by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
June 8, 2009
Did they play Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in the prison corridors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base, Guantanamo or the dozens of secret sites where we hold thousands of Muslims around the world? Did it echo off the walls of the crowded morgues filled with the mutilated bodies of the Muslim dead in Baghdad or Kabul? Was it broadcast from the tops of minarets in the villages and towns decimated by U.S. iron fragmentation bombs? Was it heard in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live in the world’s largest ghetto?
What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture—yes, we still torture—only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel’s brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?
[…]
via Truthdig
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig
Chris Hedges, who spent nearly two decades as a war correspondent for The New York Times and other newspapers, is the author of “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” due out in July.
see
Obama Stuck to the Script on the Israeli-Arab Conflict in His Cairo Speech By Jeremy R. Hammond
Obama’s Speech – America’s Violent Extremism By Paul Craig Roberts
Chomsky on Obama Speech + The 3rd Rail – Obama’s game-changing speech in Egypt
Barack Obama: A New Beginning (Cairo University 06.04.09)
Heard it All Before: Obama’s Cairo Speech is Bush Foreign Policy
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The speech wasa full of contradtions.,
Enough with the religious stuff, already! In my opinioin, that is what has gotten us where we are.
But, it is good to know that Obama thinks that killing innocent civilians is always wrong….
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For so long as the international community takes no action regarding the terrible atrocity when over 300 children were slaughtered by the IDF in Gaza as a deliberate tactic to terrorize the population, then there will be no constructive talks leading to peace negotiations. Militias who kill civilians, must be brought before a war crimes court. Otherwise there is no justice, no morality and no democracy.
Its everyone’s choice – a society that condones the wanton killing of children or a society that abides by the conventions on human rights and warfare.
All so true. the Obeyme regime–Change you can’t believe in.