US Empire: Crusty, Hulking, Feet of Clay, Short of Breath and Challenged

[It is rare to see the New York Times and other Western imperialist media write so bluntly about the decline of the US hegemonic controls over the world imperialist system.  This article draws a stark picture, although their claim that a big part of the cause is the infighting in Washington fails to focus on the several-decades  accumulation of crisis and contradictions within the post-WW2 capitalist system, exacerbated by endless wars and shifting production, trade, and resource alliances and contentions, not to mention the waves of mass resistance.  And only briefly mentioned is the huge challenge by the other major imperialist power, China.  That is a subject more deeply explored in the pathbreaking “Is China an Imperialist Country?” by NB Turner (available at  http://www.red-path.net/analysis/is-china-an-imperialist-country or in pdf at http://www.red-path.net/images/RP-paper-IsChinaAnImperialistCountry.pdf).  —  Frontlines ed] 

At Global Economic Gathering, U.S. Primacy Is Seen as Ebbing

By JONATHAN WEISMAN, New York Times, APRIL 17, 2015

[The clock is ticking uncomfortably fast, apparently–Frontlines} Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, checking the time after a financial ministers and governors photo on Friday. Credit Gary Cameron/Reuters

WASHINGTON — As world leaders converge here for their semiannual trek to the capital of what is still the world’s most powerful economy, concern is rising in many quarters that the United States is retreating from global economic leadership just when it is needed most.

The spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have filled Washington with motorcades and traffic jams and loaded the schedules of President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. But they have also highlighted what some in Washington and around the world see as a United States government so bitterly divided that it is on the verge of ceding the global economic stage it built at the end of World War II and has largely directed ever since.

“It’s almost handing over legitimacy to the rising powers,” Arvind Subramanian, the chief economic adviser to the government of India, said of the United States in an interview on Friday. “People can’t be too public about these things, but I would argue this is the single most important issue of these spring meetings.”

India: Maoists to protest Obama visit

Mohua Chatterjee,TNN | Jan 13, 2015

NEW DELHI: At a time when the government is busy with security preparations for US President Barack Obama’s arrival to be the chief guest at the 65th Republic Day celebrations on January 26 here, the Maoists have called out to people to “condemn and boycott” the visit.

“In protest of calling him to be the chief guest at the at the Republic Day celebrations, we call upon people to observe 26th January as a day of protest and to boycott all the meetings,” a written statement issued by the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the CPI (Maoist), dated January 5, said.

PM Modi with US President Barack Obama at the White House in September 2014.

White House orders Castro regime to release MORE political prisoners

saying 53 anti-Communists freed this week are just a start

[This article from the reactionary and bombastic-imperialist Daily Mail, is true to their arrogant form.  But while revealing that “diplomatic relations” is just an excuse for new imperialist dictation toward Cuba, there is, of course, no mention of a “quid pro quo” — though many might ask, where is the Cuban demand for release of political prisoners in the US, as well as …. where is the demand from Cuba for US to get out of the illegally occupied Guantanamo? — Frontlines ed.]

• The White House revealed on Tuesday that it dictated to Cuba which political prisoners should be released immediately 
• ‘Our efforts to secure the release of other political prisoners that are unjustly detained in Cuba is ongoing,’ the president’s spokesman said
• He did not say how many other dissidents the U.S. government is lobbying Raul Castro’s regime to set free

By Francesca Chambers For Dailymail.com, 13 January 2015

The White House revealed on Tuesday that it dictated to Cuba which political prisoners should be released and that there are additional detainees beyond the 53 that have already been let go that it wants to see freed.

‘Our efforts to secure the release of other political prisoners that are unjustly detained in Cuba is ongoing,’ White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

Earnest did not say how many other political prisoners it is lobbying Raul Castro’s regime to set free nor would he give out the names of the original 53.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday that the U.S. is working to free additional political prisoners in Cuba who are still behind bars beyond the 53 names it initially submitted to the Raul Castro regime

Shifting Tides, Shifty Obama-ists

[We are not accustomed to quoting the Bible, but sometimes the biblical words have become part of common culture, as in this:  “Matthew 7:15-20, ‘You Will Know Them by Their Fruits’ — ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?  Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them.'”  Which is appropriate warned, when perusing the shifting claims and tides of Obama-ists like Angela Davis, whose latest statement (read down to her Guardian article) reaches into more radical territory to restore credibility.  Davis, who partially broke with the path of the revisionist CPUSA many years ago, and who has made contributions to the growing prison abolitionist movement, still has promoted electoral-democratic-reform illusions about the imperialist system against revolutionary strategies. (our highlights, for emphasis). —  Frontlines ed.]

