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Although the Turkish military shot down a Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet for violating its sovereign airspace, Putin shares responsibility for casually risking the lives of his own troops to fulfill his impulse to test the boundaries of other nations and force them into submission. The Russian military and People are, however, the ones who will continue to pay the price for Putin’s policy miscalculations as more consequences of Putin’s half-baked grand strategy are realized.
Manipulating the Russian populous with feelings of patriotism and calls for a return to the glory days of the Russian Empire, Imperialist Putin paints a picture of an outside world hostile to Russia, yet it is the Putin government that is the greatest threat to the Russian People. What makes Putin particularly dangerous is that he appears to truly believe the propaganda he and his cronies have engineered to leave him blameless no matter what goes wrong.
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Thanksgiving is a holiday about indulgence. Although the United States of today suffers from mass obesity and a deficit of nutritious foods caused by economic distortions in the food industry and poor eating choices, unreliable and limited calories once limited the daily activities of all peoples around the world to food production. Harvest Festivals like Thanksgiving were some of the few times people could indulge in excess and leisure after they reaped the rewards of their labor. Today, the indulgence remains, but a lack of scarcity for many makes it difficult to comprehend the significance of their indulgences on Thanksgiving.
Under President George Washington, the fledgling United States celebrated the first official Thanksgivings on November 26, 1789 at a time of great triumphs and struggles. Indeed, Thanksgiving was a well-earned celebration for all former-Colonists as well as Americans in need of a morale boost during the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Since that time, Thanksgiving has become less about triumph over scarcity and more showing thanks for the bountiful inheritance build by our Forefathers as well as the fruits of our labors. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been provoking a military response from NATO since the beginning of the Ukraine Crisis. He finally got it at the expense of a Sukhoi Su-24, two Russian pilots, and the casualties of a rescue mission when Turkey shot down the Russian fighter jet after it allegedly flew into Turkish airspace.
In defending its sovereignty after repeated warnings and similar incidences over the past two months, Turkey has solidified the Syrian Civil War as a proxy war between NATO and Russia. Thanksgiving Day Shopping: Is America’s Preoccupation with Spending Psychologically Harmful?11/24/2015 Thanksgiving Day was once the highlight of Thanksgiving week, but Black Friday shopping has steadily contaminated a day when Americans are supposed to show thanks for everything they have in their lives. Today, a foreign observer of Black Friday and Cyber Monday would presume Thanksgiving is nothing more than a banquet kicking off a month-long celebration of gluttony. Indeed, the meaning of Thanksgiving has been so perverted that it has become a day when Americans are preoccupied with their plans to buy more and more trinkets as soon as the doors open at the nearest mall.
Most Americans might not like the idea that stores started opening on Thanksgiving a few years ago, but the prospective of saving a little extra on Christmas gifts is too much of a temptation. Even if American consumers hate Thanksgiving shopping, American retailers know exactly what to say and do to get Americans, who are addicted to spending, out in force. America is, after all, a country of overconsumption for a reason. Like drug addiction, this preoccupation with overconsumption is psychologically unhealthy. Aside from “stop terrorism” and “destroy the Islamic State,” world leaders are charging into battle against globalized terrorism without a strategic vision or any well-defined objectives. The inconsistent nature of US foreign policy has often been blamed for causing untold damage throughout the International Community. Epitomizing this very criticism, George W. Bush’s Iraq War suffered due to a lack of well-defined objectives and overall vision for the future of Iraq. The same can be said about the Bush Administration’s national security policies, which lead the US to torture suspected terrorists and violate the civil liberties of our own citizens.
In the wake of the Paris Terrorist Attacks, European leaders are about to follow in the footsteps of the Bush Administration. Unlike the Bush Administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq where nation-building was an assumption, however, Western leaders have failed to even recognize what role they might play in engineering long-term regional stability. “Region-building” will assuredly be part of the fight to defeat the Islamic State and emerging terrorist threats. As little has improved for the Peoples of the Middle East since the Arab Spring Revolutions began, the International Community must calibrate its strategy to address proper governance in the Middle East. |
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April 2020
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