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Below is WIKIPEDIA on Obama. I was dithering in my choice between a woman and a minority. But I think Barack's audacity of hope and his inspirational speeches have won my heart and vote. Barack Hussein Obama (pronounced /bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/[1]) (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.[2][3] The U.S. Senate Historical Office lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, the third to have been popularly elected, and the only African American currently serving in the Senate.[4] Obama was born in Honolulu to a Kenyan father and an American mother. He lived most of his early life in the Pacific island U.S. state of Hawaii. From ages six to ten, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before running for public o

I am finally catching up on all the movies I have missed this winter. I started by seeing Persepolis, since I had read the book and had found it to be very good. The movie was too similar to the book and I felt that when it was converted into a film, some thing else should have been added. Maybe changing it from black and white to color would have been a start. Also even though it was autobiographical, it became very indivudulaistic and self obsessed. It was an elitist perspective of the the time after the Iranian revolution. A review below. Persepolis An animated life story about an individualistic Iranian woman who grew up during the Islamic Revolution. The amusing narrative style by co-writer-directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi (whose story it is) features Catherine Deneuve voicing the role of Mrs. Satrapi, Marjane's mother. There's a good lesson here about Iranian history but it's not exactly gripping material. Charming at times, it amounts pretty much to a

What, in daily life, is our relationship with each other and on what is it based? Is it based on knowledge and experience that breeds emotional and or intellectual conclusions? Can it be based on memory that creates the image of you and me? Or perhaps our so-called relationship is based on mutual dependency and attachment? What seems to be "peculiar" about our relationship to life and to each other? What is the significance of relationship as it actually is? How do we approach the fact of relationship? Are we afraid to go into the fact and face it? Do we hug the status quo through fear, or through force of habit, or are we just dull human beings? Can we put aside our images and our fears and begin to look into this matter of relationship as a whole? Can we come together and begin to respond totally rather than partially? If indeed relationship is the whole structure of society then maybe it begins with what is our relationship now? The very desire to be secure is destroying i

Arundhati Roy delivered a powerful lecture on genocide and genocide deniers in India and Turkey on the first death anniversary of the assassination of Hrank Ding. (12 of 12) It tells us that the rich don't have a choice (There Is No Alternative), but the poor do. They can choose to become rich. If they don't, it's because they are choosing pessimism over optimism, hesitation over confidence, want over hope. In other words, they're choosing to be poor. It's their fault. They are weak. (And we know what the seekers of lebensraum think of the weak.) They are the 'Constraining Ghost of the Past'. They're already ghosts. "Within an ongoing counterfeit universe," Robert Jay Lifton says, "genocide becomes easy, almost natural." The poor, the so-called poor, have only one choice: to resist or to succumb. Bachchan is right: they are crossing over, quietly, while the world's not looking. Not to where he thinks, but across another ravine,

Parag Khanna writes in the New York Times magazine, about the demise of American global hegemony. Interesting he feels that India is not in the big league and is decades behind China. Waving Goodbye to Hegemony By PARAG KHANNA Published: January 27, 2008 Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead. It is 2016, and the H