Critical reading

Wednesday, 16 May 2012 00:00

By Sarah Blaskey and Steve Horn, Truthout | News Analysis

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Taxpayer-subsidized stealth lobbyists: Lobbyists who circumvent normal lobbying regulations and procedures to advance the corporate agenda in statehouses nationwide on the taxpayer dime.

If Washington DC is the new Versailles, run by corporate overlords and their lobbyist-hired guns, then the 50 statehouses are its paternal twins. That is, while they look different in form, they share the same genetic function as avenues for the fulfillment of the corporate agenda.

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2012 (IPS) - The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration's "Enduring Strategic Partnership" agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war.

But the only substantive agreement reached between the U.S. and Afghanistan - well hidden in the agreements - has been to allow powerful U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to continue to carry out the unilateral night raids on private homes that are universally hated in the Pashtun zones of Afghanistan.

The presentation of the new agreement on a surprise trip by President Obama to Afghanistan, with a prime time presidential address and repeated briefings for the press, allows Obama to go into a tight presidential election campaign on a platform of ending an unpopular U.S. war in Afghanistan.

It also allows President Hamid Karzai to claim he has gotten control over the SOF night raids while getting a 10-year commitment of U.S. economic support.

Posted on Apr 18, 2012

By Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign launched its first Spanish-language ads this week, just after he returned from the Summit of the Americas. He spent three days in Colombia, longer than any president in U.S. history. The trip was marred, however, by a prostitution scandal involving the U.S. military and Secret Service. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We let the boss down, because nobody’s talking about what went on in Colombia other than this incident.” Dempsey is right. It also served as a metaphor for the U.S. government’s ongoing treatment of Latin America.

The scandal reportedly involves 11 members of the U.S. Secret Service and five members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, who allegedly met prostitutes at one or more bars in Cartagena and took up to 20 of the women back to their hotel, some of whom may have been minors. This all deserves thorough investigation, but so do the policy positions that Obama promoted while in Cartagena.

Published on Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Is Obama Kowtowing to the Right? Or Is He One of Them?

by Ted Rall

The President's progressive critics blame him for continuing and expanding upon his Republican predecessor's policies. His supporters point to the obstructionist, Republican-controlled Congress. What can Obama do? He's being stymied at every turn.

The first problem with the it's-the-GOP's-fault defense is that it asks voters to suffer short-term memory loss. In 2009, you probably recall, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. By a sizeable majority. They even had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. His approval ratings were through the roof; even many Republicans who had voted against him took a liking to him. The media, in his pocket, wondered aloud whether the Republican Party could ever recover. "Rarely, if ever, has a President entered office with so much political wind at his back," Tim Carney wrote for the Evans-Novak Political Report shortly after the inauguration.

Sherry Wolf

Posted on April 5, 2012

There’s a troubling YouTube video, “I AM NOT TRAYVON MARTIN,” making the rounds on Facebook that was posted by a young white woman attacking white antiracists who wear “I am Trayvon Martin” t-shirts. Because the 3-minute video expresses so much of what’s paralyzing and wrong-headed about the “white privilege” argument popular among some left activists, it’s worth a comment.

Essentially, her argument amounts to this: 1) social-justice minded white people (all described as middle class) should not and cannot identify with victims of racism like Trayvon; 2) white people, including antiracists, can only identify with homicidal racist maniacs like George Zimmerman; 3) people of color are multifaceted individuals capable of independent thought and action; white people are an undifferentiated mass of privileged racists who must constantly resist the urge to oppress racial minorities — no matter what they do, say or think they think, all whites are racists and benefit from racism.

How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste

By Michelle Alexander

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Tariq Ali 12 March 2012

In most colonial wars people are arrested, tortured at random and killed. Not even a façade of legality is considered necessary. The ‘lone’ American gunman who butchered innocents in Afghanistan in the early hours of Sunday morning was far from being an exception. For this is not the act of a deranged maniac killing schoolchildren in an American city. The ‘lone’ killer is a sergeant in the US army. He’s not the first and won’t be the last to kill like this.

The French did the same in Algeria, the Belgians in the Congo, the British in Kenya and Aden, the Italians in Libya, the Germans in South West Africa, the Boers in South Africa, the Israelis in Palestine, the US in Korea, Vietnam and Central America; and their surrogates have behaved similarly against their own populations throughout South America and much of Asia.

Against the Syrian National Council

Mar 08 2012

by As`ad Abukhalil

First, let us be clear: the Syrian people have every right to protest, peacefully and violently, against the brutal regime. And let us be clear: the Syrian regime has no right to stay in power, and this was true even before it began using violence to quell the uprising. And let us be clear: the Syrian regime is incapable of reforming itself.

Phyllis Bennis

Although political brinkmanship with Iran is nothing new, escalating tensions do not bode well for the region.

Last Modified: 18 Feb 2012 10:55

Amsterdam, The Netherlands - Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting to think this time will be just like previous periods of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel's position, changes in the regional and global balance of forces, and national election campaigns, all point to this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially graver risks than five or six years ago.

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.

Tuesday 24 January 2012

by: Helen Redmond, Truthout | News Analysis

At the end of 2011, the horrendous violence of the Egyptian military police, which is routinely carried out off camera in the privacy of dark, filthy cells in the high-security prison of Tora, moved into the highly visible, public Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo. It was inevitable. Thousands of Egyptian youth are infuriated at the lack of any economic and social change and the continued imprisonment and torture of activists.

The ferocity of the violence is stomach-churning. Watching the video of uniformed police, in full body armor, wielding long, black metal rods with handles like swords, storming towards young, unarmed protesters wearing blue jeans, T-shirts and hoodies evokes sheer terror. The terror gives way to utter shock when the police, like a pack of jackals on steroids, encircle, and, in a flurry of up-and-down motions, strike defenseless protesters over and over and over again. I counted as one man sustained 21 body blows, numerous jackbooted kicks to the face and head which left him him comatose on the street.

Published on Saturday, January 28, 2012

by Renee Parsons

As an attack on Iran remains temporarily on the backburner and Syria, home to US-identified terrorist group Hamas, moves up the queue as the next target for military intervention, both are part of a larger strategy proposed to newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.

The "Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" suggested a "new approach to peace' premised on a 'clean break' from the Oslo peace process of the 1990's. Oslo would have withdrawn Israeli troops from the occupied territories while affirming Palestine's right of self-determination. Rather than pursuing a 'comprehensive peace' with the Arab world, Clean Break advocated an aggressive pre-emptive military strategy to destabilize Iraq and eliminate Saddam Hussein. In addition, Clean Break retained the 'right of hot pursuit' anywhere within the occupied territories and encouraged 'seizing the initiative' by "engaging" Hezbollah, Syria and Iran to trigger ultimate regime change.

Issue: 2287 dated: 28 January 2012

posted: 6.08pm Tue 24 Jan 2012

On the first anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, Alex Callinicos looks at how to understand the revolutionary wave—and the potential for it to go much further

The Arab revolutions have shown an astonishing tenacity. They have overthrown some dictators and shaken others. Above all, they continue.

The struggle to democratise Egyptian society goes on. And revolutionaries in Syria have shown astonishing courage and determination despite more than 5,000 deaths at the hand of the state.

But how do we get a measure of the revolutions’ significance? It’s tempting to draw historical comparisons.

One most frequently made is with the revolutions of 1848, which started with the overthrow of the French monarchy and went on to shake the old regime throughout Europe.

This isn’t necessarily the most comforting comparison, because the old regime managed to hang on and crush the revolutions.

Some 20 years later, one leader of the extreme left in the 1848 German Revolution, Frederick Engels, reflected from his Manchester exile.