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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:22 am Post subject: |
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| Salim201 wrote: | | Luke, if you think a "reformed" (expanded & corrupt) international bureacracy is what's needed, with all the central authority amongst elites that we wouldn't have voted for but (perhaps minorities in other nations have), then i'm afraid you're amongst the dangerously utopian majority nowadays, and what you think as the solution is actually part of the problem. Its just too radical a proposition that so many people on all sides seem to be proponants of, but its these bureacracies and the lack of local gov't and accountability that is what's wrong. gov'ts role is protect our 'rights', global issues can be dealt with without the entanglements and invasiveness of distant and impersonal central authorities. Ralph nader isn't a govt bureacrat, the green party here is a grassroots organisation, oxfam, shelter are all independant of govt. The UN is one of the most flawed institutions, it serves no purpose, and is next to meaningless without US support. Maybe if Ron paul took the US it may improve in providing a better forum for other nations to get together without the threat of a constant US veto! |
you raise some good points but i still think we need to work together as planet instead of individual countries, the un in its current form isn't what it should be, but my 'utopian' vision for it would be - but then, like my vision for the money system, like my vision for democracy, none of its going to happen  |
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Salim201
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:22 pm Post subject: |
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| lol realist vs idealist ?? |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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its funny i been thinking about it today actually, maybe we should start a thread
i'm kinda split on it at the moment, like half is thinking maybe if the un wasn't so impotent, say like with the cuba vote - if it could lift the american embargo, if it could force israel to to abide by 242 and move back within its borders etc, and the other half is thinking, what else would they do with all that power - i mean after kofi annan said the invasion of iraq was illegal, they then legitimatised it 
i think i need to read more on it, i don't really know enough about the un and its workings |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Salim201 wrote: | | lol realist vs idealist ?? |
Is it realistic or idealistic to put your support behind a candidate who has no chance? |
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Salim201
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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 NO! now you're confusing realism with defeatism!! i'm not a defeatist! |
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Salim201
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| plus he's got a billionaire backer, so he's got every chance! |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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| I just got a smile in seeing that Giuliani has pulled out of the race... |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Don't be fooled by the myth of John McCain
A lazy, hazy myth has arisen out of the mists of New Hampshire and South Carolina. Across the pan-Atlantic press, the grizzled 71-year-old Vietnam vet, John McCain, is being billed as the Republican liberals can live with. He is "a bipartisan progressive"", "a principled hard liberal", "a decent man" in the words of liberal newspapers. His fragile new frontrunner status as we go into Super Tuesday is being seen as something to cautiously welcome, a kick to the rotten Republican establishment.
But the truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear. Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary or Barack.
McCain is third-generation navy royalty, raised from a young age to be a senior figure in the Armed Forces, like his father and grandfather before him. He was sent to one of the most elite boarding schools in America, then to a naval academy where he ranked 894th out of 899 students in ability. He used nepotism to get ahead: when he was rejected by the National War College, he used his father's contacts with the Secretary of the Navy to make them reconsider. He then swiftly married the heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune.
Right up to his twenties, he remained a strikingly violent man, "ready to fight at the drop of a hat", according to his biographer Robert Timberg. This rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has written: "At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out."
But he claims he was transformed by his experiences in Vietnam a war he still defends as "noble" and "winnable", if only it had been fought harder. (More than three million Vietnamese died; how much harder could it be?) His plane was shot down on a bombing raid over Hanoi, and he was captured and tortured for five years. To this day, he cannot lift his arms high enough to comb his own hair.
On his release, he used his wife's fortune to run to as a Republican senator. He was a standard-issue Reaganite corporate Republican until the Keating Five corruption scandal consumed him. In 1987, it was revealed that McCain, along with four other senators, had taken huge campaign donations from a fraudster called Charles Keating. In return they pressured government regulators not to look too hard into Keating's affairs, allowing him to commit even more fraud. McCain later admitted: "I did it for no other reason than I valued [Keating's] support."
McCain took the only course that could possibly preserve his reputation: he turned the scandal into a debate about the political system, rather than his own personal corruption. He said it showed how "we need to drive the special interests out of Washington", and became a high-profile campaigner for campaign finance reform. But privately, his behaviour hasn't changed much. For example, in 2000 he lobbied federal regulators hard on behalf of a major campaign contributor, Paxson Communications, in an act the regulators spluttered was "highly unusual". He has never won an election without outspending his opponent.
