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A Nobel Peace Prize winner using his acceptance speech to justify war?

The same Peace Prize winner citing NATO’s brutal intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s as an example of a 'just war’?

It’s beyond Orwellian. We have a Noble peace prize winner, who is so committed to peace that he won’t even sign a landmine ban.

At least Obama conceded that there were many people more deserving of the prize than himself. Hundreds of millions of people in fact.

The problem with Obama is not that he's a wicked man, but that he's the prisoner of a wicked, corrupt system. As commenter Deloki puts it in the First Post:

Silly naive people to believe that the elected President of the USA has any say over policy. The people who financed and effectively "bought him", are the ones who decide, not the front man reading pre-prepared speeches. The same applies to Tony Blair who in return for doing what he was told, has a wonderful future ahead of him, clear up the little nonsense and misunderstanding about Iraq and then he can move on to greater things. To believe that there is "democracy" in the USA or Europe is really dumb, for it does not matter which party wins an election, the people with the money remain the same and it is they that "call the shots".

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What this country needs is a new direction, possibly driven by a new foreign policy lobby that recognizes that while all nations have an inalienable right to be treated fairly by the United States, Washington has a clear and compelling responsibility to avoid involvement in other countries’ quarrels so it can put its own people and interests first.

Though "America First" might sound like a crude reversion to some forms of 1930s nationalism, in reality the lobby could spearhead a withdrawal from empire in reaction to the American people’s having been sold down the river by a succession of politicians of both parties who have adhered to an agenda that is completely hypocritical, blindly globalist, and persistently interventionist.

The inside-the-beltway political class has grown fat on empire, shielded from the consequences of its own folly and never held accountable for its sins, largely because both parties adhere to the same basic policies, albeit with slightly different packaging. The sorry result has not benefited the American people in any way unless one is a defense contractor or a Wall Street banker or a politician writing a self-exculpatory book.

You can read the rest of Philip Giraldi's Manifesto for X Street here.
I urge all American readers in particular to take a look: it's the best idea I've heard for ages.

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While Teddy Kennedy's disasters were vivid, his legislative triumphs, draped in this week's obituaries with respectful homage, were far less colourful. And they were actually devastating for the very constituencies – working people, organised labour –whose champion he claimed to be.

Though the obituarists have glowingly related Kennedy's 46-year stint in the US Senate and, as 'the last liberal', his mastery of the legislative process, they miss the fact that it was out of Kennedy's Senate office that came two momentous bits of legislation that signalled the onset of the neo-liberal era: deregulation of trucking and aviation. They were a disaster for organised labour and the working conditions and pay of people in those industries.

(Kennedy).. helped push through NAFTA, the "free trade" pact that was another body blow to American labour.
....because his mishaps were so dramatic, no one remembers quite how noxious his political triumphs were for those who now mourn him as their lost leader.

You can read the rest of Alexander Cockburn's brilliant piece on the late Teddy Kennedy- and why he was no champion of the working man- here.

UPDATE: Today's Morning Star editorial discusses Kennedy's mixed record on foreign policy issues:

A knee-jerk cold warrior, he initially backed the Vietnam war, supported the 2001 Afghanistan invasion and talked up the threat from Iran in 2002. Of his stance on Israel, we need only quote thuggish far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who called him "a great friend to Israel" who "stood by Israel's side in its most trying times."
But he recanted on Vietnam to become a fierce critic of the war, opposed the Iraq invasion and was honoured by Chile last year as one of the few prominent US politicians who stood firm against Reagan's murderous interventions in Latin America.

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This is the second part of my essay, published in December in the anti-war magazine The American Conservative, calling for an end to the neo-con induced hostility towards Syria. Apologies for its late posting, but I forgot that I hadn’t posted Part 2. You can read Part 1 here.

