A USA Today editorial provided a very smart suggestion on how US primaries could be conducted in a more democratic, environmentally-effective, organized way that is also more likely to yield the best candidates: regional block primaries.
Lebanon’s army stood by as the Hezbollah militia rampaged downtown Beirut and attacked the government’s offices. Its alleged rationale? The army was not going to take sides – as if "neutrality" is the call of the day when an armed militia tries to bully and dominate (if not yet overthrow) the democratically elected government.
Then equally embarrassing and stupefying but with a diametrically opposite logic all of its own, Maj. Gen. Martin Chedondo, a top Zimbabwe Army General, called on his soldiers to be "partisan" and be tools to Dictator Robert Mugabe as opposed to defending civic society:
Soldiers are not apolitical.
Only mercenaries are apolitical. We have signed up and agreed to fight and protect the ruling party‘s principles of defending the revolution. If you have other thoughts, then you should remove that uniform. (emphasis added)
All of this comes as Mugabe’s forces have proceeded to intimidate the non-violent democratic efforts of the opposition party and civil society.
Maybe if you send Zimbabwe’s army to Lebanon, and Lebanon’s to Zimbabwe, you might actually get somewhere.
As poignant as when Senator Clinton spoke about how her own Mother was born before women had a right to vote, today when she endorsed Barack Obama with the same tenacity as she displayed during her campaign, she shared an anecdote that encapsulated the historical significance of her campaign:
To all those women in their 80s and their 90s, born before women could vote, who cast their votes for our campaign…
I’ve told you before about Florence Steen of South Dakota, who was 88 years old and insisted that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside.
Her daughter and a friend put an American flag behind the bed and helped her fill out the ballot. She passed away soon after and under State law her ballot didn’t count.
But her daughter later told a reporter, "my Dad is an ornery old cowboy and he didn’t like it when he heard Mom’s vote wouldn’t be counted. I don’t think he’d voted in 20 years, but he voted in place of my Mom.
Besides the historical progress referenced above, Clinton also spoke powerfully about human potential, underlining why so many women and men have rallied behind her and Senator Obama’s campaigns:
To the Moms and Dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, ‘see, you can be anything you want to be.’
Following on the footsteps of Rudyard Kipling’s IF, and the message, Don’t Give Up, Senator Clinton spoke today with the same tenacity as she displayed during her campaign, yet somehow with more passion, sincerity and inspiration than any time before:
To those who are disappointed that we couldn’t go all the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.
Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in.
And when you stumble, keep faith. And when you are knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.
-Senator Hillary Clinton, June 7 2008 Speech Endorsing Barack Obama and giving one of her best speeches ever.
Bahraini king selects Jewish ambassador
Bahrain’s state news agency says that King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa issued a royal decree appointing a female Jewish lawmaker to the post of ambassador. "It is a great honor to have been appointed as the first female ambassador to the United States of America, and I am looking forward to meeting this new challenge," Nonoo told AP by telephone.
Goldman Sachs reckons consumers are handing over $1.8 trillion a year to oil producers.
These states include Iran, Venezuela, Russia… No wonder "authoritarian-driven economies" have looked so good over the last few years. No wonder Iran and Venezuela can afford divisive hegemonic policies.
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
-Herbert Clark HOOVER
31st President of the United States (1874-1964)
This, indeed, is one of the paramount challenges faced by democratic systems. Democracy cannot exist without freedom of expression. And yet how can it safeguard from demagogic populists who once in power may seek to dismantle democratic systems? Nowadays it is fashionable to criticize democratization efforts in the Middle East – after all, look at what Hamas is doing in Gaza, and what is going on in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and the rise of salafis and fatalists wherever any openness is shown.
There are three keys to a successful democratic system:
"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy".
- Montesquieu
A major challenge to letting democracy and freedom take root in the Middle East is that the region’s politics are submerged in an overwhelming culture of resistance. For decades, Arab rulers have fed the Arab street with anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel epithets to such pathological degree that now every movement is defined through this prism. Those who oppose or attack Israel and the US are instant heroes of the street. It is hard for progressive reformers to gain traction in Arab elections. It is either the status quo of corruption and authoritarianism or revolutionary anti-Western opposition. Thus, according to Yasser Abu Hilala writing in Al Ghad, in Kuwait’s recent elections, the winners were Salafis and Shiia candidates who eulogized Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh. The situation is so extreme, that reporters who even just interview President Bush are considered infidels and threatened with their lives, and calls abound for countries like Egypt to break all relations with the US and Israel.
I am a staunch independent and find partisan politics to be too narrow minded in general, but if just 10% of Recount, HBO’s telling of the 2000 election Florida contest between Bush and Gore is true, one has to be