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August 13, 2008

The Khachapuri Wars - All That Needs to be Said

Aggregated from: Ruminations on Russia

Anatole Lieven in an op-ed piece in the FT (subscription required) has summarized the Khachapuri Wars concisely and succinctly. It will not make for happy reading in Washington DC, London (or Southwold), Talinn, Warsaw or Edward Lucas-land, but I suspect that the Germans, and possibly the French, wi...

August 11, 2008

Wanted: not one political story, but four

Aggregated from: Neil Stockley

There’s a lot more talk about the art of political story-telling at the moment. For instance, CNN.com has an article by Paul Willis, who says that the US presidential election will boil down to whose story voters prefer, even more than where the candidates stand on the issues. And within the Liber...

August 6, 2008

Paris Hilton Ready to Lead AmericaThis is a Video post

"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead," says celebrity Paris Hilton in a tongue-in-cheek online video reply to the advertisment launched by John McCain. The viral caught the blogosphere by storm, triggering millions of hits and thousands of comments and blog posts around the world in less than a day. Paula Goes reflects on a few voices in this post.

Obama's lean and hungry look, openUSA

Aggregated from: open Democracy News Analysis - USA

In a whimsical column comparing Obama to Mr Darcy, Maureen Dowd records one Texan voter's nervous appraisal of Obama's physique. “He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “...

Barack Obama: not “one of us”

Aggregated from: Neil Stockley

During the primary season, Barack Obama gave us an object lesson in how political narratives work, engaging both the heart and the head.Now, after a slow start, the McCain campaign shows us how counter-stories really work; in the process, they might be proving something thoroughly unpleasant about A...

August 4, 2008

The disappointment of the “image war”, Kanishk Tharoor

Aggregated from: open Democracy News Analysis - USA

In the heat of the summer, the presidential race seems to have lost its fire. The contest between McCain and Obama had promised to be a clash of starkly different histories and personalities, and - thanks to both candidates' commitment to bipartisanship and dialogue - had even promised to be ab...

July 31, 2008

Barack Obama at 10 Downing Street in London

Aggregated from: Darryl Wolk Blog

Barack Obama at 10 Downing Street in LondonBarack Obama delivered remarks before a press avail at the Prime Minister's residence in London, the famed 10 Downing Street.British leader tells Obama: Hit the beach Posted: 11:59 AM ET Sen. Barack Obama listens to British Tory Leader David Cameron Satur...

Obama in Britain! (and the rest of the world, grrrr), Anthony Barnett

Aggregated from: open Democracy News Analysis - USA

Kanishk is in holiday and asked me before he left to report on Barack Obama  in London. It is quite hard to do so. There isn't really a British angle as the trip was played out for US domestic politics. Dropping in on the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition was a politeness. He got ...

July 30, 2008

Barack Obama’s political tour, Godfrey Hodgson

Aggregated from: open Democracy News Analysis - american power & the world

Senator Barack Obama's trip to the middle east and Europe from 19-26 July 2008 was no junket. Nor was it an updated version of the old "three I's tour" that Democratic presidential candidates used to make - to Italy, Ireland and Israel - for reasons exclusively of domestic electo...

Obama, wrong about Belfast, openUSA

Aggregated from: open Democracy News Analysis - USA

Over on OurKingdom, Ian Parsley corrects Barack Obama's version of Northern Irish history. Standing near the ghost of the Berlin Wall last week, the US presidential candidate claimed that walls had “come down in Belfast, where Protestants and Catholics found a way to live together.” "Se...