Propaganda

By Dave Lindorff

The Taliban suicide attack that killed a group of CIA agents in Afghanistan on a base that was directing US drone aircraft used to attack Taliban leaders was big news in the US over the past week, with the airwaves and front pages filled with sympathetic stories referring to the fact that the female station chief, who was among those killed, was the “mother of three children.”

By Dave Lindorff

If you google “recession easing,” you will find articles all the way back to April quoting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as saying that the recession is easing, and that the economy is “improving modestly.” Newspapers too, on their own, have written rosy-tinged stories about how things are bad but getting better.

Spins get put on every hint of good news, as when last month “only” 11,000 jobs were lost (a story that was quickly followed by an “unexpected” jump in new unemployment claims by 474,000 in early December.

By Dave LIndorff

There are so many things wrong with Obama’s “New and Improved”
Afghanistan War that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I guess the
place to start is with his premise.

If America needs to be fighting in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda
planned and launched the 9-11 attacks from there back in 2001, as the
president claimed in his lackluster address to the cadets at West Point
last week, then we would have to assume either that Al Qaeda is still
there, or that if we were not there fighting, that Al Qaeda would be
back to plan more attacks.

By Dave Lindorff

Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the
Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime
Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain
is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British
leaders that led to the country’s joining the US invasion of Iraq in
2003.

Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday,
news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that
the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the
public about the country’s involvement in war planning.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published
documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British
special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been
instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with
Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the
value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of
non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of
strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president
himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US
troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk
about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian
style control over information.

By Dave Lindorff

As the strike by transit workers in Philadelphia enters its fifth
day, it is clear why unions have such a tough time in the United
States, where fewer than one in eight workers is covered by a union
contract.

Although the average pay of transit workers is just $50,000 a year
(that represents take-home pay of less than $35000 take-home after
taxes or about $3000 a month to live on for a typical family of four),
the suburbanites who feel put out because they have to brave huge
traffic jams to get to and from work in the city are grousing that the
transit workers are greedy for holding out for a slightly-less-than 4%
per year pay increase over the three years of their contract.

By Dave Lindorff

Ordinary, average, struggling Americans might be scratching their
heads over the news today, as the Labor Department reports that
unemployment is up by four-tenths of a percent for the month to a
record 10.2%, fully three-tenths of a percent higher than economists
had been forecasting, and stocks do what? Rise by a quarter of a
percent!

What’s going on here?

Well, the tube analysts are quick to say, unemployment figures are
a “lagging” indicator. That is, employment generally lags the overall
economy, with layoffs coming after a recession kicks in, and hiring
waiting until a recovery is well underway.

By Dave Lindorff

If you listen to the happy-talk folks at Treasury and the Fed, and
on the tube, you’d think things had finally turned a corner. The
economy grew at a 3.5% annualized rate in the third quarter ended
September 30. “The Economy is Back in Gear” shouted the headline on an
article by CNN senior writer Chris Isadore. “The recession ended
unofficially in September,” said a reporter on NPR.

By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add 74,000 private contractors who are doing jobs normally done by uniformed military, and about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia. That’s 164,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters.