Tuesday, March 03, 2009
The torture of the Special Relationship
The half-hour meeting between Brown and Obama (which will demonstrate to the world how special is Our UK Relationship with the USA) is billed to be on world economic affairs.
Given President Obama’s praise of The Blair Poodle Project it is perhaps too much to hope that Obama will actually use some of the time to discuss at least one torturous special relationship – namely the shaming mess on torture of terror suspects in which the UK has some urgent questions to answer. .
It is just possible to believe that Obama has so far refrained from letting in the light on his predecessors actions because key US Allies such as the UK are so deeply implicated that the truth would cause huge political upheavals in those countries. The diplomatic repercussions of the truth could be profound.
One way to prepare for an outbreak of open revelations by the USA would be to have face-to face meeting with the person most at risk to prepare him for the inevitable. This current meeting is Obama’s chance to do that. If he does not, we can begin to wonder whether the cover-up on the Bush torture agenda is actually current US administration policy.
For a really excellent summary of the Special Relationship and the European dimension see the ever-thoughtful Cicero.
Given President Obama’s praise of The Blair Poodle Project it is perhaps too much to hope that Obama will actually use some of the time to discuss at least one torturous special relationship – namely the shaming mess on torture of terror suspects in which the UK has some urgent questions to answer. .
It is just possible to believe that Obama has so far refrained from letting in the light on his predecessors actions because key US Allies such as the UK are so deeply implicated that the truth would cause huge political upheavals in those countries. The diplomatic repercussions of the truth could be profound.
One way to prepare for an outbreak of open revelations by the USA would be to have face-to face meeting with the person most at risk to prepare him for the inevitable. This current meeting is Obama’s chance to do that. If he does not, we can begin to wonder whether the cover-up on the Bush torture agenda is actually current US administration policy.
For a really excellent summary of the Special Relationship and the European dimension see the ever-thoughtful Cicero.
Labels: Obama, special relationship, Torture, UK, USA
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
Iran and USA difficult pasts
For Iran and the USA the difficult times of talking get under way. The leak of the US President’s (alleged) draft letter to the Iranian President matches to the public demand from Iran for apologies for past US actions against Iraq.
It might be easier for Obama if the key past events were all the relics of Republican administrations. However Iran is likely to be aware of this action under the Presidency of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as reported by Robert Fisk, interviewing a notable German arms dealer in 1987:
Which in turn no doubt helped that arms trader to do business in Iraq. Iraq attacked Iran on 21 September 1980.
The 1981 onwards Reagan administration of course became extremely explicit in its support of Iraq.
Much dirty linen of all kinds lurks in the shadows of hidden washbaskets.
It might be easier for Obama if the key past events were all the relics of Republican administrations. However Iran is likely to be aware of this action under the Presidency of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as reported by Robert Fisk, interviewing a notable German arms dealer in 1987:
So it was true, I asked him, that he had given the CIA’s intelligence on the Iranian army to the Iraqi government?
“Mr Fisk… at the very beginning of the war in September 1980 I was invited to go to the Pentagon. And there I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures … the Iranian gun emplacements … the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank emplacements … all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan .. and I travelled with these maps (via Germany) to Baghdad. The Iraqis were grateful.
Robert Fisk in his book “The Great War for Civilisation” page 940 in my paperback edition
Which in turn no doubt helped that arms trader to do business in Iraq. Iraq attacked Iran on 21 September 1980.
The 1981 onwards Reagan administration of course became extremely explicit in its support of Iraq.
Much dirty linen of all kinds lurks in the shadows of hidden washbaskets.
Labels: Fisk, Iran, Iraq, Obama
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Monday, January 19, 2009
Hail to the oddities of history
When the assembled bands play ‘Hail To The Chief’ for President Obama on Tuesday, there will be a small cultural irony linking this to the Ku Klux Klan.
The music was originally a setting for part of Sir Walter Scott’s romantic poem ‘The Lady Of The Lakes’. Scott’s “Highland Revival” romanticism is responsible for inspiring a number of parallel nationalist inventions. *
The ‘Boat Song’ from Cantata Two was set to music by nationalist plagiarists in the USA in 1812. It was first used as a Presidential salute in 1828.
