Left I on the News  

I just caught a few seconds of California Senator Barbara Boxer telling Wolf Blitzer that her opponent, Carly Fiorina, doesn't agree that there is a "God-given right to a job" in America. And just what "America" does Sen. Boxer live in? Because in the America I and several hundred million others live, there is no right to a job, "God-given" or otherwise. An awful lot of people wish there were.

Most people have probably already heard that the kidnapped British aid worker in Afghanistan, killed in a rescue attempt, was most likely killed not by her Afghan captors, as the U.S. military first claimed, but by a grenade thrown by U.S. troops. Quelle surprise!

What's most interesting, as always, is the light this incident sheds on the veracity of the U.S. military.

"Immediately after her death, NATO officials said one of her captors killed her by detonating an explosive as the Special Operations Forces rescue team was approaching for its pre-dawn raid. But after receiving new information from the Special Operations Command that conducted the rescue attempt, Petraeus ordered an investigation into the circumstances of her death.

In other words, before they really knew what had happened, they were perfectly willing to put out the story that suited them. There were no doubts in the initial news reports, none, it was simply "Linda Norgrove...was killed by her captors on Friday during a rescue mission by US forces." Indeed, we were even given the detail that the death was via a "suicide belt" worn by one of her captors. But now we learn that this was just the usual "put out a lie to make your enemies look bad and hope it sticks" story, before anyone had bothered to inquire exactly what did happen.

And if this is the case for a British aid worker, or for Pat Tillman, how much more true is it for the thousands of Afghan civilians who have been killed by U.S. forces? When will anyone examine the surveillance footage of those murders?

The Guardian (and no doubt others) tells us by way of headline, "Israel's proposed 'Jewish oath' for new citizens sparks racism row." Even Gideon Levy, respected Ha'aretz columnist, quoted in the article, says "Remember this day. It's the day Israel changes its character ... From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country."

Really? This is a country which for decades has been building "Jewish-only" housing, a country that builds "Jewish-only" roads, a country which gives the tiniest fraction of its budget to Palestinian communities within Israel for basic things like education and sewage, and now, because of this loyalty oath, we're going to decide it's really a racist country? Please.

Today, President Barack Obama railed about the "danger to democracy" that the possible contribution to some election campaigns by "foreign corporations" poses. What poppycock. First of all, as I wrote back in January, the idea that U.S. corporations have "our" interests at heart, whereas "foreign" corporations don't, is both jingoistic and false. But, more to the point in this instance, these words about the "danger to democracy" were spoken by the President of a country which over the years (and I don't mean only in the past) has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, quite possibly billions of dollars, to influence foreign elections (not to mention simply overthrow foreign governments).

When Obama zeroes out the budget of such notorious interferers in foreign elections as the National Endowment for Democracy, not to mention the CIA, then and only then might we begin to be able to take his words seriously.

Oh, and by the way, if Obama is so concerned about "democracy," when is he going to recognize the results of the last democratic election in Palestine?

Update: Tonight on Rachel Maddow, she and Howard Fineman were joining in the bashing of foreign corporations and their alleged electoral contributions. Why, they said, these are the very same corporations (they mentioned call centers in India) who are taking American jobs? Hey Rachel and Howard - just who do you think is sending those jobs overseas (like to call centers in India)? It's good old American corporations! Duh.

Yesterday's Washington Post featured a major article on the alleged "increasingly sophisticated and nimble propaganda tactics" of the Taliban that has "alarmed U.S. officials." Ironically, the article itself uses as one of its examples the very real sophisticated propaganda tactics of the U.S. corporate media, specifically the very-well publicized Time Magazine cover featuring the face of a mutilated Afghan woman, under the headline "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan?" (but describing a very real event that occurred while the U.S. was in fact occupying Afghanistan).

If the original article wasn't a sufficient example of the sophisticated propaganda tactics of the U.S. corporate media, the Post continues the lie by alleging that the article featured a "woman whose face was reportedly mauled by Taliban members." But in actual fact, the article was exposed almost immediately as a fraud by a reporter who knew the woman in question, and who reported that the mutilation was done by her father-in-law after she had run away, and that the Taliban had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

And what about that "sophisticated" Taliban media strategy? Here it is:

U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a "puppet" state with little reach outside the capital.

Yeah, that's just such a stretch from, you know, reality.

There have been big developments in Cuba recently, from Fidel Castro's misinterpreted statement that the Cuban system "doesn't work" to the government announcement of a 500,000-person reduction in the public work force and the simultaneous expansion of private work opportunities. Rather than offering my own thoughts on these events, I wanted to provide readers with a list of things I've been reading, and found useful, in an attempt to understand these events and put them in context. So here's my recommended reading (and in one case, viewing) list:

• Report on the Political and Economic Situation in Cuba, written by my friend Gloria La Riva, featuring extensive background information
• A Marxist Analysis of Cuba's New Economic Reforms, by Brian Becker (National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition and a leader of the Party for Socialism and Liberation)
• Mills' Return, a 2007 talk by Ricardo Alarcón, President of Cuba's National Assembly, detailing the history of U.S. policy against Cuba (which puts what's happening in Cuba in its proper context)
• Cuba, The Measure of Revolution, a 2009 talk by Alarcón, also very important
• What the Economic Reforms Mean for the Cuban Revolution and Socialism, video of a recent talk by Brian Becker, very much different from his article linked above
• Cuba: Economic changes and the future of socialism -- interview with Cuban professor José Bell Lara, a very informative article about the way Cuban supporters of the revolution view what's happening
• The self-employed sector - Much more than an alternative, an article from today's Daily Granma explaining in detail some of the changes that have been adopted

It's a lot, I know, but every one of those articles (and one video) will almost certainly prove both enlightening and informative. All are highly recommended.

This Saturday, the "One Nation Working Together" march, sometimes called the March for Jobs and Justice, will descend on Washington. Hundreds of organizations, including unions, Black and Latino groups, antiwar groups, and others, are building the march. Have I heard or read a word about that in the corporate media? No.

At the end of October, also in Washington, Jon Stewart is holding a "Rally to Restore Sanity", as he continues to promote the false meme that "left=right" and the problem the country faces comes equally from "extremists" on the left (crazy people who think George Bush was a war criminal!) and extremists on the right (I won't even begin a litany of the very real actions of such people, much less their words). So naturally, we find not only Arianna Huffington promoting that event (free buses for anyone who shows up in New York!) but now President Obama as well (another well-known promoter of the same false meme as Stewart).

Real marches for jobs and justice? Mums the word. Fake marches for fake causes? That's the stuff.