Barack Obama has arrived in Iraq on the second stage of a major foreign tour.

Source BBC News

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Although the occasion he is marking is highly appropriate - the nomination of an African-American candidate is an important step towards fulfilling MLK’s dream - it is also a high-risk move in two ways: Obama’s speech will have to avoid paling in comparison with King’s, and the venue could provide an opportunity for some nutcase to make Obama “emulate” MLK and JFK (and lest we forget, RFK) in the worst possible way. For some reason, the idea of it is frightening - I have visions of Icarus flying towards the sun, the wax in his wings slowly melting…

I wish Barack Obama well, and sincerely hope he will not disappoint his legions of supporters, including me. But I fear the effects of hubris. Like Caesar, he should always have someone on hand to whisper: “Remember, you are only a man.” Michelle Obama, perhaps?

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First, I believe that Muslims against Sharia are absolutely right - Barack Hussein Obama should and could have taken a firm stand from the very beginning. If blacks and women have a right to be elected President of the United States, then so do Muslims - there is nothing in the US Constitution to the contrary.

Branding someone a terrorist because he or she is a Muslim - or is a Christian with a Muslim name - is just as absurd as it would have been to call everyone with an Irish name a terrorist when the IRA were setting off bombs in Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. That would have included every Kyle, Kevin and Connor in the US of A. (I’m also reminded of the time when Kennedy’s opponents railed against him because he was a Catholic, claiming that he would be controlled by the Pope.)

Although Obama should have said “I’m not a Muslim, but even if I were, there would be nothing wrong with that,” the Muslims’ worst enemies are Karl Rove and all those who use Rovian tactics, Fox News commentators and conservative bloggers and emailers who fuel and pander to prejudice and bigotry by sending out scurrilous libels of Obama and, by association, the Muslim community, such as emails and comments about 99% of terrorists being “Muslim males between the ages of 18 and 40″ (try Googling the words in quotes or variations thereof). The injustice to the Muslim community is so staggering that the fact that Obama is 46 and a Christian seems hardly worth mentioning. Even NY Mayor Bloomberg has denounced the “whisper campaign“. In this regard, it is worthwhile reading this NY Times article on how lies live and grow in the brain.

If Senator Obama is elected President of the United States, I hope he will feel secure and confident enough to take a firm stand in favour of the peaceloving Muslim community and start the healing process. They, too, have a right to fight off slurs and live the “American dream.”

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For example, Krugman writes: “Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service.” In other words, the Obama campaign may have lost yet another valuable player and possible VP candidate - General Wesley Clark (Ret.), a man with impeccable military credentials - due to an impolitic remark that was blown out of all proportion.

However, as a comment in The New Yorker pointed out in 2007, there is another secret to Rove’s success that goes well beyond the Internet: “He was consistently better than the other side at reaching the groups that felt shut out of politics, usually through local organizing. There are plenty of these groups on the left as well as on the right, but Democrats have let the muscles needed to reach them grow slack. Organizing is hard, unglamorous work; the language it requires is combative, self-interested, and non-seigneurial.”

As a former community organiser in Chicago, Obama is well qualified to do this ‘hard, unglamorous work’ without resorting to Rovian tactics.

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Foreigners are often bemused by the American insistence on the right to own guns - knife crime is bad enough - but there is an even more important point to be made. Obama has been accused of “flip-flopping” on his pledge to use public campaign financing, but the NRA’s $40M investment makes it obvious that the Republican budget will not be limited to the relatively small amount ($85M) officially available to McCain. This is clearly one of the loopholes in the “broken system” that Obama and his advisors were talking about.

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Obama’s summer
What’s the betting he’s in each destination for no more than a day. But there’ll be much excitement in the UK no doubt and perhaps even a re-vivification of the rather moribund-looking England for Obama site.

I did wonder why we had that little spike in hits a few days ago.

Its a real shame he had to refer to the site as moribund (stagnant)

Truth be told, the site has dropped off since Obama won the nomination. Its a case of looking for a new angle and for new contributors to come forward who can help us cover the election, not the nomination.

If you have what it takes then Help us out!

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Obama’s Fight the Smears website has an insightful page listing people who have spread lies about Obama and his campaign.

The list includes Craig Shirley who owns the website Stop-him-now.com a right-wing scare-fest which includes articles such as ‘Obama’s sham Christianity‘ and ‘Actual communist endorses Obama’.

Classy!

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Barack Obama will arrive in Britain this summer on a long-expected seven-nation world tour including Europe, designed to answer doubts among global leaders — and US voters — about the direction of his foreign policy.

Source TimesOnline

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Barack Obama

Source BBC News

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The recent comments are the clearest indication yet of a potential sea-change in Anglo-American relations if Mr.Obama is elected in November. Unqestionably, the ’special relationship’ that has dured between our two Countries since the World Wars, has been placed under strain by Tony Blair’s unquestioning support of President George W.Bush during the Iraq War.

With an end to the ”Yo Blair” era, comes an opportunity to build a new epoch of economic, diplomatic and cultural links to advance the democratic values we both share.

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