One Born Every Minute

So said the American showman, Barnum. He should know. Every day, he had the evidence, in front of his eyes, of the large numbers of people who were taken in by the various con men at the local fairs, or who were prepared to willingly believe that what they saw in the numerous sideshows was actually real. That was what struck me watching BBC 2's programme last night Tea Party America. One of the leading lights, Fox News' Glenn Beck, is reported to have made $35 million. His self-righteous preaching, and inclination to bring forth tears every few minutes to punctuate the vacuousness, and cheesy content of his orations, is the stuff of dozens of self-styled evangelicals, who have got rich from putting on such shows, and coining it in from the masses. Barnum would have recognised the techniques only too well. Of course, in the US such showmanship fits well with a political system where no one has a chance unless they are multi-millionaires of getting elected, and where the lack of any political difference between the two parties has to be made up for in the vitriolic personal abuse that candidates whip up against each other through repeated glossy ads, and TV slots. It fits too, in a system where one of the main reasons for trying to get elected appears to be, far more than in Europe or elsewhere, motivated by the desire to use elected office to further your own personal gain. An example of that was a comment made by some contributors to the programme who said that following the last Presidential race, Sarah Palin had begun to coin it in, and one reason that she might not stand was that it would mean having to curtail her current activities.

Of course, the US has a history of this sort of thing, and it seems a very paradoxical situation that in the world's most technologically advanced society such a large number of people are susceptible to believing such complete drivel as that put out by the Christian fundamentalists about the origins of the Earth and of Man. There may be common roots to this. The term “Snake-Oil Salesmen”, is often used to describe politicians and others who put forward completely unsubstantiated, and fallacious ideas, but who, like a good con artist, have the charisma, the confidence, and the spiel to be able to convince enough gullible people of what they have to say. It is the stock in trade of the demagogue. But, as the con men say, to some extent people have to be susceptible to being conned, they have to want to believe the easy answers, to believe the get rich quick schemes, and so on. Con men, mostly succeed by playing upon people's weaknesses. That indeed, is what the real snake oil salesmen did. They travelled from town to town in their covered wagons, producing various bottles of potions that they were able to sell to gullible people with the promise that they would cure everything from baldness to impotency. Of course, the US is not the only place where there are such gullible people. You only have to look at the tens of thousands of people in Europe who waste lots of money on pointless trips to Lourdes to sample the snake oil solutions of the Catholic Church. Or look at the large numbers of people who believed that crop circles were the work of ET when it was obvious to anyone with a brain that they were the work of practical jokers, and farmers quick to recognise what Barnum had pointed out, and how easy it was to make a few quid. Even when some of those involved in producing the circles have come forward, and shown how they did it, there are plenty who prefer to believe that it is still the work of aliens, and still plenty of TV programmes ready to pander to their daft illusions.

But, the US does seem to have a concentration of people prepared to be gulled. It has the highest number of weird sects, and people prepared to look to all kinds of hokum than anywhere in the world. A look at the elections is an example. Could you imagine a candidate – other than perhaps someone from the Monster Raving Loonies – starting one of their election addresses with the words - “I am not a witch”. Yet that is precisely what Tea Party activist, and Republican candidate, Christine O' Donnell did, in Delaware. She was moved to make this comment, because, in the US, no candidate is ever likely to be elected if they are a known atheist. In fact, for Tea Party candidates, it is almost a necessity to be a Christian Fundamentalist. Some of its candidates have come out to oppose abortion even for women who have been raped, and sitting Republican candidates have been unseated by Tea Party insurgents, if their standing on these issues is not considered zealous enough. Oddly, they have many similarities with one of the things they are most opposed to the fundamentalist zealots of regimes like Iran. The problem for O'Donnell was that someone dug up a TV interview she did some year ago, no doubt also part of an attempt to gain media exposure, which is one of the quickest routes to fame and fortune in the US, in which she admitted to having been to a satanic ritual. This again seems to be one of the common features of all these snake oil salesmen, they tend to be deeply hypocritical. A large proportion of the TV evangelists, as well as living high on the hog – which none of the tens of thousands of frequently poor people, who send them money, seem to think is odd – have been found to be adulterers, drug addicts and so on. Yet, what is amazing is the willingness of the dupes to forgive them, when they are found out, and to continue sending them money!

