Following the Second World War geo-politics became dominated by the Cold War between Communist and Capitalist ideologies.

When the Cold War ended free-market capitalism was often seen as the victorious ideology and successive Governments in the US and around the world pursued free-market economic policies and de-regulatory practices.

It seems however, that just as the fall of the Berlin Wall left communism discredited as a political and economic ideology, so to has the recent financial crisis, the result of a lack of effective regulation and oversight, discredited the notion of pure free-market ideology.

Seems like the answer to the debate between socialist style Government control and intervention and free market capitalism is not about one extreme or the other, but as always somewhere in the fuzzy middle.

I was looking for news coverage of the Swann/Costello debate and had to take this screenshot of the front page of the Daily Telegraph website.

The banner which I’ve circled in blue is an attack on protesters who held up a sign but got the letters around the wrong way.

Apparently this is big news for the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that handful of protesters had made an error, a big enough deal that they labelled it a “shame”. This caught my attention first as I couldn’t believe they felt like this was news worthy.

But then, I scrolled down the page to the part I’ve marked with a red circle and saw how they’d spelt Howard!

Surely even the Daily Telegraph can’t be that dumb?

Rosa Parks is credited with sparking the civil rights movement in the US when, in 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a public bus for a white man. Her act of defiance saw her jailed and fined, but it also began a 381 day boycott of the bus system which marked the start of the civil rights movement.

I hope that Parks’ death triggers reflection, not just in the US, but everywhere, on how far we have come (if at all) in ending racial discrimination.

The Australian Government has introduced even tougher anti-terrorism laws. These laws further infringe on our civil rights. The Government claims that these infringements are justified because they protect them from terrorists.

But let’s analyse this concept a little further…

The Government claims that we are a target of terrorists because of who we are, because we are a free, democratic, nation.

What makes this nation and democratic free? Our civil rights.

If our civil rights are infringed upon isn’t the government doing what it claims the terrorists are trying to do?

Just a thought, feel free to disagree.