Dive into the archives.
- Obama’s Bombs
An Afghan woman and a child were killed in a joint NATO-Afghan operation against insurgents in Afghanistan on Friday, sparking a protest by a group of angry villagers. (full article…)
- Please Elaborate
To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama’s young presidency, “we simply disagree … He got the prize for what he has done”, said the committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland. (full article…)
- Obama’s (Really Forgotten) War
Heavily armed Ethiopian troops crossed over into some villages in Somalia’s central border town of Beledweyne and arrested some villagers they suspected of being Islamist sympathizers, witnesses said on Sunday. (full article…)
- The Nobel Peace Prize in Action
President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials. (full article…)
- Heckuva Job, Barack
True, Obama didn’t ask for this. It was obvious, from his halting delivery and slightly shamefaced air last Friday, that he wishes the Nobel committee hadn’t put him in this spot. But he still wasn’t brave enough to tell it no. (full article…)
- Empty Handed
“It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later,” she said. (full article…)
- Then Decline the Award
Speaking in Washington, Obama said he did “not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honoured by this prize”. (full article…)
- Premature (or Undeserved)
President Obama should thank the Nobel committee and ask them to hold on to the Peace Prize for a couple more years. The prize should be awarded for achievement, not aspiration, and so far Obama’s main achievement has been getting elected President, which is in a different category. (full article…)
- Prove It.
The U.S. administration is furious over Israeli incitement against President Barack Obama, Democratic congressmen close to Obama told an Israeli source who returned from a visit to Washington this week. (full article…)
- Couldn’t Have Said It Better
Issam al-Khazraji, a day labourer in Baghdad, said: “He doesn’t deserve this prize. All these problems — Iraq, Afghanistan — have not been solved…The man of ‘change’ hasn’t changed anything yet.” (full article…)
- Standards of the NYT
After the June 28 coup, President Obama joined the region in condemning the action and calling for President Zelaya to be returned to power, even though the Honduran president is an ally of Mr. Chávez, America’s biggest adversary in the region. (full article…) In an article discussing the $400,000 being spent by the coup regime [...]
- This is “Change”
His successor in the White House is now sending different signals. US President Barack Obama began his career as an opponent of the Iraq war, but now, after moving to the White House, he too is making use of the superpower’s military might. Obama is increasing US troop numbers in Afghanistan while, in neighboring Pakistan, [...]
- Obama’s Bombs
Afghan tribal elders said Thursday that eight people, at least five of them civilians, were killed in an airstrike in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday. An American military spokeswoman, Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, confirmed the airstrike, in the Nad Ali district of the troubled province of Helmand, but declined to estimate the number of casualties before a [...]
- More “Change”
Barack Obama has talked down the importance of sealing a global deal on climate change before the end of the year, world leaders said yesterday. (full article…)
- This is “Change”
The White House acknowledged for the first time that it might not be able to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay by January as President Barack Obama promised. (full article…)
- Where is the Defund Blackwater Act?
Perhaps one of the most jarring comparisons here is the fact that ACORN is being attacked. Yet the Obama administration continues to contract with Blackwater, the Bush administration’s favorite mercenary company, which is headed by Erik Prince. Prince was a major donor to Republican causes and campaigns, including those of some of the Defund ACORN [...]
- Abu Aardvark’s Verdict
I’ve had plenty of criticisms of the Obama team’s tactical choices along the way — letting the settlements battle draw out, not acting to alleviate the Gaza disaster, unreasonably expecting Arab concessions in response to tepid Israeli statements, and do on. But they’ve made it clear that the time for games is coming to an [...]
- Stephen Walt on the Goldstone Report
Nonetheless, it was disappointing that the Obama administration felt it had to denounce the report within days of its release, despite Goldstone’s impeccable credentials (former member of South Africa’s Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda) and his strong Zionist convictions. Israeli PM Netanyahu hasn’t been doing Obama [...]
- Greater Israel
Why is Netanyahu defying Obama so openly? Because he has long been committed to the dream of a “greater Israel,” and the only Palestinian state he might accept would be an archipelago of disconnected enclaves under de facto Israeli control. (full article…)
- This is “Change”
In a troubling legal brief filed last week, the Obama administration followed the disreputable example of the Bush White House by opposing judicial review of military detentions, even for a discrete segment of prisoners: the 30 or so non-Afghan Bagram prisoners who were seized outside Afghanistan, far from any recognizable battlefield, and who have been [...]