Why might this be? Perhaps, one thing we should remember is the origins of the US itself. In Europe, from the Middle Ages onwards, the science that the Ancient world had developed, and which during the Dark Ages, had largely been kept alive in the civilisations in Persia, India, and other parts of Arabia and North Africa, began to be rediscovered and developed. It did so in a very contradictory manner. It was often religious scholars who were at the forefront of this development, or else it was people like Galileo or Da Vinci, who were themselves dependent upon the riches of the Church, or of Princes themselves inseparable from it. Yet, the discoveries they made, inevitably began to undermine the teachings of the Bible itself. It is not surprising that European religious dogma, began to develop in a pragmatic manner, and that religious divisions developed more on the basis of schisms based upon how to worship than on the basis of the absolute truth of the Holy Book. That process took a qualitative step forward during the Enlightenment, and it was upon that basis the the ground was already prepared during the 19th Century, alongside the industrial development, which itself imbued a scientific, and practical mindset in populations, for the ideas of Darwin etc. But, the Pilgrims who embarked on their voyage to the US, did so at a time when that process was only beginning. Moreover, the reason for their voyage was because they were not prepared to reconcile their own religious bigotry with the growing religious tolerance in Europe at the time. In other words, these were already people who were of that kind of gullible mindset, in which they could hold these irrational views with such conviction that they were prepared to relinquish all, and risk a hazardous journey rather than compromise, or to adopt that kind of pragmatism that was to mark religious development in Europe. And the conditions they landed in were conducive to reinforcing those ideas.

We don't really know where religious ideas come from. Marxists have tended to argue that the idea of a God is merely a reflection of Man. Man attempts to make sense of the world around him by externalising his own ideas. The idea of perfection is given a form in the shape of a God, almost always male, reflecting patriarchal society. Yet, anthropological research seems to indicate that the need for some kind of spirituality is deeper than this, and that one reason that rationality has been unable to defeat religious sentiments, is because it is this need for a spiritual existence that fulfils some inbuilt human need. Having said that it is clear that it is the attempt to provide explanations for what we find around us that provides a basis for the idea that the world and everything within it was created. Moreover, the greater the inability to exercise control over that world, the greater the temptation to rely upon some supernatural power to come to the rescue. When, the Pilgrims landed in America, the potential for their survival was not good. Had it not been for the Native Americans who provided them with food and Turkeys during their first Winter, they would have starved. It is all too easy to see how already impressionable people, having prayed for their salvation, would interpret the actions of the Native Americans, as being their prayers being answered by a merciful God. And, of course, that interpretation, is kept going going even today, because it is the basis of the US celebration of Thanksgiving.

And, of course, those very Native Americans lived in an environment where all of that development of European civilisation was missing. The Native Americans that the Pilgrims and those after them came across were not short of their own mysticism, their own Medicine Men, and snake oil salesmen. In fact, the later snake oil salesmen were able to latch on to that, and sell their remedies to a gullible public partly on the basis of selling old Indian remedies, just as today there are those prepared to buy small bottles of water on the belief that such homoeopathic solutions are in some way based on ancient traditional remedies. In almost all societies, religious ceremonies and beliefs have developed on the basis of a need to influence the weather, or other natural conditions in order to sustain agriculture, or food collection. Even by the time that the Pilgrims set off for the Americas, Europe was seeing the development of towns, and a growing influence of merchants. By the 18th Century, the application of scientific methods was beginning to occur in agriculture.

One of the reasons, according to Engels, that, other than in a few places, North American tribes did not develop beyond hunter-gathering is that there was no necessity. Huge tracts of land, with ample livestock, and available roots and other foodstuff, meant that, apart from occasional crises, food was readily available, and nomadic tribes could escape the worst of the weather if they so chose. But, those same factors meant that when Europeans, used to settled agriculture, moved there, they could quickly establish their own self-sufficient peasant farms, and communities. But, everywhere that this kind of peasant society exists and dominates we see the development deeply held religious convictions. In fact, the kinds of peasant farms and communities that developed across America are a close resemblance to the kinds of Libertarian peasant communities that Rousseau describes, and it is not surprising that they breed the kind of Libertarian ideas, of self-reliance that dominated the 18th century, and into the 19th. It is these factors that play into the ideology of the Tea Party movement.

