Post-election Links

[erudito]

Ah election time, the things that happen. Via wolfkit.

Arnie seems to carry some weight with Californians.

What one can learn from post-election comment. Via razerwolf.

Actually, compared to those other 'programmatic North-East liberals', McGovern in 72, Mondale in 84 and Dukakis in 88, Kerry did relatively well, as one can see from this election data site (

Comments

[tcpip]

Oliver Kamm gives an example of the Chomsky Method at work.

Because Nixon thought it was funny, it shouldn't be taken seriously?

Actually

[erudito]

I think it was Kissinger and Haig who thought it was funny. Mind you, I think they were laughing at Nixon rather than the order per se.

I don't think anyone is going to claim that these are nice people. Kamm's point is more that Chomsky wants to take something at face value which fairly clearly shouldn't be and then equates it with the Nazi equivalent.

Re: Actually

[tcpip]

Kamm's point is more that Chomsky wants to take something at face value which fairly clearly shouldn't be and then equates it with the Nazi equivalent.

I prefer to look at the results, rather than engage in what is the equivalent of literary interpretation. :/

Re: Actually

[erudito]

Yes, well, I think Mr Shawcross has covered that fairly thoroughly. With more recent additions by Christopher Hitchens.

There is actually a large number of people on the American right who are not Kissinger fans by any means. I don't means the 'detente was soft on communism' criticism (though there is ovelap), more the folk who object deeply to his amoralism.

I have a neoconservative academic acquaintance who thinks the European admiration of Nixon is a major black mark against the contemporary European elite on precisely those grounds.

[random_goblin]

Read this piece of smug condescension and tell me I’m wrong.

what's smug and condescending about that? what am i missing?

It might sound worse if you

[erudito]

Tony Blair, alongside the Queen and the Pope, has joined the select fraternity of famous foreigners most Americans have actually heard of.

a representative collection of the stupid, ignorant and frighteningly arrogant voters who had just decided the identity of the most powerful man in the world

the British people international collaborators in George Bush’s re-election to the White House.

And the entire argument that the Republicans needed a Brit (Blair) to put them over the line

The complete lack of any possibility that there might have been good reasons to prefer Dubya over Kerry.

Re: It might sound worse if you not British

[erudito]

is how the headline should read.

what we know about the rest of the world...

[random_goblin]

Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the interpretation in front of you.

[thorfinn]

*chuckle* I understand the "argh, run away" urge - I had it myself for a while. I then came to the realisation that if I do that, I'm just letting the other side win by default. So I'm staying to fight.

And Australia is still better than the U.S.... We're not just randomly locking up foreign nationals without charge. Yet.

Um

[erudito]

We're not just randomly locking up foreign nationals without charge. Yet.
What about detention for asylum-seekers? I suppose it is not 'random', and one can get out if one agrees to leave, but I am not sure the US is being 'random' either.

I don't know that, in a spectrum of rights and legal processes, we would come out notably ahead. The provisions of the Patriot Act people were getting so worked up about are mostly already Australian law.

Mind you, both countries are lily-livered softies compared to the French: France has a strikingly harsh anti-terrorism policy. It has had no qualms in making the most of laws allowing the detention of terrorist suspects without trial for months on end. All four of its nationals repatriated from Guantánamo Bay were detained on a judge's instruction on their return to France. Dominique de Villepin, Mr Sarkozy's successor as interior minister, has been unyielding in his determination to expel imams guilty of hate crimes. When an expulsion order against Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian cleric based

Re: Um

[thorfinn]

Hrm, forgot about those asylum seekers... Technically that mostly happens offshore, not inside Australia, and as you say, technically they can leave if they want. Leastways, that's what our wonderful government claims, anyway. And, well, yeah, nothing surprises me about the French. And you're probably right when it comes to actual guaranteed rights and legal processes, that we don't really come out ahead. No bill of rights, etc. Our legal system is a bit more sane than the one in the U.S., but I dunno how long that will last, if Howard gets to stack the High Court too much more... Mind you, Bush gets to stack the U.S. Supreme Court even more too, so not much hope of things improving there either.

Re: Um

[erudito]

Actually, Howard has far more control over appointments to the High Court than Dubya does to the Supreme Court -- the latter have to be ratified by a majority of the US Senate.

Here, they are just a prerogative of the Executive. Mind you, Howard has been a pretty cautious appointer of judges. He goes for judicial conservatives (i.e. those who are likely to be pretty restrained in their judgements, and not change the law much), though of notable quality.