Take Two, beginning with Libya

Let's try this again, shall we?

A lot has happened since that post in February, 2009, and it would take a while to recap it all. So let's just get back in the swing of things with a very interesting article from the New York Times.

This one is about the difficulty of nation building in the ruins of the ancien regime. The media has focused a lot on the war, but what I find more interesting is how the rebels have been trying to rebuild their country in the midst of the conflict. In this area of the Nafusah Mountains, the rebels have held their ground and built a new society in what was once Qaddafi's Libya. This is in spite of the fact that this rebel held territory is much closer to Tripoli than the areas out in the east; weeks earlier the territory had been on the brink of defeat.

But the politics of the situation is not as interesting as how the city is run. The proverbial trains still need to run and administration still has to be done. For instance, in spite of the war many of those who worked for Gaddafi's government have retained their old positions in what is supposed to be the new Libya. This includes the police, many of whom are Gaddafi's men in new rebel uniforms. The article never delves into why this has happened, but one can see why. Not all of these people were loyal to Gaddafi because they loved him, but simply because they needed a job and he was willing to give one to them. This is true throughout the Middle East, where jobs are given to many to make it economically difficult for them to revolt. After all, why would one revolt against his employer? Furthermore, these people know how to run a state, and can run the trains that are working well while the rebels try to put the other ones back on their respective tracks.

At the moment, this region has also embraced the idea of "freedom of speech," or at least the right to protest against its former dictator. Seven new newspapers have been launched in this area (and distributed through the magic of photocopies), proving that at least in this part of the world the newspaper industry is not dead.

Honestly, the entire article is worth a look, just to see how much has changed...and how much work it takes to build a new state and fight a much stronger foe, even when you have wealthy Libyans contributing from abroad and an ill-equipped army against a much stronger one.

Yes, this is my first new post in more than two years, and I plan to do this on a weekly basis at worst, but preferably a daily one. Hope you like the revived blog!

The Blair Lecture

I just went to the Tony Blair lecture, and...uh, I don't want to forget anything. They wouldn't let us bring a lot of stuff, like recording devices for instance. So...yeah...

So why not use a blog I haven't updated in months?

Anyway, this was at the Issam Fares lecture at Tufts on February 2nd. Sorry if the notes are rough!

The World: To make a peaceful world where we banish the issues of Global Warming, hunger and disease in Africa (which he is quite passionate about), we have to deal on a global basis of partnership and create a world order based on justice and partnership- the time when the West could impose their will on the rest of the world is over. We can not and should not do this. We should not act in morally restrictive and anyway useless national fashion- the whole world must act together. But there is one big problem with this...

Islam: Samuel Huntington once proclaimed that the Cold War would be replaced by a Clash of Civilizations- and it is the belief that such a clash exists that motivate some radical Muslims to think that committing suicide and killing innocents will somehow reconcile you with God.

Is Islam in a transition phase? Perhaps. And if we want to influence it at all, we cannot keep it in a strictly military manner- we need to do things in terms of persuasion, and overall...

Blair on the Middle East: During a tour through Palestine as the envoy of the Quartet (the US, Russia, EU and the UN that is supposed to negotiate or at least guide the process as one bloc), Blair's (Palestinian) guide once said, "Moses, Jesus, Muhamaad...why did they have to come here?"

He said that there are a lot of conflicts, and while the Arab-Israeli conflict was not the cause of the conflicts that rile from Somalia to Iraq, or even a cause, for they would exist without Israel, but solving it is necessary and the most important thing they can do to bring peace to the Middle East (which I will acronymize to MENA or "middle east and north Africa"). To solve this, we have to start now. We have to let the Palestinians rule themselves, instead of promising it as the Israeli settlers are allowed to take the best land uninhibited. Perhaps more importantly, we have to give the Gazans a way out, for the Gazan strikes has destroyed the infrastructure- and the hopes of many. We must not isolate Gaza from the West Bank!

