March 2005
Labour's Stolen Votes: Rod Liddle
In Birmingham it is beginning to look as if the activists and possibly the candidates themselves have been a little over-eager in the matter of ‘encouraging’ voters. And a little too, shall we say, involved and proactive.
Tim Hames: It might be boring us all to death, but the pre-election campaign really does matter
Look on the bright side. It should soon be over. Although the pre-campaign has endured since the party conference season, a period rather like the phoney war at the start of the Second World War, the actual combat will last for only five weeks
Jamie Oliver's recipe for an unappetising election: How has a reality television programme about a celebrity chef sticking his fork into the murky business of school dinners become a major focus of the pre-election campaign in British politics?
How has the fat content of school dinners come to top the political agenda?
Labour in lead on key issues in run-up to election
Tories losing fight on health and education and also in traditional areas of law, order and Europe
Kennedy: we can win election
Charles Kennedy today held out a hostage to fortune, saying the Liberal Democrats could "potentially" win the general election, as his party launched its most expensive advertising campaign in 20 years.
It's Blair, Iraq and immigration
Those expecting a Labour election walkover should get out more. From Beeston to Brentwood, the mood is increasingly hostile
February 2005
Iraq: a peculiar peace
Post-election Iraq is neither a 'new democracy' nor an Islamic state in waiting, but a nation pacified by stasis.
Shias win Iraqi election
The United Iraqi Alliance, a Shia coalition assembled by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has won the Iraqi elections, taking over 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the ballots cast, officials said today.
Our white elephant in Iraq
The foreign policy establishment picked a loser; Allawi is a Baathist who lacks appeal or the right vision
Partial Iraqi results show support for UIA
Partial results have shown the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which is endorsed by powerful cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, with a large margin over U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in the race for seats in the 275-member National
Norman Geras: 'Something I waited so long for'
So, then, you can go with Steve Bell or Terry Eagleton; or you can listen to the voices of these Iraqis...
JAMES CARROLL: Train wreck of an election
There is only one way in which the grand claims made by Washington for the weekend voting will be true -- and that is if the elections empower an Iraqi government that moves quickly to repudiate Washington.
Why Iraq and Vietnam have nothing whatsoever in common. By Christopher Hitchens
Perhaps now is the moment to state the critical reasons why there is no reasonable parallel of any sort between Iraq and Vietnam.
Iraqis fight a lonely battle for democracy
Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.
How To "Be Happy" For the Iraq "Elections":
But, c'mon, everyone. We should be acting like the proud parents of a baby, should we not? A severely disabled baby? We're just so thrilled to have a child, but, Christ, what hardship and heartache lie ahead. But it was worth it, right?
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches: What They’re Not Telling You About the “Election”
Every Iraqi I have spoken with who voted explained that they believe the National Assembly which will be formed soon will signal an end to the occupation. And they expect the call for a withdrawing of foreign forces in their country to come sooner rath
Mark Brown: What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?
After watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?
New America Foundation : Now for the Hard Part in Iraq: by Noah Feldman
The Iraqis who braved violence to vote on Sunday in the country's first free election in 50 years were, like voters everywhere, expressing democratic belief in ownership over their political future.
The Washington Note Archives: ORDER OUT OF DISORDER: MISSION FAR FROM ACCOMPLISHED
I don't think that George Bush has the foggiest idea how Japan became democratic, and our role in that process was questionable in my view.
Eliot Weinberger : What I Heard about Iraq
by 1 otherIn 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq’.
The Vietnam Turnout Was Good as Well! No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis' hostility to US occupation
On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war.
January 2005
Monday, Monday: Norman Geras on the Iraqi Election
A very happy day. And the happiness of it was not only, in a manner of speaking, necessary but also sufficient.
Fareed Zakaria: Elections Are Not Democracy
The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq, and is simply trying to gain stability and legitimacy
Informed Comment: Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan
If it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. I
Toll of missing, dead in Indonesia estimated near 210,000
The larger Indonesia toll would bring the total of dead and missing from the tidal surge across the Indian Ocean to nearly 272,000, ranking the tsunami as the fifth or sixth deadliest natural disaster in about 250 years.
