A little bit of politics - part two
One of the (many) joys of living in a hotel in a foreign country - for a Brit, at least - is that you get to watch CNN.
Granted, I’m watching a fair amount of CNN because it’s the only English language channel apart from Star Movies (and I just never seem to be in my room at the right time to catch The Horse Whisperer) - but I’m watching it also because I’m enjoying indulging myself in a slightly geeky love.
Election coverage.
I’m not sure why, but there’s something about television coverage of elections that stirs something in my, well, not quite my loins, but some sort of region like it. My mental loins, perhaps.
I think it’s partly the ‘comfort blanket’ effect - childhood memories of election-night coverage, these strange one-off events in which adults stayed up in a TV studio all night, in some sort of grown-up sleepover; which I could never match, given that I was, erm, a child, and not an adult, and therefore had to go to bed early. And like all ‘comfort blanket’ events, it’s regular, and inevitable. Like the Queen’s speech. Or Wimbledon. You may not like it; you may not follow it; you may not even agree with it. But its mere presence, every year (or four or five years), is comforting in some way.
Also, of course, it’s simply an interest in politics - and more specifically, political analysis. This combined with the fact that it’s the American election - an event whose interest in which I wouldn’t be able to indulge in such depth back home - makes watching CNN’s coverage a delight. To the extent that I get rather annoyed when I switch it on and it’s Business News, or World News, or a special report on polar bears.
The American election coverage is gripping due to the current contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, of course; and the emergence of John McCain as the Republican front-runner, and the possible consequences of that. (Is it only me who finds McCain’s public-speaking frighteningly like Linus’s at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas?).
But on CNN you also have John King, America’s answer to Peter Snow:
- who bears an uncanny resemblance to another CNN political correspondent, Anderson Cooper:
Anderson Cooper
John King
Fortunately, I have quickly learned to tell them apart a) by their hair (John King’s is more bouffant); and b) any time they’re on the same show together. That normally makes it quite easy.
February 27th, 2008 at 10.19pm
I am hooked as well!
Given that black men received the right to vote, far earlier than white women in most regions of the West we could have guessed this trend would have been played out in the US campaign trail as well. That was until Ralph ‘I have no absolutely no policies but I’m extremely keen’ Nader put his beak back in 2 days ago.
Why can’t he just give up & sod off? This is his 5th attempt! All he manages to do is fracture the left. When I lived in FLA his primary policy centered on how best to save fish due cruise liners carving through the coral reefs. I mean, very nice Ralph, but what about all the dead Cubans floating about next to them? If only America had Proportional Rep like le French…..
February 28th, 2008 at 1.05am
Sarah, I thnk that would be a fair enough position if the Democratic candidate actually was in any way “left” in a significant (i.e European?) sense. Hilary might have more humane ideas on health policy for example, but when she tried to implement last time under Bill she was just stopped by those hwo stop these things. Equally Obama makes leftish noises but won’t do anything to frighten off the corporations precisely because he is black. I take the point that Nader probably kept Gore out last time but that could also have been down to the hanging/pregnant chads and what was basically a legal/illegal coup in FLA against a recount plus Gores pusilanimous response to the whole thing.
February 28th, 2008 at 1.07am
but yes, the whole world should have prop rep, actually of the German sort, rather than the French ;). But then the whole world should be mopre liek Europe and Europe should be much more like Norway (to paraphrase Richard Rorty. Plus Gore would not have done much as president anyway. It’s easy to sound radical in opposition.
February 28th, 2008 at 1.12am
I can watch CNN in London actually.
February 28th, 2008 at 1.15am
Which is all why I am finding it very difficult to get into the US primaries at all I suppose.
February 28th, 2008 at 1.17am
Yeah, I thought I had seen CNN on UK satellite TV. But then Andrea doesn’t have a telly. Strange though enviable girl!
February 28th, 2008 at 1.23am
Actually US politics is rather like Malaysian politics it seems to me. The republicans and democrats represent one big coalition from slightly left of centre social liberalism through to hard right wing neo-liberalism and gung-ho patriotism, with both positions present in both parties. The US media, it seems to me (from my limited experience of staying for a few weeks in FLA and NY), finds it as hard to think outside the confines of that box as do the Malaysian. The reason that your two blokes look the same is that they might as well be the same, given the level of conformity in TV reporting in the States. The press is slightly better than the broadcast media, granted.
