Sunday, November 28, 2004

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

What seems like a long time ago I saw an image that reminded me of a poem I had read in a literature class even longer ago. Watching the toppling of the statue in Freedom Square, Bagdad.

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said: Two vast and
trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a
shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on
these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;And on
the pedestal these words appear:‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my
works, ye Mighty, and despair!’Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that
colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.


I decided to write this little musing now because of the things I see going on in the world and how it relates in my mind to the 'shatter'd visage' of Ozymanias. Idi Amin, Mugabe, Milosovic and so many other despots and thugs have joined Saddam and met their end as dictators. Others whose time is short, such as UBL, Zarqawi, Mullah Omar etal may hopefully join this august club soon.

The Freedom and Democracy train seems to keep rolling with the response to the election in Ukraine. Leonid Kuchma and his handpicked Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych are finding out, that to openly steal an election through the use of thugs, intimidation and outright fraud doesn't seem to work anymore. Putin needs to pay close attention to this watershed event in Ukraine. Even with blatent string pulling by Moscow and the attempt to stifle the press, the world and the Ukraine people know the truth and the Russian people are learning the truth. Despite Putins attempts to bring back some of the Communist type government with crackdowns on the Russian press, he needs to worry about another Yeltsin moment. If you keep betting the wrong horse you will run short of capital sooner or later. Even Jimmy Carter would have a hard time certifying this election, and that says a lot.