Saturday 12 June 2010

consider this reconsidered....

Syria seems a good place from which to recommence my musings, particularly given I have just discovered that my blog is actually banned from the country's normal internet portals.

Banned! Perhaps the authorities here don't like some of my views on Calvinism or EU legislation, or fear, for that matter, that my hatred of the 9-5 working week will have an adverse affect on the morale of the locals (!). Who knows...At any rate, here I am with you having been rerouted via Angola, giving the whole act of writing anything at all a hint of Bond-esque exoticism which a childhood full of John Le Carre novels has taught me to relish.

I must admit I have not checked this site since I stopped writing two years ago. I have written almost nothing of any description since, bar a long thesis on Liberalism and Religious Conservatives which, if you are very unlucky I may post excerpts from, Dickens-style, on a weekly basis.

There is a point to this new start, however. My interest in plural societies and how we manage them (both from a philosophical and sociological/public policy perspective) are dominating my research right now, and I'm hoping to contrast what I learn in the Middle East with my analysis of Liberalism's fundamental failure to provide suitable solutions to the challenges of Multiculturalism in the West. As such, I'll use the blog from now on for related discussions and, given I'm a woman and thus a multi-tasker, anything else which catches my eye over the next four months of my stay here in Damascus. Enjoy!