Are western democracies one party states?

Well, being as the board is quiet today, here's a topic that might stimulate some opinions?

this isnt an "icke" issue by the way, theres plenty of peoples work on this one, most esecially our own opinions

For instance:

Am I alone in feeling somebody's mocking us with the fact that the republican Elephant is opposed by the democrat Donkey?

Well, I call the current Reagan/Bush Republican Party a proto-fascist party. By “fascist” I mean a government run BY, and FOR the benefit of the financial, commercial and business interests of the country. The ultimate fulfillment of Calvin Coolidge’s prescient observation that “the business of America is business.” An America as envisioned by Sam Walton. I do not think Canada, the EU or even the S. Koreans and Japanese have regressed into the Mussolini and Hitler era, YET. But we are all heading that direction. I pose this question: Which will OWN the world first, China or Wal-Mart?

Hello Don

Well, getting the idea that there may be more people from the US than the UK on here, I picked the Elephant/Donkey comparison to get things going

I'll give you an example from UK politics

We had a general election last year...the sitting New Labour Government under tony Blair of course and the conservative party and Liberal democrat party in opposition

Now there had been a great deal of sleeze being exposed about New Labour...especially with regard to lying to gain public support for the War in Iraq...the Conservatives supported going to war "on the basis of the evidance given": the Liberals wanted more time for UN sanctions

When the lies were then exposed the conservatives said "well we are in now and must stay in to finish what we started" and the liberals said "well, it would cause a civil war if we left" and New Labour said "we acted in good faith based on the info we had at the time"(which even the mainstream press had a good guffaw about)

and come the election, where was the democratic choice to end the war and stop killing 10,000 (PLUS) Iraqi's and our own soldiers too for a situation now publicaly acknowledged to have been an invasion of a foreign nation based on rational that quite simply, was not true?

No saddam involvement in 911, no weapons of mass destruction

And this is far from the only major issue when we are presented not with choice, but different reasons to do the same thing...in fact, i terms of manifestos, UK political parties compete to be as alike to each other, not different: Tax, Healthcare, Working Conditions, Expansion of survailaance and Police powers etc...

So where is the "choice"?

(Notice thats without bringing in any "brotherhood" angle to things, though thats certainly possible)

But the crunch of this is that come that election there was all this amunition to use for any party hungry to take power...was it used? No, not at all! The election focused on small differences barely seeming relevant to the electorate....and of course the expansion of the state (in Liverpool for example 40% of the working population work for the state) and the sweetners in generous benefits for targeted areas to get the Labour vote out and massaging of electoral boundaries...

What is the point of voting (the majority said) they're all the same anyway!

Now to compare this to your own country...

When clinton was presidnet, tony Blair was his best friend and they saw completely eye to eye on policy

when Bush became president Tony Blair was his best friend and they saw completely eye to eye on policy...

Now if Clinton and Bush represent completely different political ideologys and a genuine choice, how can it be that Blair was able to be in complete agreement with both without a single change in policy of his own?

Of course there's more, but thats some more to muse over for now

Hello! John White. One of my old ancestors was so named. He came to Virginia around 1740-1750, which is a long time ago in America. As to genealogies, most of us over here are content to start with the first relative to come from over there.

I may be more of an Anglophile than most Americans. Sir Winston is equal to FDR in my pantheon of gods. But I’m also a great fan of France. Too few Americans know or care that without French aid our revolt would probably have failed.

Louis XVI funded the American Revolution, furnished us with arms and munitions, gave us cover by recognizing our fledgling government and that in the last battle of the war, Yorktown, half the troops under Washington were French. Finally, Lord Cornwallis’ planned evacuation to New York City was blocked by the French fleet. I am aware France was not motivated by “love” for America, but was using America to fight Great Britain. That made the help no less valuable.

LAST OF HISTORY TODAY. I have become convinced the American Revolution was really a COUP D’ETAT. We changed our leaders, but not our principles. OK, back to real life.



John, let me digress. America is STUCK with Geo W until Jan. 20, 2009. Regardless how low in the polls he goes. This is the worst example of a re-elected president losing public support so early in the 2nd term. We call him “Boy Blunder” over here. You name a mistake and he has made it.

It is generally conceded here, 3 years in, that the trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are the one’s who made the decision to invade Iraq and “planned “ the fiasco that has followed. The parliamentary system - as we saw in Canada a few weeks ago - can remove a leader when he gets too bad for the country. We cannot. I suppose if Tony Blair loses ONE more vote, he too will be history? Resume.

“ . . there had been a great deal of sleeze exposed about New Labour . . lying to gain public support for the War in Iraq . . the Conservatives supported going to war . . the Liberals wanted more time for UN sanctions . . When the lies were exposed the Conservatives said "well we are in now and must stay in to finish what we started" and the Liberals said "well, it would cause a civil war if we left" and New Labour said "we acted in good faith based on the info we had at the time"(which even the mainstream press had a good guffaw about) . .

