Obama's Fatal Corporate Addiction

Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by Truthdig.com

Obama's Fatal Corporate Addiction

by Robert Scheer

If it had been revealed that Jeffrey Immelt once hired an undocumented nanny, or defaulted on his mortgage, he would be forced to resign as head of President Barack Obama’s “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.” But the fact that General Electric, where Immelt is CEO, didn’t pay taxes on its $14.5 billion profit last year—and indeed is asking for a $3.2 billion tax rebate—has not produced a word of criticism from the president, who in January praised Immelt as a business leader who “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.”AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite President Barack Obama applauds GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, right, before speaking to workers at the GE plant in Schenectady, NY on Jan. 21.

What it takes, evidently, is shifting profit and jobs abroad: Only one out of three GE workers is now based in the U.S., and almost two-thirds of the company’s profit is sheltered in its foreign operations. Thanks to changes in the tax law engineered when another avowedly pro-business Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president, U.S. multinational financial companies can avoid taxes on their international scams. And financial scams are what GE excelled in for decades, when GE Capital, its financial unit, which specialized in credit card, consumer loan and housing mortgage debt, accounted for most of GE’s profits.

That’s right, GE, along with General Motors with its toxic GMAC financial unit, came to look more like an investment bank than a traditional industrial manufacturing giant that once propelled this economy and ultimately it ran into the same sort of difficulties as the Wall Street hustlers. As The New York Times’ David Kocieniewski, who broke the GE profit story, put it: “Because its lending division, GE Capital, has provided more than half of the company’s profit in some recent years, many Wall Street analysts view G.E. not as a manufacturer but as an unregulated lender that also makes dishwashers and M.R.I. machines.”

Maximizing corporate profits at the taxpayer’s expense is what top CEOs are good at, and after all it was Immelt who presided over GE when it got so heavily into the subprime mortgage business that it needed a government bailout to avoid bankruptcy. This was before Obama made him a trusted adviser.

Back at the end of 2008, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. government had agreed to insure an additional $139 billion in GE Capital’s debt holdings, the second such intervention within a month, adding, “The company’s exposure to the deepest financial crisis since the 1930s has cut its market value by more than half this year.” A Washington Post exposé titled “How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue” documented the power of Immelt’s lobbying operation in Washington. GE was not initially deemed eligible for the debt guarantee program offered to failing banks, “but regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the scenes appeals from GE.” And it worked; as the Post reported, “The government’s actions have been `powerful and helpful’ to the company, GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt acknowledged.” For the next two years, GE would still report enormous profits without paying taxes, adding insult to the injury that financial shenanigans had inflicted on ordinary taxpayers who bailed the company out.

On Feb. 6, 2009, Immelt sent a contrite annual letter to GE shareholders, admitting, “Our Company’s reputation was tarnished because we weren’t the ‘safe and reliable’ growth company that is our aspiration.” While conceding his own culpability in GE’s downturn, Immelt predicted a rosy future: “I accept responsibility for this. But, I think the environment presents an opportunity of a lifetime.”

Not, obviously, for the 50 million Americans who have either lost their homes or are deeply underwater in a housing market that is still in steep decline thanks to the lending practices of companies like GE Capital. Nope, the good times are in the offing only for corporations that know how to make the U.S. government a partner in their scams. As Immelt stated blatantly: “The global economy, and capitalism, will be `reset’ in several important ways. The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”

That’s the essential blueprint for Obama’s restructuring of the economy, as the president put it in selecting Immelt to replace Paul Volcker as head of his outside team of economic advisers. Volcker had become increasingly critical of the corporate high rollers. Obama, although noting the suffering of ordinary Americans, clearly believes that such populism is now beside the point. As the president put it in announcing Immelt’s appointment on Jan. 20, 2011: “The past two years was about moving our economy back from the brink. Our job now is putting our economy into overdrive.”

But overdrive, with CEOs like Immelt shifting the gears, is what brought us so close to the brink. Once again Obama seems fatally addicted to the notion that the heavy hitters who got us into this mess are the very folks to be trusted to get us out of it. What he seems incapable of grasping is that while they are personally very good at avoiding the precipice, the rest of us are hardly passengers in their limos.

© 2011 TruthDig.com

Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

POLITICO

Obama: Libya is no Iraq

The experience in Iraq is 'not something we can afford to repeat in Libya,' Obama says. | AP Photo Close

By GLENN THRUSH | 3/28/11 8:29 PM EDT Updated: 3/28/11 9:21 PM EDT

President Barack Obama, addressing the American people directly for the first time since military operations began in Libya, offered no new details about how the U.S. commitment there will end, but pledged that it won’t become another Iraq.

“Regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya,” Obama said.

Seeking to sway a country divided and confused by the unexpected air and naval mission against Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s government, Obama laid out a sweeping rationale for the action, arguing that it would have been immoral and strategically disastrous to have stood by and allowed Qadhafi to massacre rebels and civilians.

“We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world,” Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington.

“It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.”

Obama articulated a broader – if not easily explained — vision of U.S. involvement in future actions, reserving the right to act in the nation’s “interests and values” and arguing that Americans “should not be afraid to act.” But he also cautioned against unilateral action that would result in bloody, protracted conflict and pronounced the country’s days as the world’s police force to be over.

Obama, who resisted deploying U.S. forces to Libya until after the passage of a U.N. resolution and the commitment of Arab League and NATO support, dismissed what he said was the “false choice” between doing nothing and making an all-out ground assault.

“It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action,” he said. “But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right.

“In this particular country – Libya; at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale….To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.

“As president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Obama has been buffeted by criticism for his Libyan policy, with liberals criticizing his decision to act without extensive congressional consultations and conservatives arguing that he could have easily chased Qadhafi out of power weeks ago of he had not hesitated for so long. And critics of all stripes say he’s failed to articulate a clearly-defined doctrine for future U.S. policy in the turbulent Mideast.

House Speaker John Boehner has called upon Obama to provide a more detailed rationale and roadmap for exiting the Libyan conflict, and his spokesman said the Ohio Republican was less than impressed by Obama’s speech Monday night.

“Americans waited a long time to get few new answers,” said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. “Whether it’s the American resources that will be required, our standards and objectives for engaging the rebel opposition, or how this action is consistent with U.S. policy goals, the speech failed to provide Americans much clarity to our involvement in Libya. Nine days into this military intervention, Americans still have no answer to the fundamental question: What does success in Libya look like?”

Many Americans appear to be confused by Obama’s sudden switch from dove to hawk – and a quick pivot to military action in a third Muslim nation. A Pew poll released Monday found that only 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. made the “right decision” in launching air strikes while 36 percent said the operation was “wrong” – one of the lowest initial approval ratings for military action in the last three decades.

