Monday, February 25, 2008
Your Morning News 2.25.08
Posted by Josh in Barack Obama, Cuba, Election 2008, Iraq, Kurds, Nader, no country for old men, Oscars, Turkey
Just to get it out of the way, the 80th Academy Awards were last night. No Country for Old Men was the big winner, pulling down awards for best picture, best director, and best supporting actor. Best actor went to Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood and best actress went to new 2.0somethings obsession Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose (A biopic of someone I have never heard of). If anyone wants you to talk about the ceremony (and they will) just mention it that seemed subdued and talk about how much all the montages sucked. We discuss the latter at length in our 2.0somethings liveblog.
Ralph Nader has entered the race for the Presidency. To people of our generation he is known more for being a perennial third-party candidate than he is for his crusading consumer protection work. That should say something, Mr. Nader. Nader announced his intentions on Meet the Press on Sunday. If this comes up at work, just say disdainfully that it is all ego at this point.
Democrats, Cuba, and Iraq after the jump
Moving on to people who might actually be President some day, today is a media love-fest for Senator Obama. The New York Times has a story saying that Obama is taking blows from the left and the right and is getting “the customary greeting that the political tribe accords to apparent front-runners.” The story goes on to detail the debate within the Obama campaign on which attacks to respond to and which to ignore. One place the Obama campaign is not taking blows from is the New York Times (Will Kristol does not count). Its main political story today is about the unspoken fear on Obama’s campaign that he might be assasinated. The story essentially compares him to Dr. King and to Robert Kennedy and quotes supporters who pray for his safety. The Los Angeles Times ran a similarly puffish piece profiling lifelong Republicans who now support Senator Obama.
In Cuba, the National Assembly this weekend voted Raul Castro, brother of former President Fidel Castro, as President. This signifies that there will be few major changes to domestic of foreign policy. If the topic comes up at work, and it won’t, make sure to comment that US/Cuban relations rely on us changing our position more than it relies on the Cuban government.
Finally, looking to Iraq we see a stories reminding us of the simmering ethnic tensions and that it is really not a very nice place to live. This past Sunday, a suicide bomber attacked a procession of Shiite pilgrims and killed 40. This has the potential to spoil a delicate ceasefire that has been put in place by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. His supporters are chafing to fight back after this attack and others on Shiite pilgrims.
Additionally, fighting is intensifying between Turkish troops and Iraqi Kurds in the northern provinces of Iraq. Turkey has a large Kurdish population that has been historically, and is currently, discriminated against and brutally oppressed. For years, Kurdish terrorist groups have been staging themselves in Kurdish Iraq and sneaking across the border to stage attacks. Four days ago Turkish ground forces invaded across the border (violating the sovereignty of Iraq and basically telling the US to go to hell) and having been clashing with the Kurdish groups since then. The US is pretending the whole thing isn’t happening.