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War and Terror: The Obama Administration Targets Antiwar Activists
Friday, May 13 @ 09:30:37 UTC |  Frozen Bank Accounts and Free Speech in the US
By Ron Jacobs
May 12, 2011 - counterpunch.org
In Palestine, Israel and its surrogates round up residents every day, putting them away for indeterminate amounts of time. The recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas makes it likely that these arrests will increase while Tel Aviv contrives to destroy that agreement. After all, it was less than a week after the agreement was announced that Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority could choose peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. If this statement doesn't make it clear that Israel will do whatever it feels necessary to prevent a united Palestinian liberation movement, then its history of "divide and conquer" tactics against that movement certainly does.
Most readers are familiar with the military campaigns and siege by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza. Fewer, however may be aware of the systemic campaign of arrest and detention carried out in the West Bank. According to San Francisco's Arab Resource and Organizing Center, "The last year has witnessed continuing mass arrest campaigns....and the detention of high-profile protest organizers and leaders from the popular committees." Many of those arrested are held on so-called secret evidence that neither the arrestees or their defense are allowed to see. The reasons for the arrests of these organizers are the same as the reasons it opposes the Fatah-Hamas agreement: Israel fears a united and popular resistance against its occupation. Simultaneously, these arrests and detentions isolate the organizers and paint them into the same corner as those Israel and the West call terrorists.
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World Focus: Can We Swap Obama for Chavez?
Tuesday, February 08 @ 19:18:55 UTC | By Mike Whitney
Feburary 08, 2011 - informationclearinghouse.info
On Monday, while Barack Obama was hob-nobbing with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hugo Chavez was busy handing out laptop computers to second graders at a school in Caracas. After that, the Venezuelan president rushed off to a food distribution plant which is providing $110 million in prepared meals for Venezuela's poor. Finally, he ended his afternoon by making an appearance at one of the many construction sites where new homes are being built for the victims of January's massive floods. It's all in day's work for Hugo Chavez.
While Obama has turned out to be the most disappointing president in the last century, Chavez continues to impress with his resolve to improve the lives of ordinary working people. For example, in just 12 years, Chavez has created a thriving national public health care system with 533 diagnostic centers and medical facilities spread throughout the capital. Health care is free and there have been over over 55 million medical consultations since Chavez launched the Misión Barrio Adentro program. Compare that to Obama's wretched cash-giveaway to the giant US HMO's which he has tried to promote as universal health care. What a joke.
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War and Terror: Can Obama Work His Magic on Arabs?
Monday, June 08 @ 03:55:59 UTC | By Ramzy Baroud
June 04, 2009
Among many major misconceptions pertaining to Arabs and Muslims is the common belief that they are a weak-willed, irrelevant collective, easily influenced and effortlessly manipulated. This mistaken assumption underscores the very ailment that has afflicted United States foreign policy in the Middle East for generations.
As media pundits and commentators began their drum-rolling in anticipation of US President Barack Obama's speech in Egypt on Thursday, very few paid attention to the fact that Arabs and Muslims are not so naive as to be wooed by mere rhetoric, but that they are significant players in their own affairs, capable of resistance and change.
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War and Terror: Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects and Promotes CIA Torture Mavens
Sunday, April 12 @ 22:57:39 UTC | By Chris Floyd
April 09, 2009
chris-floyd.com
It was obvious from the moment that Barack Obama appointed Leon Panetta to head the CIA that there was going to be no serious investigation -- much less prosecution -- of the high crimes of torture committed by the agency at the order of the Bush White House. Panetta, a Clinton retread (who actually began his career in the Nixon administration), has always been a bland, feckless, obedient servant of the Establishment; he has no outside power base, no pull, no heft, no popularity -- nothing that would enable him to grab hold of the CIA with both hands and clean that fetid, blood-encrusted house. And of course, it was precisely this kind of powerless figure that Barack Obama wanted in the post.
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War and Terror: The Ideology of Barack Obama
Sunday, April 12 @ 21:52:18 UTC | By William Blum
April 04, 2009
killinghope.org
In the past two months:
-- US Vice President Joe Biden was asked by reporters at a summit in Chile if Washington plans to put an end to the near-50-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. He replied "No."
-- Israeli authorities broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events in Jerusalem, disrupting a children's march and bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration. There has not been, nor will there be, any embargo of any kind by the United States against Israel. Nor will President Obama make any comment about what he really feels about invading a children's party and bursting their balloons.
-- The White House and the Pentagon appear to be having a competition over who can announce the most troops being sent to Afghanistan. Is anyone keeping a body count?
-- US drones continue to drop bombs on people's homes and wedding parties in Pakistan. No one in Washington publicly admits to this or comments in any way about the legality or morality of it all.
-- Bolivia and Ecuador have expelled American diplomats for what their hosts saw as conspiring to undermine the government.
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Inside U.S.A.: The Rove-Obama Deal: Tangled Up in Karl
Saturday, March 07 @ 20:55:18 UTC | By Chris Floyd
March 07, 2009
chris-floyd.com
There has been a flutter of congratulatory noise in some quarters about the recent "compromise" brokered by the White House regarding Karl Rove's criminal refusal to heed Congressional subpoenas requiring his testimony on the Bush Administration's transformation of the Justice Department into a goon squad targeting -- and imprisoning -- political opponents.