In an effort to quell anxiety over mission drift, Obama portrayed the military operations as near an end, saying, “The United States of America has done what we said we would do.”

He portrayed Libya as a two-phase mission, with U.S. air and naval assets employed at first to keep Qadhafi from overrunning the rebels and killing civilians, and then squeezing the regime through sanctions, freezing bank accounts, an arms embargo and aid to insurgents.

He rebuffed calls by conservatives to wage an all-out ground war against the regime, citing the outcome in Iraq, and said the U.S. will quickly hand-off its command-and-control duties to NATO, assuming what he termed a “supporting role.”

Still, Obama offered few specifics about how and when U.S. forces will exit the fight, saying that many of the operational details will be negotiated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a meeting with NATO partners in London on Tuesday. Obama himself consulted with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hours before delivering his address.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said U.S. forces will likely continue to take part in attacks on Qadhafi’s forces for the foreseeable future. But Obama suggested an earlier exit, saying the primary role for American forces would be “intelligence, logistical support, search and rescue assistance and capabilities to jam regime communications.”

Republicans argue that scaling back U.S. operations is easier said than done in a fight against an unpredictable and brutal despot. And some have questioned whether attacks against Qadhafi’s forces in support of the rebels exceeded the U.N.’s mandate and Obama’s authority under the War Powers Act.

“If U.S. military forces were to have responsibility for close air support or execute additional strike missions in support of opposition forces, then that of course would exceed the President’s definition of a limited, supporting role,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a speech earlier Monday.

“Such a mission could last indefinitely and would trigger congressional consideration of our larger role in the war.”

Obama's Case for His Immoral Warfare

Obama's Moral Case For War

by Peter Beinart

In the president's Libya speech tonight, he'll have to deflect critics who ask why we're taking on Gaddafi—but not other murderous regimes. Peter Beinart on why consistency in foreign policy is overrated.

There are plenty of smart objections to America’s Libya intervention. But when President Obama addresses the nation on Monday night, he should rebut the stupidest one: that America shouldn’t wage humanitarian war in Libya because we’re not doing so in Congo, Zimbabwe and every other nasty dictatorship on earth.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

The consistency argument, it’s important to understand, has nothing to do with Congo and Zimbabwe. Most of the people who invoke those ill-fated countries showed no interest in them before the Libya debate and will go back to ignoring them once Libya is off the front page. Ask someone who demands moral consistency in humanitarian war how exactly they propose to intervene in Congo and you will quickly realize that the call for moral consistency is actually a call for immoral consistency. The point of invoking the horrors of Congo is not to convince the US to act to stop the horrors of Congo; it is to ensure that, out of respect for the raped, murdered and maimed in Central Africa, we allow innocents to be raped, murdered and maimed in North Africa as well. The Congolese, presumably, will find it comforting to know that the great powers are as just as indifferent to savagery in other lands as they are to the savagery in theirs.

There will always be horrors that outside powers cannot or will not prevent. But the fact that they cannot be stopped everywhere is no reason not to try to stop them somewhere.

There is a serious argument against humanitarian intervention. It starts with the belief that international affairs is by nature tragic. Terrible things happen in distant societies but we do not really understand them, and so our efforts at amelioration either prove futile or actually make things worse. We think that because our motives are pure we can violate the norms of sovereignty that we guard jealously when it comes to our own affairs, but in so doing we open—or reopen—the door to a predatory imperialism that can do even greater harm. And finally, by spending money on distant lands we bankrupt our own.

What unites these arguments is a belief that foreign policy must be Hippocratic: First, do no harm. But the advocates of moral consistency cannot stomach this moral minimalism so they cloak it in moral maximalism: Rather than arguing against humanitarian war anywhere, they argue for it everywhere, which is a less honest way of saying the same thing.

But humanitarian war is not possible everywhere because war is never waged for humanitarian reasons alone. There is nothing strange or scandalous, for instance, about considering logistics. NATO is intervening in Libya in part because Libya lies relatively close to the NATO countries that are doing the intervening, as did Bosnia and Kosovo. That means the operation can be done more cheaply, at less risk to American and European lives, and with a greater chance of success, than in Zimbabwe or Congo. Those are all valid considerations, as valid as a doctor choosing to operate on the patient he has the best chance of saving.

Libya also resides in a more strategically important part of the world than do Congo and Zimbabwe. In intervening there, the US hopes not only to save innocent Libyans, but to bolster its reputation and relationships with the activists seeking to replace Gaddafi and his fellow tyrants in the oil-rich Middle East. To say that makes the Libya intervention immoral is like saying that covering the uninsured was immoral because Barack Obama hoped it would win him votes. It’s also true that NATO is intervening in Libya because, unlike say, Burma, is does not lie within the sphere of influence of a hostile great power. That’s also a pretty reasonable consideration if one wants humanitarian interventions to succeed, and not increase the risk of superpower war.

The point is that there is no purely moral position from which to judge international affairs. At best, moral concerns coincide with practical, self-interested ones. It may be that this nexus never offers much hope for a place like Congo. But that hope is probably slightly greater if the West intervenes—successfully—in Libya than if it does not. In the 1990s, after all, critics condemned the Bosnia intervention because the West was not stopping genocide outside Europe. It was in large measure because the West did stop genocide in Europe, however, that the world’s non-intervention in Rwanda was considered in retrospect such a disgrace. Spurred by the memory of Rwanda, activists from around the world drew attention to the killing in Darfur. And now, in part because of that widening circle of outrage, NATO is doing in North Africa what fifteen years ago critics charged it would do only in Europe.

There will always be horrors that outside powers cannot or will not prevent. But the fact that they cannot be stopped everywhere is no reason not to try to stop them somewhere. And showing that they can be stopped somewhere—first in Bosnia and Kosovo, hopefully now in Libya—may make dictators pause to reflect that they could be next. That’s moral progress, which in the ugly, real world is a pretty impressive thing.

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is now available from HarperCollins. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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Obama's Standard Imperial Hypocrisy

Standard Imperial Hypocrisy

Reflections on Obama, the World, Libya, and Mass Diversion

by Paul Street / March 26th, 2011

Recently on a car trip to New York City, I tuned briefly into a National “Public” Radio news show called “The World.” A middle-aged newsreader was interviewing a younger female activist in the Middle Eastern island Kingdom of Bahrain, where 1500 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had recently arrived to help the kingdom’s Al Khalifa royal family crush democracy protests inspired by the wave of popular rebellion rolling across North Africa and the Middle East. (Dozens if not hundreds of Bahrain protestors and activists have been killed and disappeared since the foreign soldiers came under the aegis of the “Gulf Cooperation Council” on March 15). The activist decried the presence of Saudi soldiers, lent from one U.S.-sponsored monarchy to another U.S.-sponsored monarchy with obvious authoritarian intent.

