Here come the liberals

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By Will Hutton*

For decades American conservatism defined global politics. Now we are about to witness a seismic change in Washington. Will Hutton leads a special report on the profound impact the new thinking will have on Britain and the world

turn-left-right-arrow.jpgBritish politicians, commentators and the public like to believe in their sturdy autonomy. We have arrived at our decisions as freeborn men and women. We debate our ideas furiously in pubs, on radio phone-ins or via letters to the editor. We read the opinion pages. We elect a sovereign parliament that passes the laws and regulations that we mandate.

The truth is more subtle. We dance to another country’s tune. It is the United States that makes the political, cultural and intellectual weather. It is the rich American institutes that develop the ideas for XYZ plan or ABC radical reform. Our academics, especially in the social sciences, want to get published in the American journals and ensure they please the editor in question. Our politicians watch closely to see what works in the US. We enjoy their movies and use their technology. The West Wing and Mad Men are part of our culture, as are Sex and the City and Friends. We think we are free; we are painfully and excessively influenced by the US.

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Remembrance Day 2008

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How Should we Honour the War Dead?

by Alan Morrison

poppy-7738861.jpgThe 11th of November is a date which impinges as a dichotomy on our already seared consciousness. Remembrance Day. Remember our war dead - especially from the First World War. Remember the heroes. Poppies. Wreaths. Solemn-faced politicians making a show of care about life and death. Elderly, stiff-gaited uniformed gentlemen with medals. Brass bands. Sentry-like cenotaphs against the dark, dank, drizzly-grey skies of November’s winter foreboding. Pomp and circumstance. Always a glorification of the heroism in militarism but never a hint of condemnation in it.

    One shudders to put one’s head over the parapet to interject a thought which may detract from all that jingoistic fervour but… dare I ask: Is there any genuine substance to it all?

    I venture to suggest that Remembrance Day as we know it is an outmoded institution which is not only inappropriate for the purposes of the remembrance of the foulness and futility of war but is also an affront to those whose lives have been wasted by it. There was no heroism in World War I. Not really. It may have felt like that for some as they gave their lives for their country. But if ever there was a futile gesture it was laying down one’s life in World War I.  Heroism is wasted if it leaves no lasting legacy. Death, if it is futile, is a jumping into the void devoid of moral virtue.

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Remembrance day salutes man’s ancient instincts

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By James Delingpole

flo.jpgEvery man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, and I’m sorry to repeat such a hoary cliché, but the reason it’s so hoary is it’s true. There’s barely a chap I know who doesn’t wonder how he’d fare if forced to undergo the ultimate male test - combat. And the ones who claim not to wonder such things I find frankly a bit weird. Are they not in denial of almost everything it means to be a man?

A boy’s childhood is - even now, in an era when we’re supposed to have evolved from all that militaristic nonsense - a preparation for war. Some of it’s plain obvious, like the way boys love to fight one another with sticks, and shoot each other from behind corners going ‘peeeooing peeeooing’ (or, better still, ‘trrrrrrrrrrrrr’ if they can roll their ‘rs’ and do machine guns) with their pointed fingers.

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Americans Murdering Their Judges, and the US Crisis of Judicial Corruption

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By Dr Leslie Sachs

prison-bars-image.gifIn the headlines are the appalling news stories of Americans carrying out murderous attacks on judges and their families. In a matter of days, one judge was shot and killed in his own courtroom, while another judge had family members brutally murdered in their home.

These news stories are, however, related to another news story, which is the most taboo subject of the American media - the expanding crisis of corruption among American judges and lawyers. At question is whether the deepening despair of Americans about their own legal system, is fueling some of these violent attacks on judges.

Much is written now about how America’s economy is resembling that of a banana republic, given how America is sunk in preposterous debt, and how the US dollar currency is sinking toward a possible collapse in the near future.

But there is another way that America is also like a banana republic, in that its legal system - contrary to its Hollywood image - has become a sinkwell of secret proceedings, the jailing of the innocent, and political misconduct; and how it is sullied with documented corruption, fake trials and court fraud.

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What’s up, Comrade Bush?

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By Vincent Bevins

combush.jpgCajoled for years to take on Western-style economic liberalism there’s more than a wry smile on the faces of some of South America’s left wing leaders as George Bush and others step in to save collapsing financial institutions, writes Vincent Bevins

The irony has not been lost on the political leaders of Latin America’s insurgent left movements that the governments of Europe and the US are now taking measures that involve far deeper state intervention in the economy than actions they themselves used to harshly criticize when attempted in other regions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joked that George Bush “is finally beginning to understand the road to socialism” and notes that “he isn’t criticized for nationalizing the largest bank in the world.”