Watching the various programmes on this movement, and reading some of the material about it, as well as having spent some time in the past debating with US Libertarians, there is, however, another aspect, which flows from this, and which has not been picked up on by many commentators other than peripherally. It is a factor that has some reflection within right-wing populism in Europe. It is that the Libertarians attack on the big state in the US, is not just about those things we tend to think about in the UK. It is not just about the Federal Government being involved in Healthcare, or its Tax take, or Welfare and so on. When the US Libertarians talk about the role of the Federal State what they are also addressing is the nature of the settlement achieved in the Civil War. The American Civil War, is usually portrayed as being all about a struggle against slavery. It was nothing of the kind. All wars are fought in the name of something completely different to what they are really about. If the real reasons were advanced, those that have to fight them would not go. The First World War was fought in the name of opposition to German militarism, the second on the basis of a fight against a fascism for which most western leaders had not long before displayed their admiration. Slavery fulfilled the same function in the American Civil War. The real reason for the war was to complete, the process of the bourgeois revolution that the War of Independence had begun but could not finish. It was a War waged by Northern Industrial Capitalism to create the kind of centralised nation state it required, and which required the assertion of its dominance over the individual states. The Libertarians argue this victory of the Federal State is essentially against the Constitution, and subsequent developments have simply continued that process of centralisation, and undermining of the Constitution. A look at the people who support the Libertarians, and in large part the Tea Party, shows that they are concentrated in those mid-western areas, where that old peasant lifestyle is still powerful, and amongst those sections of the middle classes where those Libertarian values of self-reliance can also be found. Not a few come from those sections of bourgeois society not directly dependent upon industry, the stock market traders, for instance. But, the irony, as with all ideology that is founded upon these kind of 18th Century values relevant to peasant economy, and societies, is that they are inimical to modern bourgeois society. Having fought a Civil War to create a centralised nation state, the industrial bourgeoisie in the US, and those other sections of Big Capital related to it, have no desire to see it, undermined by people whose ideas are drawn from the needs of a society long since confined to history.

The Tea Party is described by some of its supporters as a revolution, but what it really is, is an attempted counter-revolution to undo the achievements of the bourgeois revolution from the Civil War. Twenty years ago, faced with growing economic pressures, Yeltsin carried through a counter-revolution in Russia, as Stalinism was unable to resolve the contradictions of Soviet society. Today, the US, faced with similar economic pressures, is showing signs of similar coming apart at the seams, and of its own counter-revolution. As I wrote, in A Tale Of Contradictions, part of the reason for the problems facing Europe is precisely that it did not achieve the kind of transformation that the US did in its Civil War. It does not have a centralised Federal State, and Big Capital, which needs such a State, has not been prepared to wage the kind of struggle against the remnants of those reactionary ideas that is necessary to create such a state. It has preferred to proceed by bureaucratic means, which only act to build up the underlying contradictions, and to provide the seedbed for populists and demagogues to utilise those reactionary ideas. An example, of that is the agreement between the current British Government and the the French Government signed in the last couple of days to combine their military forces. This is a Tory Government that professes its opposition to EU federalism, and its general Euro-scepticism, yet the logic of this agreement is to bind the British State more closely to other EU states, the logic of which has to be the establishment of a single EU military force. But, rather than come out and argue for such a solution, which would mean confronting those reactionary ideas, it maintains the façade, and simply does a partial deal behind closed doors.

But, it is one thing not to be prepared to wage a determined struggle to carry through the bourgeois revolution consistently, and another to sit idly by, whilst a counter-revolution turns back the achievements of that revolution. We will have to see exactly what success the Tea Party has. Its already been said that Christine O'Donell looks set to lose what is traditionally a safe Republican seat, and other prominent Republicans have left the party to stand as Independents. The Tea Party do not have sufficient candidates to be able to exercise a majority even within the republican Party, let alone within Congress. But, they are openly talking about waging an extra-parliamentary struggle. Marxists in the US might need to dust off their copies of Permanent Revolution, and to examine Marx and Engels activity in the German Democrats. The Tea Party certainly seem to have learned some of those lessons in deciding to act as a wing of the Republicans rather than attempting to establish their own counter-revolutionary party.

Morons On The March

The other day in my Blog on "Creationists On The March", I pointed to the apparent contradiction between the fact that although the US is by far the world's most technologically advanced society, it continues to have tens of millions of people who beleive literally in the Bible, and who have little or no appreciation of basic scientific facts. In a forthcoming blog I shall be looking at similar contradictions that seem to abound across the world today, and explain the basis of these contradictions, and their implications.

In the meantime, I was struck by the Newsnight report last night on the growing opposition to Obama, and influence of the Tea Party movement. The report was interesting because it illustrated this contradiction once again. On the one hand, the Murdoch Empire represents the application of the most modern technology to the purpose of media production and distribution. Yet, despite that the Fox News Network not only represents the most reactionary, mangling of facts and opinion you could come across outside some former Eastern European regime, but also the perpetuation and dissemination of this kind of medieval mysticism and bigotry.

