There is one thing more frustrating than seeing MPs use your money to pay for their second homes. This is when the leader of one of the parties – after going to the effort of filling out his expenses forms to get back money for his second home, of course – then comes out and says he would actually do the job for no money!
John Bird and John Fortune shred the financial system’s decision making to absolute bits in this satirical interview.
A Must Watch !!
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Respected First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama,
Your husband is one of the few great things that have happened to the world of politics as we see it today.
Not only has President Barrack Obama managed to stimulate the world of bureaucracy into reevaluating its objectives and aspirations for the rest of the world, he has also managed to shed more than some light on the existing political infrastructure of the United States, exposing the idiosyncrasies of the system that have lead to some of the most irresponsible decision making by the country’s foreign policy makers in the last two decades.
He has redefined the concept of mean politics for the rest of the US administrative powers to see, chosen some of the best, most liberal and intellectually sound cabinet members of all time in the history of the country, to spearhead his initiatives with him, the initiatives being the plight of an American people who have been waiting to see a leader who has the will to serve ‘them’ and not special interests, the will to overthrow unreasonable policies put into active legislation and effect by previous administrations, the personality to charm a world of supporters and foreign onlookers into embracing the thought of there being a possible change in the stance of the USA towards foreign countries, particularly in the Middle East, South and South East Asia, and the desire to embrace change that has been an inevitability ignored by the largely near-retirement ranks in previous US administrations.
He is the new breed of American politician the country and the rest of the world have been waiting for, someone who is more ‘contemporary’, someone who lives in the 21st century and not in the past, someone who can appreciate the role modern day technology plays in reaching the masses, someone who knows how to replace outdated laws and policies with new more refreshing and open-minded strategies that attempt to seek a resolution to the country’s and the world’s problems without the imposition of force and status, and most importantly, someone who can actually ‘communicate’ with the masses, both inside and outside the borders of the United States.
Yes, you didn’t see it coming.
Yes, you didn’t want him to enter politics because it was one mean business to get into.
But you and many others know, that he’s doing a fine job at running it.
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Ref: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7462669.stm
Western media sources have been bashing the Iranian government’s treatment of protesters rioting against the outcome of the 2009 elections now for the past few days. It’s interesting to note how all of a sudden the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan have magically forgotten the usual norm of elections, results and people’s reaction to them in the Islamic Republic of Iran for the past decade. Iran, like many other countries, has a history plagued with manipulative electoral ways, rigging of almost every election and campaign in their history, the clear advantage in any election being with those candidates who are battling at the political front aided strongly by powerful religious influences and facilitators.
Is it really that big a surprise to see Ahmedinejad win the 2009 elections with almost 63% of the vote? How and why is it any different from his win against Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2005 where Ahmedinejad took nearly 62% of the vote? Does a 1% fluctuation really stir the west’s conscience so much that every media outlet in the world starts talking about Iran hosting sham elections? Why now? Why not in 2005, or even earlier?
What western media has ignored recently is Ahmedinejad’s former status in Iran as a supporter of populism who’s exhibited time and time again that he is a strong politician and even stronger campaigner. An example of this is when he destroyed Mousavi in the national debates that were aired on all major Iranian television channels, giving many the impression that he had strong leadership skills, and thereby allowed him to secure the support of a large segment of the Iranian population. How much of the 62% vote in both 2005 and 2009 this attributed to remains unclear, but by any stretch of the human imagination, it is quite unlikely for a good majority of the people to not vote in favour of a candidate who’s exhibited the effectiveness as a politician that Ahmedinejad has.
It’s quite silly for western media to be using the latest elections as the seed to sow more revivalist propaganda into the ranks of a country already plagued with zero transparency between the people and their government. The protests we see in Tehran today are not like any other the country has witnessed since the revolution. The misconception that the Iranian people are protesting against just the outcome of the elections should be done away with if the media wishes to preserve the perceived accuracy of its reports in the longer term.
The Iranian people are protesting against a lack of personal and religious freedom, basic human rights, democratic systems that they wish were in place but sadly aren’t, the fear of an ‘Iran Liberation Act’ being brought into play as a result of the political instability in their country, a policy the US President Bill Clinton, the Senate and Congress unanimously upheld in 1998 with the ‘Iraq Liberation Act’. President George Bush later stepped in to declare that the Act should not prohibit the President from using Military Force to exercise the regime change the Iraq Liberation Act supported, leading to the Act being cited as a basis of support in the Congressional “Authorization for use of Military Force Against Iraq” in October 2002.
If one takes a look at how things are unfolding in the current conflict-ridden atmosphere in Iran, it becomes quite easy to strike unusually familiar comparisons between Iran’s current state of affairs and Iraq’s between 1980 and 1998 :
Two of the accusations against Iraq in 1998, according to the ‘Iraq Liberation Act’, stated that Iraq had “committed various and significant violations of International Law” and “had ignored Resolutions of the United Nations Security Council”.