- Demoralized
On Friday, seven former CIA directors urged President Obama to end the inquiry, arguing that it would inhibit intelligence operations in the future and demoralize agency employees who believed they had been cleared by previous investigators. (full article…)
- If True, This is Some Good News
In a move with potentially major strategic implications, U.S. President Barack Obama announced Thursday he is scrapping plans by the George W. Bush administration to deploy long-range-missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. (full article…)
- This Is “Change”
On the second anniversary of the single worst massacre of Iraqi civilians committed by a private force since the US invasion, President Obama should be forced to explain to the American people and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan why he continues to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to this company and why he [...]
- This is “Change”
The two candidates’ starkly different reactions to that ruling was supposed to underscore one of the true differences between them: that Obama, the Constitutional Law Professor, would insist on adherence to core Constitutional liberties even while prosecuting the War on Terror, but McCain wouldn’t. Yet here we are, barely more than a year later, and [...]
- Obama’s War
The top US commander today signalled for the first time that Washington will almost certainly deploy more troops to Afghanistan later this year. (more…)
- Obama Ignores Black People Better Than Bush
So that gap, that wealth gap, that race-wealth divide, as it’s often called, is widening in the midst of the crisis. And the Obama administration is absolutely refusing to talk about the need for policies that will look at this specifically, at closing the gap. (more…)
- Obama’s War
The prosecutor of the international criminal court is collecting information on alleged war crimes committed by Nato and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (more…)
- In the NYT Letters Section
The only real solution %u2014 one that replaces the profit motive with actually keeping us healthy and operates in most civilized nations on the planet %u2014 has already been taken off the negotiating table by our government-corporate plutocracy, and that is a single-payer system.(more…)
- This is “Change”
“Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again,” Obama said. “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”(more…)
- Zionism is Racism
The message to President Obama, he said, is that this is Jewish land. He did not use the president’s name, but an insulting Hebrew slang for a black man and the phrase “that Arab they call a president.” (more…)
- Self-Hating Jews
Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White [...]
- Some Good News
The U.S. government revoked the visas of four members of Honduras’s de facto government Tuesday, escalating the pressure on officials there to reinstate the president, who was kicked out of the country a month ago. (more…)
- Less Subtle U.S. Propaganda
The scrolling electronic sign, a low-tech version of New York’s Time Square ticker, escalated the US’s propaganda war with Cuba’s leader three years ago by flashing human rights messages in five-foot high crimson letters. But history, or more specifically Barack Obama, appears to have pulled the plug on the billboard which flitted across 25 windows [...]
- “Stupidly”
Obama’s choice of words might not have been politic, but he was merely stating the obvious when he said the police behaved “stupidly.” (more…)
- Popular Opinion
A new survey of global opinion reveals strong negative feelings toward U.S. foreign policy, even as an average of 61 percent of those polled have at least some confidence in President Barack Obama to make sound decisions. (more…)
- This is “Change”
As the predictions for global warming get more and more alarming, talks on a worldwide climate treaty have stalled — largely due to the United States.(more…)
- Obama’s Position
“Still, administration officials said that they did not expect that the military would go so far as to carry out a coup. “There was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that,” the administration official said. But the official said that [...]
- This is “Change”
The government will agree to preserve the secret overseas sites where a defendant in a terror case was once held and, his lawyers say, subjected to harsh interrogation techniques after his capture in 2004, a prosecutor indicated in court in New York on Thursday. (more…)
- Why Obama Will Do Nothing
When Manuel Zelaya was elected president on November 27, 2005 in a close victory, he became president of one of the poorest nations in the region, with approximately 70% of its population of 7.5 million living under the poverty line. Though siding himself with the region’s left in recent years as a new member of [...]
- This is “Change”
And, yes, this was a military coup. It does not matter that there is no military junta, or that the arrest of the president was allegedly approved by other state institutions (Supreme Court and congress). I heard a news item today that the US government has not officially branded the act a military coup, because [...]
- This is “Change”
The promotion of Middle East adviser Dennis Ross to a senior White House position may open the door to a more positive tone by the United States toward the Israeli government, experts believe. (more…)
- Obama Bombs
The missile attacks targeted a suspected Taliban camp and a religious school used by fighters in the rugged tribal border region of South Waziristan, said a local official from the region and a resident, who said at least 13 people were killed. (more…)
- Obama’s War
On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. (more…)
- Palestinian Nonviolence
When US President Barack Obama called on Palestinians to practice nonviolence, I laughed just like Mahmoud. Palestinians like Mahmoud have never needed to be told about nonviolence. The English word may be unfamiliar but the steadfast, daily acts of resistance known as nonviolence are nothing new. In the south Hebron hills, Palestinians face Israeli soldiers [...]
