Fox News says Obama has ‘sketched a populist agenda’ during his speech which is ‘sprinkled with jabs at the super rich’ such as critising plans for the Keystone XL pipeline. But most controversial it says are plans for $300bn tax hike on top earners over the next ten years including an end to the break on inheritance tax to fund tax breaks for the Middle Class which Obama says are the engine for future growth. All this, it says, sets the President on collision course with the Republicans who control both houses.
Unlike the President, the Republicans will paint a downbeat assessment of the economy which they say has suffered from stagnant growth and low wages. They will argue tax hikes are not the way forward but creating better jobs – the Republican rebuttal was delivered by Iowi senator Joni Ernst.
The President will call for a $320bn increase in tax over the next ten years to help the middle class. He will seek to raise capital gains tax and dividends on couples making $500, 000 to the level under Ronald Reagan – to 28%.
Obama will also seek to eliminate a tax break on inheritance. The money raised will fund new tax credits for working families, expanding child care tax credit, as well as making college more affordable including his recent proposal to make community college free for all students. However, the tax increases are likely to be rejected at the Republican controlled Capitol Hill.
It is usual to refer to the leader of the most powerful country in the world as a lame duck as he approaches the last two years of his elected presidential term. That of course implies that he is simply form filling and entertaining heads of state. President Obama’s moves in the last two weeks are showing that this doesn’t have to be the case.
The much opposed CIA torture report which brought into the open what most people have claimed and suspected – namely that intelligence service broke all rules and gained nothing as a result, even the much heralded information leading to the assassination of Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with Rendition, Torture and Interrogation methods.
And last week came the highly unexpected announcement that there would be a change in the long-standing and very stupid dispute with Cuba, a small defenceless Caribbean island that dared to overthrow a Washington friendly regime and nationalise the country’s resources.
Both moves are bold and face the ignominy of being first ignored and second overturned by a future Republican led government. But that would be a mistake for the Obama administration is clearly signalling that there is a change in the way the US is going to deal with other nations. For the US is no longer the world’s sole superpower – technically there are two, the US and China, who the IMF recently referred as the world’s leading economy in terms of output from goods and services. That is something no future President can ignore and could even be a positive thing if America alters the way it treats weaker nations, and takes a leaf from China who has never attempted to bully or influence any country even North Korea who Washington is currently accusing of hacking a film owned by Sony.
ANALYSIS – Barack Obama’s Presidency has been a disappointment to anyone hoping that America would change direction. To date, he has launched attacks on six countries through drone strikes and assassinations that could one day be copied by nations like Russia and China. And with troop build up once again in Iraq, as well as an extension of the stay in Afghanistan, the Nobel Peace Prize winning President has proved to be little more than a black Ronald Reagan – shiny with little else behind the steady smile. But it’s the scenes emerging in Ferguson and Cleveland following the deaths of two young black men at the hands of law enforcement that are proving to be the defining images of this Black President’s two term stay at the White House.
They are Michael Brown who was shot dead by a white police man, who the Grand Jury has just decided will not face any charges, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot dead by policemen.
Tamir was playing with a replica gun when police were alerted by a caller clearly alarmed by the sight of an armed black man playing on the swings. In both cases law enforcement believed they were acting in self defence – Michael was shot several times, whilst Tamir twice. Yet, the protesters in Ferguson some of whom have been violent, and those in Cleveland clearly do not accept the offered version of events, for they like most African Americans see nothing of the American dream – they never have and probably never will. The only difference now is that the word racism has been taken out of public debate, for America has a black president and he won twice. Never mind that the conditions in which African Americans, as well as Native Americans, have to endure every single day of their lives. America’s founding communities are trapped in a cycle of poverty, poor education, non existent health care with zero prospects of bettering themselves – all of which is backed up by a law enforcement that civil rights campaigners say has simply incorporated anti terror measures into policing Black neighbourhoods, at a time America is enduring a deep and still unfolding recession. So, as the skies of Fergusion and Cleveland, as well as elsewhere, light up with scenes of protest and violence from demonstrators and law enforcement, perhaps the most telling comment about the state of race relations in modern day America after six years of having a black President at the helm comes from Mayor Gulliani. Blacks, he said, were more likely to be killed by another black than a white police officer.
