America’s ‘Primal Scream’

The frustration in America isn’t so much with inequality in the political and legal worlds, as it was in Arab countries, although those are concerns too. Here the critical issue is economic inequity. According to the C.I.A.’s own ranking of countries by income inequality, the United States is more unequal a society than either Tunisia or Egypt.

 

Op-Ed Columnist

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published in NewYork Times on October 15, 2011

 

IT’S fascinating that many Americans intuitively understood the outrage and frustration that drove Egyptians to protest at Tahrir Square, but don’t comprehend similar resentments that drive disgruntled fellow citizens to “occupy Wall Street.”

Calling America’s bluff

By Kurt Jacobsen and Sayeed Hassan Khan

Published in Dawn

HAS Obama unwittingly called his own bluff? The spooky so-called mastermind Osama Bin Laden is rubbed out, courtesy a Hollywood-style hit squad operation. What more is there to say?

Everything, actually. But nervous authorities want to curb jubilation so as not to give the exasperated American public any funny ideas about pulling their stupendously expensive military apparatus out of battered Afghanistan.

Killing of Osama and its Implications for Islamic World

Asghar Ali Engineer

(Secular Perspective May 16-31, 2011)

The United States has claimed, through its own President Barak Obama that Osama  bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, was killed on 1^st May 2011 at the dead of night in his hiding place in Abbotabad, near Islamabad, Pakistan’s own capital. This news has been broadcast, telecast or published all over the world. However, the President also claimed that as per Islamic rites we buried him in the sea without loss of time as in Islam it is not allowed to keep the body for long. He also claimed that his photographs (with disfigured face) were not shown as it would not satisfy the skeptics and instead, would incite feelings among radicals.

Now That Bin Laden Is Dead, Can We Have Our Freedoms Back?

AlterNet.org

Let’s remember once again who we are, and begin to rebuild our confidence in ourselves – starting with our system of justice.

Osama bin Laden’s death removes the single focal point that has dominated American foreign affairs – and much of American politics at home – for a decade. And certainly, the United States and the world can breathe a sigh of relief that a dreaded enemy no longer needs to be countered. But the removal of bin Laden also opens up some space for thinking – not just for perpetual reaction, which has been the singular characteristic of the American version of the “war on terror”.

Obama snatches defeat from jaws of victory

By Yvonne Ridley

As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death filtered out onto the streets of America it triggered unsightly scenes of undiluted hysteria, chest-thumping and back-slapping which has sadly become a trademark of the vengeful ‘hang’em high’ lobby that emerged from the rubble of 9/11.

7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration

This week we are going to publish a series of articles written by Americans themselves  about Bin Laden’s death. Bloody shame on those servile bleeding heart complexed Pakistanis who dare not raise a finger or a question.

As the week wore on, many of the details of the historic raid were “revised.”

May 5, 2011

The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that’s par for the course: “the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.”

Osama Bin Laden: Alternative views

This week we are going to publish a series of articles written by Americans themselves  about Bin Laden’s death. Bloody shame on those servile bleeding heart complexed Pakistanis who dare not raise a finger or a question.

[Awaam]

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

By Noam Chomsky

May 07, 2011

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them.

Post Morterm of Osama

Scientific American tells us: How Do You ID a Dead Osama?

By Christie Wilcox | May 2, 2011

Osama Bin Laden is dead. At least, that’s what we’ve been told, and I tend to believe such things.

But how do they know it’s him? Well, they have the visual evidence and the body, for one. But to be certain it’s not a look-a-like, the government has taken steps above and beyond to make sure they’ve got who they think they have: DNA analysis.

Bin Laden: An alternative view from America

We present two articles from United States that present views that are not part of mainstream media. A little realism rather than triumphalism.

Bin Laden’s Dead, But Our Long National Nightmare is Not Over

By Steven D. | Sourced from Booman Tribune  Posted on  May 2, 2011, 5:59 am

Ding-Dong the Witch is dead!

Well, that’s nice, I suppose. But after ten years of wars that we paid for on the National credit card, one of them (Iraq) clearly and unquestionably unnecessary, after trillions of dollars wasted killing hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and destroying the lives of millions more, we still ain’t back in Kansas, Dorothy.

Separate but unequal: Charts show growing rich-poor gap

By Zachary Roth zachary Roth – Wed Feb 23

The Great Recession and the slump that followed have triggered a jobs crisis that’s been making headlines since before President Obama was in office, and that will likely be with us for years. But the American economy is also plagued by a less-noted, but just as serious, problem: Simply put, over the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm.

We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?

AMERICA’S TRAGEDY BORN IN THE PRISONS OF EGYPT

“The former Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons spoke at a conference for Israel’s leaders last year and assured them they didn’t have to worry about the British people’s growing opposition to their policies because “public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue”. This is repellent but right. It is formulated in the interests of big business and their demand for access to resources, and influential sectional interest groups.”

“Mubarak has been at the forefront of waging war on the Palestinian population. There are 1.5 million people imprisoned on the Gaza Strip denied access to necessities like food and centrifuges for their blood transfusion service. They are being punished for voting “the wrong way” in a democratic election.

Israel blockades Gaza to one side, and Mubarak blockades it to the other. I’ve stood in Gaza and watched Egyptian soldiers refusing to let sick and dying people out for treatment they can’t get in Gaza’s collapsing hospitals. In return for this, Mubarak receives $1.5bn a year from the US. Far from contributing to peace, this is marinating the Gazan people in understandable hatred and dreams of vengeance.”

Johhn Hari

Source: The Independent

The old slogan from the 1960s has come true: the revolution has been televised. The world is watching the Bastille fall on 24/7 rolling news. An elderly thug is trying to buy and beat and tear-gas himself enough time to smuggle his family’s estimated $25bn in loot out of the country, and to install a successor friendly to his interests. The Egyptian people – half of whom live on less than $2 a day – seem determined to prevent the pillage and not to wait until September to drive out a dictator dripping in blood and bad hair dye.

An Unlikely Trio Can Iran, Turkey, and the United States Become Allies?

By Mustafa Akyol

Insanity, it is often said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When it comes to the Middle East, writes Stephen Kinzer, a veteran foreign correspondent, Washington has been doing just that. Hence, in Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future, he proposes a radical new course for the United States in the region. The United States, he argues, needs to partner with Iran and Turkey to create a “powerful triangle” whose activities would promote a culture of democracy and combat extremism.