On Iraq: Blair openly acknowledged that he could split the room on the question "Do you still think it was the right thing to do?"...or not XD. Apparently all the information he had was put on a website, though I remember reading that the whole event was rather controversial. I believe there was some rather odd event that put a shroud over the whole affair, but it may be best not to reference it directly in such a post as this. Still, he seems to have acknowledged the damage, and the best he could answer was that Iraq would not have been less dangerous if Saddam was still in power.

Okay, onto the lighter stuff before I forget absolutely everything.

On his command of communication: Apparently he somehow dodged using a mobile or a blackberry for his ten years in power as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. In any case, he said he has one now- which prompted Tufts President Bacow to comment that he was trying to get rid of his. Blair remarked he loved the communication ability his gave him- and had to refuse Bacow's offer of his Blackberry.

More problematic was something that happened in his first years of power. He was at a news conference with the French Prime Minister at the time (a Socialist, given the timing), and he made the mistake of giving a live conference in French. He's good, but not that good: When asked which policies of the French PM he wanted to emulate, he meant to say, "There are many policies of his that I would like to emulate."

It came out as, "I prefer the Prime Minister in many different positions." No, Blair's married. To a woman.

On Ireland: Before Blair had a Bush-shaped albatross around his neck, he was famous for many other things. His New Labour coalition created growth and prosperity (which seems to have gone down the toilet recently), he pushed for ground troops in Kosovo during the Balkan wars, was (and is) passionate about African aid (and rock stars who want said aid), and, perhaps most importantly given Iraq, pushing for peace in Northern Ireland. While there, his wife Cherie got pregnant. An Irish delegate came up to Blair and remarked on how wonderful Blair is blessed with yet another child and inquired about the name of the child. Blair said "Well, if it's a boy, then we'll probably name him after his grandfather," and thought nothing of it.

A few months later, the delegate came up to Blair and said, "remember that fortutious conversation?"

"Well, I put 1000 euros on his name..."

I hope you guys got something out of this!

Remember, Remember, for we should never forget

I know very few people read this blog, but try to remember the 11th, not the fifth, of November.

89 years ago, on the 11th minute of the 11th hour on the 11th day on the 11th month, the worst war the World had yet seen finally ended. On that day, many hoped for peace. True, many of them also hoped for glory, but the people on the field rarely thought of that- they just wanted to survive. They saw possible friends die on the field that day. Some of them had played football together in the Xmas of 1914 for crying out loud! Those soldiers, in another life, were or could have been friends; due to the war, people with similar ideas never had the chance...

By that day, the hope was not for a peace built on quicksand like the Treaty of Versailles; they wanted the Great War to be the War to end all Wars, the last time war would ever be fought. The fact that the peace didn't even last a year- as Central and Eastern Europeans fought to carve out their states from Austrian, Hungarian, German, Turkish and Russian territory- but no one really wanted that. The hope was that Wilson would be able to lead us into a new world, where war wasn't just a memory, but its very recurrence unthinkable.

The fact that he failed is not the same thing as wanting to fail. He really did hope he could save the world from other wars. Sure he was a racist and had a nasty messiah complex, but he did believe what he said. He wanted no more wars.

I believe the British and their ex-colonies wear poppies to remember those who thought they were fighting to end that war. Sure it may have been for glory at first, but there was a genuine hope that the Great War would be the last War.

We Americans don't have such a tradition. Maybe we should start it. For it does not stand for war, but for those who hoped there would be no more.

Can We Do It? Jesus Christ that's not the Question anymore!

Okay. The election was a week ago. In that span a lot has happened.

And yet we're [my college] looking back on the Bush years as some bygone era that we should be glad to see the back of, and Obama is still some wonderful thing.

Someone needs to poor a bucket of water on us. The time for enthusiasm was some time ago. Barack may mean "blessed," but Jesus Christ (Christos: Good news)! Wake up!

Looking back on history, we've only rarely had presidents who can unite us in any meaningful way (Roosevelt after the New Deal, Eisenhower). Furthermore, a magical Super Man is almost unheard of in history. Look at our supposed heroes!

Washington: Rare. Like, really rare. Besides, can anyone of us name something he did while president?

