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Chris Matthews on MSNBC made the comment that if he won the presidency, Barack Obama would be the first “Western” leader of African descent. He then wondered if he was right, and whether there had been an African Roman Emperor. The categories Matthews deployed are not very useful. We are all Africans, after all. Homo […]

Obama DNC Speech: ‘Eight is enough’ Obama up in polls.

Notable quotes: “I hope that no American, considering the really critical issues facing this country, will waste his franchise by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant . . .” “There has also been a change–a slippage–in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean […]

Calculate your Obama tax cut. “Barack Obama will cut taxes for over 95% of American families (even though more than half of American think he’ll raise their taxes)”

BBC: Arctic ice is at a ‘tipping point’. Watch for yourself on google earth: “This animation in Google Earth shows satellite data of Arctic sea ice concentration from May 25 to August 21, 2008. Note how the decline rate speeds up during August, with strong losses north of Siberia.” – The more drilling and use […]

Pakistan has had to impose trading limits to stop the slide in its stock market coming off the end of the coalition government. Investors have been worried about the withdrawal of the Muslim League (N) from the parliamentary coalition with the Pakistan People’s Party. Meanwhile, Switzerland has dropped its money-laundering investigation of Asaf Ali Zardari, […]

Iraqi politicians greeted the the selection of Joe Biden as the Democratic vice presidential candidate with dismay because they oppose his soft partition plan for Iraq, an affront to Iraqi conceptions of national unity. In contrast, the Sulaymaniya newspaper Kirkuk ran an article by Zana Galali, that, according to BBC Monitoring, “Says that the US […]

Bush is trying to permanently widen FBI prerogatives in opening investigations of US citizens before leaving office. His new guidelines would allow an investigation to begin on the basis of data-mining and profiling, with no evidence of suspected wrong-doing. See my Salon.com article on this issue. This, at a time when the British MI-5 is […]

A warm congratulations to Senator Joe Biden on his VP candidate position on the Democratic ticket! Sen. Biden called me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq in April 2004, when there was heavy fighting between the Mahdi Army and the US military. He did so on the basis of a journal […]