With near certainty now that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee, even doubters should accept that there is a fundamental current of change within the US to overcome the dark chapters of its history of racial discrimination.

If he defeats John McCain in November, the message American voters will send to the world will echo Martin Luther King’s dream of having a country where a person is judged by his character and worth rather than skin color or origin. This should be cause for satisfaction because no country today puts more value on the quality of the person than on social class, ethnic origin and similar elements.

This could be the start of a new era of American soft power in the world after the disastrous years of George Bush, during which the US lost the trust of the world’s people as a country wedded to universal values rather than political expediency.

Support for Obama is attributed to the desire of ordinary Americans for real change instead of politics as usual. Ordinary Democrats have brought him to this point of triumph after their initial disdain less than a year ago when Hilary Clinton was seen as a shoo-in for the nomination.

The mystery now is whether the majority of American voters will choose him as the most credible agent of genuine change or turn to McCain for more of the same spiced with a touch of change.

Whatever the degree of blood-letting between Obama and Clinton through to the summer, we stand at a momentous point in American and world history. Obama’s swearing in as President will not be a magic wand that removes the scars of the injustices done to black people over time on all continents. But it will be a symbol of new hope that the world’s people, not just Americans, are more ready to deal with each person on the basis of his or her character rather than as “the other”.

This is the audacity of hope. A hope not just of American voters fed up with back room pork barrel politics but of a world exhausted by the hypocrisy and platitudes used to disguise America’s raw pursuit of power in recent decades.

All of us are now aware that flawed processes bring flawed results. Processes based on “winning at any cost” cannot bring the kind of results capable of delivering change we can all believe in. To bring a genuine end to politics as usual, the election process between now and November must be principles-based rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is necessary both for the remaining process of Democratic Primaries and the contest with McCain after that.

There is nothing pointy headed about this contention. The process can be either fear-based, meaning that it is guided by the fears of people about jobs and benefits etc. Or it can be hope-based, meaning it resolutely focuses on building a better future free from the negative psychology of the past. It cannot have one foot in each camp. The fight and flight of fear and the innocence of hope do not mix well.

How the process works in practical terms depends on the behavior of American voters, not that of the candidates or media. Both the latter respond to what they perceive as the concerns of ordinary voters, especially those that comprise the electorate’s bulk including the blue-collar and less educated “masses”.

Blaming politicians and media is undeserved if less-educated white working class voters mistrust Obama simply because they mistrust African Americans or Hispanics or Asians. Don’t scold the politicians. They will do whatever they think will win votes. Thus, Clinton swallows beer and Obama goes to bowling alleys.

Are the coming months capable of triggering a start to real change? Absolutely yes. But only if American voters treat the election process with respect and think about their responsibility as individuals to improve the terrain upon which their families, communities, country and the world rely for progress.

There is an African saying that “Character is like smoke, it cannot be hidden.” This fairly accurately describes Obama’s ascension from a “Who’s that?” to a change agent of history.
The issue now is whether American voters deserve a better future for their country. If so, what are they willing to do about it? Albert Einstein had a nice bit of advice: “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” This is something white blue-collar voters might remember in coming weeks.

Why is the media, and the blogs, overlooking the “real” issues? The recent Clinton/Obama debate once again brought under spotlight a serious lack of professionalism among journalists and their growing penchant to trivialize serious issues. To give another example, few seem interested at the looming food crisis that is likely to have worldwide political and economic ramifications.

Would the media wake up only when the wolf reaches their doors or the dinner table (when it is too late)? Even if the media is looking for “sensational” news there is plenty to be found in the “real” issues. How about this….?

“Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting ‘We’re hungry’ forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. ‘It’s an explosive situation and threatens political stability,’ worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d’Ivoire’s chamber of commerce,” reports The Economist.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have been a co-blogger at The Moderate Voice for nearly three years now. After alcohol and cigarettes, I found blogging to be highly addictive. I gave up smoking two years ago (one addicition at a time please!!!) and have heavily reduced my intake of alcohol. My wife/mother ensure that I have meals at the right time, and begin to howl in protest when I am at the computer for more than three hours at a stretch.

Thus, I remain a “healthy” blogger because I am under watch at home (and have not much time when I am travelling on professional assignments). A recent NYT story informs us that the bloggers are toiling “under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.”

The NYT goes on: “They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

“Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.”

More here…

I have never been (alas!) paid for my posts (and hence look for other work avenues for survival), I can understand the compulsions of other bloggers who have to keep hunting for, and then retaining, a position by working 24/7.

To me blogging is a pure joy. I have been a working journalist for most of my life but now find that the mainstream media has undergone a sea change, and those who learnt the professional nuances in the pre-1980 era have little opportunity to contribute. I and Joe Gandelman, editor-in-chief of this blog, began our mainstream journalism career almost at the same time and worked in New Delhi in the early 1970s.

