6year old Fatini Lazri pictured at the opning of the New Educate Together School in Lucan Co. Dublin , Ireland, September 2. The School was opened by Minister for Education and Science Batt O’Keefe. Photo: Aidan Crawley/The Irish Times
US Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain appears on stage to introduce his vice-presidential running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
A phrase Barack Obama has used in a couple of speeches is, “There’s not a red America and a blue America. There’s the United States of America.” Having watched the Democratic and then the Republican Party Convention, I’m not sure that’s true.
John McCain definitely kept the presidential race interesting when he picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. The tone and tenor, even the look of the audience at the Republican convention was very different to that at the Democrats’. And yet both sides seem to have really energised their bases.
I’m not into melodrama, but I think this election will play a disproportionately large role in determining what a future America will look like. John McCain is running on a theme of reform, while Obama wants to change things – I believe both of them are sincere. McCain, maverick as he may be, still represents America as it has been till now.
The reason this election is so close, in spite of the unpopularity of the current president, is that most people are risk averse. As exciting as Obama is, he is very different. He probably reminds a lot of people of the changing demographics and values in the United States. That kind of change frightens some people. John McCain, and even more so Sarah Palin, represent to some, the best of the past, just done better.
I think the election result will depend on whether blue America has grown larger than red America. At the end of the day, I don’t think many will pay much attention to real issues. Most people will decide which candidates represent the way they want the country to look and vote for that person.
A friend recently reminded me of an essay written by Binyavanga Wainaina. How to write about Africa is one of those works you read and wonder why you can’t write like that. It is both hilarious and brilliant.
Always use the word ‘Africa or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.
I’m really sad that I’ve come to the end of this book. Andrew Brown’s voice has grown very familiar, and I’m not ready to have us part ways. I’ll wrap up the whole book next week.
For now, I think Ireland has a lot to learn from Sweden’s immigration experiences. To quote Mr Brown:
The great change in the last thirty years is that Swedishness doesn’t look like Swedishness any more… In the past, the most visible thing about Swedes to the outside world was always that they were blond… Only when I came to London would I notice people who were black, brown, yellow or fat.
…The change happened gradually, and largely unremarked by the rest of Sweden, partly because the areas of heavy immigrant settlement were satellite towns, which are out of site for the rest of the country…
… Because of the generally undemonstrative nature of Swedish public life, in which good manners demand that everyone ignore everyone else, it is easy to miss the degree to which olive-shinned immigrants are specially ignored – and easy for them, too, to overestimate it.
… Still, the idea that Sweden should be a multifarious society is an odd one… The great distinguishing characteristic of the society as I knew it was its narrowness… and I can’t believe that anything has happened to change that.
… It is one of the known unspeakables of Swedish life that the crime rate among immigrants and their descendants is at least double that in the native population.
…Zanyar Adami was optimistic about integration when I talked to him. But he certainly didn’t think it was an inevitable development…
You can draw your own parallels and conclusions.
AARON McGRUDER’s The Boondocks is an animated TV series which takes a satirical look at American culture and race relations from the perspective of an African-American family. In a controversial episode titled Return of the King , Martin Luther King Jr does not die after the assassination attempt in Memphis, but falls into a long coma. He then wakes up in modern-day America and is disgusted by what he sees.
A Russian armoured vehicle is driven past a housing block in Tskhinvali, the main city in breakaway South Ossetia, Georgia, September 2. Russia praised the European Union on Tuesday for taking a “responsible approach” to its conflict with Georgia by refusing to impose sanctions on Moscow but said the EU had failed to understand it reasons for intervening. Photo: Sergei Karpukhin/REUTERS
In his book The Post-American World, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria argues that America’s influence is subsiding as other nations rise. A few commentators have suggested in recent times that the world is changing from a unipolar state to a multipolar one.
The Russia – Georgia conflict brings this turn of events to light quite dramatically. It really got going in earnest on the day of the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony. The Olympics came and went, we were all duly impressed by China, but this thing has dragged on. Russia has insisted on proving that it deserves the same kind of attention that China has been getting. And in case anyone was wondering how tough the Russians are, pictures of the Prime Minister taking on a tiger have been circulated far and wide.
I can see what America’s role will be in the future. Should oil and gas prices remain high, or, should Russia find a way of diversifying its economy, I can just about make out their future place in the world. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture China in an important geo-political role. And it is conceivable that countries like Brazil, Australia, South Africa and India will have pretty strong voices in the years to come. What is much less certain for me is where Europe fits in.
Europe has been pretty impotent, in my view, with respect to Georgia. The fact that the continent is beholden to Russian fossil fuels is no secret. The extent to which the EU will go to protect that source of fuel has been a little surprising. At least there was a little posturing from the Americans. Brussels has gone out of its way to keep on Mr. Putin’s good side. But then, he does have a gun, and he isn’t afraid to use it.
Stormont Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie, has launched an interesting pilot scheme in County Armagh known as “Own a Home”. Under the scheme, Barclays Bank is offering a 100% mortgage to first time buyers for half the value of the house. The other half of the house is split into two and owned by the property developer and a housing association. The aim is to help people get onto the property ladder. In time, the home owner can buy up the rest of the property.
It’s a very interesting proposal. I think it’s a dignified way of making housing affordable and more widely available to those who would otherwise be unable to buy a house. It also limits the bank’s risk since they are only providing funds for half the value of the house. And unlike systems whereby people get rent allowance or a placed in houses they do not own, there is a big incentive under this plan to both take care of the property and to work hard towards owning it completely.
With a large vacancy rate and a housing market that has seen better days, I wonder if the government here will consider doing something similar. I am sure there are property developers with houses they are dying to get rid off who would be more than happy to come to a similar agreement.
I had breakfast with a group of friends over the weekend. One of the things that came up during the gathering was the Lisbon Treaty. Deaglán has a really good post on it at the Politics blog.
I have to say, I was a little surprised that people voted against the treaty. But what has surprised me even more than that is the fact that even in the face of global recession, there is still an awful lot of animosity towards both the treaty, and Europe as a whole. I would have thought that most people would see being at the centre of all things Europe as the best form of economic insulation from what may lie ahead.
The question I have is this: does the animosity towards the Lisbon Treaty have anything to do with that document per se? I know there are polls and studies being conducted to find out why people voted ‘No’, but I think this country sometimes conducts these polls and studies when just asking people would do the job just as well, and for less. So why did people reject Lisbon?
One of the theories at the breakfast table was that there is just a huge level of distrust of officialdom in Ireland. Another interesting one was that the timing was bad. Had the treaty been up for ratification at the height of the boom, some of my friends were convinced that it would have faced little opposition.
The interesting thing is that none of the guys thought the issue was the content of the treaty itself. None of us really knew what was in the document, but we were fairly confident that at least 80% of the country was in the same boat.
If most people don’t even know what’s in the treaty, why the opposition?
