Obamamania Crapaganda Bites the Dust

William Blum's article at Counterpunch yesterday summed it up nicely:

Okay, at least some things are settled. When George W. Bush said "The United States does not torture", everyone now knows it was crapaganda. And when Barack Obama, a month into his presidency, said "The United States does not torture", it likewise had all the credibility of a 19th century treaty between the US government and the American Indians. ...

And when Obama says, as he does repeatedly, "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards", why is it that no one in the media asks him what he thinks of the Nuremberg Tribunal looking backwards in 1946? Or the Church Committee of the US Senate doing the same in 1975 and producing numerous revelations about the criminality of the CIA, FBI, and other government agencies that shocked and opened the eyes of the American people and the world?

On the same day there was another article by Fidel Castro, and again I was struck by Castro's intelligence and good writing, compared to the flabby and evasive chatter of American politicians. (Maybe he didn't write these pieces; but if so, he chooses better, smarter ghostwriters than American politicians do.) I know very well that being a good writer doesn't make one a good person, and Castro is a dictator, though if he were only a dictator the US would have no objection to him. We usually get along well with dictators, including those far more brutal than Castro, as long as they spend the money we give them on pleasure palaces, shoes, and Swiss bank accounts instead of literacy campaigns and training doctors. It doesn't say much, but I'd much rather have a beer with Castro than with Obama.