• From Black Agenda Report, by Glen Ford — March 27, 2012 — “Angela Davis Lost Her Mind Over Obama” —  The “delusional effect” that swept Black America with the advent of the First Black President has warped and weakened the mental powers of some of our most revered icons – and it has been painful to behold. Earlier this month, Angela Davis diminished herself as a scholar and thinker in a gush of nonsense about the corporate executive in the White House. The occasion was a conference on Empowering Women of Color, in Berkeley, California. Davis shared the stage with Grace Lee Boggs, the 96-year-old activist from Detroit. The subject was social transformation, but Davis suddenly launched into how wonderful it felt to see people “dancing in the streets” when Barack Obama was elected. She called that campaign a “victory, not of an individual, but of…people who refused to believe that it was impossible to elect a person, a Black person, who identified with the Black radical tradition.”……There was a hush in the room, as if in mourning of the death of brain cells. Angela Davis was saying that Barack Obama is a man who identifies with the Black radical tradition. She said it casually, as if Black radicalism and Obama were not antithetical terms; as if everything he has written, said and done in national politics has not been a repudiation of the Black radical tradition; as if his rejection of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was not a thorough disavowal of the Black radical tradition. In his famous 2008 campaign speech in Philadelphia, Obama blamed such radicals for compounding the nation’s problems.
• From Democracy Now, January 21, 2013  —  Addressing the Peace Ball in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the renowned author, educator and political activist Angela Davis urges those content with President Obama’s re-election to continue pushing him for social change. “This time around we cannot subordinate our aspirations and our hopes to presidential agendas,” Davis says. “Our passionate support for President Barack Obama … should also be expressed in our determination to raise issues that have been largely ignored or not appropriately addressed by the administration.”
• And Angela today, adjusting her tone, more accurately and radical, to the shifting tides, as anger and defiance grow…………

“From Michael Brown to Assata Shakur, the racist state of America persists”

by Angela Davis, The Guardian, Saturday, 1 November 2014 

 

Although racist state violence has been a consistent theme in the history of people of African descent in North America, it has become especially noteworthy during the administration of the first African-American president, whose very election was widely interpreted as heralding the advent of a new, postracial era.

US moving to block China’s challenge to World Bank

[Chinese imperialism is moving rapidly, knitting new alliances of trade, investment, security, intel-surveillance, and other challenges to the “traditional” US domination of these world relations.  Finance is one of the most active arenas of this inter-imperialist contention, as this fidgety New York Times article describes, from US perspective.  Significantly, the article, while focusing on the challenge to the US-dominated World Bank, does not go into the parallel challenge (to the US dollar standard) that China is making on the monetary systems of trade, investment, and credit — raising the yuan/renminbi as the significant “alternate” currency/monetary system.  The Wall Street Journal reported, “The U.K. government moved a step closer on Thursday to becoming the first country other than China to issue bonds in China’s yuan.” Revolutionary people everywhere are beginning to note that the contradictions within and between imperialists are sharpening, and becoming more muscular. It won’t do to focus on the US as the only imperialist to oppose.  —  Frontlines ed.]

U.S. Opposing China’s Answer to World Bank

By JANE PERLEZ, New York Times, OCT. 9, 2014

BEIJING — For almost a year, China has been pitching an idea to its neighbors in Asia: a big, internationally funded bank that would offer quick financing for badly needed transportation, telecommunications and energy projects in underdeveloped countries across the region.

With the public backing of President Xi Jinping and a pledge from Beijing to contribute much of the $50 billion in initial capital, the plan could be seen as an answer to critics who have long argued that China should take on greater responsibilities as a world power. But the United States, perhaps the most vocal of such critics, especially on issues such as climate change and arms proliferation, has not embraced the Chinese proposal.

