Bin Laden and the Folly of Being Driven by a ‘Search for Monsters’

Bin Laden Is Dead, But Will

the 'Long War' on Terror Live On?

By Tom Hayden
Progressive America Rising via The Nation

May 2, 2011 - The killing of Osama bin Laden is a triumphant moment for President Obama and the CIA, allowing a symbolic claim to victory in the War on Terror, bringing an understandable feeling of closure for the victims of 9/11, and will almost certainly assure the president’s re-election in 2012.

But as I wrote in The Nation in October 2009, however, the death of bin Laden is not likely to end the Long War on Terror, now spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and a dozen other theaters of counterterrorism.

If bin Laden is gone, and his network heavily damaged, what is left of the terrorist threat to our national security that justifies so many trillions of dollars and costs in thousands of lives? Because of a fabricated fear of bin Laden, we invaded Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was to deny sanctuaries to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In response, Al Qaeda moved into Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed tonight. So why are the Taliban in Afghanistan a threat to the security of the United States with bin Laden gone? Surely there are terrorist cells with lethal capacity scattered around the world, surely there might be revenge attacks, but there is hardly a centralized conspiratorial threat that justifies the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American troops.

Now we shall learn whether there is another agenda that keeps 150,000 American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama’s Globalist Centrism & ‘Blue-Eyed Bankers’

On Bill Fletcher's Thoughts on Obama

  By Tom Hayden

Progressive America Rising via TomHayden.com

I agree with Bill Fletcher’s essay on how to approach Obama in 2012. I only wish to add these thoughts.

First, I knew very well that Obama was a centrist, because he declared himself to be at the midpoint between Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and “Tom Hayden Democrats” such as myself. I knew where things stood from the get-go. No matter how reasonably I described my beliefs, Obama would keep moving to the right of them in order to maintain his role as a centrist. Aside from the frustrations this would mean for progressives like myself, it also meant that Obama was defining “center” in an unfortunate way. He apparently didn’t mean a midpoint between the 75 percent majorities and 25 percent minorities on taxing the rich, saving Medicare and Social Security, and getting out of Afghanistan. He meant staying in the middle between the poles he chose to consider relevant, which meant the far right and the middle, leaving the Democratic Party liberals stranded on many issues.

His call.

But now Obama has stranded himself, with a majority of Americans favoring “another candidate” in 2012, and a fall-off of about 30 percent among all Democrats and Latinos. His strategy obviously is to get Democrats and Independents to hold their noses and vote for him against an obnoxious Republican in 2012.

Read More...

Summary only...

Romney: War is Peace

Down the Memory Hole ‘Peacetime’ Line

Presumes Ignorance is Strength in 2012

By Jon Walker

Beaver County Peace Links via FireDogLake

April 25 - In an op-ed for the New Hampshire Union Leader, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney attacked President Obama for a “peacetime spending binge,” as pointed out by Greg Sargent. From the Op-ed:

“Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history. With its failed stimulus package, its grandiose new social programs, its fervor for more taxes and government regulations, and its hostility toward business, the administration has made the debt problem worse, hindered economic recovery and needlessly cost American workers countless jobs.”

This is a frightening level disconnection from reality from the guy that is supposed to be the most sensible of the Republican candidates.

Read More...

Summary only...

Budget Debate: Getting Us Headed in a Progressive Direction

Photo: Progressive Caucus Members announcing their alternative

The People's Budget:

Quick Summary of a Good Plan

By Kay Kirkpatrick
Beaver County Blue

Among the budgets proposed in Congress recently, one eliminates the deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work, and restores our economic competitiveness.

Unlike the GOP proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the People’ Budget does not seek to crush those with a low-income, the elderly or otherwise cripple vital government services.

Instead, it preserves Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits; expands jobs and job training programs; shifts the tax burden off the backs of the people; eliminates tax credits for the oil and gas industries and subsidies for new nuclear power plants; invests in infrastructure and brings our troops home.

This version of our financial future, proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), is not only in keeping with priorities of the majority of the American people, it is viable, reasonable and sustainable.

