Caroline Kennedy endorses Obama; Obama's SC victory speech

Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama in an editorial in the NYT entitled "A President Like My Father." She says, in part, the following:

All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

Barack is an inspirational voice for the future for our generation, just as JFK was for his.

Meanwhile, if you didn't see it, Barack gave an amazing victory speech tonight in South Carolina after his 55-27% blowout of Hillary Clinton, calling on us to move past divisive politics that box people in, and look to the future and to addressing the problems that concern all of us. It was a denunciation of the manipulative, deceptive methods the Clintons have been using and a call to go down the path that will best serve the Democratic Party and all Americans.

Update: (1) Here is the transcript of Obama's speech from NYT.

(2) Ezra Klein says, re Hillary: "The chances for disappointment are less, but so are the chances for transformation." I agree, but (a) we need transformation and (b) I'm young and still believe in voting for the honest guy.

Opera relegalized in Turkmenistan: good thing or bad thing?

On the plus side, it looks like the autocratic government continues to at least restore a semblance of normality. Opera, the circus, ballet and other such pernicious foreign cultural influences are now legal again after being illegalized during the Years of the Rukhnama. (For other examples of the weirdness of Saparmurat Niyazov, Father of the Turkmen, I recommend checking out the archives of the Turkmenistan Project, which have weekly news summaries up through 2007).

The downside, of course, is that some people will have to listen to opera.

More seriously, it's also being reported that the Turkmen government will actually permit an international auditing of the country's gas reserves. To see, you know, if they really exist. Niyazov said they did, but depending on Niyazov's sanity was always inadvisable.

Friday anthem - Auferstanden aus Ruinen

The national anthem of East Germany, "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" (English: Risen from Ruins). The Youtube includes many images of the DDR. ¡Qué Ostalgia! It reminds me of Good-bye, Lenin!, one of my favorite movies because it includes not one, but two national anthems in their entirety ("Auferstanden" and "Das Lied der Deutschen").

Anyway, the "fun fact" about "Auferstanden" is that it has exactly the same beat as "Das Lied der Deutschen," that is, each can be sung along with the other melody (the music for "Auferstanden" was by Hanns Eisler). Also, since the author of the lyrics (Johannes Becher) neglected to anticipate the incoming Cold War, the lyrics ("Germany, united fatherland!") had to be left behind somewhere in the '50s, leaving just the tune. Best other line: "If we unite as brothers, we will defeat the enemy of the people."

Electoral reform in Italy

Romano Prodi's government in Italy has fallen. However, Italy can't really go to elections yet, because the electoral system is defective. The current ridiculous system was introduced by Silvio Berlusconi's outgoing rightist government in a blatant bid to win the next elections. It allowed Prodi's Union coalition to sweep into office with a big majority in the House of Deputies, yet have only a two-vote margin in the Senate (whose confidence must be retained). This meant small parties could still play the blackmailer role, and one of them, UDEUR, a small Christian-democratic party most popular in the Naples area, left the coalition due to a corruption probe into the justice minister's wife.

It appears that Italy will have some sort of unity or technocratic government whose task is to bring the country to elections. All sorts of solutions have been mooted for the problem of the disproportionate power held by smaller parties in the large coalitions (especially on the left), even as far as bringing in first-past-the-post. (In Israel, which has the same problem, the same solutions have been mooted).

The Italian Constitutional Court has just okayed a referendum to go forward. From the Reuters link it seems that voters would vote "yes" or "no" to several different possibilities to be incorporated into a law. Of course, if that's the case, this sort of referendum is defective insofar as some of the possibilities approved might well be contradictory. But it may well result in something better than the political parties have managed to agree on.

If the big parties can put aside their rivalries, the best solution may well be the simplest--just forget about everything else, and impose a 4 or 5% threshold, distributing seats in the regions. Ban joint electoral lists or coalitions if it's necessary. MMP doesn't seem like a great idea--in prior years it was manipulated by the larger parties, who ran duplicate "front" parties in the constituencies to increase their parliamentary overhang (as is legal, but distasteful; it doesn't happen in Germany, New Zealand or Scotland, other places where MMP is used).

A threshold of 5% would likely allow in the center-left Democratic Party, the Communist Refoundation, the centrist/Christian-democratic Union of Christian and Center Democrats, the conservative Forza Italia, and the rightist National Alliance. Also possibly clearing the bar would be the socialist Democratic Left and the regionalist Northern League. A reasonable diversity of opinion, all in all, without allowing excessive proportionality to continue to paralyze government.

New flag for Iraq

The Iraqi parliament has approved a new flag design, eliminating the three green stars from the center band of the flag:

old flag



new flag


The three stars in the old Iraqi flag were for Iraq, Syria and Egypt, which under their Arab nationalist (Ba'ath in Iraq and Syria) leadership were supposed to form the United Arab Republic. The United Arab Republic, in any form, hasn't existed in around 45 years, plus it reminds everyone of the Ba'ath party, so they ditched the stars.

This is supposed to be a "temporary" design for when a new flag is agreed upon, theoretically next year. I will, however, be taking 2015 in the office betting pool.

Update: Changed on 25 January because Wiki changed the images on me. The "old" flag now comes from Flags of the World.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

I had, admittedly, not listened to Martin Luther King's speech "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam," before today. It is worth 23 minutes to hear in its entirety.

The Belgian version of "intercultural"

An amusing (?) note from the Economist's EU blogger:

2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. As such, the website highlights national projects done in each of the EU member states. There are 27 member states, and 29 projects. Why 29 projects? It seems that 26 member states have one project each, and Belgium submitted three--one intercultural project from the Flemings, one intercultural project from the Walloons, and one intercultural project from the tiny German-speaking community of Belgium. That's the true meaning of multiculturalism.

Guess we shouldn't read too much into it. After all, six months after their elections, they did finally manage to form a provisional government...

Update: I changed the title of the post, just because its dripping sarcasm is hard to pick up through a computer.

Serbia: second round, as expected, on high turnout

Radical Party candidate Tomislav Nikolić and current president/Democratic Party candidate Boris Tadić have finished 1-2 in the Serbian presidential election first round, as was widely expected. The greater surprise here was turnout, which was around 60 percent, well up from the last presidential poll in 2004 and roughly equivalent to turnout in last year's parliamentary poll.

Compared to the previous election, both leading candidates took higher shares of the vote (Nikolić at 39 percent and Tadić at 35 percent). A key question will be where supporters of the third-place candidate, Velimir Ilić of New Serbia (an ally of PM Vojislav Koštunica) decide to put their second-round votes.

If one assumes that Tadić takes most of the votes of Cedomir Jovanović (a liberal) and Ištvan Pastor (the Hungarian minority candidate) this gives him 43.2 percent; Nikolić gets the support of Milutin Mrkonijć (from Milosević's Socialists) for 45.4 percent. It therefore seems that much will turn on those who voted for Ilić, who took 7.6 percent in the first round. Note that in 2004, turnout for the second round was almost identical as for the first round.

RFE/RL has coverage. The numbers I have seen come from Wikipedia, and I am not sure of the original source.