Source: Al Jazeera English

March 11, 2010

He was the first African-American to get a PhD in philosophy at Princeton.

He went on to write more than 20 books, receive more than 20 honourary degrees, to teach at Harvard and Yale, and hold classes at universities from Paris to Addis Abeba.

With his latest hip hop CD he was named “MTV’s artist of the week”, and he has provided futuristic philosophical commentary on all three Matrix movies.

In a famous spat with the then president of Harvard University he called Lawrence Summers “the Ariel Sharon of higher education.”

Avi Lewis talks to Cornel West, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton, hip hop artist, and one of the most controversial academics in the US, about the state of democracy for African-Americans today, the Obama administration, and his dispute with Lawrence Summers.

He also shares his views on US foreign policy, the war in Afghanistan, global recession, and the growing pressure on Barack Obama.

Fuente: Página/12

(Imagen: AFP)

por Juan Gelman
18 de marzo, 2010

Está dicho en un valsecito criollo de Gardel y Le Pera: “Hoy una promesa, mañana una traición,/amores de estudiante flores de un día son”. Hace mucho que el presidente Obama dejó los estudios, pero no abandona, al parecer, ese sentimiento inefable que embarga a cualquier joven. En su primer día de gobierno envió un memorándum a los directores de los departamentos y agencias ejecutivos en el que señalaba: “Mi gobierno se propone crear un nivel de apertura sin precedentes. Trabajaremos juntos para garantizar la confianza pública y establecer un sistema de transparencia, participación pública y cooperación. La apertura fortalecerá nuestra democracia y promoverá la eficiencia y la eficacia de la gobernabilidad” (www.whitehouse.gov, 21-1-09). Pero los organismos convocados, cuando se les solicita información, esgrimen la palabra “secreto” con más frecuencia que el gobierno Bush. Read the full story

Source: Democracy Now!

March 15, 2010

We spend the hour with world-renowned linguist and dissident, Noam Chomsky. In a wide-ranging public conversation at the Harvard Memorial Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chomsky talks about President Obama’s foreign and national security policies, the lessons of Vietnam, and his own activism. “You just can’t become involved part-time in these things,” Chomsky says. “It’s either serious and you’re seriously involved, or you go to a demonstration and go home and forget about it and go back to work, and nothing happens. Things only happen by really dedicated, diligent work.”

Parts 2-5 below

Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: Truthdig

(AP / Chris Carlson)

by Chris Hedges
March 1, 2010

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened. Read the full story

Source: GRITtv

February 25, 2010

The Bush administration thrived on secrecy; Obama promised more transparency, but has yet to really deliver. What’s more, when information does come out, it seems that accountability is nearly impossible to get: the torture memos were released, but there will be no trials.

We ask Daniel Ellsberg, one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers, if there’s anything the people can do to take the power back.

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

(Scott Olson / Getty Images file)

by Harvey Wasserman

The mystery has been solved.

Where is this “new reactor renaissance” coming from?

There has been no deep, thoughtful re-making or re-evaluation of atomic technology. No solution to the nuke waste problem. No making reactors economically sound. No private insurance against radioactive disasters by terror or error. No grassroots citizens now desperate to live near fragile containment domes and outtake pipes spewing radioactive tritium at 27 US reactors.

No, nothing about atomic energy has really changed.

Except this: $645 MILLION for lobbying Congress and the White House over the past ten years. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Source: The Guardian

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: EssG, Ericskiff Sirkullay)

by Mark Weisbrot
February 18, 2010

In a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week, Hillary Clinton said that Iran “is moving toward a military dictatorship,” and continued the administration’s campaign for tougher sanctions against that country.

What could America’s top diplomat hope to accomplish with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric? It seems unlikely that the goal was to support human rights in Iran. Because of the United States’ history in Iran and in the region, it tends to give legitimacy to repression. The more that any opposition can be linked to the United States’ actions, words, or support, the harder time they will have.

Second, it is tough for anyone – especially in the region – to believe that the US is really concerned about human rights abuses. In addition to supporting Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza, Washington has been remarkably quiet as the most important opposition leaders in Egypt were arrested as part of the government’s preparations for October elections. Amnesty International stated that the arrestees were “prisoners of conscience, detained solely for their peaceful political activities”. Read the full story

Traducción del artículo en español abajo

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch and the author

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Aaron Escobar ♦ (the spaniard)™, safety superhero)

Source: TomDispatch

by Tom Engelhardt
February 15, 2010

Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen.

In 2008, 14,180 Americans were murdered, according to the FBI.  In that year, there were 34,017 fatal vehicle crashes in the U.S. and, so the U.S. Fire Administration tells us, 3,320 deaths by fire.  More than 11,000 Americans died of the swine flu between April and mid-December 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; on average, a staggering 443,600 Americans die yearly of illnesses related to tobacco use, reports the American Cancer Society; 5,000 Americans die annually from food-borne diseases; an estimated 1,760 children died from abuse or neglect in 2007; and the next year, 560 Americans died of weather-related conditions, according to the National Weather Service, including 126 from tornadoes, 67 from rip tides, 58 from flash floods, 27 from lightning, 27 from avalanches, and 1 from a dust devil. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch

Source: TomDispatch

The New Deal, by Conrad A. Albrizio (1934)

How the Obama Administration Ended Up Where Franklin Roosevelt Began

by Steve Fraser
February 11, 2010

On March 4, 1933, the day he took office, Franklin Roosevelt excoriated the “money changers” who “have fled from their high seats in the temples of our civilization [because...] they know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.  They have no vision and where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Rhetoric, however, is only rhetoric.  According to one skeptical congressional observer of FDR’s first inaugural address, “The President drove the money-changers out of the Capitol on March 4th — and they were all back on the 9th.” Read the full story

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso del autor

Read the original version (in English) below

Traducción: Loles Oliván, Rebelión

por Ramzy Baroud

La costumbre de los medios de comunicación de volver a revisar ciertas cuestiones a intervalos regulares de tiempo puede parecer extraña e incluso a veces ilógica. Por ejemplo, muchas agencias de noticias han hecho comentarios acerca de los primeros cien días de gobierno del presidente Obama así como del aniversario de su victoria electoral y, nuevamente, después del día de su toma de posesión. A cada número redondo se han sumado más comentaristas y han tenido lugar acaloradas discusiones entre los partidarios y los detractores de la actuación de su gobierno. Read the full story