Roosevelt: A great man, if flawed. His New Deal hit it well for a while, especially with the poor over the grumbles of the rich. Then he tried to pack the courts and smashed his popularity, as the 1938 campaign demonstrated (he tried to run rebel candidates against conservative Democrats. They failed).

John F. Kennedy: The King of Camelot didn't ascend to his throne until his postmortem. Cuban Missiles and Nasa aside, he authorized and botched the Bay of Pigs, failed to get most of his program through, pumped up our Vietnam presence, and ignored Civil Rights until late in his presidency. Third year to be specific.

Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters each!): For some reason the right has siezed on this man as the Saint of Conservatism. Really? His massive tax cut in 1981 was reversed by 2 massive tax increases in 1982 and 83. Mondale in 84 said that Reagan would increase taxes again (his point? "I will raise taxes. My opponent won't tell you. I just did."). In 1985 Mondale was proven right.

As for everything else? Reagan did little for abortionists (Sandra Day O'Connor and Kennedy were centrists, with Scalia as the lone "true" conservative of his picks). He helped bring down Communism, but he had help (and ran huge deficits for "victory" in a nuclear war at that.). To be honest, I tend to do better in noting his successor's achievements than RWR (you know, greenery, a limited war with Iraq, etc)

Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt, the posterboy for American Greatness, Trust Busting, and Imperialism. He's awesome and may well be one our very best, but he was also a mistake and why VPs tend to be filled these days by, apparently, idiots and old wannabes these days. Just ask Qualye and Cheney. Or Mondale. Or Bensten. Or...Actually, I think the idiot thing was a recent Republican phenomenon, apart from Andrew Johnson.

Well, how about foreign leaders? This is called "A view on the World," right?

Most of those, such as Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Maria Theresa and Joseph II of Austria and their ilk are rare dictators that we would no longer stomach. Some, like Peter I and Joseph II had problems satisfying their base (especially Joe, who actually ennobled Jews).

What about politicians? If picking presidents of our country was hard, who could compete?

Charles De Gaulle, who revived French pride and gave them an overlarge view of themselves

Tony Blair, who will be remembered for devolution, Saving Northern Rya-Ireland, and following Bush into a war that destroyed his popularity (why did he win the following election? The conservatives would've done it too!)?

Some Spanish guy I must be forgetting?

Otto Von Bismarck, who put the words "trickery, deciet, and Blood and Iron" in diplomacy and pretty much master-minded much of international politics?

Junichiro Koizumi, who privatized the Post Office, did some other stuff that I can't remember, and has The Best Hair Ever (see above)?

...

Okay, Obama? If you want to prove your mettle, you need a new hairdo. We need more people with awesome hair.

Still, we need to temper our expectations. He may well be an improvement on Bush, but we won't know for some time, okay? He'll do something, and it might even be good, like in the days of Johnson (Please ignore Vietnam), Nixon (Please ignore his crookedness), and Clinton (please excuse the political skill of the man who destroyed Universal Health Care in america for two decades and somehow let his last years get dominated by his more frivolous undertakings until he finally touched on Israel and Palestine. And we want our White House dishes back.)

And suddenly I'm hoping that Koizumi takes over Japan again. And TR comes back with a new haircut. Can you believe that look with a stache? Sigh...

Bright, Articulate, and Clean...

Articulate?...has anyone watched the debates?

Still, he won and everyone on my campus is ecstatic! Ill have to talk more later...

And whatever the system, he definitely won, eh?

Sorry for being a little short; I'm in the middle of class right now. Still-

OBAMARAMACAMADAMALAMACHAMAGRAMARAMAWHAMAWAMAOBAMA!!!

Don't forget to Vot!

Vote Damnit! I live in the fakest America in all of America! We're so fake that we'd vote Democrat even if the Presidential candidate was Satan himself! Wearing a Yankee uniform!

After all, we have to...

1. Income tax ban? Well...

2. Decriminalize small chunks of marijuana!

3. Drive dog racing underground by banning it! WOOO!

And that's from Massachusetts! We all have important things to do!

