Most Recent Content

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• Tuesday, Feb 02, 2010
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  Street: Obama & American Politics

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Interview for New Left Project...

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Jan 29, 2010
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  Street: The People's Historian

  

  

  Commentary

  The news of Howard Zinn's death hit me like a ton of bricks. I did not expect to cry and then about 10 minutes after getting the e-mail…it hit me - three times. The last time I looked down and saw that I was standing in my den about one foot away from one of my old "instructors' copies" of Zinn's masterpiece, A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Sunday, Jan 24, 2010
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  Street: Liberal Vacuum, Right Comeback?

  

  

  ZNet Article

  The e-mails are coming in from frightened Europeans. They are shocked by the previously unknown right-wing Republican state senator Scott Brown’s stunning victory over the establishment Democrat Marcia Coakley in the open seat election for the critical U.S. Senate post formerly held by leading liberal Democrat Teddy Kennedy in “liberal” Massachusetts. The remarkable Brown “upset” costs the Democrats their filibuster proof “super majority: (60 to 40) in the U.S. Senate, endangering the legislative viability Obama’s “health reform” – if that’s what we really want to call it (see below) – as currently constructed.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Jan 15, 2010
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  Street: Classquakes

  

  

  ZNet Article

  The earthquake catastrophe in Haiti is being portrayed on the national and local evening news as a natural disaster that has elicited a virtuous humanitarian response from the inherently noble and benevolent United States.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Jan 14, 2010
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  Street: Obama & King

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Last December 17, eight days before Yemen resident Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blast Northwest Flight 253 out of the sky on the way to Detroit, Yemen opposition forces testified that many dozens of civilians, including a large number of children, were killed in US air-raids in the southeast section of their country. The fighters reported the deaths of 63 people, 28 of whom were children, in the province of Abyan.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Jan 08, 2010
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  Street: Capitalism's Faillure and "the So-Called 'Underemployment' Rate"

  

  

  Blog Post

  Capitalism's utter failure even to provide employment cannot be explicitly mentioned in the corporate media but here (pasted in below) are some ugly facts -- including a real U.S. unemployment rate of 17 percent: See the Associated Press report pasted in

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Monday, Jan 04, 2010
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  Street: On Realism and Revolution

  

  

  ZNet Article

  In the spring of 1967, after he went public with his principled opposition to the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr. was approached by liberal and left politicos to consider running for the U.S. presidency. King turned the activists down, saying that he preferred to think of himself "as one trying desperately to be the conscience of all the political parties, rather being a political candidate…I've just never thought of myself as a politician."[

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Wednesday, Dec 30, 2009
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  Street: Obama’s Terror War

  

  

  ZNet Article

  It is important that the nearly successful terrorist attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day appears to have been planned in Yemen and that the attempted suicide bomber began his journey to the United States in Amsterdam.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Monday, Dec 28, 2009
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  Street: Fight the Rich

  

  

  Commentary

  The following remarks were delivered on Friday December 18, 2009, at 5 PM in front of the Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Cedar Rapids, IA, after a vigil and march called by the Cedar Rapids branch of Socialist Alternative and Iowa Women for Peace.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009
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  Street: The (Fading) Call of Obama

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Now that Barack Obama is being exposed like never before as a tool and agent of concentrated wealth, business class rule, and militarism, 2009 is ending on a distinct note of liberal disenchantment. His "progressive base" is restive over his actions to an unprecedented (to use Obama’s favorite word [1]) degree as the president of “Yes we can” has morphed (as widely predicted on “hard left”) into the pallid symbol of “No We can’t – as the clarion of “change” has emerged as another Democratic office-holder whose outwardly progressive campaign pledges translate into corrupt, corporate and imperial nothingness in the real world of power.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Dec 17, 2009
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  Street: Race, Class & Memories of Obama

  

  

  ZNet Article

  As we hurtle towards the first anniversary of the new corporate war president Barack Obama’s inauguration, journalists and commentators will advance recollections of – and retrospective reflections on – the ascendancy and early days of the United States’ first black president.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Monday, Dec 14, 2009
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  Street: Blood on the Nobel

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Does Obama deserve his Nobel? Let's admit from the start that the prize has long been a less-than- perfect measure of its recipients' actual commitment to peace. Alfred Nobel, it is worth recalling, was a leading armaments manufacturer. He was the inventor of dynamite along with other deadly war materials.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Sunday, Dec 13, 2009
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  Street: "Peace Prize? He's a Killer"

  

  

  Blog Post

  "Obama has only brought war to our country. Peace prize? He's a killer."

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Dec 05, 2009
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  Street: Saving Capitalism

  

  

  ZMag Article

  Orin Kramer defines Obama's duty to America

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Dec 03, 2009
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  Street: Obama's West Point Speech

  

  

  Commentary

  War President Barack Obama's Afghan "surge" address from West Point [1] last night was unsurprising, given the fact that, as Alexander Cockburn has noted, "Obama has...surrounded himself with the same breed of intellectuals who persuaded Lyndon Johnson to escalate the [ Vietnam ] war." [2] As Tom Engelhardt has pointed out, Obama's "civilian advisors" on Afghanistan include a large number of military men, all predisposed by career background and philosophy to advocate increased force levels. Did it really make sense to be surprised, Engelhardt wondered more than two months ago, that Obama would opt for more troops, money, and war when the president had "turn[ed] crucial war decisions over to the military…functionally turn[ing] our foreign policy over to them as well?"