Assad, the wily old "Lion of Damascus," died in June 2000. Since then, under the leadership of his shy, soft-spoken son, Bashar, hundreds of political prisoners have been released and some media restrictions have been lifted. Syria may still be along way from a model Jeffersonian democracy, but it's certainly a less totalitarian society than it was a decade ago. Yet Washington's attitude toward the Arab republic has only hardened.

Syria was castigated for opposing the illegal invasion of Iraq, even though the war was opposed by almost all Syrians. Then when Saddam's WMD couldn't be found, neocons advanced the ludicrous fiction that Iraq's stockpile had been moved to Syria just prior to the invasion.

Syria's military presence in neighboring Lebanon came in for renewed attack when Lebanese President Rafik Hariri was assassinated in Beirut in February 2005. The neocons lost little time pointing the finger of blame at Damascus, even though the political upheaval caused by the killing was to Syria's great detriment.

The country's great crime in the neocons' eyes is not its poor human-rights record--human rights in "friendly" countries such as Jordan and Egypt do not seem to concern them unduly--nor its involvement in Lebanon. No, they resent Syria for its refusal to accept U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the region and for its support of the Palestinians.

When Washington's hawks accuse Syria of being a "destabilizing" force, they are referring to Syria's patronage of both Hamas, the winners of the 2006 elections in Palestine, and Hezbollah, the paramilitary organization formed to resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Both groups are regarded as terrorist organizations for their attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces, and their violent acts should be condemned. But the U.S. makes a mistake when it conflates Damascus's support for groups it views as resisting a regional hegemon with the sponsorship of Islamic terrorism generally--much less Islamic terror directed against America.

Yet ironically, while neocons continue to foam at the mouth whenever Syria is mentioned, Israel--the country they most admire in the region--is itself adopting a more pragmatic approach to its neighbor. In May, it was announced that Israel and Syria were engaged in indirect negotiations, carried out through Turkish mediators, for a comprehensive peace treaty. Realists in Tel Aviv accept that there can be no lasting peace in the region without some arrangement with Syria--a peace deal that could involve Israel handing back the Golan Heights, which they have held since 1967, and making concessions on Palestine in return for Syrian recognition of Israel and a commitment to use their influence to rein in Hezbollah and Hamas.

And while Syria continues to be lambasted by laptop bombardiers in Washington, it's been receiving plaudits from those closer to the action. Late last year, then top American commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus praised Syria for taking steps to reduce the flow of foreign fighters through its borders with Iraq.

Moreover, neocon attempts to isolate Syria are proving increasingly unsuccessful. In July, President Assad made a high-profile visit to France, which in 2005 had cut off diplomatic relations with Syria. Six weeks later, Nicolas Sarkozy, the man whose elevation to the Champs-Elysees the neocons hoped would reposition French foreign policy to their liking, became the first Western head of state to visit Damascus in five years. And in October, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem flew to London to meet with his British counterpart, David Miliband, for talks.

It was during this visit that the U.S. attack on Syria took place, leading some analysts to claim that the raid was designed to counter diplomatic moves to bring Syria in from the cold: "a final vengeful lunge against a country that others are now wooing but which still attracts profound hostility in Washington," as the Guardian's Middle East editor, Ian Black, put it.

But while diplomatic approaches to Damascus are welcome, it is important that the West engages with Syria for the right reasons. Renewing relations merely to isolate Iran, its longstanding ally, would only make an attack on Tehran--and a potentially catastrophic Middle East conflict--more likely. It is in America's interest to build a new, positive relationship with Damascus for its own sake: Syria has done the U.S. no harm and has the same desire to counter Islamic fundamentalism.

During the recent presidential elections we heard a lot from the Obama camp about the need for change. A visit from the new U.S. president to Damascus and a return invitation to Bashar al-Assad to visit Washington, together with the repeal of the Syria Accountability Act and the adoption of a new, less aggressive tone toward Syria, would go some way to showing that the new administration really does want to make a clean break from the disastrous foreign policies of George W. Bush.

