Can the U.S. continue to have it both ways?

Reacting to the turmoil in Egypt, the last couple days, President Obama said
the following:

""I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters."

"The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association. The right to free speech and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights."

Noble words, but rather hypocritical since the U.S. Government has been
supporting Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak with billions of dollars in
military aid for about 30 years.

These words are also hypocritical since Obama and his predecessor Bush
did not speak these words to a repressive Israeli government that has
built a wall that dwarfs the scope of the old infamous Berlin wall,
and commits human rights violations against Palestinians on a daily
basis.

In addition, Obama has not even allowed these remarks to be regularly
applied right in the United States itself, by continuing Bush's repression with increasing restrictions on the right of "peaceable assembly and association," the "right to free speech and the ability to determine
their own destiny." Nor have we always seen the order of "authorities
to refrain from any violence against peaceful demonstrators."

It was a telling sign to see that the tear gas canisters that the Mubarak
government used against demonstrators were made in the United States. It
seems that few things are made in the United States these days except
items made to harm or kill others.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has consistently installed or supported right wing dictators or governments, while consistently
opposing governments on the left, whether democratically elected or not.
Yet, like an engineer jumping off a speeding train that is coming to the
end of the track, the U.S. has wanted to avoid responsibility for the
"train wrecks" it has engineered, by, at the last minute before a dictator
falls, calling for him to "reform" or "allow democratic elections," to
avoid the angry citizens from turning their anger against the dictator to the United States itself. Furthermore, the United States wants to be the chief meddler in the power struggle after the dictator, and make sure
that only someone favorable to the U.S. takes charge. This seems to be
what has happened so far in Tunisia, with the interim leader connected
to dictator Ben Ali, who the U.S. supported for so many years.

How long then can the United States continue to have it both ways?

"The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power."

Mary Pickford

"Once you pour the water out of the bucket, it's hard to get it back in it."

Chinese Proverb

...the significance of which not only individuals, but governments need to
learn when deciding how to treat their own citizens, as well as those in other countries of the world.

"Common sense is not so common."

Voltaire (1694-1778)

The Republican leaders are all awash in talk about having "not just a budget
freeze, but budget cuts." So duh... as I said once before here, let's start with
the most glaring example of what MUST be cut: military spending and
"security" spending..... This spending is laid TOTALLY on the backs of the
poor for the TOTAL benefit of the rich, and because of the secrecy of these
budget items and the lack of accountability to the public, who are paying
"through the nose," the TOTAL amount of waste and fraud involved with
spending on these items is staggering. 

...And how much do the Republicans (and most Democrats) care?

"If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it."

Brendan Francis Behan (1923-1964)

"Nothing will make us forget the oppression until it stops, until it's finished, until it's eliminated."

Malcolm X

On Tuesday, January 25, President Obama will deliver his third State of the
Union address. He is trying to rally his 2008 election supporters after seeing
millions of them stay home on Election Day 2010, thus handing the House of
Representatives back to the right-wing Republicans and barely holding an
edge in the Senate.

Unfortunately, he seems to continue to do everything that the opposing Party
wants him to do rather than completely reversing course to go in the
direction he again and again promised those millions of Progressives who
ultimately put him in office in January 2009.

As I thought about this during the past week, I realized that there was an
important indicator that this would happen during Obama's campaign days
in 2008.  For two decades Obama had attended an activist church in
Chicago, dedicated to social and economic justice, the Trinity United
Church of Christ. His pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was not afraid to
preach against American injustices and American hypocrisy. The right-
wing, so called "mainstream" media, were quick to jump on a couple of
Wright's "one-liners" and Obama in turn was quick to repudiate his
pastor of two decades.

It seems that, for Obama, with that repudiation also came a repudiation of
dealing directly, head-on, with some of the injustices, disparities, and
hypocrisies perpetuated by the American Government that the pastor had
been preaching about for all those years.  Thus, the bailouts were not for
the working class, but for the billionaries and their corporations.  The
immoral "detention" tortures of the Bush Administration are still taking
place and the world's most notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay is still
being used.  The bedrock rights of free speech, press, and assembly are
continuing to be eroded and more illegal search and seizures are taking
place. And the U.S. continues to support in practice every brutal action
of the right-wing Israeli government against the virtually enslaved
Palestinians, including their latest threat to veto a UN Security Council
resolution condemning the ever expanding Israeli settlements, even
though the resolution is in harmony with U.S. rhetoric for the past 40
years.  The U.S. also had been stepping up aid to the Tunisian dictator
before he was ousted during the past couple weeks, and continues to
mightily aid the Colombian government, with its death squad history
and misuse of "drug war" funds, while railing about the rise of "leftist"
governments in Latin America, whose leaders were democratically
elected (as in Gaza too), which process the U.S. claims to believe in.

What is most sad about all of this to millions of poor Americans is
that it was they who handed President Obama, in 2008, the most
golden opportunity since John F. Kennedy: to turn the United States
in a positive direction by focusing on closing the world's largest
income disparity gap; by ending reckless wars abroad and
transferring the billions spent on them into public services and
works; and by seeking to work with other countries as equals
instead as the world's cop with a billy club. Obama had "the
wind at his back," with the Republican Party discredited and
in a shambles, and millions of enthusiastic supporters who
thought this government would finally help them "get on their
feet," after being beaten down at the whim of the wealthy elite
during the previous eight years. 

...But the President has let the oppression of the poorest and
most powerless get greater ... so what can he say ... and
more importantly ... do ... now?

"Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation."

 Eugene V. Debs - (1855-1926) Five time candidate for President,
the last time from his U.S. prison cell where he was serving a 10
year sentence for a speech denouncing American participation in
World War I.