Michael Tomasky

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History may one day record it as a stark irony - and let us hope an amusing one rather than the tragic kind - that on the very day that Barack Obama was sketching out to an adoring throng in Prague his vision of a post-nuclear world, North Korea launched a rocket that may one day give it the capacity to fire a nuclear warhead as far as 3,700 miles. This means, to get down to brass tacks, that it could hit Alaska.

The juxtaposition is worth dwelling on. Symbolically, it describes an age-old tension in statecraft, something scholars and writers have argued about down the ages.…  Seguir leyendo »

1.- An End To Extreme Poverty

Our generation's unique challenge is to live peacefully and sustainably on a crowded planet. I commit America to work with all the world to end extreme poverty in our generation, convert to sustainable energy and ecosystem use, and stabilise the world's population by 2050, before our numbers and resource demands overwhelm the planet and our fragile capacity to co-operate. Our wars are distractions from these challenges; today's enemies will become tomorrow's partners in shared prosperity.

By Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also a special adviser to United Nations secretary-general on the millennium development goals.…  Seguir leyendo »

Will I upset you if I offer the observation that, to us in America, the British leg of Barack Obama's tour came across as a bit of an afterthought? A Shakespearean coda, after the bodies have fallen and the swords have been re-sheathed and one of the side characters (Gordon Brown seems increasingly that, alas) steps forward to offer a little homiletic summation. Even Obama admirers such as myself were starting to suffer phenomenon fatigue and to think: "Enough already, dude. Come home and campaign."

But stop me - I don't want to feed into that ridiculous rightwing narrative about Obama thinking he's the messiah.…  Seguir leyendo »

Between them, Barack Obama and John McCain participated in more than 40 televised debates with their respective Democratic and Republican competitors over the course of 2007 and 2008. They were asked questions about topics from the serious (Iraq) to the frivolous (flag lapel pins). But to my knowledge, and I watched as many of these confabs as a normal human could be expected to endure, the men and woman bidding to be the next US president weren't asked a single direct question about the current administration's use, and misuse, of executive power.

This says something depressing about America's agenda-setting media corporations and their stars.…  Seguir leyendo »

The best news as 2008 dawns, of course, is that this most endless of presidential campaigns now finally reaches a point at which something actually happens. Finally the people will speak, starting Thursday in Iowa. So what will they say?The races in both parties have developed along very unexpected lines, making this probably the most fascinating presidential election in decades. Let's start with the Republicans. Here we have the most unpopular sitting president since Richard Nixon. Significant majorities of his countrymen have long since concluded that they made a mistake in electing him; that he isn't up to the job; that he basically lied us into a war; that his domestic policies have been at best no great shakes; and that the conservative ideology to which he has been in thrall has not served the country well, to put it mildly.…  Seguir leyendo »

This is another one of those very "serious" weeks in Washington, when we put aside matters like senators skulking about in men's rooms and turn our attention to the life-and-death questions as General David Petraeus testifies to Congress on the progress of the surge in Iraq. Our concern here is not the testimony itself, since it's been obvious for some time that Petraeus will say that the surge is showing sufficient signs of success for Congress to continue funding the war.

Cynosure though he will be today, Petraeus in fact has only a limited role to play in seeing to it that the US continue its mad engagement.…  Seguir leyendo »