A Contrario

ACTIVISTS ARE outraged after administrators at the University California (UC) Irvine announced plans to suspend the Muslim Student Union (MSU) for a whole year starting in September because students protested Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.

The Law School and Political Science Department cosponsored an event February 8 in which Oren spoke on the recent findings of the UN Human Rights Commission's fact-finding mission to Gaza. Oren maintains that the Israeli Defense Forces' 2008/2009 invasion of Gaza was justified and the IDF acted appropriately in all its operations.

This story first appeared in the 20 May 2010 edition of Socialist Worker and the 21 May 2010 edition of The Palestine Chronicle.

By Brian Napoletano – Paris

The governments of the 31 member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) all agreed on May 10 that Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, its institutionalized discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, and its multiple alleged war crimes will not disqualify the state from joining the ranks of the world's strongest economic powers.

I was not particularly distraught when I learned that US Senator Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, will not be seeking a third term in the upcoming elections. What most pundits call his "bipartisanship" is largely a product of the cynical view of government spending that he shares with most Republicans, whereby the investment of public funds in helpful social programs like Medicare and welfare is frowned upon, but wasteful military spending and large subsidies to private corporations is applauded. During his tenure in the Senate, Bayh has backed some of the Republicans' worst initiatives and has repeatedly blocked or undermined efforts to implement genuinely beneficial initiatives that the public supports, such as a single-payer health plan and many of the useful features of Obama's economic stimulus plan. That said, the exception that Bayh has taken with the Supreme Court's idiotic ruling on 21 January 2010 is, however, a sentiment I share with the Senator, and his recent initiative to introduce some minor reforms to the nightmare that political campaigns have become is a step in the right direction.

This story first appeared in the 19 April 2010 edition of Socialist Worker.

A FEDERAL court declared unanimously April 6 that media corporations--and not the public--can dictate who uses the Internet and what they use it for.

Unless the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decides to reclassify the broadband Internet access industry from an "information service" to a "telecommunications service," the court's 3-0 ruling could block the government agency from preventing Internet service providers (ISPs) from barring access to certain Web sites or Internet services.

This story first appeared in the 12 April 2010 issue of Socialist Worker.

GRADUATE STUDENT employees at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) won a new contract following a threat by the 1,400-member union to go on strike if its demands, particularly around tuition waivers and differentials, weren’t met by university officials.

The tentative agreement was hammered out during a 13-hour marathon bargaining session that began as supporters of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) at UIC rallied on campus on April 5.The union was able to gain stronger language securing tuition waivers for graduate employees, an increase in the minimum stipend for the next two years, and more money from the university for health insurance.

Five months have passed since Justice Richard Goldstone et al. submitted their report on the UN fact-finding mission's investigation into the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. Shortly after it was submitted, the Obama administration claimed that the report was "deeply flawed" and unduly critical of Israel, and the US ambassador to the UN voted against the Resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. Despite the serious nature of these allegations, the Obama administration has not offered any objective evidence or analysis to substantiate them.

Sadly, everyone's favorite search engine and web application provider, Google, has decided to discontinue development of its Notebook utility. I discovered this when I finally decided to upgrade my Inspiron from Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope to Karmic Koala 1, and found that no Notebook extension exists for Firefox 3.5. While the developers at Google don't offer any explanation as to why they decided to discontinue development, the advice they offer seems to suggest that they consider much of its functionality redundant with other services that they offer. Once I learned that Notebook would be retired, I began researching the alternatives discussed below.

1. 1. Despite my faith in the Ubuntu development team, the issues I encountered when going from Hardy to Intrepid have turned me into something of a late adopter when it comes to the latest releases. Much of this hesitation stems from the knowledge that my computer has reached the technological equivalent to middle age.

First printed in MRZine.org on 13 November 2009

On 3 November 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted 344-36 in favor of House Resolution 867, making it Congress' official response to the 575-page Report submitted by Justice Richard J. Goldstone to the United Nations Human Rights Council at the conclusion of a “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict. The Resolution does little more than recycle traditional rhetoric about an anti-Israel bias, Qassam rocket attacks, Hamas' use of human shields, and Israel's right of self-defense, all in an effort to ignore the reality of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the devastating effects it has had on the region. By passing HR 867, Congress has opted to join the Israeli government in rejecting international efforts to defend the civilians in Palestine and to hold Israeli and Palestinian forces accountable to international law.

First printed in MRZine.org on 11 November 2009

If you were to wander about campus asking students at Purdue about the distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois in Chicago who was invited to speak at Purdue, or about the Cummings-Perrucci Annual Lecture on Class, Race, and Gender Inequality's inaugural presentation on the challenges facing urban schools, you would probably receive little more than a blank stare in almost every case. If, on the other hand, you were to ask about the University inviting a "domestic terrorist" or an "ex-radical" onto its campus, virtually every student would immediately identify William Ayers as the dangerous terrorist in question.

