The Syrian "Revolution": A Farce from Beginning to End

@Capracus, your quote
"Let it be said that the mercurial Vladimir Putin (whom Obama regards as the most transactional leader in the world) knows how to propose an 11th-hour deal."

Does the writer mean by "Transactional" that Putin is hard to deal with, or easy to deal with?
Unusual choice of word. What does it mean exactly?

I've found this use of the word on the Bloomburg site:
What needs to happen now is that the U.S. and Russia settle into a nice, stable, transactional relationship. Both Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin seem to realize this -- but they’re having trouble getting there.

There it seems to mean "giving and taking",
Does Obama think that Putin is easy to deal with?

 

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Nice reply

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The Maori were boat people themselves.
I am a descendant from boat people that arrived 62 years ago.
It is the pirate-types that we must protect our daughters from.

 

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I think David Ignatius was referring to Putin's dictatorial style.

 

Thanks. Makes it a bit difficult when people use the same word to mean different things.
In this case it will certainly refer to leadership style, and it means that it is difficult to make Putin change course.

It is not necessarily a bad style of leadership. It depends on the circumstances.

Transactional Leadership, also known as managerial leadership, focuses on the role of supervision, organization, and group performance; transactional leadership is a style of leadership in which the leader promotes compliance of his followers through both rewards and punishments. Unlike Transformational leadership, leaders using the transactional approach are not looking to change the future, they are looking to merely keep things the same. Leaders using transactional leadership as a model pay attention to followers' work in order to find faults and deviations. This type of leadership is effective in crisis and emergency situations, as well as when projects need to be carried out in a specific fashion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_leadership

Putin came to leadership at a time of crisis, and for Russia he has done a good job.
Once the crisis is over, a new kind of leader is needed.
As his style is transactional, he will be unwilling to allow that to happen.

 

Putin's leadership has kept Russia in a perpetual state of crisis, necessitating his perpetual leadership. We've seen this far too many times, where a strong leader emerges in a crisis and promises to lead his people into the light... 20 years later they're still struggling along and ignoring the cane trying to hook them off the stage. How the f*** is Mugabe still in power?

 

Not at all.
Under Putin the country has made great advances. It is one of the BRICS nations.
In economics, BRIC is a grouping acronym that referred to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which are all deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development. It is typically rendered as "the BRICs" or "the BRIC countries" or "the BRIC economies" or alternatively as the "Big Four". It has been replaced by BRICS since the 2010 inclusion of South Africa in the bloc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC

Mugabe is another autocratic leader who has benefited his country.
The average Zimbabwean is far better off than when he came to power.
The blacks, after decades of colonial rule, were serfs in their own land.

Any country which counts its natural resources as common wealth,
is demonised by the people who own TV stations and Newspapers.
Those people prefer resources to be in the hands of the few.
People like themselves.

Here's a graph you might find interesting, from Forbes website, showing the occurrence of murder, alcohol poisoning and suicide since Putin took over

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From http://www.forbes.com/sites/markado...ul-and-the-myth-of-the-authoritarian-model/2/

 

OH NO. It's Bells

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What are their growth industries? All I hear about is oil and gas, and the occasional financial meltdown. They even had a recession during the 2008-2009 period. You're making it far too easy on Mr. Putin by comparing his performance to the chronic drunk who preceded him. Third world nations with access to global markets are supposed to be growing much faster than countries like Canada, not keeping pace.

Yes Mugabe brought Zimbabweans freedom once upon a time, then he brought them cholera. He has incited continued racial violence and practically emptied his country of white people not because of the threat they posed under his rule, but as a pretext to invoke emergency powers so he could legally extend his term of office. Are you seriously expecting me to believe the average Zimbabwean is better off today than when Mugabe started? Do you mean the million+ who fled to South Africa? Or are you inferring that a banana costs billions of Zimbabwe dollars because they suddenly struck it rich like Switzerland?

You mean people like Mugabe, who's probably now the richest man in the country? Which Star System have you been sailing in these last 20 years? So it's ok to beat up and torture your main political rival at election time in the name of getting back at whitey?

View attachment 6556 ​

 

Zimbabwe has many problems, like most of Africa.
If Mugabe was inviting in corporates to take over resources, the Western news would be saying he was wonderful.

 

Touche!

 

Well I think that is quite a leap. You need to tell that to the Saudi's and other Arab oil producing states. They have a lot of wealth and corporate interests in their countries but the western press isn't portraying them as "wonderful".

