Nancy Pelosi

People of America, this is truly the problem with what was once a Representative Republic and now is a country run by “elected“ officials who believe that they, individually and collectively, are above any accountability and are not answerable to their constituents.
Our public servants erroneously believe that they are the leaders!
Ms. Nancy Pelosi made this statement to a group of reporters at a luncheon recently and she also went off on activists who have been participating in vigils outside of her chi-chi home in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco.
The people who are vigiling outside her house regularly, in a Pelosi Watch are only exercising their rights as American citizens to make their concerns known to a Rep who was elected from a district that is wholeheartedly against the occupation of Iraq and for impeaching the liars who got us into the illegal and immoral situation.
No, Ms. Pelosi, you are not a leader. You have proven time and again in what you laughably believe is a “mistake“ free run as Speaker of a Democratic House that you will do anything to protect an Imperial Presidency to the detriment of this Nation and the world, particularly the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This Democratic Congress supported BushCo’s disastrous and deadly surge; handed him over billions of their constituent’s tax dollars to wage this murder; have by their silence and votes countenanced an invasion of another country; approved more restrictions on the rights of the citizenry to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure; Ms. Pelosi does not even know if “torture“ (which violates international law and the 8th Amendment in our Bill of Rights) is an impeachable offense; and worst of all the impeachment clauses were taken “off the table“ in an ongoing partnership with BushCo to make the office of the presidency a Congressionally protected crime conglomerate that is rapidly sending this Nation down a crap-hole of fascism.
So, Congress has led us to a few things: war, poverty, oppression, unemployment, and an inexplicable continuance of the Bush Regime.
No, Ms Pelosi, you are not even a leader in the very narrowest of definitions. We do not elect our Congressional Representatives to be leaders, not to be used as willing marionettes for the war machine and other special interests that serve the elite to the detriment of the rest of us, but to represent the will of the people.
We send our elected officials to DC and pay their salaries and subsidize their benefits to do the “Will of the People.“
A true leader accepts responsibility in ways that are not even dreamed of by BushCo or Congress Inc. A true leader would stand up and do what is intelligent and what is right and if he/she were a leader then people would follow. A leader does not wait idly by for a crowd of sycophants to gather around her before she does her job with integrity and courage; a leader leads the way and the Democratic Congress with an approval rating even lower than George’s had better wake up to whom they need to follow: us!
We have countless examples of true leaders throughout American history and if not for them, women would not have the right to vote, much less be Speaker of the House; Black Americans would still be slaves or at the very least still drinking out of separate fountains; workers would not have the right to unionize and children would still be mining coal; we would still have troops in Southeast Asia, and we would still be under the aegis of our close Cousins in Empire: the British.
Some of our courageous leaders have had to pay the ultimate price for their bravery and vision and Ms. Pelosi should be ashamed of arrogantly whining over her rubber chicken that Americans exist who want her to do her job because people are dying and lives are being ruined with her complicity.
Cindy Sheehan
COUNTERPUNCH.COM

