Some my most endearing memories from childhood are my mother’s efforts to introduce my sister and I to the world of classical music. For us that included an annual pilgrimage to the Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. It was always a highlight of our annual European vacations. One year, I remember there was a marionette performance of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. If today I have a love for opera (and I do) and a love for marionettes, it can be traced back to that magical evening when I witnessed something truly full of wonder. My appreciation for opera was also enhanced by a class I took at Stanford taught by Professor Paul Robinson and his class on Opera and Ideas that examined intellectual thought in Europe through opera. Professor Robinson teaches European Intellectual History and has two books on opera– Opera and Ideas, from Mozart to Strauss (1985) and Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters (2002).
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
I chose tonight’s camp as I considered today’s events and I find myself thinking we Hillary supporters are but lonely goatherders dealing with rather recalcitrant Obama yodeling goats, begging forgiveness for any aspersions cast on goats. Obama’s supporters are indeed quite tiresome. And as for Figaro, my heroine is truly the hardest worker around. She indefatigable just like Figaro, the Barber of Seville. Plus it is one hell of a piece of music. True the Bugs Bunny version is most excellent but we’ll save that one for another night.
A te fortuna, Bella Hillary. Fortunatisima per verità!
For more on the Salzburg Music Festival (28 July - 31 August 2008) please visit their website: Salzburg Music Festival 2008.
Trying to dig himself out of hole on his willingness to meet with global villians face to face without precondition, Obama stutters some more:
Obama objected on CNN this week to “this obsession with Ahmadinejad” and explained guardedly: “I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
“Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don’t even know how much power he is going to have a year from now,” Obama added. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”
He said he would expect “to meet with those people who can actually make decisions” in Iran on its nuclear program, its aid to terrorists and destabilization in Iraq.
Well true, the Ayotollah Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran but he doesn’t run the day-to-day affairs of the Iranian government. Ahmadinejad has more day-to-day control and while the Ayotallah Khamenei is likely to sign off on any high level contact between the United States and the Islamic Republic, it is unlikely that the Iranians would want to exclude Ahmadinejad from those deliberations. And who in Iran is going to be willing to meet with a President Obama if Ahmadinejad is being purposefully excluded from a meeting?
Yesterday three top Florida Democrats filed suit in Federal Court to force the DNC to seat the delegates from Florida at the National Convention. Steve Geller, the Florida Senate Minority Leader, is an undeclared superdelegate and he is joined in the lawsuit by two other plaintiffs — one is a delegate for Sen. Hillary Clinton and the other a delegate for Sen. Barack Obama. Geller estimates that a quarter to a third of the Florida Democratic voters are so outraged by the DNC’s inability to solve this intractable dispute that he fears this might do the Democratic Party in Florida long-term harm.
I have generally stayed away from covering this issue in part because I know little about it and in part because other blogs do it so well, especially TalkLeft and The Confluence. But there is one issue that confuses me a bit. This is only an issue for the DNC and not the RNC. Why is it that the RNC solved their Michigan and Florida mess and the Democratic leadership can not? I think three individuals are largely responsible for this mess: Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, and Barack Obama.
Today in Boca Raton, Florida, Obama was peppered with a question from a Florida voter on his relationship with Rashid Khalidi, a Professor at Columbia University in New York. Obama became defensive and indignant over the question calling it “guilt by association.” ABC News reports on the exchange.
“You mentioned Rashid Khalidi, who’s a professor at Columbia,” Obama said. “I do know him because I taught at the University of Chicago. And he is Palestinian. And I do know him and I have had conversations. He is not one of my advisors; he’s not one of my foreign policy people. His kids went to the Lab school where my kids go as well. He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel’s policy.”
But then Obama pushed back, launching a broader defense of his associations, while acknowledging that some past relationships have caused people in the Jewish community concerns.
“To pluck out one person who I know and who I’ve had a conversation with who has very different views than 900 of my friends and then to suggest that somehow that shows that maybe I’m not sufficiently pro-Israel, I think, is a very problematic stand to take,” he said. “So we gotta be careful about guilt by association.”
Okey dokey. Since Obama omitted some facts, allow me. Obama failed to mention that Rashid Khalidi hosted a fundraiser for him when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000, or or that he attended a testimonial dinner for Khalidi and praised him when Khalidi left Chicago to chair Columbia’s Middle Eastern Studies Department, or that while he served on the Board of the Woods Fund, it voted to grant $40,000.00 to the Arab American Network, an organization headed by Khalidi’s wife, Mona Khalidi. The Woods Fund is also the focus of his relationship with William Ayers, the unrepentant Weatherman terrorist.
It’s guilt by association because such a relationship suggest a pattern of behaviour. These relationships are long-standing and run years not an occasional chat as Obama would have us believe. It’s a pattern of behaivour oft-repeated by Obama. He cultivated relationships in Chicago that now must be jettisoned because they imperil his Presidential ambitions.
Here is the Friday May 23, edition of interesting reads from around the world.
British Labour Party Lose By-Election
The result from the Crewe & Nantwich constituency in NW England saw the Tory reverse a 7,000 vote majority and create one of their own. It is the first by-election reverse for the Labour Pary in over a quarter century. The UK Guardian has all the bloody details.
Islam In Spain
I am skeptical but Der Spiegel looks at a multicultural Spain. There are approximately 1.5 million Muslims in Spain. About half are Moroccans.
Interview with a Taliban Commander
Taliban commander Qabir Bashir Haqqani is threatening the Germans in Afghanistan. In an interview with Der Spiegel, the representative of the radical Islamists says they will ramp up deadly suicide attacks against Germans and other “invaders” in the northern part of the country.
Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba Under Probe for FARC Links
Outspoken Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba is under investigation for unauthorized contacts with the FARC, a crime in Colombia. Any contact with the FARC must be disclosed and approved by government in advance. Eleven others, including one American, are also being investigated. The Miami Herald has the details.
Slavery in the World
Experts put the number of slaves at 27 million worldwide, with 90% of these being women or children. Slavery remains an acute problem in the Islamic world, especially in the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, but also in South Asia, South-East Asia and in China and North Korea. Still slavery or forced labour occurs just about everywhere including the United States. More from Truth Out.
France’s Illegal Immigration Protests
Since April, hundreds of illegal workers have been protesting in and around Paris - this time, with union backing. The workers pay taxes but receive no job benefits, and they say it’s high time they’re granted legal status. France 24 has the story with video. Meanwhile President Sarkozy is in Angola on a state visit attempting to mend ties after a corruption row last year.
“These elections were not perfect,” said delegation head of the electoral monitoring team from the OSCE, Joao Soares. He added, however, that “concrete and substantial progress” had been made.
Preliminary official election results gave President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pro-Western ruling party a majority in a new parliament in the Republic of Georgia. What gave pause to the OSCE team was a lack of transparency including reports of fraud but more seriously an atmosphere of intimidation in separatist regions of the Georgian Republic.
More from the BBC on the problems in the Georgian elections. More on the results of the election from Washington Post.