Critical reading

June 2, 2013

By LORI WALLACH and BEN BEACHY

WASHINGTON — THE Obama administration has often stated its commitment to open government. So why is it keeping such tight wraps on the contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995?

The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom. It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join. President Obama has said he wants to sign it by October.

Although Congress has exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade, so far the executive branch has managed to resist repeated requests by members of Congress to see the text of the draft agreement and has denied requests from members to attend negotiations as observers — reversing past practice.

By Matthew Rothschild, June 2013 issue

(Editor’s Note: This article is derived from research and writing conducted by Beau Hodai, published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in the report “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”)

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, the Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement officers have engaged in widespread domestic spying on Occupy Wall Street activists, among others, on the shaky premise that these activists pose a terrorist threat. Often, Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies have coordinated with the private sector, working on behalf of, or in cooperation with, Wall Street firms and other companies the protesters have criticized.

Was the Boston bombing really a “terrorist” act?

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sat, 04/20/2013 - 16:17

President Obama has repeatedly claimed that the Boston Marathon bombing was an “act of terror” and that its alleged perpetrators are “terrorists.”

It may seem pointless to quibble with this description: after all what could be more “terroristic” than setting off bombs at a peaceful sporting event killing three persons, one a child, and injuring or horrifically maiming dozens more?

But in fact how the act is described is very important in determining government, media and wider societal responses, including ramping up racism and bigotry against Muslims, Arabs or people of color.

There can be no doubt that the Boston Marathon bombing was a murderous act, but does it –– based on what is known –– fit the US government’s own definitions of “terrorism”?

It is important to recall that other, far more lethal recent events, including the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado and the school massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut have not been termed “terrorism,” nor their perpetrators labeled “terrorist” by the government. Why?

April 14, 2013

By SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

Peter Rugh
April 4, 2013

Tianna Smalls had planned on working Thursday, but her colleagues convinced her otherwise. “‘You’re either with us, or you’re for Wendy’s,’” Smalls remembers her co-workers telling her. Her mother also weighed in Thursday morning as Smalls was heading to work at the franchise in downtown Brooklyn. “She said, ‘If one person stands up, nothing happens. You have to stand together.’”

So Tina Smalls joined approximately 400 other fast food workers across New York City in Thursday’s day-long strike — the latest action in the ongoing campaign that is demanding a raise of $15 an hour and attempting to form a cross-franchise union. Twice as many workers participated in Thursday’s walkout than in the previous strike, which launched the union campaign in November.

By Michael Schuman | March 25, 2013

Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.

March 9, 2013, 7:30 pm

By JOSEPH LEVINE

I was raised in a religious Jewish environment, and though we were not strongly Zionist, I always took it to be self-evident that “Israel has a right to exist.” Now anyone who has debated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have encountered this phrase often. Defenders of Israeli policies routinely accuse Israel’s critics of denying her right to exist, while the critics (outside of a small group on the left, where I now find myself) bend over backward to insist that, despite their criticisms, of course they affirm it. The general mainstream consensus seems to be that to deny Israel’s right to exist is a clear indication of anti-Semitism (a charge Jews like myself are not immune to), and therefore not an option for people of conscience.

04.03.13

by Mark Bergfeld

Last Saturday's "Que Se Lixe a Troika" (Fuck the Troika) demonstrations represent a qualitative as well as quantitative shift for the anti-austerity movement in Portugal. In more than 40 towns and cities across Portugal, 1.5 million people (800,000 in Lisbon) took it to the streets against the government's slavish submission to the dictates of the Troika of IMF, ECB, and EU. In the wake of the first "Que Se Lixe a Troika" demonstration on September 15, an ongoing militant dockers' strike, and a general strike on November 14 of last year, Saturday's demonstration is starting to tackle the unfinished business of the 1974 Portuguese Revolution.

February 13, 2013|Steve Johnson | Tribune reporter

William Rainey Harper High School, in West Englewood, is known for a few things.

It has a really good football team for its size.

In 2010 it was featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for its success in boosting a dismal academic record.

And last school year almost 30 of its students or former students were shot, the principal said, and eight of them died: five recent students and three enrolled at the time.

It's that last fact that brought three “This American Life” reporters into the hallways of Harper, in the impoverished South Side neighborhood, for the first semester of this school year. The result begins airing this weekend in the first of two episodes of the weekly public radio documentary program devoted to the school and its efforts to handle the violence.

Published: February 12, 2013

To the Editor:

I am deeply, deeply disturbed at the suggestion in “A Court to Vet Kill Lists” (news analysis, front page, Feb. 9) that possible judicial review of President Obama’s decisions to approve the targeted killing of suspected terrorists might be limited to the killings of American citizens.

Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it.

I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims. Your response as a society to Osama bin Laden and his followers threatens to undermine your moral standards and your humanity.

DESMOND M. TUTU
Aboard MV Explorer, near Hong Kong Feb. 11, 2013

Where sports and politics collide.

By Mike Elk
January 27, 2013

Dave Zirin is the rare sportswriter who covers, in his words, the space “where sports and politics collide.” His new book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down (New Press), explores the intersection of sports and politics over the past three years, touching on the London Olympics and their role in the city’s anti-austerity riots, the lack of accountability after the Penn State sex-abuse scandals and the historic player lockouts in three out of the four major professional sports leagues.