Obama: An impossible challenge and hurdle?

Obama will be sworn-in as president of the US in 5 days.

He is confronted with formidable challenges, as The German Times catalogues:

"Al Qaeda, Darfur, Russia, China. The financial crisis. The EU, the Middle East, Kashmir, Taiwan, North Korea, Iran. And don’t forget all the domestic challenges. Welcome to your new job, Mr. Obama.

As the sands of time run out on the hapless administration of George W. Bush, the world is waiting with bated breath for Barack Obama to take the helm. The new man in the White House, after the dismal Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Greenspan era, a beacon of hope for mankind, faces a daunting in-tray. When he takes over on Jan. 20, he and his impressive team will confront a host of grave problems.

The guns of Gaza, rising tensions between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai assaults and ethnic clashes in the eastern Congo remind us that peace around the globe is a state of affairs to be fervently wished for but far from present-day reality. At the same time, the ruinous fallout from the global financial crisis has revealed the fragility of an economic system that was once touted as producing prosperity for all."

Continue reading here........

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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