Not unexpectedly after Super Tuesday, the world press is fascinated by the US presidential campaign. In ‘The World Watches’, Newsweek describes how newspapers from Cuba and Israel to China and Australia are busy analysing the greatest show on earth, but in Russia “…the big US election news was deemed to be the actor Robert De Niro's endorsement of Obama.” In The New Statesman, Andrew Stephen assesses the three likely contenders’ vital statistics with some skepticism: Clinton “has the Democratic working-class, Latino and women’s votes sewn up (while) Obama will now be playing the youth and c-word cards for all they’re worth.” Meanwhile, McCain is the ‘Maverick’: “(that) explains his cross-party appeal as well as opposition within the Republicans.” Concludes Stephen: “The fun, my friends — as John McCain would say — has hardly started”.In the same issue John Pilger tears into ‘The danse macabre of US style democracy': “(the) presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque (with) flags, balloons and bullshit, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money, power, human division and a culture of permanent war.” War is on the Spectator's mind too, although in a very different context. In “McCain, please” it argues that: “…the 2008 race is, at heart, a wartime election… and winning in Iraq will be by far the most pressing task… A second Clinton presidency would… simply be the restoration of a duumvirate that left the White House in disgrace seven years ago. Barack Obama… we can not support …for the same reason that he says that he is running: the fierce urgency of now… McCain is the man.”Newsweek provides a profile in courage of McCain,72, who if elected “will be the oldest president ever”. The Economist likes a McCain presidency but “his age will be a drawback… and his choice of running, is therefore a subject of more than usual concern.”In “Raising Obama” Vanity Fair asks “Is he tough enough?” The answer is yes: not just because of “dreams from my father” but also “his mother’s daring, his grandmother’s grit, and his own relentless drive” A poem by boy Barack explains that drive: “..saw an old, forgotten man,/On an old, forgotten road./Staggering and numb under the glare of the Spotlight. His eyes, so dull and grey,/Slide from right to left, to right,/Looking for his life, misplaced”. Away from the American elections, The New Yorker and Seymour M Hersh investigate ‘A Strike in the Dark’. Examining claims that Israel had destroyed a nascent nuclear reactor in Syria developed with North Korean help on September 6, 2007, Hersh found evidence to suggest that “the preëmptive raid on Syria was also meant as a warning about—and a model for—a preëmptive attack on Iran.”In The New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar asks “Will you marry me - temporarily?” Muta marriage, a specifically Shia tradition, involves a contract between men and women “in which the duration of marriage and the dowry are specified in advance,” and can last one hour or 99 years. This year, the Iranian interior ministry has launched a huge campaign to encourage the country's youth “to seek sexual fulfilment in muta marriages.” Roughly half of Iran’s 70 million population is under 30. “An increasing number are delaying marriage because of financial pressures and house prices, thereby missing out on sex… hopping from temporary partner to temporary partner. Iran will have caught up with the west; and we will all be happy.”