POSTCRIPT:
Sadly, the US, despite a thaw in relations since the change in administration, has renewed sanctions against Syria for another year. In a letter notifying Congress of his decision, President Obama accused Syria, of among other things, “pursuing weapons of mass destruction”. I wonder where we’ve heard that one before?

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This article of mine appears in The New Statesman.

Last Tuesday was a momentous day in American political history.

For the first time in more than 30 years, a regular smoker was installed in the White House. But whereas Gerald Ford openly puffed on his pipe in the Oval Office, it is unlikely that the new incumbent will be quite so forthcoming.

"It's not something I'm proud of," says Barack Obama of his long-standing and much-discussed cigarette habit. The 44th president certainly takes great care never to be seen smoking in public.

But is this the right move?

Historical evidence suggests that if Obama really wants to go down as a great American president, being a smoker - and a smoker not afraid to be seen smoking in public - can only enhance his chances.

James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution", was a cigar smoker throughout his presidency, and smoked right up to his death at the age of 85. The Civil War hero - and supporter of civil rights for African Americans - Ulysses S Grant smoked 20 cigars a day. In the 20th century, Franklin D Roosevelt, the man whose New Deal Obama would like to emulate, was seldom seen without his jauntily clenched cigarette holder. And Ford, who smoked on average eight pipeloads a day while in office, has been labelled America's "greatest president" by the political pundit Alexander Cockburn, simply because he did the least damage. In contrast, we can reflect that Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes were non-smokers.

Twenty-first-century America is, of course, a country where some consider smoking to be one of the seven deadly sins. But if the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has the courage to face down the antis and light up a cigar on a live television programme, as she did in 2003, surely the US president could do likewise.

Most commentators agree that the success or failure of Obama's presidency will depend on whether he has the courage to stand up to powerful vested interests.

Lighting up a cigarette in the Oval Office would be a symbolic gesture that, at last, America has a president not afraid to be his own man.

And if Obama really wants to be another FDR, why not buy a cigarette holder?

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We're told that new President Barack Obama telephoned Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas yesterday to tell them how committed he was to Middle East peace. Well, one thing yesterday tells us is that Obama is not too committed to democracy. Whether you like the fact or not, Hamas - and not Fateh- won the 2006 Palestinian elections- and as such, can be said to represent the democratic wishes of the Palestinian people.

The Zionist slogan 'Yes to Hummus, No to Hamas' might have a certain ring to it, but there can be no effective Middle East peace-deal which doesn't involve Hamas- the idea that a lasting deal can be stitched up between Tel Aviv and Fateh is naive to say the least. What Obama's actions show is that he, like his predecessors is a Henry Ford democrat. Countries have the right to elect in any colour governments they like, so long as Washington (and in the case of Hamas, Tel Aviv), approves.

If people have the temerity to vote the wrong way- as they did in Palestine in 2006, or in Federal Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s, then their elected representatives will be shunned- and if they still don't toe the line and adopt a suitably servile position, then it's time to build the air-raid shelters.

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1. Face down the antis and smoke openly in public.
2. Announce that the US is going to stop giving blank cheques to Israel.
3. Ditch Joe Biden as VP and replace him with Maggie Gyllenhaal.
4. Announce that he’s going to introduce a free national health service.
5. Visit Tehran and Damascus and adopt a new, friendlier stance towards Iran and Syria.
6. Ditch Hillary The Hawk and appoint Jimmy Carter or Ramsey Clark as Secretary of State.
7. Announce that the US will only act in accordance with international law.
8. Announce that the US will pay reparations to the people of the former Yugoslavia for the illegal bombing of the country in 1999- and that it will also compensate the Iraqi people for the illegal attack on their country in 2003.
9. Announce the immediate withdrawal of US troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
10. Announce the closure of most of the US’s overseas military bases.
11. Stand up and say “The ‘war on terror’ was a load of old baloney- it was a neo-con smokescreen for extending US hegemony around the globe”.
12. Appoint Ralph Nader Trade Secretary.

