politicalevent:presidential race

  • Trump claims Twitter is stopping him from getting more followers | The Independent
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-twitter-followers-tweets-today-facebook-google-democrats-accoun

    Donald Trump has accused Twitter of blocking followers from his account, despite lacking any evidence to support such a claim, in his latest complaint about how he is treated by social media companies.

    The president wrote on Twitter that the site had “made it much more difficult for people to join @realDonaldTrump,” despite his account featuring the same, one-click follow button as any other profile. He also claimed the platform had “removed many names & greatly slowed the level and speed of increase,” suggesting Twitter had targeted him and other Republicans by reducing following counts. 

    Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!” Mr Trump said Tuesday during a series of angry morning tweets. “_They have acknowledged-done NOTHING!

    Twitter and other major social media sites have spent the year purging millions of fake accounts and bots, with countless celebrities — including the president — and regular users alike seeing slight reductions in their followings due to the loss of false profiles.

    The effort has been part of a response to criticism from Congress that companies have not been doing enough to combat efforts at election meddling such as those seen during the 2016 presidential race. In October, Twitter announced it had removed at least nine million accounts as part of an effort that had been underway since July. 

    Facebook has also been steadily purging fake accounts throughout the year, and executives from all three platforms the president attacked on Twitter have testified before Congress in 2018 about their company’s responses to the spread of disinformation, Russian interference in the 2016 election and other issues. 

    It was previously reported the president’s personal Twitter handle, @realDonaldTrump, was followed by millions of fake accounts and bots. During one purge in July, Mr Trump lost at least 300,000 followers.

    Gallup conducted a survey in May that found nearly 15m — 29 per cent — of Mr Trump’s Twitter followings appeared to be fake accounts. 

    The president has a Twitter following of 56.3m as of Tuesday, compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who has a following of 104m. 

    The same Gallup survey found Mr Obama’s following to have a fake following of nearly 15 per cent. 

    The tweets from the president come a day after a pair of reports were released by the Senate Intelligence Committee said Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election was more widespread than previously thought and aimed at dividing Americans.

  • The Rise and Fall of the Latin American Left | The Nation
    https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ebb-and-flow-of-latin-americas-pink-tide

    Conservatives now control Latin America’s leading economies, but the region’s leftists can still look to Uruguay for direction.
    By Omar G. Encarnación, May 9, 2018

    Last December’s election of Sebastián Piñera, of the National Renewal party, to the Chilean presidency was doubly significant for Latin American politics. Coming on the heels of the rise of right-wing governments in Argentina in 2015 and Brazil in 2016, Piñera’s victory signaled an unmistakable right-wing turn for the region. For the first time since the 1980s, when much of South America was governed by military dictatorship, the continent’s three leading economies are in the hands of right-wing leaders.

    Piñera’s election also dealt a blow to the resurrection of the Latin American left in the post–Cold War era. In the mid-2000s, at the peak of the so-called Pink Tide (a phrase meant to suggest the surge of leftist, noncommunist governments), Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia, or three-quarters of South America’s population (some 350 million people), were under left-wing rule. By the time the Pink Tide reached the mini-state of Mexico City, in 2006, and Nicaragua, a year later (culminating in the election of Daniel Ortega as president there), it was a region-wide phenomenon.

    It’s no mystery why the Pink Tide ran out of steam; even before the Chilean election, Mexican political scientist Jorge Castañeda had already declared it dead in The New York Times. Left-wing fatigue is an obvious factor. It has been two decades since the late Hugo Chávez launched the Pink Tide by toppling the political establishment in the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election. His Bolivarian revolution lives on in the hands of his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, but few Latin American governments regard Venezuela’s ravaged economy and diminished democratic institutions as an inspiring model. In Brazil, the Workers’ Party, or PT, was in power for 14 years, from 2002 through 2016, first under its founder, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, between 2003 and 2011, and then under his successor and protégée, Dilma Rousseff, from 2011 to 2016. The husband-and-wife team of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of the Peronist Party governed Argentina from 2003 to 2015. Socialist Michelle Bachelet had two nonconsecutive terms in office in Chile, from 2006 to 2010 and from 2014 to 2018.

