The fallout from the Republican letter to Iran

The fallout continues from the letter sent by 47 Republican senators to the leaders of Iran, condescendingly explaining the US system of governance to them and explaining why they should not trust any deal they arrive at with the US government. Not only has the letter produced an angry response from the Obama administration, it was also a grossly inaccurate oversimplification of the US president’s power to negotiate agreements with other nations.
[Read more…]

Netanyahu’s strategy backfires

There was a time not so long ago when there were three rigid dogmas in elite US government and media circles: 1. The interests of the US and Israel were identical. 2. Anything that the government of Israel did must be given unquestioned support. 3. One must never mention even the existence of the Israel lobby, let alone its role in enforcing the first two dogmas. To violate any of these dogmas was to be prima facie guilty of anti-Semitism.
[Read more…]

The hyperpatriotism trap

Bill Maher had a good segment on the deep strain of jingosim in America that demands that one should never say anything negative about its past or present actions. The problem with such a stance should be obvious. If you think that your country can do no wrong and has never done anything wrong, then you are going to continue doing those wrong things. Politicians of the major parties relentlessly pander to this way of thinking, making it worse. Obama panders a lot too but not enough for some people because he has the audacity to say that maybe not everything was always great.
[Read more…]

How the government treats whistleblowers

The Daily Show looks at how governments treat whistleblowers, starting with the case of the UK-based megabank HSBC where a whistleblower accused his employer of helping its clients avoid taxes in their home countries. Of course the people who take advantage of these kinds of sophisticated tax avoidance schemes are the very wealthy and well-connected and includes the HSBC chief so you can guess how they were punished, and what happened to the person who revealed it.
[Read more…]

More on Chicago’s black sites

Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian has been all over the story about Chicago’s ‘Black Sites’, a kind of Guantanamo on the US mainland whose location is in a drab building complex known as Homan Square, where people were taken and effectively disappeared from sight while they were being abused and interrogated. If there is one thing that we have learned in the last few months, it is that the willful disregard of people’s constitutional rights, especially if they are poor and minority, is endemic in the US and that this kind of knowledge is shared within the police system so that the revelation of an abuse in one location is usually a predictor that similar abuses are occurring elsewhere.
[Read more…]

Ferguson and the hidden tax on the poor

The Department of Justice has issued a scathing report of the policing practices of the city of Ferguson, MO in the wake of the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last August. It reveals instance after instance of the way that the police abused poor and minority people, subjecting them to systematic arrests and harassment. The report details instances of racist, discriminatory, and abusive behavior.
[Read more…]