Of course, it would be a miracle if he even does one of these things.

But wouldn’t it be nice if he did!

Anyway, that’s my wish-list. What's yours?

UPDATE: 'Nicki' has added her list in the comments below - and there's three of hers I wish I'd added to mine:

2. Ban political donations from Agents of foreign countries and corporate political donations. Cap political donations at $100. Return democracy to the American people.

12. Put all neo-cons and associated corporate racketeers on trial for high treason and crimes against humanity.

13. Transform the WB and IMF. Change the culture of American consumerism, stop encouraging usury, free people from debt, free other nations from debt. Truly bring liberty and freedom to the world.

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Barack Obama's signature issue in the primaries was his "good judgment" to oppose the Iraq war. He invoked this more than any other qualification in his early battles with Hillary Clinton. She may have experience, he'd charge, but she lacked the wisdom to oppose the war. Indeed, the whole Democratic establishment was somehow corrupt or out of touch for not opposing the war, according to the Obamaphiles. So now Barack Obama is going to appoint Hillary Clinton to be the chief architect of his foreign policy. Moreover, he picked Joe Biden to be his running mate and "partner" in the White House explicitly because of his foreign policy experience and judgment. But wait: Joe Biden, too, supported the war. Meanwhile, at Defense, it looks like he will keep George W. Bush's man, Robert Gates.......surely keeping Bush's SecDef is not exactly what the anti-war Dems had in mind as "change we can believe in." Heck, Joe Lieberman's sitting pretty and he endorsed McCain. It will be interesting to see how long Obama's charisma can paper over reality.

opines neo-con commentator Jonah Goldberg in The NRO.

Is Barack Obama in the process of betraying his anti-war supporters?

Today's Sunday Telegraph , in a piece entitled "Obama accused of selling out on Iraq by picking hawks to run his foreign policy team" quotes Chris Bowers of the OpenLeft.com blog who complains:

"That is, over all, a centre-right foreign policy team. I feel incredibly frustrated. Progressives are being entirely left out of Obama's major appointments so far."

Meanwhile, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the anti-war Daily Kos site, warns that Democrats risk sounding "tone deaf" to the views of "the American electorate that voted in overwhelming numbers for change from the discredited Bush policies."

I've put a question mark on the heading of this blog post, because of course we're still to see what Obama's foreign policy will be like in practice.

But as far as his early appointments are concerned, it's hardly a promising start, is it?

(many thanks to Stuart Reid for alerting me to the Goldberg piece).

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"Have any of you ever seen a picture of Mr Obama, a heavy smoker, with a cigarette in his mouth? No, nor have I. Why is that?"

asks my friend Peter Hitchens in his weekly column.

Well, Peter, just for you, there's a picture of Obama smoking above, but it's true that he hasn't been pictured smoking for a long while. Is he intimidated by the anti-smoking fanatics who will denounce him as a man not fit to be President if he is seen to light up in public? (thank goodness they weren't around in the days of FDR and Winston Churchill, otherwise the Allies would never have won the Second World War).

There's been a lot of talk recently about whether Obama has courage, and he can show that he does by following the example of Maggie Gyllenhaal, this blog's choice for President in 2012 and light up live on prime-time tv.

But there's a second even more important thing he can do to show us all that he's courageous. And that's to resist the growing pressure- being asserted by certain powerful interest groups- to appoint the neocon's favourite Democrat Hillary the Hawk as Secretary of State. People voted for Obama because they wanted a clean break with the aggressive, pro-war policies of the past. Appointing a woman who played such a key role in the illegal NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, who supported the equally unlawful Iraq war, and who has threatened to "obliterate" Iran, would be a betrayal of all those ordinary Americans who wanted something different.

Don't do it, Barack.

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With every passing day of economic woe, the scale of the heist just perpetrated against America's taxpayers by the country's largest banks becomes more apparent.