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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  Street: My Resoc Interview

  

  

  Blog Post

  Paul Street's Resoc Interview

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Sunday, Nov 29, 2009
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  Street: Fake Democracy

  

  

  ZNet Article

  “Life isn’t simple,” says the voice of David Brancaccio in the advertisement for the United States’ “Public Broadcasting System’s” (PBS’) popular “Frontline” series. “Not in a democracy.”

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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  Street: Obama, As Predicted

  

  

  ZNet Article

  In late December of 2006, a young progressive Democrat and recent college graduate stated to me his intention of seeking employment with one of the Democratic presidential campaigns that would soon be setting up shop in Iowa. My initial response was to ask “why?”

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
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  Street: Essential Reading

  

  

  Blog Post

  This (linked) essay by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson is essential reading - the best short summary/critique yet from the actual Left on the foreign policy of Re-Brand Obama. Note that it is also a devastating critique of what passes for progressive,

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Wednesday, Nov 04, 2009
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  Street: One Year Later

  

  

  ZNet Article

  One year after President Barack Obama’s historic election in the name of “change” and “hope,” Gallup and USA Today report that the U.S. citizenry’s initially high expectations of the Obama presidency have fallen along with the president’s popularity.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Oct 24, 2009
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  Street: True Crime

  

  

  Commentary

  Imagine, if you will, a small, predominantly white city with growing poverty and crime in a small, highly segregated black section of its South East side.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Oct 22, 2009
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  Street: Obama Q & A

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Dissident U.S. author Paul Street was interviewed by Brazilian journalist Leonardo Sequeira via e-mail between 10 AM and 12 PM on September 18, 2009. The interview took place before: the awarding of the Olympics to Rio/Brazil (not Chicago/US), the Orwellian granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama, Obama’s claim at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh(where militarized police dispersed protesters with tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and an eardrum-piercing “crowd control” machine mounted in the turret of a tank) that Iran had been caught with a “secret nuclear weapons facility,” the U.S.-led burial of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Goldstone Report (on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009), and the efforts U.S. negotiators to weaken rich nations’ commitment to serious carbon emission reduction measures at global climate meetings (held in late September and early October)in Bangkok.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Oct 10, 2009
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  Street: The Nobel Gift

  

  

  ZNet Article

  It is said that the Norwegians wanted to send a message against the unilateral American imperialism and militarism epitomized by the Cheney-Bush years and to encourage less brazenly hubristic, world-hegemony-oriented behavior on the part of the U.S....

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Thursday, Oct 08, 2009
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  Street: Moore & Obama

  

  

  ZNet Article

  If you liked Michael Moore's latest movie, “Capitalism: a Love Story” (I did) and are long past being fed up with Barack Obama's deep allegiance and service to his corporate paymasters (I am), then this essay might be for you. I start with some happy reflections on Moore 's apparent ideological evolution. The mood darkens, however, as I raise unpleasant questions about the extent of Moore 's break with existing American power relations. I discuss two critical and related matters that exist in curious tension with Moore 's newly proclaimed rejection of the capitalist system (portrayed as a sin in his new flick): the President of the United States ' love affair with capitalism and Moore's continuing love affair with the President.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Saturday, Sep 19, 2009
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  Street: Ringmaster

  

  

  Audio

  An interview with Paul Street, one of Mr. Obama's earliest critics from the left, who had the opportunity back in Chicago to see him in action. Total runtime an hour and one minute.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Friday, Sep 11, 2009
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  Street: Obama’s Speech

  

  

  ZNet Article

  With Barack Obama as with Bill Clinton, you must always distinguish between progressive style and corporate-regime substance. Obama is a master when it comes to embodying what the formerly left Christopher Hitchens once (in a book about the Clintons) called “the essence of American politics” – “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” The president is a maestro at executing what former Clinton administration official David Rothokopf calls “the violin model,” under which “you hold power with the left hand and you play the music with the right.” In other words, “you” gain and keep office with populace-pleasing progressive-sounding rhetoric but govern in standard service to existing dominant corporate and military institutions.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Sep 08, 2009
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  Street: Every Day is Capital Day

  

  

  Blog Post

  The United States' "Labor Day" (yesterday) must have seemed ironic to the nation's expanding army of unemployed, ther vital human labor power deemed un-profitable and therefore unworthy of even minimal ransom-payment by the masters of capital.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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  Street: That’s Politics

  

  

  ZNet Article

  Three weeks ago, The New York Times ran a front-page story on the difficulty that the Obama White House was experiencing in getting its supporters to fight for the president’s “embattled health care plan” with anything like the passion and numbers voters and activists demonstrated in getting Barack Obama elected. The story was titled “Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Grass Roots.” It was sent in from the largely working-class town of Muscatine in the pivotal presidential-electoral state of Iowa, where Obama’s defeat of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton on January 3, 2008, made the viability of his quest to become the nation’s first black president crystal clear.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Monday, Sep 07, 2009
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  Street: June 2008 Reflections on the Coming Deceptive Red- and Black-Baiting of Obama

  

  

  Blog Post

  I thought I would paste in the following two paragraphs (below) from the June 2008 preface to my book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics. They seem rather germane to current events and to the difficulty involved in trying to criticize the ne

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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• Tuesday, Sep 01, 2009
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  Street: Health Care & Democracy

  

  

  ZNet Article

  It is characteristic of the narrow, business-dominated nature of the United States’ political culture that the current U.S. health reform debate includes no meaningful discussion of the critical roles the nation’s employment-based health insurance system play in deepening the power of bosses over workers and closing off democratic space.

  Paul Street ZSpace page
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