[http://www.blackcommentator.com/269/269_cover_obama_race_speech_analysis_ed_bd.html A critique] from Black progressives, including Bill Fletcher Jr:
Senator Obama offered a brilliant and inspiring address which was, nevertheless, a bit problematic. On the one hand, he spoke to the people of the United States about race in a manner that has only occasionally taken place (such as during the Jesse Jackson campaigns). He spoke as someone from both inside and outside the African American experience and was completely unapologetic about the rage that we feel, as a people, for the injustices that we have suffered over the centuries.
Yet Senator Obama, at one and the same time, attributes much of the anger of Rev. Wright to the past, as if Rev. Wright is stuck in a time warp, rather than the fact that Rev. Wright's anger about the domestic and foreign policies of the USA are well rooted--and documented--in the current reality of the USA.
"Until last week, the [Beijing Olympics] sponsors' biggest concern was pressure over Darfur," reports the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031902617.html Washington Post]:
Robert A. Kapp, a former president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said it's possible that popular anger, particularly among Americans concerned with human rights, may become so severe "that some companies may face a very hard decision as to whether their highly visible support of the Olympics is causing so much damage that they need to reconsider their options."
"I could imagine some companies going back to their advertising departments and external PR advisers and seeing whether there are ways in which the company's presence in support of the Olympics can be reviewed with an eye toward these recent and tragic circumstances," Kapp said.
"Hope is a strong weapon as Americans lie suffocating in the pile of what is Bush's presidency."
I'm afraid the question isn't which candidate will best dig us out of that pile, but which one will pile the least fresh stuff on top of it.
If McCain gets elected it will be refreshing, for a few weeks at least, to see his face instead of Bush's in the nightly news, but the relief won't last long. McCain will simply continue the same disastrous policies Bush is pursuing now.
As for Clinton and Obama, this video interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World' Most Powerful Mercenary Army, provides some shrewd realistic analysis.
From [http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/18/Chinese-Internet-censorship-code-of-conduct-in-the-works_1.html?source=NLC-GOV&cgd=2008-03-18 IDG News Service]:
A code of conduct addressing how major Internet service providers and portal operators should deal with Internet censorship in China is in the final stages of preparation by Human Rights Watch and the providers, the head of the human rights pressure organization said Tuesday.
The code is due in the next couple of months and comes in the run up to the Beijing Olympic Games that begin in August. ...
"One of our concerns is the degree to which the major international Internet companies have become complicit in this censorship of the Internet," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch at a Tokyo news conference.
I am not suprised by these results at all. Whether it be McCain or Clinton or Obama, none of that really matters. As long as it is not George W. Bush. For the first time Americans are having higher hopes for the Iraq War, because for the first time they are seeing a future that is not Bush. They see new ideas on the table from new minds. Right now, everyone's biggest PR boost is that they are not George W. Bush.
McCain has an added plus, because he has had time to travel to Iraq several times in the last year or so. (As the two democrats fight their own war over here.) He has just returned from one trip where he says something to the effect of "I have seen great progress." That is comforting to everyone. It is nice to hear from someone we could potentially elect president. Positivity is always a good thing. Hope is a strong weapon as Americans lie suffocating in the pile of what is Bush's presidency.
[http://www.blackcommentator.com/269/269_cover_obama_race_speech_analysis_ed_bd.html A critique] from Black progressives, including Bill Fletcher Jr:
"Until last week, the [Beijing Olympics] sponsors' biggest concern was pressure over Darfur," reports the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031902617.html Washington Post]:
I'm afraid the question isn't which candidate will best dig us out of that pile, but which one will pile the least fresh stuff on top of it.
If McCain gets elected it will be refreshing, for a few weeks at least, to see his face instead of Bush's in the nightly news, but the relief won't last long. McCain will simply continue the same disastrous policies Bush is pursuing now.
As for Clinton and Obama, this video interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World' Most Powerful Mercenary Army, provides some shrewd realistic analysis.
From [http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/18/Chinese-Internet-censorship-code-of-conduct-in-the-works_1.html?source=NLC-GOV&cgd=2008-03-18 IDG News Service]:
I am not suprised by these results at all. Whether it be McCain or Clinton or Obama, none of that really matters. As long as it is not George W. Bush. For the first time Americans are having higher hopes for the Iraq War, because for the first time they are seeing a future that is not Bush. They see new ideas on the table from new minds. Right now, everyone's biggest PR boost is that they are not George W. Bush.
McCain has an added plus, because he has had time to travel to Iraq several times in the last year or so. (As the two democrats fight their own war over here.) He has just returned from one trip where he says something to the effect of "I have seen great progress." That is comforting to everyone. It is nice to hear from someone we could potentially elect president. Positivity is always a good thing. Hope is a strong weapon as Americans lie suffocating in the pile of what is Bush's presidency.
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