Instead, in quiet conversations with China’s potential partners, American officials have lobbied against the development bank with unexpected determination and engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade important allies to shun the project, according to senior United States officials and representatives of other governments involved.

US’ Controls on Kashmiri and Sikh anti-Modi Protests

September 30, 2014 | By Parmjit Singh, sikhsiyasat.net

Washington, DC: The Kashmir American Council staged a sit-in outside the White House on Monday (Sept. 29) as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived to attend a private dinner where he was due to meet US President Obama and other key US officials.

A number of Sikh protesters also gathered outside the White House and raised slogans against the Indian prime minister.

An “International The News” report says police had to intervene when some of Narendra Modi supporters and protesters came face to face.

WASHINGTON: The Kashmir American Council staged a sit-in outside the White House on Monday as Indian Prime Minister arrived to attend a private dinner where he was due to meet President Obama and other key US officials.

New York: Indian/South Asian Group leads anti Modi protest demonstration

[We have received other reports that, while the numbers of protesters were much smaller than claimed in this AJA press release, the action clearly and prominently challenged the fascist Modi’s claim of universal embrace and acclaim.   The views of AJA are offered here by Frontlines, to understand the growing and diverse opposition to the Imperialist’s Modi.  —  Frontlines ed.]

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Massive protests send clear demands to Indian PM Modi: End suppression of minorities and desist from clamping down on civil society institutions

Alliance for Justice and Accountability — Press Release
New York, NY |  September 28, 2104

Alliance for Justice and Accountability, a broad coalition of organizations and individuals, announced that the rally this morning in New York City during Prime Minister Modi’s event at Madison Square Garden, was a huge success. Hundreds of people, including human rights activists, professionals, students and people from all walks of life attended the rally. Protesters were a large and spirited group of Indian Americans comprising of people of all faiths and ideological persuasions, with one thing in common: they were demanding justice and accountability in the case of Mr. Modi, and an end to repression of minorities and crony capitalism in India.

“The protests have demonstrated the rejection of a leader who represents a hateful and divisive agenda, ” said Robindra Deb, a key AJA organizer of protest on September 28. “We represent the 70% of Indians that did not vote for Mr. Modi,” added Mr. Deb.

Greenwald: NSA Docs Show ‘Israeli Action In Gaza Has US Fingerprints All Over It’

[It’s really quite amazing how supporters of imperialism believe Obama’s statements of outrage and dismay at Israeli genocidal murder of Palestinians, most recently in Gaza.  In fact, the US government has largely paid for and armed the colonial aggression, and the US’ NSA has provided targeting data to the Israeli forces for the aerial attack on Gaza’s people.  So, Obama’s “outrage” notwithstanding, it appears the debate in Washington is about whether the Israelis have not gone far enough, and if they should, right away, again with US funds, arms, and “intelligence,” further aggress toward what Israeli politicians, especially from the Likud Party, are calling the “Final Solution.” —  Frontlines ed.]

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New documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how intellegince cooperation enables repeated Israeli aggression against Palestinians.
By Jon Queally, Common Dreams | August 4, 2014

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, talks with the media on Capitol Hill in Washington. While much of the rest of the world watches the Gaza war in horror and scrambles for a cease-fire, U.S. lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration to take no action that puts pressure on Israel to halt its military operations. Boehner said Monday, July 28, the administration should “stand with Israel, not just as a broker or observer but as a strong partner.”

A new analysis of the intelligence and military relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments—bolstered by new top secret NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden—exposes the deep complicity of American foreign policy when it comes to enabling Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and its ongoing aggressive military assault on the Gaza Strip.

Reported by The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald on Monday, the new NSA documents show how the U.S. spy agency “has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians.”

According to Greenwald, the “new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that enabling.”

In This Time of Resistance to a Genocidal Assault, A Strategic Call for Palestine

[Today, July 31, amidst loudly announced “ceasefire talks” at hand in Cairo, one can’t help but think of the endless see-saw of aggression by the gun and the aggression by the pen.  In this article below, the noted Palestinian scholar, Dr. Hatem Bazian, predicts the ominous and dangerous play about to be performed behind the doors in Cairo, based upon his careful and detailed review of the Oslo Accords and Camp David Talks (and other highly-touted but widely seen, in time, as notorious embellishments and extensions of the bloody settler-colonial Zionist regime in the historic land of Palestine).  As the balladeer Woody Guthrie once wrote, “Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered / I’ve seen lots of funny men; / Some will rob you with a six-gun, / And some with a fountain pen.”  How the appeal of Dr. Bazian — to keep eyes fixed on the goal of liberation, and not be tricked or dissuaded — will be carried by the Palestinian representatives in the Cairo talks, will be seen in the days to come. — Frontlines ed.]

