> Adam/Monika, thanks for keeping me entertained.....this conversation
gets more like what you'd have found a couple of centuries ago in a
'salon'  every day (a compliment, by the way)....!

And good luck to Obama.

If he can get a real national health reform thru Congress and into law,
he'll do what no President has done since (arguably) LBJ with M/M, which
itself was of course only a half-way house....

let's hope he only 'reaches out' as far as he needs to (ie not to the
diehards....... and 'neocons', who are of course nothing of the
sort...they're neo-liberals using democracy-lite as a justifying ideology,
in coalition with the descendants of those who overthrew democracy
(Mossadeq in Iran, 1953) and helped 'grow' the Taliban to overthrow the
moderste government in Afghanistan which happ[ened to be (re-)installed by
the USSR .....the USSR had invaded at the end of the '70s after a split
Politburo (see Gorby's memoirs)to overthrow a 'rogue communist' - H. Amin
- who had supplanted the original 'revolution', which had overthrown the
ex-king's shady cousin Daoud, who had overthrown the King......

the real 'neo-cons' were ex-Marxists who missed out the middle in turning
to the Right, as they renounced the USSR (and Daniel Bell, for example -
he of 'The End of Ideology' fame - a sort of ne-con fellow traveller,
summed it up well when I said, 'I am a socialist in economics, a liberal
in politics and a conservative in culture'

I hope Barack knows all this.........!

Adam, isn't all this more fun than health economics?

best Calum

Dear Members,
>
> Monika sends the following brief message...(although I doubt that anyone
> outside France has thought that there has been a French pretender since
> the end of the 18th Century, at least).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monika STEFFEN [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 05 November 2008 18:46
> To: Oliver,AJ
> Subject: Re: Obama
>
> Dear Oliver and AAHPN members,
> as I cannot come in for a coffee, it's not so much because of
> distance (1.500 km bird's fly) but because there is a strike again,
> today in France; this time it is the railway system, which would it
> make problematique to get to the next international airport or to
> join the Eurostar, if the latter is running at all.
>
> So let me just give you a short account of French reactions: EVERYONE
> I met here seems absolutely happy to have Obama as the strongest, at
> least most important man of the World. "As this title cannot be hold
> anymore by a French pretender, De Gaulle being dead and Sarko not
> quite eligible, it then should be, as an alternative to a Son of the
> Grand Nation, at least a very handsome man, dynamic, smart and
> elegant just as like Obama!", that was the conclusion of our
> secretaries, after collective delibaration on the subject over an
> expresso.
> "Le Monde", the most legitimate opinion maker of the Grand Nation,
> and the Left Intellectual media leader, titled warmest felicitates
> with great headlines to great this achievement. This evening's issue
> will be entirely on OOBAAMAA.
>
> In the street people all smiled (which is unusual) this morning, and
> talked to each other (even more unusual) in public transport and
> shops, very spontanouly knowing that everone else had the same
> opinion, to say something like: "Oh it was such a wonderful night" or
> "Now we will come back to normal, in Irak as well as at Wall Street".
> Or "Oh my God, now I will be able to sleep again, it was so
> stressing, I drank a whole bottle of Champain last night, alone with
> Obama!".
> An old lady said that she had been "waiting for this since three
> months, and that she had actually lit up candles last night, since
> she was not allowed to vote but wanted to help destiny fulfill its
> task and to do it well" as she explained.
>
> And personnally, I am just happy and hopeful, and conscious that a
> big turn in history is beginning; he will not have the time to
> actually do it all, 4 and even 8 years is not enough, but he will be
> the one who puts the train on the truck and in the right direction;
> conscious also that he is at danger to be assassinated (I guess the
> risk at 1 to 4). Hopefully the security staff will be well directed,
> and that the experts learned from Kennedy and the World Trade Center.
> That is actually my main thinking, that he will not be assassinated.
>
> A strange witness is on this political science institute, where
> nothing happened at all, at least so far, not even from the side of
> the students; but that is France : nothing happened either when the
> Berlin wall broke down, no-one even talked about it. Therefore, the
> secretaries collective deliberation, with its stylish
> expresso-cafee-ceremony, as strange the "sexy-worded-judgement" may
> sound to well educated British ears, is a most expressive witness of
> the French normal average citizen being VERY content with this
> election, and an excellent sign that the entire French nation is
> behind .... OBAMA ! So far I have not heart one single words that
> would not have been enthousiastic.
>
>
> Monika (Steffen)
>
>
>
>>Dear AAHPN members,
>>
>>Just a quick note to congratulate our American cousins on their
>>collective common sense last night. You never know - this might even
>>facilitate our attempts at encouraging greater Anglo-American health
>>policy learning.
>>
>>If any of you are in London and want to meet for coffee or something,
>>let me know.
>>
>>All best wishes,
>>Adam
>>
>>Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic
>>communications disclaimer:
>>http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm
>
>
> Monika STEFFEN
> Directeur de recherche au CNRS,
> Présidente de la Commission Scientifique de l'IEP de Grenoble
> PACTE (UMR 5194),
> Institut d'Etudes Politiques
> Grenoble University
> BP 48
> 38O4O GRENOBLE/France
> Tel. direct:	+33 (0) 476 82 60 71
> Secretary: 	+33 (0) 476 82 60 42
> FAX:		+33 (0) 476 82 60 98   (... 82 60 70)
> e-mail:	[log in to unmask]
>
>
> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic
> communications disclaimer:
> http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm
>