Fernando Fuster-Fabra's Blog
THANKSGIVING FOR WHAT ?
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With all that’s gojng on in the world, today’s Thanksgiving has absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Seeing what is in store for us in the next few years even makes the scene gloomier.
At the White House seats a man who was awarded a Nobel Peace Award too soon that he never made merits to deserve it.
At the Kremlin rules an iron-fisted man who never ever thought about peace if it wasn’t in his personal terms.
Around the globe, we have rulers sold out to vested interests, puppets that can’t shake a leg on their own.
Meanwhile, cruel wars are waged at the whim of wealthy magnates and macho rulers with the Dollar sign branded in their minds.
Why should we celebrate Thanksgiving for any of that ?
Definitely, here’s one person who isn’t celebrating Thanksgiving this year.
Fernando Fuster-Fabra
Sitges. Barcelona
Tags: Thanksgiving Day, wars
THE UGLY AMERICAN, 2012
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The Ugly Americans
Ever since the Burdick & Lederer’s novel, The Ugly American, was published in 1958, American candidates to the White House and incumbent Presidents have had a chance to face numerous international problems as leaders who have to assume responsibilities attributed the world’s most powerful nation.
Nevertheless, time and time again, one President after another has committed quite a number of errors that have led to what the USA is today.
On the verge of next Tuesday’s presidential elections, incumbent President Obama and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, have demonstrated that Americans have not wagged away the then Asian foreign vision of “the ugly American”.
On the contrary, today, American leaders are seen as “ugly” in continents other than Asia. In the last half century, one after another, the U.S. Presidents have blundered in international affairs in Vietnam & Cambodia, in the Caribbean, in the Middle East, in Africa and in Central & South America.
From Kennedy to Obama, all White House tenants have had their Achilles heel. Some succumbed to the temptation of playing God and ended causing civil wars or local ethnic cleansing.
At the crossroads of American supremacy, President Obama has not only failed to live up to expectations and to a moral commitment after being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009, but also has selfishly closed himself into what he sensed was to be a battle for his continuance as President of the United States of America. He has, in many ways, taken as his own the very habits of what was described in the novel as “the ugly American”.
Regretfully, his adversary is no better off. Mitt Romney considers he is a self-made man who has amassed a fortune with his talents. Nevertheless, if he would look back, I’m sure he will have to admit to himself that he isn’t all that respectable a citizen as he wants to make voters believe. He too is “an ugly American” in the eyes of any foreign beholder.
At this stage of the 21st century with new technologies making communications go global with a click, U.S. leaders have seemed to remain stagnant in their 20th century ways of government and diplomacy; precisely those very same manners that worried John F. Kennedy when the novel was first published.
Neither Obama nor Romney gets even solid approval from their European allies. I feel, much less would they get it from the Muslim states that their policies have led into an irreversible permanent war.
The issue is that none of them have learned from their errors but worst still is that there being an opportunity to be once again the best, both Obama & Romney have decided to just make it to the White House next balloting day.
Who is the “uglier American” of the two?
Fernando Fuster-Fabra
Barcelona, Spain
G-8 & NATO MEETS, 3 YEARS AFTER
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Strolling together down the wrong path?
“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything
– or nothing.”
– Nancy Astor
On April 19, 2009 I published my first post in my English WordPress.com blog http://wp.me/pv6EY-1 among others things stating:
“As it stands today, European Union leaders seek proof that America has the willpower to continue occupying world supremacy in more than military alliances such as 60-year old NATO or world organisms as the United Nations, the IMF or the World Bank. In effect, there is a rather increasing incredulity emanating from the inefficiency of said organisations in bringing about peace and prosperity to all Mankind in this New Millennium.”
These very words are valid today. President Obama is more worried in ensuring his re-election than facing the hard facts of what has been dubbed as “the 21st. century depression”. After various G-8 summits, the last one at Camp David with Obama as host and the NATO Conference today in Chicago, world leaders will have met firstly wanting to change everything to finally end up doing nothing.
What’s the name of their game?
G-8 summits have lost their sense of being whilst the G-20 version has not even gotten a chance of being somewhat effective.
In Europe, the French-German axis that germinated in the Merkozy Connivance of Deauville is no more. France has elected a new socialist President in the person of Francoise Hollande and his strategy at these meets is yet to be seen. In the USA, no stand will be taken before the Obama-Romney presidential bout is over. Meanwhile the world is not at a standstill and the financial sharks are making one killing after another. The crisis goes on and quality of living where there was is eroding.
