USA

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): Tony Benn’s piece on liberty is beautifully written by a true libertarian. However it is, in essence, a call for vigilance and little more. That is not enough.

I am writing this in the United States where people are confronting with some discomfort aspects of their country’s recent past. Their new President when announcing the end of waterboarding and the closure of Guantanamo has reminded  them that the US will have and deserve little moral influence if it does not hold to its founding ideals. At the heart of those ideals is ‘liberty’. My friends are asking themselves what ‘liberty’ truly is and who should enjoy it.

What strikes me again and again is that when discussing some of the less fragrant events of the recent past they do not ask ‘Was it legal?’: instead they ask ‘Was it constitutional?’.

Holding to the Constitution is an important part of being American. It is part of the glue which holds American society together.

We have nothing similar in the UK. We are almost discouraged from thinking about our Constitution. We are the poorer for that. 

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In his inaugural address, America's new president turns to England's greatest republican:

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have travelled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

The reference is to Tom Paine's Crisis No 1, which George Washington ordered read to his men in December 1776 before crossing the Delaware to attack George III's Hessian mercenaries, in a crucial turning point in the American revolutionary war.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama is set to appoint George Mitchell as his envoy to the Middle East on his first full day in the job today.

Mitchell previously chaired the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement, so perhaps Obama is taking the much discussed analogy with Northern Ireland seriously.

Among those who have suggested that there are lessons for the Middle East from the north is George Bush's former peace process envoy Richard Haass.

Ben Folley (London, Compass): The future of the US Missile Defence system is now up for discussion following the election of Barack Obama as US President and two weekends in a row where the Czech Social Democrats have won enormous electoral victories over the governing conservatives, just as the Czech Chamber of Deputies prepares to discuss and vote on the installation of a US missile defence radar station.

Obama has previously suggested he is not willing to provide endless funds to a system for which there is little proof of operational success.

Within that context, and the success of the Czech Social Democrats campaigning on an explicit anti-missile defence agenda, the broad statement of over 50 Labour MPs released yesterday, welcoming their sister party's opposition and calling on the government here to allow an open debate on British involvement in the system, is particularly welcome. Their calls are boosted by a new opinion poll showing the British public believe US Missile Defence installations increase threats to national security.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Gerry Hassan worries that an Obama victory might hold out the prospect of "the reinvigoration of the whole ‘Camelot on the hill’ liberal rhetoric." Anthony Barnett is more hopeful. In an email exchange with K.A. Dilday he suggests that an Obama presidency may represent a break from American exceptionalism.

I'm sure that Bush felt - perhaps I should say "feels" as he is still going to be President for another three months - sorry for foreigners. He pities us. He expects us if we are good humans to want to be Americans, and if we don't he assumes we are likely to be bad anti-Americans. By contrast there is a very different and moving passage about al-Qaeda in the intro to Obama's first book where he reflects (I quote from memory, someone has walked off with my copy, a good omen) that its malevolent explosions have touched different parts of his life: Bali, Nairobi and New York.

This is the Obama I hope wins today and becomes a president. A man who sees himself and his country as part of the world, not apart from it. A country of hope but not our last or only hope. 

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Does Barack Obama's presidential campaign have lessons for the left in Britain? That's the question that the Fabian Society will be considering in an OurKingdom-supported debate at the Labour Party conference on Sunday. 

Among the speakers will be Skills Minister David Lammy, who argued earlier this year (in a speech that is available as a podcast) that the US experience provides a model for involving a generation of young people who are socially aware but disengaged from party politics.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):  As Gerry Hassan points out in his recent post on the new Labour leader in the Scottish parliament, trading life stories is becoming mandatory, It's becoming a farce in the US, as a witty mail now circulating in cyberspace neatly and Obamaly illuminates. It has just been posted over in our sister blog, openUSA. Here's how it opens,

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

 Carry on HERE

Ian Parsley (North Down, Alliance): Senator Barack Obama made the inevitable reference to Northern Ireland during his speech in Berlin last week, saying that walls had “come down in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics found a way to live together”.

These are delightful sentiments – but they do not tell the story. There are, in fact, more walls up separating communities in Belfast than at the time of the Agreement 10 years ago. In truth, it could better be argued, Protestants and Catholics have found away to live apart - and they have done so, primarily, for economic reasons.

Anthony Barnett (London,OK): I have just done a short post about this over in openUSA.