“What More Would You Like the U.S. to Do?”

The newsreader stopped the activist short to ask her if she knew that U.S. President Barack Obama had issued a declaration criticizing the infusion of Saudi forces and calling on the Bahrain regime to avoid undue violence and to seek a peaceful political solution. Yes, the activist responded, she was aware of the White House’s proclamation, but she was not impressed. She wanted “The World’s” listeners to know that Bahrain ’s democracy movement required “more than statements” from Washington. The Obama administration’s words were one thing, the activist felt, but what really mattered were its deeds. She mentioned the United States ’ massive financial and military support for highly repressive regimes across the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, the Arab Emirates, and, of course, Bahrain, the Middle East ’s leading financial hub and home to the U.S. Navy’s critical Fifth Fleet.

As the activist knew, the Saudi and UAE troops entered Bahrain just one day after U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dined with the Bahraini ruling family in a show of support. Gates refused to meet with pro-democracy protesters who had been marching by the thousands for a month. The royal family “probably bugged [Gates] that they need to use force to suppress this,” Husain Abdulla, director of Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain, told Democracy Now! “And next day, immediately after he left, the Saudi troops came to Bahrain. This is no coincidence. This is all planned.” Certainly the Obama administration is deeply complicit in the Saudi invasion of supposedly sovereign Bahrain – an incursion that was requested by the Al Khalifa family.

That’s a pretty remarkable thing for “the world’s leading democracy” to green-light. As Amitabb Pal observed on the web site of The Progressive last week:

Imagine if East Germany ’s Erich Honecker had successfully requested a Soviet invasion in 1989. Or, to take a more contemporary example, imagine if Muammar Gadaffi got one of his very few friends to invade in order to defeat the armed rebellion … imagine the global outrage.

The “public” newsreader seemed taken aback by the activist’s critique of Washington . “What more,” she asked the activist, “would you like the United States to do?” The newsreader’s tone communicated exasperation with the impudent notion that the United States was not doing everything it could be reasonably expected to do to defend democracy in Bahrain .

I did not get to hear the activist’s response because the N“P”R station became inaudible as my Honda crossed into the Delaware Water Gap in western New Jersey, but let me imagine a reasonable response based on my elementary grasp of the U.S. role in the region. It might have gone like this: “Well, we’d like the White House to stop sponsoring murder and authoritarianism. We’d like the administration to pick up a telephone and inform its friend, the absolute ruler of Bahrain, that he and his regime will no longer receive military and financial support from the U.S. and its regional allies. We’d like Obama and Hillary Clinton to order their client states, Saudi Arabia and UAE, to remove their troops immediately. We’d like the U.S. to cease and desist from funding and equipping arch-repressive and authoritarian governments across the region. We’d like the U.S. to insist on an end to state violence and the beginning of a transition to popular, democratic governance in Bahrain. We’d like the U.S. to freeze the foreign assets of the king of Bahrain and to tell him that the Fifth Fleet and other military forces intend to protect basic democratic rights in Bahrain.”

All impossible, of course: the last thing the U.S. foreign policy establishment wants to see break out in majority Shia Bahrain and, by demonstration effect, in Saudi Arabia, where Shia Muslims constitute a significant minority population in oil-rich territories. As far as the American imperial elite is concerned, that would potentially threaten U.S. control of, and access to, the Middle East’s hyper-strategic oil reserves, whose greatest material prize falls under the nominal sovereignty of the U.S.-sponsored Saudi monarchy.

Obama’s Own Colonial War

But, of course, there are many places in the world where a simple withdrawal of expensive U.S. support for oppressive regimes would help open the door for democratic liberation. In Honduras, to take one example, the White House and Pentagon under Obama have significantly funded and militarily equipped a thuggish right wing regime that overthrew a democratically elected, left-leaning president (Manuel Zelaya) in the spring of 2009. The administration initially responded to the Honduran putsch with what sounded like words of condemnation but it promptly angered much of the world and most of Latin America by continuing the standard U.S. practice of bankrolling, equipping, training, and running cover for Central and South American reaction, giving the new authoritarian regime the okay to kill, torture, and imprison democracy activists.

The crucifixion of Palestine by Israel continues to receive critical financial and military backing and diplomatic cover from Uncle Sam, who has never sought to enforce a no-fly zone to prevent Israel from bombing children and hospitals in the open air apartheid prison called the Gaza Strip.

Washington continues to fund, train, and equip state repression in the deceptive name of “the war on Drugs” across Central America — repression that supports Washington-imposed neoliberal trade and investment policies that deepen the extreme poverty that drives so many Latin Americans to seek access to lower ends of the U.S. labor market. This feeds right wing anti-immigrant sentiments on the part of North Americans conditioned to think that Washington has nothing to do with endemic misery south of the Rio Grande. Obama naturally made no effort to undo these core imperial policy continuities during his recent trip to Latin America, which coincided with the launching of his first wholly owned imperial adventure – code-named “Operation Odyssey Dawn” (hereafter “OOD” – which advertising firms come up with these military campaign brandings, anyway?) – in Libya . “What more” could the U.S, do to support democracy? Stop murdering it abroad and at home.

The notion that Uncle Sam is hopelessly hamstrung in terms of what it might do beyond offer nice words in support of freedom and democracy abroad is contradicted by the curious case that has recently grabbed the headlines from Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, Wisconsin protestors, and the Japanese earthquake and nuclear crisis — Libya.

Here a recently U.S.-tolerated dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, has been re-declared a grave public enemy to western ideals and his nation has been target-bombed by a U.S.-led “coalition” of “the international community” (selected national elites from the wealthy West) in the enforcement of a no-fly zone. The White House claims that OOD seeks only to protect Libyan citizens, not just Gaddafi, but Hillary Clinton’s recent comment to the effect that the dictator should leave the country certainly suggests that the Bush Doctrine’s notion of imposing regime change (in the name of democracy) on a poor nation that poses no serious risk or imminent danger to the United States1 lives on – along with so much else from the dark days of Dubya – in the “new” age of Obama, the Empire’s New Clothes, who is attacking Libya without the pretense of congressional authorization¹ that George Bush obtained before assaulting Iraq.

The official reasons given for OOD are out of Bill Clinton’s Serbia and George W. Bush’s Iraq playbooks. They are that the United States is driven by humanitarian and democratic concern for the suffering Libyan people. But what about the millions of other world citizens living under the oppressive rule of sadistic autocrats across Africa and in, for example, the key U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, home to perhaps the world’s single most reactionary government? The United States is not moving towards targeted bombings and no-fly zones to protect victims of oppression or to discipline oppressors in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Palestine, Israel, or Yemen, where the U.S.-supported president Ali Abdullah Seleh has recently butchered and maimed hundreds of protestors.