In the shadow of the presidential election, the nine biggest banks were given $125bn of taxpayer money with the understanding they would send this fresh capital coursing into the economy in the form of loans.

Unfortunately, the US government forgot to get the lending requirement in writing.

Instead, the banks are sitting on the money, earning interest and mulling mergers and acquisitions and replenishing bonus pools for their employees.

writes Philip Delves Broughton in today's First Post.

If you are an American taxpayer, (and I know that around 25% of this blog's readership is US-based), I'm afraid you've been the victims of what Delves Broughton rightly calls the biggest bank heist ever.

The biggest bank robbers don't wear stripey jerseys, black masks and carry bags marked 'Swag'; they wear suits and hobnob with the political elite.

Or, as Berthold Brecht so memorably put it: "What is robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?"

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"Obama will not win the presidency: America will have been made to feel sufficiently good about itself simply by his nomination and the way it responds to him as a candidate not to feel the need to put him in the White House. America will decide that in such dangerous times, it must choose the wise older leader, the war hero, the statesman who talks about foreign policy and national security with real authority."
Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph, January 2008

"For what it is worth, I think it will be a close presidential race with the favourite, Obama, winning by a squeak."
Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph, November 2008.

Well, I hope you took my advice and headed down your local bookies to bet on an Obama landslide. If Daley, the world's worst pundit, said that Obama would win by a squeak, we knew for sure he'd win at a canter.

'The scale of Obama's victory exceeded Democratic expectations' reports The Guardian as the man Ms Daley assured us "will not win the Presidency" recorded the most emphatic win in a US Presidential election for two decades.

It's great to see the uber neocon McCain/Palin combo suffer such a heavy defeat. The American people have delivered a damning verdict on the past eight years- and disastrous neoconservative/neoliberal policies pursued by Bush and Cheney.

But while public opinion in America (and Britain too for that matter) has undoubtedly shifted to the left, neocon/neoliberal voices are (scandalously) still disproportionately represented in both countries mainstream media. Expect that to change over the next couple of years: people will simply stop reading columnists- and the newspapers they write for, if they consistently tell them things that they know not to be true (such as 'unregulated free market capitalism is good for everyone'; 'Barack Obama is a hard-line socialist' and 'soft' on terror, or that Russian and Iran pose 'a grave threat' to the west).

With their ridiculous attacks on Obama and bellicose pro-war rhetoric, uber neocon writers like Janet Daley, William Kristol and Melanie Phillips are totally out of step with the new spirit of the age. They've been proved wrong on virtually everything they've written about over the past ten years and their moment has well and truly passed.

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I know he's not a 'socialist', as Simon Heffer ludicrously claims. I know that his plans for extending health care are not as comprehensive as they should be. And I know that he's not the Messiah.

But nevertheless, it has to be Obama.

And the reason why? Well, as American divorcee Mary Treadwell (played so memorably by the late Vivien Leigh) says in the clip above from that wonderful, wonderful, film Ship of Fools, "in life if you can't get what you want, you'd better damn well settle for what you can get".

I'd like to see an unequivocally and unapologetically socialist, anti-war US President, someone who would give Americans the same universal state health care system that we enjoy here in Britain. A President who would pull US troops out of both Iraq and Afghanistan and announce that the US would henceforth only act in full accordance with international law.

But we can't get that at present so we need to settle for what we can get.

And that's Barack Obama. And what is Barack Obama's main attraction? Simply that he isn't John McCain. Make no mistake, a McCain presidency would be a nightmare.

Scott McConnell, the leading US paleo-conservative, explains why:

John McCain wants to bring them(the neocons) back, in triumph, on horseback.