    Economic turmoil and discontent is another culprit. As fate would have it, the Pink Tide coincided with one of the biggest economic expansions in Latin American history. Its engine was one of the largest commodities booms in modern times. Once the boom ended, in 2012—largely a consequence of a slowdown in China’s economy—economic growth in Latin America screeched to a halt. According to the International Monetary Fund, since 2012 every major Latin American economy has underperformed relative to the previous 10 years, with some economies, including that of Brazil, the region’s powerhouse, experiencing their worst recession in decades. The downturn reined in public spending and sent the masses into the streets, making it very difficult for governments to hang on to power.

    Meanwhile, as the commodity boom filled states’ coffers, leftist politicians became enmeshed in the same sorts of corrupt practices as their conservative predecessors. In April, Lula began serving a 12-year prison sentence for having accepted bribes in exchange for government contracts while in office. His prosecution, which in principle guarantees that he will not be a candidate in this year’s presidential race, was the high point of Operation Car Wash, the biggest anti-corruption dragnet in Brazilian history. Just after leaving office, in 2015, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was indicted for fraud for conspiring with her former public-works secretary, José López, to steal millions of federal dollars intended for roadwork in Argentina. The “nuns and guns” scandal riveted the country, with the arrest of a gun-toting López as he hurled bags stuffed with millions of dollars over the walls of a Catholic convent in a suburb of Buenos Aires. In Chile, Bachelet left office under a cloud of suspicion. Her family, and by extension Bachelet herself, is accused of illegal real-estate transactions that netted millions of dollars.

    All this said, largely overlooked in obituaries of the Pink Tide is the right-wing backlash that it provoked. This backlash aimed to reverse the shift in power brought on by the Pink Tide—a shift away from the power brokers that have historically controlled Latin America, such as the military, the Catholic Church, and the oligarchy, and toward those sectors of society that have been marginalized: women, the poor, sexual minorities, and indigenous peoples. Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016 perfectly exemplifies the retaliation organized by the country’s traditional elites. Engineered by members of the Brazilian Congress, a body that is only 11 percent female and has deep ties to industrial barons, rural oligarchs, and powerful evangelical pastors, the impeachment process was nothing short of a patriarchal coup.

    In a 2017 interview, Rousseff made note of the “very misogynist element in the coup against me.… They accused me of being overly tough and harsh, while a man would have been considered firm, strong. Or they would say I was too emotional and fragile, when a man would have been considered sensitive.” In support of her case, Rousseff pointed out that previous Brazilian presidents committed the same “crime” she was accused of (fudging the national budget to hide deficits at reelection time), without any political consequence. As if to underscore the misogyny, Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, came into office with an all-male cabinet.

    In assessing the impact of the Pink Tide, there is a tendency to bemoan its failure to generate an alternative to neoliberalism. After all, the Pink Tide rose out of the discontent generated by the economic policies championed by the United States and international financial institutions during the 1990s, such as privatizations of state enterprises, austerity measures, and ending economic protectionism. Yet capitalism never retreated in most of Latin America, and US economic influence remains for the most part unabated. The only significant dent on the neoliberal international order made by the Pink Tide came in 2005, when a massive wave of political protests derailed the George W. Bush administration’s plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. If enacted, this new trade pact would have extended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all countries in the Americas save for Cuba, or 34 nations in total.

    But one shouldn’t look at the legacy of the Pink Tide only through the lens of what might have been with respect to replacing neoliberalism and defeating US imperialism. For one thing, a good share of the Pink Tide was never anti-neoliberal or anti-imperialist. Left-wing rule in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile (what Castañeda called the “good left”) had more in common with the social-democratic governments of Western Europe, with its blend of free-market economics and commitment to the welfare state, than with Cuba’s Communist regime.

    Indeed, only in the radical fringe of the Pink Tide, especially the triumvirate of Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador (the “bad left,” according to Castañeda), was the main thrust of governance anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist. Taking Cuba as a model, these self-termed revolutionaries nationalized large sectors of the economy, reinvigorated the role of the state in redistributing wealth, promoted social services to the poor, and created interstate institutions, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, to promote inter-American collaboration and to challenge US hegemony.