The American military and financial aid keeps flowing to unjust rulers in these and numerous other U.S.-backed states. Those rulers and their cronies are not subjected to travel bans and asset freezes and Western-led prosecution for crimes against humanity. They continue to receive official designation as U.S. allies in the “war on terror.”

What supposedly privileges Libyans over and above other victims of tyranny when it comes to the United States supposed goals of freedom protection? And what about the large number of Libyan civilian casualties that can be expected to result from an aerial assault on Tripoli, home to 1.1 million? Couldn’t an U.S. aerial attack actually increase regime violence on the ground? What about the likelihood that imperial assault will result in greater popularity within Libya for the dictator that Washington claims to oppose (on the model of how murderous U.S.-imposed “economic sanctions” and no fly zones deepened Saddam Hussein’s popularity and weakened his opposition inside Iraq )?

What about the unsavory nature of many atop Gaddafi’s hastily formed opposition, who are leading a civil war, not a peaceful people’s uprising on the model of Tunisia, Egypt, Wisconsin, and Bahrain? And what about the distinct possibility that Western military intervention could prolong a bloody civil war in Libya by undermining the opposition’s ability to pursue negotiations and through the instability that large-scale civilian casualties can produce?

These and other problems raise serious questions about the honesty of Washington’s justifications, suggesting that something other than humanitarian and democratic ideals – petroleum-related strategic and political concerns emerging from America’s imperial role in the Middle East – are at play in the design and execution of OOD, Barack Obama’s first full-fledged, non-inherited colonial war. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Just the Opposite…

The left U.S. foreign policy critic Phyllis Bennis has recently noted a dark irony behind many Americans’ support of the Libyan action. That support was premised on the notion that Gaddafi’s successful crushing of his opposition “would send a devastating message to other Arab dictators: Use enough military force and you will keep your job.” Things are working out quite differently, with the American intervention seeming to feed top-down repression, not bottom up rebellion in the Middle East. As Bennis observes:

Instead, it turns out that just the opposite may be the result: It was after the UN passed its no-fly zone and use-of-force resolution, and just as US, British, French and other warplanes and warships launched their attacks against Libya, that other Arab regimes escalated their crack-down on their own democratic movements….In Yemen, 52 unarmed protesters were killed and more than 200 wounded on Friday by forces of the US-backed and US-armed government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was the bloodiest day of the month-long Yemeni uprising…Similarly in US-allied Bahrain, home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, at least 13 civilians have been killed by government forces. Since the March 15 arrival of 1,500 foreign troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, brought in to protect the absolute power of the king of Bahrain , 63 people have been reported missing.

Wag the Dog

The American and western left is currently at some risk of tearing itself up yet more than it is already torn up over the question of how to understand and respond to OOD. My instincts are pretty much always anti-White House and anti-Pentagon when it comes to foreign policy, and I personally can’t get behind even limited support for a no-fly zone in Libya. Still, my desire to get into a finger-pointing and shouting match with “progressives” who offer qualified support to Obama’s new war is inhibited to some degree by my sense that the current imperial extravaganza is taking on a disastrous “wag the dog” aspect in the hands of America ’s dominant Orwellian mass war and entertainment media.

It is diverting public attention from at least three critical and ongoing policy and political issues: the epic state-level state-capitalist assault on public sector workers, organized labor, and working people more generally and the remarkable popular rebellion against that assault within and beyond Madison, Wisconsin; the equally epic nuclear disaster in Japan and the deadly implications of aging and revamped nuclear power operations (horrifying epitomes of the underlying and very possibly exterminst irrationality of the state-capitalist profits system) within and beyond the United States, where a deadly, old, and accident-prone nuclear plant (Indian Point, home to 2 of the nation’s 105 currently operating nuclear power reactors) is located just 30 miles north of the world’s financial capital, New York City; the counter-assault on democratic protests in U.S, sponsored regimes like (to name just three) Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.

Even as they steal vast, desperately needed public resources away from the real and potential meeting of social needs and help distribute wealth upwards (to “defense” contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and other elite, high-tech corporate interests) at home ² moreover, imperial adventures and the bloodlust they reflect and promote are great authoritarian populace-diverters and domestic democracy-destroyers – all too consistent with the warnings of American Founding Father James Madison, who observed that:

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad.

1. In 2007, candidate Obama was asked the following question when it was feared that the United States was going to attack Iran: Under what circumstances would the president have the constitutional authority to bomb Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress? His answer: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch.” Essentially, Obama said that the president had the authority to act first and seek approval later if there were an imminent threat to the security of the United States and that the president could not order a military attack without the approval of the Congress if a threat to the United States was not imminent. Both statements were accurate but neither applies to the current situation in Libya. They have pretty much disappeared down the Orwellian memory hole as far as many of Obama’s liberal and centrist supporters are concerned. Many of those supporters would likely be complaining about constitutional violations if the Libya venture was being conducted by a President McCain. Likewise, many Republicans would be muzzling the constitutional concerns they are currently voicing if one of their party currently held the title of Commander in Chief. Such is the moral and intellectual level and situational politics of partisan identity and behavior within, and beyond, Washington .
   [↩]
2. A recent Huffington Post item reports that “In the opening days of the assault on Libya, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a barrage of at least 161 Tomahawk cruise missiles to flatten Muammar Gadhafi’s air defenses and pave the way for coalition aircraft….In fiscal terms, at a time when Congress is fighting over every dollar, the cruise missile show of military might was an expenditure of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Each missile cost $1.41 million, close to three times the cost listed on the Navy’s website…Raytheon Corp. is the manufacturer of the Tomahawk Block IV, a low-flying missile that travels at 550 miles per hour. During a decade of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya, the Pentagon has increasingly relied on the Tomahawk. A year ago, Raytheon boasted of its 2,000th Block IV delivery to the Navy.” See Sharon Weinberger, “Cruise Missiles: The One Million Dollar Weapon,” Huffpost Business (March 25, 2011) at 161 X $1.4 million = $225 million Tomahawk Cruise Missile expenditure in just the early stage of Obama’s Libya adventure, including a nice cost-plus profit for leading “defense” (Empire) contractor, Raytheon. Someone other than I can calculate the social opportunity cost of $225 million as more and more Americans run out of ammunition in the war on economic destitution. [↩]

Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is a veteran radical historian and independent author, activist, researcher, and journalist in Iowa City, IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm 2005); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge 2005): and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman&Littlefied 2007). Street's new book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics can now be ordered. Read other articles by Paul.