Unlike Bush, McCain is a neocon true believer; Wilsonian bellicosity has visceral appeal for him. A McCain victory would mean, in short order, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Joshua Muravchik, a candid and well-connected neoconservative whom I’ve known for 25 years, affirmed this unequivocally at a Nixon Center debate last month. Iran is now the principal neoconservative obsession—as it is for Israel’s hawks, who ludicrously paint Tehran as Nazi Berlin. McCain jokes about bombing Iran, but the consequences would not be amusing. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, has warned that an Israeli strike would put American forces in Iraq at grave risk. If America bombs, the consequences would be worse. As Secretary of Defense Gates warned a group of senators recently, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.”

That’s not all. Top McCain advisers like Robert Kagan seek to reignite a Cold War with Russia: Kagan recently told a Washington audience he wouldn’t want to live in a world in which Russia had a preponderance of influence over Georgia. Elliott Abrams, son-in-law of Norman “World War IV” Podhoretz, is reportedly in line to head McCain’s National Security Council. As a Bush appointee, he’s worked at stymieing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Expect a McCain administration to back the Netanyahu policy of turning the West Bank into isolated bantustans instead of a Palestinian state.

For these reasons, I’m voting for Obama. While he doesn’t inspire me, he does impress. His two-year campaign has been disciplined and intelligent…..If elected, he will inherit an office burdened with massive financial and foreign-policy problems. Unlike John McCain, he won’t try to bomb his way out of the mess.

Well, we don't know for sure that Obama won't 'try to bomb his way out of the mess'.
But he's certainly less likely to do so than John 'Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran' McCain and for that reason alone he has to get the nod.

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Should the British left be hoping that John McCain wins the American presidential election next month? asks The Exile

He continues:

One of the giants of British socialism, the late Ian Mikardo, once said that you can't make a socialist omelet without cracking a fair few capitalist eggs. One of those eggs that is going to have to be cracked sooner of later is the NATO alliance, and there is more chance of that happening with a McCain presidency than with the version that Obama will offer. With Obama we are liable to receive a charm offensive that will aim at repairing the damage done to Anglo-American relations by the chimp, coupled with some solid Keynesian policies at home that could shore up the crumbling American economic system. If you look at things in that light, McCain might very well turn out to be the man for us.

I can’t fault The Exile’s logic (as always, its impeccable)- and the fact that the warmongering neocon loon and former Wally of the Week Christopher Hitchens is now urging people to ‘Vote Obama‘ hardly makes the case any weaker. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to cheer if John ’Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran’ McCain does win (which admittedly seems unlikely) even though it might hasten the demise of NATO.

How about you?

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"There is a French revolutionary air in America these days, with bankers playing the part of the aristocracy. Turn on the radio or open a newspaper and the bile comes out. Michael Daly, a columnist for the New York Daily News, yesterday wrote about 'Wall Street subslime'. Congressmen say calls to their offices are opposed to any bail-out of bankers by a factor of 100-1. Even Warren Buffett, the wise old man of American capitalism, is coming under suspicion from ordinary American voters. They point out that he seized on the chaos to make investments, notably $5bn in Goldman Sachs, which now depend for their very success on a massive bail-out". writes Philip Delves Broughton, in the Daily Mail.

America certainly is at a turning point in its history. It is an obscenity that a $700bn bail out of the greedy bankers is even being proposed- and it will be even more of an obscenity to ordinary, hard-working American taxpayers if the Bush plan does go through.

It's time for American to heed the words of one of their greatest Presidents- Thomas Jefferson:

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Do we put the interests of greedy, amoral capitalists, before the interests of ordinary hard-working American taxpayers? Its 1% of the population against 99% and if the 1% do prevail, we can't call it democracy.

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The DT reports:

Comments by the governor of Alaska in her first television interview, in which she said Nato may have to go to war with Russia and took a tough line on Iran's nuclear programme, were the result of two weeks of briefings by neoconservatives.

Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organised by the right-of-centre Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin.

Her case as John McCain's running mate was later advanced vociferously by William Kristol, the magazine's editor, who is widely seen as one of the founding fathers of American neoconservative thought - including the robust approach to foreign policy which spurred American intervention in Iraq.

