GOATMILK: An intellectual playground edited by Wajahat Ali

Barack Obama’s half-hour infomercial Wednesday night didn’t teach us a lot we didn’t already know—except that an Obama administration would likely
feature immaculate stagecraft.

Wall Street Journal

There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.

As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, “Crowds and Power” (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when “distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.” These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress. Read the rest of this entry »

Fatima Bhutto

http://www.newstatesman.com/print/200810300015

Published 30 October 2008

Pakistan is in crisis, with an economy that has hit rock bottom. Think Zimbabwe, minus the good governance

Is Pakistan a failed state? No, but it’s damned lousy at pretending it’s a democracy.

The country’s newly elected government, the first in the world headed by two former convicts (between them the president and prime minister have served time on charges of corruption, narcotics, extortion and murder, no less) was heralded into power by a barrage of praise and congratulations by the Labour Party – David Miliband is a huge fan – and the Republicans waiting out their term across the pond. However, eight months into the new government’s post-Musharraf rule, Pakistan’s economy, sovereignty and freedoms have been considerably eroded. Think Zimbabwe, minus the good governance. Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) — Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said Sen. Barack Obama has ties to a Columbia University professor who she said is “a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.”

Gov. Sarah Palin says it’s “not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record.”

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The Obama campaign said on its Web site that “ugly insinuations about Barack Obama’s relationship with a former neighbor and university colleague … are completely false.” The professor has denied he was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization.

Palin said her assertion “is not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record.”

“It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years,” Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio. Read the rest of this entry »