I had almost begun to feel left out three years ago in the absence of a platform to write. By sheer chance I revived contact with Joe in the US. Joe motivated me to get back to writing…and got me out of my “writer’s block”. So in this way blogs can get people out of stress and listlessness. In fact one can make a contribution towards public good too…so long blogging does not become an addicition. And your entire life is not dependent on this activity…

PS: Maybe the governments should insist on warning signs on all blogs (as on cigarette packets) that “blogging for more than two/three hours at a stretch is dangerous for health”.

[For more blog reaction to this story GO HERE.]

If credibility and fairness were not necessary ingredients of a criminal-justice system, then the bolt-out-of-the-blue announcement that six Guantánamo Bay detainees will be tried before a military tribunal – and if found guilty executed – for their roles in the 9/11 terror attacks might be viewed as belatedly taking care of business.

But as it is, there is a decided shortage of both credibility and fairness.

There has not been a single successful trial before a military tribunal in the six and a half years since the attacks because of the Bush administration has been repeatedly taken to task by federal courts for its embrace of extralegal prosecutions, the key defendant among the six was waterboarded, and the timing of the announcement stinks of political expedience and not justice being served.

No, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former Al Qaeda operations chief who has described himself as the mastermind of the attacks, and the five other defendants are not nice people, but that does not obviate the Bush administration’s obligation to play by the rules.

As it is, if the trial ever begins – and I have doubts about that – it will be widely viewed as a kangaroo court around the world and yet another instance of a presidency that has used the War on Terror to rob its own citizens of the very rights that it supposedly was defending in going after terrorists.

More here.

You Readers must really like us as a news and opinion source because we are ranked #46 on Memeorandum’s Leaderboard! We are surprised, honored and grateful! Thank-you Memeorandum and Dear Readers!

Gabe Rivera at Memeorandum and Techmeme:

The ascent of blogs and other independent publishers has expanded and revitalized political dialogue in the United Status. While the “mainstream” media remains the primary source of factural reporting, they no longer own the agenda. It follows then that tapping a diversity of media sites is essential to produce memeorandum’s autosummaries of the web’s most buzzed-about political items.

What exactly are these sources? The memeorandum Leaderboard, launched today, identifies 100 of them, ranking sources simply by how much they’ve appeared on memeorandum in the past month. It updates every 20 minutes and offers archives of past days. This follows the introduction of a similar list for Techmeme enumerating leaders in tech reporting.

The memeorandum Leaderboard doesn’t tell the whole story of course. For instance, influential curators of opinion like Instapundit.com don’t figure highly given memeorandum’s preference for longer articles. Yet it remains a handy portal to many of the sources with the greatest role in framing and shaping the national debate.

Last night officially ended my own extensive months-long travel show schedule, with an evening performance in Los Angeles. More travel will start up again in mid October but not as heavy until 2008. SO now some things on the back burner at TMV will be dealt with quickly:

BLOGROLL UPDATE: As promised months ago, we will remove most inactive blogs or blogs TMV had links with but that no longer have links or no link to TMV. Also, a happy TMV reader alerted us to a blog that has removed us from its Moderate column due to some posts here and put us in another category. We are appreciative of being on its blogroll in what was originally a reciprocal link. We revisited that site and have now moved it on our blogroll from Center Voices to Other Voices, which has many fine blogs that do not fit into the other three blogroll categories.

BOOK, CD REVIEWS: Due to a backlog reviews will be shorter and punchier but you will see more and more of them.

Non Political Topics: We’ll be doing more nonpolitical posts as well and running special Guest Voice columns on some of those issues.

Take A Peek: Several readers asked about that feature and it will be appearing regularly starting Monday — pointing readers to weblogs on the right, left and center that we may not always agree with but that deal with issues, people and events. Those featured will not received advance warnings. Viewpoints will be rotated and include sites of all kinds.

As you all have learned by now, I try to keep track of the blogosphere and try to find (discover) new blogs just about every single day. Many blogs are created every day, the far majority of those blogs are useless, but some really add something to the blogosphere and deserve a bigger audience. That is why, when I find such a blog, I do not just add it to my blogroll (or befriended blogs depended on my relationship with the owner) but also spend a post to it. Today I would like to point out 2 blogs:
- Turkish Digest: a blog owned by a Turkish-American woman. This blog is a great way to stay updated about what is going on in Turkey.
- EU-Digest: a blog dedicated to European news, as the name implies. You will not find American on this blog: it is all about Europe. A great resource for European news.

I encourage all of you to read these two blogs very regularly. Americans have to look beyond America’s borders: there is a big world out there.