Articles of Barack Obama

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What Obama could not possibly say

Barack Obama

Facts on the ground will decide whether the United States really “values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator”. So let’s start with a fact. For US President Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia is not in the Middle East. Maybe the House of Saud has relocated the deserts and the oil to Oceania without telling anyone. In his major speech on Thursday from where the opening quote comes, and where, according to the Reuters gospel, he would “lay out a new US strategy toward a skeptical Arab world”, the skeptical Arabs, and the whole world for that matter, never heard these fateful two words, “Saudi” and “Arabia”. Even India, Indonesia and Brazil were mentioned.

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Lots of rhetoric – but very little help

Barack Obama

And then, I guessed it before he said it, he compared the Arab revolutions to the American revolution. We hold these truths to be self-evident, etc, etc. That many Arabs fought and died to be free of us than to be like Americans was quite lost on him. And then we had to hear what America’s “role” was going to be in the new Middle East. We did not hear if the Arabs wanted them to have a role. But that’s Obama for you. Always searching for a role.

Reflections by Fidel »

The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

Nobody can assure us that in its agony, the empire won’t be dragging human beings down to catastrophe. As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible. I remember well that one day, almost 20 years ago, I said that there

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Andrew Breitbart’s ‘electronic brownshirts’

Andrew Breitbart holds a news conference on Acorn Revealed: The Philadelphia Story at the National Press Club. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Judy Ancel, a Kansas City, Missouri, professor, and her St Louis colleague were teaching a labour history class together this spring semester. Little did they know, video recordings of the class were making their way into the thriving sub rosa world of rightwing attack video editing, twisting their words in a way that resulted in the loss of one of the professors’ jobs amid a wave of intimidation and death threats. Fortunately, reason and solid facts prevailed, and the videos ultimately were exposed for what they are: fraudulent, deceptive, sloppily edited hit pieces.

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No End to the “War on Terror,” No End to Guantánamo

The US Congress

With the death of Osama bin Laden, there is a perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to bring to an end the decade-long “War on Terror” by withdrawing from Afghanistan and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The justification for both the invasion of Afghanistan (in October 2001) and the detention of prisoners in Guantánamo (which opened in January 2002) is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, just three days after the 9/11 attacks..”

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Osama and Obama

Osama - Obama

By Frei Betto (Published MHP Literary Agent – Advisor) It is curious to note that when announcing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the CIA did not exhibit his body, like they did, unnecessarily, the body of another “hunting trophy” – Ernesto Che Guevara. Bin Laden left this life and entered history. There is nothing

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My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition – except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.”

Reflections by Fidel »

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden

Those persons who deal with these issues know that on September 11 of 2001 our people expressed its solidarity to the US people and offered the modest cooperation that in the area of health we could have offered to the victims of the brutal attack against the Twin Towers in New York. We also immediately

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A Nobel prizewinner without scruples

Barack Obama, presidente de los Estados Unidos

By Atilio Boron Translation: Machetera / Tlaxcala One more sign among many illustrating the profound moral crisis of “Western and Christian civilization” that the USA claims to represent is offered by the news of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Aside from the rejection his image and manner of struggle provokes among us, the nature of

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Obama/Osama rock the casbah

Obama y Osama

United States President Barack Obama may have turned the boogie sound on his 2012 re-election – bookmakers are giving him 1.75 – way beyond the reach of a circus freak show featuring specimens such as mama grizzly Sarah Palin and billionaire bully (with a fox in his head) Donald Trump. But was it “justice” – as Obama claimed? Justice – up to the age of the drone – implied a crime scene, evidence, courts, due process, a jury, a judge and a sentence.