The McCain-Palin ticket is being promoted as the ticket for 'Change'. In fact, its the 'No Change' ticket, offering a continuation of the disastrous policies of Cheney and Bush. If you really do want more neocon wars of aggression, you know who to vote for.

PS. I think it's time that Michael Palin dropped the drag routine, don't you? It was funny at the Republican convention, but now its wearing a bit thin.

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Back in September 2001, I wasn't blogging and so there was no 'Wally of the Week Award'. But had there been, I've no doubt I would have awarded it to a certain 'Thomas Smith' from Bristol.

These extracts from an article of mine from The Spectator, written to mark the first anniversary of the Twin Tower attacks in September 2002, explain why.


'I am 25, a graduate who has travelled extensively after university and a Labour voter. To people of my type, across Europe and the English-speaking world, Americans are a laughing-stock, known mainly for their vacuous culture and profound ignorance. We all have a “dumb Yank” story on our travels. This is why Americans are so hated by us on the Left, however much we condemn the outrages.'

Such were the thoughts of Thomas Smith of Bristol, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph not long after the events of 11 September.

I am 35 - ten years older than Smith. I am also a graduate, and I, too, have travelled 'extensively' - to more than 30 countries at the latest count. I, too, consider myself to be 'on the Left', although, unlike Thomas Smith, I actually stopped voting Labour when, in 1995, it ditched Clause Four and thereby ceased to be a party of the Left. Why, then, when our backgrounds and viewpoints appear so similar, did I feel such anger and indignation on reading Smith's letter?

It would be nice to think that Smith's views are just the unrepresentative opinions of a rather arrogant and puffed-up young man. Yet sadly, he is probably right when he talks about how people of his 'type' see Americans.

Although Smith's assertions, thankfully, did not go unchallenged by American readers of the Telegraph, one can only wonder what greater commotion would have been caused had our young Bristolian used the term 'dumb' to describe, for example, Nigerians or Pakistanis instead of Americans. If he had done so, he would probably have been visited by officers of the Commission for Racial Equality, and all prospects of a glittering postgraduate career would have been nipped in the bud.

Moving on to the dreary 'Dumb Yanks' jibe, I write as one who has taught both American and British students for more than ten years. While it is true that knowledge of European geography is not usually the American student's strong point, once again, one can't really press this too hard when only 8 per cent of our own schoolchildren have heard of Winston Churchill and 12 per cent believe Tony Blair to be a football player. And while we castigate Americans for their ignorance of Europe, how many Britons can name the capital of Nebraska, or know which states border Iowa?

All in all, unthinking attacks by the Left on Americans are not only nasty but they don't add up.

Does that mean, then, that we all have to love Uncle Sam? Not a bit of it. I have written thousands of words condemning US foreign policy, most of which were considered too strong to be published in mainstream publications. I have organised petitions for the indictment of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright as war criminals for their role in the illegal bombing of Yugoslavia, and have taken part in vigils and demonstrations outside US embassies at home and abroad. I have resolutely opposed President Bush's never-ending 'war against terrorism' since day one, and am appalled at the prospect of forthcoming US military strikes against Iraq.

Yet I have never personalised the strong feelings I have regarding US foreign policy into attacks on individual Americans or Americans in general. Refraining from doing so does not constitute a cop out or appeasement of the enemy. Slobodan Milosevic, a man who has more cause than most to feel bitter about Uncle Sam, shows that he understands this nuance perfectly when, after a long, arduous day at his US-financed show trial, he unwinds each evening with his collection of Hemingway's works and his Frank Sinatra CDs. Similarly, no more scathing critiques of American society have been written than Brave New World and After Many a Summer, yet their author, Aldous Huxley, liked America and Americans so much that he spent the last 30 years of his life living in California. By the same token, there have been few more devastating critics of US foreign policy than Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Ramsey Clark, American citizens all.

