Kameel Majdali's Road Ahead

Melbourne, a city that has been my home for thirty years, had protests. This is nothing new in the world’s once ‘most liveable city,’ now rated Number Eight. Sometimes Melbourne can host rowdy, even violent protests. Wasn’t it the city that tried to tear down Oral Robert’s gospel tent in 1961? Mobbed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Burke Street Mall in 1988? Returned the compliment to then US President George HW Bush in 1992? This time, the protestors made their views known about abortion - in the United States. They were protesting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision that mandated all fifty American states must provide abortion services, at least in the first trimester. The 24 June 2022 five to four ruling reversed Roe and returned the matter of abortion to the individual states to decide on their own. California and New York will continue to be major abortion states. Other states will restrict. Not just the Melbourne protestors were indignan...

  The US Presidential election will be held on Tuesday 3 November 2020. It is clearly the most unusual US election in history. It has been defined and limited by a pandemic. There was no big party convention with 1000s in attendance. Many events went virtual. One candidate is hardly on the campaign trail at all. Who could have imagined such a scenario, even a year ago? One of the big concerns for the 2020 US election is that voters will be looking at personality rather than policy. This is a big mistake. Serious governance is influenced by personality but ultimately guided by policy. There are serious issues at stake and we need to focus on them. The Economy    This is often the Number One concern of most voters. In normal elections, the health of the economy can make or break an incumbent leader. Again, the situation is unusual: at the beginning of 2020 the US economy was in great shape in most areas (the federal deficit being the exception). Then the pandemic ...