Kanishk Tharoor

Barack Obama's nomination as the official candidate of the Democratic Party offers many firsts, not least that he is the first African American to come so close to the Oval Office. Yet more importantly perhaps, Obama is the first presidential candidate to so baldly represent the histories of migration and movement that have made America. With immediate connections to Kenya, Malaysia, Hawaii and the rural midwest, Obama embodies the global narratives that course through American identity.

Such a multitude of connections may be to Obama's detriment. As Michael Powell observes in this excellent, sweeping piece in the NY Times "newcomers always rubbed up against the settled." Just as "primal rootlessness" and "wanderlust" are encoded in American DNA, so too are the myths of the small town, of Main Street and safe white fences staples of American political parlance. Thanks to his roaming upbringing, Obama remains susceptible to right-wing attacks aimed at his supposed "Americanness". But McCain - and a slew of past presidents - has no less a "rooted" a past as the scion of a military family. As one scholar tells Powell, "The next US president is going to be Ishmael [the Biblical wanderer], whether we like it or not, and whether he knows it or not." 

openDemocracy

openDemocracy/Russia was created last year. Two new articles on Abkazia demonstrate why it is a brilliant initiative.
The idea was that English readers around the world should be able to learn at first hand the vitality and intelligence of Russia’s free voices and that Russians should be able to participate directly in the growing (we hope) democratic discussion that is global in its interests and concerns.
Alas, it has taken the crisis in the Caucasus to confirm how much this initiative is needed. openDemocracy has always resisted the clichés of received ideas and the imposition of worn out worldviews while seeing itself as a platform where minority voices and opinions (even if they too have their clichés and evasions) can be well published and debated when the current is against them.
oD’s exceptional coverage of the Caucasus predates the present interest and will continue after it. Others have drawn attention to the analysis and the seeking for human based conceptual frameworks in new essays by Ivan Krastev and Mary Kaldor, I’m just going to draw your attention to Zygmunt Dzieciolowski's encounter with Sergei Bagapsh the President of Abkhazia and then an article by Inal Khashig,
editor of the Abkhaz newspaper Chegemskaya Pravda, who states that argues the West's endorsement of Georgia's claims has merely ensured that Abkhazian independence is a fact.
Zygmunt writes in the tradition of his late Polish compatriot the celebrated Ryszard Kapuscinski. It’s a journalism of the main facts and the telling details, threaded with an awareness of history and place so that the reporting is rooted in time without being fatalistic or sensational. He brings to life the “soft voice” of President Bagapash, his willingness to delay catching his flight to Moscow to talk with co-editor of openDemocracy Russia, his wariness of and desire for independence from the Russia that has just saved his statelet but was only recently also imposing sanctions on it.
One detail I didn’t know that comes across strongly in both Zygmunt’s report and Kashig’s insistent article. The West’s participated in preventing medicines including antibiotics from being imported by Abkhazia after it broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. This abuse of humanitarian principles turned everyone who remained into a potential martyr. When Russia let in antibiotics it made a moral gain (whatever the cynical calculations behind it) that western media coverage seems completely oblivious of. This is the kind of significant detail that openDemocracy Russia brings to our understanding of the Caucuses.

Tom Griffin

In his latest contribution to OurKingdom's debate about the future of the UK, Gerry Hassan points to the limits of nationalism as a response to neo-liberalism. Scotland's nationalist leader Alex Salmond has inadvertently whipped up a media storm by arguing that Scots 'didn't mind the economic side of' Thatcherism. The furure has exposed the contradictions of a country where mainstream politicians are as united in tacitly accepting Thatcher's legacy as in publicly abominating her policies.

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Guardian brings us news of the latest edition of Progress magazine, in which Skills Minister David Lammy makes Labour's latest attempt to develop a line of attack against David Cameron:

The truth is that the Tories' change in language has touched a nerve, reflecting a big gap in our own political narrative. Yet beneath Cameron's rhetoric lies the basic philosophy that failed Britain in the past. The Tories demand responsibility without offering support; they appeal for fraternity without any real belief in equality; they have finally noticed 'society,' but remain implacably hostile to the state.

Over at Comment is Free, David Marquand suggests that the Tory leader won't be so easily pinned down Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): If The Scotsman is to be believed, Gordon Brown is set to take the advice of Iain MacWhirter rather than Martin Kettle over the fortcoming by-election in his Fife backyard:

A final decision has not yet been taken, but it is understood Labour leaders favour either Thursday, 30 October or Thursday, 6 November for the contest.

The November date is the favourite simply because it comes only a day after the expected result of the American presidential election, and if Labour was to lose, party managers believe the bad news would be partly buried by the US coverage.

 Read the rest of this post...

28 - 08 - 08

Comment...