    Second, the focus on neoliberalism and US imperialism obscures the Pink Tide’s biggest accomplishments. To be sure, the picture is far from being uniformly pretty, especially when it comes to democracy. The strong strand of populism that runs through the Pink Tide accounts for why some of its leaders have been so willing to break democratic norms. Claiming to be looking after the little guy, the likes of Chávez and Maduro have circumvented term limits and curtailed the independence of the courts and the press. But there is little doubt that the Pink Tide made Latin America more inclusive, equitable, and democratic, by, among other things, ushering in an unprecedented era of social progressivism.

    Because of the Pink Tide, women in power are no longer a novelty in Latin American politics; in 2014, female presidents ruled in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Their policies leave little doubt about the transformative nature of their leadership. In 2010, Fernández boldly took on the Argentine Catholic Church (then headed by present-day Pope Francis) to enact Latin America’s first ever same-sex marriage law; this was five years before same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the United States. A gender-identity law, one of the world’s most liberal, followed. It allows individuals to change their sex assigned at birth without permission from either a doctor or a judge. Yet another law banned the use of “conversion therapy” to cure same-sex attraction. Argentina’s gay-rights advances were quickly emulated by neighboring Uruguay and Brazil, kick-starting a “gay-rights revolution” in Latin America.

    Rousseff, who famously referred to herself with the gender-specific title of a presidenta, instead of the gender-neutral “president,” did much to advance the status of women in Brazilian society. She appointed women to the three most powerful cabinet positions, including chief of staff, and named the first female head of Petrobras, Brazil’s largest business corporation; during her tenure in office, a woman became chief justice of the Federal Supreme Court. Brutally tortured by the military during the 1970s, as a university student, Rousseff put human rights at the center of Brazilian politics by enacting a law that created Brazil’s first ever truth commission to investigate the abuses by the military between 1964 and 1985. She also signed laws that opened the Brazilian Army to women and that set into motion the corruption campaign that is currently roiling the Brazilian political class. These laws earned Rousseff the enmity of the military and conservatives.

    Bachelet, the last woman standing, made news when she entered office, in 2006, by naming the same number of men and women to her cabinet. After being term-limited, she became the first head of the newly established UN Women (formally known as the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), before returning to Chile to win a second term at the presidency in 2014. During her second term, she created the Ministry of Gender Equality to address gender disparities and discrimination, and passed a law that legalized abortion in cases of rape, when there is a threat to the life of the mother, or when the fetus has a terminal condition. Less known is Bachelet’s advocacy for the environment. She weaned Chile off its dependence on hydrocarbons by building a vast network of solar- and wind-powered grids that made electricity cheaper and cleaner. She also created a vast system of national parks to protect much of the country’s forestland and coastline from development.

    Latin America’s socioeconomic transformation under the Pink Tide is no less impressive. Just before the economic downturn of 2012, Latin America came tantalizingly close to becoming a middle-class region. According to the World Bank, from 2002 to 2012, the middle class in Latin America grew every year by at least 1 percent to reach 35 percent of the population by 2013. This means that during that time frame, some 10 million Latin Americans joined the middle class every year. A consequence of this dramatic expansion of the middle class is a significant shrinking of the poor. Between 2000 and 2014, the percentage of Latin Americans living in poverty (under $4 per day) shrank from 45 to 25 percent.

    Economic growth alone does not explain this extraordinary expansion of the Latin American middle class and the massive reduction in poverty: Deliberate efforts by the government to redistribute wealth were also a key factor. Among these, none has garnered more praise than those implemented by the Lula administration, especially Bolsa Família, or Family Purse. The program channeled direct cash payments to poor families, as long as they agreed to keep their children in school and to attend regular health checkups. By 2013, the program had reached some 12 million households (50 million people), helping cut extreme poverty in Brazil from 9.7 to 4.3 percent of the population.

    Last but not least are the political achievements of the Pink Tide. It made Latin America the epicenter of left-wing politics in the Global South; it also did much to normalize democratic politics in the region. With its revolutionary movements crushed by military dictatorship, it is not surprising that the Latin American left was left for dead after the end of the Cold War. But since embracing democracy, the left in Latin America has moderated its tactics and beliefs while remaining committed to the idea that deliberate state action powered by the popular will is critical to correcting injustice and alleviating human suffering. Its achievements are a welcome antidote to the cynicism about democratic politics afflicting the American left.