When the Ku Klux Klan fabricated its Scottish White Purist myths in the decades after the US Civil War they drew on another episode in of Sir Walter’s work – the display of the ‘Crann Tara’ or Fiery Cross. Originally a sign of inter-clan declaration of war, this is described in Cantata Three. The transfer to Klan symbolism seems to have been via the novels of Thomas Dixon (The Clansman) which in turn inspired the film ‘Birth Of A Nation’ in which cross-burnings appeared as dramatic symbols.
In the early 20th century the Fiery Cross became a signal for a lynching.
I suspect that the complex strands of history will throw up even more odd purls and knots in the coming years.
Original Sir Walter words for ‘Hail To The Chief’:
Hail to the chief, who in triumph advances,
Honored and bless'd be the evergreen pine!
Long may the tree in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line.
Heav'n send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gaily to bourgeon and broadly to grow;
While ev'ry highland glen,
Sends our shout back again,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! i-e-roe!"
The Gaelic title ‘dhu’ appended to the name means ‘The Black’ by the way.
* Other unexpected results of Scott’s popularity amongst activists of semi-defined emerging nineteenth-century nationalisms include the large number of east European men who thanks to their nineteenth century ancestors embrace of romantic fashion now carry variations on the names ‘Edgar’ ‘Edmund’ or ‘Edward’. Includes me. Thanks a bundle, Walt.
The music was originally a setting for part of Sir Walter Scott’s romantic poem ‘The Lady Of The Lakes’. Scott’s “Highland Revival” romanticism is responsible for inspiring a number of parallel nationalist inventions. *
The ‘Boat Song’ from Cantata Two was set to music by nationalist plagiarists in the USA in 1812. It was first used as a Presidential salute in 1828.
When the Ku Klux Klan fabricated its Scottish White Purist myths in the decades after the US Civil War they drew on another episode in of Sir Walter’s work – the display of the ‘Crann Tara’ or Fiery Cross. Originally a sign of inter-clan declaration of war, this is described in Cantata Three. The transfer to Klan symbolism seems to have been via the novels of Thomas Dixon (The Clansman) which in turn inspired the film ‘Birth Of A Nation’ in which cross-burnings appeared as dramatic symbols.
In the early 20th century the Fiery Cross became a signal for a lynching.
I suspect that the complex strands of history will throw up even more odd purls and knots in the coming years.
Original Sir Walter words for ‘Hail To The Chief’:
Hail to the chief, who in triumph advances,
Honored and bless'd be the evergreen pine!
Long may the tree in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line.
Heav'n send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gaily to bourgeon and broadly to grow;
While ev'ry highland glen,
Sends our shout back again,
"Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! i-e-roe!"
The Gaelic title ‘dhu’ appended to the name means ‘The Black’ by the way.
* Other unexpected results of Scott’s popularity amongst activists of semi-defined emerging nineteenth-century nationalisms include the large number of east European men who thanks to their nineteenth century ancestors embrace of romantic fashion now carry variations on the names ‘Edgar’ ‘Edmund’ or ‘Edward’. Includes me. Thanks a bundle, Walt.
Labels: nationalism, Obama
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Saturday, November 08, 2008
Ultimate in sagacious lucky escapes
Thanks to the diligence of the Daily Telegraph (Barack Obama: the 50 facts you might not know) we are aware that the President-Elect (1) has visited the UK at least once. Specifically “He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived”.
Would his candidacy have survived a YouTube moment of that event if he hadn’t in fact left? We can only wonder at his forward campaign planning.
And yes I did notice Obama is left-handed. So I believe is Senator McCain, or so I surmised from seeing how they took notes at one of their debates.
I also note that he has read all the Harry Potter books (‘Accio Presidency’ would explains a lot!). And that his favourite TV show is ‘The Wire’ which plug, if it encourages more people to dig out the DVDs of this neglected masterpiece, could help focus minds soberly on the immense domestic problems that still swirl in racial currents in the USA.
(1) Obama is of course constitutionally not yet the President-Elect. That legal status only comes after the ‘meeting’ of the Electoral College in early December. For a people allegedly in thrall to the worship of an Ancestral Document the Usa-eans can be brutally pragmatic where prime time play is concerned.
Would his candidacy have survived a YouTube moment of that event if he hadn’t in fact left? We can only wonder at his forward campaign planning.
And yes I did notice Obama is left-handed. So I believe is Senator McCain, or so I surmised from seeing how they took notes at one of their debates.
I also note that he has read all the Harry Potter books (‘Accio Presidency’ would explains a lot!). And that his favourite TV show is ‘The Wire’ which plug, if it encourages more people to dig out the DVDs of this neglected masterpiece, could help focus minds soberly on the immense domestic problems that still swirl in racial currents in the USA.
(1) Obama is of course constitutionally not yet the President-Elect. That legal status only comes after the ‘meeting’ of the Electoral College in early December. For a people allegedly in thrall to the worship of an Ancestral Document the Usa-eans can be brutally pragmatic where prime time play is concerned.
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Obama is of course constitutionally not yet the President-Elect. That legal status only comes after the ‘meeting’ of the Electoral College in early December.
I made that point to the gf the other day and got called a pedant! I think he should be called the President-presumptive.
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I made that point to the gf the other day and got called a pedant! I think he should be called the President-presumptive.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The dangers of an Obama overhype?
A major reason for hoping for an Obama presidency is that we will be spared another round of the Republican party dreamworld dance. However there are dangers in the rather orgasmic enthusiasm behind his campaign.
Can he survive the collision between his build-up and the reality?
The Perils of the Build-Up were brilliantly explained by John Kenneth Galbraith:
When they fail to do the miraculous., the expectations machine turns viciously against them reducing them to pitiful wrecks.
Galbraith ends thus:
If a President Obama can keep his head when all about him are singing praises he will be an exceptional leader indeed.
Can he survive the collision between his build-up and the reality?
The Perils of the Build-Up were brilliantly explained by John Kenneth Galbraith:
Then comes the build-up. He is a man transformed indeed he is no longer a man but a superman. His eccentricities become the mark of a unique personality. His hobbies are the refreshment of an intense and active mind. His wife becomes a gracious, untiring, and selfless partner. If he has had several wives, he has been tried by sadness. If he is a teetotaller, this marks him as a stern, disciplined, and dedicated man. If he is given to belting the bottle, it will be said that he is not lacking in warmth and human qualities. But most remarkable of all are his qualifications for the job he has assumed. Where others ponder, he has solutions. That is because he is able to separate the essentials from the nonessentials and then find a painless course of action by shooting straight for the target. It has been the fault of lesser men that they had left the impression that there was a choice only between equally grim alternatives. In fact, the build-up is particularly likely to occur at a time when problems are numerous, vexatious, and incomprehensible. Not knowing how to control nuclear energy, disarm, increase needed expenditures, balance the budget, eliminate farm surpluses ….we find it desirable to invent people who can do these things.
When they fail to do the miraculous., the expectations machine turns viciously against them reducing them to pitiful wrecks.
Galbraith ends thus:
Although there is no clear remedy for the build-up, it might help were we to resolve to remember that in a democracy leaders, at their best, are only the first among near-equals. So they will always share the bafflement of their followers. To build extravagant images of their wisdom renders no more service than the other modern habit of freely asserting their total venality.
(John Kenneth Galbraith ‘The Liberal Hour’ Chapter 7 ‘The build-Up and the Public Man’)
If a President Obama can keep his head when all about him are singing praises he will be an exceptional leader indeed.
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Community Politics US style ?
The organisational revolution in US politics engineered by the Obama campaign is quietly changing the way politics work over there.
A most interesting read for the jaded survivors of our Community Politics efforts. Wonder if our Lib Dem Presidential Candidates – and people worried about how to support our PPCs- might find the whole article of interest. There are certainly some good Liberal themes on decentralisation and trusting people to get on with the job here…
If this is for real the Obama campaign may prove to be a bit more than a knocking-up push to change the deckchair in the Oval Office.
Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.
The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade…The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign …. have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization….Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation.
Zack Exley Huffington Post 8 October 2008
A most interesting read for the jaded survivors of our Community Politics efforts. Wonder if our Lib Dem Presidential Candidates – and people worried about how to support our PPCs- might find the whole article of interest. There are certainly some good Liberal themes on decentralisation and trusting people to get on with the job here…
If this is for real the Obama campaign may prove to be a bit more than a knocking-up push to change the deckchair in the Oval Office.
Labels: Community Politics, Obama
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Wednesday, September 03, 2008
History eye - on wrecking a political party
And also just to show how far things have moved in 84 years… the worse Political Convention in US history was probably the 1924 Democratic Party convention which took 104 ballots to nominate a compromise candidate for President and also failed to carry a motion denouncing the Ku Klux Clan in a vote of 543 and 3/20th of a vote in favour and 544 and 7/20th of a vote against.
Now that was a piece of vote-counting excitement. Not surprisingly the Democrats were thrashed in the polls that year.
The presidential candidate selected by the way was John W. Davies who thirty-odd years later was the lawyer arguing in the segregationist side in the landmark ‘Brown vs Board of Education’ Supreme Court decision that forced desegregation of U.S. schools.
The 2008 US Republicans are unlikely to make quite that bad a spectacle of themselves though.
(The story that Republican US President Warren Harding joined the Klan in a White House ceremony appears not to be true).
The reason for the prolonged ballot was that the strongest candidate (Al Smith) was a Catholic. Smith did get the nomination in 1928 and the result was an outpouring of religious bigotry during the campaign that set the cause of Catholic integraton in US politics back a generation. Lets hope for a better result from the Obama candidacy this time round.
Now that was a piece of vote-counting excitement. Not surprisingly the Democrats were thrashed in the polls that year.
The presidential candidate selected by the way was John W. Davies who thirty-odd years later was the lawyer arguing in the segregationist side in the landmark ‘Brown vs Board of Education’ Supreme Court decision that forced desegregation of U.S. schools.
The 2008 US Republicans are unlikely to make quite that bad a spectacle of themselves though.
(The story that Republican US President Warren Harding joined the Klan in a White House ceremony appears not to be true).
The reason for the prolonged ballot was that the strongest candidate (Al Smith) was a Catholic. Smith did get the nomination in 1928 and the result was an outpouring of religious bigotry during the campaign that set the cause of Catholic integraton in US politics back a generation. Lets hope for a better result from the Obama candidacy this time round.
Labels: ku klux klan, Obama, US politics
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
On history and narrives and Obama
As we will be reminded often, today is the 45th anniversary of Marin Luther Kings ‘I have a Dream’ speech, a suitable coincidence of dates for the first Afro-American nominee for the US Presidency (by a major party) to make his acceptance speech.
Worth remembering how the ‘race issue’ tore apart the narratives of both ‘Major Parties’ in the USA. The Civil Rights Act (enforcing the right to vote for example) passed the US Congress with the support of half the Senators and Congresspeople of the then-ruling Democratic Party. And two –thirds of the Republicans voted in favour. Roy Jenkins attended the 1968 funeral of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, walking through the city streets in the company of a solid phalanx of Republican Senators, Governors, and Members of Congress, who linked arms and sang ‘We Shall overcome’. Nothing comparable was structured by Democrats at the event, it appears.
How ‘The Party Of Lincoln’ rejected this heritage and helped purge the Democratic Party of its racist heritage by taking over that constituency through the ‘Southern Strategy’ is a fascinating study in political narrative manipulation and the evolution of power bases.
So we now have a Democratic nominee embodying part of the Dream.
Worth remembering how the ‘race issue’ tore apart the narratives of both ‘Major Parties’ in the USA. The Civil Rights Act (enforcing the right to vote for example) passed the US Congress with the support of half the Senators and Congresspeople of the then-ruling Democratic Party. And two –thirds of the Republicans voted in favour. Roy Jenkins attended the 1968 funeral of Martin Luther King in Atlanta, walking through the city streets in the company of a solid phalanx of Republican Senators, Governors, and Members of Congress, who linked arms and sang ‘We Shall overcome’. Nothing comparable was structured by Democrats at the event, it appears.
How ‘The Party Of Lincoln’ rejected this heritage and helped purge the Democratic Party of its racist heritage by taking over that constituency through the ‘Southern Strategy’ is a fascinating study in political narrative manipulation and the evolution of power bases.
So we now have a Democratic nominee embodying part of the Dream.
More history of the song than you ever thought you needed is here.
Lest hope that the burden of historic expectation does not crush Obama.
Lest hope that the burden of historic expectation does not crush Obama.
Labels: Martin Luther King, Obama
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Is Lorin Hawes still around? The famous boomerang designer had the 'association' as one of his wacky projects, I thought. Perhaps if he is still in Mudgeeraba you could ask him, and get the word onto the nets one way or another.
Cheers!
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Cheers!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Obama and the 'apostasy' claims - a dangerous thread?
Well the statement is pretty unvarnished. In their Guardian comment article on ‘The Toxic Texans foreign policy doctrine will endure’ authors Thomas Lynch and Robert Singh say about a putative President Barack Obama:
I was moved to send one of the authors this e-mail
If I get a reply I will append it here.
But what do our LibDem Moslems make of this apostasy claim? Is there any way it could really have substance? And true or not if some over-excited person believes it and believes it needs lethal attention, this repeated casual use of the claim could have violent consequences.
I do also note that the book written by Lynch and Singh ‘After Bush: the Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy’ has won high praise from the likes of Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (sometimes described in the US Liberal political sphere as the ‘Prince of Darkness’); Daniel Pipes (of the Middle East Forum) and John Yoo (Professor of Law at Berkeley University and possible the most prominent US legal scholar to argue that the current US administrations actions on indefinite detention and torture are legally justified). Maybe that shows that I am practicing guilt by association mythologizing?
Somewhere in Open Democracy there is a comment on this book by Fred Halliday which says
So maybe we should read Lynch and Singh as a warning against over-romanticising what could emerge from an Obama Presidency?
“Before sitting down to tea in Tehran, at least one precondition Obama might consider making is establishing whether the mullahs believe that apostate Muslims, such as himself… should be killed”.
I was moved to send one of the authors this e-mail
Dear Robert Singh
Thank you for your
interesting analysis (with Thomas Lynch) published in the 'Guardian' comment column on 10 June.
Could you perhaps give a link or reference to a rigorous study showing that Senator Barack Obama was ever a Moslem thus giving himself the opportunity to become an apostate? If possible, other than your own writings.
I do note the amusing coincidence that one of the other articles published on the same Guardian page(on the subject of the TV programme 'Top Gear') quotes Roland Barthes’ argument that cultural myths develop through deceptive transparency in that "Myth... abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences ... (creating) a world wide-open and wallowing in the evident .. a blissful clarity". I have to admit to believing up to this point that the 'Obama as a (former) Moslem narrative' was one of those myths convenient to a particular set of arguments and I look forwards to discovering any challenges to my assumptions.
Sincerely
Edis
Bevan
If I get a reply I will append it here.
But what do our LibDem Moslems make of this apostasy claim? Is there any way it could really have substance? And true or not if some over-excited person believes it and believes it needs lethal attention, this repeated casual use of the claim could have violent consequences.
I do also note that the book written by Lynch and Singh ‘After Bush: the Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy’ has won high praise from the likes of Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (sometimes described in the US Liberal political sphere as the ‘Prince of Darkness’); Daniel Pipes (of the Middle East Forum) and John Yoo (Professor of Law at Berkeley University and possible the most prominent US legal scholar to argue that the current US administrations actions on indefinite detention and torture are legally justified). Maybe that shows that I am practicing guilt by association mythologizing?
Somewhere in Open Democracy there is a comment on this book by Fred Halliday which says
"...[P]erhaps of greatest importance, there is no evident wish in the US - whether in the political elite in Washington, or in the Democratic Party, or in the nation as a whole - to abandon US primacy and exceptionalism. The new president of 2009 will only in some degree alter existing policies. Washington will continue to want to run, if not control, the world."
So maybe we should read Lynch and Singh as a warning against over-romanticising what could emerge from an Obama Presidency?
Labels: apostasy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Obama, United States
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As far as I can tell, his father (Barack Obama Sr) was apostate, when he met Obama's mother he was already an atheist (possibly worse in the eyes of many an american voter...)
The biggest scandal about Obama's parentage should surely be the bigamy his father engaged in - he never divorced his first wife...
Obama should of course not be held responsible for the sins of his father.
The biggest scandal about Obama's parentage should surely be the bigamy his father engaged in - he never divorced his first wife...
Obama should of course not be held responsible for the sins of his father.
No reply to my e-mail at this time...
Looking round the world of anti-Obama online postings, it seems that the Moslem Obama seekers have moved on from the failure of Barak Obama Sr to ensure his son was raised a Moslem.
The emphasis now is on Obama's time in Indonesia where his mother moved after marrying another Moslem, Lolo Soetoro.
Obama was educated at a Catholic school in Jakarta and later at a secular government school (so progressive in Indonesian terms that the female staff wore miniskirts). So much for the 'educated at a Madrassa' mantra.
However Indonesia has national identity cards and these include a category for 'religion'. It seems to be the common practice for Children automatically to be registered according to the stated ID card religion of the father, or legal father figure, so Obamas ID card status was 'Moslem'.
