Latest Worldaffairs Talk Posts at VideoSift.com

Held by the Taliban - David Rhode

xxovercastxx (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/xxovercastxx) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:08:52 -0700

(5 comments - 273 views)
David Rhode is a reporter who was held captive by the Taliban after securing an interview with one of their leaders.

I wanted to sift this but it's a javascript embed, so no dice.

Part 5 will, presumably, be posted tomorrow.

video: http://projects.nytimes.com/held-by-the-taliban
article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world/asia/18hostage.html

- xxovercastxx

Obama won the Nobel Peace prize?

NetRunner (http://netrunner.videosift.com) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:24:28 -0700

(16 comments - 443 views)
I'm not quite sure I understand what the thinking was behind the Nobel committee's decision, but as usual, I find it fascinating to watch the political sphere react en masse to this kind of political hand grenade being tossed into the mix.

Let's start with a snippet of the announcement itself from the Nobel committee:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.

...snip...

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.

Sounds good, but they seem to be awarding the prize for simply starting down this path, not for having achieved any particular milestone.

The RNC reaction, is somewhat predictable:

The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?' It is unfortunate that the president's star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain - President Obama won't be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.

As is the response from the right-wing extremists who're part of the newspapers/Taliban.

Limbaugh says it's a sign that the world loves an emasculated US.

Shockingly, I think John McCain has the smartest thing for Republicans to say on the topic, politically speaking, which hasn't been true of him since he won the nomination last year.

The DNC is apparently equally combative in their response:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.

The reaction from the netroots is one of, well, confusion. We're not gonna go all crazy n' stuff and try and make this into some sign of how Obama's evil, but we generally agree that at best, this is premature.

DailyKos is scouring international news, in order to get some perspective. TPM, in my opinion, nails it exactly. According to Josh Marshall's reasoning, it's really about a return of the world's largest superpower returning to the international community as a law-abiding citizen generally on board with the goals of that same community.

Glenn Greenwald is, to say the least, less charitable than anyone from the right, mostly because he's coming at it from a, uhh, well, you know, human perspective. He's also pissed about the RNC/Taliban link the left is halfheartedly pushing, which is fair.

For what it's worth, Obama himself seems to be taking this as a call to action, rather than a recognition of anything he has done so far.

Mostly I'm just amazed that all the above ink was spilled before lunchtime.

- NetRunner

USA! USA! USA!

xxovercastxx (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/xxovercastxx) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:06:09 -0700

(4 comments - 198 views)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2005/1764080976_baee1a4c5d_o.jpg

- xxovercastxx

Not "Cool" Anymore - Yair Lapid

demon_ix (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/demon_ix) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:16:28 -0700

(13 comments - 290 views)
Yair Lapid is one of the most prominent Israeli journalists. He hosts a weekend news show and writes columns for several newspapers, including the one I'm translating here. I felt very strongly about this particular column, and decided to share it with the Sift.
When commenting, please do two things - Remember that he is writing to Israelis, and read the whole thing, please, don't just read a couple of paragraphs, TL;DR, and skip to the usual comments.

-------------------------------------------------------------

We've stopped being "cool."
By Yair Lapid

We've had problems here since ever, but up until a few years ago, we were one of the "coolest" countries on Earth. When you met an American and told him you're from Israel, they would immediately say "Wow". It wasn't always clear what they said it about, but it was some kind of "wow" - about the high-tech, the most beautiful girls in the world, the Entebbe operation, the Six Day War, the Kibbutzim, "Exodus", the Mossad, the oranges, or the fact that the weak little Jews suddenly went to the beach and got a tan.

And sometime in the last decade, it was over. "I'm from Israel" you say to John Smith who is sucking on his beer, and he raises a foggy look, "you've got a lot of problems down there, man," he says, "it must be tough."

And John is still OK, he has a nephew serving in Iraq and he hates the "fucking Towel Heads" (the American equivalent to "Arabushim"). Maggie from London just takes her cocktail and walks away with a rather too upright blond neck, so you won't miss her loathing, Julio from Madrid has a Kefiah tied around his neck because he identifies with the screwed people of the world, and Jorgen from Munich - from Munich! God! - says he's a pacifist - which is code for not being willing to take blame for the Holocaust, he wasn't born then yet, and we shouldn't think it justifies everything.

There's something insulting about that. Like being the Prom Queen who got fat, or the moment when you meet - after 20 years - the captain of the basketball team, the one you cheered for until your throat was sore, and find out he's a complete idiot.

Because we're not "cool" anymore. Everything that used to be funny is now problematic. The villager walking into the Opera house in Vienna wearing biblical sandals was replaced by a bunch of teenagers destroying a hotel in Napa. And the guy who got to New York with 10 dollars and became a Millionaire, is now a suspect in a real-estate fraud case and is wanted in 6 countries. Instead of bringing drip-irrigation to Africa, we're selling weapons to the worst governments on Earth. The best army in the world gets photographed the worst on CNN.

And in response we're grumpy and complaining, calling them "Anti-semites", which of course makes things worse, since there's nothing less "cool" than a whiner, but we're stuck with the insult in our throat, and what can we do? Shut up? Leave the stage to the bad-guys?

Only it's not clear what we want from them, because even to ourselves we're not "cool" anymore. Instead of drying swamps we're dehydrating on the bench, collecting social security, the Bible is a settlement on Mt. Hebron, and the guy who calls you "my brother" is about to draw a knife and stab you in the parking lot.