First printed in Socialist Worker on 2 November 2009

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.--Approximately 150 workers, union activists and students rallied October 28 in front of the Indiana statehouse to stand in solidarity with workers at several Indianapolis hotels. The workers at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, Westin Indianapolis and Sheraton Indianapolis City Center have been publicly campaigning for almost a year to unionize hotel workers.

This column first appeared in the 15 October 2009 print edition of the Purdue Exponent
Forty-six years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead a 250,000-person march on Washington, D.C. to demand that black people be granted the same rights as white people. At that historic march, Dr. King shared his vision for a different world—a world where humanity would no longer be divided by ignorance and hatred. On Sunday, roughly 200,000 people followed his example and once again marched on Washington to bring his dream closer to fruition. Drawing inspiration from the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s that prepared the way for the nation's first black president, protesters, many of them young people in their twenties and thirties, arrived from all over the nation to declare that the right to marry whom they choose is a fundamental civil right.

First printed in Socialist Worker on 22 November 2009

THE STUBBORN refusal of the Democrats in both Congress and the White House to deliver on their promise to hold the Bush administration responsible for torture offers a sobering reminder of the party's ability to hide conservative politics behind liberal rhetoric.

Public opinion has been demanding answers on this issue for more than five years now. In August, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration's latest concession to this public pressure would be an independent review into specific interrogations conducted by the CIA.

While the mainstream media may have wanted to ignore all this, public sentiment has forced it to keep the issue alive. Much of the credit for this goes to individuals and people working with groups like the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which kept a spotlight on the issue of torture and the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Likewise, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's articles detailing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other revelations have added to the public questioning.

According to a USA Today/Gallup poll earlier this year, 62 percent of the population wants an investigation into "the possible use of torture while interrogating terrorism suspects" (38 percent wanted a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, while 24 percent wanted an independent panel that would investigate, but not necessarily prosecute).

Calls for an independent investigation into the Bush administration's misdeeds are becoming more persistent and difficult for the ruling officials to ignore.1 Spain has already initiated criminal proceedings against six of the administration's high-ranking officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In March, Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to request that they call for a criminal investigation in the United States, policy reforms, and reparations, and Amnesty International USA coordinated meetings between several citizen delegations and federal legislators in April to press for an independent inquiry. The people also want to see the previous administration face justice: according to a recent Gallup Poll, 62% of US citizens favor an investigation, with 38% favoring a criminal investigation, and 24% an investigation by an independent panel. 2 Even pundits in the notoriously subservient mainstream media -- perhaps upset by the way that the Bush administration's blatant deceptions threatened to draw attention to their role as a mouthpiece for the rulers -- have echoed calls for investigations and impeachments.

1. 1. I originally wrote this article six months ago for submission to "The Nation." They never got back to me on it, so I took it to the "Z Magazine," and they must not have liked it either, because they also ignored it. Next was "Monthly Review," where they at least acknowledged the submission and thanked me for considering them, but they didn't have space for it. Finally, I took it to "Dissent" three months ago, and they haven't gotten back to me yet. This leads me to conclude that this may not be a very good essay, and I feel compelled to warn you of this before you get too far into it.
2. 2. J. Jones. 12 February 2009. No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration. Gallup, Inc. Available at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/114580/No-Mandate-Criminal-Probes-Bush-Administration.aspx

President Obama's 4 June 2009 speech in Cairo briefly turned the media's spotlight back to the conflict between the Israeli government and the Palestinian people. In keeping with the traditional role of the commercial press, the reports of CNN, The New York Times, the ever-reactionary FOX News, and others faithfully reiterated the "official" position of the two ruling parties and their array of "experts" (although FOX News did take the time to find a fanatical settler who would venture even farther right than the experts). The mainstream media's historically one-sided coverage of the issues that Obama raised in his speech has consistently failed to offer any critical analysis of the popular assumptions regarding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. Consequently, most people in the United States who rely on the media for their information have an extremely distorted perception of what's actually happening in the Occupied Territories, and why Israel has been such a significant source of tension in the Middle East. This article attempts to eliminate some of this ignorance by filling in a few of the contextual lacunae left by the corporate media's irresponsible journalism.

Why do different organizations and individuals speak of "mixed messages" coming from Obama's "first 100 days" in office? Obama's time in office thus far has played out almost exactly as I expected. He made perfunctory gestures toward fulfilling campaign promises, introduced initiatives to pacify the working and middle classes, and attempted to increase government transparency without upsetting the establishment. The Right also behaved almost exactly as expected by opposing almost every initiative with a flurry of rhetoric and pro-corporate propaganda. The only two surprises to me were that the Right didn't learn enough from their humiliating defeat to cut down their open and belligerent hostility toward the people and that Time Warner Cable wasn't able to move forward with its plans to further restrict Internet access.