    How the epoch-making legacy of the Pink Tide will fare in the hands of incoming right-wing governments is an open question. Some of the early signs are not encouraging. The Temer administration in Brazil has shown a decidedly retro-macho attitude, as suggested by its abolishment of the Ministry of Women, Racial Equality, and Human Rights (its functions were collapsed into the Ministry of Justice) and its close ties to a politically powerful evangelical movement with a penchant for homophobia. In Argentina, President Mauricio Macri has launched a “Trumpian” assault on undocumented immigrants from Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, blaming them for bringing crime and drugs into the country. Some political observers expect that Piñera will abridge or overturn Chile’s new abortion law.

    But there is reason for optimism. Temer and Macri have been slow to dismantle anti-poverty programs, realizing that doing so would be political suicide. This is hardly surprising, given the success of those programs. Right-wing governments have even seen fit to create anti-poverty programs of their own, such as Mexico’s Prospera. Moreover, unlike with prior ascents by the right in Latin America, the left is not being vanished to the political wilderness. Left-wing parties remain a formidable force in the legislatures of most major Latin American countries. This year alone, voters in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia will have presidential elections, raising the prospect that a new Pink Tide might be rising. Should this new tide come in, the Latin American left would do well to reform its act and show what it has learned from its mistakes.

    Latin American leftists need not look far to find a model to emulate: Uruguay. It exemplifies the best of the Pink Tide without its excesses. Frente Amplio, or Broad Front, a coalition of left-wing parties in power since 2005, has put the country at the vanguard of social change by legalizing abortion, same-sex marriage, and, most famously, recreational marijuana. For these reasons alone, in 2013 The Economist chose “liberal and fun-loving” Uruguay for its first ever “country of the year” award.

    Less known accomplishments include being one of only two countries in Latin America that enjoy the status of “high income” (alongside Chile), reducing poverty from around 40 percent to less than 12 percent from 2005 to 2014, and steering clear of corruption scandals. According to Transparency International, Uruguay is the least corrupt country in Latin America, and ranks among the world’s 25 least corrupt nations. The country also scored a near perfect 100 in Freedom House’s 2018 ranking of civil and political freedoms, virtually tied with Canada, and far ahead of the United States and neighboring Argentina and Brazil. The payoff for this much virtue is hard to ignore. Among Latin American nations, no other country shows more satisfaction with its democracy.

    Omar G. EncarnaciónOmar G. Encarnación is a professor of political studies at Bard College and author of Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution.

    #politique #amérique_latine #impérialisme

  • Egyptians online angry over arrest of presidential hopeful Anan

    BY BBC MONITORING

    Egyptians online have expressed their anger at the army’s arrest of former military Chief of Staff and presidential hopeful Sami Anan.

    Several Twitter users said the arrest was a sign that the regime of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was “panicked” by Anan’s candidature, describing the arrest as an act of “thuggery”. Users also urged another hopeful to withdraw from the race.

    Earlier on 23 January, the army announced in a statement that Anan will be referred to investigation for “clearly violating” army laws and codes.

    The army said that Anan “committed the crime of forgery in official documents” and announced his presidential bid without receiving prior approval from the armed forces.


    “Freedom for Sami Anan”

    Shortly after the arrest of Anan, the Arabic hashtags #Sami_Anan, #Khaled_ Ali, #the_presidential_polls and #the_armed_forces have become trending in Egypt, garnering about 20,000 comments over the past couple of hours.

    User @mnjjdddopp said that the arrest of Sami Anan “condemns Sisi in front of the world”. (http://bit.ly/2DCdOfW)

    “Freedom for Sami Anan, Sisi and his gang do not want [fair] elections. This is unprecedented thuggery,” Pro-Muslim Brotherhood rights activist Haytham Abokhalil tweeted to his 218k followers. (http://bit.ly/2DyGlTR)

    “It seems plausible now to believe that the regime was panicked by Sami Anan’s candidacy,” User @karimeltaki said in English. (http://bit.ly/2DtSoyr)


    “Withdrawal is not weakness”

    Meanwhile, thousands others called on the leftist rights lawyer Khaled Ali to withdraw from the presidential race.

