The Red Line Is About Time

Most people I speak to about the news (and most politicians that I see on the news) tend to be rather tentative about getting involved in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This mainly stems from the unnecessary war with Iraq, but I think there is a significant difference between the conflicts. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors were doing a good job, albeit a little slowly; they would have eventually determined that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and rendered him militarily impotent. I know that it wouldn’t have been particularly moral to leave a previously brutal dictator like Hussein in power, but further political measures would hopefully have been deployed (e.g. harsh economic sanctions) that may have forced a new Iraqi dawn – as in Egypt and Tunisia – without having to resort to warfare. But Syria is different: it is the U.N. Security Council that has been rendered impotent this time with Russia / China and Britain / America / France in a seemingly permanent stalemate that prevents political implementations. So now that today it has been revealed that President Barack Obama’s ‘red line’ has been crossed (proof has been shown that Bashar al-Assad has been using chemical weapons), I’m pleased that the U.S. government has taken the decision to arm Syrian rebels; in fact, it’s about time. Just because Russia and China have their own immoral agendas to keep Assad in power, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should sit idly by while tens of thousands of people are massacred, many of them innocent civilians. As much as it may be reasonable to avoid sending in the soldiers (so that we don’t get dragged into another Afghanistan) we still have a moral duty to intervene somehow. We were able to get rid of Colonel Gaddafi by helping rebels in Libya (though that was with more political consensus), and that country is certainly better off without him. So I hope that Obama is strong in his decision-making, and forces Assad to back down from genocide.

Well That's A Relief

Barack Obama has won the U.S. Presidential election. This means that we will be spared four years of Republican belligerence, as they would probably have been threatening unilateral war with Iran (well, bilateral alongside Israel) and been much more reactionary towards Russia - not that Russia deserves a round of applause for recent decisions (i.e. Syria) but we can do without the old nuclear foes at loggerheads again. So as much as Obama isn’t perfect - he never was able to shut Guantanamo Bay - at least he guarantees us a calm head in any future storms, and he believes in universal healthcare (something us Brits take far too much for granted). And not forgetting, of course, that Democrats are generally liberal and free-thinking people; rarely a bad thing.

 

Ideological Conflations

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan as U.S. President and Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister were able to work together to introduce a far-right capitalist ideology of widespread proportions. Wealth creation became paramount to the extent where being rich was more important than being decent. That legacy still stands today when customers are allowed to treat workers like dirt, and the worker simply has to grin while eating shit so that the business doesn’t lose any profit!
Most political analysts have said that in yesterday’s Presidential debate, Mitt Romney was more successful in putting his viewpoints across than Barack Obama. This is making an unnerving prospect a little more likely: that Romney could become President while David Cameron is Prime Minister. They’re both right-wingers and could do untold damages to global economics. Cameron has already tripled tuition fees (regardless of what his Lib Dem coalition partners wanted), and if Romney were President then perhaps we’d have more situations like a recent one in California:
Community colleges in California provide access to higher education for low-income students. But as budget cuts have recently reduced the number of classes on offer, some students were not getting placements. So one college came up with the bizarre plan of charging up to 400% more for a guaranteed seat in class! The idea was that the extra revenue earned by the extortionate charges would then be used to subsidise poorer students, but in fact the less well-off were only gaining access to the cheapest classes; the more expensive lessons were mainly going to the richer kids. I think that Republicans would love that idea! Thankfully the programme has now been put on hold after a protest against it resulted in students being pepper-sprayed! But there is little doubt in my mind that policies like these could easily become more widespread (and not just in America) if a right-wing capitalist ideology were once again to hold all the power.
So please support Barack Obama. Don’t let money rule the world.

Race Perpetuates Racism

Barack Obama - the 44th President of the United States - is a Democrat. He is one of the most eloquent orators to ever grace the political landscape, and a man of true moral principle which has inspired a world. These are the headlines that should be grabbing people's attention. Yet instead a different headline has been plastered across the media: Barack Obama is the first black President! It is not wrong that this statement of fact should be mentioned; after all, this is a country where blacks and whites were segregated in all walks of life less than half a century ago, giving rise to racist persecution and death. But Martin Luther King, probably the greatest icon of those times, famously stated that his dream was to live in a country where people would "not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character". So if people are now hailing Obama purely because he is a black President, then they are not taking a moral standpoint; they have managed to take this man's immense achievement and lessen its worth by colourising it. If Obama is to be judged solely on the colour of his skin then the racist society that King condemned is still being perpetuated; if a black warmongering hateful Republican were President, that would not be a good thing just because he had overcome repression; and if Americans cannot judge a President on his policies then they have not yet overcome the past. Obama has already made some great decisions (having not yet been in office for a week); he has commenced closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp, reinstated a pro-choice abortion law, and (best of all) given the go ahead for embryonic stem cell research so that future generations can benefit from massive medical breakthroughs. Let's judge the man on these social accomplishments, not on his race, which incidentally is mixed!