Whereas mere mortals can go to prison for ignoring a Congressional summons, Rove has been allowed to roam free, appearing on national television, writing for national publications, and carrying on his life's work of polluting and degrading the nation's political culture. This unelected, porcine bullshit-slinger is apparently so powerful that the new President of the United States felt compelled to step in and negotiate the very gentle terms under which said porcine polluter would deign to appear before Congress.
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Inside U.S.A.: Obama and Miracles that Never Happen
Sunday, December 07 @ 13:03:33 UTC | By Stephen Gowans
December 06, 2008
gowans.wordpress.com
If 10 times more people claimed to have attended Woodstock than were actually there, I suspect 10 times more people claim to have wept at Obama's election victory than actually did. Weeping on the night of November 4 – or claiming you did – has now become a fashion. I, too, wept, though not because Obama won, but because the number of times I heard the words "Obama is the embodiment of hope" was too much to bear.
The day before the election, my son called me from school.
"I was just interviewed on Obama for the national news," he related excitedly.
"How'd that happen?"
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Inside U.S.A.: Vote first; ask questions later
Friday, December 05 @ 22:16:49 UTC | By William Blum
December 3, 2008
killinghope.org
Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way. It was historic. I choked up a number of times, tears came to my eyes, even though I didn't vote for him. I voted for Ralph Nader for the fourth time in a row.
During the past eight years when I've listened to news programs on the radio each day I've made sure to be within a few feet of the radio so I could quickly change the station when that preposterous man or one of his disciples came on; I'm not a masochist, I suffer fools very poorly, and I get bored easily. Sad to say, I'm already turning the radio off sometimes when Obama comes on. He doesn't say anything, or not enough, or not often enough. Platitudes, clichés, promises without substance, "hope and change", almost everything without sufficient substance, "change and hope", without specifics, designed not to offend. What exactly are the man's principles? He never questions the premises of the empire. Never questions the premises of the "War on Terror". I'm glad he won for two reasons only: John McCain and Sarah Palin, and I deeply resent the fact that the American system forces me to squeeze out a drop of pleasure from something so far removed from my ideals. Obama's votes came at least as much from people desperate for relief from neo-conservative suffocation as from people who genuinely believed in him. It's a form of extortion – Vote for Obama or you get more of the same. Those are your only choices.
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Inside U.S.A.: A Leftist Looks at the Near Future
Tuesday, November 11 @ 15:44:53 UTC | Moving Beyond Hope
By Ron Jacobs
November 11, 2008
counterpunch.org
I can't deny the exhilaration I felt on Tuesday, November 4th when the presidential election was called for Barack Obama. When people in my working class multiethnic neighborhood started setting off firecrackers and shouting out their windows, my housemate's daughter joined them. The feelings most of us felt on knowing that the reactionary Bush regime was on its last legs were genuine emotions of hope and relief. Our job now is to turn the critical support that Obama received from many on the left into a movement that strives to return the focus of the movement away from the man and his victory and towards ending the war/occupations, etc. To do this, we must engage the issues. The most important issues are the issues of imperial war and capitalist failure. We should understand the difference between the symbolism of a black man winning the presidency of the United States and the reality of a moderate liberal free marketeer who believes that there is a war on terror and that it can be won by killing Afghanis and other people whose religion and culture are used to define them as the enemy.
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Inside U.S.A.: Obama Mania
Tuesday, November 11 @ 09:42:21 UTC | By Stephen Lendman
November 10, 2008
Global Research
On November 4, the world exhaled. The age of George Bush ended, and a new one under Barak Obama began. With high hopes he'll reverse the toxic legacy of the past eight years. Adopt socially progressive policies. End foreign wars. Govern the nation responsibly, democratically for all its people. Show his supporters that their faith in him was justified.
"Let us congratulate ourselves on being alive at such a promising moment," wrote The Nation magazine's William Greider. His victory is "a monumental rebuke to tragic history -- the ultimate defeat of 'while supremacy.' Barak Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. (He) redefined the country for us."
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World Focus: Barack Obama is NOT a socialist, is NOT a revolutionary, is NOT anti-capitalist!
Sunday, November 09 @ 12:35:03 UTC | By Franz J. T. Lee
November 09, 2008
Of course, currently in the mood of the North American workers and their counterparts elsewhere, especially in the metropolitan countries, serious questions, democratic impatience and apocalyptic fears are beginning to surface across the length and breath of the blue planet. This Uncle Sam does not like at all. As never before, all over the toxic machinery of brain laundering, mind and thought control, and of the systematic destruction of real human thought and thinking related to true emancipatory actions, is working at top speed night and day. The World News Empire, Hollywood, CNN, Fox News, the political carnivals and shows of the Leviathan, the huge international mass media and the tons of boulders of rocky music, the greedy physical and mental consumption, the quagmire of alienating 'love' songs and the massive entertainment industry, all are working over time to feed the Orwellian Murdoch and Moloch, the international 'transcapitalist' Mental Holocaust.
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Inside U.S.A.: Barack Obama: The Coming 'Anti-Chavez' of the Americas?
Thursday, November 06 @ 10:33:01 UTC | By Franz J. T. Lee
November 06, 2008
In the land of a billion of golden opportunities, after all, it seems that marvels and miracles are still on the world order. Across the globe, in globalization in recession, in capitalism that is experiencing its worst economic crisis, its worst recession ever since its accumulative inception in Ancient Greece, the poorest of the poor, the toiling wage slaves, the "scum of the earth", the "wretched of the earth" and the "white man's burden", all are celebrating the political victory of one of theirs, of a "black man", trained at Harvard, right within the den of the ferocious, wounded imperialist lion.
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