Just remember: your vote counts! Whether you be a Floridian in 2000 or a Washingtonian watching recount after recount for the governorship. Come on! Vote vote vote!

We're not some dictatorship!

Yisrael is insane

Hello from fake-America!

Well, if North Virginia isn't "real" Virginia, than you can't get more "real" than Taxachusetts, which elected the first black senator since Reconstruction and had Republican governors between 1988 or so to 2006...And at least one of them was a centrist hated by Jesse Helms and the other one is the Antichrist aka Mitt Mormon Romney.

Anyway, I forgot about this. Sorry! There went the systems, eh? Well, how about two opposite ones?

Canada is basically Britain, where the upper house is filled with a hodgepodge of party toadies- that is, installed by the parties in power over the years without any formalities such as elections (since Canada has mostly been run by Liberals over the years, this means that Liberals control the Senate). In Britain the MPs and the population realized how stupid a House of Lords was back in the 1900s, when it was stripped of most of its powers. Nowadays it has lost more and more of its, ahem, charm (You can't inherit seats anymore, for instance, and it will be elcted- thus dragging Britain into the 19th century or so). Hopefully Canada will join every other country in the Western hemisphere at some point, but the fact that it's mostly unchanged since its founding in 1867 is a tad unnerving.

Never mind the fact that the "first past the poll" system has heavily favored the Quebec separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, thus preventing any stable majority governements for years now. Perversely, the Reform party- then a Western conservative grouping- had ensured the Liberals majority governments from 1993-2004, but their merger seems to have made the Conservatives stronger. But all this has done is guarantee minority governments; 2004-8 has seen 3 unconclusive elections in four years. That's insane. Then again, this is pretty much our system, except the Speaker of the House is pretty much the dictator thanks to extreme party loyalty and the President is the Governor General and doesn't seem to do much.

Think: What if Cheney was speaker of the House and the Senate didn't exist? Anyone convinced of Cheney's power should understand now.

Israel? That makes Canada look excessively stable.

Israel has had a Proportional Representation system since its founding, and it mostly demonstrates the problems of PR. You see, it works on the idea that if a party gets at least 2% of the vote, it should be in government. In this way it's extremely fair and a two party system doesn't exist, but it also means that a lot of parties only get a few seats in the Knesset (out of 120 total), and a few parties still get out on top. In the last election, five parties got more than 10 seats; Kadima got the most at twenty nine seats, less than a fourth of all the seats available. This means that the parties have to horse trade a lot to get everyone on board. The new election in Israel is going on right now because the new leader of Kadima refused to increase handouts and keep Jerusalem undivided, which is what the shas party wants.

This also means that the Grand Coalitions of Germany are far more prevalent in Israel, since it's difficult only to reign with a big party and a few (er, maybe more than a few) religious groups with 2 or 3 seats each. How bad is this? Here's the government

Kadima (Centrist grouping founded to give Ariel Sharon a way to run without depending on anti-Palestinian land deal Likud)
Labour (once dominant and hoping to get the next election; still somewhat socialist)
Shas (a Sephardic religious grouping; supportive of synagogues and such, obviously.)
Yisraeli Beitenu ("Israel is our Home," it's a right wing secular grouping and once solely the voice of Russian Jewish immigrants. It's really rightwing and is similar to Likud on some issues. Given it's suspicion of religion, it's sort of ironic that it's in the same coalition as Shas)
Pensioners (a protest party for pensions, obviously)

Yeah, so there are ex-and not so ex-socialists, Ex-soviet Jewish right wingers, renegades who joined together in support of Ariel Sharon, Sephardic Rabbies, and for some weird reason pensioners. I might have missed a party or two too.

Is this, and can it be, stable? Heavens know Italy realized this was stupid a long time ago, having the FPP system from 1993-2006 and since 1993 reformed itself into a two coalition system. And, given American politics, this would be a stupid idea; if Israel- a country of 7 million people- has at least 10 parties with seats, then one can only imagine what would happen in a country with fifty states and 300 million people.

Let's just leave those two countries out of any electoral debate, okay?