Every politician knows the cautionary fable: the vain emperor who kept on buying new clothes, who was eventually sold an imaginary new suit--and who was suddenly and publicly revealed to be worryingly short of substance.
So how on earth did Gordon Brown, one of the canniest operators in British politics, end up seeming so naked?
The brief history of his premiership now looks rather like Hans Christian Andersen’s exercise in groupthink. Since he took over from Tony Blair in June, Mr Brown has dressed himself in a whole wardrobe of different political costumes.
Borrowing the traditional garb of the opposition Conservatives, he has appeared as a stout patriot and hammer of criminals and foreigners.
In his preacher’s cassock, he has frowned on drugs, drink and gambling. Above all, he has striven to portray himself as principled, strong and serious, in supposed contrast to Mr Blair.
The reasonably competent management of several minor crises reinforced his gravitas. He seemed to have pulled off an impressive confidence trick, persuading voters that his was a new administration, rather than the continuation of Mr Blair’s, throughout whose ten years Mr Brown was second-in-command.
The result was a wide lead over the Tories in the polls. His acolytes in the Labour Party--including many once sceptical about his leadership--extolled him as a seer, who would keep them in government for another decade.
His whole team encouraged talk that Mr Brown would stage a general election, which British prime ministers call more or less at their pleasure.
There was no need for one: he inherited the parliamentary majority Mr Blair won in 2005.
The aim was to crush the Tories, supposedly as lame as Mr Brown was invincible.
The imperial pomp was shattered by a decent speech by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, and by a salvo from George Osborne, the impish shadow chancellor. Mr Osborne pledged that a future Tory government would dramatically raise the threshold above which inheritance tax is levied.
Suddenly the polls, especially in marginal constituencies, looked less rosy for Mr Brown. The prime minister announced that there would be no early vote after all. But he admitted he had thought about one, contradicting his previous insistences that he was focused wholly on governing.
Worst of all, he insulted voters’ intelligence by denying the blindingly obvious--that the adverse polls had swayed his decision.
Now Mr Brown seems less strong and serious than weak and spinning. A visit he made to Iraq in advance of the phantom election campaign seemed to exploit Britain’s armed forces for party advantage: the emperor of Downing Street, like the one in the fable, now stands accused of caring more for his image than for his soldiers. Meanwhile, his political underwear--his broadly successful stewardship of the economy--has begun to look skimpy. His successor as chancellor was obliged this week to reduce the official growth forecast in his mini-budget.
Despite more than a decade of economic expansion, borrowing and tax are set to rise, and the increase in spending on Britain’s public services will slow.
Does the non-election fiasco mark a fundamental shift in British politics, the beginning of the end of the Labour imperium that began with its landslide win in 1997? It is too early to say conclusively--but it might.
Certainly Mr Cameron and the Tories look stronger than seemed feasible a fortnight ago. But to win a general election--now unlikely, Mr Brown says, before 2009--they need to develop their eye-catching but embryonic ideas about the proper size and complexion of the state into a more coherent platform for government.
Petrified, still, by their old reputation for heartlessness, the Tories have pushed policies that so far only tinker with the tax code rather than reforming it.
The response to the inheritance-tax proposal suggests that the time is ripe to ditch Britain’s long cross-party consensus about taxation.
That does not mean abandoning the new emphases on poverty, the environment and health care; it means combining them in a way that reins in government power.
So Mr Cameron is still underdressed; but he now has a couple of years to change that impression. Mr Brown does not. Ironically, one of the many excuses he gave for his election retreat--he wants more time to set out his “vision“ for Britain--has a core of truth. So far, it is not at all clear how that vision is distinctive, beyond the laudable but universal aims of alleviating poverty, improving schools and hospitals and reinforcing meritocracy.
ECONOMIST.COM

Russian President Vladimir Putin (r) shakes hand with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy at the Kremlin in Moscow, Oct. 10.

The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has repeated one of the most notable achievements of his Russian counterpart.
During his two-day visit to Moscow he gained from the Russian President what Vladimir Putin once gained from US President George W. Bush--the privilege to speak his mind without damaging personal relations.
The French president said: “France wants to understand you. I appreciate the strength of your convictions. I think we can understand each other, because I also have convictions.“
He also said: “Friendship is when people tell each other what they think.“
The two presidents did not expect to feel any sympathy for each other, let alone become friends. Yet their meeting was bound to be a success, else it would have been postponed “by mutual agreement.“
Relations between France and Russia are multifaceted, complex and extensive, combining many elements and events involving a huge number of people.
One of the most eye-catching diplomatic gestures during Sarkozy’s visit was an invitation to Russia’s next president (whoever that may be) to the launch of a European satellite on Russian rocket at the Kourou spaceport in French Guyana in 2008.
He also said that French investors would like to buy into Russian energy giant Gazprom.
French business is making inroads into Russia’s pharmaceutical and cosmetic sectors, and the two countries plan to join forces in designing new cargo versions of French Airbus.
These events belie the thesis that Sarkozy has torn up the foreign policy of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, by strengthening ties with the United States, advocating independence for Kosovo, and adopting a stronger stance on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Some say that his policy has pulled France away from Moscow, and that Russia, deprived of German and French sympathies, has suffered a blow in a crucial sphere of foreign policy.
Here is what one would say to that: Like France and Germany under their previous leaders, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, Moscow has never steered an anti-American policy.
However, several years ago the three states, along with many other countries, did their best to contain the United States’ destructive military plans, fuelled by an illusion of its own omnipotence.
This is a new world, and it is dealing with a new America. The weakened giant, having now lost its illusions, no longer needs to be contained, but assisted to its new place in global politics.
Nor is the international community still concerned with protecting the world from Washington, and Washington from itself. Of far more importance are the potential actions of other, new, powers currently surging into the lead.
As for Kosovo, we should take a closer look at the situation in France, the rest of Europe, and also in Russia.
Kosovo, a Caine’s mark on Europe, has shown that although Europe geographically stretches to the Urals, politically it is divided into Europe and Russia-and “never the twain shall meet.“
You can see this by analyzing the changes in Russia’s supposedly pro-Western leader, Putin, who has formulated not a pro-European, but a perfectly independent Russian policy.
In the 1990s, the European community closed its eyes to the silent occupation of Serbian territory by well-armed groups. When it saw that it could not deal with the problem single-handed, it appealed for the United States to send in its bombers.
That made a strong impression on both politically aware and ignorant Russians.
Europe then was like Poland under the Kaczynski brothers--scandalous, arrogant and unpleasant, but not dangerous.
Europe has ceased the aggressive marketing of its superior values and morals, but this is about all that has changed. Apart from Kosovo, it will have to do much more to win back Russians’ respect.
Moscow does not expect much from the new French president. It is enough for her that his personal style is similar to that of Putin--he can speak his mind to his friends and partners, and expects them to do the same.
EN.RIAN.RU