February 28th, 2008 at 2.30am
Hi Peter, I am about as left as you can get, but I think it’s best to aim for pragmatism rather than a non existent socialist utopia. Americans will never have European Left. Most wouldn’t even grasp the lack of individualism it would entail.
I realize all front runners must placate AIPAC & the pharmaceutical industry, among others, but I also believe there is a significant difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. For example, students studying outside their home state can expect to graduate with debts of over $70,000 which is shit - clearly. What is even shitter than that, though, is Bush’s attempt to completely obliterate the loan facility altogether, ensuring the elite stay in power without exception. He was overuled by the Senette. Similarly, Bill Clinton, the full bright scholar, who went into Kosovo to defend the mass slaughter of Muslims & attempted the (flawed) Oslo Accords would not drop bombs on the Middle East with the same relish as his Republican counterparts. He also introduced the minimum wage before Britain did!
So I really disagree with you, I think millions of lives may be damaged & lost because of Ralph Nader.
February 28th, 2008 at 6.57am
Those are all fair points and I’m not saying that when it comes to the US all cats are grey. Of course a Clinton is better than a Bush any day, and an Obama in the hand is worth two Bushes in the, umm, something or other but it is very easy, in the name of pragmatism, to get sucked into concessions to power which are simply too great. Look where that got us with Blair, of course he was better than Major in many ways but he too made too many deals with too many people of whom we know far too little. The real function which Nader can play is to remind the Democrat candidate that there is a small, though important constituency on the Left which is keeping their eye on him/her, and that is an important role. After all, at least one Republican Senator voted with the democrats against that ruling on student loan facitlities, while it was Clinton who bombed the shit out an Aspirin factory in the Sudan in 1998 on the spurious grounds that it had liks to Bin Laden.
And I wouldn’t rule out the development of a real Left in the US. It has happened before and it could happen again given the right social and economic conditions and organisational structures. That would of course drag the Democrats to the left and cause all sorts of new alignments in which independents like Nader and the Green Left might play a role. Having said all that, I am not a great Nader fan myself and would probably vote Democrat, just like I voted Labour in 97.
February 28th, 2008 at 8.32am
Pffff…
’tis hard work isn’t it.
And I’m just reading this.
So what do we think of Gordon Brown?
No …..
February 28th, 2008 at 4.51pm
Sarah, Peter - am thoroughly enjoying reading your arguments and feel like I’m sitting in a pub with you. even though you’ve never actually met.
speaking of which, my friend J emailed me and suggested: “a big get-together for all your blog regulars when you get back. and i will continue my blog tactics in person by standing in the corner of the room, staring intently at everyone but not actually saying anything.”
February 28th, 2008 at 5.20pm
And I just went to the bar, obviously.
February 28th, 2008 at 5.23pm
I’m opening a packet of crisps in that way you do to share them, folded out in the middle of the table. Sarah probably doesn’t like Cheese and Onion though
February 28th, 2008 at 5.35pm
actually, I fancy ordering some food. anyone want to share some nachos?
February 28th, 2008 at 5.39pm
sure, extra cheese for me
February 28th, 2008 at 8.56pm
Hey Peter, regarding the crisps, you’re right! I’m more partial to a pistachio, an olive or perhaps even a crudité of some sort. But this is because I like to curb my carbs
I note what you say about Blair. Tactical voting is a vexing issue. The French elections last year (?) propelled people who hate Chirac to vote for him to keep Le Penn off piste. That was easy. I voted for Gore in 2004 because I was fearful Bush would triumph & I will do the same this time for who ever succeeds as the Dem front runner. I also voted for Blair in 97 & it’s not easy to live with. However, I prefer to vote pragmatically because I fear that an act of conscience on my behalf would translate into the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Middle East while I sat round in the relative safely of the West, loving myself for being a ‘caring lefty’ & washing down my crudités with a fruity Rioja. If Nader manages to hand the election to the Republicans yet again, we can sit back and watch, as they rain uranium down on the innocent Iranians next in line.
I wonder who you refer to when you describe the American left? Are you talking about the Marxist-lite Jews persecuted by McCarthy? All you had to do back then was post a can of soup to Spain & you were regarded as a committed ‘fellow traveler’. There are Liberal leanings in East coast urban areas and sections of the mid west of course, but holy mother of God, most wouldn’t know a ‘socialist inkling’ from their trans-fat laden acre!
