Sandyenglish’s NewsCloud Journal

It is a measure of the profound decay of American democracy that when the president of the United States welcomed the Roman Catholic pontiff to Washington last week, a major concern was that the representative of a 2,000-year-old religious institution, steeped in reaction and hostility to science and human progress, might seem to criticize the US government from the left.

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Over the past five days, media commentary on the US presidential election campaign has focused on the supposedly disastrous "gaffe" made by Democrat Barack Obama in his comments earlier this month at a San Francisco fundraiser, where he remarked on the mood of anger and bitterness in small-town and rural America, and how this was expressed in various political and ideological forms.

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Speaking to the WSWS, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law and human rights at the University of Illinois, said, "Clearly this was criminal activity at the time they committed it. At the very least, it violated the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the War Crimes Act, and the federal anti-torture statutes. Clearly these would be impeachable offenses."

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Significant protests in London, Paris and now San Francisco have threatened to disrupt the Olympic torch relay as it makes its way through cities on five continents preliminary to the summer games in Beijing in August.

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In a brief televised speech delivered just before noon Thursday, President Bush announced that there would be no further reduction of US troop strength once the current drawdown of forces is completed in July. This means that some 140,000 US soldiers will remain in occupation of the country through the November election, and likely until Bush leaves the White House on January 20, 2009.

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The widely publicized speech Tuesday by Barack Obama on race relations in the United States was another exercise in walking the political tightrope for the Democratic candidate in his closely contested struggle with Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

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Five years after Washington inaugurated its “shock and awe” campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.

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The International Students for Social Equality held a demonstration Saturday, February 16 to protest the Iranian government’s arrest of more than 40 left-wing students and demand their immediate release.

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The outcome of the Democratic primary suggests that Clinton benefited from a growing concern among working class voters over the state of the US economy. Clinton was the only candidate to raise the growing danger of recession in Saturday’s televised debate, and exit polls showed that the economy was the number one issue of those who turned out to vote, whether they cast a Democratic or a Republican ballot.

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With Pakistan erupting in violence over the assassination of its former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and amid conflicting accounts as to both the identity of her assassins and even the cause of her death, official Washington and the American mass media have coalesced around a version of events that has been crafted to suit US strategic interests.

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