Obama’s Paris Visit Captivates French Minorities | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008

How the Left Can Rise Again
Denis MacShane 5/30/2009 12:00:00 AM
This should be the left's big chance in Europe. Capitalism is in crisis. Growth is collapsing. Unemployment is rising, and the state is back in business. The time is ripe for the left to push a coherent alternative to the right's free-market vision of the world. But no, the classic 20th-century parties of the left—social democrats in Northern Europe, socialists in the Mediterranean, Labour in Britain—are struggling, and 20 of the European Union's 27 member states have a right-wing government head. They include Nicolas Sarkozy in France, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Angela Merkel in Germany. Among the big four EU nations, only Britain's Gordon Brown hails from the left, and he's hanging on by a thread. Even supporters of the left look back a decade or more—to Willy Brandt in Germany, Felipe González in Spain or François Mitterrand in France—to find a political giant.
INTERNATIONAL
Obama's Challenge
John Barry 4/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
At the G20 summit this week, President Obama confronts a problem no American president before George W. Bush had to face: suspicion and even hostility toward the U.S. government from European allies. Bluntly, the Bush administration all but destroyed traditional transatlantic ties, including the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain.
LETTERS
A Bloody Battle
2/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
The deadly clashes in Gaza drew impassioned responses from readers on both sides of the issue. Arguing that Hamas is not solely at fault, one said, "Gaza has been made a prison by the Israelis." Another defended Israel's action, saying, "There is no moral equivalent between terrorism and self-defense."
Mail Call: Get Ready, Get Set
1/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
U.S. POLITICS
Reflecting On Race Barriers
Christopher Dickey 11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
They'll be slaughtering sheep in Galilee this week to honor a man that local Bedouins now claim is their cousin: American President-elect Barack Obama. The sheikh in a tiny village not far from the Israeli city of Nazareth says his mother remembers an African man who married into the clan some 80 years ago. The evidence of kinship is, to say the least, thinly substantiated. Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, 53, tells NEWSWEEK that his late cousins carried themselves like Obama, gestured like Obama, grinned like Obama. "His smile is typical of our tribe," says the sheikh. "It shows gentleness and kindness but also firmness." But the sheikh says he really doesn't want much from the new president: a little recognition, an invitation to the White House and, oh yes, for Obama to defend the rights of Bedouins in Israel and around the world. "Obama will not desert his family," the sheikh says confidently.
LETTERS
Peace of Mind
11/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
Readers marveled at what cognitive neuroscientists are uncovering about the biology of the brain and its impact on human feelings, part of our HEALTH FOR LIFE package. One pointed to the intangible, transcendent "dimensions of consciousness." Another stated simply: "Science reveals more mysteries than it explains."