Have you tried turning it off and then back on again...?

               Right. So seriously, let me just point something out to you. This is literally my second article in like an hour. I finished the whole weird Congo thing, saw the news, and then basically ran back to my computer. Just to reiterate: MY SECOND IN AN HOUR. Not that I feel overly pleased with myself for something that cannot even be vaguely regarded as an achievement. But two. In one hour. On the trot. Bang bang. Okay, gloating over. But it took a monumental amount of effort to actually begin to type again after what seemed to my hands like 'War and Peace Unabridged'. But I don't think that a tiny thing like the U.S government deciding that they were gonna end the shutdown warrants an article on a blog the claims to also include politics and not just historical and opinion pieces plagued with the weird ramblings of a girl who doesn’t really know anything about anything. So here is that article.
 You might be wondering why I only just found out about this whole thing. But I haven’t even turned a T.V on in the past few days, let alone sat down for long enough for the rambling presenters to get over whatever other ridiculous story counts as 'news' today and actually get on to the good stuff. And, shockingly, no-one mentioned it to me. I feel as if i should have been greeted with it as I walked into school, just to keep me in the loop. But no. I have been left more woefully ignorant than usual, which is saying something. And I know that there are Americans out there who read this, and I reckon we've been neglecting you a little bit at Nonsuch HP. So here's a little article (I mean little, my hand feels like ive just sewed the Bayeux Tapestry) for you. And hey, well done with the whole 'fixing the government' thing. Give yourselves a pat on the back.
 For those of you who don’t know what has been going on in the Land of the Free, the government shutdown as a result of the Republicans and Democrats disagreeing over Obamacare and the debt ceiling. Basically, Obamacare is like a free healthcare system, which the Republicans don’t want (I’m not going into why, because my opinions will come out, and that is never good). But this thing called the 'debt ceiling' which regulates how much money America can borrow from everyone unfortunately is close to being reached and Obama wants to change this. In order to do this, the Republicans have to agree with it, which they said that they wouldn’t unless Obama agreed to scrap Obamacare. As a result, government spending stopped. Public parks were shut, the NASA website didn’t operate, and, as a girl in my class woefully pointed out, the ‘bins didn’t work’. Quite how this is possible I don’t know. But, bins aside, anything that was paid for by the government simply ceased to work. But a vote was passed to end the shutdown, and put off the whole debt-ceiling thing until February. So for now, the bins can work again. But who knows what will happen next year..
 I apologise for the appalling quality of both this article and my knowledge of American politics, but somebody had to post something about America, and unfortunately for you, that task fell to me. But thank you for reading for so long, and I’ll post again soon!
E.C

Obama's Impossible Decision.

   

It's alright. You can all stop worrying now. You can come out of the corner from which you have taken refuge, and take the tinfoil hat off of your head. I'm back. I know, I know, your life has been empty without me. Well, here I am again with your usual dose of madness. Except todays article is a little different from my usual, because I belive there are some things you just can't joke about, but things that probably belong on a history and politics blog. Like the current situation in Syria. So I apologise if  I send you into a sleep deeper than that of Henry VI ( look it up).
 Well, I suppose it's always best to begin with the facts, but to be honest there's very little we know for sure about the situation, although we can make an educated guess. What we know is this: On the 21st August the nerve gas Sarin was released in Damascus, killing many and permantly damaging many more. I won't go into the gory detail about what Sarin does, because the majority of the public have seen it on the news, but it's far to say that it's pretty nasty. However, from there, the 'facts' become bluured; namely who excatly released the gas, although an educated guess has been made that it was the government. This wasn't decided ''because the syrian governments obviously dodgy'', as the girl at my bus stop said this morning, but rather because it's thought that only the government has large enough stocks of sarin to cause harm and the means to disperse them, making it seem obvious that it must be the goverment who had released it upon the rebels, which may have been seen as a final attempt to end the civil war. But although the facts are largely agreed upon by the U.N ( though not Russia), ideas about what to do as the 'next step' are the cause of many a heated debate, not just in the houses of parliament, but also in ordinary housholds. I've just about separated the different ideas into four basic categories:

  There's School of thought One: That we should take miliary action on Syria to ensure that such gas attacks cannot happen again. If we don't do anything, the the U.N will appear weak, and that will be it's downfall - basically history repeating itself (Leauge of Nations, anyone?). It may bring us into a war, but we cannot let these kind of attacks go on unreprimanded.