This article was posted on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Bahrain, Disinformation, Honduras, Imperialism, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Libya, Military/Militarism, Obama, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Weaponry.

Winding Down Obama

by Linh Dinh / March 25th, 2011

Occupying Iraq, the U.S. spends about $300 million a day. For Afghanistan, it’s $200 million. These numbers are approximations because the Pentagon doesn’t really know how much it has spent on anything, or how many it has killed in its several wars, big and small. It doesn’t really care, I don’t think. Imagine a team of alcoholics parked permanently at the bar, downing pints and shots with an open tab into infinity, or until the Second Coming, at least. In 2001, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that $2.3 trillion were unaccounted for. He blamed it on sloppy bookkeeping. It must be hard to keep track of so many digits.

As firemen and cops are being fired across America, as teachers are being told they must accept austerity measures, the country is broke after all, as public radio and television, with their supposed liberal bias, lay on the chopping block, as more homeless sprawl and tent cities spring up, as casinos, a sure sign of desperation, mushroom, the United States has entered another costly war without any fanfare or discussion whatsoever. Obama didn’t have to persuade anybody, no sending a Secretary of State to make a fool of herself in front of the United Nations’ General Assembly, no congressional vote, which, last time I checked, was supposed to be a Constitutional requirement, no media blitz. No lies even. He simply ordered more than a hundred Tomahawk missiles, so far, to rain down on Libya, with many more to come. In any case, this it not even a war, but merely a “kinetic military action,” according to an Obama aide. Such straight faced butchery of language, even as one butchers real people, shows that the United States has entered a deep psychotic state. Upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama himself declared, “I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence.”

If this is Obama pacified, I hate to see him riled up, but, of course, he doesn’t get riled up. Suave, articulate and personable, Obama is proving to be just as deadly as Bush, but clearly more cynical. A great, loyal tool of the establishment, Obama has dampened protest from American liberals. Though they know he has betrayed them, they’re reluctant to show appropriate outrage because, not that long ago, they have cheered and wept for him so openly. The day after Obama won, Rebecca Solnit burbled in the Nation, “Citizenship is a passionate joy at times, and this is one of those times. You can feel it. Tuesday the world changed. It was a great day.”

The President of the United States is a traveling salesman for the military industrial complex. In 2010, Obama came to India to visit the Mumbai home of Gandhi, a hero of his, someone he would most like to dine with, very touching, before announcing a mega arms deal of GE fighter jet engines and Boeing military transport planes. Now, as he bombs Libya, Obama tries to sell F-18 fighter planes to Brazil. According to an aide, “President Obama underscored that the F-18 is the best plane on offer” as he made a “strong pitch” to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

The President of the United States is also a spokesman for murderers and crooks. He doesn’t rule, but obeys. His main job is to deceive the masses as he serves his enablers. He can say anything at any time, and means none of it. The President of the United States is the world’s most visible actor, in short. Campaigning in 2007, Obama said, “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.” Quite a performance. This year, as Wisconsin teachers fight to retain their right to collectively bargain, Obama has said absolutely nothing. One would have to be a fool to think he would join them.

Offshoring began under Clinton, and has continued unabated. Under the banner of free trade, the only goal of Globalism is to couple capital with the cheapest labor available. Since organized workers are anathema to the bosses, American companies have moved their factories to totalitarian countries where workers have little rights, where they cannot be unionized. The idea is to roll back the clock to the earliest days of industrialism, where workers toiled all day long for next to nothing. In February, a bill was even introduced in Missouri to eliminate child labor laws. It seeks, in part, to get rid of “the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed.” Don’t laugh. This may be a sign of things to come.

As for work that can’t be outsourced, foreign workers are allowed or even invited in. U.S. borders are not porous out of charity or ineptness, but because this benefits American businesses. During the recent housing bubble, builders employed countless Mexican workers, and every stateside restaurant these days seems to be staffed by Mexican busboys, cooks and dishwashers. Chinese engineer students can stay after graduating from American schools, and Indian doctors and nurses are given special visas. There are certain jobs, however, that can’t easily be staffed by aliens, such as teachers, for example. If Albanians could be imported to teach English and American History to American kids, it would have happened already. The latest attack in this relentless war against American workers is the announcement that Mexican truckers will soon be allowed to drive into the U.S. Though ignored by the mainstream media, this calamity won’t just put tens of thousands of American truck drivers out of work, but also many American dock workers. Containers can be shipped to Mexico, then trucked into the U.S. by cheaper Mexican drivers.

Again, American borders are porous by design, just as other countries’ borders are routinely violated by the U.S.A. There is a huge difference, however: when Americans enter another country illegally, it’s never to empty foreigners’ bedpans or to wash their dishes, but usually to kill them.

As Obama fizzles out, as he loses legitimacy, the power brokers will come up with other figureheads and slogans for American liberals and conservatives to become passionate about. These candidates will jabber, jab and insult each other. As in professional wrestling, the battle will appear fierce. Barack, meanwhile, can look forward to a lucrative memoir and six-figure speaking fees. Even that man of malapropisms and snafus, the much despised Bush, is getting $150,000 each time he opens his mouth these days.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, and a just released novel, Love Like Hate. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union. Read other articles by Linh.

This article was posted on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Capitalism, Disinformation, Economy/Economics, Mexico, Military/Militarism, Obama, Unions.

Backing Nuclear: Obama Administration “Disconnected from Reality”

Backing Nuclear: Administration “Disconnected from Reality”

March 16, 2011


Bloomberg reports: “The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan’s power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.”

NORMAN SOLOMON

Available for a limited number of interviews, Solomon is president of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a senior fellow at the new group RootsAction. He recently wrote the piece “Nuclear Power Madness,” which states: “Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.” Solomon’s books include Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation (co-authored with Harvey Wasserman). He is also former director of the landmark National Citizens Hearings for Radiation Victims held in Washington, D.C. in 1980.

LLOYD DUMAS

Dumas is professor of political economy, economics and public policy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Formerly a professor of engineering at Columbia University, he is an expert on technological disaster. His most recent book is The Technology Trap. Dumas just wrote the piece “Shadow Elite: ‘Safe’ Nuclear Power? No Such Thing.”

TYSON SLOCUM

Slocum is director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, which recently issued a statement: “Despite the assurances of our elected officials and the industry, there is no way to guarantee the public’s safety when a natural disaster or terrorism strikes commercial reactors. The Japanese are arguably the best prepared to deal with earthquakes, yet they failed to adequately plan for the impact of a tsunami. This demonstrates the difficulty in planning for both the ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ that impact nuclear reactors from natural disaster and terrorism. There are alternatives. Had Japan invested in rooftop solar and wind turbines to the degree it spent maintaining and building nuclear reactors, the country wouldn’t be grappling with the potential of a full-scale nuclear meltdown.

