Reader's corner
Obama's people
Sir-- Millions of Americans voted for Obama for his promise of change. Unfortunately the people selected for Obama or by himself are guarantors of the old way politics. The collapse of the Soviet Union was because Gorbachev believed that NATO would be abolished and peace would follow. Many countries in this world are in a worse situation than the Soviet Union was and they do not collapse. Gorbachev was fooled. Do you remember the "wall of shame", as the Berlin Wall was called? Unfortunately today, walls are in fashion and nobody objects. There's Israel's infamous wall and now a wall between the US and Mexico, which is 100 times longer than the Berlin Wall and it is against the poor Mexicans who are trying to make some money in the US. The cold War never ended; the US is happily making cold wars against Cuba, Iran and North Korea. I cannot believe in Obama's promise of change because the people who advise him will not let him keep his promises.
Robert Berger
Miami
USA
Fits the image
Sir -- Congratulations on your fine coverage of the historic American elections.
Concerning the letter on some of Barack Obama's social views like gay rights ('Lost lives' Al-Ahram 13-19 November) these are views which he would broadly share with most Western progressive leaders and writers on the Middle East. They would include American presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, British prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, German chancellors Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel, French presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, liberal and pro-Arab writers and scholars such as Jonathan Cook, Noam Chomsky, David Hirst, Alexander Cockburn, and Robert Fisk, and Israeli progressives like Jeff Halper, Ilan Pappe, Uri Avnery and Avi Schlaim. It is on the contrary, the rightist American Christian Zionists and Israeli settlement expansionists whose social views fit more with the letter's writer, like Benyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman.
Furthermore, no letter has appeared in Al-Ahram criticising any of the Western leaders noted above, who are white and of First World origin, for having the same social views that Obama does. Instead such a critical letter would appear in Al-Ahram only when it is an attack on the first black man and the first man of Third World origins to be elected president. This exemplifies double standards, anti-Third World prejudice and underlying racism that are shattering. The hatred against Obama among rightist elements in Israel and the West is unremitting and unrelentless. The right-wing agitprop in papers and talkbacks and blogs is intense, such as on The Jerusalem Post site, where what is written and said is much the same agitprop.
The Middle East's problems did not come about in a day. We need to help President-elect Obama in order for him to be able to offer American help with regional social and political problems. We can help with our goodwill, trust and patience, and our forgiveness for some of the errors, misjudgments, and frustrating zigzags that he undoubtedly will end up making. The greatest gift we can give him, and what he will need most of all in order to be able to achieve anything, is an ample allotment of that most precious of all commodities called time.
James Adler
Massachusetts
USA
Not on Czech land
Sir-- Czech mayors and non-violent movements have sent a letter to President-elect Obama to drop the US plan to install the National Missile Defence (NMD) radar base on Czech soil. Two-thirds of the Czech citizenry do not agree with the arrangement. Despite their opposition, the Czech government has signed agreements with the United States that are due to be ratified shortly by the parliament. The current deputies were elected before there was any public discussion about the project, and the involvement of the Czech Republic in the NMD system was not in the programme of any political party. The plan to place elements of this system in the heart of Europe is already increasing tension between the US and Russia, as well as between the US and the European Union, and will lead to a new expansion of the arms race. The matter is made even more sensitive by the fact that after the fall of communism in 1989, the Czech people vowed that a foreign army would never again be stationed on their territory.
Jan Tamàö
Prague
Czech Republic
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