But McCain has distinguished himself most as an όber-hawk on foreign policy. To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: at a recent rally, he sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann". He says North Korea should be threatened with "extinction".
McCain has mostly opposed using US power for humanitarian goals, jeering at proposals to intervene in Rwanda or Bosnia but he is very keen to use it for great power imperialism. He learnt this philosophy from his father and his granddad Slew, who fought in the Philippine wars at the turn of the 20th century, where he was part of a mission to crush the local resistance to the US invasion. They did it by forcing the entire population from their homes at gunpoint into "protection zones", and gunning down anybody over the age of ten who was found outside them. Today, McCain dreamily describes this as "an exotic adventure" which his grandfather "generally enjoyed".
Then McCain's father, John, led the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, at a time when there was a conflict on the Caribbean island. On one side, there were forces loyal to Juan Bosch, the democratically elected left-wing President who was committed to land redistribution and helping the poor. On the other side, there were forces who had overthrown the elected government and looked nostalgically to the playboy tyranny of Rafael Trujillo. John McCain Snr intervened to ensure the supporters of the democratic government were crushed, bragging that it taught the natives "how to behave themselves". He saw this as part of a wider mission, where the US would take over Britain's role as a "world empire".
These beliefs drive McCain today. He brags he would be happy for US troops to remain in Iraq for 100 years, and declares: "I'm not at all embarrassed of my friendship with Henry Kissinger; I'm proud of it." His most thorough biographer and recent supporter Matt Welch concludes: "McCain's programme for fighting foreign wars would be the most openly militaristic and interventionist platform in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt... [it] is considerably more hawkish than anything George Bush has ever practised." With him as president, we could expect much more aggressive destabilisation of Venezuela and Bolivia and more.
So why do so many nice liberals have a weak spot for McCain? Well, to his credit, he doesn't hate immigrants: he proposed a programme to legalise the 12 million undocumented workers in the US. He sincerely opposes torture, as a survivor of it himself. He has apologised for denying global warming and now advocates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions but only if China and India can also be locked into the system. He is somewhat uncomfortable with the religious right (while supporting a ban on abortion and gay marriage). It is a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted that these are considered signs of liberalism, rather than basic humanity.
Yet these sprinklings of sanity onto a very extreme programme are enough for a superficial, glib press to present McCain as "bipartisan" and "centrist". Will this be enough to put white hair into the White House? At the moment, he has considerably higher positive ratings than Hillary Clinton, and beats her in some match-up polls. If we don't start warning that the Real McCain is not the Real McCoy, we might sleepwalk into four more years of Republicanism. |
from the independent |
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faceless
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| interesting read - cheers. I didn't know much about him - and now I could care less... unless he wins. |
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Salim201
Joined: 12 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| The republican party hasn't drifted to the right, its taken a shift into a quite new direction altogether. Neo-conservatism has little to do with traditional republicanism, the main proponants can't stand the realist/realpolitik policies of people like nixon and kissinger. I think it wouldn't be as bad as Bush to have McCain in as long as there is a different crowd and with a democrat congress there should be furthur checks. Other hand it could be pretty much the same, with an impending conflict with Iran. Either way it can't get much worse if you live in middle east. For domestic policies very little will change with all the front-runners at the mo. Edwards was the only one who offered real change for democrats and he's dropped out cos he can't compete financially, ron paul will stay in the race just to win the debates but he'll never win the nomination. |
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Brown Sauce
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:21 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | John McCain Snr intervened to ensure the supporters of the democratic government were crushed, bragging that it taught the natives "how to behave themselves". (Dom Rep 1965) He saw this as part of a wider mission, where the US would take over Britain's role as a "world empire". |
I wonder does this assholes son share his ideal of a "world empire" ? If so, there are two world govt supporters, the other being Clinton. |
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faceless
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Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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Cheerio Cheerio Cheerio! |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Clinton suspends campaign, endorses Obama
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her pioneering campaign for the presidency on Saturday and summoned supporters to use "our energy, our passion, our strength" to put Barack Obama in the White House.
"I endorse him and throw my full support behind him," said the former first lady, delivering the strong affirmation that her one-time rival and other Democratic leaders hoped to hear after a bruising campaign.
