Liu Xiaobo, Jeff Cohen: President NAFTA Backs President SHAFTA

Jeff is an author, media critic, founder of the seminal For Accuracy

in Reporting (FAIR), Fox TV personality until he was fired, now a

professor, and a long time, peripatetic and funny friend.  -Ed

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/president-nafta-backs-pre_b_795306.html

President NAFTA Backs President SHAFTA

By Jeff Cohen
HuffintonPost: December 11th, 2010

It was a stunning spectacle yesterday afternoon when former President
Clinton took the podium from President Obama in the White House briefing
room to help shove the Obama-GOP tax deal down the throats of Democratic
activists and Congress members.

It was a fitting spectacle too (carried live on CNN) -- since Bill Clinton
paved the way in teaching how a Democratic president can win battles through
the votes not of his own party but the Republicans.

Remember NAFTA, the trade deal loved by big business and Republicans -- and
opposed by Democratic constituencies like unions, environmentalists and
consumer advocates? Clinton passed NAFTA with the votes of nearly 80 percent
of GOP senators and almost 70 percent of House Republicans. Meanwhile, House
Democrats opposed NAFTA by more than 3 to 2.

More than a year ago, I warned ("Get Ready for the Obama/GOP Alliance") that
Obama would follow Clinton's lead in winning some of his biggest fights by
allying with the GOP against his own base.

Following a long period of White House lecturing and name-calling ("the
professional left," "f**king retarded") aimed at the activists who put him
in the Oval Office, Obama has again shafted his base and broken a promise,
this time on tax breaks for the rich.

Look for another Obama/GOP alliance if Democrats in Congress find their
voices over Obama's bloody, costly, unwinnable folly in Afghanistan.

These kinds of deals can become habit-forming. After NAFTA, Clinton went on
to other bipartisan deals -- cutting welfare for the poor while extending
welfare to the media conglomerates in 1996, and concluding his tenure with
deregulatory giveaways to the investment banks that directly led to the
financial meltdown of 2008.

And Obama seems to have less backbone and firm principles than even Bill
Clinton -- even more prone to a Stockholm syndrome-tendency to cozy up to
his Republican batterers.

So it was quite a scene yesterday, with CNN pundits almost giddy that the
gray ghost of pro-corporate "bipartisan compromise" was back at the White
House.

Meanwhile, independent Bernie Sanders was electrifying much of the country
by railing for 8 and ½ hours in the Senate against the wealthy getting
billions in tax breaks while deficit-hawks take aim at Social Security and
other vital programs.

I'm sure I wasn't the only American fantasizing that one day a fighting
independent like Bernie would be in the White House.

Instead, with Obama, we seem to be getting the best Republican president
since... well... since Clinton.

 

Follow Jeff Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffco

 

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From: Jerry Kay

By LIU XIAOBO Published: December 8, 2010 I had imagined being there beneath sunlight with the procession of martyrs using just the one thin bone to uphold a true conviction And yet, the heavenly void will not plate the sacrificed in gold A pack of wolves well-fed full of corpses celebrate in the warm noon air aflood with joy Faraway place I've exiled my life to this place without sun to flee the era of Christ's birth I cannot face the blinding vision on the cross From a wisp of smoke to a little heap of ash I've drained the drink of the martyrs, sense spring's about to break into the brocade-brilliance of myriad flowers Deep in the night, empty road I'm biking home I stop at a cigarette stand A car follows me, crashes over my bicycle some enormous brutes seize me I'm handcuffed eyes covered mouth gagged thrown into a prison van heading nowhere A blink, a trembling instant passes to a flash of awareness: I'm still alive On Central Television News my name's changed to "arrested black hand" though those nameless white bones of the dead still stand in the forgetting I lift up high up the self-invented lie tell everyone how I've experienced death so that "black hand" becomes a hero's medal of honor Even if I know death's a mysterious unknown being alive, there's no way to experience death and once dead cannot experience death again yet I'm still hovering within death a hovering in drowning Countless nights behind iron-barred windows and the graves beneath starlight have exposed my nightmares Besides a lie I own nothing Liu Xiaobo, a poet and literary critic, is the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. China has forbidden him to travel to the award ceremony, which will be held today in Oslo. This poem was translated by Jeffrey Yang from the Chinese.