The Ovi magazine today

Missing the forest by Thanos Kalamidas

I never pretended to be an expert on US politics and embarrassingly I have to admit that I learn a big deal on what's going on in the White House and Capitol Hill from a television series called the "West Wing".

Caption This! April 2008 by The Ovi Team
It is simple. Look at another photo of Sarkozy and write a caption/speech bubble/thought bubble or anything else that captures your imagination.

Manufactured Landscape - Landscape as Architecture by Luis Alves
Who are the users of an industrial structure like a factory, a mine, a quarry or an industrial village? Obviously they are the workers. In fact, who defines the requirements of those structures are the investors or the capital owners.

Union Pour La Mediterranee: Bienvenue Au Souk by Europe & Us
Forum de Paris, vendredi 28 mars. 17h30, Paris, XVeme arrondissement. Petite foule compacte sur les marches de l'Unesco.

Pelosi urges for an end

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, has urged a swift end to the Democrats' contest to nominate a presidential candidate.

Mrs. Pelosi, a senior Democrat, told ABC News it was important to get behind one candidate if the party expected to win the White House in November. A number of supporters of Barack Obama have been calling for his rival Hillary Clinton to concede the race. Mrs. Pelosi did not say which candidate she preferred.

Another one asking the same, shouldn’t the candidates start thinking about it? Or is it a fools’ day joke?

Obama Says Clinton Should Keep Running

Barack Obama refused Saturday to go along with other Democrats who are calling for Hillary Rodham Clinton to step away from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. "My attitude is Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants," Obama said.

Obama told reporters he did not agree with one of his supporters, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, when he said earlier this week that Clinton cannot win the nomination and should therefore drop out. "I hadn't talked to Pat about it," Obama said.

At stops throughout the day, Clinton raised the question of whether she should leave the race — eliciting loud jeers from supporters. "There are some people who say we should just stop these elections.’Enough people have already voted, what's a few million more?'" Clinton said in Louisville, Ky. "I don't know about you but I'm glad Kentucky is going to be voting and you'll be choosing because it's such an important election." The state holds its primary May 20.

Well he could not say anything else, could he? At least to the media, but he can do something more important, pick the phone and call her and Finlay give an end to this dog fight!

Clinton rejects call to quit race

US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has rejected calls by supporters of her rival, Barack Obama, to abandon her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Senator Patrick Leahy, an influential Democrat and Obama supporter, had said that by remaining in the race she was helping the Republican Party. Mrs. Clinton told supporters she had no intention of abandoning the race. The New York senator is trailing Mr. Obama in the number of delegates needed to obtain the nomination.

But the latest opinion polls suggest that she is leading Mr. Obama by more than 10 points in the next major primary in Pennsylvania on 22 April. "There are some folks saying: 'Well, we ought to stop these elections'," she told a crowd at a high school in Indianapolis, Indiana.

"I didn't think we believed that in America. I thought we of all people knew how important it was to give everyone a chance to have their voices heard." Former President Bill Clinton said those calling for his wife to pull out of the race should "just relax".

Pity, she should realize that is over and she should step down and give her full support to Obama. Somehow she has to understand that this hearts more the democratic party than anything McCain could do!

Democrats to wrap up fight

US Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean has said he would like the party's presidential nominating contest decided by 1 July to avoid bitter in-fighting.

Mr. Dean told US network ABC he did not want rivalry between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to "degenerate into a big fight at the convention" in August. Mr. Obama has begun a six-day tour of Pennsylvania, which votes on 22 April.

Meanwhile the Republican contender John McCain has aired his first advert aimed at November's general election. The Arizona senator is effectively guaranteed to pick up his party's nomination to run for president at the Republican National Convention in September.

In the Democratic contest, Senator Obama is ahead of Senator Clinton in terms of the number of delegates won in the party's primary elections. But the battle for the presidential nomination seems set to continue all the way to the party's national convention in late August.

And he’s not the only one; I think everybody had enough of all the dirt thrown around. Is about time Hillary and Obama to wrap out and decide who of the them will be the next …Vice-President of the US.

Obama presses Clinton

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has published seven years of tax returns on his website and urged his rival, Hillary Clinton, to do the same.

Mr. Obama's spokesman said he hoped the release of tax returns would encourage her to let people "see her finances" before the key primary in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Clinton said she hoped to release her tax returns "within the next week". Earlier, Mrs. Clinton was forced to explain how she came to misrepresent a visit she made to Bosnia in the 1990s.

She said last week that she and her daughter, Chelsea, "ran with our heads down" to avoid sniper fire when she arrived at Tuzla airport in 1996. But television footage broadcast on Monday showed her smiling as they are greeted by a Bosnian government welcoming committee.

Mr. Obama's aides said the admission was proof that Mrs. Clinton had overstated her foreign policy experience.

The closer we get to the electoral day the worst the fight turns, actually it has already turn into a dirty war and I’m not sure if that’s working for them and not for McCain who continues clean and away from all these!

It was not only Obama’s records breached, it was for all of them!

Man, the thing is getting worst every minute. In the beginning it was only Obama, now is just …everybody! The passport files of the three leading US presidential candidates have been improperly accessed, the state department has said.

A state department employee looked at the files of both Republican candidate John McCain and Democratic front-runner Barack Obama, the department said. State department spokesman Sean McCormack said a trainee also accessed Hillary Clinton's file last year. Two state department contractors have been fired and a third disciplined.

"In the case of Senator McCain, we detected earlier this year... one of the same people who accessed Senator Obama's passport file also accessed Senator McCain's passport file," Mr. McCormack said. That contract employee had been reprimanded but not fired, he said.

Is something more they miss to tell us? Just the …passport files all the lifelong files? And by the way, earlier this week, Ms Rice said she had apologized to Mr. Obama about the breach of security regarding his passport file.

She said a full investigation was under way. A spokesman for Mr. Obama suggested that the government could be using private information for "political purposes".

Obama’s passport files

If Obama will be elected he will definitely have a lot of work to do if he doesn’t want to live what F.J.K. lived with FBI and other internal foes. Apparently the latest incident comes from the US Department of State that had to fire two contractors and disciplined a third for accessing the passport file of presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

A spokesman for the department, Sean McCormack, said the cases were probably the result of "imprudent curiosity". But he said it was not clear what the employees may have seen or what they were looking for. In the times we live curiosity is just …out of question.

A spokesman for Mr. Obama suggested that the government could be using private information for "political purposes". And he is right. The strange thing is what they were looking for, all these stupid things like he was trained in Pakistan and his real name is Osama? How naïve or how stupid they can be.

Obama’s US cannot ignore race

So this was it, in the end everything came down to race and gender while Mr. Obama was insuring everybody that it was about ideas and tomorrow! Speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city seen as the cradle of US democracy, Mr Obama gave a speech that drew on America's long history of racial inequality - and called on the US to move beyond it.

"The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races," he said. As the child of a black father and white mother, he said he understood the passions of both sides in what he called "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years" - and said he was not so naive as to believe it could be overcome in one election cycle.

What is coming next? The line between been the person we’ve seen for so long and good old Jesse Jackson is very thin and a lot of his opponents would love to see him crossing it.

Obama wins in Mississippi

Barack Obama has beaten rival Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic primary election in the state of Mississippi.

Mr Obama polled strongly among African-American voters, winning 60.7% of the vote to Mrs Clinton's 37.1% with almost all of the votes counted. The result is not decisive but boosts his lead in terms of delegates at the August convention where the party will choose its White House candidate.

And nothing yet about united against the Republicans' front that starts collecting money now for the next step while the Democrats just ...spend ...spend ...spend!!!