Then we have the military pulse at the NATO summit where issues will likewise remain unresolved due to the US-Pakistan estrangement.
As a new business week starts off tomorrow, the stock exchange markets will again speculate round and about the doubtful rating reports of the biased agencies and the partial media. The powerful shall become even richer and more dominant whilst the impoverished will have to find consolation on a daily wage of a couple of dollars.
In no way has deserved the Nobel Prize he was awarded just as in no way have today’s world leaders demonstrated that they have merits to manage the destiny of Mankind.
Honestly, I suspect that none of them, not even the all-powerful President of the United States governs in the name of democracy and for the people. I suspect they are mere puppets with their strings attached to vested interests in this sad vaudeville of the New Millennium.
Fernando Fuster-Fabra
Barcelona
HEIL KASNER (ALIAS MERKEL) ???
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“Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Versión español : http://wp.me/pRlnf-5I
Being against hastily drawing an opinion without the necessary facts for a good judgement, Angela Merkel as a public figure has always called my attention in her apparently accidental rise to power. She is part of that group of leaders that came about in the last 15 years not only in the European scenario but also worldwide, appearance that seemed to contribute to today’s chaos.
As I wish to centre my attention to the European continent, apparently immersed in its worst moments in its route towards a true merger of partners that once wished to be a common market, I shall only consider those who have had or continue to have power in what has been dubbed as “the Euro crisis”.
Aznar, Berlusconi, Blair, Brown, Chirac, Prodi, Rodríguez Zapatero, Schröder, Sócrates, and an endless number have held government posts in their respective countries in the framework of the Union of 27. Although some have left office, they have left the inheritance of the tower of Babel that the EU is today. Some have relocated themselves after leaving their nation’s government as in the case of Durao Barroso or Van Rompuy, now occupying post of maximum relevance in the Brussels-based power structure. Others have moved on to the private sector lured by juicy fees whilst exercising all their influence.
Nevertheless, no one has marked as much the agenda as has Angela Dorothea Kasner, daughter of an Evangelist theologian who decided to migrate precisely to the GDR in those years of the German miracle of the FRG, when the flow was precisely in the opposite direction.
Truly, what do we know about this woman that today bosses Europe around?
Aside from the fact that she was sponsored by no less than Helmut Kohl in the ‘90s and that today she is presently Germany’s chancellor with power over all the EU, most people ignore that this woman, in spite of having been born in Hamburg, grew up and was educated (the family moved when she was a few weeks of age) in the ways of the Soviet-influenced Easter Germany or that her father was so well considered within the GDR regime he availed (a real privilege for those days) of an official car for family use and for his trips (unusual for the GDR) to the other Germany, or that she was a full-pledged member of the Communist German Free Youth movement, having even been responsible of propaganda. Her true surname isn’t Merkel but Kasner, adopting the surname Merkel when she married a GDR university colleague called Ulrich Merkel. It is somewhat strange that in spite of separating from her first husband in 1982 and after having married (1998) her former professor, Joachim Sauer, she didn’t renounce to her first husband’s surname.
With such track record and being an outsider to the power echelons in Western Germany, Angela Merkel conquered Helmut Kohl’s sympathy at which time, due to circumstances related to a illegal party-financing scandal, Merkel lashed out against her mentor, causing the downfall of the then CDU leader, now her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.
After the criticism harvested at the end of the early December European meet and recently rounded about by the actual IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, I must ask again why European leaders (all except David Cameron) submissiveness towards the German chancellor in European and crisis issues.
Should we praise her with a round of applause and a ‘Heil Merkel!’ to reward her tenacity to get all to accept her thesis for the EU?
Or on the contrary, should we begin to question the legitimacy of that authority she wishes to impose without any guarantee of her capacity to govern in the manner that we the true democrats understand the exercise of liberty subject to the will of the citizenry?
Yesterday, Angela Kasner Merkel has again imposed her will upon in that ‘summit for two’ held in the German chancellery in Berlin. The increase of the rescue fund is speeded up while the application of the Tobin tax is again left sine die.
With the imposition that has lodged relevant unelected governing higher-ups, hand-picked by consensus to calm down the markets, we must be alert because we could very well be close to the seizure of our legitimate right to elect those we wish to govern us.
Fernando Fuster-Fabra
Barcelona
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