 

Yes it is difficult for press to portray the Saudi Kingdom as wonderful when women can't drive and if they go out on foot without the required close relative escort, they asking to be gang rapped. The men will not be punished, but the rape victim will get 12 lashes on her bare back for violating the "escort rule."

As I recall, during his last visit to the kingdom, GWB gave them a squadron of modern fighter jets and they gave him a gold inlaid ceremonial sword. Too bad, he did not stumble and fall on it - US would be much better off, if he had. Unfortunately Obama will be falsely blamed for the coming US & EU depression. That is why, every chance I get, I call it "GWB's depression" as I was able to predict it coming while GWB still had more than two years as POTUS. I.e. his stupid and needless wars; his change of tax laws to lighten the burden on the rich (increase it on Joe American); his restraint of the SEC, and bank regulators, because, like Anne Rand schooled Greenspan,* GWB thought banks, etc. would self-regulated better than government employees could; and his general stupidity, I could make that prediction back then with confidence.

*Few know that when younger for more than a year, Greenspan was a regular in Anne Rand's weekly living room discussion groups. That team, Greenspan & GWB has destroyed the US economically - I believe in giving "credit" where it is due, and hate to see, the ill-educated Americans blame the first black president for the coming depression, but they will despite my calling it "GWB's depression" every change it is slightly on topic.

 

That's exactly what Mugabe was doing, and he still is. First he invited western-based companies to invest in his country, and many did. Then when his mismanagement bled his own finances dry, he seized all the foreign assets purchased under his control and sold them off to China instead. Now China's bankrolling Mugabe in exchange for essentially selling out all the available resources in his country.

Sorry, but I recommend you brush up on Zimbabwe's post-colonial history and present state of collapse before we get another high-minded lecture about how it's all Europe's fault and how those few whites who remainded or immigrated under Mugabe had it coming to them all along. Indeed, most of Africa is struggling, but Zimbabwe is a basket case in possibly even worse shape than the Congo (and on the subject of the Congo, Mugabe sent his troops there for blood diamonds and has played a crucial role in their civil war ever since).

My point is that strong leaders emerge in times of crisis, and then they usually overstay their welcome until they've managed to undo or negate anything positive they may have achieved early on. Remember, once upon a time men like Assad and Saddam had a reputation as modern reformists.

 

What annoys me is the lack of balance.
Zimbabwe is not such a basket case as you might believe.
Nor is China's investment in Africa pure evil.
Those views are propaganda.

This is from the UK Daily Telegraph, August 1st:
Robert Mugabe always told a great many lies on the election trail, but this year, his biggest boast is actually true. Zimbabwe’s economy is recovering and he is overseeing an extraordinary mini-boom. “Zimbabwe has not collapsed under the heavy weight of sanctions,” he boasted from the podium on Sunday – and he is quite correct. The few sanctions imposed by the West have not stopped what a World Bank economist recently called an “amazing” recovery. For those who like to believe that political freedom is the surest route to prosperity, it’s deeply depressing news. For the 89-year-old president, something has gone horribly right.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ing-but-its-future-lies-in-Chinese-hands.html

Mugabe surely won't live much longer, so genuine Democracy may make a return soon.
The economy is improving.
With cheap and effective AID's drugs life expectancy is increasing.
China is investing.
It isn't heaven, but it isn't the Congo either.

 

I'd like to get back to the subject of the upcoming chemical weapons removal agreement for a sec. The powers that be are saying it would normally take 5-6 years to shut down the program, and even at an unprecedented pace, completing the task within a year is difficult if not impossible to envisage. That just seems really fishy to me, why such a long timeframe? If Assad wanted to position his arsenal and use it up on specific targets, would it take him 5-6 years to complete the task? Why do we need a year just to load up all his stuff and truck it out of the country? Thoughts?

 

I don't know why it takes so long to destroy.
The Sarin can be made unusable with a large addition of Sodium Hydroxide.
Wasn't Russia offering to take the stuff at one point?

So long as the ingredients are secure from an early date, it doesn't matter that much does it?

 

To me it doesn't matter if it takes 30 years to destroy everything safely, so long as they get it out of Syria and keep it out of Lebanon. On a positive note, the article cited above claims there are several ways to neutralize Assad's arsenal in the interim, and that everything will be shipped out of the country within the first half of 2014. I can see that as a reasonable timeframe for thoroughly taking inventory and devising appropriate methods of shipment, but I don't see why that process should take any longer, and I couldn't imagine it taking longer than a year for Assad to voluntarily do it himself.