First Short Quiz

Post Reply
johnkarls
Posts: 2034
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

First Short Quiz

Post by johnkarls »

.
1. Who was Machiavelli?

2. What, per our author, was the key piece of advice in Machiavelli’s The Prince?

3. Who was Nizam al-Mulk?

4. What, per our author, was the key piece of advice in Nizam al-Mulk’s Styasat Nameh (Book of Politics)?

5. Is our author’s primary experience with foreign-government corruption in Afghanistan?

6. What does our author say about Afghanistan?

7. What does she say about The Arab Spring?

8. What countries does she discuss? Are all of them Islamic or at least partially Islamic?

9. What is the relationship between corruption in these countries and the rise of Radical Islam?

10. Does U.S. policy in these countries violate the key advice of Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk?

11. Didn’t the U.S. legislate against bribery of foreign government officials by US-based companies back in the 1970’s, threatening both criminal prosecutions and tax penalties such as the loss of foreign tax credits? How effective has the enforcement of these provisions been?

12. Should the U.S. government be prosecuting itself for fostering the corruption of foreign governments?

13. What put a stop to The Arab Spring?

14. Was the U.S. too eager to throw allies such as Egypt’s President Mubarek under the bus?

15. As the U.S. was throwing Mubarek under the bus, were the Saudis wise to bar Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates from entering Saudi Arabia to lecture its government on how it must kowtow to Arab public opinion and, instead, to immediately send troops into neighboring Bahrain to put down the rebellion of its majority Shiite population?

16. Was Soviet President Gorbachev forced to implement Glasnost or could Stalinism have lasted forever?

17. In other words, has there been a Great Leap Forward in democracy in China during the 26 years since Tiananmen Square? Or has there been any discernable progress vis-à-vis human rights since the inception in 1959 of the Stalinist regime that still rules Cuba?

18. Or if Hitler had won World War II, does anyone think that he and his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would have permitted any exceptions to a Big Brother darkness forever? Ditto Stalin if the Soviet Union had rolled across Europe and conquered the world?

19. Is democracy good per se? Is its adoption in many areas of the world, such as The Middle East, good from the perspective of American interests?

20. Does technology in the form of social media, etc., guarantee that such repression will soon be consigned to history?

21. If democracy and social media are so powerful, why does the U.S. still have a government which, as we have studied several times, compels long-time Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and long-time Business Week columnist Robert Kuttner to document that nothing gets done in the cesspool that is Washington DC except as the result of campaign contributions? And which NEVER addresses America’s most pressing problems such as doing anything to address mainstreaming the Permanent Under-Caste of our Inner Cities?

22. And warping back on Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk, isn’t America’s violation of their Most Important Advice NOT SO MUCH our support of corrupt foreign governments in The Middle East, BUT RATHER our drone program?

Post Reply

Return to “Participant Comments - Why Foreign-Government Corruption Threatens Global Security – May 13”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest