Posted 4:10 PM by Paul

United States of the Ukraine

It is a very serious situation, but there is something deeply comic about the White House lecturing another country on the accuracy and probity of its elections. As I write, Ohio has not yet declared and there is still no Mayor of San Diego. They are still counting. It descends into absurdity when the reasons given for doubts about Ukrainian democracy are that

- The winners had much more money than the losers.
- The winners had privileged access to the media.

Have these people sense of irony?

That said, it is clear that the goings on the Eastern Ukraine make the disenfranchisement of Black American voters in Florida look like small beer. It was, as they say in South London, SCAME. The Russian backed party rigged it so that they would win. Any sensible person thinks that at the very least the election should be re-run purely on the basis that a turn out of 102% is statistically unlikely. Although, I am sure that software engineers for a Texan touch screen voting machine supplier could give us a good reason why this was well within the margins of statistical error.

So, as I write 100,,000 people are on the streets of Kiev blockading the Government offices crying “We were robbed!” If I were Ukrainian I would probably be with them. Particularly now that they are handing out free food and bright orange clothing. Day by day the Opposition’s demands get more confident. They are now insisting that the PM is not only made to admit he that he rigged the election but that he should resign. Long Live People Power! Or maybe not.

400 kilometres to the East in the industrial heartlands 100,000 people are in the streets complaining that the sophisticated Western Ukrainians are just bad losers. Ring any bells? Some would say they have a point. Because if the Ukraine were to operate an Electoral College system based on which candidate won most regions, the pro-Russian ex-Communist would have won…even though he polled 500,000 fewer votes.

So now, dressed in Sky Blue the hard liners are threatening to secede and maybe even re-join Russia. The Orange Opposition has cried cry foul and are even demanding that anyone suggesting such blasphemy should be charged with treason

Two ideologies are in conflict. One pro-free market and one centralist. Broadly speaking two religious outlooks are also in conflict. One Uniate Catholic and one Russian Orthodox.

Also two huge marketing machines are battling it out for share of media time and public opinion. The Opposition (cynics say backed by a US Marketing Services Giant) latched on to the power of branding and unifying symbols very early on. Swathed in orange and waving banners they were joyously televisual. The ex-Commies hit back a few days later with a swathe of Sky Blue and banners of their own. The Communists are not new to the trade. In fact they are one of the pioneers of modern branding theory. If the proletariat had been made to read Das Kapital before storming the Winter Palace, the Russian Revolution would have never happened. Instead Lenin and Trotsky reduced 20 years of philosophical critique to four words and a symbol. PEACE-BREAD-WORK-FREEDOM and the Hammer and Sickle. The brand may be devalued but once upon a time the Red Banner was a brand right up there with the Golden Arches and Coca-Cola.

My desperate hope for the future is that in all of this turmoil no one is killed and if they are to separate, they do it peacefully. It is not worth one drop of blood. Not one orphaned child

And what of the past? What if Gore had martial led millions of Democrats to take to the streets? He could have included some of those Black Floridians who showed up to vote and found that they were not in to list. What if they had lobbied the Supreme Count in December 2000 and halted Washington all dressed in Democratic Blue chanting " Count Every Vote!"

Dream on buddy. Dream on.

Posted 7:25 AM by Paul
Ex-Servicemen

I read a short piece on Page 7 of the Guardian today reporting that four Ghurkas working for a UK securirty company called Global Strategy had been a killed in Iraq. A mortar had been lobbed into the Green Zone where they were working. A further seven Gurkas were seriously injured. They were all ex-British Army. Four loyal servants of the British Crown dead and just a cursory mention in a broadsheet.

Posted 1:22 AM by Paul
What's in a Name?

During the 1980s people on the Looney Left warned that the Labour Party had a secret plan. They were going to turn themselves into a British Democratic Party. This didn't worry me too much, providing that it was the right part, that's the Left, of the Democrats. But the Lefties were wrong. The plan was to turn Labour into the Republican Party. You have got to hand it to them. It's an audacious plan.

Peter Hain, a big hitter in the Labour Party and spoken in some circles as a future leader had a clear message for voters yesterday when he was interviewed on the radio.

You will be safe under Labour. The Liberals and Conservatives oppose our plans to fight terrorism and crime.

Not so much a warning as a threat. Vote Liberal Democrat and you may die. Setting aside the fact that fears of getting mugged on your way home from Safeways and blown to smithereens by a hi-jacked plane are different issues, Hain's claim is startling. Startling because it is straight out of the Karl Rove playbook.

I met Peter Hain years ago when I was a Labour councuillor. He spoke passionately and eloquently at a public meeting I organised in opposition to the proposed privatisation of the Post Office. It was the last year of the Conservative Government and I thought,

" Great. We are in good shape with democratic socialists like him who speak common sense coming to positions of power. We can sleep easy in our beds. There will be no total sell-out when we get elected. "

Now Hain is very much in power, the Post Office is about to be privatised and he is using the rhetoric of Condoleeza Rice.

But maybe none of this should worry us. Party alliances are in flux across the world. . The Left .v. Right face off that dates from the French Revolution does not really hold any more. New fault lines are opening up. It has happend in othe parts of the world already.

In the late 80s I went to Nicaragua to act as an interpreter for a group of Labour Members of the European Parlimrent. I was intested to discover that the Liberals were a far right party with the Red Flag as its symbol and the Conservatives were moderate Social Demcorats who had supported the Sandinistas. The Communist Party of Nicaragua hated the Sandinistas and had joined the CIA financed co-alition to succesfully oust them from power.

So what's in a name? Nothing.

Freeing ourselves form the old party labels might even be liberating.

Posted 3:27 PM by Paul
Conference Speak

Today I went to a conference on training in the construction industry which was attended by a Government minister. He is an intelligent man who spoke well and it was a pleasure to hear him talking abut the value of training and self improvement for its own sake as well as the economic benefits.

The same man two years ago had banged the lectern and asserted "the age of learning for learning's sake is over!" I wish Socrates has been with me in Oldham to hear this twaddle. He may have nutted the Minister shouting "stitch that you brain dead Spartan!". However, the anti -intellectual proclamation got rapturous applause from a hall full of small businessmen.

" Don't any of these people collect stamps or read about the Zulu Wars? " I wondered to myself as I downed the third glass of free wine. But I suppose he knew what his audience wanted to here. Everything was down to the balance sheet.

But today's conference also had it's fair share of nonesense. Below are a few of the words and phrases I would either ban or tax heavily.

• It's all about partnership
• Agenda for change
• We need a step change in [ insert nonesense ]
• Engineering out the problems
• There are no easy solutions
• There are no more jobs for life [ errr. unless like me you have a safe seat in Parliament ]
• We have just set up a working party to scope out the issues

At some point in the near future a politician is going to reclaim the English language from consultant double speak and reap the reward at the ballot box.

P.S Amongst other things Alice is getting The White Stripes Live at Blackpool on DVD and tonight we talked about going to see them play live. Problem is that I would not be allowed to dance as this would be just too embarrassing.

Posted 3:05 PM by Paul
Good Game

The world is in flames, and what are my friends doing? Playing a stupid on-line game where you have to guide a drunken man back home from the office Christmas Party with the use of your mouse!!!! Which given the circumstances is just as well and a sure sign of their sanity. Have a try yourself. It's great fun.

http://www.wagenschenke.ch/index2.htm

But two things trouble me deeply about this game.

1. Why are the instructions in German when the website URL is Czech. Is there something we should know?

2. Why does the struggling drunk look like me 10 years ago?

The record apparently is 53 seconds. The game was sent to me by Martin the Swede a lovely man who works for the Swedish car industry and likes a Bloody Mary. He has been to the fiesta in Pamplona for the last three hundred years and knows a thing or two about pickled herrings and bull fighting.

Posted 2:22 PM by Paul
Jacques Come to Town

Chirac was in London last week and made the most of the fact that events have proved him right. In fact he took the Mickey out of the Government at every opportunity. In a very eloquent French way Jacques reminded us all that he was right all along about Bush’s intentions in Iraq and his inability to fight a successful war and then win the Peace without Arab support. He was clearly enjoying himself.

It’s a funny old world. Who would have thought that Jacques Chirac would have become a hero of the European Left? It seems like only yesterday that we were cheering as Mitterand defeated him twice to herald a new era of French Social Democracy. Except that it wasn’t. France went broke and all those rumours about the Socialist President being a Nazi collaborator turned out to be true. You couldn’t make it up. Just before he died someone even got hold of a photo of him in the uniform of the Petainist Youth Movement. He managed to keep that one quiet for 50 years. At the time Mitterand’s victory seemed to be the only positive news in the otherwise right wing unremitting landscape of the Reagan Thatcher years. My friend Jim was working on Wall Street at the time and he called me with the news that the New York Post had covered the news with the headline REDS TAKE PARIS.

Then there was the scandal of the contaminated blood which gave people AIDS and the Elf Oil bribery scandal. It was a reminder to us all that a large part of politics is about how political entrepreneurs use political parties as vehicles for their own self aggrandisement. The party machine becomes a machine for collecting votes and distributing favours. Ideology doesn’t come in to it.

Compared to nasty Francois naughty Jacques seems relatively clean.

But beyond all the political manoeuvring and point scoring, Chirac made a series of broad philosophical points that made sense.

Nations subjugated to colonialism in the recent past would be quick to see what we call democratisation as imposed Westernisation. Despite what Blair might say about the US being the only superpower we in fact live in a multi –polar world. Disagreements should at least in theory be worked out by a multi- lateral approach. No one has a monopoly on wisdom. Compared to Chirac’s broad sweep many Labour politicians’ geo-political world view comes over like a mediocre under grad paper. They constantly seem to be trying to convince you of their globalist free market credentials in an attempt to lay the ghost of their Marxist past. It feels like over compensation

Critics say that this is idle wishful thinking on the part of an old fraud. In fact Chirac is stating the facts. The USA has the most weapons and could blow us all up 100 times over but its economic power is waning. Some of its high value as well as its menial jobs are moving to China and India, two powers which comprise around a third of the world’s population. Only 10% of the Chinese population could be termed middle class, but that is 120 million people. Nearly half the population of the USA. Europe for all its problems is soon to be a bigger market for goods and services not just because it has a much larger population but because it will soon be richer. The USA will always be powerful, but it is no longer the only show in town. Perhaps power and wealth are moving back to where they were 1000 years ago – the East

Chirac’s analysis annoys many people including my old friend Noel Chandler who was holding forth on the subject over a pizza in Soho last week. For some British people supporting the USA on every single occasion is now the litmus test of our nationhood. France is seen as being ungrateful after the sacrifices made by the US forces on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. No one should ever forget those young men. That is true.

We also need a bit of perspective. Five divisions landed on D-Day. Two were British. Two were American and one was from Canada, a country with a 10th of the population of the USA. But we hear very little about the boys from Toronto and Montreal who lost their lives. The Russians had over 30 divisions in the field against the Nazis in the summer of 1944. They still regard D-Day as a bit of a side show. Helpful, but not the real war. Also there has to eventually be a statute of limitations placed on national debts of gratitude. Without the French, the USA would not have beaten the British in 1776. At what point did Washington stop thanking Paris? Probably before 1836.

Do I trust Chirac? Of course not, but I am not sure that I trust any of them in a way I might have trusted FDR, Churchill or Atllee.

Chirac does at least seem to have an idea about the way the world is moving.

Posted 8:47 AM by Paul
49% of Americans are Cool

Lest we forget they are definitely not all crazy.

Exhibit A

http://www.idleworm.com/nws/2002/11/iraq2.shtml

Very funny and unlike a lot of anti-Bush stuff that is up in cyberspace it does not take itself too seriously. The creator of this game also posts the hate mail he/she has received from bitter crazy right wingers. An excellent tactic.

Exhibit B

The Onion. The glory of America can be sampled every week by signing up to their weekly updates at www.onion.com My friend Steve Corrigan put me on to this just after September 11th. It cheered him and a lot of other New Yorkers up a great deal. If you can laugh directly after the horror you are on the mend. It reminded me of what my mum and dad told me about making jokes about the Bilitz even though whole streets had just been bombed out.

Historical note to the American Right. This was before you guys decided to help out. FDR tried hard to help in 1940 and 41, but the Republican Party did its level best to leave us to the Nazis.

Besides a brilliantly funny piece in the Onion about how the Very Poor of America had rallied round once again to ensure that the Very Wealthy continued to control of the White House it hit on a key dynamic of the election. Something we might all refer to as The Sting Syndrome. Let me explain.

Sting is quite clearly a brilliant and successful musician. He has sold millions of records and raised awareness of the plight of indigenous Amazonian tribes who are being wiped out by illegal loggers. he is a very clever bloke. But there is something so unbearable smug about him that he makes you want to get out the chain saw and launch into a few 300 year old mahagony trees. Just to wipe the smile off his face. You know Sting is right but you want to oppose him.

Thus it is with many US Liberals. Even when they have no power and little influence they give the impression that they rule the roost. I am sure that a small but significant percentage of the US electorate voted for Bush just to wipe the smile off the face of NYC intelligencia. Thye just couldn't bear to see them crowing on TV on November 3rd.

Bush and co. have pulled off the brilliant masterstroke of having most of the power, most of the money and most of the media and still appear to be the underdog. The clear thinking patriots against the Liberal Elite with all their nuance and fancy arguments.

It must go down as one of the greatest deceptions of all time.

Posted 2:54 PM by Paul
Post Election Post Mortem

Readers of this blog ( all three of you) will be surprised that I have failed to pass comment on the election of George Bush for a second term. There are reasons for my absense from the Blogosphere

• I was crying
• I was acting as a therapeutic e-counsellor to distressed Americans, particularly Democrats in the Southern States who were getting homophobic insults for having a Kerry bumper sticker
• I was working on a creative pitch for McCains Home Fries - This is not a joke
• I thought I would wait a while until I had something to contribute rather than just pour out bile into already polluted cyber space

So here are some my thoughts on the the past two weeks.

The Debates. Kerry won 3-0 but it did not matter one jot. US electoral politics is now about culture, values and emotion not intellect and ideology. I repeat. Will Smith for 2008!

Gay Marriage. Make it compulsory

Tony Blair. Has taken to wearing a lot of make up when on TV. And what's with that awful pink shirt, orange TV make up and bouffant hair? Is he turning into the Child Catcher?

France. Now officially the opposition to Bush. The state funeral send off from Paris accorded to former revolutionary icon and corrupt minor despot Yasser Arafat was a big two fingers to Washington. Did they have a reason for according him full military honours? Or were they just having a laugh at Bush's expense? Blair's pleas to Germany and France that now is the time to build bridges with the Bush administration appear to have been ignored. What a surprise. The idea that Tony has any influence with anyone outside his own cabinet is one of the abiding conceits of modern British politics. Bush is just humouring him and Chirac clearly thinks he is a light-weight.

Falluja. They keep talking about an action by Iraqi troops supported by the US. But strangely we have seen no images of swarthy men with moustaches taking burnt out buildings or going in to Mosques. Unless they are the rebels that is. Just guys who look like they are straight out of the Waltons. It is like history on rewind. Does anyone remember Vietnamistaion? The South Vietnamese troops lasted a few weeks before they gave up. If the US want to hold Iraq they will have to fund an occupation for 20 years. There is no budget plan option on this one.

November 3rd A lot of commentators have talked about the visceral hatred between the two Americas. I have seen enough of that via e-mail and on the web. What is less commented on is the visceral sadness, not just because of a good candidate beaten but because of the end of an era. The end of a notion of America. Faith has triumphed over reason. I commented in an e-mail to about 30 people that I never shared the hope of my Democrat friends that Kerry would win. Esti - a New York Jewish woman replied that she also was certain of a Bush victory. I paraphrase her words -

" The Christian right is in the ascendant and the America that many Democrats talk about no longer exists. That America. Our America... is long gone"

It was like she was talking abut the death of parent. Tom Turley a man in his 30s who has travelled the world working for USAid and is by no means a left wing radical summed up the social divide and the political malaise when he wrote to me about life in Denver. In the motorway intersections small camps of the destitute are beginning to spring up. Cards outside their shanties proclaim that they have gone bust due to not being able to pay their hospital bills. But one man in rags run out into the road shouting after a car with a Kerry bumber sticker

" That John Kerry! He is stabbing our troops in the back!!"

The Dollar. A soft currency used to buy oil and hamburgers. If the deficit grows any bigger and foreign investors keep refusing to buy US Treasury Bonds the green back will soon be on a par with the Turkish Lira.

Fingerprinting All Visitors to the US. Bush's plan to push the US tourist industry into total crisis.

" I know kids! Lets go to Florida. When you arrive at immigration they make you feel like a criminal. You have the added fun of wondering if you will be allowed in to the USA when the software has a bad day and they suspect that mum is Osama in drag."

I suspect that this in in fact a covert French plan to boost visitor numbers to the Dordogne. However, with the dollar plunging the USA is now a very cheap holiday destination. Perhaps we will all put up with feeling like we are entering San Quentin in order to take advantage of dirt cheap hotels and theme parks with short queues and cheap burgers.

The Black Watch. I will come on to that later

Posted 2:23 AM by Paul
Ohio

It has just been announced that the Federal courts have allowed a Republican appeal to allow their scrutinisers inside polling stations to "check voters' eligibility" In the UK this is called voter harassment and carries a prison sentence. The job of scrutiny is for officials not for party workers. Try and do it in Spain and you would be beaten senseless.

My fear (and my predictions have been lousy over the last few weeks - no decisive invasion of Falluja and Rove did not use the Black Watch deployment to demonstrate the strength of the coalition) is that the polls in parts of Ohio will descend into violence. But it shows that Bush's people are scared that they will lose the state. If they lose Ohio they will almost certainly be out of office. Kerry can lose it and still win. In fact he can lose Ohio and Florida and still win if he takes West Virginia, Colorado and New Hampshire.

Both candidates are still on the stump, in stark contrast to 2000 when Bush went home to Texas on the Sunday before polling day. His people had told him he was 4-6% ahead, when in fact he was 0.5% behind. At least the US electorate are making him work for a living.

And, if as I suspect, Bush just wins? Move to a South Sea island but not Pitcairn.

One thing is certain. If he wins with a minority vote he will still act as if he carried the election on a landslide