US Vice President Joe Biden was asked by reporters at a summit in Chile if Washington plans to put an end to the near-50-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. He replied "No."
Israeli authorities broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events in Jerusalem, disrupting a children's march and bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration.11 There has not been, nor will there be, any embargo of any kind by the United States against Israel. Nor will President Obama make any comment about what he really feels about invading a children's party and bursting their balloons.
The White House and the Pentagon appear to be having a competition over who can announce the most troops being sent to Afghanistan. Is anyone keeping a body count?
US drones continue to drop bombs on people's homes and wedding parties in Pakistan. No one in Washington publicly admits to this or comments in any way about the legality or morality of it all.
Bolivia and Ecuador have expelled American diplomats for what their hosts saw as conspiring to undermine the government.
Any number of other examples can be given of how alike the foreign policies of the Bush and Obama administrations are, how little, if any, change has occurred; certainly nothing of any significance. Yet, my saying such a thing is precisely what most often bothers Obama supporters who read or hear my comments. They're in love with the man with the toothpaste-advertisement smile, who's "smart" (whatever that means), who plays basketball, and is not George W. Bush, and his wife who puts her arm around the queen of England.
Obama's popularity around the world is enhanced, to an important extent, by the fact that he has endeavored to conceal or obscure his real ideology. As an example, in early March, in an interview with the New York Times, he was asked: "Is there a one word name for your philosophy? If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?"
"No, I'm not going to engage in that," replied the president.
The next day he called the Times reporter, telling him: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question". Obama then gave the reporter several examples of why his policies show that he isn't a socialist.
He didn't have to convince me. Obama's centrist bent is clear to anyone who bothers to look. But after the Times incident — which apparently bothered him — he may have felt the need to be more clear about his ideological leanings to avoid any further silly "socialist" episodes. The next day, meeting at the White House with members of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democratic members of the House, Obama said at one point: "I am a New Democrat."
Most conservatives will probably continue to see him as a dangerous leftist. They should be happy that Obama is the president and not any kind of real progressive or socialist or even a genuine liberal, but the right wing is greedy.
The six-member jury found that Ward L. Churchill, 61, was the victim of political retaliation, not discharged for academic misconduct, as the Colorado University administration claimed. The jurors found that his political views had been a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal.
The jury awarded him only $1 in damages, but Churchill dismissed the amount as irrelevant, saying, “I didn’t ask for money. I asked for justice.” David Lane, his lawyer, said the jury’s action was a victory “for the First Amendment and academic freedom.”
Whether Churchill is restored to his position as a professor of ethnic studies at the CU Boulder campus will be decided by Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves, who heard the case with the jury. The judge will also decide whether to award attorney’s fees.
Churchill is a long-time advocate of Native American rights who has published more than a hundred articles and a dozen books. An article he wrote shortly after the 9/11 attacks, under the title, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” made the perfectly reasonable assertion that the terrorist attacks were a byproduct of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
He went further, however, and in an offensive and unwarranted slur on the victims in the World Trade Center, described them as “little Eichmanns” (after the Nazi functionary who played a key role in the Holocaust) because in their jobs at financial firms they were contributing to the destruction of people in the Third World.
This comment demonstrated the essentially reactionary character of the identity politics espoused by Churchill, which makes no class distinction between the billionaires and CEOs who direct the predatory activities of Wall Street, and the thousands of workers, both professional and clerical, employed in the financial industry.
Four years later, the right-wing media and capitalist politicians whipped up a firestorm over Churchill’s reference to “little Eichmanns” after it was publicized by a college newspaper. Colorado Governor Bill Owens demanded that Colorado University fire him, and when the university’s president, Elizabeth Hoffman, declined to do so, she was forced out of office.
Since Churchill was a tenured professor and could not be discharged except for cause, his enemies set about manufacturing the necessary pretext. After a year-long right-wing campaign, CU launched an investigation into Churchill’s academic work and three faculty committees, acting under the pressure of what the professor called “a howling mob,” ruled that he had committed plagiarism, fabrication and research misconduct in his writings on Native American history, his specialty.
The concocted character of the charges against Churchill is well described by Stanley Fish, a law professor who blogs regularly for the New York Times online. In a recent posting, Fish (who is politically conservative and no fan of Churchill’s views) writes: “I had read the committee’s report and found it less an indictment of Churchill than an example of a perfectly ordinary squabble about research methods and the handling of evidence. The accusations that fill its pages are the kind scholars regularly hurl at their polemical opponents. It’s part of the game. But in most cases, after you’ve trashed the guy’s work in a book or a review, you don’t get to fire him. Which is good, because if the standards for dismissal adopted by the Churchill committee were generally in force, hardly any of us professors would have jobs.”
Churchill took the stand on his own behalf in the course of the lawsuit, and sought to explain the basis of his comments on 9/11. “I’m not in favor of terror,” he told the jury, but reiterated his indictment of American foreign policy. “If you make it a practice of killing other people’s babies for personal gain,” he argued, “eventually they’re going to give you a taste of the same thing.”
The jurors were clearly able to overcome any lingering prejudice against the ponytailed former professor, engendered by the rabid media campaign led by right-wing TV pundits like Bill O’Reilly. Their decision demonstrates a willingness to stand up for basic democratic rights that is both courageous and encouraging.
Emperor Obama would be proud to help accomplish Israel's destruction, looking the other way as Iran prepares to ignite the world, even as he is working hard to destroy the United States in every way possible.
Justice demands Obama/Soetoro/Obama has got to go if our Constitution and Republic are to remain, so help us God.