Kanishk Tharoor

The Obama campaign is trying to reinforce its unconventional candidacy by staging an unconventional convention. Yesterday, Obama received a massive boost from Hillary Clinton. The ritual centre-piece of all party conventions is the roll call, when all the states and far-flung territories of this supra-continental country are paraded one-by-one before the TV cameras. The delegates add up, and slowly and methodically, the candidate becomes the official party nominee.

Not this time. When the roll call reached New York, Hillary Clinton appeared amidst the swarm on the convention floor. The locus of divisiveness within the party, Clinton made a powerful statement of support for Obama by asking for the suspension of the roll call and his nomination by acclamation. Instead of systematically anouncing its delegate votes, the Empire State instead provoked an astonishing moment of US Convention history. I know it was all carefully stage-managed. But as a New Yorker, I can't help but feel a bit of spine-tingling pride that the raucous and potentially historic clamour was initiated by my state.

Video below:

Kanishk Tharoor

Bill Clinton's much anticipated speech yesterday at the Democratic National Convention went far in banishing the memory of his dismal behaviour during the primary contest. For all his growing faults, the former president remains a superb speaker. Clinton found the right balance of hard and soft, comfortably quoting the statistical evidence of the damage wrought by the Bush administration while lifting the crowd with brighter sentiment and memorable lines. Most soundbyte-able was this turn of phrase: "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example, than by the example of our power." Clinton insisted that Obama was the right kind of leader to set a proper example in an increasingly multicultural, globalised world, and that he was "ready" to be president. Perhaps Clinton spoke through gritted teeth, but whatever; this is politics, and words matter.

Full speech in video below.

Kanishk Tharoor

What has Pervez Musharraf bequeathed Pakistan? The "president-general" steps down from power at a time of great political and violent unrest, with the civilian government falling to pieces and insurgencies wracking the country. Irfan Husain chronicled the Musharraf years last week on openDemocracy, finding morsels of good in the soup of ultimate failure. Shaun Gregory, however, is far less generous. Musharraf, he argues, was a strongman who encouraged (and relied upon) the myth that "the Pakistani army is all that stands between Pakistan and chaos." Yet the army was and continues to be the single biggest obstacle in Pakistan's path to a more peaceful secular and democratic future. If the country's civilian leaders, like Nawaz Sharif, continue to nurture ties to the more unsavoury potentates of the military, Pakistan's crises will be unrelenting. 

Solana Larsen

Getting anywhere near The Big Tent is a hectic experience. There are several degrees of credentials, bracelets for backstage, dozens of smiling volunteers, free massages by Google, and free burritos and beer. This isn't where the politicians are speaking (although many visit). This is where the bloggers are convened with their power plugs, wifi, and laptops galore, writing I'm-not-sure-what yet, because I haven't had a chance to read it.

The Big Tent is ordinarily a parking lot, but now has an enormous two-story tent erected on it. The panel I spoke on was upstairs from the bloggers. The panels are back to back. Mine was organized by the Better World Campaign of the UN Foundation, and was primarily about a new poll they have published that says Americans care about foreign policy. The fact that this would be news, is sort of astonishing to me. But there is some scientific method to help establish the fact that this has changed in the past year. I always wonder whether people just respond according to what they happened to see on the news the night before.

I spoke about the work my colleagues Amira, John, Jillian and many others from Global Voices are doing on Voices without Votes, a website sponsored by Reuters where we are tracking non-American responses to the US presidential election and foreign policy. I personally, think Americans tend to focus too much on what foreign policy means for themselves (and how people perceive them), and not enough on what it means for citizens in other countries. The questions I got during the panel reinforced my sense of this.

Let me paraphrase: Do non-American bloggers say that America doesn't accomplish it's foreign policy goals? What do bloggers in the Middle East say about American women?

In other words, what does the rest of the world think about America. Well, I don't know. I think most of the time they too, are thinking more about themselves, and interpreting world events according to what makes sense in their own hemispheres and blogospheres. Please visit Voices without Votes to see the many, many different things bloggers around the world are saying. Unlike pollsters, we don't pretend to speak on behalf of entire populations or the world - but we do hope to give a taste of what foreign opinion and reasoning looks like.

Tony Curzon Price

A part of Fred Halliday's call to understand local agency before jumping the geo-political gun is to know the domestic politics (see his recent article here). War often has deep domestic political repercussions - some anticipated and many not - and Robert Parsons shines a light right into the here and now of Georgian politics. The first surprise -- to Russia, at least -- is that the Geogian institutions have held up and continued to function. There is no immediate call for regime change despite Russia's best attempts to re-open old divisions. The war has, for now, united Georgia. But the end of the war is likely to produce a demand for accounts from within and provides an opportunity for an organsied and compelling Georgian opposition to emerge. This fascinating piece of insider observation points to who we should expect to do what to who else and under what circumstances.

openUSA

The Nation's Victor Navasky pens an excellent piece on the missteps of Obama's campaign since his defeating Hillary Clinton. Obama risks aping the failures of John Kerry if he frets too much about the "illusory middle".

His mistake is the same one that the last two Democratic candidates for President--Gore and Kerry--made. The assumption (shared by too many campaign consultants) that the way to woo those in the center is to move towards the center. Arianna Huffington, I believe, has a point when she advises, "Instead of targeting the swing voters he should target the unlikely voters." But I would argue there's nothing wrong with targeting the swing voters. What's wrong is to pander to them on the assumption that the way to win them over is to move towards the center.

The reason they are undecided is precisely because they are not Democrats or Republicans, and they don't care about left vs. right. They care about finding someone they can connect with, a candidate they can trust. And as soon as they see a candidate who appears to be listening to his consultants and pollsters rather than being true to himself, they see a candidate who has betrayed what they care about most: authenticity.

During the pageantry of the Convention, will Obama continue to make that pitch to the "centre"? Or from the bosom of the Democratic Party, will Obama speak from a position of strength and on his own terms?

Damian O'Loan

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): The situation in Stormont may now merit the term crisis. A prominent Sinn Fein representative in the South of Ireland, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, has threatened collapse of the Assembly if policing and justice are not devolved: “we will have no option but to pull out our ministers.” Jeffrey Donaldson MP, MLA, Privy Council member and possible Justice Minister, has called for clarification of the threat: “Do they want to stay in the executive? If they do, let's meet and address these issues."

Both sides claim the other refuses to talk; it is widely held that Sinn Fein are blocking the passage of other Ministerial business until their key electoral promises have been resolved – or as Peter Robinson has it: “Adams seems to think that it is the role of everyone to move to his position.” The other parties are unforgiving, nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan saying “The soundings coming from Sinn Féin at the minute are more ludicrous than ominous.” Moderate unionism's leader Sir Reg Empey warned “This sort of behaviour cannot continue for much longer.” Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There  was a short, strong overview of the threat of an authoritarian, corporate cash cow database state by A.C. Grayling in yesterday's CiF. It reinforced the alarm set off by No2ID's Phil Booth in his excellent OK post. I particular liked Grayling's raised eyebrow over Seimens of Germany who are "already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity". Apparently its system is notorious for throwing up "huge numbers of false positives". I like that phrase "false positives". I suspect it will run and run, as in "We are all false positives now!"

My only objection was to Grayling's stirring conclusion,

We need to stop this assault on civil liberies going further, we need to roll back the attritions they have already suffered, and we need a rock solid written consitution to protect us from those who aim to make us all suspects in the gaze of the unblinking universal eye.

He should know better than that. No constitution, written or unwritten is "rock solid", nor is ever meant to be. Of course he is spot on to see that to roll back the surveillance state we need to constitutionalise our governing settlement. But this is in order for it to be lived in a democratic fashion, not to be set rock solid. Simply to change the governing culture we have to show everyone that our values are rooted in popular sovereignty encoded in a democratic constitition. This is the precondition for stopping the mandarins treating us as colonialised natives. But the constitition that results will be flexible as well as principled, an aid for us to better govern ourselves, a step on the road to emacipation and freedom, not a rock-like fixed point that we will have to bow down to. 

Solana Larsen

I spent most of the afternoon wandering around looking at people who came here for different reasons. There are a lot of strange people here, including a whole delegation of people carrying "9/11 was an inside job" banners demanding "the truth". There are merchandise dealers everywhere, including some who managed to quickly print enough Obama/Biden shirts ($15) to put the plain Obama ones on sale ($10). The anti-abortion activists are probably the most vocal, drawing slogans with chalk on sidewalks, holding banners on sidewalks, and driving around town in a van with a blown up image of a mutilated dead baby on it.

Solana Larsen

I've arrived in Denver and slowly finding my way around the city. Tomorrow, I am speaking at a UN Foundation event in "The Big Tent" about Americans, foreign policy and international perceptions. Come say hello!

“New American Consensus on International Cooperation”
Location: Big Tent:DIGG Stage
Time: 3:00 PM - 3:50 PM (MST)
Scheduled to Appear:

- Geoff Garin, President, Peter D. Hart Research Associates
- Steve Clemons, Senior Fellow and Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
- Rep. Bill Delahunt (invited)
- Solana Larsen, Global Voices Online

Geoff Garin will present findings from the Better World Campaign’s 2008 polling and Steve Clemons will lead the panel in a discussion of the findings and the role of foreign policy in the campaign. The UN Foundation's blog, UN Dispatch is also featuring daily posts and tweets from the convention.

 

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Comment Is Free, Paul Kingsnorth reflects on his recent OurKingdom debate with Vron Ware, and re-states his left-wing case for English nationalism:

because the English, unlike the Scottish, the Welsh or the people of Northern Ireland, have no political focus for their concerns, they have nowhere to turn to express them. What can happen when such a focus does exist can be seen north of the border. The last decade has seen a transformation of Scotland, as a direct result of the creation of a Scottish parliament.

