[youngian]

http://fluidsurveys.com/s/worldthinkers2015" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Some interesting nominations and certainly one joker in the pack I can spot.

[visage]

Kissinger and Brand. Jaysus.

[Agnes]

Shouldn't Kissinger be competing in 'World's Greatest Unindicted War Criminal'?

[SoulBoy]

Shouldn't Kissinger be competing in 'World's Greatest Unindicted War Criminal'?

TONY BLIAR!!!1!

[new puritan]

Some shockers there. Still, Arundhati Roy's very good. Suspect Piketty will win it though.

[youngian]

Or Varoufakis who is a man of the moment like Piketty. Although he'd be first to admit that you don't have to be that clever to conclude that the ECB's medicine isn't working very well.

Maybe its just me but the sky appears to turn darker when I hear Anne Appelbaum open her mouth.

[Watchman]

OK I'm going out on a limb here, so please no plagues on my house!
We may pull a face at the mention of Kissinger but at the top of his game he was a mover and shaker and I would rather read him as a counter-point to what I believe in rather than anyone from the Reagan/Bush era....yes I mean you Rumsfeld and Cheney

[youngian]

No you're not
Kissenger is a Realist who believed in calculating the end game, he's not the most respected advocate and people find that school of thought amoral and reprehensible on the surface (which its not but is intellectually slippery). But Neo-conservatism and Blairite liberal imperialism is bound in blind fanaticism that has had far worse consequences than anything Nixon and Kissenger unleashed.

[Bones McCoy]

but why no Katie Hopkins???

[Agnes]

No you're not
Kissenger is a Realist who believed in calculating the end game, he's not the most respected advocate and people find that school of thought amoral and reprehensible on the surface (which its not but is intellectually slippery). But Neo-conservatism and Blairite liberal imperialism is bound in blind fanaticism that has had far worse consequences than anything Nixon and Kissenger unleashed.

Not sure I *entirely* buy the dichotomy there. I don't think Kissinger committed his crimes entirely from expediency while the neo-cons are doing it out of principle - the paranoia about any kind of social democracy, let alone communism, definitely had ideological overtones, for example, and a lot of the people who started the last Iraq war have made a good deal of money out of it (just look at Blair, after all).

[youngian]

Its was Nixon and Kissenger that opened up relations with Mao's China not invade them as part of a war against the international axis of evil. They never hid their motives which were pure Realpolitik expediency and balance of power politics. Of course the more ideological Neo con Whitehouse was faced with statecraft dilemmas but they had the luxury of being the only superpower which allowed the accomodation of an ideology not unlike Trotsky's permanent revolution domino theory; if we actively overthrow the bad guys and plant the seeds of democracy it will set off a chain reaction and bring freedom throughout the world. I would guess the Kissengers of this world regard that as dangerous bunkum. And the evidence is stacking up that they'd be right.

[Big Rob]

Someone should start an argument to find the world's greatest thinker.

Problem is they probably don't do social media.....

[Bones McCoy]

Someone should start an argument to find the world's greatest thinker.

Problem is they probably don't do social media.....

Can I start with Joey Essex.

Here's how it works, Joey is nominated top until somebody else is demonstrated to be cleverer.
Cleverer person than assumes lead until a successor is found.
Repeat lots.
We end up with the greatest thinker.

[youngian]

A sort of boffin in a reasonably priced car

[Malcolm Armsteen]

OK.
Giles Coren is a greater thinker than Joey Essex.