The eyes of the world are upon us as the day of the second presidential debate begins.
Up until now, the translations we have done from Poland have been decidedly pro-Romney. But in an article headlined With Romney in the White House, ‘War is More Likely to Happen’, Gazeta Wyborcza columnist Mariusz Zawadzki warns that just about the only thing that can be discerned about a Romney presidency is that, judging by Romney’s closest advisers, his administration would be far more war prone than the Obama’s:
“George W. Bush was no hawk, and he had no definite views on Iraq. Following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the void in his brain was filled by ‘chicken hawks’ … Americans or Israelis will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, but this won’t finish it. Iran would inevitably fire rockets at Israel and ask its friends from Lebanese Hezbullah to do the same. What comes next is anyone’s guess.”
The Beijing government has concerns that are not only a matter of economics, but of national pride. In an article headlined Huawei and ZTE: U.S. Politicians Malign China for ‘Short-Term Political Gain’, China Daily columnist Dr. Qi Li asserts that recent moves to restrict Chinese firms in the U.S. market and a Congressional report laying out why they cannot be trusted, endangers Sino-U.S. relations and the global economic recovery:
“This latest U.S. Congressional report comes in the final stretch of campaigning for the U.S. presidency. It is an election in which China has been scapegoated for America’s economic woes, with both candidates trying to show that if elected, he would bash China the hardest. Both have without hesitation put partisan interests above the interests of the American nation and people.”
And from Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung, in an article headlined Mitt Romney and America’s ‘Medieval’ Calvinist Resurgence, columnist Andrian Kreyen wonders why Mitt Romney and the U.S. Republican Party have responded to the financial crisis with policies that contradict every humane and intuitive instinct and the Western conception of society, and finds the answer in America’s Calvinist roots, writing in part:
“It’s that eerie feeling that this country we love so much (Manhattan, Dylan, Philip Roth) is still fundamentally foreign to us (genetically altered foods, Wall St., George W. Bush). Isn’t Mitt Romney one of those people who gave us the most severe economic crisis since 1929? … Instead of solidarity and a sense of community, a self-righteous anger is directed at the victims of the crisis – at the losers, the penniless, the bankrupt, and the millions who have been put on the street as a result of home foreclosures – and at the government, which has undertaken to help them.
“It is here that the faith that stood at the very beginning of American history asserts itself in the form of Calvinism, which was driven out of Europe to the New World. Calvinism (in broad terms) assumes that man is born a sinner, but that God rewards those who work hard and punishes the idle. So poverty is self-inflicted. This credo has always smoldered in American society. Only a Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to partly tame this original notion of a free market economy with the “New Deal,” his new social contract after the Great Depression.”
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