Well, the Russian president and legislature have just fired each other.
Film at 11.

37 responses total.

 I think that Yeltsin will come out on top, due to his former record.

Of course, he will only last as long as the military is behind him,
once they leave, he will be toast.

I agree Yeltsin will hold out. Things will be quite jumpy
for a while, though--er, jumpier than usual for the last
couple years.

Firing each other: an interesting concept. I don't think
I would want them to try it over here on the national level.
On the state level, however...

It sure is interesting to watch this play out.  It should give everyone
in America pause.  What would happen if Clinton decided to send Congress
home?  

  I think we'd pat him on the back for a job well done.

;-)

You walked right into that one, Dan.

I've been watching (on and off) the shooting in Moscow around the
Russian White House.  It's been live on CNN since at least midnight.
It's 10Am in Moscow (3AM here) and I am to tired to watch it any
more, but it is truly amazing.  They keep saying the paratroopers
are coming, but I haven't seen any of them yet. NBC, CBS, and ABC
are showing movies. <sigh> Thank you, CNN. 

  From what I heard at 1:00 on WJR the shooting is over with about 100
casualties. Ruskoi(sp) and the speaker are in custody, and Yeltsin
was said to be considering exile to a pro western state, rather than 
shooting or imprisoning them, which would make them in effect, martyrs.

I really like #4's answer to #3.... Yes, danr, beautiful waltz that one.
Nicely capitalized by aa8ij.
  
What is the situation now?

Think about this a second.  You, and maybe quite a few others, would
applaud this, but would you really want this??  Where would it end?

   You're right Dan, I really wouldn't like to see Congress fired. I do think
that the people of this nation have to weed out the do-nothings, and elect 
people who have a real commitment for change, instead of playing politics.
Why can't we have total heathcare? It would help us be a more productive nation
Why do we still subsidize tobacco farmers who are not exactly hurting for mone
 Why do these people insist on giving themselves raises, when they are the
least deserving of it? 
 Why is there still no national plan for educating our children? Why is it
#left to the states to set the policies.? 

 Congress is a mess, and like other things, it has to be cleaned out and 
refocused on what is really important. I really think that Thomas Jefferson
is turning over in his grave.

There's this crazy little thing called "federalism" that supposedly leaves
to the states all powers not expressly granted to the federal government.
It would be awkward to place "education" under federal control, via the
Commerce Clause (or some other clause).  What the feds *can* do is set a
curriculum, then require states that accept federal funds for education to
follow their curriculum.  But states would kick up a fuss.  (Also, we have
this bizarre notion that "local control" is critical to quality education
in this country, despite its poor track record.)

A loosely defined national curriculum, setting forth what subjects should
be studied in a given year, would be *very* helpful in this society -- kids
who move from one state (or country) to another risk missing entire years
of material on any given subject.

Congratulations aaron, and that is said with sincerity not sarcasm, you
have the right handle in #11. If the federallies (sp) would just
be happy with REading,Writing and Arithmetic the system would be
VeryMuchBetterOff (tm), but they are not satisfied with such a minimal
constriction on the various states' educational plans. 
  
And with the states' +NOT+ kicking up a fuss when TaxDollars are
proferred (with Federal Strings), they cave in to worshiping thje
Almighty Dollar, which, of course has been extracted from the
states' residents. Vicious circle - how to break it?

The federal government at present takes virtually no role in education.
States have mucked things up, all by themselves.

 Should I make this drift into another item?

You're the boss.

(does anyone care about what is happening in the ex-Soviet Union
anymore?)

Yes. We do.

Why do you ask?

(I haven't a clue as to what's going on with our Eurasian cousins,
and would like to read healthy discussion of such. 'tis all.)

The world does need balance in order to exist, but the greedy people of the
west realized that too late.  Now that the USSR is (at least visibly) gone
a search for a new enemy has begun.  However, I' affraid it's too late.  We
did miss what was perfect - Another superpower, USSR.  There simply isn't 
another country with the mental capability to replace the soviets.  The lack
of a serious competition has led to the present recession.  Not only should 
the west be agains the communists in Russia, they should provide thier full
support for them.  After all, democracy is the first step towards anarchy.

I don't agree with any of that. The world can do just fine without
superpowers duking it out. The US does not need a USSR to balance it.
We are not in a recession. The West must be careful in dealing with
Russia - yes, they need our support, but so do others in the region.
Democracy is not a step towards anarchy - it is the only civilized way to 
run a country. 

Former communists and socialists perceive capitalists as
greedy, that is probably going to be very hard to change. After 70 years of
being trained to be offended by anyone who has more money than they
do, the current population of Russia is utterly unprepared to handle
a free market economy. Their psychology is all wrong.
The first step they have to take is to stop being jealous of those
with more, and to start admiring and emulating them.

It is also crucial for them to learn from the mistakes of early capitalism,
and enact and enforce laws to prevent abuses, such as we have done.
(Fair labor laws, anti-trust laws, securities laws, etc.)

And then grow and train a huge crop of proficient lawyers to deal with a 
massively complex legal system, build and staff lots of prison facilities
to store the people whose lawyers weren't sufficiently proficient, and 
instantly multiply the gross domestic product by a factor of x to support
the bureacrats and the underclasses.

Was that just general all-purpose sarcasm, or would you really prefer to
see the USSR try to give capitalism a go without the benefit of 
anti-abuse laws?

They probably do need the prisons, regardless.