Gaza: A Palestinian War of Independence

July 30, 2014

by Dr. HATEM BAZIAN, Director, Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project

The PLO announced the sending of unified delegation to Cairo to participate in intense negotiations with Israel through Egyptian intermediaries intended to institute a ceasefire in Gaza. Leading up to the PLO delegation announcement, PA President Mahmoud visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate and reaffirm support for the Egyptian ceasefire plan. As such, one has to be clear on the unfolding process and the negotiation lines that will become transparent in the next few days. More importantly, how best for the Palestinians as a people, to confront plans coming from the smoke filled rooms in Cairo which seeks to dispossess them one more time but with the complicity and participation of the PA, Arab “leaders” and the Western powers.

Gaza’s resistance and steadfastness, in reality, is a Palestinian war of independence witnessing complete self-reliance and internal grassroots solidarity in the face of Israeli, PA, Arab and Western collusions to maintain the Occupation intact.

Let us again be clear on Israel’s approach to the Cairo negotiations, which at present sees high level coordinating of its positions with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the US with the specific short-term goal of a ceasefire to immediately be followed with restoring Abbas’s authority and power inside Gaza. Israel’s failure in this campaign is as much a result of the lack of intelligence on the ground as it is the success of resistance planning on the ground. As such, immediate reconstitution of Abbas and the PA in Gaza would be the game changer for Israel if the same framework present in the West Bank is permitted to sink roots in the Strip.

Israel/Palestine: Where “Peace Process” is Sham by Design

“Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream”
— Gilbert & Sullivan, HMS Pinafore

[The ongoing repressive Israeli settler-colonial project on the Palestinian people, facing growing exposure and international opposition, has increasingly brought Zionist ideologues (an echo of American “manifest destiny” expansionists) as well as “soft Zionist” real-politicians to resort to ever-more arrogant and hyperbolic deceptions to prevent their imperial allies from thinking they’ve outlived their usefulness.  At the same time, the collaboration of the corrupt Palestinian “leadership” with the “realities” of imperial power and Israeli settler-colonialism, has spun a very thin theatrical disguise of Palestinian identity and loyalty.  Both the Israeli colonist-settlers and the Palestinian quislings (struggling to extend their credibility in their mutually-symbiotic weakened states) depend upon blasting the mutually-reinforcing lies and deceptions of each other.  The details of this slimy and shadowy faux “opposition” are revealed in this recent article by author Jeff Blankfort.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Palestinian Collaboration Overshadows Latest Talks

“Imagine for a moment, what the reaction would have been in Northern Ireland if the IRA had taken to guarding the streets of Belfast and Derry for Her Majesty’s occupation forces.”

by Jeff Blankfort, Dissident Voice, May 7th, 2014

Shortly after the signing of the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the Jerusalem Post ran a cartoon that depicted a critical aspect of those accords which has rarely been discussed much less acknowledged. In the cartoon, a smiling Yasser Arafat was sitting upright on a stretcher giving a “V” sign. The stretcher bearers were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

Its message was clear: the Oslo agreement had come to the rescue of the PLO chairman whose reputation among his fellow Palestinians had sunk to the bottom of the barrel. The price they were to pay was dear: the legitimizing of Israel’s presence in 62% of the West Bank, what is commonly known as Area C and which Israel is quite likely to annex. Arafat’s representative at Oslo who negotiated the accords that effectively signed away West Bank land to Israel and ended the first intifada was Mahmoud Abbas.

Netanyahu, Obama, and Abbas — Partners in a Theatrical Crime

Now, let’s jump ahead 21 years to the present where the support of West Bank Palestinians for Abbas, Arafat’s successor, has been even lower than it was for the late PLO chair and with good reason: By any definition one chooses, Abbas is a traitor, a collaborator with the enemy. His Palestinian Authority “Preventive Security” police force closely coordinates its activities with Israel’s security forces with the goal of suppressing resistance to Israel’s ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing while leaving Palestinians without a semblance of protection against Israeli raids on West Bank towns and refugee camps. For all intents and purposes, that goal has been achieved.