  School of thought Two ( usually in debate with One): Syrias alliances with very powerful countries could potentially drag us into an incredibly destructive war, mainly based on allainces,which is again history repeating itself. Also, we can be seen to ignore other countries in the UN, that would basically undermine the point of it, and cause it to fall apart.

School of thought Three ( usually held up by the person annoyed by this debate): The UN is on its way out, thats clear. Either way people will get hurt, so why bother arguing about it. None is particularly better than the other, so it's just damage limitation that we're looking at.

School of thought Four ( One that I haven't heard as often as the others) : A military strike on the stores of Sarin would do more harm than good. A medium- strength missile would fail to destory all the Sarin, and a strong one would only succeed in blowing the sarin up into the air, where it could blow into many overpopulated areas. What we should be trying to do is provide people with the anti dotes for Sarin and Mustard gas, and also give them leaflets telling them what to do in case of a gas attack.
 
   Each idea has it's own individual problems, and at the moment all eyes are on America, watching to see what it will do. For the meantime, we'll have to be content in our intense squabbling. Whatever America does, it's sure to cause fireworks with the rest of the world, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

  So there we are. A moderately serious article from me. I haven't joked for so long, I can feel the 'bad joke' part of me slowly dying. I may have to call up the wonderful Nan and Grandad and annoy them with my horrendous sense of humour, just to get back to my old self again. I hope this article was at least a tiny bit informative, and I will be back soon to my old mental self, jabbering on about something or another. Thanks again for reading!

E.C

Should Obama seek congressional approval for Syrian action?

Following David Cameron's decision for Britain not to participate in any action against Syria following a parliamentary vote on the issue, President Obama surprised everyone by agreeing to seek congressional approval before any US action, rather than simply acting without authorisation as many commander-in-chiefs have done before. Is Obama right to seek congressional approval or does the process weaken both himself and the office of president?

The tenth anniversary of the War in Iraq

The War in Iraq which began 10 years ago tomorrow cost 179 British soldiers' lives, over 100,000 Iraqi and nearly 4,500 American lives and caused one of the UK's biggest ever demonstrations against it in London. Why did it happen? What was involved? Was it worth it? As a result of the anniversary there is a wealth of information on the conflict. The BBC have a wide range of interviews with the people involved particularly Tony Blair , John Simpson and Panorama have done a special programme on the intelligence involved in the decision to go to war. The Daily Telegraph also has some interesting interviews especially one with Andrew Gilligan, the journalist who was accused of lying about the government's intelligence dossier just after the war started. Also interesting to look at the USA's coverage of the anniversary, here in USA Today Obama pays tribute to the troops involved and the Washington Post suggests 10 great books, fiction and non-fiction, to read on the event.

Should the USA use drones?

An interesting article here from the Guardian on the use of drones after one of Obama's former security advisers criticised their use.  Another article on the same issue here from the Washington Post.  What do you think?   Why do you think Obama is finding them so useful?  Does he need to be 'reined in' over their use by Congress? Or do you think they should be banned?