    “I hope that Khaled Ali will withdraw from the presidential polls after the arrest of Sami Anan,” User @a_aboufaddan tweeted. (http://bit.ly/2DumrWE)

    “At present, withdrawal is not weakness, it is [a sort of] objection and rejection of the farce taking place. Khaled Ali must withdraw,” user @bassuma_tarek tweeted. (http://bit.ly/2n594VJ)

    “I’m certainly with the withdrawal of Khaled Ali,” User @Dokansalah tweeted. (http://bit.ly/2Dz396A)

  • Nixon’s #Vietnam Treachery - The New York Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=stor

    Now we know #Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.

    #assassins #criminels #Etats-Unis

  • C’est déjà samedi, mais il n’est jamais trop tard pour une belle théorie du complot: The likely winner of this weekend’s French presidential primary will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin
    http://qz.com/846200/the-likely-winner-of-this-weekends-french-presidential-primary-will-be-russias-v

    If you’ve paid any attention to France’s presidential race, you’ll know that the Front National’s Marine Le Pen is a serious contender. But the prospect of another far-right nationalist coming to power in a major Western country is not, in fact, the only thing to worry about.

    The other worry—and one that should concern not just residents of France, but the entire world—is that whether Le Pen wins or loses, France’s next president is likely to be part of a new, hardline Moscow-Paris-Washington axis: supporting Russia’s Vladimir Putin, appeasing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and turning geopolitics away from liberalism and human rights.

    That’s because this Sunday, Nov. 27, is the primary for the center-right Les Républicains party, and the front-runner is François Fillon, a socially conservative, provincial French Catholic who claims Russia poses “no threat.

  • Let Us Mourn, Then Organize
    Peter Dreier
    http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/let-us-mourn-then-organize

    We need new Democratic Party leadership. We need a progressive like Senators Elizabeth Warren or Dick Durbin, or Congressman John Lewis as the next head of the Democratic National Committee.

    This is no time for liberals and progressives, Bernie Sanders supporters and Clinton followers, to point fingers. This is a time for cooperation and strategizing. Unions, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, community organizing groups, LGBT activists, and wealthy progressives must collaborate. Progressives must raise the money—hundreds of millions of dollars—to send an army of paid organizers to key swing states and House districts now. We can’t just parachute organizers into swing states a few months before the next election. We need to build on and expand the base by organizing ordinary people around local and national issues. We need to ramp up protest and engage in civil disobedience to stop Donald Trump’s initiatives. And we need to register voters, so they’ll be “fired up and ready to go” for the midterm elections in two years and the presidential race in 2020. 

    We need to lay the foundation for Democrats to take back the Congress in 2018, and then elect Elizabeth Warren president in 2020.

    Mourn our losses. Then organize.

  • ‘Silver bullet’ wall-building to deter migrants counterproductive and dangerous | #Ruben_Andersson

    Professor Andersson explains to Radio 4’s PM that barriers built to deal specifically with migration are rarely successful and instead create more dangerous entry routes

    https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/news/2018silver-bullet2019-wall-building-to-deter-migrants-counterproductive-an
    #murs #barrières_frontalières #asile #migrations #réfugiés #efficacité #frontières
    cc @albertocampiphoto @daphne @marty

    • Borders and Walls: Do Barriers Deter Unauthorized Migration?

      In 2015, borders and walls seemed to burst onto the global agenda in the context of migration and halting spontaneous movement. Countries as diverse as Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia announced or began work on new border barriers. This trend has continued apace in 2016, with Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria expanding their fences, Norway building a fence on its Russian border, the United Kingdom funding a wall in Calais, France, and Pakistan building a fence on its border with Afghanistan.

      Border walls also became a central issue in the U.S. presidential race, with Republican Donald Trump emerging from a crowded field of rivals in large part because of his promise to build a “beautiful wall” on the remaining 1,300 unfenced miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, deaths of would-be asylum seekers and migrants in transit have been on the rise worldwide, reaching 5,604 in 2015 alone, according the International Organization for Migration.

