Archive for February, 2010
02 26th, 2010
Newsweek has an excellent cover essay by Joshua Kurlantzick on the collapse of the advocacy of human rights.
‘Today the lack of interest in human rights has been virtually institutionalised in Washington and other capitals,” he reveals. “Advocating for global freedom will get you nowhere.”
This is an intelligent piece that warns of a cataclysmic event such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the 9/11 attacks to ’shake Western populations out of their torpor.’
02 25th, 2010
In a piece about logjam in the US Congress, The Economist argues:-
A few years ago only Chinese bureaucrats dared suggest that Beijing’s autocratic system of government was superior. Nowadays, there is no shortage of leaders from emerging countries, or even prominent American businesspeople, who privately sing the praises of a system that can make decisions quickly. We disagree.
And so do I, for what it’s worth.
02 22nd, 2010
I may be late coming to this, but is Word on Vista total rubbish? Things that used to be so simple, like inserting page numbers, foot notes, tables etc, have become labrynths of unecessary complexity and the Word document cannot be read by many older programs.
How stupid can you get?
02 20th, 2010
A recommendation from the younger generation. www.gap-year.com is on board for moving furniture around in people’s minds when it comes to democracy:-
“Here’s a thought-provoking book for anyone about to take off on their travels. Most of us in the developed world probably take the democracies we live in for granted. After all, we have the vote, freedom of speech, the choice to do our own thing and prosperity, or at least the potential to achieve it (despite the current economic crisis). So perhaps it would never really occur to us to really consider whether a democratic system is the only or most appropriate form of government everywhere in the world.”
02 20th, 2010
The Telegraph blogger called Anna the Imp refers to Democracy Kills in a blog about liberty which drew dozens of comments.
“I should say that Hawksley, despite the title of the book, offers a vigorous defence of democracy. I would certainly offer a vigorous defence of democracy; but, goodness, how we have traduced it by, first, making it a foreign policy aim- by bringing democracy at the barrel of a gun – and, second, by failing to understand the growing weakness of our own representative institutions. Two cheers for democracy, E. M Foster said. Is it possible, I wonder, now to get past one?”
Click here: Anna The Imp — Democracy
Click here: Democracy Kills Click here: Democracy Kills
02 16th, 2010
Deutsche Welle has joined the debate on democracy. Click here: Deutsche Welle — Democracy Kills
Hawksley though, goes a couple of steps further. He suggests replacing the word democracy, by now intrinsically linked to an ideological form of government opposed by countries such as Russia and China, and replacing it with something along the lines of “good governance.”
“If you got together with the UN and said ‘we want to give these people in this African country good governance and we want to build them schools and so on,’ then you would take away the friction that many places see as the West trying to export their own ideology in order to get business contracts.”
02 12th, 2010
In The Spectator, Francis Fukiyama asks: Is the age of democracy over? Fukiyama is the author of the seminal post Cold War book The End of History and the Last Man in which he became a cult thinker by arguing that liberal democratic principles are the end point of any form of government. Twenty years later — by watching Russia and most recently Ukraine – Fukiyama concludes: “We need to match those high ideals with unglamorous but steady investments in institution-building if liberal democracy is to deliver on its promises.”
Six months after the publication of Democracy Kills: What’s so good about having the Vote this debate is really hotting up.
02 12th, 2010
A New Zealand friend sent me a piece by author James Jackson about Africa. It was depressing and spoke of Africa’s word associations – Famine. Drought. Conflict. Cruelty. Machetes. Child Soldiers. Massacres. Diamonds. Warlords.Tyranny. Corruption. Despair. Disease. Aids. Africa. She asked whether I agreed. I have just returned from Uganda.
I don’t agree. I detected signs that reminded me of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia 20-30 years ago — hugely intelligent and motivated people picking their way through bad government. Back in the 60s & 70s, there was famine in China, genocide in Cambodia, war in Vietnam and poverty throughout Asia. Back in the 1940s there was hunger, cruelty, massacres, tyranny corruption, disease and despair in Europe — for the second time that century.
It is not Africa. It is the way the human spirit is mismanaged.
02 10th, 2010
A follow up contribution from the note about how much it costs to live in Britain from Donald Hirsh www.donaldhirsch.com
The bare minimum for a couple with two children renting a council flat in the Midlands – £28,000 a year — almost a third more than the average wage.
Click here: Democracy Kills Click here: Democracy Kills
02 5th, 2010
Anatole Kaletsky hot foot back from Davos writes in The Times :-
The question that nobody wants to raise is whether the new model of capitalism that emerges to dominate the world will be a radically reformed version of the Western democratic system or some variant of the authoritarian state-led capitalism favoured in China, Russia and many other emerging economies.
“The West must come up with a new model of capitalism that’s consistent with our political values,” he quotes a US diplomat as saying. “Either we reinvent ourselves or we will lose.”