Happy New Year

Hope everyone has had a fantastic Christmas break and a very good 2013 so far.
Below are some interesting articles to get you thinking about some issues this year.
First of all, the gun control issue in the USA is due to be a big feature of Obama's political year as he tries to persuade Republicans to pass some sort of gun control legislation.  Here is a Jonathan Freedland article from the Guardian about why it is so difficult to achieve in the USA.
Another key issue so far this year has been the public outcry about the treatement of women in India after a female student was gang-raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi.  Shocking new information is revealed daily about the problems there from female infanticide and abortion to now in this BBC article the trafficking of women that results from a shortage of women.  Feminism Society recently held a session on this worrying situation.
Lastly, this is an article about the latest film about to come out about the killing of Osama Bin Laden by Kathryn Bigelow, the first female director to win an Oscar.  Naomi Wolf criticises it for 'peddling the lie that CIA detentions led to Bin Laden's killing' and compares her with the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who you might remember from GCSE History.  A nice combination of History and Politics!  Now the US Senate Intelligence Committee has asked to see the information that the film producers received about the use of torture, BBC article attached.  Please comment if you see the film and tell us what you think (it is classified as a 15 certificated film remember).

Campaigning for Obama in Ohio

This time last year, I was told there was a chance that I could spend October 2012 campaigning for President Barack Obama. Obviously, I jumped at this opportunity and refused to let go. Which is how, last month, I found myself travelling 2,000 miles to the swing state of Ohio as part of a contingent from the Labour Party to help our sister Democrats. It was to be one the most demanding, exhausting, and ultimately thrilling weeks of my life.
First we flew to Detroit to stock up on Motown, before starting our road trip east. As soon as we arrived in Cleveland, we were taken to campaign headquarters to be briefed. Here we were told that our battleground was Cuyahoga, the most marginal county in the state. We were armed with clipboards, split into crack teams of door-knockers and given our marching orders. Ohio early voting starts a month before election day, and our job was to get this vote out. The next week passed in a blur of determined canvassing, leafleting and occasional running away from Republicans’ dogs.

We soon discovered that the most rewarding places to campaign were the predominantly poor and African-American neighbourhoods, where there was almost universal support for Obama. Many were practically disenfranchised from early voting by poor access to polling stations and being overlooked by the parties for fancy publicity campaigns. The most interesting part of the week was just speaking to people on the doorstep, talking about things like how the laws passed in Washington really affected their everyday lives; how grand rhetoric about the economy actually translated into wages in the bank and food on the table. Over the course of the week, we knocked on over 10,000 doors.

We were lucky enough to be in Ohio in an eventful week – the local Democrats threw a watch party for the broadcast of the second presidential debate, and on our last day we attended a rally headlined by Bruce Springsteen and Bill Clinton. Locals were particularly anxious about the second debate, after Obama’s flop in the first (there were many, many theories about this – from Obama being kept up the night before due to alien landings to Romney’s skiing experience helping him cope with Denver’s thinner air). Emotions at the rally ran high as Bruce, with Bill Clinton cheering from the side, covered Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to a stadium full of people singing along.
Finally, our convoy rolled on towards our final destination, Washington D.C. We said goodbye to our friends in the campaign headquarters before stocking up on everything Obama-related we could lay our hands on. In D.C. we spent the day touring Congress, the monuments and the tat shops, and in the evening we were lucky enough to have dinner with a few local Democratic senators. We finally waddled through customs with our suitcases bulging with badges, masks, and a few ‘Obama for America’ emblazoned frisbees, desperate for our first full night’s sleep in ten days.

Three weeks later, our group, though now far-flung across the UK, was reunited in sitting glued to our TV screens into the early hours. After a nail-biting night, watching Obama’s electoral college votes slowly mount, there was an eruption of several very loud celebrations as Cuyahoga County came through for Obama, and with it Ohio.

Bring on 2016.

KSN

Tweeting again

Nonsuch HP is having another go with Twitter. We signed up with @nonsuchhp over 2 years ago but frankly didn't do a lot with it.  There is clearly great potential on Twitter to link up with other historians, politicians, journalists etc so please take a look at our Twitter page and let us know if there is anyone else we should be following. We have included a "latest tweets" section on the right hand side of the blog, and if you think there is anything else we should be doing, or any trends we should be following, let us know.

On that subject, you may find this blog post of interest showing tweeting trends during last week's political debates between @BarackObama and @MittRomney. It may not surprise you to know that the most popular subject of interest (hence the picture above) was #BigBird following Mitt Romney's comments...