For those of us in Europe, the images of the oily preachers, spouting the most cheesy lines, and effecting fake emotion, come over for what they really are, comical snake oil salesmen, preying on gullible, often poor, ill-educated people. We are even more likely to see such creatures as objects of derision, given that so many of them soon turn out to, not only have been lining their pockets, and living the high-life, but a high-life that includes not a small amount of indulgence in each of the seven deadly sins! Though we might be still taken aback by the extent to which those they have previously gulled, are quick to line up and hand over their money once again, no sooner has their chosen one expressed their profound repentance at having been caught out.

But, such sepctacle is even more stomach churning when the snake oil salesmen is not one of these hokey preachers, but a main news man on Fox News, and who was so obviously fake that even the BBC reporter commented on his attempts to force an ingenuous tear, unsuccesfully. Yet, as the report shows this particular snake oil salesmen was able to attract, tens of thousands of people to the Lincoln Memorial on the Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream", speech to hear his fifth rate, counterfeit product, and to rail against Obama's "Socialism"! The further irony, looking at many of those who attended, is that these are likely to be precisely the kinds of people who would gain most from an authentic Socialism.

The tendency must be to simply dismiss such people as morons, but we cannot do that for many reasons. Firstly, what this demonstrates is the extent to which, without prolonged work by socialists amongst all layers of the working class, there are large numbers of people who will look for easy answers to their problems, and those easy answers are always reactionary. Secondly, the US, but not only the US, there are other states, with their own religious zealots, has nuclear weapons, and by far the world's largest military. I tend to beleive that the ruling class, and its State, who do not share these nonsensical medieval ideas, would not stand idly by, and allow a Government of religious bigots to just blow up the plante on a whim. At the same time, the experiecne of Nazism demonstrates how, under certain conditions, a group of zealots, able to secure control of the Governmental power, and to exercise a control over the State, can gain a degree of independence from the ruling class that might not so easily be constrained. Sarah Palin is reported to attend a Church that preaches the doctrines of the "Endtimers", who hold the nutty, and odious view that any time now, millions of true beleivers will simply disappear off the face of the Earth in the Rapture, whilst God brings about Armageddon, an event they beleive which will be sparked by a War in the Middle East. There are more of these Endtimers who go on pilgrimages to Jersusalem, and who finance right-wing Israeli zealots, than there are Jews.

But, as my forthcoming series of blogs will argue these contradictions have a material basis. They are contradictions the Left should take seriously.

Money Talks

A few weeks ago I wrote about the state of US democracy , about the way US democracy allows failed Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, to appoint herself Senator for the State in the event that its existing Senator was sent to gaol. In fact, a look at the US politcal system seems to show a greater number of its political representatives being sent to the Big House compared to Britain. That has little to do with a greater degree of deference by the police to politicians in Britain as the fiasco over Tory MP Damian Green demonstates, but a greater degree of corruption in a system where money talks even more than it does in the hardly democratic British Parliamentary system.

See Also:

US Democracy and

Obama and Political Change


Now, it looks like one of Ms. Palin's associates, the Democratic Governor of Illinois - Barack Obama's State - is likely to join that long line. He is accused of selling the Senator's seat to the highest bidder. As was said on US CNBC, however, today, the asking price was less than the price to buy a seat on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange - also based in Chicago, Illinois - which probably says something about where real power lies in the US. Its no wonder that Chicago's Cook County - you know where the Blues Brothers had to pay the Rent to the Sherriff's Office - has earned itself the name Crook County.

In another example of money talking, however, it has in recent days been saying soemthing else, though perhaps giving out a contradictory message. IN the US yesterday the price of very short term US Government Bonds fell to a yield below zero. In other words, investors were paying the Government to keep their money safe for them! That is an indication of the amount of risk aversion current in financial markets despite the unprecedented level of liquidity and state backed guarantees that have been given. In Britain too, the extent of the Government's fiscal stimulus package, and its borrowing have brought about a reduction in Britain's creditworthiness. The cost of insuring against the British Government defaulting on its debts went up. It is now higher than the cost of insuring against McDonalds defaulting.

