Give the Blacks a go, Sharkfin, just imagine yourself a black, would you not be the same?

Certainly for future America, an elected Obama would be spot on - just the right time, with us whites making such a mess of things.

Finally, as far as our own Aborigines are concerned, even before they were given the vote, they should have been allowed permanent non-vote represention in every elected Australia-wide government as with Maoris in New Zealand.

And certainly American Indians should have similar representation in the US, as Indians have in Canada.

Reckon you've still got a lot to learn, matey.

Cheers, BB, WA.

I say it once more for emphasis: "The Powell publicity is just another pole to the campaign's populist button-pushing, emphasizing again how distracting and dirty its manipulations around the fake issues of "race" and religion."

So sharkfin actually takes the bait put out over the bogus "race election". It's a bit apt to recall the recent interception of "future crime" involving some outlandish neo-Nazi assassination-cum-decapitation plot, which probably amounted to some swaggering fascist kids' beer talk in a pub.

Whether from fear, guilt, racism or plain old gullibility and a corrupt media, white and black (and other) Americans are being manipulated over this race card, just as we are.

That's not to dismiss the very real potential for oligarchs to stir the pot with a real assassination if they fear that Obama (like a Noriega or Saddam Hussein) realizes he's just being used, and that money from the likes of Soros comes with thick, prickly strings attached!

I did not mean this article to be an apology for General Powell, or for his actions in regard to Iraq or any other war. I did not criticise his complicity in the war on Iraq simply because this article is not about Powell. The article is critical of his blindness up to now about Muslims, but I'd be very happy to go on a more extended anti-Powell rant in some other place, especially if it accomplished something useful.

I am only too well aware of the death machine that is imperialism, and I should have thought that my mention of Alexander Love might hint at that. But I would suggest that there are many people who (wilfully or ignorantly) don't know of the sacrifice of "some Muslims" ("some"? I give an indication of the numbers in the article, and it ain't "some"). My point does not concern the worth of the cause, but the extent of the sacrifice – and how it is unacknowledged, still. But I hadn't reckoned on how that sacrifice is so shamefully disrespected by even those who acknowledge it, such as Commenter No 1.

As for the comment that blacks are racist because there are so few of them at McCain/Palin rallies: their absence says more about the Republican Party than it does about black Americans.

Helen Pringle

No names no pack drill, so must only suggest that a couple of the above threads do give opinions not totally against Islam.

So even if proven that Obama is part Moslem, isn't it about time we adopted simply what is hinted at in the Sermon on the Mount, which in modern thought, simply means sharing the blame with our so-called enemies -

because nine times out of ten, it is usually right, as Mubarek of Egypt only mentioned a year or two ago that the main problem in the Middle East is not so much Islam, but simply Western intrusion and injustice.

Th point is are we too blind to see, or is it that we are so full of ourselves as whities rather than coloured we believe we have the God-Given right to close our minds.

"According to Powell, the “really right answer” to such claims about Obama is: “What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”"

Imagine the outcry if McCain had given that answer rather then the one he did give? My guess is that he would then have been accused of promoting the idea that Obama is muslim.

Either that or it could have overtones of the the Seinfield "Not that there's anything wrong with that" line.

There may be a perfect answer, perhaps McCain could have done better, there are legitimate things to criticise McCain over but to endorse and opponent on the basis of that response does not ring right.

R0bert

Seems the author tries to displace my target onto some other irrelevancy. My actual “disrespect” is implicit only, and only for the presumptions and pomposities of such institutions as Fulbright; the rest is criticism for her commentary's distracting, “small picture” perspective. Instead – by her cheap, sophist tactic - I am supposed to have insulted Muslims killed in military service for imperialism, as if I defaced “some/many/most” of the Islamic headstones in western war cemeteries! Imagine: we're meant to conclude that the British-officered Arab Legion troops sang 'Rule Brittania' and 'Land of Hope and Tory'! For even more emotive protection against criticism, why not wrap herself in a flag, grasp totems and amulets, or bedeck herself with church icons and mosque calligraphy?

Thus does she join exactly the same superficial distraction and nasty divisiveness over “race” and religion as has numbed us throughout these very heavily manipulated Democrat primaries and presidential election campaigns. Criticise corruption, or even identify manipulation over race itself, and find yourself slapped with a gag of “racist” in some form or other (“cemetery vandal” is a new one though). No prizes for guessing how such petulance and pseudo anti-racism would label anyone addressing the motives and strategies of Obama's immediate sugar daddy George Soros.

R0bert's response identifies the Obama-McCain race-religion card for the discursive cul-de-sac that it is; such vacuous commentary as the article's only offers slight variation on the same cliched theme. The worst aspect of distraction in such pseudo-dissent is its avoidance of the elephantine issue in the US election: sanctified corruption and the financiers' virtual dictatorship via bail outs.