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Diary in date order Jan 2002 to date
but you also find this search
engine useful, in keeping track of events
Renewing
participatory democracy
My Little Red Book
A
New
Socialist Settlement
Bevan
Re-visited
Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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040510 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week
20 Sunday
16 May 2004
Editorial Note I am back in
operation again, after a week away, see Berlin
below. The "remote editing" of this website, while on the move, is
beyond me - my web-editing program has to be properly installed on a PC,
and is not portable. Can anyone suggest a solution? If you
can, please
drop
me a line
Editor
China
can save
the world from itself
How will global patterns of consumption
be re-balanced, to rein back high "Western" levels of personal
consumption? How can selfish Western consumers be persuaded to make
room for the so-called "Third World"?
- That has always been the Achilles Heel of
the
eco-warriers.
Their ends have seemed admirable, but they have not been able to
demonstrate the means.
Now, China's economic
growth will do the job for them. We will all be forced, by economic
circumstance, to adjust our patterns of consumption, although the changes
will not be precipitate or cataclysmic. Competition is rising, for the
world's scarce resources - oil, commodities, capital. Steel prices,
and oil prices, are at long-term highs and interest-rates are rising. And as the pull of China bites,
consumer prices will rise relentlessly against the Western economies.
- This will change the
politics of the 21st century, in ways so far unforeseen.
Keep thinking.
May
Day in Berlin
My online
silence is explained by my sojourn in Berlin, 1-6 May, with a Fabian Study Tour.
A great informative trip -
all politics, Bier and plenty of good German food. There
was the added excitement of EU expansion. The accession of eight new
Continental states, all to the East of
Berlin, will greatly enhance the geopolitical importance of the City.
The City authorities gave free use of the City's facilities for the whole
week to "New Accession nationals".
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Real Cobber
At last! The real Mike
Davis, our powerful Australian correspondent - thanks, Mike - I'm holding, for a second week, this excellent letter from Mike, with his choice views on
Britain and Europe. I can now bring your the Real Mike Davis, not
merely an Internet image reflecting his straight-talkin'
no-nonsense style - but whatever he's talking about, you must admit
that Mike has a very distinctive style....
Council Election
Special
The countdown for the 10 June Council
elections has started. I have been adopted as the prospective Labour
candidate for Swansea's Oystermouth Ward, in Mumbles - if you are a fellow
political activist, follow my -
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
 PS If,
without joining, you would
like to be added to the monthly Fabian Update e-mail list,
just e-mail
Fabian Research
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Special
Footnote
I love the online newspapers, which
are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their
here - I have added the English-language China Daily ... and I now
offer you the leading English-language Indian paper The Hindu.
They are all just
a click away.
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I
enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to
the minute, which can be found at
www.metafilter.com.
Never miss
Steve Bell!
His
cartoons, from
The
Guardian
- his wit and perception illuminate
the absurdities of the political scene...
 Having
discovered this remarkable NASA website, linked with the Hubble Telescope
and the NASA Mars exploration vehicles, with its current photographs from
outer space, I am reluctant
to let it go
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When will
they ever learn?
 These awful photographs cannot be one-off
oddities, covered by The "Few Bad Apples"
Defence. They can reflect only a military without discipline or ethics, an
incompetent and amoral officer class. There is no sign that
senior American generals acknowledge that, behind the fragile facade of
democracy and human rights, America routinely brutalises its own civilian
prisoners within the USA. Many American prisons are hell-holes. The
conscience of America was not provoked by Guantanamo Bay - because
none of it seemed exceptional. Abu Ghraib was therefore no exception, to
those in the know, no watershed.
-
And although I am satisfied
that our own UK military does have higher standards,
war brutalises all. Tony
Blair is disingenuous, in limiting blame to the military. While
hostilities continue, brutal and dehumanising methods of interrogation
seem justified. And all armed forces routinely recruit thugs, psychopaths
and vicious bullies who relish these opportunities.
We
ought not to be surprised. We are all to blame,
particularly our political leaders, who refuse to share the responsibility
for making war. We must all be more zealous
to ensure that military force is deployed only as the ultimate last
resort. "Foreign policy", the world of relations between sovereign
states, must move higher up the democratic agenda. We must all
acknowledge that we share
these awful responsibilities.
-
In Iraq, other options were
brushed aside in the wrongful rush to war by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld,
dragging Tony Blair ignominiously behind them.
 As my scanner has been on the blink, you
have been deprived of my customary running commentary on our beautiful UK
postage stamps. The anniversary of the Entente Cordiale between
Britain and France went unnoticed, on the philatelic front - let me make
amends. Normal service can now be
resumed...
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Managed Migration
future
mode
 Tony Blair is right
to take a strong line on migration management. International
migration raises fundamental new political questions about the proper
organisation and interaction of societies, globally. And the subject is moving towards the centre
of the political stage.
But he is wrong
to suggest that, as present international
conventions stand,
this is a
soluble problem.
It is not. The need is for
quite different institutions, laws that are quite different in character.
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PS Is it significant that
Governmental spin has now given the Home Office a livery of
imperial purple..? |