Yet, contradicting this picture the Libor and Euribor rates - the rates charged by banks to lend to each other on a very short term basis - has been steadily falling, reflecting that the Credit Crunch is slowly thawing. As I wrote at the weekend, the fact that the US had some truly appaling economic data out last week - jobless claims up by over half a million, the worst since 1974, for one - whilst the DOW, NASDAQ and S&P ended the day up over 2%, and that was despite the longest run of up days for months, seemed to possibly signal that the market was climbing the wall of worry that traders speak of when the bottom has been reached. US markets have been up quite strongly every day this week other than yesterday too, and European and Asian markets have been following suit. In Japan too, the other day, despite very bad figures on Exports and output the market managed to move upwards.

These conflicting messages that Money is sending seem to suggest that although three is understandably a considerable amount of fear around reflected in higher risk premiums, there is a sense that all the bad news has now been priced in and that the various State aid packages are beginning to have some effect. As one analyst put it on CNBC today, although figures put out by businesses in the next quarter are likely to be bad, it is likely that investors will say, "Well its no worse than we expected" so prices will not fall, and might even rise. And by the time the second quarters figures are being pre-announced the Credit Crunch should be near its end, and the stimulus packages will be promoting new growth. That is no doubt why markets are beginning to rally, which in itself will recapitalise the Balance Sheets of fianncial companies, and why the price of Oil and Gold is rising ahead of an expected spurt of inflation, certainly by 2010, and possibly as early as late 2009.

US Elections

Whoever wins the US Presidential Election today it looks certain that the lawyers will once again be big winners. The Democrats claim to have 5,000 lawyers on hand in Florida alone, ready to launch legal challenges against any malpractice or funny business. And let's face it you can't have a US election without a hell of a lot of malpractice and funny business. If the goings on in US Elections happened in some Third World country the US would be the first to want to lecture them about their wayward tendencies.

This is a country where you can register as a supporter of one Party even though you actually support their opponents, simply in order to vote in that Party's Primary elections with the intention of landing them with the least electable candidate. The basic democratic principle that you should actually be a MEMBER of the Party whose candidate you are selecting is unthinkable in the US.

Although, we are told that the "American Dream" is manifest in the fact that even those from the humblest beginnings can become President, the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by the Parties to fight elections, the tens of millions that any individual candidate has to raise to have a chance of becoming the Party's nominee - Obama has raised $650 million - the fact that almost all of the US Political elite are born or married into some of the richest families in the country illustrates that its not so much a dream as a delusion.

This is a country where one of the most detested, least popular Presidents of all time, a President with his finger on the nuclear button of the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and who has taken the country into two wars, actually polled in his first election less votes than his opponent! This is a country where elections like that can be decided not by the electorate, but by top juges, who are themselves tied by a thousand golden threads into the country's richest families.

This is a country where an election like that could be thrown into doubt, because although it is the richest country and most technologically advanced country on the planet, it is incapable of even carrying out the basic administrative requirements of an election effectively. Even India with a much larger population spread over vast rural areas is more efficeint in that regard. Venezuela, which the US often refers to as a Dictatorship, has a far more democratic system than that which rules in the US.

This is a country where local political leaders play a significant part in the organisation of the electoral process, and where not surprisingly therefore, there arise accusations founded or otherwise of partiality in the election process. A country where 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement large numbers of Black people are disenfranchised by one means or another.

This is a country, where we might see in coming weeks the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate - whose popularity has fallen in proportion to the degree to which the voters have learned what she stands for - could be part of a losing ticket, yet find herself part of the Country's Legislature, if she decides to appoint herself Senator, in place of an Alaskan Senator who may be sent to gaol. In Venezuela at least the electors have the right to recall their elected representatives, and hold an election to choose someone else!

In recent weeks there have been challenges against the electronic voting machines introduced to overcome the farce of the "hanging chads" from the 2000 Election. Apparently, voters were casting their vote on the touch screen for Obama, but the machine was mysteriously showing the vote as being for McCain! The fact that the Company that makes the amchines is connected to the Republican Party is, of course, purely coincidental.

In order to assist with the election process voters have been able to vote early over the last couple of weeks. One wonders whether the same principle might apply as used to be the case in Ireland where the slogan was raised "Vote early, Vote Often". But, its perhaps, as well that such an opportunity has been given, because voters have still needed to queue for several hours in order to cast their votes. How many people who need to earn a living or look after their kids have simply given up we don't know. The whole process certainly seems geared to dissuade peoplef rom voting. Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on Soap style adverts trying to persuade voters that their is some real difference between what is in the different packets, it might have been a good idea to actually spend some money on having sufficient polling stations to enable voters to exercise their democratic right effectively.