“U.S. policymakers should watch events in Japan closely and understand the implications to public safety of committing U.S. taxpayer resources to building new nuclear plants. We call on the federal government to do the following:

1) Immediately stop activity relating to re-licensing aging U.S. reactors;
2) Halt all activity geared toward building new reactors; and
3) End federal subsidies — such as loan guarantees — for commercial nuclear power, which total $500 billion to date.

“Instead, the U.S. should focus on developing wind power and assisting families in the installation of rooftop solar systems.”

CHRIS WILLIAMS

Williams just wrote the piece “The Risks of Nuclear Roulette,” which states: “Sentiment in this country remains solidly anti-nuclear. A recent poll in the Wall Street Journal showed that three-quarters of Americans back the elimination of tax credit for oil and gas companies to reduce the federal deficit, and 57 percent deem it ‘mostly’ or ‘totally’ acceptable to ‘significantly cut’ subsidies to new nuclear power plants. This is in direct contrast to President Barack Obama’s offer of new loan guarantees to the nuclear industry.”

Williams is author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis and is a professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University.

More resources: commondreams.org/japan-earthquake

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Filed Under: The U.S. Economy Tagged With: nuclear,

March 20, 2011 at 12:35:11

President Obama Bullying PFC Bradley Manning

By Sherwood Ross (about the author)

"If there's one goal of this conference (on bullying)," President Obama told those gathered recently at the White House, "it's to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up. It's not." In fact, he added, bullying is "not something we have to accept." The president explained that as a child he had been bullied and so identified with the victims.

All this, of course, is part of the Obama spin op, part of the art of putting a good face on a commander-in-chief of an imperial military machine that is bullying much of the world from 800 foreign bases, that is slaughtering in drone raids the innocent together with those it illegally decides to call guilty, and that is torturing PFC Bradley Manning, perhaps one of the few men in its own military with a conscience having the guts to expose the war machine's criminality. Manning is interrogated twenty times every waking hour, denied virtually all human contact apart from his invasive jailers, denied freedom of movement in his cell, forced to sleep naked and stand naked at morning roll call, and allowed to "exercise" while dragging chains! Not bullying?

One tactic used on Manning the Pentagon seemingly picked up from the Soviets' is to force Manning to sleep with his hands outside his coverlet. If it doesn't sound like torture, read how Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes this aspect of sleep deprivation in his book "In The First Circle"( Harper Perennial):

"Take your hands from under the blanket!" (the guard ordered the prisoner).

"What for? Innokenty exclaimed, almost weeping. "Why did you wake me up? I had such difficulty getting to sleep!"

"Get your hands out!" the guard repeated, unmoved. "Hands must be out in the open."

Innokenty obeyed. But it proved to be not so easy to fall asleep with his hands above the blanket. This was diabolically clever! Human beings, without even noticing it, have an inveterate habit of concealing their hands, pressing them to their bodies, while they sleep.

Innokenty tossed and turned, trying to adapt himself to yet another cruel humiliation."

President Obama said he'll take the Pentagon's word that its treatment of Manning in the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., is "appropriate," and immediately dropped a veil of secrecy over the reasons why he thought so, explaining, "I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well "---proving he can tell a joke as well as Bob Hope. So the anti-bullying president takes the word of the Pentagon whose secret torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere----including rape, sodomy and homicide----only yesterday revolted the world when it was revealed. By the way, did you notice sleeping with hands outside the blanket advocated in Mr. Obama's " Change We Can Believe In "?

In a letter of March 16th, to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the ACLU's Anthony Romero had to remind the former CIA Director that his treatment of Manning is "clearly forbidden by our Constitution." Romero's plea for humane treatment is not likely to move Gates, who headed the CIA when it committed some of its most egregious crimes, and who as Deputy Director allegedly urged bombing Nicaragua even though that country had not attacked America. What's more, Wikipedia relates, "Gates has been criticized for concocting evidence to show that the Soviet Union was stronger than it actually was," a falsehood that would be spread to fatten Pentagon and CIA budgets.

Denying that DOD has "any legitimate purpose in requiring Private Manning to stand naked in his observation cell at 'parade rest,' with legs spread and genitals displayed, in full view of guards and other officers," Romero charged, "The very purpose of such treatment is to degrade, humiliate, and traumatize---a purpose that cannot be squared with what the Supreme Court has described as 'the basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment, which is nothing less than the dignity of man."

So we have the topsy-turvy spectacle of Secretary Gates, who urged bombing of innocent Nicaraguans, torturing PFC Manning, who protested Pentagon killing of civilians allegedly by leaking a video of a U.S. helicopter doing its dirty work over Baghdad. Of course, tyrannies consistently punish those who tell the truth. Asked about Manning's treatment, top State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley told an MIT audience that it was "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid" and that he could not grasp why the Pentagon would do such a thing. Crowley, a veteran of 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, paid for blurting out the truth with his resignation three days later.

If Mr. Obama ever identified with the victims of bullying, he has sped light years from that noble view, stating recently that PFC Manning's conditions comply with the Pentagon's "basic standards," when, in fact, the Pentagon's "basic standards," like those of the CIA, are now seemingly indistinguishable from those of Stalin's Russia. Michelle Obama, who introduced the president at the bullying conference, urged adults to treat others with compassion and respect. "It sends a message to our kids about how they treat others," the first lady said. It sure does, and the suffering of PFC Manning sends a message to the world that reveals what her fork-tongued husband really thinks about bullying. President Obully? #

(Sherwood Ross, formerly reported for major U.S. dailies and wrote weekly columns for British and U.S. wire services. He currently directs the Anti-War News Service of Coral Gables, Florida. )

Sherwood Ross worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and contributed a regular "Workplace" column for Reuters. He has contributed to national magazines and hosted a talk show on WOL, Washington, D.C. In the Sixties he was active as public (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Obama, centrism and the Clinton myth

Friday, Mar 11, 2011 10:47 ET

Obama, centrism and the Clinton myth

Someone needs to tell the president that moving to the center is not what won Bill Clinton a second term

By Robert Reich

• 
  

Barack Obama

This piece originally appeared at Robert Reich's blog

In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle -- both for the economy's sake and for the sake of his reelection. But will he? Don't count on it.

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they're worried the President's absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year -- large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won't actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."

The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That's partly because so many of President Barack Obama's current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton's own shellacking in 1994. It's also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.

From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton's campaign script -- distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama -- or so it's supposed.

The superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there's only correlation. In fact, there's no reason to believe that Clinton's lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery.