The CPC plan ends the budget deficit two decades earlier than the Ryan plan. Specifically, the budget offers:

· $5.6 trillion in deficit reduction

· $869 billion in spending cuts

· $856 billion net interest savings

· $3.9 trillion revenue increase

· $1.7 trillion in public investment, and

· $30.7 billion in a budget surplus in 2021.

Read More...

Summary only...

Needed: Debt Relief for Youth

War Against the Young: Recent Graduates

Not Only Move Back Home, But Stay There

By Amanda M Fairbanks
Progressive America Rising via Huffington Post

NEW YORK, April 22, 2011 -- Ashley Moore never planned on moving back in with her parents.

Nearly a year after graduating from college, Moore, 22, also never expected to still be waking up in her old twin bed every morning.

“It’s been difficult because not only was I on my own, I was really far away,” explains Moore, a St. Louis, Mo., native who graduated from Pace University in New York City. At one point, she spent an entire year away. “What I miss most is my freedom and having my own space.”

Like many 20-somethings, Moore is experiencing what it’s like to not only move back home, but stay there.

Despite a recent report released by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which predicts that 2011 graduates may enter into an improved job market, many remain skeptical.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama, 2012 and Focusing Hope

How Do We Bring Obama Home?

How to Respond to Obama

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Progressive America Rising via BlackCommentator.com

Rather than dwell on the question of whether we can bring Obama home, whether he ever was home, etc., I want to refocus on this question of how to respond to him, particularly as we start to think about 2012.

First, what do we now say about 2008? Contrary to those who have thrown up their hands and feel betrayed by what the Obama administration has not done, I start in a different place. I continue to assert that Obama was knowable in 2008. He was a charismatic, smart candidate who made the right call on the Iraq War and stepped out on the issue when it was necessary. He was also, as I said at the time, someone who could appear to be different things to different people. The problem was that too many of his supporters saw what they wanted to see rather than what existed.

What existed? Well, from the beginning he was a corporate candidate. We knew that. The question was not whether he was one but the extent to which his views could be shifted in order to take progressive, non-corporate stands. Second, he was a candidate who was going to avoid race as you or I would avoid a plague ship. He went out of his way to prove that he was not an ‘angry black man’ and that race was not going to be an issue that he would harp on. Third, he was clear that he wanted to change the image of the USA around the world, but it was not clear to what extent he wanted to change the substance of the relationship of the USA to the rest of the world.

Read More...

Summary only...

PowerShift: 10,000 Youth Gather in DC

Obama to Thousands of Young

Climate Activists: Push Me

By Mark Hertsgaard
Progressive America Rising via The Nation

April 18, 2011 - The following article first appeared in The Nation magazine. For more great content from The Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here.

Bring to Washington, D.C., ten thousand political organizers who are willing to play hardball, and you can get serious face time with the president of the United States. Even if you aren’t yet 25 years old.

Shortly after 4 p.m. last Friday, April 15, Barack Obama dropped in unexpectedly on a White House meeting that his aides were holding with the Environmental Action Coalition, a network of climate change groups on college campuses that had drawn the ten thousand organizers to its PowerShift conference in the nation’s capital. Interviews with multiple sources in the room indicate that Obama spent twenty-five minutes with the young EAC activists, telling them, “You have power, that’s why I’m here.” Ten of the eleven activists were women; none was older than 31. Their discussion with the president was friendly but plain-spoken—one young woman even interrupted Obama, who didn’t seem to mind—as the activists urged the president to be the clean energy champion they and their peers had done so much to elect in 2008.

Read More...

Summary only...

Scorecards & Players: Political Economy for 2012

Graphic: Milton Friedman of the ‘Chicago School’

What is Neoliberalism?

A Brief Definition for Activists

By Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
"
Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.
"
Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

Read More...

Summary only...

Fighting for Our Future & Honoring Martin Luther King With Solidarity

April 4 'We Are One' Events:

Uniting Labor and Community

For an Upsurge in Class War

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Working-class solidarity actions involving thousands of workers were among the lead news items in the headlines in nearly 1200 cities and town around the country over the April 4 weekend. The Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio 'rust belt' region was no exception.

