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A couple of recent web videos pointing out John McCain’s qualifications, or lack there of, when it comes to his politics, experience and knowledge of the issues…
The first one makes it clear why John McCain supports expanded drilling for oil. He has more than 29 oil company lobbyists as members of his campaign staff.
Lawyers for a Canadian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay released excerpts of videotaped interrogations Tuesday, providing a first-ever glimpse into the secretive world of questioning enemy combatants at the isolated U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While they do not show waterboarding and other forms of torture approved for use against enemy combatants by the Bush administration, the video is still disturbing if only because of the young age of the individual…
For full story read (here)
I am in awe of the New Yorker Magazine’s cover for this week.
It will be I think a net plus for Senator Obama’s campaign. Further bringing all the smears about him being a crypto -etc, into the public comedic schema?
New Yorker
I remember hearing something about the xenophobic rioting and violence back in late May when it was happening, but i didn’t pay to much attention…
However, this evening i was reading a Frieze Magazine essay “Weighing the Africa in South Africa” by Sean O’Toole, (here)
Excerpt
“The morning papers on May 19 recorded a grim scene. A young Mozambican man was pictured on hands and knees, his body engulfed by flames. Set upon by a group of South African youths, the unidentified man had been stabbed and severely beaten before being set alight. Taken in Ramaphosa, an impoverished settlement east of Johannesburg, the photograph forms part of a mosaic of news photographs documenting the ruthless wave of attacks targeting African immigrants resident in South Africa’s townships.”
Just this first passage inspired me to find an original piece of reporting about the event discussed in the essay.
Below is an image from the Sunday Times.
And a link to the story they published back in May…(here)
Once again James Traub delivers a knockout of an article in the “Lawyers’s Crusade“.
In which he examines the recent work of Pakistani activists lawyers who are driving for a real, transparent and more importantly independent judiciary.
Prominent among these figures is Aitzaz Ahsan a constitutional lawyer and federal legislative.
I found this passage ineresting;
“People who knew Pakistan well were taken aback by the lawyers’ movement. Stephen Cohen, the Pakistan scholar, admits that he “misjudged” the country’s commitment to constitutional principles. In his 2004 book on Pakistan, he wrote, ‘While Pakistan’s Islamists have enthusiastically cultivated international ties and contributed much to Islamist thinking . . . Pakistan is an ideological ghetto, especially as far as its liberals are concerned.’ But there truly was a liberal tradition in Pakistan, buried beneath six decades of dictatorship, corruption and religious extremism. I was struck by the deep sense of embarrassment, even shame, that many Pakistanis feel over their political and economic failures, and their sense of resentment about being viewed in the West as an Islamic autocracy. ‘We are and very much remain,’ Ahsan says, ‘a South Asian Muslim country, sharing aspirations and history with India — due process, habeas corpus, mandamus, certiorari. We are not a Middle Eastern Arab Muslim country’.“
Thoughts???
(here)
Pretty much a roundup of all his speeches to date. But now that he has won a majority of pledged delegates and is on his way to the nomination even more powerful.
“Irrawaddy, Burma: A man finds the body of a child that lies in a field after cyclone Nargis”
From the Guardian’s 24 hours in pictures (here)
Great look at the foreign policy approach advocated by Obama and his team of polciy advisors. Which like the rest of his campaign is premised on the fact that Democrats and Republicans need to move beyond the pigeonholed ideological labels/positions they have allowed themselves to be stuck in for the last 3-4 decades…
A key Quote…
“There is a popular notion that Democrats have to try to appear like Republicans to pass some test on national security. The fact that that’s still the case after Iraq is absurd,” says one of Obama’s closest advisers. “So you break from that orthodoxy and say ‘I don’t care if the Republicans attack me because I’m willing to meet with the leadership in Iran. We haven’t for 25 years, and it’s not gotten us anywhere.’”
Most of the members of Obama’s foreign-policy team expressed frustration that they had taken a well-considered and seemingly anodyne position on Iraq and suffered for it. Obama had something similar happen to him in the spring and summer of 2007.
Full Article (here)
Brilliant and Funny…..
One of the best segments charlie has had in a while. Mainly because in it he gave the opportunity for both of these Iraqis to speak about the real problems facing the country. They were clear that the key fundamental problem is the fact that we are viewed as an occupying force. They both said we should leave immdeiately. Oru presence is only prolonging the inevitable, with regards to Iraqi’s having to face and confront their own problems.
Great listen for anyone who thinks Iraqs want us their and that we are hlping. The surge has done nothing to fix the underlying problems facing Iraq, all it has done is improve, slightly the security situation but only in Bagdhad.
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