Happy Songkran everyone!

"I'd be interested to see Obama's next move, he has seemed least keen on intervention and this might give him an excuse to dial-back US involvement. "

We can only "hope". I'm confident we will be disappointed. Obama has expanded the scope of the GWOT greatly since Bush left, and failed to exit Iraq and Afghanistan. He seems keen on intervention to me.

Craig your post immediately reminded me of the Bertrand Russell quote:
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision"

I would wear your political exile as a badge of honour. If you were some political hack you could make a nice living as a talking head or else still be in the FCO. It's precisely because you are dangerous to the powers that be that they feel the need to try and ignore you. BTW the 'vices' that you refer to in your books and blog have always made me think even more highly of you. Your imperfections make your achievements and sacrifice all the more impressive.

Honestly I can't really think of many practical ways to do reverse SEO work, the most you can do is make little effort to increase your ranking. In order to do reverse SEO work, people would have to contact websites that link to the electoral commission website and ask them to remove the links, very unlikely. It could also be done by using search engine unfriendly formats, but the use of said formats are much more likely do to incompetence/ease. It also depends greatly on the search terms you use. I just tested 'UK party finance' and the top 4 results all pointed to the electoral commission website. I also tested 'UK party donors' and the third result pointed to the electoral commission website.

All the big boys are meeting to plan out Libya's future.

"In a joint statement, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the talks were aimed at sealing support for "Libya's transition from violent dictatorship and to help create the conditions where the people of Libya can choose their own future."

No representative from Libya's opposition was expected to attend the conference" http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,206...

Priceless. I don't know whether the author wrote it that way to highlight the sheer audacity of it all, or whether they are simply oblivious to the arrogance of the major powers. If I had to bet I would put money on the latter.

I guess my point was that I don't think corporate structures occurred by chance and that we are all at their mercy. I believe that the elite actively worked to create the corporations and alter laws which enable the current corporate structures to exist. The IMF, World Bank and state laws have all been created to enable the current breed of corporations to exist. They couldn't exist without the active work of the elite and it is not by chance they are structured the way they are.

I agree that people working within a corporation cannot alter the rules. However I would argue that corporations definitely follow the rules set by the super elite. It's no coincidence that the rise of the corporation has occurred at the same time the elite have become richer than ever before. The structures interest is the shareholders interest.

The Gilbert Achcar article is interesting and definitely got me thinking. I found it far more thoughtful than the recent Juan Cole blogs I criticised above. I guess where I differ from Achcar's position (although he also touches on this) is that I simply don't trust the West to stick to the UNSCR 1973 resolution. I think that once there is a fig leaf to cover their aggression, the West will do whatever they want to serve their own agenda. Just look at how the UN was used in the lead up to the previous Iraq war, the US/UK claimed they had a UN mandate to invade Iraq when clearly this wasn't the case. They don't care what the UN mandate states, they just want the cover so they can tell their domestic population the war is legitimate. I also find the hypocrisy too confronting, surely the aims can't be good when in order to get the international support they need, the US supports Saudi Arabia sending tanks in to crush the Bahraini democracy movement.

I do agree that the issue is not nearly as clear cut as the Iraq war, but my rule of thumb is 'when in doubt, don't bomb'.

Strangely familiar ground. Osama was an ally of the US against the USSR. What blowback can the West expect 12 years from now?

This is the point I always raise when debating those who claim all the worlds problems will be solved via unrestrained capitalism. While I often agree with a large number of the faults 'free marketers' list about governments, I simply ask how a completely undemocratic entity would fix the problems they just listed. I am yet to get a coherent answer. They also like to ignore fact the we have already tried laissez faire capitalism and it turned out real bad for the average person.