On October 27, Omanis will elect representatives to their 85-member lower house of Parliament, the Shura Council, for four-year terms beginning in 2008.
Some analysts consider the council, established in 1991, to be the most advanced in the Persian Gulf region apart from Kuwait’s, and see it as part of a gradual move toward democracy and wider popular participation.
For example, Oman enfranchised women as voters and candidates in 1994, well before Kuwait. But a closer look reveals that in the past 16 years the council has achieved little and failed to meet Omanis’ aspirations.
The Shura Council has remained advisory and has not evolved into a legislative body and partner to the government, as Omani officials often claim.
Article 29 of the Omani law regulating the appointed upper house (the 59-member State Council) and elected Shura Council specifies the powers of each body. The Shura Council’s powers include reviewing legislation drafted by government ministries and passing them on to the State Council with recommendations, as well as submitting proposals for social and economic legislation.
The Shura Council may also provide feedback on government initiatives, propose development projects, and participate in raising citizens’ awareness of the country’s development goals and government efforts in that regard.
Members may give opinions on subjects on which the sultan seeks the council’s input, and look into matters related to public services and infrastructure.
Despite this variety of powers, many Omanis believe that in reality the Shura Council’s role has been limited to looking into public services.
And even for this council members do not receive credit, as government ministers constantly point out that development in public services and infrastructure is a result of the government’s vision and plans rather than initiatives by council members.
Some Shura Council members are frustrated by the lack of appreciation from either the public or the government.
Shura Council member Rahila bint Amir bin Sultan al-Riyami stated on several occasions that members do not receive due credit for their work, and asserted that the government actually does accept and consider suggestions and proposals of council members.
Another Shura Council member, Hummoud al-Amri, said in a recent interview that a member nominates himself to be the voice of the citizens but does not hold all the keys to achieving their demands, and citizens need to realize that.
He also noted that council members themselves are doubtful of their ability to represent citizens and achieve their aspirations. Hamad al-Rawahi, also a Shura Council member, said that he considered the slow and hesitant process of developing the council’s role as appropriate for Oman, considering its tribal and cultural characteristics.
Council member Zayed al-Rashidi said in a recent interview that there was little awareness of the council’s role due to the lack of an effective media awareness campaign.
He pointed out that members receive no privileges to encourage them to seek office and yet continue to participate in the process.
In fact the upcoming elections will see the largest number of candidates yet in Omani elections: 808 male and 25 female candidates vying for 85 seats. Why does the number of candidates increase every year, and what are the incentives that encourage candidacy? Rashidi says it is to complete the public services projects introduced in the previous term; citizens say it is for personal gain.
The Shura Council’s president is appointed by the sultan, another controversial aspect of the council’s operations.
The newly appointed president is a state adviser and former minister of social affairs and labor.
DAILYSTAR.COM