The occasion commemorated the anniversary of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his effort to help striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee win union recognition. The entire U.S. labor movement seized the time to organize public protest against the outrageous rightwing attacks on worker rights in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. The AFL-CIO knows full well that more attacks are coming, and its 'We Are One' campaign for the day was a grassroots dress rehearsal and consciousness-raising effort to prepare both its troops and its community-based allies for more battles to come.

"We are one! We are one!' and 'What's Disgusting? Union busting!' were among the chants echoing off the concrete and glass walls of downtown Pittsburgh. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 marchers waved V-signs at passersby in cars and buses--but more often than in a long time, one saw a sea of the more militant clenched fist salutes as well. As usual, different contingents of workers wore their color coded T-Shirts for the day-camouflage for the UMWA, dark blue for the Steelworkers, red for Unite Here! hotel workers, and purple for SEIU service workers.

Read More...

Summary only...

Chomsky on Libya: The Issue is Control

Rebel guarding oil field in Eastern Libya

Libya and the World of Oil

By Noam Chomsky
Beaver County Peace Links via Truthout.org

April 5, 2011 - Last month, at the international tribunal on crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor came to an end.

The chief prosecutor, U.S. law professor David Crane, informed The Times of London that the case was incomplete: The prosecutors intended to charge Moammar Gadhafi, who, Crane said, “was ultimately responsible for the mutilation, maiming and/or murder of 1.2 million people.”

But the charge was not to be. The U.S., U.K. and others intervened to block it. Asked why, Crane said, “Welcome to the world of oil.”

Another recent Gadhafi casualty was Sir Howard Davies, the director of the London School of Economics, who resigned after revelations of the school’s links to the Libyan dictator.

In Cambridge, Mass., the Monitor Group, a consultancy firm founded by Harvard professors, was well paid for such services as a book to bring Gadhafi’s immortal words to the public “in conversation with renowned international experts,” along with other efforts “to enhance international appreciation of (Gadhafi’s) Libya.”

The world of oil is rarely far in the background in affairs concerning this region.

Read More...

Summary only...

Libya: Obama’s Tangled Web Is Unraveling

The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President

By David Bromwich
Beaver county Peace Links via Huffington Post -03/31/11

One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo -- a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored -- and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico.

One had come to think of "X must go" assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way.

The Egyptian protest of January and February saw a new siege of wishful commandments and reversals by the president. He told Mubarak to go. Then he told him to stay a while. Mubarak said he would stay, but after a time, he went; and in the mind of Obama, it appears, there was a relation of cause and effect between his initial request and the final result. He was consequently emboldened.

He said that Muammar Gaddafi must go. Gaddafi stayed. When the protest that gathered against Gaddafi would not disperse, the dictator shot at the protesters; and when some of them turned to armed rebellion, he went to war against the rebels. Obama for his part seemed ready to retire from an unpromising scene. His dryly prudent secretary of defense encouraged him to do so.

Then other forces intervened.

Read More...

Summary only...

Many Americans Unhappy with Attacks on Libya

How Many Should Die To Send Qaddafi to the Hague?

By Robert Naiman

Beaver County Peace Links via DailyKOS

Here is a question I would like pollsters to ask American voters about the Libya War:

Is sending Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court a military objective worth having American troops "fight and possibly die" for?

I haven't seen any pollster ask this question. Indeed, the fact that sending Qaddafi to the Hague is a de facto military goal of the United States in Libya isn't even being clearly acknowledged yet in the U.S. media.

However, we can make an educated guess what he response might be, because a Quinnipiac University poll recently asked some questions that are closely related.

Voters say 61 - 30 percent that removing Qaddafi from power is not worth having American troops "fight and possibly die" for, the poll reports.

Read More...

Summary only...

