Day: February 4, 2009

Reflections by Fidel Castro: Deciphering the Thoughts of the New President of the United States

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To keep a military base in Cuba against the will of our people is a violation of the most elemental principles of international law. The US President has the faculty of abiding by that rule without exacting any condition whatsoever.

It is not too difficult. After taking office, Barack Obama said that the decision to return the territory occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base to its legitimate owner requires weighing up the extent to which the defensive capacity of the United States would be or not in the least affected.

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URGENT: Act Now To Defend UNRWA In Gaza

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Washington, DC | February 4th, 2009 | www.adc.org

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) urges you to act quickly to oppose House Congressional Resolution 29 (H. Con. Res 29) which questions support for the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) and alleges its support for terror organizations. H. Con. Res. 29 has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. While the people of the Gaza Strip are suffering after years of occupation, blockade and weeks of war UNRWA deserves only steadfast American support and aid to alleviate the suffering in Gaza. The attempts to make UNRWA’s job harder and limit funding for the organization sends the message that the United States is actively seeking the continued deprivation of the Palestinian people.

Take action below by sending a prepared message to your representative. Eight Representatives have co-sponsored this resolution and if your Representative is one of them then you will be able to send them a message expressing your disagreement with the resolution. If they have not co-sponsored the resolution you will be able to send them a letter encouraging them not to support the resolution.

CLICK HERE TO CONTACT CONGRESS

With everyone’s quick cooperation we can act on H. Con. Res. 29. Let’s Act NOW!

Media Lens: The BBC, Impartiality, And The Hidden Logic Of Massacre — Part 1

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4 February, 2009

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

Writing in the Independent last week, Robert Fisk commented on the BBC‘s refusal to broadcast an appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC):

“The BBC’s refusal to handle an advertisement for Palestinian aid was highly instructive. It was the BBC’s ‘impartiality’ that might be called into question. In other words, the protection of an institution was more important than the lives of children.”
(www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-when-did-we-stop-caring-about-civilian-deaths-during-wartime-1521708.html)

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COHA: ¿Cambio?: Latin America in the Era of Obama ― An Early Reading on the Administration

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  • Bush’s legacy leaves an estranged Latin America
  • Range of new Latin American issues vie for Washington’s attention
  • Conflicting messages from Obama’s diverse cabinet
  • Regional leaders express hope, remain cautious

Now that Barack Obama is several weeks into being the 44th President of the United States, expectations are running high in Latin America, where two terms of George Bush’s widely noted indifference to regional affairs have strained hemispheric relations. Obama now must address a hemisphere that has developed a substantially different profile than existed eight years before when Bush first assumed office. A highly regarded would-be superpower, an impressive collection of left-leaning governments, a concerted attempt at regional integration, and the formation of an entire array of new institutions have emerged in Latin America since Washington’s near abandonment of the region in favor of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Moreover, an intensifying security threat associated with drug trafficking and the demands of other, more clamorous issues have muscled their way to the forefront of the area’s concerns.

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William Blum: Anti-Empire Report, Number 66 – Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in

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3 February, 2009

I’ve said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what’s already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

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Security in Iraq: Relatively Speaking by Dahr Jamail

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3 February, 2009

If there is to be any degree of honesty in our communication, we must begin to acknowledge that the lexicon of words that describes the human condition is no longer universally applicable.

I am in Iraq after four years away.

Most Iraqis I talked with on the eve of the first provincial elections being held after 2005 told me “security is better.”

I myself was lulled into a false sense of security upon my arrival a week ago. Indeed, security is “better,” compared to my last trip here, when the number of attacks per month against the occupation forces and Iraqi collaborators used to be around 6,000. Today, we barely have one American soldier being killed every other day and only a score injured weekly. Casualties among Iraqi security forces are just ten times that number.

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