February 28th, 2008 at 9.14pm
Sarah, no I was thiking more about the spontaneous workers’ movements and organisations which got off the ground around the Great Depression in the 30s and which were met with basic and brutal state and private corporation violence. The state also recruited a vast and private army of right-wing proto-fascists ready to take on the workers if necessary. It is a tradition which is largely forgotten, though lives on in the songs of Woody Guthrie etc., though even those have now been emasculated (to use a gender laden term) and turned into money. I agree that the post-war stuff was less inspriing, not least because the Left was largely undermined by allegiance to Stalin’s Soviet Union. As to voting pragmatically, yes, I knwo what you mean. I did once vote Respect and though it had no real effect on the outcome (it was in Sheffield and so v. safe Labour) i think I now feel worse about that than I do about voting labour in 97! I just don’t think that the death toll of “muslims” (whoever they may be) will be that different whether McCain or or Clinton or Obama (I’m surprised the Clinton campaign hasn’t called him Osama yet - maybe they are saving it and will let the Republicans use it in the real election) are in charge. There are structural powers at work behind the scenes which will control what any president does and it is very difficult to stand against them. So, now I don’t really vote at all, and that feels both liberating and like a cop-out. No, things change, nothing stays the same and just because things are bad now and we are forced to choose between one capitlaist bastard and another capitalist not such a bastard, it doesn’t mean they always will be that way. In the words of George Michael, you gotta have faith, comrade!
February 28th, 2008 at 11.19pm
Another drink anyone? I’m just off to the bar again.
February 29th, 2008 at 12.15am
Peter: I just don’t think that the death toll of “muslims” (whoever they may be) will be that different whether McCain or Clinton or Obama
Sarah: Muslims, generally speaking are the people who get in it the neck every time we export liberal secular democracy to regions where Allah is preferred to PR.
I’m surprised by your claim that alternative leaders have zero impact on casualty rates. Note the difference between the attitude & conduct of Blair & Brown; within the first week in office Gordon was pulling the troops out of Basra.
Re Guthrie, Steinbeck, Seeger et al, they were artists who chronicled the horrors of the Depression & its aftermath. I don’t think they represented a true shift in consciousness. I wish they had. Their resistance has since been appropriated into a ‘Walker Evens style’ nostalgia trip, rather than something that signaled a genuine movement. Dito, with the civil rights movement & the Blues.
I think ultimately that given that the American popular imagination insists communism = atheism, ‘lefty-ness’ is highly unlikely to take off as an identity or idea. While we may yet see a black president or a female president, it will be a cold day in hell (if you believe in hell outside the Oxford St branch of Primark) when we see an atheist president. I read somewhere that it’s easier to come out as gay in the US than as a non believer. Blair consulted with the Lord about our foreign policy but at least he was ashamed enough to hide the full extent of his fervor until he got booted out by Gordon & co.
Here are the Republicans warming up http://alexandre.batlle.googlepages.com/obama6.JPG/obama6-full.jpg
In the words of Bobby Zimmerman ‘I do not fight the morality of war, I fight the futility of war.’
February 29th, 2008 at 12.25am
Old man in corner of pub wakes up:
I believe that given I have the vote I should use it. I’d like to see the vote having value *flicks to leaflet by the Electoral Reform Commission* but I’d also like to see more people simply voting so that mandates mean something. And if there’s a coilition soup as a result, well bring on the negotiators, which is a better approach to a solution than using blunt instruments and wielding unlistening powers that come with big (albeit dubiously formed) mandates.
Oh and as a corollary, a vague logic in the back of my head makes me think that if you haven’t taken part, then in some way it’s not your right criticise the result. Although Peter is obviously able to!
Turns back to sup her pint.
February 29th, 2008 at 3.09am
well, one of the things those who fought for the vote were fighting for was surely the freedom not to vote if you don’t feel represented. There are other ways of affecting the political debate in this country without going through the increasingly useless process of voting. FPTP is not really a democratic system of electing people, with millions of useless votes stacked up in safe constiuencies so that many are disenfranchised because of where they live. If there were PR (along the German lines of a List with a constituency element as well) then that would be better. I might vote then.
