When Barak Obama visited Germany in July, he stood at the site where a wall once separated East and West Berlin. With his usual eloquence he praised the crowd of 200,000 for having had the courage to tear that wall down. He reminded them that the “greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us one from the other.”
“The old future’s gone,” John Gorka sings. “We can’t get to there from here.”
That insight from Gorka, one of my favorite singer/songwriters chronicling the complexity of our times, deserves serious reflection. Tonight I want to argue that the way in which we humans have long imagined the future must be rethought, as the scope and depth of the cascading crises we face become painfully clearer day by day.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made his earlier endorsement of the 'surge' strategy in Iraq a prominent feature of his campaign. By portraying the 'surge' as a huge success. McCain poses as a foreign policy savant and depicts Barack Obama, who didn't favor the 'surge', as a candidate who "does not understand the challenges we face, and did not understand the need for the surge.
Amidst the death and destruction in Georgia, the neo-conservative reaction here in the United States is a sight to behold. Aggression, the neo-cons are screaming. The Russians are waging an unprovoked war of aggression, they’re exclaiming. This is unacceptable, they’re declaring. Something must be done, they’re saying.
Explosions have been heard in Gori after the planned handover of the Georgian town degenerated into a tense standoff between Russian and Georgian troops.
A court has ordered a prominent Malaysian blogger to reveal his sources for articles alleging sodomy accusations against an opposition leader, according to a lawyer.
News_Alerts 
The US military has begun delivering aid to Georgia as Washington stepped up support for the Georgian government over its conflict with Russia.
