In which Paul talks politics

For the last few months i have been slowly chomping my way through Robert Fisk's book, 'The Conquest of the Middle East'. i was slow going at first, the book is around 1400 pages long but once i got to the bit about the Israeli/Palistine bit i started getting interesting and i have read around 300 pages in the last week alone. I think i would like to do a Masters on Middle Eastern studies or politics when i get home, just a thought.

The book itself is pretty good, i did not like Fisk whenever i heard him on the radio or read his articles, thought he was too shrill but some of the stories in his book are class, real foreign correspondance journalist adventures. I disagree with him a lot in the book but it does get me thinking, sometimes i have to stop and spend around 15 minutes thinking why exactly i think he is wrong or misguided and work out the argument in my head, something that not many books do.

One thing about the book though, is that it makes me incredibly angry at shit, but you know there is nothing you can do about it. I always though that Fisk was very anti-American, i did not like him cuz i thought he went too far in that direction and was too biased. From reading the book though he really seems to be able to back up a lot of his arguments with facts and actual proper sources and stories. Its not just america though, he is only bitching about them the whole time because they are the ones involved in major stuff these days. He really riled against the turks and kurds during the armenian holocaust, the french during the Algerian uprising, as well as the isaraelis and the arabs. In fact it seems that he is not just anti-american, but just anti-establishment. Reading about the real-politik deals that are made between countries that ends up with massacres and genocides and how these are just ignored or covered up really makes you lose faith in big countries. In the end you realise that every country is just trying to look out for its own interest, and not even the interest of the people, but those in charge.

One question that got me thinking though, was If you were in power and elections were forth-coming, but your opposition looked like they would win, would you cancel elections if you were certain that your opponents would get rid of democracy in the country. This happened in Algeria in the 90's when it looked like the Islamic opposition looked like they were going to win and had stated that they would establish Islamic law if they won. The same kind of this happened in Palestine when the Islamic Hamas party won the elections. What Fisk did, and which annoyed me, was to moan about the existing government 'destroying democracy in order to save it" and how it was just a corrupt way to retain power. He admitted though that the opposition getting into power would be a bad thing though, but did not give any solution to the problem, just wailing and moaning about it.