“What’s up, Comrade Bush,” he said.

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Change, or more of the same?

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From Pravda. Ru

voteforchange.gifIn a recent article for the Miami Herald, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts discussed two “still-classified” government memos that not only revealed how the United States government, under George W. Bush, authorized and engaged in the use of torture, but also how Bush himself blatantly lied to the American people about this reality.

The memos, written in 2003 and 2004, were designed to alleviate the concerns of then-CIA director George Tenet that agents might be criminally prosecuted for torturing “high value” terrorism suspects. Yet two years later, George W. Bush was telling the American people, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it-and I will not authorize it.”

Pitts made two other compelling points in this article. The first was that the corporate-controlled media largely ignored the revelations in these memos, a development that, while disturbing, is certainly not surprising given the plethora of so-called “news” channels that favor sensationalism and superficiality over substance.

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A short history of modern finance

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The 2008 crash has been blamed on cheap money, Asian savings and greedy bankers. For many people, deregulation is the prime suspect.

The Economist

house_of_cards.jpgLink by link

The autumn of 2008 marks the end of an era. After a generation of standing ever further back from the business of finance, governments have been forced to step in to rescue banking systems and the markets. In America, the bulwark of free enterprise, and in Britain, the pioneer of privatisation, financial firms have had to accept rescue and part-ownership by the state. As well as partial nationalisation, the price will doubtless be stricter regulation of the financial industry. To invert Karl Marx, investment bankers may have nothing to gain but their chains.

The idea that the markets have ever been completely unregulated is a myth: just ask any firm that has to deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in America or its British equivalent, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). And cheap money and Asian savings also played a starring role in the credit boom. But the intellectual tide of the past 30 years has unquestionably been in favour of the primacy of markets and against regulation. Why was that so?

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Re: The McBama Burlesque

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By Hanna Jaeckel

mccain-obama-spinning1.jpgI am sorry not to have gotten to this great article until this morning Anwaar. I have been teaching myself “international economics”, and it was a crash course of a 3-weeks duration. International Finance is nothing by comparison.

God I feel jaded and cynical!! If the premises for your article were correct, then I would have sent it to the NY Times “guest editor”, but I don’t see it, the way that you do. The US’ use for Pakistan is limited - and the partnership in the “wa’ on terra’” is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Just as the “wa’ on terra’” is as phony as a three-dollar bill. That “war” is nothing but an excuse to attack every … any … sovereign country at will, using that as an excuse to;

1) steal the countries’, currently declared to be harboring “terists”, natural resources, if they have any interest for USA, Inc. by means of any threadbare excuse, repetitive lies and absurd accusations;

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The killing of Anna Politkovskaya

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By *Sara Hall

annapolitkovskaya003.jpgThe murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October 2006 has been remembered all over the world during the last week. Amnesty International believes that Politkovskaya was killed because of her work as a journalist. The trial of three men accused of her murder is set to start on 15 October in a Moscow military court.

Politkovskaya was relentless in her efforts to draw the world’s attention to the suffering of the people in Chechnya. Her reports were crucial in bringing about the first ever prosecution against a Russian police officer, guilty of serious human rights violations. While working in the area she was put in a pit in the ground by Russian forces and subjected to abuse and humiliation.

She was included in the Top 50 Heroes of our time compiled by the New Statesman in May 2006.

Her books, which have been translated into English, highlight atrocities in Chechnya, criticise Vladimir Putin’s presidency and the general stifling of civil liberties by Russia’s secret service, the Federal Security Service (FSB). She frequently spoke about theses issues to audiences worldwide.

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Guided by an invisible hand

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By Joseph Stiglitz*

global_crisis.jpgThe bank meltdown marks a turning point in our thinking about how the world works writes the Nobel Laureate. In some ways this is the biggest crisis in 80 years.

Make no mistake: we are witnessing the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. In some ways it is worse than the Great Depression, because the latter did not involve these very complicated instruments - the derivatives that Warren Buffett has referred to as financial weapons of mass destruction; and we did not have anything close to the magnitude of today’s cross-border finance.

The events of these weeks will be to market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism. Last month in the United States almost 160,000 jobs were shed - making more than three-quarters of a million this year. My guess is that things will get considerably worse. I have been predicting this for some time, and so far, unfortunately, I have been right.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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