      The surge in interest in border walls and fences is not simply a media creation but rather represents a very recent historical trend, arising in response to the growth in spontaneous international migration. Although we often imagine that there was a past era in which most borders were secured with physical barriers, in fact the construction of border barriers is a relatively new phenomenon. At the end of World War II there were fewer than five border walls in the world, according to Élisabeth Vallet, a professor of geography at the University of Québec at Montréal. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, there were 15. Today, there are nearly 70 (see Figure 1).

      This rush to build new walls raises several questions: Why now? Did border walls work in the past? Do they work today? This article examines the history of border fortifications around the world, discusses the evolution of the meaning and purpose of borders, and assesses the extent to which such walls have been effective in achieving their goals.

      https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration

  • Trump: CIA officers helped Turkey coup attempt, evidence available - AWD News
    http://awdnews.com/political/trump-cia-officers-helped-turkey-coup-attempt,-evidence-available

    Donald Trump, US Republican presidential candidate, claims in his new tweet that he has evidence that CIA officers helped in Turkey’s attempted coup. It is probably make a new turmoil amid the heated presidential race between him and the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

    In two consecutive tweets posted on his official Twitter page trump said he obtained evidence that will prove 13 high-ranking CIA officers helped in Turkey’s “Failed Coup” and that Obama’s “failed leadership” caused this “stupid mistake” witch put USA interest in Middle East at risk. He also repeated his adversarial word against his rival Hillary Clinton by comparing her possible presidency with Obama’s "third term” If he were supposed to stay one more term in the presidential seat.

    En plein délire dans la #catastrophe_arabe

  • The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview.
    http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-he

    There aren’t a lot of certainties left in the US presidential race, but here’s one thing about which we can be absolutely sure: The Clinton camp reallydoesn’t like talking about fossil-fuel money...

  • Giving Peace Very Little Chance | Consortiumnews
    https://consortiumnews.com/2016/02/05/giving-peace-very-little-chance

    By Robert Parry

    After nearly 15 years of Mideast war – with those conflicts growing ever grimmer – you might expect that peace would be a major topic of the 2016 presidential race. Instead, there has been a mix of warmongering bluster from most candidates and some confused mutterings against endless war from a few.

    No one, it seems, wants to risk offending Official Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment that is ready to castigate any candidate who suggests that there are other strategies – besides more and more “regime changes” – that might extricate the United States from the Middle East quicksand.

    Late in Thursday’s Democratic debate – when the topic of war finally came up – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued toeing the neocon line, calling Iran the chief sponsor of terrorism in the world, when that title might objectively go to U.S. “allies,” such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of whom have been aiding Sunni jihadists fighting to overthrow Syria’s secular regime.

  • Hey, Burning Man: Your desert party sucks for the rest of us | Grist
    http://grist.org/article/hey-burning-man-your-desert-party-sucks-for-the-rest-of-us
    https://grist.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/15276706031_a21d9ab2ea_k.jpg?w=1200

    this year’s [Burning Man] event will spew a minimum of 49,000 tons of greenhouse gases. How much is that? About the same that the nation of Swaziland (population 1.2 million) produces in a week. I mean, it’s not the Olympics or a presidential race or anything, but it does seems like a lot just to get naked in the desert and talk about your chakras.

    Ironically, Burning Man’s single most important tenet, according to every Burner ever, is leave no trace.

    #écologie #millionnaires #silicon_valley #transhumanistes

  • #erdogan announces candidacy in Turkish presidential race
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/erdogan-announced-his-candidacy-turkish-presidential-elections

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to stand for the presidency in August elections, his party announced Tuesday, paving the way for him to extend his dominance of the country’s politics for at least another five years. “The candidate for the 12th president (of modern #turkey) is our prime minister, head of our party and Istanbul lawmaker Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” said Mehmet Ali Sahin, deputy leader of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). read more

    #AKP #presidential_elections

  • Campaigning opens in #Egypt's presidential race
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/campaigning-opens-egypts-presidential-race

    Egyptian leftist leader and presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi (C) is greeted by supporters during a press conference to unveil his program on April 30, 2014 in Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Khalen Desouki) Egyptian leftist leader and presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi (C) is greeted by supporters during a press conference to unveil his program on April 30, 2014 in Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Khalen Desouki)

    Campaigning opens Saturday in Egypt for a May election likely to be won by the ex-army chief who deposed the elected president, after deadly bombings underscored tensions ahead of the vote. The May 26-27 presidential poll, meant to restore elected rule following the July overthrow of Islamist Mohammed Mursi, is widely expected (...)

