Welcome to Standpoint
Welcome to StandpointOnline, the internet home of Standpoint magazine. Our sixth issue hit the newstands in the UK on Thursday October 30th and copies of our fifth issue should now be available in the USA at Borders and Barnes & Noble and other good bookstores. As well as a significant portion of the print magazine's content, StandpointOnline features a variety of blogs and web-only essays and articles. We welcome your opinions on Standpoint and look forward to hearing from you. A selection of letters and website comments are published in every issue of the magazine.
Beware the Obama Machine
In an opinion piece published by the New York Post in September, I drew public attention to Senator Barack Obama's attempt to interfere with negotiations between Iraq and the United States regarding the presence of American troops and future defence co-operation between the two countries. I argued that by trying to undercut the incumbent president, Obama had broken a golden rule of American politics and manifested either his naïveté in matters of diplomacy or, worse still, a remarkable degree of cynicism.
At first, the Obama camp tried to ignore the whole matter. However, when it became clear that the issue was attracting massive public interest, it reacted in three ways.
All at Sea Over Pirates
Pirates conjure up images of hook hands, peg legs and eye-patches. The modern species is much less comforting, flourishing in failed states and confronting the crews of huge tankers and bulk carriers with a new and dangerous occupational peril. I once had an incredulous response from a young American radio journalist after remarking that international terrorism should be combated with the same concerted rigour that was once brought to bear on pirates. Being of limited contemporary cultural range, he immediately thought of Johnny Depp hamming it up in the 18th-century Caribbean as reconceived by Hollywood. But in the words of Captain Pottengal Mukundan, the head of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), these are more like "maritime muggers" armed with AK-47s, than a cutlass-wielding Captain Blood.