Obama Visits Mandela’s Old Cell, But Won’t Free His Own Political Prisoners

Tue, 07/02/2013 -— Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

“Obama has no sympathy, however, for political prisoners of any race in his own country.”

 

Barack Obama making a highly-publicised visit to Nelson Mandela’s 1980’s prison cell on Robben Island

President Barack Obama, a man of infinite cynicism, made a great show of going on pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s old prison cell on Robben Island, where the future first Black president of South Africa spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration. With his wife and daughters in tow, Obama said he was “humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield…. No shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit,” said the chief executive of the unchallenged superpower of mass incarceration, a nation whose population comprises only 5 percent of humanity, but is home to fully one-quarter of the Earth’s prison inmates.

 

True sociopaths, like the commander-in-chief who updates his Kill List every Tuesday, have no sense of shame, much less irony. Obama feigns awe at Mandela’s suffering and sacrifice in the prisons of apartheid South Africa, yet presides over a regime that, on any given day, holds 80,000 inmates in the excruciating torture of solitary confinement. During Nelson Mandela’s nearly three decades of imprisonment by the white regime, he spent a total of only about one week in solitary confinement. The rest of the time, despite often harsh treatment, backbreaking labor, and unhealthy conditions, Mandela and other political prisoners at Robben Island and other South African jails were typically housed together. Indeed, Mandela and his incarcerated comrades called the prisons their “university,” where they taught each other to become the future authorities over their jailers.

As China’s investments grow, Obama gives advice to Africans

[Obama speaks from the long experience of the US’ empire in Africa, when he urges African caution when new investors come around.  These are not altruistic words; they come from the proverbial fox seeking to “guard and protect” the hen house from other predators.  Obama asserts that African development can only occur under his “trusted” US’ tutelage.  But the pathbreaking writer Walter Rodney, author of the 1973 book “How Europe Undeveloped Africa,” detailed those relations and concluded, “African development is possible only on the basis of a radical break with the international capitalist system.”–  Frontlines ed.]

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Ask questions on foreign investments, Obama tell Africans

Vanguardngr.com, PRETORIA, on June 29, 2013

US President Barack Obama urged Africans on Saturday to ask more questions about lop-sided deals with some foreign investors, while dismissing talk of a Chinese and US scramble for influence on the continent.

During a landmark visit to the continent of his father’s birth, Obama said he welcomed renewed interest from larger emerging markets.

“I actually welcome the attention that Africa is receiving from countries like China and Brazil and India and Turkey.”

But he urged African nations to make sure trade was not a one-way street.

“When we look at what other countries are doing in Africa, I think our only advice is make sure it’s a good deal for Africa.”

South Africa: Protesters Denounce US Foreign Policy, as Obama visits

While the US media focused on Obama meeting the Mandela family, and claiming a link to the iconized figure of Nelson Mandela. police disperse protesters opposed to US drones and foreign policy

U.S. President Barack Obama met the family of South Africa’s ailing anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela but faced protests by South Africans against U.S. foreign policy.  Obama faced protests by South Africans against U.S. foreign policy, especially American drone strikes.

Police fired stun grenades on June 29 to disperse several hundred protesters who had gathered outside the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg, where Obama was due to address a town hall meeting with students.

JOHANNESBURG — Police fired rubber bullets and a stun grenade into a crowd of hundreds of protesters before President Obama arrived at the University of Johannesburg on Saturday.

The crowd quickly scattered as police officers walked up the street pushing protesters away with shot guns.

“I feel my rights are being infringed,” said 24-year-old Bilaal Qibr, who was at the protest. “We can’t protest anymore. Personally, I feel like this is an extension of the U.S.”

Washington in Africa: Who will Obama ‘whack’ next?

[An important and detailed look at Washington’s Obama-era African policy initiatives.  Lengthy, but well worth reading.  The conclusions drawn from the information provided are the author’s, and do not necessarily imply Frontlines’ perspective.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Graphic from The Economist

 

by Patrick Bond, Address to the Muslim Youth Movement 40th Anniversary Conference, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, September 30, 2012.  Article was posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author’s permission.