‘Third Way’ Dems and the Road to Perdition

Why Any Deal to Cut Social Security,

Medicare or Medicaid Would be

a Moral, Economic and Political Disaster

By Robert Creamer
Huffington Post, March 28, 2011

Friday, the Democratic group Third Way published a memo arguing that Democrats should support "entitlement reform" -- by which they mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don't doubt the sincerity or intentions of their proposal, but I believe that if Democrats took their advice it would result in a moral, economic and political disaster.

Here's why:

The immorality of "entitlement reform." The very idea that seniors on Social Security -- whose average income is $18,000 a year -- should be asked to tighten their belts while the Federal Government still gives huge tax breaks to millionaires and subsidies to oil companies is just plain wrong.

The principle voices for "entitlement reform" are the multi-millionaires from Wall Street who argue that we need to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a bargain to reduce the long-term federal deficit and give the "markets" confidence. Never mind that Social Security in particular does not contribute anything to the deficit and has in fact generated a $2.6 trillion surplus that was paid for by workers and employers through Social Security taxes. Never mind that the Wall Street gang clamoring for "entitlement reform" demanded extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, subsidies for the oil companies, tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas and an end to the estate tax that only affects the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires.

Read More...

Summary only...

Siberia Solution: 'Ship Them Off to Freeze to Death and Die'

New Hampshire GOP State Lawmaker

Advocates Eugenics to Balance Budget

By Shira Schoenberg
Progressive America Rising via Concord Monitor

March 11, 2011 - A 91-year-old state representative told a constituent that he believes in eugenics and that the world would be better off without "defective people."

Barrington Republican Martin Harty told Sharon Omand, a Strafford resident who manages a community mental health program, that "the world is too populated" and there are "too many defective people," according to an e-mail account of the conversation by Omand. Asked what he meant, she said Harty clarified, "You know the mentally ill, the retarded, people with physical disabilities and drug addictions - the defective people society would be better off without."

Harty confirmed to the Monitor that he made the comments to Omand. Harty told the Monitor the world population has increased dramatically, and "it's a very dangerous situation if it doubles again." Asked about people who are mentally ill, he asked, apparently referring to a lack of financial resources, "Can we afford to bring them through?"

Harty said nature has a way of "getting rid of stupid people," and "now we're saving everyone who gets born."

Read More...

Summary only...

One Picture, One Thousand Words: The Right’s Wacko Priorities

We Are Not 'Broke,' We Just Need Progressive Tax Reform

Class Warfare, Illustrated

or Why We Need a Campaign to Turn Priorities Around

Read More...

Summary only...

Jobs for All Now! Get Your Member of Congress to Sign On to HR 870 Full Employment Bill

Help Put America

Back to Work:

Cosponsor H.R. 870

 

A Message From:

The Hon. John Conyers, Jr.

Bill: H.R. 870
Date: 3/3/2011

Let’s Put America Back To Work:
Become a Cosponsor of H.R. 870
'The Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century
Full Employment & Training Act'

 

Dear Colleague,

In order to expand job opportunities for Americans who have been unable to find work during this period of unacceptably high unemployment, I recently reintroduced H.R. 870, the “Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act.”  This bill would establish a comprehensive and innovative federal and local government job creation and training program that would create millions of new jobs for the nation’s unemployed.  

Under H.R. 870, the Department of Labor would work collaboratively with local and state governments, non-profits, and the private-sector to fund community based “fast track” jobs. This work could include renovating housing and schools, weatherizing homes, fixing our aging infrastructure, expanding access to broadband and wireless internet, neighborhood beautification projects, or other community initiatives in the health and education sectors. This direct job creation effort would be coupled with a significant increase in funding for job training programs authorized by the Workforce Investment Act. Funds will automatically continue to be disbursed from the Act’s Full Employment and Training Trust Fund until a level of “full employment” is reached in the economy.

Additionally, because we are living in a period when concerns about government debt loom large in many minds, my legislation will be fully funded by a tax on Wall Street speculation and will not add a dime to the federal debt.  Wall Street was responsible for the financial crisis that began in 2008 and continues to affect us today.  Having already received significant assistance from the federal government, it is only fair that Wall Street now pay Main Street back by helping put America back to work.   

If you would like to cosponsor H.R. 870, please contact Michael Darner (michael.darner@mail.house.gov) at (202) 225-5126.

Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
Member of Congress

Read More...

Summary only...

Heartland Rising Dept: Worker Revolt Spreading

Democrats walk out in Indiana;

Union allies protest in Ohio

By Dan Hinkel and Richard Simon

Progressive America Rising via McClatchy-Tribune News Service

February 22, 2011

MADISON, Wis. — Facing widening Republican attacks on organized labor, Democrats struck back Tuesday with legislative walkouts and boisterous rallies across the Midwest to defend one of their core constituencies.

In Wisconsin, where the state Senate has been paralyzed because Democrats fled to block Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from government workers, the governor warned he would send 1,500 layoff notices unless his proposal passes. In Indiana, Democrats in the state Assembly vanished, depriving that body of the quorum needed to pass a right-to-work law and limit government unions' powers.

And in Ohio, an estimated 5,500 protesters stood elbow to elbow in and outside the Capitol chanting "Kill the bill!" as a legislative committee took up a proposal that would similarly neuter government unions.

Read More...

Summary only...

‘War is Hell’ Dept: the GOP Assault on Women

One Cartoon, One Thousand Words…

Read More...

Summary only...

Congress: Time to Leave Afghanistan

New Bill: A Responsible End

to the War in Afghanistan

By Barbara Lee
Beaver County Peace Links via Huffington Post 2/17/11

On September 14, 2001, I placed the lone vote against the "Authorization of Use of Force" -- an authorization that I knew would provide a blank check to wage war anywhere, at any time, and for any length. Nearly a decade later, the United States remains embroiled in the longest war in our nation's history in Afghanistan, longer than Vietnam and World War II.

The fact is, we cannot continue to funnel billions of dollars a week toward a counterproductive military-first strategy in Afghanistan while sacrificing vital domestic priorities such as quality education, affordable health care, and much-needed investments to create jobs and jump start the economy.

And that is why today I will re-introduce my legislation, The Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act, which would end combat operations in Afghanistan and limit funding to the safe orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors.

Read More...

Summary only...

Street Heat Dept: Our Egypt Is Beginning

Wisconsin Students and

Professors Join Thousands

Rallying Vs, Governor's Plan

Andy Manis, AP Images

U. of Wisconsin employees and students were among the state workers who thronged the State Capitol in Madison on Tuesday to protest legislation that would end or curtail their collective-bargaining rights and increase the share workers pay for benefits.

By Jack Stripling

Progressive America Rising via Chronicle of Higher Education

Madison, Feb 15, 2011 - Thousands of protesters gathered on the steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol here on Tuesday to voice their opposition to a fast-moving proposal that would strip the union bargaining rights for University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members, while almost eliminating bargaining rights for nearly all other state workers, including graduate students.

Chanting "We're not gonna take it," throngs of state employees and their supporters rallied for more than two hours on snow-covered grounds, before moving their protests inside the Capitol, in defiance of Gov. Scott Walker's "budget repair" bill. Apart from undoing hard-fought 2009 legislation that gave university faculty authorization to unionize, the bill would cut employee retirement and health benefits.

The Republican governor and his supporters say the sweeping proposal will close the state's current $137-million budget shortfall, while beginning to shrink a projected $3.6-billion gap for the next biennium. Opponents, however, describe the plan as an unabashed ideological effort to cripple unions in a state with a strong history of organized labor.

Read More...

Summary only...

‘Complex Relationships’ Shouldn’t Derail Us

What Ails the Black Body Politic?

By James Thindwa
In These Times, Jan 25, 2011

The direction the Obama administration takes in the next two years depends in part on popular pressure. But ironically, those who suffer the most are the least politically agitated. This disjuncture is evident in the uncritical support President Barack Obama receives from the black body politic.

Polls show that 90 percent of African Americans approve of the president's job performance, compared to 40 percent of white Democrats. This raises the question: Can Black America, experiencing newfound pride in the first black president, challenge a Democratic Party in the grip of neoliberal orthodoxy and help reinvigorate progressive politics?

Read More...

Summary only...