By the spring of 1995, the American economy had bounced back, averaging 200,000 new jobs per month. By early 1996, it was roaring -- creating 434,000 new jobs in February alone. I remember suggesting to Clinton's political adviser, Dick Morris, that the president should come up with some new policy ideas for the election. Morris scowled. This election will be about the economy -- nothing more, nothing less, he said. Morris knew that voters didn't care much about policy. They cared about jobs. "The president," said Morris, "is going to say, 'You've never had it this good, and you ain't seen nothing yet.'"

The 1991-1992 recession was relatively mild as recessions go. As is typical of most recessions, it had been brought on by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates too high in response to fears of inflation -- meaning that a recovery would occur when the Fed reversed course and reduced short-term rates, which then-Chair Alan Greenspan obligingly did.

President Obama won't be as fortunate. The Great Recession resulted from the bursting of a giant debt bubble. Wall Street's irresponsible lending and speculating, negligible oversight by federal regulators, and the insatiable desire of Americans to use their homes as ATMs created a toxic mixture that exploded at the end of 2007 and continues to sicken the economy.

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero for more than a year and has opened the spigots of its discount window, without much result. Unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. Economic growth is pathetic.

While jobs used to follow corporate profits, American corporations now rack up big profits without expanding employment. Their profits are coming mainly from buoyant sales by their foreign operations -- especially in China and India -- combined with cuts in jobs, wages, and benefits here in the U.S.

The richest 10 percent of Americans, who own about 90 percent of all financial assets, are buying again (sales at Neiman Marcus and Tiffany's are way up). But most Americans still have little purchasing power. Under a huge load of debt, worried about meeting mortgage payments, and seeing their major asset -- their home -- continue to drop in value, they're holding back from the malls.

A strong recovery cannot be sustained by the richest 10 percent. Before the Great Recession, the top 10 percent received about half of total income, but they accounted for only about 40 percent of total spending. Forty percent of spending isn't enough to convince businesses to invest in new capacity and jobs, which is why corporations are still sitting on $1.4 trillion of cash.

So many jobs have been lost since Obama was elected and so many people have entered the workforce needing jobs that even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s, year after year, the unemployment rate wouldn't fall below 6 percent until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least.

If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Obama's challenge in 2012 has nothing to do with Bill Clinton's in 1996. He must fight the Republican plans to cut the budget deficit this year and next, and explain to the public why he's doing so. And he must convince Americans that public spending during the next few years is necessary to get the economy moving, reduce the long-term debt as a portion of the total economy, and get jobs back.

• Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. He is also a blogger and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." More: Robert Reich

Daniel Ellsberg: Obama ‘needs to get a grip’

Daniel Ellsberg: Obama ‘needs to get a grip’

By Muriel Kane

Friday, March 11th, 2011 -- 9:18 pm

Tags: analyst, barack obama, confession, daniel ellsberg, daniel ellsburg, Greenwald, New, pentagon papers, prison psychologist, state department spokesman, Times

Vietnam War era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg slammed President Barack Obama's assertion Friday that the Pentagon has assured him the terms of Pfc. Bradley Manning's confinement "are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards."

Manning has been in a military brig since last summer under suspicion of being the source of a massive transfer of secret United States documents to WikiLeaks and has been subjected to increasingly harsh conditions,

Ellsberg, a former military analyst known for having leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other papers in 1971, fired off a quick response to Obama's remarks in an op-ed for the Guardian, writing, "If Obama believes that, he'll believe anything. I would hope he would know better than to ask the perpetrators whether they've been behaving appropriately."

"I can just hear President Nixon saying to a press conference the same thing," Ellsberg suggested, making a sarcastic reference to his own history as a whistleblower: "'I was assured by the the White House Plumbers that their burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in Los Angeles was appropriate and met basic standards.'"

"If President Obama really doesn't yet know the actual conditions of Manning's detention," Ellsberg added, "if he really believes, as he's said, that 'some of this [nudity, isolation, harassment, sleep-deprivation] has to do with Private Manning's wellbeing', despite the contrary judgments of the prison psychologist – then he's being lied to, and he needs to get a grip on his administration."

Ellsberg went on to refer more favorably to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley's description of Manning's treatment as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid."

"It's what the CIA calls 'no-touch torture,'" Ellsberg explained "and its purpose there, as in this case, is very clear: to demoralise someone to the point of offering a desired confession. That's what they are after, I suspect, with Manning. They don't care if the confession is true or false, so long as it implicates WikiLeaks in a way that will help them prosecute Julian Assange."

Blogger Glenn Greenwald and others have been suggesting for some months that Federal investigators are attempting to force Manning to implicate Assange because they have no other basis for a criminal prosecution of WikiLeaks.

In December, the New York Times suggested that "Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them."

"[The Times] story appears to shed substantial light on my story from yesterday about the repressive conditions under which Manning is being detained," Greenwald commented. "The need to have Manning make incriminating statements against Assange -- to get him to claim that Assange actively, in advance, helped Manning access and leak these documents -- would be one obvious reason for subjecting Manning to such inhumane conditions: if you want to have better treatment, you must incriminate Assange."

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Obama's Outrageous and Lawless Authorization of Military Commissions Injustice

March 9, 2011 at 03:49:55

Obama's Lawless Authorization of Military Commissions Injustice

By Stephen Lendman (about the author)

Obama's Lawless Authorization of Military Commissions Injustice - by Stephen Lendman

On March 7, New York Times writers Scott Shane and Mark Landler headlined, "Obama Clears Way for Guantanamo Trials," saying:

By Executive Order (EO), Obama authorized their use "with revamped procedures but implicitly admitt(ed) the failure of his pledge to close the prison camp."

Since taking office, Obama broke every important pledge he made with regard to:

-- war and peace;

-- fixing the economy;

-- helping beleaguered homeowners;

-- supporting organized labor;

-- helping working Americans, especially those most vulnerable, disadvantaged, and harmed by economic crisis;

-- governing lawfully;

-- ending illegal domestic spying;

-- environmental protection;

-- a public option included in health care reform;

-- ending Wall Street shenanigans, corruption, and market manipulation;

-- protecting whistleblowers, human rights, civil liberties, and public education;

-- Net Neutrality;

-- food safety;

-- "ensur(ing) that the hopes and concerns of average Americans speak louder in Washington than the hallway whispers of high-priced lobbyists" - the same ones who own him; and

-- ending torture, closing Guantanamo, and assuring due process and judicial fairness in civil courts for everyone brought to trial based on hard, not secret or bogus, evidence.

Instead, Obama's March 7 EO authorized indefinite detentions and military commissions in violation of the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, stating:

"No person....shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...."

Indefinite detentions and military commissions are lawless, indefensible, unjustifiable practices that democratic civil societies don't tolerate. They're reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Stalinist show trials, assuring guilt by accusation.