On “Muslims”, actually I am in favour, as I said before, of the whole world becoming like Europe in that I actually do want to export rational, secular, liberal, democratic, progressive values all around the world. Not at the point of a gun of course but I worry a bit about the sudden love for Islam which crops up on the Left inthe name of some sort of concept of abstract cultural diversity, especially amongst people who would be the first to suffer from the restrictions which traditional state formations of Islam puts on the rights of women, say for example, to play guitar and sing in front of mixed audiences. I know that Islam does not necessarily take that form, but at the moment it tends to.
For all its faults, at least the US at least technically has separated church and state. It’s just a shame the churches are so powerful there that they have captured the political debate which captures the levers of the state. I don’t think it is very different in this country though. The only politician I can think of who has recently come out as not believing is Nick Clegg. Blair certainly does, Brown always talks about morality in the same breath as mentioning his father the religious minister. The son of the manse story is just a way of saying that he has a religious background without having to admit to it directly. Brown has indeed started to withdraw some troops from Iraq but only to send more to Afghanistan, where the real emergency is and where, in about a year’s time, we are going to have to admit that it is an uncontrollable mess and either take drastic measures or pull out, the latter being less likely than the former. So, I find myself with a foot in many camps, unable to march against a war I oppose because to do so would be to align myself with the sorts of religious zealotry which I despise even more than I hate Bush.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.19am
Gosh, I have enjoyed this debate, just goes to show how serious discussion can flow from any start. It’s a slightly different perspective from here in Canada, where there is a lot of instinctive anti-Americanism, flowing from having such a powerful neighbour, although lately Canada’s economy is looking a bit healthier than the US’s (but only because Canada has oil!). It’s a curious thing, America is full of simply lovely people who have perfectly sensible views on the world and are politically very moderate - not necessarily socialist in the purest sense but very different from the archetypal view of the average American. But where are they when the votes are cast and counted? As always, it is those of more extreme views, especially of the right, who seem to predominate at the ballot box. Certainly the legacy of the cold war lives on in the US in the industrial-military complex and the rise of Putin and the ex-KCB power brokers in Russia merely serves to strengthen the views of those Americans who want to be ever stronger militarily. I guess that European democracy doesn’t export well, either to the US or to the Middle East, let alone China. And, as Sarah says, for all the secular nature of the US constitution, you’ll never find a candidate for President who will take a non-religious oath of office.
But I don’t think there is any real difference between Blair and Brown on troop deployment it is all an unholy (if you’ll pardon the expression) mess.
Ah well, back to designing the study for the new house….
February 29th, 2008 at 8.12am
Point of interest. My Electoral Reform leaflet* says that George Galloway was elected with the vote of 18% of the constituency, given turn out levels. Five MPs in the whole of the House of Commons were elected with more than 40% of the vote. If votes counted were 50% Labour, 50% Conservative then Labour would still have more than 100 seat majority.
*I read this this morning whilst waiting for the Dean of Social Science and Humanities who happens to be a lecturer in Politics, got off the phone. It was 9 in the morning. Figures might be the odd percentage out. But the point is still made.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86338173@N00/403343735/in/set-72157594557727861/
I return to bar (it’s a Lock In)
February 29th, 2008 at 11.26am
Well that’s the joy of dear old “first past the post”. It means that parties are elected whether they win a majority of votes or not and it’s one of the reasons so many people feel alienated (even if they weren’t put off by the political posturing that goes on endlessly in Parliament. Just look at the total turnout. And it’s even worse for local politics which ought to be more interesting to people since it’s actually relevant to where they live (or would be if Westminster didn’t more or less control the purse-strings! Maybe Australia has the answer - you have to vote or pay a fine!
February 29th, 2008 at 5.21pm
I am temperamentally against making things compulsory. People should want to do things because they see the need to do them. If politics is so crap that nobody wants to take part, the answer is not to say that they have to. Interestingly Nick Clegg is holding a session at Sheffield Uni this month called “Why do we hate politics so much?” I feel like going along just to say “where do you want us to start?” PR would be a good start of course, but even then, systems with PR, even my favourite version of Germany’s List plus constituency, have suffered massive declines in voter turnout. The reason we hate politics is so much is that, in the words of Clinton, it really is the economy, stupid, which rules the world now. Politics and democracy has been reduced to little more than an enabling system for the untrammelled rule of international finance capital and corporations whose only concern is increased turnover and profitability. It is what has got us into the sub-prime mess and it is why we are having to pay such a massive financial bill for everything at present (I am surprised that no-one has called Gordon Brown the Sub-Prime Minister yet). People would learn to love politics and voting more if they felt that it could regain some control over the impersonal forces which run the world at present.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.28pm
Where are those drinks Rachel? I’m parched.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.40pm
Sorry Pete, it was a long night last night in that lock in.