Of course, the Scottish Parliament is itself the product of decades of political mobilisation. Scottish nationalists had no political focus either until they created one. Perhaps the first step for progressive English nationalists is to figure out how to follow that example.

Anthony Barnett

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Tom Griffin spent a long time finding Stephen Glenn to write a post about the Lib Dem leadership contest. I'm afraid Tom didn't get as much warm support from me in his search as he should have. Eventually, he found Stephen and we ran this story by him on the battle to lead Lib Dem Scotland. It seemed to me that Tavish Scott was the least interesting of the three candidates, if he is indeed standing for continuity of a forlorn strategy. Today they have announced the outcome of the ballot: it seems that Scottish Lib Dems have voted for the hole into which they are digging. Could this be true?

Tony Curzon Price

Fred Halliday takes a broad historical sweep at the nationalist delusions of grandeur of small states. Nationalism, more than any other force, has led local leaders to mis-read their strength, their opponents, the supportiveness of their allies and the future. Be it Ireland in 1916, North Vietnam in 1950, Egypt in 1973, Cyprus in 1974, Iraq in 1980 then 1990, local powers, suffering a fetish of "territorial integrity" have refused "to look at reasonable, humane compromises," have misread "international political realities" and have resorted "to destructive and often useless violence." Georgia today is an unhappy addition to that list.

Over and above a denunciation of nationalism, Fred Halliday's piece goes two steps further. First, you need to understand these local elites to understand global conflicts; the short-cut of talking in terms of "clients", "proxies", "agents", "pawns" won't work, because local nationalist delusions are a necessary pre-condition of geo-political clientelism. Second, Fred asks whether these nationalist delusions are not just as prevalent and damaging amongst the large powers as amongst the small. Yes but ... he answers --- the delusions are further from the reality in the case of small nations, and distance from reality in this domain, creates violence and inhumanity. "Smaller peoples pay a higher price. "

Phil Booth

Those who question the 'database state' are often accused of alarmism. But what if we were to report that a recent series of announcements show that the government is already spending millions on a vast database that will retain digital copies of all variety of tracking and information about the whole population, our phone calls, bank accounts, commercial records as well as personal ones, and that it is creating the authority and powers which allow it to do this by hiding behind EU regulations which it has inspired, to impliment them without a parliamentary debate? Now read on:

Phil Booth (London, NO2ID): Back when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary, not long after the London tube bombings, he pushed EU justice ministers to massively increase communications data retention powers. Terrorism was, of course, at the forefront of everyone's minds - and frequently referred to by Mr Clarke in his championing of mass surveillance. Other countries such as Germany did not see the need for such wholesale interception of personal phone, text, e-mail and internet usage data. They were overruled. Read the rest of this post...

Solana Larsen

The Nation magazine is doing excellent "unconventional" coverage of the Convention on their website including blog posts, videos, and articles. On this video, festivitas-expert and Nation writer, Ari Berman, explains that lots of the action outside the convention happens outside the main events, and that lobbyists and big companies abound. In this regard, a political Convention in the United States is not dissimilar to the Olympics, as somthing with a higher purpose that is irrisistably good for business.

In the clip, Ari introduces The Most Powerful Man in Denver (You've Never Heard Of), a man named Steve Farber who is a lobbyist and chief fundraiser for the Democratic Convention. Obama says he is opposed to special interest funding, but he obviously hasn't been able to change how the entire political machine works overnight. The total budget of the Convention must be astronomical.

 

The Convention itself is totally scripted, and the predictability is partly what makes it more of a ceremony than a real political conversation. I met one of the speech writers, who says they have a team of writers who will be sitting behind the stage in "the pit" editing and writing politicians' submitted speeches before they go on stage. There are strict time limits they must adhere to, and they must submit their speeches in writing for editing first. I imagine it will be somewhat like the Oscar's except the people coming up to give the speeches won't be as drunk.

However, the Convention is making strong 'gestures' towards democracy and inclusion of the American people, which is nice. Unfortunately it seems less a matter of principal, than something that seems good for publicity, given how Obama is currently on the up and up. House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, says in one of the introductory webcasts, that this year's convention is "almost without walls" given how much they will be interacting with the public in Denver and on the internet.

I hope once I'm there, my faith in the US political process may be restored, but national politics here generally seem to be more about saying the right thing than doing it. With 5000 delegates and 15,000 members of the press, clearly this whole show is about publicity more than anything. There are so many gross imperfections in the political system that voters simply seem to have come to terms with and lost hope of changing. It's doesn't make it easier that those who could change it, stand to gain by allowing the status quo to persist.

But I suppose that is the case mostly everywhere, in all countries.