Tuesday, March 27, 2007
leaping from the 19th to the 21st century and bypassing the 20th altogether..
Today’s Guardian editorial is worth reading, in particular the final paragraph..
That final paragraph
Yesterday it almost felt as if Northern Ireland politics was suddenly leaping from the 19th to the 21st century and bypassing the 20th altogether. Long experience - and the personalities involved - nevertheless counsels caution. Yesterday, not May 8, was supposed to be the date when Northern Ireland’s two big parties began to work together in a devolved government. No agreement by March 26, no devolution, said the law passed by Westminster last year. In the end, not for the first time but hopefully for the last, the law in Ulster took second place to politics. As a result Mr Paisley can display another concession to his own sceptics. But it would be naive to think that yesterday marked the end of brinkmanship. There will still be spats and standoffs aplenty to try the patience. It was a day to remember, but still a day for two hearty cheers rather than the full-throated three.
The 20th Century risks being a closed, and sealed, book with only précises of selected chapters being made available.
Pete Baker @ 10:04 AM
mickhall: “Your continuos praise for southern Rhodesia, as I said not only ignores the majority of the peoples appalling standards of living etc within the country at the time, but borders on either racism or provocation, probably the latter. “
Beg pardon? Criticism of Zimbabwe does not equate to praise of Rhodesia, any more than pointing out the squandered opportunity Mugabe has botched in an attempt to be Zimbabwe’s dictator for life is praise for European colonialism in Africa. Your cries of “racism” is just a clumsy effort to silence criticism of the corrupt government of the continent. It does not take an economic genius to recognize the advantages of scale. Bad governance is bad governance, regardless of the practioners.
As for the state of the average African in Zimbabwe, if you look at most measures, such as inflation (up to 1700%) and life expectancy (crashing down to 37 years today), in the case of Zimbabwe, a case could be made. Again, this is not praise for Rhodesia, but a look at the statistics, pre and post liberation.
mickhall: “Your correct about the Ukrainians and Finns but I never said otherwise, you could have added the Baltic states, what I said was the Russian revolution was a progressive and beneficial event”
But it wasn’t, because you artificially cherry-pick the results of the event, trying to edit out Stalin from the results of the revolution. One could argue a great many things were “progressive and benefical” if they were allowed a great eraser to remove certain events and consequences from consideration.
The revolution led to starvation even under the relatively more benevolent Lenin, following into an openly totalitarian Stalin, who killed millions in his purges and his engineered starvations. His lunacy has echos even unto the present, with Russians trying to argue that the Baltic states joined the USSR voluntarily in 1940. He was followed, in turn, by a collection of apparatchiks until the system collapsed under its own weight as a failed experiment.
Social democracy owes a far greater debt to the United States security guarantee, which allowed most of the NATO nations, along with a few associated free-loaders, to experiment with socialistic policies by reducing their military spending.
mickhall: “The problem we have on Slugger is that no one blogs from a left wing socialist/communist perspective, thus arguments/debates like this can only come about by going off thread, which is a shame
Must go for now, enjoyed our debate, cheers.”
Keep the flags of discontent flying, mickhall.
Posted by on Mar 27, 2007 @ 07:42 PM