The one question which could possibly still be outsanding is whether the young Obama ever accompanied his stepfather to the Mosque at one of his infrequent big-occasion attendences and if so whether the young Obama ever said and understood the implications of the first prayer of any service, the recitation of the first sura of the Koran, known as the Fatiha. If he did so about the age of ten (the age when he left Indonesia) it is just possible I suppose that some Moslem legal schools would assume this to be an attestation of faith. Comments?
Obama's half-sister by the way has married a Chinese-Canadian. Her children are Buddhists.
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Looking round the world of anti-Obama online postings, it seems that the Moslem Obama seekers have moved on from the failure of Barak Obama Sr to ensure his son was raised a Moslem.
The emphasis now is on Obama's time in Indonesia where his mother moved after marrying another Moslem, Lolo Soetoro.
Obama was educated at a Catholic school in Jakarta and later at a secular government school (so progressive in Indonesian terms that the female staff wore miniskirts). So much for the 'educated at a Madrassa' mantra.
However Indonesia has national identity cards and these include a category for 'religion'. It seems to be the common practice for Children automatically to be registered according to the stated ID card religion of the father, or legal father figure, so Obamas ID card status was 'Moslem'.
The one question which could possibly still be outsanding is whether the young Obama ever accompanied his stepfather to the Mosque at one of his infrequent big-occasion attendences and if so whether the young Obama ever said and understood the implications of the first prayer of any service, the recitation of the first sura of the Koran, known as the Fatiha. If he did so about the age of ten (the age when he left Indonesia) it is just possible I suppose that some Moslem legal schools would assume this to be an attestation of faith. Comments?
Obama's half-sister by the way has married a Chinese-Canadian. Her children are Buddhists.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Obama - what is he about?
Obama-mania is spilling over the edge of many cups. What to make of him? Well for a LibDem an interesting fact is that he made his first political impact in community politics initiatives in Roseland, part of Chicago’s South Side, working for grass-roots projects and fighting a corrupt political machine run by his own party.
I came across this interesting note from a book published before his current candidacy. Observing him in 2003 –even before his election to the US Senate- the Canadian thinker John Ralston Saul said: (Saul 2005. p273)
Obama, said Saul, was rephrasing Adam Smith:
This is discussed in the context of what Saul calls ‘Positive Nationalism’ which includes according to Saul:
Saul may be reading his own agenda into Obama of course, but it is an interesting glimpse of one interpretation of this man and where he may have come from before the Presidential campaign masks went up.
John Ralston Saul “The Collapse of Globalism and the Re-Invention of the World” Atlantic Books, 2005 (in the chapter on Positive Nationalism.)
Adam Smith quote from ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ p 61 in the 6th edition of 1790
I came across this interesting note from a book published before his current candidacy. Observing him in 2003 –even before his election to the US Senate- the Canadian thinker John Ralston Saul said: (Saul 2005. p273)
Obama already had a calm, clear idea of how community worked and how it was the big picture that had to adjust. As he moved onto the national scene he continued carefully pointing out that“instead of having a set of policies that are equipping people for the globalisation of the economy we have policies that are accelerating the most destructive trends of the global economy.”
Obama, said Saul, was rephrasing Adam Smith:
“This disposition to admire and almost to worship the rich and powerful and to despise or at least to neglect persons of poor and mean disposition….. is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments"
This is discussed in the context of what Saul calls ‘Positive Nationalism’ which includes according to Saul:
The desire of people to organise their lives around the reality of where they live … a healthy democracy will be community generated… The Western model has for some time turned around managerial ideas of power, and these require centralisation… If we look at our own histories we discover that the changes that have made the biggest differences have most often been local..
If people who know each other well serve the welfare of their fellow citizens they may learn something unexpected about each other, perhaps how different they are. If people who do not know each other well perhaps because they come from different cultures, serve the welfare of their fellow citizens, they may well discover how similar their values are…
Saul may be reading his own agenda into Obama of course, but it is an interesting glimpse of one interpretation of this man and where he may have come from before the Presidential campaign masks went up.
John Ralston Saul “The Collapse of Globalism and the Re-Invention of the World” Atlantic Books, 2005 (in the chapter on Positive Nationalism.)
Adam Smith quote from ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ p 61 in the 6th edition of 1790
Labels: globalisation, localism, Obama, Saul
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