Let me offer one example. The yellow cake from Niger. Enriched uranium. EU. And not the euro. The Director of the IAEA recognized the referenced documents were FORGERIES the day following the February speech by Colin Powell. He was just “intelligent” and not in “intelligence.” Using the bairn that God or Darwin had given him. I have asked - but no one else does - WHO forged the documents?

The documents came to us via MI6. We can accept Saddam did not forge the papers. We can accept that Niger did not forge the papers. So who is left as the likely perpetrator? I doubt MI6 would have done this on their own. I suspect the plot was “hatched” in the Oval Office by either VP Cheney or Rumsfeld - I call him the Oberfuhrer. Geo W is not known for having brilliant ideas. The decision goes to the CIA to make up the paper-work. The CIA conjured the scheme to forward the papers to MI6, which in turn would “with approval” send them back to the US of A under their imprimatur. We would present the papers to the world as legitimate. As proof!

“ . . and come the election, where was the democratic choice to end the war and stop killing 10,000 (PLUS) Iraqi's and our own soldiers too for a situation now publicly acknowledged to have been an invasion of a foreign nation based on rational that quite simply, was not true?

Same BAD choice over here. Sen. Kerry - I love his wife Teresa Heinz - just offered lamely, “I can do it better.” This is not to say the Dems cannot do smart planning. In 2000, the final tally in Florida was 537 votes for Geo W. (With 30,000 votes not counted.) Sen. Lieberman was put on the Al Gore ticket to carry the Jewish vote in Florida. He came that close.

Although the Dems lost in 2004 by over 3 million votes nationwide, the race came down to Ohio where the Dems lost by 120,000. Sen. Edwards was put on the ticket with Kerry to carry Ohio. Not even close. But had that strategy worked, the Dems would have won the Electoral College vote which is what counts.

“ . . No Saddam involvement in 911, no weapons of mass destruction . . UK political parties compete to be as alike to each other, not different: Tax, Healthcare, Working Conditions, Expansion of surveillance and Police powers etc . . So where is the "choice"? . .

And the same is true here. In fact, in all our history, the U.S. has had only ONE period of social conscience-ness, and that was the 1930s NEW DEAL under the capitalist FDR. I should not forget that LBJ completed the New Deal in the mid-1960s.

“. . But the crunch of this is that come that election there was all this ammunition to use for any party hungry to take power . . was it used? No, not at all! The election focused on small differences barely relevant to the electorate . . What is the point of voting? They are all the same anyway! . .

That was true here until 1980, but the retro Reagan/Bush movement is so subtle, it is as yet not obvious to the general voters what is happening to America.

“Now to compare this to your own country . . When Clinton was president, Tony Blair was his best friend and they saw completely eye to eye on policy . . when Bush became president Tony Blair was his best friend and they saw completely eye to eye on policy . . Now if Clinton and Bush represent completely different political ideologies and a genuine choice, how can it be that Blair was able to be in complete agreement with both without a single change in policy of his own? . . but that’s some to muse over for now . . [Edited by Don W]

A French leader once said “In America, the Democrats are a right wing party and the Republicans are an ULTRA right wing party. There is NO left party in America.” Only in America’s public discourse is there a “left” and it is the endlessly useful bogey man of the far right. And which half our adult population lives in fear of. With much on-going help from every pro-capital, anti-social source of every kind, including not the least of which is our huge preference for organized religion. Only Malcolm X - murdered - and Louis Farrakhan - marginalized by his own anti Semitism - speak for social responsibility and sharing through religion.

Let me leave you, John, with this thought. For the ordinary person there is no difference in living in the US and the UK. You could live two lifetimes in either place and not notice much difference - unless you are poor and get sick. Then you’d want to live in the UK.

I say, to know about American history, you must consider LAND and SLAVERY. The super abundance of free or cheap land “solved” our social problems until the early 20th century. The tragedy of slavery, introduced here in 1619, is still with us, the 1861-1865 Civil War notwithstanding. Every public issue here is ultimately race based. We have not gotten over slavery. We may not ever get over slavery. It is our millstone.

[edit on 3/19/2006 by donwhite]

Nice one Don, an insightful reply

I'll give the thread some time see if there's any other voices want to come in here and pick up for a detailed response later

Anglophile. I studied the law. I practiced law 17 years. I am now retired. The laws in every American state are based on the English Common Law except Louisiana which uses the Napoleonic Code, highly modified. Jury trials are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, so the inquisitorial system had to go.

As to my opinion on the former colonial powers, Belgium was worst, England was best. Spain and Portugal were close to Belgium, followed by Holland. Of Germany, I am not informed. Italy was more benign than most unless the Scandinavians would take that honor. But of all colonial powers, England or say Great Britain - excluding Ireland - was the best one to have, if you have to have any.

Although no one in my household has had any contact with distant relatives in the UK for at least 4 generations, I nevertheless feel a kinship to Englishmen, which may go to some extent to explain the Blair affiliation with the U.S. despite the large degree of difference in the Bush and Clinton world agendas. Early in the Bush presidency, I thought the EU or UN had assigned Blair to be Bush’s ‘DD’ - designated driver.

I was 11 when FDR died suddenly, on April 12, 1945. The public had no inkling FDR was near death. We were totally surprised. Even lifelong Republicans wept. This man, more than any other, had carried us through the Great Depression. Those days were days of risk. Look what the Germans got: Adolph Hitler. Then FDR led us to victory in the Greatest Conflagration the world had ever seen. And he and Churchill had give us the Atlantic Charter as a base from which to work for world peace post War 2.

I have vague recollections of VE-Day, May 8, and of the Potsdam Conference which was held near Berlin on July 17 to August 2, 1945. I have some memory of the surprise replacement of Winston Churchill by Clement Atlee, a man we did not know. Americans had not the slightest understanding why the man who more than any other had saved Britain, was put out of office by the very people he had served so well. See en.wikipedia.org...

Britannia ruled the waves from the Battle of Trafalgar until Britain gave up India, in 1947. America and the USSR competed for dominance from 1945 until 1991. Stalin’s penchant for secrecy may have, more than any single thing, worked against him and guaranteed the ultimate demise of the USSR. America constantly overestimated the Soviet’s strength in every aspect of war and industry. In part that was perfectly agreeable - if not actually known - by the Military Industrial Complex Pres. Eisenhower warned us about. The Soviet Union went bankrupt trying to keep up with the U. S.

I recall when a defecting East European pilot delivered a new Mig-29 to us. Before the CIA clamped down, it was discovered the MiG’s electronics were still vacuum tube. The U.S. was into the SECOND generation of solid state miniaturization. I was in the USAF in 1964, working on fully transistorized solid state inertial navigation sets in F4Cs. It did seem all along the Soviets were ahead of us in jet engines. At least in the thrust measurement. No thanks to Rolls-Royce.

The Soviet’s N1 Moon Rocket had more lift than our Saturn V. The public was not told the N1 involved many rocket motors compared to the 5 motors in the first stage of the Saturn V. Well, the N1 seemed to fail ever time the Russian’s really needed it. See below for details of the N1.

We have 12 super carriers and 2 abuilding. We have 34 nuclear subs in service and 1 abuilding. We need most 200,000 more soldiers on the ground in Iraq but we have our money tied up in wish-list items like the USMC’s futuristic Boeing V-22 Osprey. 30 men have died in 3 fatal crashes in this program. The Osprey somewhat resembles a 1960s Lockheed XFV-1 and Ryan X-13 both of which were pure VTOL “tail-setters.” The first recommendation to cancel the V-22 was made in 1986. Yet we plough on. Sort of a Boeing welfare program. The Osprey features 38 foot diameter propellers. The plane sits 5 feet off the ground. It is impossible to land the plane if the propellers do not rotate. There are more than 200 critical parts in the rotating mechanism. No rotation, no landing. Crash only. The plane is not easy to get out of, all the more if the 38 foot props are spinning. It’s an on-going disaster.

FEAR NOT. The U.S. Congress just raised our national debt limit to $9 T. Yup, nine trillion dollars. $30,000.00 per person. At 41/2%, that means the first $400 B. in tax money collected each year will go to our bankers. Out of an annual $2.8 T. 15% is already spent. The total worth of the U.S. is given as $45 T. (Est. in 2000) Our GDP is $12 T. We are spending 18% of GDP on health care and it is one botched system. 45 million people are outside the system. Out of 300 million + 11 million from South of the Border. Most of who actually do our grunt work. And not ONE of them has ever been arrested as a TERRORIST. Well, my point is, the LAST super power is blowing it! Big!

FOOT NOTE: The N1 was a complex system made up of a number of different stages and components. The first stage, known as Block A, stood 100 ft tall and was designed to provide over 11 million pounds of thrust during the first two minutes of flight. Generating this thrust was a combination of 30 separate liquid rocket engines burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene.

The second stage, Block B, was nearly 68 ft in length and contained another 8 rocket engines generating over 3 million pounds of thrust for another two minutes.

A third stage, Block V, used four more engines to provide the final push into orbit. The remainder of the vehicle was collectively known as the L3 and contained all the components needed to travel from Earth orbit to a landing on the Moon.

At its base were two more sets of rocket stages called Block G and Block D. Riding atop these stages were Block E, containing the LK lunar lander, and Block I, containing the LOK lunar orbiter.
END.

[edit on 3/19/2006 by donwhite]