- Out of Hiding
But Mr. Bush, in an appearance here on Wednesday, maintained that he would not criticize President Obama, though he did discuss his policies. “I will just tell you that there are people at Gitmo who will kill Americans at the drop of a hat,” Mr. Bush said at a dinner held by a group of [...]
- This is “Change”
But American gays and lesbians are still waiting in vain for Obama to fulfill his election promises. While the US in general is clearly heading in the direction of a relaxation of homophobic policies, the White House is shying away from the issue. Even worse, on some issues, it has actually put new stumbling blocks [...]
- Back To the Future (On Torture)
If, like me, you’ve been following America’s torture policies not just for the last few years but for decades, you can’t help but experience that eerie feeling of déjà vu these days. With the departure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from Washington and the arrival of Barack Obama, it may just be back [...]
- This is “Change”
CLIMATE CHANGE: Obama Sounds Too Much Like Bush (more…)
- Not Surprised
The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them. (more…)
- Editing
AP Edits Palestinian Suffering Out of Obama’s Speech (more…)
- John Pilger on Obama’s Moral Bankruptcy
“Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” said Obama, “does not serve Israel’s security.” That was all. The killing of 1,300 people in what is now a concentration camp merited 17 words, cast as concern for the “security” of the killers. This was understandable. During the January massacre, Seymour Hersh [...]
- This is “Change”
Imagine the positive reaction Obama would have received throughout the Arab and Islamic world if, instead of simply expressing eloquent but vague words in support of freedom and democracy, he had said something like this: “Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their [...]
- Obama’s Trail of Broken Promises
The worst part of this devolution is the centrality of Obama, the prophet of “hope” and “change” who once said that “cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom.” If that’s true, then he has become America’s wisest man — the guy who seems to know my kids will laugh when I tell them politicians and [...]
- Enough Said
David Horowitz, the fanatical persona behind Campus Watch, approves of Obama’s Cairo speech.
- Obama’s Speech
Bahaieddin Hasan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, described the address as “superficial” and devoid of details. “There didn’t appear to be any concern for either democratic reform or human rights,” he was quoted as saying in the Friday edition of independent daily Al-Dustour. “This came as a major disappointment.” (more…)
- On Obama’s Cairo Speech
Of course, I didn’t expect much, but I found Obama’s brief remarks yesterday about the Palestinians extremely disingenuous and misleading. After pontificating to the audience in Cairo on the Holocaust (as if he were addressing a crowd of affirmed anti-Semites), Obama said the following about Palestine: “[I]t is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – [...]
- Angry Arab on Obama’s Speech
Obama is not a man of courage: if he was politically courageous, he would have said that Al-Azhar under the rule of Nasser was a force of progressive thought, enlightenment, state feminism support, and quasi-secularism. Under American puppets, Sadat and Mubarak, Al-Azhar became a force of obscurantism, fanaticism, misogyny, religious intolerance, and violence. Al-Azhar does [...]
- Obama’s Semantics
Labeling America’s “other” as a nebulous and all-encompassing “Islam” (even while professing rapprochement and respect) is a way to avoid acknowledging what does in fact unite and mobilize people across many Muslim-majority countries: overwhelming popular opposition to increasingly intrusive and violent American military, political and economic interventions in many of those countries. This opposition — [...]
- Obama Can Keep His Silly Speech
US President Barack Obama met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Thursday as he continued his trip to the Middle East. Amnesty International has documented a series of human rights violations in Egypt. It is particularly concerned about the extension of the state of emergency and the planned new anti-terrorism law, which seeks [...]
- This is “Change”
President Obama should not have decided to come to Egypt. The visit is a clear endorsement of President Hosni Mubarak, the ailing 81-year-old dictator who has ruled with martial law, secret police and torture chambers. No words that Mr. Obama will say can change this perception that Americans are supporting a dictator with their more [...]
