Three more great articles from The Economist on this past Tuesday’s election excerpted below. The first article deals with the expectations that President-elect Barack Obama will face once he takes the Oath of Office on January 20th.
Barack Obama has won a famous victory. Now he must use it wisely
NO ONE should doubt the magnitude of what Barack Obama achieved this week. When the president-elect was born, in 1961, many states, and not just in the South, had laws on their books that enforced segregation, banned mixed-race unions like that of his parents and restricted voting rights. This week America can claim more credibly than any other western country to have at last become politically colour-blind. Other milestones along the road to civil rights have been passed amid bitterness and bloodshed. This one was marked by joy, white as well as black.
The second article examines how Mr. Obama won the election, where he won his support and how he held off Senator McCain.
Barack Obama owes his victory to blacks, Hispanics, the young, women of all races, the poor and the very rich
IT WAS a suitably exhilarating end to the most thrilling presidential race in a generation. This was the longest election in American history, and the most expensive by far. It was also, on the Democratic side, the hardest-fought, with Hillary Clinton amassing almost as many primary votes as Barack Obama. But on November 4th the result was clear: Mr Obama beat John McCain by six points in the popular vote (52% to 46%) and 190 votes in the electoral college (364 votes to 174).
A sense of history in the making hung over the election: a country that has been torn apart by race peacefully elected a black man to the highest office in the land. Mr Obama’s volunteers wore T-shirts inscribed with the slogan “Making history”. People across the country cheered and wept when the result was announced. Both Mr Obama and Mr McCain gave speeches worthy of a turning point.
The final article discusses the many challenges, especially in foreign policy matters, facing the future President.
How will a 21st-century president fare in a 19th-century world?
BLISS it is in this dawn to be alive. That will be the reaction of many people around the world to America’s election of a thrilling new president—young, black, with political and intellectual gifts well above the ordinary. But the world that will face Barack Obama when he moves into the White House in January is not very heaven. It is, in fact, a mess.
Just because the election is over does not mean that everything is going to be all wine and roses over the next four years. Stay educated, read the three articles linked above, and keep reading over the next four years.
The challenges facing this nation are not going away anytime soon, if ever. As each challenge is surpassed, another will surely present itself, and we the people need to make sure that we continue to make the correct choices as face each new obstacle.
That is what made the United States a great nation, once upon a time, and that’s what will bring us back to the fore.
LONG, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and
prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grap-
pling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children
en-masse really are?)
AMERICA
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
— Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), American poet, essayist, journalist and humanist.
On the day before the Olympic torch was to be carried along the citys waterfront, hundreds of protesters took to the streets today to rally support for freedom in Tibet and to decry the Peoples Republic of China rule there.
The roving demonstration moved from United Nations Plaza to City Hall to the Chinese Consulate at Geary Boulevard and Laguna Street in the Western Addition. The consulate building was protected by dozens of San Francisco police officers.
The protesters remained peaceful throughout the day, waving the colorful Tibetan flag, singing the Tibetan national anthem and chanting slogans denouncing China. They watched the lighting of the Tibetan Freedom Torch and cheered as caged white doves were released into the sky.
The gathering was timed to coincide with the appearance of the Olympic Torch, which is scheduled to make its only North American appearance in San Francisco Wednesday as part of a five-continent relay leading up to the Summer Games in Beijing.
“This is not about disrupting the torch-bearers. This is about China using the torch for political purposes and we using it right back,” Lhadon Tethong, executive director if Students for a Free Tibet, said through a bullhorn in front of the Chinese Consulate.
Protesters, upset with Chinas policies in Tibet, Sudan and with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, have disrupted the relay in Athens, London and Paris. San Francisco officials also are bracing for demonstrations by China critics and counterdemonstrations by pro-China supporters.
Previous posts on this blog illustrate what I feel the athletes should do when it comes to the Beijing Olympics, but all of the news about the protests surrounding the torch made me wonder how the whole torch carrying thing came about.
So I do what many people do when confronted with one of those odd questions … what is the history of the Olympic Torch relay?
Well … according to a 2004 article in the New York Times, the torch relay was introduced by none other than Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, as part of his Nazi propaganda machine.
The torch relay is a celebration of the ancient fires that burnt through the original Olympiads but the idea of carrying the flame from Olympia to the host city each year was invented by the organisers of the 1936 Berlin Games.
The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film, “Olympia”, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.
Surprisingly, the use of the Olympic rings, originally adopted as a symbol of the Games at the 1914 Olympic Congress prior to the cancelled 1916 Olympic Games, were also widely promoted by Riefenstuhl’s film (when she had the rings carved in stone at Delphi).
Joy.
Perhaps it’s a good idea that the torch was extinguished not once, but twice by the French, and the American leg of the journey tomorrow (Wednesday) in San Francisco may actually be cancelled because of the protests.
It certainly seems fitting that the Chinese government has promoted the this year’s relay as a Journey of Harmony … but it’s too bad their harmonic convergence seems to be more in line with with the powers of oppression and genocide, rather than truly of peace.
» by flahute in: Music on January 29th, 2008 at 02:59:31 UTC |
RISE AGAINST - STATE OF THE UNION
If we’re the flagship of peace and prosperity,
We’re taking on water and about to fucking sink.
No one seems to notice, no one even blinks.
The crew all left the passengers to die under the sea.
Countdown
to the very end.
Equality;
an invitation that we won’t extend.
Ready, aim.
Pull the trigger now.
In time you
firmly secure your place in hell.
State of the union address
reads “War Torn Country Still a Mess”
The words: power, death and distorted truth
are read between the lines of the red, white and blue.
Countdown,
to the very end.
Equality;
an invitation that we won’t extend.
Ready, aim.
Pull the trigger now.
In time you
firmly secure your place in hell.
“Guilty” is what our graves will read,
no year, no family.
We did nothing to stop the murder of
a people just like us.
» by flahute in: Word Play on January 14th, 2007 at 07:21:49 UTC |
PAX
All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
— D.H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930), English writer, poet, author.
» by flahute in: Word Play on December 25th, 2005 at 14:41:36 UTC |
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!’
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American Poet.
@neilkod I do back-office operations work for a brokerage firm. Liaison between the branches and various processing depts. in reply to neilkod7 hrs ago
Back to work today ... am I looking forward to it? No, but it likely means I'll be tweeting more, so all y'all get to enjoy my presence! 9 hrs ago
The roving demonstration moved from United Nations Plaza to City Hall to the Chinese Consulate at Geary Boulevard and Laguna Street in the Western Addition. The consulate building was protected by dozens of San Francisco police officers.