But if you like I’ll call up to Marge in the kitchen. She’ll whip out a quick stomach-lining fry up for us.
You just did. Call GB a Sub Prime Minister.
OMG his initials are the same as the country! Well the country minus Northern Ireland.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.47pm
which is as the country should be!
I just sent that line to the Guardian as well, so look at the lettes page tomorrow! Mind you, David Cameron will probably pinch it.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.54pm
If they do publish it, bang go my chances of rejoining the Labour Party!
February 29th, 2008 at 5.57pm
We can live in one country made of three other countries, or make a fifth country out of the three previous countries plus a province.
Perhaps we’d confuse less Americans
if we just put them in a sum:
England+Scotland+Wales+Northern Ireland
I was once put down as ‘Irish’ (by a border guard in Panama). This is because my passport reads ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. When I started to explain I found he was rather more interested in my ‘living in England’ (didn’t know whether to write my being English, British or European there) given the (at the time) imminent first fixture for the 2006 World Cup.
February 29th, 2008 at 5.58pm
Sorry not Panama - Paraguay!
February 29th, 2008 at 6.01pm
Paraguay -Schmaraguay
February 29th, 2008 at 6.08pm
Pete. Just been checking on Marge. She says, perhaps we should work this thing back to having something to do with Jazz, Malaysia and Andrea. Oh and she asked how you want your eggs?
February 29th, 2008 at 6.13pm
sunny side up of course, and yes, I was thinking the same. Maybe we should start a separate Politics Blog. We’ll call it the Lock-in. People can drop by any time for a virtual drink and a chin-wag.
February 29th, 2008 at 7.45pm
And here it is!
http://peterthompson.wordpress.com/
February 29th, 2008 at 7.50pm
you know, I was just about to send you a link to Word Press…
February 29th, 2008 at 8.01pm
yes, we have dominated your postings terribly with our ramblings, sorry.
February 29th, 2008 at 8.04pm
no need to apologise. it’s been very interesting!
February 29th, 2008 at 10.47pm
I joined - current topic Putin and embedded capital, or something very complicated that I don’t understand.x
February 29th, 2008 at 11.06pm
yes, come one come all. It is more fun than it sounds and if it isn’t then make it so!
March 1st, 2008 at 12.04am
And anyway, you started it rachel
March 1st, 2008 at 12.12am
Peter I don’t know why you feel propelled to put inverted comers around the word “Muslims” as if they’re claiming to be something their not. I note that you refer to my occupation in your comment. You imply that I would be curtailed as a musician if I lived in a Muslim nation state. These issues are far more complex & relativist than that. They don’t center on ‘me’ or what I might want to do. This is the Adrian Mole guide to theology. Has it ever occurred to you that not everybody on the planet seeks to live their life according to the supremacist ramblings of Richard Dawkings & Nick Choen? People have the right to surrender to God, if even if you think they’re deluded, as much as we have the right to fall into deep, irrational love that no on-looker can fathom. I find myself agreeing with Martin Amis on this topic, who recently said on Newsnight ‘The opposite of religion is not so called humanism or agnosticism, but an independent mind.’ I really sense the “Left” is imploding on itself, the battle cry of the French Revolution ‘Liberté, egalité, fraternité, ou la Mort!’ has now come to mean ‘Be free & equil of we’ll kill you!’
March 1st, 2008 at 12.36am
Sarah, I put inverted commas round Muslims precisely because it is a portmanteau term covering all sorts of people with all sorts of views, from the liberal to the hard line.The other reason I did so is because you used it first in a very abstract way, with no definition of what you menat by it at all. As to my views on religion, then have a look at an article I wrote for the Guardian last year http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/11/comment.religion in the face to faith column, in which I attack Dawkins and Hitchens (and by extension Cohen, who i think has gone slightly mad on this) precisely for their undifferentiated views of religion. I accept the right of people to believe in whatever they want, I even think that religious debate and belief has contributed vastly to our sum of knowledge - indeed the enlightenment can be seen to have issued directly from the writings of many 15th century Muslim scholars such as Avincenna/ Ibn Sinna, and I concur that an independent mind is the best thing to have, but I also think that I have the right to criticise what I think of as dangerous, obscurantist or fundamntalist thought when I come across it and I wish to argue it out of existence. As Rorty says, if the choice is between widows having to self-immolate at their husbands cremation or the welfares state transferring a husband’s pension rights to his widow then we must choose the latter every time. Not everything that people believe is of equal value and if we believe in liberty and secularism we should be prepared to say so and to defend it.
