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War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not

Wed, 08/04/2010 - 09:52 — Paul Street

wikileaked_photo

The Obama administration is even more fixated on secrecy than its Republican predecessor, whose crimes go unpunished and in many case, repeated. The continuity of the two war-making regimes is obvious. As it turns out, there are only so many ways to run “the world’s greatest killing machine” – and they are all mass murderous.


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Reparations…for Present Injustice

Tue, 07/20/2010 - 18:45 — Paul Street

reparations

by Paul Street

The author’s problem with African American reparations is that some of the demands seem to stop with the demise of Jim Crow. “Why stop with the 20th century?” Racist crimes that cry out for repair are constantly committed in the United States. “The very distinction between past and present racism ought to be considered part of the ideological superstructure of contemporary white supremacy.”

 

“Felony is the New ‘N-Word”: Michelle Alexander on Mass Incarceration as “The New Jim Crow” in the Age of Obama

Wed, 06/09/2010 - 01:12 — Paul Street

the new jim crow

by Paul Street

The author – himself a renowned Left, anti-racist scholar and activist – calls Alexander’s work “as close to being a perfect book as you are going to see.” While established Black leadership spent most of its political capital defending affirmative action programs that never reached the masses of Black people, the U.S. was busy establishing a “new racial caste system” based on mass Black incarceration and “unimpeded by the Fourteenth Amendment and federal civil rights legislation”

 

A Comeback for Chattel Slavery? Remarkable Revelations from a Top Obama Aide

Tue, 04/06/2010 - 21:48 — Paul Street
Negroes For Saleby Geraldine Winstanley, AN political writer
Hot off the presses: slavery is about to stage a return engagement, by presidential decree. “This and the president’s repeated visits to Africa have helped him develop a sense of slavery’s rich contribution to the development of what he calls ‘this magical place the United States.'”

Killer Obama, Dr. King, and the Triple Evils

Tue, 01/12/2010 - 23:27 — Paul Street
warmonger and peacemakerby Paul Street
Dr. Martin Luther King's ideas on the nature of peace and social justice bear no resemblance to those of the current occupant of the White House, yet another in a long line of presidential killers on an industrial scale. MLK, the social democrat, would have recoiled in horror at the trillions lavished on Wall Street Obama's first year in office, believing as he did that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”

“You Can’t Be President”: Race, Class, and Memories of Obama

Tue, 12/22/2009 - 18:51 — Paul Street
by Paul Street
No one should claim they were fooled by candidate Barack Obama – least of all, Black people. “Obama’s political team has always taken an official position of cowardice on race.” His avoidance of racial realities is long-standing. The president's supporters simply ignored the evidence of their own eyes and ears, and let their imaginations do the thinking.

Perverted Priorities: Obama, One Year Later

Tue, 11/10/2009 - 18:19 — Paul Street
the faceby Paul Street
Barack Obama's presidency was almost scripted by the corporate interests that backed his candidacy. A year after his election, his political trajectory is remarkably consistent with the requirements of late stage capital. “It was and is foolish, childish even, to expect progressive change from a carefully corporate-choreographed bourgeois election in the headquarters of world imperialism.”

True Crime: White Privilege and a Police Killing in an Obama-Mad College Town

Mon, 10/19/2009 - 22:49 — Paul Street
Iowa cityby Paul Street
Iowa City, Iowa went wild for Barack Obama in '08, earning a reputation among it's more conservative neighbors as “The People’s Republic of Johnson County.” But when a white deputy sheriff shot to death a homeless Black man at the urging of a local white drunk, the “liberal” oasis behaved much like any racist backwater town.

“In Cold Blood”: White Deputy’s Killing of Homeless Black Man Sparks Mild Protest in Obama-Mad Iowa City

Tue, 08/11/2009 - 11:03 — Paul Street
homelessby Paul Street
In what might be called “White Obamaland,” places like Iowa City, Iowa, “middle class 'liberals' and 'progressives' are proud of the support they gave to the nation’s first black president during the election last November.” But when a Black man was shot down without apparent provocation by a white policeman, most whites refused “to acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, state-of-being societal and institutional racism in American life.”

“Skip” Gates: A Curious Martyr in the Struggle Against Racism

Mon, 07/27/2009 - 23:04 — Paul Street
gates in studyby Paul Street
President Obama’s “friend” Dr. Henry Louis Gates has been richly rewarded for arguing “that poor African-Americans are largely to blame for the fact that blacks stand at the bottom of the nation’s steep socioeconomic pyramid.” Presumably, and by the same logic, Gates must now blame himself for getting arrested in his own home by a Cambridge policeman. Actually, Gates’ first impulse was to cash in on the experience with a “PBS special” on Blacks and the criminal justice system – a subject that never previously crossed his mind.

Race Cowardice From the Top Down

Wed, 04/22/2009 - 09:08 — Paul Street

 

america's head on raceby Paul Street
Discussions of race in the US, except on the terms of and with the permission of privileged whites are impolite. They are “playing the race card.” Attorney General Eric Holder labeled the national reluctance to engage with itself a symptom of cowardice, forcing his boss to defend him. But the old saying is that it takes one to know one.

 

Obama's Violin: Who's Playing, Who's Being Played?

Wed, 03/04/2009 - 05:02 — Paul Street

drink up!

by Paul Street

Delving into the speeches and writings of the President of Change reveals a Barack Obama sharply at odds with the popular image.  On war, peace and a host of other issues the gulf is widening between what many voted for, and what they are beginning to get from the 44th president.

Barack Obama's Not-So Non-Ideological Inaugural Address

Tue, 01/27/2009 - 18:00 — Paul Street

by Paul Streetobeyobama-1

The new president dismisses "ideology" in order to promote his own brand of neo-liberalism. He is a partisan in the corporate war-against-all who slimes the opposition as purveyors of "dogma,"  "stale" ideas and "tired" recriminations, a proponent of government "that works" who never addresses the question, "for whom?" Obama blames the current crisis on a "collective failure" of the people, a form of "vicious victim-blaming" that suggests "the country's broad populace shares equal responsibility with the investor class for the nation's dire economic straits."

Reflections on Obama’s “Non-Ideological Pragmatism”

Tue, 01/06/2009 - 18:00 — Paul Street
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by Paul StreetobamaStreet

The corporate media work hard to frame pro-business policies as the "practical" and "pragmatic" work of "centrist" and "non-partisan" politicians who can "get the job done." The clear implication is that progressives have their heads in the clouds, and are incapable of "getting things done." Of course, "Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin certainly ‘got things done.' So did Richard Nixon and George W. Bush and so on." That doesn't make them the good guys. Barack Obama and his handlers stress that he is "non-ideological" - which really translates to non-threatening to entrenched interests.

Arne Duncan and Neoliberal Racism

Tue, 12/30/2008 - 18:00 — Paul Street

ChicagoMilitrySchoolsby Paul Street

Barack Obama likes to play basketball with his friend Arne Duncan, but does that make Duncan worthy of the nation's top education spot? If Obama's appointees are a reflection of the president-elect's own world view, this one is quite disturbing. Paul Street writes: "Privatization, union-busting (charter and contract schools operate union-free), excessive standardized testing, teacher-blaming, military schooling, and the rollback of community input on school decisions - these are the interrelated hallmarks of private school graduate Arne Duncan's six and a half years at the helm of" the Chicago Public Schools.

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