Now let’s take a look at how Iran fits that picture almost perfectly, and how it is only a matter of time before someone in the US Government decides to make even more public this already bare picture:
11th September, 2004 : Iran refuses IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspection of their Parchin Military site. – ( Iraq did the same before the ILA had to be drafted. )
1st March 2005 : Iran refuses to allow United Nations Nuclear Watchdog to make a visit to their Parchin Military site, popularly pitched in allegations to nuclear weapons testing, stating that though an underground nuclear-related facility exists, there is no nuclear weapons construction and/or testing being performed at the site. – ( Iraq did the same between 1991 and 1998. )
26th October 2005 : Mahmoud Ahmedinejad delivers a speech at the “World Without Zionism” conference in Asia, stating that Israel must be wiped off the world map.
10th March 2009 : Iran violates UN Resolutions banning arms transfer by supplying arms to Syria. Iran refuses inspection of its nuclear facilities by the IAEA for the third time, while the IAEA publishes a report citing Iran being in possession of 5,500 centrifuges, 4,000 of them designed for the enrichment of uranium, and releases studies of how Iran’s ‘Heavy Water Reactor’ at Arak is designed to meet the standards set out for nuclear reactors capable of producing Plutonium, clearly for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons.
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The Iranian people are afraid of their country diving into a fate similar to Iraq’s. They are protesting in an effort to oust a leadership that is drawing their country closer and closer to a possible military response from international governments, particularly the US and Britain. They seek to engage in diplomacy with the west that their current leadership does not believe in. They seek the transparency of political practices that are in compliance with UN Resolutions and democratic principles, and not a state that is in under constant scrutiny for not upholding the same.
These people are afraid of what is to come, and the last 12 years of war ridden history between the US and countries exhibiting such traits as Iran is currently, doesn’t really help them.
Almost every Western nation practiced slavery to some degree, but with the new philosophies of the 1800s and abolition of slavery, the long journey towards racial equality began. In the United States, however, this goal was to be put on hold for almost a century, when an official policy of racial segregation was gradually adopted, beginning in 1876. One need only pick up a psychology textbook post-Zimbardo, to read of the dangers of splitting people into two seperate groups.
In Britain, after the abolition of slavery, black people had equal rights under the law. Not “separate but equal.” Just equal. Of course they faced discrimination, but it was not built into the very structure of the country. It was not a legitimate or acceptable theory, even if it was a practice. In Britain, the preoccupation was class. This, by extension, includes the issue of race, but is yet very different from an official policy of segregating people’s lives based solely on skin colour. The deep-rooted hatred was not present; large-scale murder, mutilation and intimidation of black people is, thankfully, not a part of British history.
A very obvious example of how differently countries without ‘Jim Crow’ equivalents developed from the USA is when black US soldiers met Europeans a century later, during the second world war. To be able to walk into any business just the same as somebody with white skin, mix with and even date white women, must have been a real eye-opener to how unnatural and wrong things were back home at the time (I would recommend ‘Mudbound’ by Hillary Jordan for a very poignant description of this).
When we come to the modern day, things get a lot less clear-cut. The USA still bears the scars of segregation; of that there is no doubt. Geographical and psychological divides still remain. US cities are well-known for their “black” and “white” areas, and through my personal experience of living in St Louis, I observed a real “them and us” mentality among people, the likes of which I had never witnessed before.
However, does this necessarily mean that the USA is “more racist” than those countries without such a turbulent racial history? Perhaps in the US, people talk openly about their prejudices, because it’s something that is literally imprinted upon the history and geography of the nation for all to see. In countries like Britain, it maybe lurks dangerously benealth the surface, only discussed when glaring cases of “institutionalised racism” are brought to light.
It’s a tough one, and the ‘Americanization’ of the world makes it even tougher. We’re no longer closed societies. We can’t compare “Society A – without Jim Crow” with “Society B – with Jim Crow.” People blame a recent surge in black-on-black violence in UK cities on young black males copying the American ‘gang culture.’ But surely this would never occur if there was not an underlying problem to begin with. There has been an increasingly vocal backlash against Chris Rock’s tour of the UK, with people saying his racist jokes are divisive and not welcome in Britain. Is there any truth to these statements, or is Britain racist too, but is just uncomfortable discussing it?
The impact of the Jim Crow laws not only upon the United States but on the world, is impossible to quantify. There is no doubt that it oppressed black people in the USA for the century that it reigned as law, and beyond. Does the USA suffer from deeper racial divisions than other Western nations because of it? Surely it does, for the horrors endured by black people in the United States are truly unmatched in other Western democracies. Yet, as our cultures become inextricably linked, the Jim Crow legacy is one that will be shared – hopefully to be conquered – by all.
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This article was inspired by Shazale Ramsey on facebook.
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