Amid tears from her supporters, Clinton issued a call for unity that emphasized the cultural and political milestones that she and Obama, the first black to secure a presidential nomination, represent.
"Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States," she said.
For Clinton and her backers, it was a poignant moment, the end of an extraordinary run that began with an air of inevitability and certain victory. About 18 million people voted for her; it was the closest a woman has come to capturing a nomination.
"Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before," she said in a speech before cheering supporters packed into the ornate National Building Museum, not far from the White House she longed to occupy, as president this time.
Indeed, her speech repeatedly returned to the new threshold her candidacy had set for women. In primary after primary, her support among women was a solid bloc of her coalition. She noted that she had received the support of women born before women could even vote.
But her main goal was to heal the rift in the party one that cleaved Democrats in part by class, by gender and by race.
"The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States," she said.
"Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me," the New York senator said in her 28-minute address. Loud boos competed with applause.
With that and 13 other mentions of his name, Clinton placed herself solidly behind her Senate colleague from Illinois, who awaits Arizona Sen. John McCain in the general election. "We may have started on separate journeys but today, our paths have merged," Clinton said.
Obama, in a statement from Chicago where he was spending the weekend, declared himself "thrilled and honored" to have Clinton's support.
"I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run," he said. "She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans."
Obama secured the 2,118 delegates needed to clinch the nomination Tuesday after primaries in South Dakota and Montana. Aides said Obama watched Clinton's speech live on the Internet. His campaign put a photo of the New York senator on its Web site and urged supporters to send her a message of thanks. Likewise, Clinton's Web site thanked her backers. "Support Senator Obama today," her Web page said. "Sign up now and together we can write the next chapter in America's story."
Party leaders welcomed the new alliance.
"As you may know, I was a boxer. And I've seen many fights go the distance," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "But never have I seen one where everyone came out stronger until now. Because of the unprecedented number of new voters and the tremendous amount of enthusiastic supporters all the Democrats brought to the primary process, we stand ready to win the White House in 2008."
Both Obama and Clinton stood to gain from the new collaboration.
Obama could use the women and blue-collar voters who flocked to Clinton's campaign. She could benefit from his prodigious fundraising to help retire a debt of as much as $30 million. Clinton loaned her campaign at least $11.4 million; by law only, she has until the summer Democratic convention to recoup it.
Clinton also has told colleagues she would be interested in joining Obama as his running mate. On Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an Obama supporter, said she had made "a powerful case for her eligibility" to be on the ticket.
Joining Clinton on stage Saturday were her husband, the former president, and their daughter, Chelsea, to loud cheers from the crowd. When she spoke, they stepped away. Her mother, Dorothy Rodham, watched from the floor to the side of the stage and wiped away a tear.
In deciding to suspend her campaign, Clinton kept some options open. She gets to retain her delegates to the nominating convention this summer and she can continue to raise money. It also means she could reopen her campaign if circumstances change before the Denver convention, but gave no indication that was her intention.
As soon as Clinton finished speaking, some of the nearly 300 Democratic party leaders and elected officials across the country who had pledged their support to her as superdelegates released statements announcing they now back Obama. The switchers included some of Clinton's most high-profile supporters, including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Maine Gov. John Baldacci.
Clinton supporters began lining up at dawn to attend the farewell address. A smattering of Obama backers showed up as well, saying they did so as a gesture of party unity.
As they awaited her arrival, campaign staffers milled the room, exchanging hugs and saying goodbye.
Clinton seemed almost buoyant in her address, feeding off the energy of a loud and appreciative crowd.
"Well, this isn't exactly the party I planned but I sure like the company," she said as she opened her speech.
Clinton backers described themselves as sad and resigned. "This is a somber day," said Jon Cardinal, one of the first in line. Cardinal said he planned, reluctantly, to support Obama in the general election. "It's going to be tough after being against Obama for so long," he said.
Republicans quickly launched a "Clinton vs. Obama" page on the Republican National Committee's Web site drawing attention to her criticism of Obama during the campaign.
President Bush praised the symbolism of the 2008 field.
"I thought it was a really good statement, powerful moment when a major political party nominates an African-American man to be their standard bearer," he said in an interview Friday with an Italian journalist. "And it's good for our democracy that that happened. And we also had a major contender being a woman. Obviously Hillary Clinton was a major contender. So I think it's a good sign for American democracy." |
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