Kathianne
06-08-2013, 01:28 AM
It's interesting that the most insightful articles about the US current news events, breaking and reporting are coming from Europe, mostly UK: (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/06/Mainstream-Media-Did-Not-break-Even-One-of-Four-Obama-Scandals)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10106197/Not-superhuman-Barack-Obama-just-a-very-naughty-boy.html
Not superhuman Barack Obama, just a very naughty boy The American leader’s snooping shows he has given in to the murky demands of presidential power
By Matthew Norman (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/matthew-norman/)
8:04PM BST 07 Jun 2013
This, so Barack Obama used to say in his stump speech of 2008, “is not who we are”, and the thousands who ecstatically cheered that slightly glib line instinctively knew what he meant. “This” was shorthand for George W Bush, and for those oppressively dark and fetid corners of government activity with which his name was synonymous: Guantanamo Bay, drones, the surveillance powers granted to the state by the Patriot Act, and the other measures taken in response to the atrocities of 9/11.
As for the “we”, in its royal or imperial usage that of course meant “I, Obama”, but it also referred to the wide-eyed disciples who worshipped him as a deus ex machina, floating down from his Illinois Olympus to cast healing sunlight on all those dirty little nooks and crevices, and allow America to call herself the land of the free without inviting sardonic smirks.
Five years on, Guantanamo Bay survives, the teenage computer gamers of the US military guide ever more drones to deliver remote control destruction, and we now learn that the government’s use of electronic surveillance is so wide-ranging that the default adjective of Orwellian barely seems adequate.
...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10106197/Not-superhuman-Barack-Obama-just-a-very-naughty-boy.html
Not superhuman Barack Obama, just a very naughty boy The American leader’s snooping shows he has given in to the murky demands of presidential power
By Matthew Norman (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/matthew-norman/)
8:04PM BST 07 Jun 2013
This, so Barack Obama used to say in his stump speech of 2008, “is not who we are”, and the thousands who ecstatically cheered that slightly glib line instinctively knew what he meant. “This” was shorthand for George W Bush, and for those oppressively dark and fetid corners of government activity with which his name was synonymous: Guantanamo Bay, drones, the surveillance powers granted to the state by the Patriot Act, and the other measures taken in response to the atrocities of 9/11.
As for the “we”, in its royal or imperial usage that of course meant “I, Obama”, but it also referred to the wide-eyed disciples who worshipped him as a deus ex machina, floating down from his Illinois Olympus to cast healing sunlight on all those dirty little nooks and crevices, and allow America to call herself the land of the free without inviting sardonic smirks.
Five years on, Guantanamo Bay survives, the teenage computer gamers of the US military guide ever more drones to deliver remote control destruction, and we now learn that the government’s use of electronic surveillance is so wide-ranging that the default adjective of Orwellian barely seems adequate.
...