The World is Talking. Global Politics

Palestinian blogger Ramzi breaks his silence to give us an overall view of politics in the Middle East here.

Lebanese Jamal Ghosn admits he has only travelled to Damascus five times in his life.

Egyptian blogger Ahmed Saad Domah has vanished, according to the Blogger’s Observatory, which has been set up to monitor the arrests and harassments bloggers and online writers in the Arab World face.

Democracy Corps recently conducted surveys in key battleground districts for 2008 “and the results look like a rerun of 2006 — an election when Democrats lost no incumbents and swept the competitive seats.”

Key findings:

• In the battleground of the 70 most competitive congressional districts (35 Democratic and 35 Republican-held), the Democratic incumbents, including the big class of freshmen, have quickly moved into dramatic leads in the named congressional ballot (52% to 40%.)
• In the 35 Republican battleground districts, the named Republicans trail their generic Democratic opponent by 5 points, 49% to 44%.
• In a poll across seven Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, the named U.S. Senators had a vote to re-elect of only 37% and were garnering only 44% of the vote against a generic challenger.
• The overall image of the Democratic Party has fallen back from the honeymoon post-election period to essentially where it stood for the whole 2006 election period — and that has been stable since April. On the other hand, the Republicans have weakened in the current period since April to their lowest
  thermometer score in the past half century.

Also available: National poll, Crosstabs, Graphs, District List

August first marks the eightieth anniversary of the founding of China’s People’s Liberation Army and Chinese media news blog Danwei correspondent takes a look at how several Beijing newspapers covered a performance held to commemorate the day, also known as Bayi (8-1) Military day, also the anniversary of the Nanchang Uprising.

“As I understood Obama’s statement, he’s either going to invite to Washington or meet somewhere else the head of Cuba, who would be Castro, and the head of Iran, who is Ahmadinejad. That’s quite a crew. I don’t know that I would want to meet with them. Some people you just don’t meet with if they’re going to use that to propagate their own propaganda. I thought Hillary Clinton was on the right side of that.”

– Rudy Giuliani, quoted by New York magazine, on the “mini-feud” between the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

American Research Group has released new polls from three early states in the 2008 presidential nominating race.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Clinton has lost ground to Sen. Barack Obama in New Hampshire and South Carolina as Obama has gained among male Democrats in both states. Clinton continues to lead Edwards among Democrats in Iowa, with Bill Richardson cutting into Edwards’ support among Democrats and Richardson leading among independents in the state. These results suggest Obama benefited from the July 23 debate and its aftermath in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney has slipped in Iowa and New Hampshire and he is now essentially tied with Rudy Giuliani in those two states. In South Carolina, Giuliani is tied with Fred Thompson as John McCain has slipped into third place, giving up his lead among independents to Thompson.

Iowa:

• Among Democrats, Clinton 30%, Edwards 21%, Obama 15%, Richardson 13%
• Among Republicans, Giuliani 22%, Romney 21%, McCain 17%, Thompson 13%

New Hampshire:

• Among Democrats, Obama 31%, Clinton 31%, Edwards 14%, Richardson 7%
• Among Republicans, Giuliani 27%, Romney 26%, Thompson 13%, McCain 10%

South Carolina:

• Among Democrats, Obama 33%, Clinton 29%, Edwards 18%
• Among Republicans, Giuliani 28%, Thompson 27%, McCain 10%, Romney 7%

Today marks one of the most important occasion in Malaysia’s blogging community as Screenshot’s Jeff Ooi, who is dubbed as one of the most prominent blogger in Malaysia’s blogosphere joined an Opposition Party - the Democratic Action Party (DAP).
Speaking at the the press conference announcing his decision, Jeff reason’s for joining the DAP is an […]

“If I masturbate to Jack Bauer torturing a suspect, does that make me gay?” No, it’s not an itching, burning question emailed in the dead of night to Dan Savage. It’s one of many helpful suggestions from posters over at…

Though the FBI won’t say what it was looking for, the Anchorage Daily News reports agents were at the home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) for more than 10 hours yesterday. They carted off “undisclosed items from inside” the house and took “extensive pictures and video.”

Stevens “has long been the most powerful political figure in Alaska and a major force in Congress. A swarm of federal agents serving a search warrant at his home is unprecedented in Alaska politics and is part of what appears to be a widening corruption investigation that first burst into view last August.”

“Federal investigators and grand juries in Anchorage and Washington, D.C., have been seeking information about a remodeling project” at Stevens’ home that occurred in 2000. “The project, which more than doubled the size of the house, was overseen by” an oil services company CEO who pleaded guilty two months ago “to bribing state lawmakers and agreed to cooperate with authorities.”

Late last year, Stevens indicated he intended to run for re-election in 2008.