2 posts tagged “politics”
From French news blog Rue89's English edition, Street89, came this story about an interview with Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) published in Politique International. An excerpt, on the Iraq war:
"It is a defeat for the United States, indeed. And we will pay the consequences for this defeat for a very a long time.There is no longer any way to turn this defeat into victory. It is too late."
But did Obama really said that? As it turns out, no: the interview was conducted by Alexis Debat, a political scientist with the (conservative) Nixon Center. Do read the full story to find out this person's .. colourful .. past, it is rather incredulous.
One question that must be asked: is this simply a personal act of fraud, or is it part of some grander Republican smear campaign against one of the two Democratic front-runners? It is quite well-known that some Republicans are hoping Hillary would seal the nomination, banking on her high unfavourable ratings in the past, and regardless, it would be a good thing for them to paint Democrats as unpatriotic defeatists anyway.
The Nixon Center should fire this person, at the very least. They are hounding a senator of their own (Larry Craig) for what is, arguably, a morally lesser crime (paying people for oral sex in public places. Unfortunately, Craig is homosexual, and that is no-no for Republican "traditional value" voters). But sadly, the Republican climate nowadays is that political crimes committed in the name of conservatism is OK. Witness Karl Rove's career.
PS I linked to the story through reddit.com; please vote the story up if you like it so more people will see it.
Edit: Leon pointed out that Craig was not even caught verbally propositioning the undercover cop, let alone offering money. He was just making foot-tapping movements that apparently is understood to mean a proposition.
Over at BBC reporter Mark Mardell's blog entry Religion and Politics, Turkish reader Leyla said:
Kurds only suffer so much because they refuse to accept that they are in a country that has the legal language of Turkish which they refuse to learn. How would the Enlish (sic.) like it if the Welsh, Scottish and Irish refused to learn English?
Ms. Leyla, I'd like to remind you that in Turkey it used to be illegal for the Kurds to have schooling in their own language, and bus drivers have been jailed for playing Kurdish pop while at work.
This is not an isolated incident -- witness the comments previously left by Turks in his Deep in Kurdistan entry. For example, from Metin we have this gem:
If you want to follow the elections in Turkey, why did you go to southeast? What do you expect to find there? Also there is no Kurdish territory in Turkey. I have never heard of a Mexican territory in the USA even though there are lots of latinos in southern states, which make up the majority in some cities and towns. Have you?
The Kurds have lived in the south-east of Turkey for thousands of years (even though in the past they were nomadic and as such some of the cities *were* indeed Turkish). The proper analogy is actually with Basque territories in France and Spain. Nationalist Spaniards might take issue with the use of the term Basque territory but a lot of Spaniards won't, even though the Basques, like the Turkish Kurds, have engaged in separatist terror campaigns.
The majority ethnicity in so-called nation states tend to oppress their ethnic minorities as de Tocqueville warned when he coined the phrase tyranny of the majority. Even the Russian and Chinese pay lip service to having Special Autonomous Regions for their ethnic minorities (Tatarstan, Karelians, etc. in Russia; Tibet, Inner Mongolia, etc. in China). But mention the g-word to a Turk or the s-word (self-determination, separatism) to nationalist Indonesians and ooh you're so in trouble. Nationalism is the new colonialism. The empire is dead, long live the empire!
