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Although Lula remains the favorite, he has a mere 26 days to persuade 1.5 million voters to support him. In Sunday's election, the impoverished Northeast region voted for Lula and the industrialized state of Sao Paulo voted for Geraldo Alckmin. The next battle will be in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where Heloisa Helena received 17% of the vote.
Miklos Vamos, Budapest, Hungary - Your humble chronicler is a keen Hungarian. He is also a novelist, and because his book was coming out in German, he was in Berlin when his cell phone started to ring again and again. Many friends called from Hungary asking my opinions about events. Events? - I just hadn't the faintest idea what they were talking about. At the same time, a few foreign friends called and asked if I intended to go home. "Why shouldn't I?" "Because there has been a revolution in Budapest," they said, and added that I should watch CNN or Euronews. When I did, the aired scenes looked exactly like TV images of the tempestuous days of the 1956 Revolution. The only difference was that the latter had been black and white, while these moving pictures are color.
Stephan Haggard - Over the last two years the Bush administration has had surprising success putting together a sanctions regime against North Korea. But the country's threat to test a nuclear weapon could leave the U.S. worse off than ever: with a nuclear North Korea perfectly willing to pay the price of hunger and even famine. I'll tell you first why these sanctions are so efficient, and then why they're also ineffective.
The Korea Liberator - Count us among those who ardently hope Kim Jong-il conducts a nuclear test.
Miriam Leitao, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - It's the economy, stupid...both in the United States and in Brazil. A divided economy explains Brazil's divided presidential election. President Lula won all states in the impoverished Northeast. He lost all states in the developed South and the rich agribusiness region of the Midwest. Brazil has become a divided country, much like Venezuela, but for completely different reasons.
Do you agree? - In an editorial today, Bush's defense secretary cites improvements in education, security, health care, infrastructure and the economy as signs that there's hope for Afghanistan.
Our panelist Ahmed Rashid recently returned from Kabul, Afghanistan and wrote the following piece:
Musharraf: Stop Aiding the Taliban
Ahmed Rashid, Lahore, Pakistan - Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.
Former U.S. National Security Adviser Donald Gregg - First: Don't panic. Kim Jong Il's objective is survival and eventual change in North Korea, not suicide. The diplomatic situation in Northeast Asia will be immensely complicated by the North Korea test, which I think was a huge mistake on their part, but missiles are not about to start flying.
In two op-eds today, David Ignatius and William Perry called for a "new deterrent" and "new red line" that would make North Korea heed Washington's threats. How would this look? Read their op-eds and join the debate.
China Confidential - America must be ready to execute a swift, devastating war on North Korea. Appeasement will not work. And if the U.S. waits, Kim's increasingly impoverished regime will sell nuclear weapons to terrorists to stay afloat. Are you ready for another preemptive war?
Joshua Stanton - Let's begin our reexamination of the North Korea problem by facing two harsh realities. First, Kim Jong Il hasn't stalled and lied his way through 15 years of nuclear diplomacy just because he's holding out for the right deal. Assume for a moment that we could get Kim Jong Il to show up at talks, something he hasn't done for more than a year. The United States could put its best offer on the table, load it up with Dane Geld and go easy on verification and Kim Jong Il still wouldn't disarm. We know, because we've seen this all happen -- twice. Kim Jong Il's compliance lasted, respectively, three years and less than 24 hours. He wants the bomb.
John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen There is plenty of blame to go around in the continuing crisis in Darfur. But the stalemate over the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping operation to the ravaged region in Sudan can be traced directly to the international community's failure to apply strong diplomatic and economic pressure on senior officials of the ruling National Congress Party to end the killing, negotiate amendments to the flawed Darfur Peace Agreement and accept U.N. troops.
Megan Mulligan - When it comes to determining an appropriate course of action on North Korea, PostGlobal readers are as sharply divided as diplomats, military officers, politicians and our own panelists. Yet one concern unites those whose opinions otherwise span the spectrum: Ordinary North Koreans ought not suffer further because of Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions.
Dr. Shalini Venturelli Of all the difficulties Britain faces with its Islamic extremists, who would have thought senior members of Blair's government, including the prime minister himself, would settle on the menace of the veil. While hate-filled men urge death and destruction in mosques, universities and private homes, it is the sight of a concealed woman's face that ignites debate on how to address the grave threat to British society from domestic sources of terrorism.
Baqi Barzani - In advance of the recommendations by former U.S. secretary of state James Baker's study group, the White House proclaimed its opposition to partitioning Iraq. Unfortunately, the Bush administration overlooked the wishes of the majority of Iraq's people.
Bordone & Chang - The Administration's North Korea policy of "ABC" - Anything But Clinton - needs revision. It's high-time that the Administration understand that listening and talking - at bilateral, multilateral, and second-track levels - are tools that may yield better results than playing a silly game of chicken.
Omar Karmi - In theory, in the case of extreme national emergency a leader has the right to bypass democratic institutions in the interests of the people. This may sound counterintuitive, but any democracy has such safeguards inbuilt. For example, think of those invoked, rightly or wrongly, in the U.S. homeland security debate.
Yoav Stern, Haaretz, Jerusalem, Israel - The Palestinian Democracy is impressive, especially when one takes into consideration the circumstances through which it emerged. Can anyone imagine the Egyptian President having open-to-the-public discussions with his Prime Minister? The Syrian President? The region's monarchs?
Ali Rose, Kabul, Afghanistan - After the fall of the Taliban, many believed that girls' education would quickly advance. But now womens' rights are associated with foreign manipulation and schoolgirls become the targets of religious resentment.
Miriam Leitao, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Lula's victory in Brazil does not mean the people have acquitted him of all the corruption scandals of his first term. The economy won him this reelection. Upon close inspection, however, the economy is not fairing that well after all. The Brazilian GDP has grown only slightly and unemployment is at 10%. But the overvalued currency has reduced inflation and kept down the price of foodstuffs, pleasing voters. Poor people's real income therefore have increased. They've additionally benefited from income transfer programs of Lula.
Leon Krauze, Mexico City - In an unprecedented move for his government, Mexican President Vicente Fox decided to take back Oaxaca from a teacher's union strike with crippling consequences. Fox made the right decision for Mexico's democracy.
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