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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: US Government Supports Protesters Abroad and Jails Them at Home US Government Supports Protesters Abroad and Jails Them at Home Submitted by mark karlin on Mon, 10/17/2011 - 8:49pm. EditorBlog MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT When Andy Borowitz captures the truth of the moment, using satire, you know the ruling elite are on the defensive. There's something all too pathetically ironic about Borowitz's daily headline: "Libyan Government Warns NYPD to Exercise Restraint: Urges NATO Action to Protect American Dissidents." In a riveting unmasking of hypocrisy, a YouTube video has appeared that masterfully shows the blatant hypocrisy of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton in applying one standard for attacks on protesters overseas - and quite another in the US. While Obama has given some lip service to the Occupy Wall Street movement, he has qualified that with an upholding of the status quo of a financial sector that cratered the US economy. And he has said nothing about the police brutality in attempts, particularly in New York, to suppress the "right of redress" protests. Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times: But anyone who believes in markets should be outraged that banks rig the system so that they enjoy profits in good years and bailouts in bad years. The banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, and that's just another form of bank robbery. Yet, President Obama even used Martin Luther King to project a narrative that it's really a bunch of "good people" on Wall Street who made a few mistakes. In his King memorial dedication speech on October 16, Obama predicted that if Martin Luther King were alive today, "I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there." First of all, this is not just an issue of struggling unemployed workers; it's an issue of a financial system that needs systemic reform. Second of all, it's not a minor issue of "excesses" as if the chairman of the Bank of America had an extra bottle of champagne for dinner on the company account. It is, as Kristof writes, "another form of bank robbery." Obama, his Treasury secretary and his attorney general are doing very little to prosecute those who conducted the bank robberies, but they are tolerating the arrests of those who are witnesses to the crime. The reality is that Obama believes in this financial system, even when it has de facto disproved that it can offer much to growing the American economy. It is fossilized, state-sanctioned and subsidized greed. For Obama, who is looking to a record campaign war chest to offset low ratings and a stalled economy, Wall Street money is essential. The duopoly of the American two-party system, as this video reconfirms, will go to war for the rights of protesters overseas, but champions putting them in jail at home. **** If you'd like to receive these commentaries daily from Truthout/BuzzFlash, click here. You'll get our choice headlines and articles too.
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#1. To: tom007 (#0)
buckwheat is proving to be such a transparently poor tool, that shadow.gov will soon kick him under the bus. What a horrible joke.
Break the Conventions - Keep the Commandments - G.K.Chesterson |
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