Obama's speech on the Middle East.

Editor,

In the USA young college graduates can't find work. Schools are being defunded. Teachers are being laid off. The divide between rich and poor is ever widening, and the political power of corporations and the rich increases daily.

In the Arab world American military aid and financial backing for autocratic regimes have disempowered the masses for decades.

Now Mr. Obama talks about the brutal domination of populations in the Middle East by repressive, torturing police states as somehow occurring on their own and American governments being remiss in not noticing, when in fact it was the USA that enabled them for all the usual reasons.

What I heard in the president's speech is privatization, "free trade" (meaning young Egyptian women gluing running shoes to transform a few "entrepreneurs" into billionaires), and promises of support for Middle Eastern youth that an intransigent Republican minority continually finds ways to deny Americans.

"Why doesn't the USA back off?" I heard myself asking.

Why does the USA feel entitled to impose its anti-democratic economic vision on anyone and everyone under the rubric of political democracy and so-called human rights?

Why does the global corporate rip-off machine unquestionably own the prerogative to coopt the Arab spring? Why does the USA, a failing, broke, corrupt, terminally financialized economy get to call the economic shots in every corner of the world?

Re: "Peace and Change" (5/20/2011)