The greaest beneficiaries of the election will undoubtedly be the lawyers in a plethora of lawsuits over coming weeks and months arising from the quite honestly disgraceful spectacle. The other main beenficiaries have already been the advertising companies. Have you ever wondered why you don't see advertrs for Rolls Royce? The answer the car itself is advert enough. It is so different from every other car that it requires no advertising. You only need advertising when you are trying to persuade consumers that your product is different from all the other similar products available. The more competing products are the same, the more companies need to advertise to con people into beleiving there is some difference. That is why so much money is spent in US elections.

The main losers will, of course, be American workers.

The End of the World is Nigh

The Big Bang Machine

Some people think that tomorrow might be the end of the world. In the early hours of tomorrow the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland will be turned on. The LHT accelerates particles to within a fraction of the speed of light in order to collide them together at immense energies with the intention of creating new particles. It is hoped that the results of these experiments will either confirm or repudiate the basic assumptions of physics that have operated for some decades now through what is known as the Standard Model. In particular, it is hoped that the experiments will produce if only for a fraction of a second the elusive Higgs Boson, a particle theorised as having existed right after the Big Bang, and which is the particle whose existence is necessary to prove the existence of the Higgs Field which is supposed to explain how matter achieves mass.

But, some scientists have argued that the experiments are dabbling in things not properly understood, and could create phenomena, which could destroy the planet. One common theory is that of the creation of micro black holes, which could grow due to their immensely dense mass to consume all other surrounding matter. Some of these ideas are discussed on Wikipedia here.

I'm not a physicist so I'm not qualified to say whether any of these ideas hold water or whether the response to them from the majority of scientists, which states that the risks put forward do not constitute good science are valid. Similar concerns have been raised in the past, and science does have a habit of undertaking activities that might be dangerous. For example, when the nuclear bomb was being developed the scientists working on the programme themselves did not know whether the chain reaction started by the explosion would be contained or not. From what I do understand of the contending views being put I think it unlikely that these experiments will mean the end of the world, but to an extent that is besides the point. As the above Wiki article points out Britain's own Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, has speculated in a recent book that mankind has a 50-50 chance of destroying itself. The important issue surely is that science has now reached such a level that in a whole series of disciplines the consequences of error can spell catastrophes on a scale never previously possible. Just look at the way CFC's in a few short years of their extensive use led to the creation of the Ozone hole. It is surely time that the working class demanded that science be brought udner far greater democratic control, that some degree of workers inspection be developed to prevent a small minority who ultimately work in the interests of Capitalist society do not destroy the whole of mankind.

The Big Bucks Machine

In a CNN report today it was disclosed that Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, is not only a Creationist - which was disclosed last week - but that she was a member of a Christian Fundamentalist Church in Alaska known as The Assembly of God. The nutters in this cult not only gibber away like cretins supposedly speaking in tongues, but are also Endtimers. There are soemthing like 10 million Endtimers mostly on the Christian Fundamentlaist Right in America, and they had some influence on US politics under Bush, though he mostly relied on their votes rather than subscribed to their views.

The Endtimers are a frightening group of religious zealots. Were they just a small group somewhere their views would be frightening enough. That there are 10 million of them in the world's most heavily and nuclear armed country, a country where 70% of the population still believe that the world is less than 7,000 years old as the Bible bashers claim, and that Man walked on the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs is even worse. That in such a country one of these nutters is possibly going to be in a position to have her finger on the nuclear trigger if the aged John Mccain were to pop his clogs by natural or other causes is far more frightening than the thought of either the world coming to an end through the experiments at CERN or the possession of a nuclear bomb by Ahmedinejad. Every year thousands of Entimers ffrom the US, UK and elsewhere visit Israel. They encourage conflict between Israel and Palestine hoping that sch a conflict will escalate into the Armageddon prophesied in the Bible, which will bring about the End of Days, and the Second Coming of Christ through which these religious lunatics hope to be saved.

See:Channel 4 - The Doomsday Code

It is necessary to do everything possible to stop Palin and McLean being elected. Of course, I'm not suggesting, even as a topic for discussion, that the fact that the world's most heavily armed nuclear power - and the only one to ever have used its nuclear arsenal (twice) - might under Palin bring about the end of humanity should lead to some pre-emptive strike against the US's nuclear capability or against the Republican candidates. Unlike others supposedly on the Left I can think of many socialist reasons why such actions would have to be condemned. Rather its necessary to build a working class in the US and internationally that is strong enough to remove such threats to human existence.