 

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends. – Former US president Jimmy Carter, 25 June 2012, New York Times

US actions since 9/11 represent the final stage in the US’s century-long effort to complete the project of making US-led globalization a concrete reality across the world through three historical moments: 1) the attempted creation of a global Monroe doctrine between 1898 and 1919; 2) the Roosevelt administration’s creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions – the World Bank and IMF – and the UN; and 3) globalization – the US-led effort to establish a new global regime based on free trade, deregulation, and privatization. – Neil Smith, The Endgame of Globalization, 2005

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and former three-time ambassador, Johnnie Carson, was feted by Brooks Spector recently at Daily Maverick, in an article entitled “America’s Mr Africa”. While it is always fitting to honour African-Americans who persevere to the top despite that country’s deep internal racism, Spector makes contentious political and economic claims about the “new” US Africa policy. “For some observers at least”, he says, “Barack Obama’s new partnership with Africa was announced in his speech in Accra [July 11, 2009], when he declared the era of the authoritarian African big man to be over – kaput!”[1] As described below, however, Washington has maintained extremely cozy relationships with a variety of African dictators.

Spector then endorses Carson’s claims that “US interests in the continent fundamentally stem from its interest in strengthening trade to help African states grow their economies and meet development needs”, and that “the US wants to work with African nations to strengthen democratic institutions, good governance and efforts to stamp out corruption [and] to spur economic growth through market-driven, free trade principles”. Sorry, but we recall Washington’s deregulatory support for Wall Street’s market-driven binge, which in 2008-09 contributed to the worst global economic crash in 80 years, resulting in around a million South African job losses. We know that only the wealthy recovered so far, and that in the US, the top 1 per cent received 93 per cent of all new income since 2009, because the system wasn’t fixed. And who can forget White House hypocrisy when it comes to vast and often illegal US agro-corporate subsidies which continue to thwart African production? And is there any capital city whose political system is more corrupted by corporate (especially banking) campaign contributions than Washington, resulting in such extreme malgovernance that Obama cannot even make an effort to convict a single banker for world-historic economic misdeeds?

Spector’s most flawed assumption is that by increasing trade with (and vulnerability to) the world economy, “Africa” grows. Although a few elites have certainly grown rich from extraction, the opposite is more true, if we make a simple, rational adjustment to GDP: incorporating the wasting of Africa’s “natural capital” (a silly phrase but one used increasingly by powerbrokers eyeing the ‘Green Economy’). Measuring this loss is something that 10 African leaders agreed to start doing so in May, in the Gabarone Declaration initiated by Botswana president Ian Khama and the NGO Conservation International. The adjustment entails counting the outflow of natural capital (especially non-renewable mineral/petroleum resources) not only as a short-term credit to GDP (via “output of goods” measuring the resources extracted and sold), but also as a long-term debit to the natural capital stocks, as non-renewable resources no longer become available to future generations. Number-crunch the resource depletion, and net wealth declines in Africa as well as the Middle East.

Liberal Anti-Drone-Policy activists ask legal accountability — but Obama and Congress could not care less

Rights Groups, in Letter to Obama, Question Legality and Secrecy of Drone Killings

[Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency — A drone model burned Friday at a protest in Sana, Yemen. Most American drone attacks have been in Yemen and Pakistan.]

By SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, April 12, 2013

In a letter sent to President Obama this week, the nation’s leading human rights organizations questioned the legal basis for targeted killing and called for an end to the secrecy surrounding the use of drones.

The “statement of shared concern” said the administration should “publicly disclose key targeted killing standards and criteria; ensure that U.S. lethal force operations abroad comply with international law; enable meaningful Congressional oversight and judicial review; and ensure effective investigations, tracking and response to civilian harm.”

The nine-page letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations and several other groups, is the most significant critique to date by advocacy groups of what has become the centerpiece of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts.

While not directly calling the strikes illegal under international law, the letter lists what it calls troubling reports of the criteria used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command to select targets and assess results. The reported policies raise “serious questions about whether the U.S. is operating in accordance with international law,” the letter says. It is also signed by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and units of the New York University and Columbia Law Schools.