Free Thinking Liberal Lefties

This evening's escapades took me to the Royal Infirmary at Little France to watch a telecasted talk given by Noam Chomsky. The evening was hosted by the Palistinian Solidarity Campaign for Scotland, and linked a number of Universities, with Professor Chomsky delivering the talk from MIT. The audience in attendance lived up to expectations, being composed of a good mixture of hippes, little old ladies, punks and academicky looking people. My acquaintance from work sadly did not put in an appearance.

The talk itself proved to be an eloquently delivered exercise in "join the dots," presenting an holistic overview, as seen by Chomsky of US foreign policy as it pertains to emerging democracies. His interpretation centred on a running thread in America's treatment of democracy that has been followed for the past forty years. Basically, that democracy is only supported by the US when it is in the in their interests and is actively opposed when the "wrong" government is elected.

It's definitely not news, but the way he presented this assessment, drawing from historical examples and the current situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palistine, was both comprehensive and convincing. He was careful to point out the myths as he saw them in the common conception of the "lobby" (largely a vote winning exercise, whose influence is dwarfed by the energy companies, who are more or less part of the government). The evening gave me a lot to think about, and it definitely altered my perception of the situation in a subtle, yet perceptible way.

Firbush Photies

Here's my uber-sucky camera phone snaps of some of the stuff we got up to at Firbush:

http://troubledskies.net/photos/firbush.html

Sorry I'm too knackered still to write about it still. The sailing was great fun.