Destination X
-
Showing posts tagged Politics
-
Lack of unified opposition helping Gadhafi
Libya has a “very weak” sense of national identity, one analyst says.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Moammar Gadhafi has clung to power partly by creating obstacles to a unified opposition.
- Libya is dominated by tribal politics — a tradition that hampers opponents.
- Gadhafi has repeatedly purged the military, the institution most likely to bring about change.
- Europe is very dependent on Libyan oil, not prepared to deal with extended instability there.
— CNN
-
”I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.
King Leopold II of Belgium to his ambassador in London during Europe’s scramble for Africa, 1875
-
”The political liberty of a citizen is that tranquillity of mind, which is the effect of an opinion that he is in perfect security; and to insure this security, the government must be such that one citizen shall not fear another.
-
”For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That’s why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
-
Direct Democracy: Origin of the Species
In October 1911, California adopted the three tools of modern direct democracy: referendums, recalls and initiatives. It was not the first state to do so. South Dakota had adopted initiatives in 1898, and Utah, Oregon, Montana, Oklahoma and other states had begun mixing their own cocktails of direct democracy from the three ingredients.
Californians thus explicitly chose a path that diverged from the one America’s founders had taken. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and their peers, as they met for the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, had deliberately rejected direct democracy. So why did Californians second-guess them? — The Economist
-
”Alas, Obama has no place in his heart for Arab children, only for Jewish ones. He even manages to infantilise Israeli Jewish soldiers who kill Palestinians, as nothing short of innocent children whose families miss them. In his AIPAC speech, Obama calls on Hamas “to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years”, but not on Israel to release the 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners, who include 300 Palestinian children, languishing in Israel’s dungeons for many more years.
Joseph Massadm Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University asks ‘are Palestinian children less worthy?’ (Read More)
(Source: newsflick)
-
”
… It is now commonplace to say that #politics increasingly resembles show business. Style trumps substance. Generating an attractive “brand” is more important than proposing sound policies. Leadership is testimony more to successful marketing than good governance.
… Despite the puerile triumphalism of neoliberalism and its intellectual apologists following the implosion of the Soviet Union, there has been no dearth of critical analyses of the new world disorder. Harsh and angry words were spit out by radical feminists, postcolonialists, environmentalists and postmodernists of every hue and cry. Marxism, as well, has not died the death predicted by Daniel Bell in 1960 (The End of Ideology) and solemnly reiterated by Francis Fukuyama (The End of History, 1992). Even the blowback from an overstretched American Empire and the smoke from the ruins of the World Trade Center have not completely obscured an embattled but still vibrant Marxist literature.
… Capitalism has distorted human nature and the human lifeworld in numerous ways. One is by overemphasizing individualism, and then shrinking it to concerns about private life. Pericles warned the ancient Greeks about those “idiots,” who cared only for their personal fortunes and were therefore useless to the polis.
… Slogans and logos, no matter how attractive, are no substitute for collective action and, although collective action may be temporarily galvanized around an individual or an issue, it is not the same sort of thing as a successful marketing campaign. Social change does not happen that way, … as many disenchanted fans of President Obama have painfully learned.
-
#Ethiopia and #South #Korea: Strengthening #Friendship
#Addis #Ababa: South #Korean President Lee Myung-bak, [visiting Ethiopia], agreed to provide active support for Ethiopia’s economic development, pledging to significantly boost relations with the African nation that helped save the South from North Korea’s invasion 60 years ago.
In summit talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Lee expressed gratitude for Ethiopia’s participation in the 1950-53 Korean War, and said South Korea wants to develop ties with Ethiopia beyond the traditional friendship into those of “development cooperation partners.” — Read more @ Korea Times -
WIKILEAKS | ‘TIME TO STOP HATING ETHIOPIA’
In the Cable, dated Nov. 11, 2006 and classified as ‘Confidential’, Amb. Huddleston wrote:
As I prepare to turn over my responsibilities to my good friend and respected colleague, Ambassador Don Yamamoto, I urge the USG to maintain and strengthen our partnership with Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is neither — as its critics like to claim — a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, nor is it a multi-party democracy that strictly adheres to open market principles. But if hubris demands that partnership be based on our standards, then we will find ourselves helping those whose principal goal is neither democracy nor development, but regime change.
If we have the courage to strengthen our commitment to Ethiopia, we have much to gain. But if we aggressively and publicly press Meles in order to appease the Diaspora, some members of Congress and some civil society groups, we will lose Ethiopia. — more @ DB blog
-
Condoleezza Rice Looks Back
With “No Higher Honor,” Condoleezza Rice has written an exhaustive brief to acquit herself before the bar of history, which she hopes will be more forgiving than the caustic judgments of the present. Her power stemmed from the bond that runs through her book: the close, even adulatory relationship with George W. Bush, which prompted jealousy and derision from Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
They were an unlikely pair: the cerebral A-student from a striving black family and the son of privilege who as a candidate for president couldn’t name Pakistan’s military ruler. But together they forged a vision of a muscular United States striking out on its own. — more @NY Times Book Review
-
Egyptian Politics in the Aftermath of Revolution
Why did the scale of the Islamists’ triumph so surprise Egypt’s mainly secular pundits? Mostly this reflects the success of Egyptian governments, beginning long before Hosni Mubarak came to power, in denying that the bulk of Egyptian society has always been deeply conservative and fervidly religious. Whatever inroads secularism made in the 20th century, a generation-long, worldwide Islamist revival has washed much of it away.
Explore our interactive Arab league mapThe reality is that most Egyptians remain grindingly poor, ill educated and alienated from a ruling class seen as more attuned to Western fashions than local custom. In a survey of attitudes in seven Muslim-majority countries in December 2010 by Pew, an American research organisation, Egyptians proved the most likely to prefer “fundamentalists” over “modernisers” as champions of Islam. More than half of Egyptians favoured separating the sexes at work, compared with just 13% among Turks. Only Pakistan matched Egypt’s enthusiasm for such traditionally Islamic penalties as stoning for adultery, amputation for theft and death for apostasy, despite the fact that Egyptian courts have shunned such punishments for a century. —more @The Economist
-
"Urinating on dead Taliban fighters prompted anger in Afghanistan"
A video showing what appears to be American forces urinating on dead Taliban fighters prompted anger in Afghanistan and promises of a U.S. investigation on Thursday but the insurgent group said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.
The U.S. military has identified two of the four Marines in the video so far, a Marine Corps official told Reuters, adding the Marine Corps believed the images were authentic.
“This is the embodiment of the strong assaulting the weak. It’s nothing new for the Americans, it only adds to what they have done in Abu Ghraib prison. This [is] a breach of the sacredness of Islam and Muslims,” said Othman al-Busaifi, 45, in Tripoli.
“They cut off ears and fingers and keep them as medals, and urinate on bodies, then they talk about civilization,” wrote user Abu Abdullah al-Janubi on one forum.
“The danger obviously is this kind of video could be misused in many ways not only to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan but undermine the potential for reconciliation. There is a danger there,” U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on a trip to Texas.— more @Reuters/Yahoo
Likes
-
What?
-
Now on view at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica is a three person show featuring...
-
-
-
Laughing in Mongolia
