Peace and Justice Post

by Stephen Lendman, Dissident Voice,  December 7th, 2010

Believing Obama is progressive is like calling a cat a dog. Only the delusional think so. He’s, in fact, hard-right, a neocon, a warrior president, a corporatist pursuing anti-populist policies favoring wealth and privilege, not social justice when more than ever it’s needed.

He’s a fraud, an elitist, chosen years ago, then put on a fast track to power. Big monied interests love him. So do war profiteers and members of America’s aristocracy. He’s one of them.

Only the voting millions who backed him were defrauded. Will they awaken, finally understand, and express their ire publicly more strongly than in mid-term theatrics, throwing out bums for new ones? It’s high time. A year two Obama assessment is coming. Watch for it, parts I and II. A year one analysis can be accessed here and here.

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The November 28 Egyptian parliamentary elections were a farce.  The vast majority of Egyptians boycotted the charade. But even those who did try to vote witnessed massive ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, intimidation, multiple voting in pro-government precincts, interminable delays in pro-opposition precincts, and mass arrests of opposition supporters.

When the Mubarak regime forbade any international monitors to watch the polls, opposition parties and civil society activists organized a large network of poll watchers in order to catch anticipated government efforts at rigging the election.  They had fielded thousands of monitors for the last parliamentary elections as well for as recent municipal elections, documenting massive fraud.  However, the government banned even Egyptians from monitoring this most recent election, thereby allowing officials to engage in widespread ballot-stuffing and other irregularities.

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Paul Criag Roberts, LewRockwell.com, Dec 6, 2010

Western Civilization no longer upholds the values it proclaims, so what is the basis for its claim to virtue?

For example, the US print and TV media and the US government have made it completely clear that they have no regard for the First Amendment. Consider CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s reaction to the leaked diplomatic cables that reveal how the US government uses deceptions, bribes, and threats to control other governments and to deceive the American and other publics. Blitzer is outraged that information revealing the US government’s improprieties reached the people, or some of them. As Alexander Cockburn wrote, Blitzer demanded that the US government take the necessary steps to make certain that journalists and the American people never again find out what their government is up to.

The disregard for the First Amendment is well established in the US media, which functions as a propaganda ministry for the government. Remember the NSA leak given to the New York Times that the George W. Bush regime was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spying on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court? The New York Times spiked the story for one year and did not release it until after Bush’s reelection. By then, the Bush regime had fabricated a legal doctrine that “authorized” Bush to violate US law.

Glenn Greenwald writing at Salon has exposed the absence of moral standards among WikiLeaks’ critics. WikiLeaks’ critics could not make it clearer that they do not believe in accountable government. And to make certain that the government is not held accountable, WikiLeaks’ critics are calling for every possible police state measure, including extra-judicial murder, to stamp out anyone who makes information available that enables the citizenry to hold government accountable.

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