Just a little healthy cynicism  ;)

In responce to #21

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union it was the production for military
purposes - guns, tanks, cars, computers, clothes, food, condoms etc. - that
kept the US economy striving.  Since 1989, however, the enormous military
expences have become unjustified due to the absence of a sufficiently
powerful opponent to the US.  In order to engage in gradual military cuts,
which would affect every part of the American industy, the government 
got involved in other foreign, rather unimportant conflicts - Iraq, Somalia,
Bosnia - thus beign able to explain to the taxpayers where those billions of
dollars go.

The Russian phychology is not wrong, it's simpy very different from that of
the Americans.  The Russian goal is not money or material possessions, that 
would be too simple to achieve.  Their goal is power.  Russia has always been
one of the least developed countries in Europe as far infrastructure goes, but
She has always been able to make Europe and the world tremble before her
military might.  That perverted sense of pleasure is what Russians enjoy the
most.

Finally, it is the balance that keeps this world alive.  Far-right against
far-left parties, Coke agains Pepsi, IBM agains Apple, day agains night.
There is always a balance in nature and we do need it to survive.  No matter
what extreme approach you take the end result will be the same.  After all,
both HCl and NaOH (strongest acid and strongest base) will do the same 
damage to your skin.

Agreed, kamen, that the US economy was geared to the cold war opposition
to the Soviet Union. But the US economy is quickly adapting to other
things. Defense spending is down, and will go down more.

The US didn't fight Iraq in order to justify military spending, but rather
to prevent a dangerous dictator from overrrunning Saudi Arabia, and ultimately
to reverse the succeessful invasion of Kuwait. Oil was a factor, but so were
other things. Justice comes to mind.

I didn't mean to imply that the Russian psychology is in any absolute sense
"wrong", but I did mean to imply that their stated desire to change to 
a market driven economy will constantly be thwarted by the psychology
that resents wealth and equates it to greed.

You said: "The Russian goal is not money or material possessions, that
would be too simple to achieve." I disagree. The Russians would have the
greatest difficulty achieving material possessions.

Would not an equivalent balance exist between two entities which are almost
identical, and cooperative, as existed between two extremes, which competed?
Seems almost like the natural end result of entropy, that the extremes would
close in on center as they exhaust their energies.  The ironic paradox is
that by that point, they will either be totally destroyed, or civilized, and
civilization has always seemed to me to be the entire goal of the fight
*against* entropy.

I know this is not the exact place to ask this but I would greatly appreciate
a responce.  How are the computer keyboards in Japan, China, Korea etc. 
designed?  I know that the signs they use do not represent letters, but rather
whole words and phrases which would make it impossible to design a relatively
simple (like ours) keyboards.

  They are able to spell out the words phonetically, instead of using
the characters (although there has been work on coming up with a type of
keyboard that will do some of the Oriental characters, but since each
character is basically a word, & there are obviously hundreds of thousands
of words, it isn't very practical).  There are also some special keys, which
are set via your keyboard driver software.

Thanks for the valuable information!

I have never used Oriental Language Software on a PC or Mac, so I 
have no firsthand experience, but I know something about the languages.

Chinese and Korean don't use phonetic writing as part of the normal use
of the language. Japanese does, because the spoken form has an inflected
origin in the Mongol language family.

While words can be spelled out phonetically, as tnt states, using
syllabaries (in Japanese), the result would hardly qualify as useful.
In order to produce usable text, Chinese characters must be employed,
even in Japanese where the syllabaries are available.

I believe software such as KanjiTalk for the Mac support entering these
characters through keystroke combinations. More than that I don't know.

 You're wrong about Chinese, or at least the Cantonese dialect, which I
learned while living in Hong Kong, & used there and in a trip to China.  If
you'll recall back about 10 years ago, Peking became Beijing, when China
switched to a "Pinyin" (or something like that) type of phonetic
spelling/writing -ting to be used in addition to the 'Chinese' characters.

Hoolie, I believe you are referring to the transliteration standard --
that is the manner in which the sounds are transliterated into our Roman
alphabet. It was in need of standardization, but it really has nothing
to do with the Cantonese Language. Chinese Languages (including Cantonese)
are all written with characters that have meaning attached, to my knowledge.

Japanese is not. It is written as a sequence of characters that are mixed
between those that impart both meaning and sound, and those that are
completely devoid of meaning. Thus anything in Japanese could, in theory,
be spelled out using these phonetic characters (kana), but in fact
this is almost never done. Thus Japanese, like Chinese, must require
a keyboard that can generates thousands of characters to be an effective
writing tool.

 OK, perhaps we're arguing semantics here, but Cantonese can be & 
frequently is 'spelled out' using the Roman alphabet -- or at least was
in the 1980s when I was last in China & Hong Kong.  Perhaps it was often
done for gwei-los (foreigners), or for people who spoke/wrote a different
dialect to see the phonetic characters & perhaps be somewhat literate of
the dialect based on the phonetics, despite not understanding the painted
character.

Re #21:

Capitalism not based on greed?  Am I missing something here?

Greed is a loaded word. For many it implies exploitation, and evil.
I do not accept Capitalism as greedy in that sense.
Many do, though, and they are probably resentful of
those who have successfully accumulated wealth through Capitalism.
That mode of thinking leads to the desire to "redistribute the wealth".
Such economic systems destroy productivity by destroying individual
motivation.

You're right, srw.  _The Grapes of Wrath_ didn't describe greed, either.

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