March 1st, 2008 at 12.44am
And of course there are some Muslims states where you *would* be curtailed in your right to perform and there are others where you would not. I said that in my original posting above. The problem is that there are more and more of the former and fewer and fewer of the latter.
March 1st, 2008 at 12.52am
So I want to eradicate suttee, female genital mutilation, unequal treatment based on gender, the stoning to death of adulters (only the female ones of course) and homosexuals etc. etc. and I won’t accept the argument that these are valid expressions of someone else’s culture. They are simply wrong. full stop.
March 1st, 2008 at 1.01am
Peter I’m starting to think you’ve never come across the iconoclastic Afgan girl ensamble,The Burker Band!?
If this link doesn’t work, you absolutly must Google!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8fCXUKLQyg
March 1st, 2008 at 1.08am
Ha! brilliant. BUT, to quote from a report and interview with them:
“- It was a lot of fun, but also very scary. Afghanistan is still a very dangerous place for modern women, and when we shot the video we had to do it very discreetely because no one could know that we were playing music, says Nargiz.” And they wear the burka not only in self-mocking irony but also because it protets their identity from the fundamentalists! My point precisely I think!
March 1st, 2008 at 1.57am
I like you’re article a lot. Do you know Fukuyama’s polemic The End of History & the Last Man? It proposes that Hagel’s dialectic is resolved in the ultimate virtue of Liberal Democracy. Obviously this idea has been undercut by 2001 onward, but it still sticks somehow, esp with the likes Choen & his cohorts on the Euston Manifesto.
The problem is that Enlightenment thinking seems to have got caught in an ethical cul-de-sac. How is it that a belief in equality makes us superior?
And the analogy of enlightenment = lightness & faith = darkness reinforces the sort of supremacist twaddle typified in White Man’s Burden, i.e. we rational Europeans must save the savages! Or at the very least, nick their produce & teach them cricket (& then accuse them of cheating when they win).
Back to Berker Band, Afgan women’s rights only mattered to western liberals when the Taliban refused to acquiesce to American interests in 2001. No one gave a rat’s arce about them before. In the same way as nobody particular cared about the homosexuals of Iran until Ahmadinejad started enriching his uranium. It is this pernicious brand of neo-conservatism gift wrapped as Humanism that is so leathal.
March 1st, 2008 at 2.07am
Yes, I know Fukuyama and that book. I used to think it was completely wrong but now I’m not so sure. At the moment we do indeed appear to have arrived at some sort of end point an it is indeed difficult to see where it can go from here, but that is no reason to give up. The only question is whether we can move forward to a global democracy which includes all forms of social and religious thought (what Bloch calls a social multi-verse) but will essentially be enlghtened and secular and liberal, or whether the forces that want the world to be subordinate to needs of capital but who use the language of democracy and liberalism as fig-leaves for the expansionist aims force us in that direction at the point of a gun. My feeling is that just because Bush says it is all about defending freedom then we should challenge him and say that wat he means is the freedom to opn the world for business. What we must mean by them is to open the world to human freedom, in which the economy becomes our servant rather than our master. But I don’t think that in the name of anti-imperialism we must accept what other anti-iperialists wish to impose on the rest of us (I mean the idea of the global Islamic Caliphate which some would like to see).
March 1st, 2008 at 2.11am
Is wrong!
March 1st, 2008 at 2.13am
And anyway, Fukuyama says that plenty of turmoil and war will take place after the end of history but it cannot and should not lead to any new social system. Socialism is mabe still on the agenda but I certainly want to see the reduction of religion as an alternative to secular democracy, be it Christian Muslim or whatever.
March 1st, 2008 at 2.26am
oi! you lot! it’s chucking out time! if you wanna keep talking politics go to Pete’s pub over ‘ere: http://peterthompson.wordpress.com/. the landlord’s a bit dodgy, but it’s a lovely gaff.
March 1st, 2008 at 4.11am
btw, I would be joining in with the debate, but I’m just too beat. bear with me while I get my mojo back…