The New Zealand labour movement used to have its own newspaper. A group of us thought that now might be a good time for it to be digitally reborn: The Standard v2.0.
There’s a lot of fuss about at the moment over Ayman al-Zawahri’s labelling of Barack Obama as the kind of “house negro” described by Malcolm X. It’s a rather absurd comparison, and in my view probably more a sign of Al-Qaeda’s increasing irrelevance than anything else.
But as it turns out, I was listening to that exact Malcolm X speech just a couple of nights ago. While I disagree with a lot of Malcolm X had to say, he sure knew how to say it. And, unlike with Obama’s vacuous rhetoric, Malcolm X left his audience in no doubt what he stood for. Here’s the video for some context:
Ever wondered what would happen if the whole world could vote for the President of the United States?
According to The Economist’s online poll, which divvies up electoral college votes to each country based on population, it’s Obama by 8,471 to 16. Only belligerent wee Georgia is leaning strongly to McCain.
It’d be interesting to see what happened if you threw Hugo Chavez into the mix…
Perhaps Mr Key is feeling a little regretful about comparing himself to Barack Obama. Certainly the chutzpah inherent in such a comparison has been noted - including these comments in the ODT today from Simon Cunliffe:
“it’s quite natural that a political leader such as the “young, smart and rich” John Key might think about himself in the same breath as US Senator and Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States Barack Obama . . . isn’t it? …
Only on Monday did Mr Key and the National Party launch their billboard campaign: “Wave goodbye to higher taxes, not your loved ones. Choose a brighter future, party vote National”. And, gosh, right there on page 47, Mr Obama is preoccupied by the very same issue. “I consider the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be both fiscally irresponsible and morally troubling.”
Or possibly Mr Key was thinking back to the cut and thrust of his early days in Parliament, attacking the wimpish Labour-led Government for not joining the Iraq war effort, saying New Zealand was “missing in action”.
How reassuring then he must have found this entry further down on the same page: “Back in 2002, just before announcing my Senate campaign, I made a speech at one of the first anti-war rallies in Chicago in which I questioned the Administration’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction and suggested that an invasion of Iraq would prove to be a costly error.”
Great minds think alike - well, about the same sort of things, at least.”
John Key’s attempt to ride on Obama’s coattails hasbeenrightlyridiculed in the New Zealand press, but the differences go much deeper than their respective speaking abilities or Key’s charisma deficit.
As this quote from Obama in a recent piece in The Nation shows, when you look at whose interests they’re serving the contrast couldn’t be more stark.
It’s time you had a president who honors organized labor, who has walked on picket lines, who doesn’t choke on the word ‘union,’ who lets our unions do what they do best and organize our workers and who will finally make the Employee Free Choice Act (legislation that would remove barriers to organizing) the law of the land.
