US Politics Special: Fiddling While America Defaults?

With four weeks to go before the US faces a possible default on its debt, there is still little sense of how President Obama will lead the country out of the public finances mess the nation faces. It defies belief that the Administration does not have some kind of long-term strategy to ensure that America pays its bills come 2 August, but quite what that plan is nobody outside the Administration could claim to know for sure.

One disturbing possibility to begin considering is that Obama is privy to information that the crisis in America's finances is worse than thought --- his seeming reluctance to get fully involved in the debate is, in fact, a masterful attempt to avoid spooking the markets before a Band-aid can be slapped on the problem. That is pure speculation, but it says something about the ineffectiveness of the President that the only way to take some cold comfort from his performance is to imagine an even worse scenario.

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Video & Transcript: Obama Speech to British Parliament "If We Fail to Meet Our Responsibility, Who Would Take Our Place?"

An extract from President Obama's speech today to the British Parliament, followed by the transcript --- we'll post further video when it is available:

Because we have always believed that the future of our children and grandchildren will be better if other people's children and grandchildren are more prosperous and free --- from the beaches of Normandy, to the Balkans to Benghazi. That is our interest and our ideal. And if we fail to meet that responsibility, who would take our place?

Our action --- our leadership --- is essential to the cause of human dignity. And so we must act --- and lead --- with confidence in our ideals, and an abiding faith in the character of our people, who sent us here today.

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Palestine Special: Fatah & Hamas Make a Deal --- What Will Israel Do?

With smaller Palestinian factions’ signatures, Fatah and Hamas formally ended a four-year conflict on Wednesday. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Syria-based leader Khaled Mashaal were present in Cairo, and Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank celebrated by raising Palestinian, Hamas, Fatah and Egyptian flags.

The Ramallah-based website, Palestine Monitor, claimed to have the text of the reconciliation deal....

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Terrorism Weekly (British Special): Smart Politics, Stupid Counter-Terrorism

On Saturday British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a speech at a security conference in Munich. The address was well-trailed by 10 Downing Street, as newspapers gave advance notice of the speech and then picked over the contents the following day.

Why link multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism when the evidence is inconclusive? Because Cameron’s speech was about politics and not about security. The Conservatives have seen their standing in opinion polls decline as massive cuts on social services begin to sink in. The diversionary rhetoric from Saturday plays well with the right-wing media and with the Conservative base; it is smart politics.

But what is smart politics does not necessarily make for wise counter-terrorism.

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Britain-US Special: Two Years into Obama's Era, The Right Takes Over The "Special Relationship" (Winter)

Relations between Britain and America have improved as the oil has dissipated in the Gulf, but what we see is not a progressive, liberal trend from either Obama or from the Liberal Democrats in the British coalition. Instead, what is emerging is an American-style big-society, small-state conservative and neo-liberal reshaping on British welfare, heath care, and education. The American charter school system is entering Britain through new "academies"; in October 2010, Geoffrey Canada, the founder and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, travelled to Britain to meet with Minister of Education Michael Gove to discuss charter schools and education reform and the alleged threat of unions to such reform, as well as to address the Tory Party conference.

As Britain awaits the next round of Tory-Lib Dem cuts to balance the budget, rein in the deficit, and punish the poor in 2011, those meetings and our looks across the Atlantic are likely to continue. President Obama may be entering his third year, but it is "what they are doing on the Right" that may be more important.

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Torture: Britain Pays Out --- So When Does the US Accept Responsibility? (Gude)

The British government's settlement agreement to pay compensation to former Guantánamo detainees  over claims that they were unlawfully captured and abused while in custody is a meaningful, though not complete, government statement on its complicity in extraordinary rendition and torture. Coming so soon after George W Bush's boast that he enthusiastically authorised torture, the British move highlights the absurdity of the American political and legal processes that so easily prevents any accountability for such blatant misconduct and lawlessness.

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