It is important for all of us who share that distinguished triumvirate's world view to continue to break bread with individual Americans, for it is not with individual Americans, or indeed with America in general, that our argument lies. If we do otherwise, and start to label whole nationalities as 'dumb' and 'ignorant', we are already one small step away from the undeniably racist mindset of those who perpetrated the atrocities in Manhattan 12 months ago. By all means refer to US foreign policy as 'dumb', Mr Smith, but please not its people.

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The US Presidential race just gets wackier and wackier. Now it transpires that Republican hopeful John McCain has selected former Monty Python star Michael Palin (above) as his running mate. When I first saw the newspaper headlines: 'McCain opts for Palin', I was somewhat surprised. I didn't know that Palin even possessed an American passport (I suppose he must have picked one up during his around the world travels). But on reflection, I suppose the choice makes perfect sense. McCain has clearly chosen Palin for four reasons: 1. he's trying desperately to get the all-important lumberjack vote; 2. he's after the support of die-hard Monty Python fans, 3. Palin is an expert on 'New Europe' haven't recently travelled there for his new BBC series. He'll be able to explain to McCain the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia and where Latvia is. 4. McCain is showing that he deplores, unequivocally, the Spanish Inquisition.

Against that, Palin's role in the controversial film 'Life of Brian', may lose McCain the support of some Christian voters, while Palin's support of Sheffield Wednesday FC will obviously alienate Republican-leaning Sheffield United fans (all six of them).

If McCain does defeat Barack Obama in November, then Palin will be only a heart-beat away from the White House. And given McCain's advanced age, we could well witness the first ever Python to become President of the United States of America. John Cleese must be going green with envy. Well, I suppose a glittering career in American politics could have been his too if he hadn't gone away to run a hotel in Torquay......

UPDATE:
The news headlines inform us that 'Palin is to make a speech at the Republican Convention tonight'. How many times do you think he'll mention lumberjacks?

FURTHER UPDATE: I've just watched a video of Palin's speech at the Republican Convention. It seems that he is now taken to dressing up as a woman. I thought that was Terry Jones territory, but there you go. I must say I enjoyed Palin's joke about 'hockey moms' and lipstick, but was disappointed that he didn't mention lumberjacks once.....

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With the 2008 U.S. President election candidates all decided, it’s time to look further ahead. Who should the anti-war movement be looking to represent their cause in 2012? Step forward, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (above), staunch opponent of ‘Shock and Awe’ and star of the new film The Dark Knight.

A truly radical US President needs to be both brave and a real non-conformist, someone who will take on powerful vested interests. And what more radical statement of bravery and non-conformity in tobaccophobic 21st century America can there be than to light up a cigar (and rather a large one at that), on a television discussion programme, as Ms Gyllenhaal does in the clip above.

A female American President is long overdue. But instead of the warmongering frump Hillary Clinton, how much better an antiwar good-looker like Ms Gyllenhaal?

The ‘Gyllenhaal 2012' campaign starts here!

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Forty years ago tonight, Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

Would he have been a great, progressive President who acted in the interests of the majority of Americans and not just the big corporations and the rich? Or would he have proved a huge let-down?

Of course, we'll never know. John Pilger, who travelled around with Kennedy during his ill-fated Presidential campaign and was actually present in the hotel when Kennedy was shot, puts the case for the prosecution here. If you'd like an alternative, pro-Kennedy view, then Martin Meenagh, who knows more about American political history than any person I have ever met in my life, is your man.

While we'll never know what kind of President Bobby Kennedy would have become, we do know one thing. That Kennedy was one of the most eloquent politicians who ever lived. Listen below to the speech he gave in Indianopolis in April 1968, when he announced to a crowd of African-Americans the tragic news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Can you imagine George W. Bush or indeed any contemporary US politician quoting Aeschylus?



And above you can watch the end of the 2006 film Bobby, which includes Kennedy's very moving 'mindless menace of violence' speech.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another".

Forty years on the need for "love, wisdom and compassion" is greater than ever, not just in the United States but across the whole world.

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