Obama
Now It’s Obama’s War
- Category: Obama
By Kenneth J. Theisen
Obama and the Fairness Doctrine
- Category: Obama
Torture, Rendition & Detention…OBAMA-STYLE
- Category: Obama
Anybody who thought the nightmare of renditions, indefinite detention, and torture would be over when Barack Obama replaced George Bush ought to take a hard look at the case of Binyam Mohamed.
Obama's Order: Continued CIA Renditions are Okay
- Category: Obama
By Larry Jones
Will President Obama Become an Accessory to Crimes of Bush, Rumsfeld?
- Category: Obama
"Mr. President: The Bush Administration lied to the people in pursuit of war. As a result, at least one million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. soldiers are dead. Thousands more are maimed. The stature of the U.S. is severely damaged. The U.S. Constitution is in shreds after signing statements, wiretaps, and torture. Your obligation is to investigate and bring to justice those who violated U.S. and international law, such as the torture treaty. Failure to do so makes you complicit in their crimes."
On Wednesday, January 28th, I sat in front of the television and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Exactly what I've been saying, myself. But it was coming from an unexpected source: the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak. I wrote down every word. He said that the United Nations has proof that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knowingly approved of torture as a policy for the United States. He said that President Barack Obama has a responsibility to investigate and prosecute those who condoned, conducted, or approved of torture.
Obama's Solution for Pakistan: Missile Strikes from Unmanned Drones
- Category: Obama
By Larry Jones
Three days after the alleged peace candidate Barack Obama was inaugurated as President and Commander-in-Chief, military forces under his command killed as many as 22 people in Pakistan, at least three of whom were children, by firing missiles from unmanned Predator drones into the Federally Administered Tribal Area. This comes on the heels Obama’s appointment of Richard Holbrooke, a long time hawk, as his special envoy to the region, and on the eve of tribal chieftains meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, husband of assassinated Benazir Bhutto.
The Hopes for Obama May Die in Afghanistan
- Category: Obama
Obama’s Privatizing Agenda for Education?
- Category: Obama
During the time that Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, public schools have been turned over to private operators – usually in the form of charter and contract schools – at a rate of about 20 per year. Privatizing schools results in union-busting since charter and contract schools operate union-free. As one of the last major district initiatives under schools chief Duncan, it was announced this month that 6 Chicago public schools will be closed in a move that could affect as many as 25 schools through closings and “turnarounds” (firing all the faculty and privatizing the school). At a recent public hearing, parents, teachers and community leaders, accused the district of closing schools only to reopen them as schools under private control and without the same accountability as regular district schools. Parents expressed outrage that now that classroom sizes were smaller, 20 rather than 40 students in a classroom, school authorities want to close the schools.
Just Say It
- Category: Obama
Obama Fact Sheet
- Category: Obama
Obama’s Inauguration: the Hopes of a Nation, the Needs of an Empire
- Category: Obama
By Dennis Loo
Barack Hussein Obama is the new U.S. President. Bush and Cheney looked awfully small and dyspeptic that day, Cheney especially, since he was wheel-chair ridden, having thrown out his back while heaving boxes of ultra secret documents from the White House on his last day in office. Apparently, staffers couldn’t be trusted to move this stuff for the man who kept a safe as tall as a man in his office.
Millions came to watch, hundreds of millions glued to the TV, to celebrate the end of the Bush/Cheney years - never a more richly deserved and so-long delayed good riddance to a despised regime - and the beginning of the administration of this “skinny black man with the funny name,” as Obama has called himself.
On the Sunday preceding Tuesday’s inauguration, a concert dubbed “We Are One” was held in front of the Lincoln Memorial, featuring headliners Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Beyonce, Rene Fleming, John Mellancamp, and many others.
Crafty 89-year old Pete Seeger, blacklisted during the 1950s and banned from TV for decades, accompanied by Springsteen, in a rousing finale, restored the original lyrics to Woody Guthrie’s ode to the American people. Mellancamp performed his “Pink Houses,” a sardonic look at the American experience for working people.