    #presidential_elections #Top_News

  • Four new candidates enter Syrian presidential race
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/four-new-candidates-enter-syrian-presidential-race

    Syria’s parliament on Sunday said four more candidates, including one woman, have announced their candidacy in the June 3 presidential election widely expected to be won by President Bashar al-Assad. The new hopefuls bring the total number of candidates to six, though Assad has not yet announced his candidacy. The opposition in exile and the West have said the election will be a “parody” of democracy, but the Syrian government says it aims to hold a “free and transparent” vote. read more

    #Presidency #presidential_elections #syria #Top_News

  • Leftist Hamdeen #Sabahi enters #Egypt's presidential race
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/leftist-hamdeen-sabahi-enters-egypts-presidential-race

    A supporter of Egyptian presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi holds a poster with his portrait on March 29, 2014 in the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Mohammed al-Shahed) A supporter of Egyptian presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabahi holds a poster with his portrait on March 29, 2014 in the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Mohammed al-Shahed)

    Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi officially submitted his bid on Saturday to run for Egypt’s presidency, making him the second candidate for next month’s election alongside former army-chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who is widely expected to win. The election is due to start on May 26-27. Sabahi, who heads a political alliance called the Popular Current, was a member of (...)

    #Sisi #Top_News

  • Sisi officially enters #Egypt's presidential race
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/sisi-officially-enters-egypts-presidential-race

    Egyptians walk past a poster bearing a portrait of retired army chief and presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on April 12, 2014 in the capital Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Mohammed al-Shahed) Egyptians walk past a poster bearing a portrait of retired army chief and presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on April 12, 2014 in the capital Cairo. (Photo: AFP - Mohammed al-Shahed)

    Egypt’s ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday officially submitted his bid to run for president, with his lawyer handing over the required documents to the authorities, a spokesman said. Sisi, who is riding on a wave of popularity after ousting Islamist leader Mohammed Mursi in July, is widely expected to win the May 26-27 election. The (...)

    #presidential_elections #Top_News

  • “A Woman Can Only Become President When All Men Die Out in Tajikistan” - Global Voices

    http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/09/20/woman-can-become-president-only-when-men-die-out-in-tajikistan

    For the first time in the country’s history, a woman is running for its highest political office. Oynihol Bobonazarova, a prominent lawyer and human rights activist, entered the presidential race on September 9, 2013, after a coalition of Tajik opposition parties and NGOs nominated her as their candidate.

    Réactions de blogueurs relayées par Global Voices.

    #présidentielle #Tadjikistan #femmes

  • Daily chart: Money, votes and imponderables | The Economist

    Elections US : hé hé intéressant la carte of The Economist... On investit massivement là où ça paye —> Floride, Ohio...

    http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/11/daily-chart-1?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/moneyvotesandimponderables

    Nov 6th 2012, 17:04 by Economist.com

    A map of swing-state campaigning

    IT IS difficult to gauge the effectiveness of advertising and campaign visits during a presidential campaign. Vast sums have been spent on TV ads, mostly cancelling each other out. Borrell Associates, a research firm, expects some $7.4 billion to be spent on television and radio advertising tied to all this year’s elections. On current showings, there will be almost 50% more ads than in 2008 in the presidential race alone, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, an academic monitoring group. The overwhelming majority of the ads are negative. As the map shows, Mitt Romney and his allies have outspent Barack Obama and friends in most of the key states. Mr Romney has also held more events in them. If the Republican nominee becomes America’s 45th president, some will argue that this edge won him the race. If he does not, it will still be possible to argue that he would have fared worse had his campaign not bought so many spots. The effectiveness of political ads remains difficult to measure, making it likely that the huge amount of money spent on them will be exceeded next time around.

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