Anthony Barnett (New York, OK): Well, Gordon made it to the (lower half) of the front page of the New York Times, with a row of three pictures of him talking to each of the three presidential candidates. He was telling them what to think with his characteristic double-handed gesture in each photo - rather than listening. An interesting error of presentation in what a fascinating Time Magazine profile calls the "black arts" of political persuasion. Gordon might indeed be more comfortable running the world's financial institutions. He told Time,

This is what appears in today's Drudge Report, the US's blog of blogs

WHO'S THAT MAN?

Brown competes with the Pope...

Anthony Barnett (Princeton, OK): Well here I am in southern New Jersey about to get the morning train into New York and I am emailed from London by Jon asking how the Americans are preparing for Gordon Brown. Unlike the ever alert Nick Robinson I am going to have to miss ABC's Good Morning America (but look forward to catching up with his avoiding the question of Britain's role in Iraq). Brown is now paying the price of not having withdrawn UK troops completely after his first and I thought brilliantly managed visit with George Bush. As for the papers here, well the friend we're staying  with gets the New York Times, printed just up the New Jersey Turnpike. The front page is dominated by a night picture of Iraqi troops withdrawing at speed from Sadr City. Doing just what Brown should have done. Inside there is a picture of Captain Logan Veath of the 25th Infantry pleading with them to stay in their positions. Its damn annoying: you can't persuade the Iraqis to kill and be killed by other Iraqis in order to make their country safe for... Other international stories are the Pope's arrival, saving the Indian tiger, a drug cartel battle to control the Mexican border, Berlusconi's new government. We will see how they cover Britain's hopes and fears tomorrow.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Yes, according to Alex Salmond. In the second of a trilogy of speeches in his "Scotland Week" tour of the US and its 'Tartan Day" he evoked the words of Jefferson to assert the sovereign right of the Scottish people to vote on independence in a referendum:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There is a lot of discussion about Obama's magnificent speech on race and America. In openDemocracy Kanishk Tharoor has a fine assessment and links through to it HERE. Elsewhere in UK blogland from NHS Doctor to Sunny Hundal to Gracchi, to an understated gloat that the speech 'won't work' on harry's place, there is genuine interest on the left. The British right seems less plussed despite efforts to project Cameron as the UK's Obama when his rhetoric seemed like a game, a sort of knights move that traditional Tories could play. Indeed they seem at a loss for words. Especially interesting as Obama explicitly highlights the point that his faith embraces a politically conservative self-help  tradition. There are two things to note, one tactical in US terms and a larger one that relates to the poverty of politics in this country.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I'm watching BBC 24 with Iain Dale and Alex Hilton sweeping up the email detritus of Question Time. Discussing the Goldsmith debacle over children swearing an oath of fealty to the monarch, Iain picked up on the member of the Question Time public who pointed out that in the US people swear loyalty to the constitution not the president and showed the kind of overview that the panelists ought to have and in this case didn't. George Osborne was useless. But not as conceptually challenged as Alex Hilton of Labour Home, who in a classic Labour way seemed not to understand what Iain was saying: that we don't have a written constitution and should. I've long thought that the Tories were more likely to propose a new constitution than Labour (if only for good conservative reasons). Alas, David Davis didn't win the leadership.

CoSERG (Cornwall): In January a CoSERG member was approached by a television company making a programme for ITV on the change to unitary local government in Cornwall. The programme researcher explained that the programme would be about the costs of the transition; was it costing more than the County Council had predicted, as forecast by the opponents of unitary local government? A fair question; but we asked whether they also intended to include the issues of the loss of democratic accountability, devolution to Cornwall or local community empowerment. They weren't - these issues had "already been covered." Moreover, it became clear that our TV person had not even heard of the soon to be unlamented South West Regional Assembly.

Sunder Katwala (London, Fabian Society): What on earth is Trevor Phillips up to? Britain's most prominent black public figure has launched an attack on Barack Obama in this month's Prospect, reported prominently in The Independent today, accusing the leading Democrat of 'cynicism' which will hold back black Americans and hold back the politics of race.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I've been blogging infrequently because after going to New York last week I changed my mind about Obama and wanted to work out what makes him tick and what are the tocks behind the tick. It's just been published in our openDemocracy mothership,  it's long but my excuse is that it is packed with quotes from the man himself to help you make up your own mind.