We're the first to admit - in the headlines - that we're intolerable, but when someone else says it, we're always shocked. Because there's no Israeli who doesn't cringe when we kill (by accident, damnit, by accident!) kids in Gaza, but when they write about it in "Newsweek" we're offended to the bottom of our soul. Because we were hoping they wouldn't see us, that it's internal information, that in a world of a thousand TV stations and a million websites, no one will notice.

So it's true that we've had radical left-wing groups working against us around the world for years - backed by Islamic money and supported by self-hating Jews - but it's hard to say we didn't give them material to work with. Because the first rule of "cool" is that no one will love you if you won't love yourself.

We are no longer "cool." We were, and have ceased to be. We are a country - another country - stuck in the wrong side of the Globe, being broadcast between riots in Malaysia to the earthquake in Indonesia, too sweaty, not very graceful, one whose relatives are a bit ashamed of her but will still love her despite her drawbacks, and whose mistakes go unforgiven by everyone so she has to forgive herself, who has some good things - even great - but she still screws up quite a bit. Who has gained too much weight, and no one falls for her at the traffic light anymore, who has to pick being pretty or right, because the two don't fit together.

So should we give up? Forget it, realize that no one will look at us adoringly from the side, wishing they could be like us, or at least our friend? Of course not.

Whoever loved us before will happily come back to cuddle in our arms. Look at the United States in the first few months of Obama: in 5 minutes they went from being a hated empire, to a sexy country everybody wants to get in bed with. The biggest advantage of a flexible world, is that the public mind can change in an instant. Even China is "cool" all of a sudden. For a thousand years she's been the "Yellow Giant" and all of a sudden we're the ones yellow with envy.

It can happen to us as well, but with all due respect to the Explanation Office (raise your hand if you knew we had a re-formed Explanation office, and we even have a Minister of Explanation? What's wrong with you, of course we do, his name is Yuli Edelstein, haven't you noticed how popular we are ever since he was appointed?), if we want to be the guy who gets invited to all the right parties - it was to be for the right reasons.

You can't keep talking about the Holocaust if you don't look after the Holocaust survivors starving at your doorstep; You can't be mad at Jew-hatred if Arab-hatred is running your life; You can't expect to be taken seriously if three outlaw 17-year-olds can run your life from a trailer in the Territories; You can't keep asking for credit for being "the only democracy in the middle east," if your democracy is dysfunctional.

Because it's time we admitted the world isn't automatically against us. Even the Swedes - the same Swedes who made us so mad - gave us Nobel Prizes recently, and organized - of their own volition, but who here remembers the good things - the most important Holocaust memorial committee ever held in Europe.

Many will say that being "cool" isn't worth it. That it's not worth giving up the territories for, or preventing the IDF's freedom of operation, or interrupting Liberman (our foreign minister) from sticking a finger in their eye every time he meets them. It might not be. Israel wasn't formed so they would say the Jews are nice - but so that the Jews could tell them all to stick it.

But just admit you miss the time when every time we walked into a room, all the prettiest girls wanted to dance with us.

- demon_ix

Obama's speech on "economic crisis" is a vile concoction

marinara (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/marinara) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:50:21 -0700

(11 comments - 267 views)
Obama made another fine speech on the The anniversary is the collapse of Lehman Brothers (ok 1 day beforehand)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32841497/ns/business-economy_in_turmoil/

1. Obama is bought and paid for by Wall Street.
2. Obama crisis management skills are exactly equal to or defeated by a wet paper bag.

You can say Obama's economic policy is not bad, but you should know that they are really the last president's bailout policy.
Also the TARP plan has a good intention, but it's just a one time fix. It's supposed to kick the economy back up to speed. As if.

- marinara

Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession

Throbbin (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/Throbbin) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:05:02 -0700

(11 comments - 273 views)
"Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers." - http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/mexico-legalizes-drug-posession/

Who's coming with me?

- Throbbin

Is Obama really a Marketing Creation?

spoco2 (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/spoco2) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:17:12 -0700

(7 comments - 215 views)
OK, are the things said in this video speech by John Pilger that seems to be doing the rounds amongst a certain group of netizens

valid?

I'm really, really busy at work at present, and haven't the time to look into all the claims against Obama, and I know that the sift has many strident supporters and also those who dislike him.

What say you all as to the veracity of these claims?

- spoco2

The NHS/Socialist healthcare

dannym3141 (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/dannym3141) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:12:24 -0700

(13 comments - 371 views)
A nice little article i just read on yahoo news page.. Not meant to start a raging debate, not meant to be inflammatory, just a well written piece on the benefits of a system like the NHS, and the way the NHS is being used as the posterboy for the apocalypse by certain politicians in the US.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blog/talking_politics/article/55620/

Interesting read and some excellent points made. Hard for a brit to understand why the US are against a free and non-obligatory minimum standard of healthcare for all - it genuinely is. And having seen the recent Obama video, harder still.

This a good read to anyone from the US?

- dannym3141

Military Spending Worldwide

poolcleaner (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/poolcleaner) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:41:55 -0700

(4 comments - 320 views)
Neat little image at http://www.visualeconomics.com/military-spending-worldwide/

- poolcleaner

HAHA! Wow America is so ignorant of themselves!

Arsenault185 (http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/member/Arsenault185) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:13:29 -0700

(4 comments - 425 views)
Got this in an email.. Thought I'd share.

Hey check out these links when you get the chance. Just a few tidbits about how the US ranks in comparison to other countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_International

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment

Even though I am American, Its so sad that I can't help be be surprised that were not even lower than we are...

- Arsenault185