- This Will Soon Be Obama’s Position
“Israel must seriously address the issue of settlements,” agreed Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) in a conversation with The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. But he stressed that Israel was not being asked to act unilaterally, saying that freezing settlements must be accompanied by “significant, concrete steps in the Arab world to normalize relations with Israel.” (more…)
- This is “Change”
Obama said he was “very much looking forward” to that part of his trip, but that he wanted to meet with Mubarak first because he is someone “who obviously has decades of experience” on a range of issues. (more…) Yeah, a whole range of issues: torture, censorship, eradication of political opponents, etc.
- This is “Change”
The Saudi government is permitting journalists accompanying President Obama entry into the country without a visa or the usual customs procedures. While in Saudi Arabia, therefore, journalists are expressly prohibited from leaving the hotel or engaging in any journalistic activities outside of coverage of the POTUS visit. Those who do so risk arrest and detention [...]
- This is “Change”
But on human rights, I fear he will disappoint: I asked him straight whether Hosni Mubarak (the Egyptian leader for 28 years!) was an autocrat. Mr Obama told me he was a force for stability and good. (more…)
- Not Exactly True, Mr. President
He also added an element not heard before. “There are a lot of Israelis who used to be Americans,” Obama said, in a not overly successfully phrase, since the overwhelming majority of those Americans who have become Israelis have retained their US citizenship. (more…)
- No Reason For Optimism
Obama has told Netanyahu firmly that Israel must stop building settlements on expropriated Palestinian land in the West Bank, but such words have been uttered by the president’s predecessors. Unless these statements are followed by decisive action–perhaps to limit American subsidies to Israel–there’s no reason to believe the lip service that failed in the past [...]
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“Anyone who was expecting a major rift in the U.S.-Israeli relationship is going to be disappointed.” (more…)
- One Can Only Hope
“The Obama administration is giving up the decades-old intimacy the White House had with the State of Israel.” (more…)
- Obama’s Methods
They come in with their Darth Vader outfits, and they literally gang-beat prisoners. There are five men, generally, that are sent in. Each of them is assigned to one body part of the prisoner: the head, the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg. They go in, and they hogtie the [...]
- This is “Change”
US President Barack Obama had thought he could clean up the Bush administration’s questionable human rights legacy on his own terms. Recent decisions regarding Abu Ghraib pictures and military tribunals show that he was mistaken. His message of “change” is at risk. (more…)
- This is “Change”
President Obama’s decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he [...]
- This is “Change”
Barack Obama will revive the heavily criticised George Bush-era military tribunals for detainees at Guantánamo Bay but will make them fairer, according to US officials. (more…)
- Donald Rumsfeld, War Criminal
Video has emerged showing two protesters confronting former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night. As Rumsfeld entered the building, Desiree Fairooz and Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK were there to greet him. Desiree Fairooz: “War criminal! War criminal! War criminal! Arrest this man! Arrest the war criminal! I wish [...]
- Netanyahu, the SOB
“That SOB doesn’t want a deal,” growled Mr Clinton at a particularly frustrating juncture in diplomacy. It remains to be seen whether—or how fast—Mr Obama may come to the same conclusion. (more…)
- This is “Change”
“This tragic, misguided, and unprincipled reversal seems to be consistent with the fact that instead of getting a real ‘change’ on policies under the Obama administration, the American people are experiencing continuity across the board with those of the discredited and criminal Bush administration when it comes to international law, human rights, and U.S. constitutional [...]
- This is “Change”
Human rights advocates and legal scholars fear that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may resurrect the military commissions designed by his predecessor to try Guantanamo detainees after Obama’s 120-day moratorium on proceedings expires on May 20. That possibility appeared to move a step closer to reality when Guantanamo’s chief judge refused to delay [...]
- This is “Change”
The president is seeking to overturn a deal made last month between the Pentagon and the American Civil Liberties Union to make public the pictures from Abu Ghraib and other prisons after a court ruled they should be released. Obama instructed the White House legal office to argue in court against the immediate release of [...]
- Obama’s War
An investigation appointed by President Hamid Karzai concluded on Monday that 140 civilians, including children, were killed in the US air strikes in Afghanistan last week, a police chief said. (more…)
- This is “Change”
The Obama administration says it may curtail Anglo-American intelligence sharing if the British High Court discloses new details of the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee. (more…)
- If Obama Is Sincere…
If Obama is sincere in treating Muslims as partners and engaging them with mutual respect, his very pretty words must inspire legitimate policy reform. First, he must use this opportunity to empathize with the people’s concerns by denouncing the heinous crimes and oppressive, intolerant conduct of client autocrats, such as Mubarak and the Saudi royal [...]