The full text of Obama's EO can be accessed through the following link:

click here=1

A previous article explained the following:

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA), listing changes that include discarding the phrase "unlawful enemy combatant" for "unprivileged enemy belligerent." Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, and allowing torture there and abroad.

MCA grants sweeping police state powers, including that "no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever....relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission (including) challenges to the lawfulness of (its) procedures...."

MCA scraped habeas protection (dating back to the 1215 Magna Carta) for domestic and foreign state enemies, citizens and non-citizens alike, and says "Any person is punishable... who....aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures," and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provide "material support" to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts. No evidence is needed. Those charged are guilty by accusation. The hangman or a firing squad awaits. Appeals aren't allowed.

Other key provisions include:

-- legalizing torture against anyone, letting the president decide what procedures can be used on his own authority;

-- denying detainees international law protection, letting the executive interpret or ignore it;

-- letting the president convene military commissions at his discretion to try anyone he designates an "unprivileged enemy belligerent," detaining them indefinitely in secret with or without evidence;

--denying speedy trials or any at all;

-- letting torture coerced confessions be used as evidence in trial proceedings, despite US and international law prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions; also, the US Supreme Court's February 1936 Brown v. Mississippi ruling stated:

"The rack and torture chamber may not substitute for the witness stand," and an earlier November 1926 Fisher v. State decision called coerced confessions "the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy (and) the curse of all countries" using them.

-- letting hearsay and secret evidence be used; and

-- denying due process and judicial fairness, destroying human dignity, mocking the rule of law, and sanctioning kangaroo court injustice for anyone the executive targets with or without evidence.

In other words, the rule of law is null and void. Whatever the president says goes. No one any longer is safe, including US citizens. Police state America leaves everyone potentially vulnerable, even those most law-abiding.

Currently, 172 detainees are at Guantanamo. Many remain uncharged and are held indefinitely. Others will be lawlessly tried. Obama contemptuously claimed:

Indefinite detentions and military commissions will "broaden our ability to bring terrorists to justice, provide oversight for our actions and ensure the humane treatment of the detainees."

Attorney General Holder added:

"The executive order....strengthens the legal framework under which we will continue to detain those individuals who are at war with our country and who pose a significant threat to the security of the United States."

No matter that virtually everyone at Guantanamo is innocent. Yet they've been lawless detained extrajudicially, and subjected to unspeakable tortures and ill-treatment, most, in fact, for years.

Human Rights organizations condemned Obama's EO. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said the following:

"Today's executive order....codif(ies the lawless) status quo. The creation of a review process that will take up to a year (then repeated quadrennially) is a tacit acknowledgment that the Obama administration intends to leave Guantanamo as a scheme for unlawful detention without charge and trial for future presidents to clean up," though who'll be courageous enough to try.

Many thought Obama would. Instead, he continued the same lawless Bush practices, adding more of his own. Overall, his record shows contempt for lawful justice. As a result, "Guantanamo and the military tribunal system are no longer an inheritance from the Bush administration - they will be President Obama's (permanent) legacy."

The ACLU said the following:

Flaunting international law, due process, and judicial fairness, "the Obama administration....institutionaize(d) unlawful indefinite detention (and) revive(d) the illegitimate Guantanamo military commissions....The detention of Guantanamo detainees for nine years without charge or trial is a stain on America's reputation that should be ended immediately, not given a stamp of approval."

Military commissions under past or revamped rules assure guilt by accusation. "The only way to restore the rule of law is to put an end to indefinite detention at Guantanamo and the broken commissions system..." Obama's EO showed contempt for lawful justice and fairness.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) tried having it both ways, saying Obama's EO "provides an additional layer of review not previously available," implying improvement when, in fact, there's none - just cover for continued lawlessness.

At the same time, HRW added that "(a)uthorizing indefinite detention(s) would have created a real danger of a permanent regime of indefinite detention for anyone the government decides is dangerous. But by limiting (the number), President Obama has committed his administration to apply the practice only to the mishandled cases left by his predecessor."

False and outrageous! Using weasel words, Obama continued the same Bush lawless practices against anyone claimed to threaten national security, including US citizens, many rotting in federal prisons unjustly.

Though HRW "strongly opposes the use of military commission(s)," its March 7 statement fell far short of unequivocally and forcefully condemning Obama's continuation of unjustifiable lawlessness.

In fact, HRW's support for the oppressed was always dubious at best, trying to have it both ways by endorsing human rights while backing US imperial lawlessness - as do its funders that include the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the (George) Soros Foundations, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Time Warner and others.

Human Rights First (HRF) called a periodic review process "a step in the right direction." In fact, it's shameless cover to continue lawless Bush era practices. However, HRF condemned military commissions and called indefinite detentions "a serious threat to fundamental rights and is no substitute for criminal justice."

In contrast, Amnesty International (AI) unequivocally denounced Obama's "new policies," saying:

"With the stoke of a pen, President Obama extinguished any lingering hope that his administration would return the United States to the rule of law by referring detainee cases from Guantanamo Bay to federal courts rather than the widely discredited military commissions."

His March 7 EO "completed the embrace of Bush era counterterrorism policy. For the new Periodic Review Boards (PRBs) are little more than a cosmetic rebranding of the much derided Combatant Status Review Tribunals that operated in Guantanamo during the Bush administration....(Obama's) 'new' policy....amounts to little more than an elaborate shell game."

In fact, it's worse by claiming responsible change as cover for continuity, one of many reasons why Obama exceeds the worst of George Bush at home and abroad, yet too few people know it. In fact, he:

-- escalated war;

-- extended it to Pakistan;

-- wages it in Somalia;

-- backs it in Yemen;

-- incites it in Libya;

-- supports global insurgencies;

-- reinvented the "Cold War;"

-- authorized special forces death squads and extrajudicial assassinations;

-- militarized Latin America and Haiti;

-- bankrolls lawless Israeli practices;

-- endorses some of the world's worst despots; and

-- governs lawlessly at home by:

-- flaunting international and constitutional law;

-- endorsing police state harshness;

-- conspiring with criminal bankers;

-- wrecking the economy;

-- looting the federal treasury;

-- forcing millions into poverty, homelessness and no futures;

-- destroying the Gulf of Mexico;

-- backing wealth and power over beneficial social change, and

-- furthering an agenda heading America for tyranny and ruin.

Detaining innocent men indefinitely and consigning others to military commissions further unmasks a rogue administration pretending to be democratic. Unfortunately, this one has over 22 months left plus another four years if reelected. Global millions tremble at the prospect, including growing numbers at home with more than enough cause to react proactively for change.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/ .

I was born in 1934, am a retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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