Hi, welcome to the Failed State blog which I started at the beginning of 2007. The aim of this blog is for me to give my opinions on the current political and socio-economic issues affecting the world today. I am likely to focus in on the Middle-East, Europe vs the USA, Americanization, and China. With particular consideration given to the ongoing Iraq war and the schism between Islam and the West. I want to present various arguments in this blog. I consider my self to be progressive and solution focused. I do not subscribe to traditional left-wing ideals and dogmas, I believe in what works. Unlike Tony Blair, however, I do not think that being progressive and letting go of out-of-date dogmas means making the case for pure free-market economics. This is in itself an out-dated dogma. To me, extremism is wrong. And I include extremist capitalism alongside communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism and nationalism in my definition of extremism. I believe what we need is much more of a balance, and the rarely criticized equation change=progress is horribly erroneous. I hope people will debate with me here. I welcome well-made arguments from all quarters and will not censor posts that I disagree with or that strongly criticize what I have posted. I will only censor spam and filth. Thanks for reading.   Thomas    del.icio.us tags: issues, failed, state, iraq, globalization, middle, east, political, blog, americanization