guarantee that the EU will not do the same things that Japan does to keep it’s currency weak and exports profitable… after all with the common currency in place the EU would be looking to get into a situation where it imports less than it exports… and in that situation a weak euro would help them. (I have no idea about balance of trade in the EU)

      Ofcourse in volatile times like this… someone like George Soros could help do the trick…

      • What is the guarantee that the EU will not do the same things that Japan does to keep it’s currency weak and exports profitable… after all with the common currency in place the EU would be looking to get into a situation where it imports less than it exports… and in that situation a weak euro would help them. (I have no idea about balance of trade in the EU)

        Not likely to happen. Unlike the USA, the EU is *actually* a union of *countries* – most of which have joined it in order to derive benefits from a *strong* Euro.

        However, even if the EU should decide to do this in the future – the damage would have been done. Right now it isn’t important to get people to accept the Euro – it is important for people to accept the possibility of an alternative, and break free of the shackles the Dollar currently binds them with.

        I am not blindly bashing the USA here – I have always been uncomfortable with the thought of a single world currency controlled by people who don’t even have the same Voltage as the rest of the world!

        And, as we can now see, the USA is *seriously* out of sync with the rest of the planet. Listing out 35 “club-members” – most of which are two-bit trade partners (not a single super power there) or recent “acquisitions” (yes, they count Afghanistan as one of the “willing”) – and then openly talking about a “regime change” for the second time in 18 months must be the most audacious thing that has ever happened in world history.

        As I type this, friends and relatives from across the USA are reporting huge protests in their areas – “strangely” enough *not* covered by CNN or other US-centric news agencies.

        Remember the mythical Nostradamus predictions about one man emerging in the new millenium to set the world on fire? And we all thought he was tlaking about Gaddafi/Saddam/Laden/whatever.

        How wrong we were.

  • Somebody said:

    Every child born is an indication that God hasn’t given up on humans

    Hope that’s true ..