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U.S. Election Turns Global

By Amy Goodman <http://www.alternet.org/authors/5721/> , King Features
Syndicate <http://www.kingfeatures.com/> . Posted July
<http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date[F]=07&date[Y]=2008&date[d]=31&act
=Go/> 31, 2008.

Obama's historic candidacy serves as an inspiration to people the world
over. 
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TALLINN, Estonia -- When I arrived in Estonia last week -- a former Soviet
republic that lies just south of Finland -- everyone had an opinion on
Barack Obama's speech in Berlin. The headline of the British Daily Telegraph
we picked up in Finland blared "New Walls Must Not Divide Us," with
half-page photos of the American presidential candidate silhouetted against
a sea of 200,000 people.

One of the first people I met in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, was Abdul
Turay, the editor in chief of The Baltic Times, an English-language weekly
that covers Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three Baltic nations.
Granted, he's not a typical resident for this country of largely
fair-haired, light-skinned people: Turay is a black Briton whose parents
come from the West African nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone. And he is
Muslim. While Estonia has no mosques, he notes with pride that the Quran has
just been translated into Estonian, and to the publisher's surprise, it's
been an instant best-seller here.

I asked Turay what Obama's candidacy means to him. "It'll open doors for me
personally if he becomes president," he said. "It's a momentous thing to
have a black president, given America's history. Some people say it's not a
big deal, but it is a very big deal. The U.S. is a model for the world. If
people see a black man can be president of the U.S., maybe they will see me
differently. If he's special, I'm special."

As for Obama's politics, Turay says he doesn't actually think Obama's
foreign policy will be that different from fellow presidential candidate
John McCain's. He said he was surprised after reading Obama's first book,
Dreams From My Father: "He's almost talking about black nationalism. He's
very liberal. He's very much a black politician, whereas today he's a
politician who happens to be black." I asked him to explain. "I think that's
a question for Barack Obama, not me," he said.

Turay marvels at the importance of the U.S. elections here: "There's more
interest in the American election than in the Lithuanian election, which is
right next door. It's a global election."

Estonia may be a world away from the United States, but it is intimately
tied to U.S. foreign policy. When the U.S. went looking for other countries
to join the coalition to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, to give the
occupations international legitimacy, Estonia was a charter member -- along
with numerous other former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe.
President Bush went to Estonia in 2006 to thank them. In 2004, none other
than Sens. McCain and Hillary Clinton visited the Baltic nation together as
part of a congressional delegation. The story goes that Clinton challenged
McCain to a vodka-drinking contest, an Estonian tradition. McCain accepted.
When a Clinton aide was asked about it, he replied, "What happens in
Estonia, stays in Estonia."

Many feel the Baltic nations' participation in the occupations was quid pro
quo for their membership in NATO. Estonia has paid a price, as its soldiers
have lost their lives in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- the latter a place
where Estonian soldiers have died before, as conscripts of the Soviet army
when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

A decade later, Estonia was the scene of a nonviolent revolution. Singing
has long been a national pastime, and song festivals, in which thousands
come together to sing, are a tradition. In April 1988, this gathering turned
into a vehicle for mass mobilization. In the Estonian capital, with the
country's banned blue, black and white flag unfurled on the back of a
motorbike, hundreds of thousands began singing the forbidden national
anthem. The movement gained momentum throughout the three Baltic nations. In
August 1989, 2 million people joined hands in a Baltic chain spanning
hundreds of miles, from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius, the capitals of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania, respectively. Estonia and its Baltic neighbors won
their independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Now, Turay observes, "Estonia looks to America." With Berlin's wall now
gone, Turay hopes other walls will soon fall, too. "If the president of
America is a black person, other countries will realize that we have people
who look like the president who are doing something important. ... I think
it will happen everywhere."

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program,
Democracy Now!

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wrensis 

[Report
<http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/93530/u.s._election_turns_global/?
comments=report&cID=966975&sID=93530> this comment] 
Posted by: wrensis on Jul 31, 2008 11:48 PM    
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]

I feel I am readling articles written after a president has been elected,
not a nominee who has yet to get thru the convention process. The Rock Star
photo op world tour complete with dramatic referemces to the nostalgia of
walls in Germany might better have shown true leadership if he had addressed
the real walls in either Iraq or Israel. 

[
<http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/93530/u.s._election_turns_global/?
comments=reply&pID=966975#comments> < Reply to this comment] [Post
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comments=post#comments> a new comment >] [Rate this comment: 1
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<http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/93530/u.s._election_turns_global/?
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historic candidacy? 

[Report
<http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/93530/u.s._election_turns_global/?
comments=report&cID=967304&sID=93530> this comment] 
Posted by: CatDad on Aug 1, 2008 9:56 AM    
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]

Okay...the novelty of electing a candidate based upon race and/or gender
should have worn off by now....There are simply too many people like JC
Watts, Tom Bradley, Anne Northrup (the list could go on and on) who
demonstrate that we should be focusing on the person's real progressive
convictions and not naively electing them because they are minorities. 

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