ANALYSIS – The assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan has become many things – a glossy film, a badge of honour for an American President as well as the navy seal who pulled the trigger, and the subject of mass debate and even comedy. One reaction that has been largely absent though is that of horror. This was a state execution in another country, the type that only that pariah state called Israel has conducted, an act that also resulted in the killing of a woman in front of her children. Barack Obama who came to the White House with so many hopes from those who voted for him not to mention the rest of the world, was pictured with his inner circle that included perhaps the future woman President of the USA, watching the events unfold in a grainy dark fluorescent background with the figures lit up by the colours of their armour and weaponry as if they were on a PlayStation. When the Americans invaded Iraq, it was awful and criminal, perhaps Washington’s disregard for international law was best captured by the pack of cards their marines distributed amongst the general populous in Baghdad, with the ‘ace’ of course being the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein who was later hanged on the verdict of a kangaroo court. But a lot more has happened since – Colonel Gaddafi didn’t even get to a court he was simply stripped, paraded and executed in cold blood, his slaughter like that of Saddam’s murder was captured on camera phone and went on to do the rounds as a grim and disturbing snuff film. And then there was the slaying of the world’s number one terrorist which got the Hollywood treatment, as well as crowds outside the White House applauding the event as if they were at an NFL soccer match.
Never before has America been so public in the pursuit of its enemies, so flagrant in flouting any international laws, in breaching sovereignty whenever it chooses, in ‘taking-out’ people in the form of drone strikes or raids like that of Osama bin Laden or in kidnappings such as that of Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who left her home in Karachi one morning and is now languishing in a detention centre in Texas. And surely the question is now that the world has accepted all this and much, much more, what is going is the world’s largest military power going to do next – and what message are China and Russia going to take from this.
The drone attacks are carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency and not the US military since Pakistan is not a zone of armed conflict, unlike neighbouring Afghanistan.
Earlier this year, President Barack Obama insisted the strategy was “kept on a very tight leash” and that without the drones, the US would have had to resort to “more intrusive military action”.
The report, by Stanford University and New York University’s School of Law, says top commanders only account for an estimated 2% of drone victims.
The report also details hundreds of civilian casualties and the effects of drone strikes on the local population. It cites data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimating that between 474 and 881 civilians have been killed in strikes between 2004 and 2012.
“In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling ‘targeted killings’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false,” according to the report, Living Under Drones.
“Publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best,” it says, adding that targeted killings and drone attacks undermine respect for international law.
The report says that the US government rarely acknowledges civilian casualties, though there is significant evidence that civilians are being injured and killed.
The report highlights the impact of drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Citing “extensive interviews with the local population”, the authors say:
children are being taken out of school out of fear of a drone-strike or to compensate for income lost from a dead or wounded relative
there is “significant evidence” of the practice of “double-tap” strikes in which rescuers arriving at the scene are targeted in follow-up attacks
drones flying overhead have led to “substantial levels of fear and stress… in the civilian communities”
as well as injury or death, the attacks cause property damage, severe economic hardship and emotional trauma for the injured and their families
people are afraid to attend gatherings such as funerals for fear of attack
Datta Khel drone strike
According to the report, 42 people were killed, mostly civilians, when they gathered at a bus depot on 17 March 2011 for a “jirga” (community meeting) to settle a dispute over a nearby mine.
The Pakistani military commander said the local military post had been alerted 10 days beforehand so those at the meeting were not concerned by drones overhead.
Several missiles were fired. Nearly all those who died were heads of large households.
The jirga had been chaired by Malik Daud Khan, a political liaison between the government, military and other tribal leaders.
Source: Living Under Drones – Stanford Law School and NYU School of Law
Today, the same man who had thrilled his nation with his presence and magnetism was now calling on those very people who had voted him into the White House to be patient.
A shot into his eyes showed the hunger and desire was still there.
Sadly, though there was little in terms of ideas as how he will tackle a national debt that because of his presidency was now 5 trillion dollars bigger.
Instead, the once great hope resorted to attacking his opponent, who he said offered little except tax breaks to the rich and was woefully short of foreign policy experience.
Obama’s only ‘triumph’ in the latter is of course the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad in Pakistan.
Whist his predecessor was known for Guantanamo Bay, water boarding nd renditions, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this President will surely be remembered for the use of drone in targeted assassinations that often missed causing huge damage to civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,
So, if Mitt Romney is indeed inexperienced, recent history teaches us that, like Obama and Bush before him, he will catch up fast.
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