interview the most certain act in the fight against AIDS is to maintain monogamous relationships. The advice was seen as seen as ironic coming from a former President who was impeached by the House of Representatives (and later acquitted by the Senate) for perjury and obstruction of justice involving an extra-marital affair he was having with a 22-year-old White House intern.

Speaking of politics, the former President later failed to admit that Barack Obama was ready for the highest office of the United States. This has fueled reports that Clinton is still angry over Obama defeating Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States.

Win or lose, Obama will find himself most often compared to Bill Clinton, the country’s last Democratic President. In Israel, Aron’s Israel Peace Weblog noticed something familiar when Obama recently sat down for an interview with the conservative paper, the Jerusalem Post.

No one in my quadrant of the political spectrum is ever going to be elected President. So my key criteria for a “good” President are: compassion, worldliness, intelligence and political savvy. Obama seems to have all of these in abundance. Although I don't agree with many of the details of his positions, the more I hear him speak the more impressed I am. He is the savviest and most intelligent politician the Democratic party has produced since Bill Clinton, and I mean that as a compliment. He may not be super progressive, but he seems to be on the correct side of the fence on all important issues. And the more I see him, the more I feel he has the same human empathy and care for people that Clinton did.

Finally, Clinton’s policies against Osama bin Laden have again made waves. Saisi Duni, from Kenya, reports that a new book by the journalist Lawrence Wright claims that the U.S. military strikes to hoping to cripple the Al-Qaeda network in east Africa after the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had the opposite effect.

The Clinton administration’s failure to strike back effectively in 1998 helped make it possible for al Qaeda to carry out the massive attacks on New York and Washington three years later, says the book titled The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright describes as “ineffectual” the US retaliation for the August 7, 1998, bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Less than two weeks later, 13 cruise missiles were fired at a factory in Khartoum that the United States believed was being used to develop poison gas for use by al Qaeda. Simultaneously, 66 cruise missiles were launched from US warships in the Arabian Sea. Their targets were al Qaeda training camps near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The twin missile attacks were given the code name “Operation Infinite Reach.”


On the little square in front of the Hotel Serena in Stone Town a corner for Obama has been created. Just like that! I really like when active citizens decide to express an attitude and gradually take over the public room - in this case with a bit of colourful grafitti and locally made merchandise.

Zanzibar is no exception.

• In Trinidad, calypso legend The Mighty Sparrow sings that America could "regain worldwide respect with Obama’s vision", and in Jamaica reggae star Cocoa Tea adds "This is not about class nor color, race nor creed. It's about the changes, what the Americans need."
• In Egypt, a humanitarian worker has written letters to dozens of superdelegates urging them to back Obama.
• In China a dramatic Obama rally is being planned on the Great Wall.
• In Gaza, a Palestinian student has been making hundreds of campaign phone calls to the US over the internet, whenever he has electricity and is not under Israeli bombardment.
• In Kenya, Obama is so popular that a beer has been named after him!
• On the internet there over 40 international Obama fan groups on Facebook, many with more than 500 members, focused on Denmark, France, Indonesia, Tanzania and many other countries. There are also dozens of blogs and websites (see listings in the sidebar).

And wherever opinion polls have been conducted, comparing him with Clinton and McCain, Senator Obama is consistently the favourite candidate by a wide margin, for example:

• 74% in Japan
• 71% in Brazil
• 68% in Holland
• 64% in South Africa
• 61% in Britain
• 54% in Iraq
• 48% in Switzerland

What suprised me in the economist article is that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia is actively lobbying for “the Pentagon to put the headquarters of its Africa Command (AFRICOM) in her country, not least because it would make it much harder for ragtag rebels to mount another coup”.

I know that Kenya was being considered for this but I wonder if the election violence has spared us having a U.S. military on our soil. Goodness knows the Brits have done us no good and especially not the women they’ve been raping an violating over the years. It barely makes sense why Liberia would want a base there but why do other African countries actively want the U.S. military on their soil?

African’s have a lot of hope that Obama will do great things for Africa because of his heritage; a lot closer to Africa than most African Americans, since Obama’s father was a Kenyan himself; rather than someone who traces their African lineage through centuries, Obama has a very real and present relationship with Africa.

But the best that Obama will be able to offer Africa will look not dissimilar to what Bush has offered the continent over the last 7 years; namely aid packages that are finally linked to achievements on the ground before more aid is opened up, which leads to diminished corruption and more funds reaching the people who should receive from the U.S.’s generous giving.

But Obama’s right to contest for the Presidency against John McCain in November, is not assured, with the battle of Texas between Obama and Clinton looking to be a dead heat; increasingly it looks like super delegates will be the way in which the candidate is chosen at the convention, which will provide McCain with a massive head start in the national race, as well as the very real possibility that the popular candidate (who may well be Obama) being side-lined by the candidate with the most battle hardened political operatives (namely Clinton).

What may swing the balance is that in Barack Obama, the Democratic party may finally have a candidate who can be as inspirational as John F. Kennedy; the touchstone of inspirational president’s of the last 50 years.

Bill Clinton may have been ‘the first black president’, but Obama will show that being black and being the president doesn’t equate to folksy chicken cook outs; in Obama black Americans, and indeed black people across the world have a role model that shows that excellence transcends race.

That is if Hillary doesn’t take this momentous opportunity for change in Washington away from him.

And my new little long shot/what-if dream of this campaign? Would Hillary run with McCain on a joint Democrat/Republican Washington Establishment ticket against Obama? Now THAT would be a race of my dreams….