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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Obama Admin Seeks Permission To Lie In Response To Freedom Of Information Requests - Even To The Courts



October 25, 2011 at 15:31:46

Obama Admin Seeks Permission To Lie In Response To Freedom Of Information Requests - Even To The Courts

By (about the author)

One of the President Obama's first promises after becoming President of the United States was a commitment to usher in a new era of unprecedented government transparency . Instead the Obama administration has exhibited what may be an unprecedented obsession with government secrecy including blocking numerous law suits by invoking the doctrine of "State Secrets." The administration has even come up with an interpretation of the Patriot Act which many in Congress who have seen it claim is overly broad and bestows more power on the Executive Branch than was intended by Congress when they passed it.

Unfortunately those in Congress who have seen this document are not permitted to divulge its content, and we, the public, cannot see it because the administration has chosen to classify it as a "State Secret." In other words, you might be doing something that the Obama Administration believes violates the Patriot Act, but you won't know it until they indict you for breaking a law you did not know existed (I might be breaking it just by penning and publishing this article).

Now the Obama/Holder Justice Department is attempting to re-write the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), empowering or even compelling government agencies to deny the very existence of records they know to exist if they believe they are legitimately exempted from disclosure. Of course they are most likely the sole arbiter of whether they are indeed exempt from disclosure. In effect the Obama/Holder Justice Department wants to be free to legally lie about the existence of records in response to FOIA requests. Apparently they want to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience of being officially rebuked by the courts for doing exactly that (lying to a Federal judge), as occurred earlier this year when, in a strongly worded opinion, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney wrote that the "Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court." The solution is simple: re-write the law so the government, in many circumstances, can affirmatively mislead the court.

Despite substantial opposition by such groups as the ACLU, The National Press Club, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, OpentheGovernment.org., Judicial Watch, et al to this radical re-write of the FOIA Law , this controversial effort by the Obama Administration to evade the very transparency it so passionately promised to deliver has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media which is supposed to the guardian of the people's right to know.

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or neither, this move by the Obama administration should trouble you deeply. Is this change we can believe in???

Below are snippets of reports on this controversy, none of them from a mainstream media source. That was not my intent. I just could not find any. I learned about it just this morning in an e-mail from the National Law Journal:

National Press Club Urges Administration to Reconsider Draft Rule on Freedom of Information

"Under the new Department of Justice proposal, in replying to a request for information under the freedom-of-information law, if the information is allowed to be withheld under certain statutory exceptions, then federal officials "will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist"--even if that is not the case.

"No rule or law should allow, let alone require, the government to mislead the press or the public about anything," said Mark Hamrick , a broadcast journalist with the Associated Press who is the 2011 president of the National Press Club. "If enacted, it appears that this proposed rule would offend the precepts that informed the Freedom of Information Act, and it would tarnish the government's credibility.

"What's more, the change seems unnecessary," he said. "If agencies are exercising legally allowable exceptions to the law and withholding certain records, they can just continue to do as they do today: neither confirm nor deny the information's existence.""

Justice Dept. proposes lying, hiding existence of records under new FOIA rule

"The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist," rather than citing the relevant exemption.

The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who've called it "Orwellian" and say it will "twist" public access to government.

In a public comment regarding the rule change, the ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org, said the move "will dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people."

"Conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch has also lambasted the proposed rules change

"Upon taking office, President Obama released a memorandum declaring his administration was "committed to operating with an unprecedented level of openness. Specifically, he pledged to bolster the strength of the FOIA act, calling it "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government."

Government Could Hide Existence of Records under FOIA Rule Proposal

"The ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and OpenTheGovernment.org said the move would "dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government to be twisted.

"Open government groups also contend that the proposed rule could undermine judicial proceedings.

In a recent case brought by the ACLU of Southern California, the FBI denied the existence of documents. But the court later discovered that the documents did exist. In an amended order , U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney wrote that the "Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court."

DOJ's draft FOIA rule was first published in March , but DOJ re-opened comment submissions in September at the request of open-government groups. The new comment period ended October 19"

redacted documents flickr image By wnjr


I have been an advertising executive most of my career with a long-time interest in progressive politics and journalism. I am now running as the Democartic candidate for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on PA-41 where one of my objectives (more...)
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and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors

Afghan and Iraq Wars Will Remain As Endless As Obama's Lies

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice

Afghan War Remains Endless While Obama’s Iraq Plan Fails

The 10th anniversary of Washington’s invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed October 7, but despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to terminate the U.S. “combat mission” by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer.

The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out “extremists” and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters.

Washington’s tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press October 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring “God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan…. If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”

At the same time, Washington has just suffered a spectacular setback in Iraq, where the Obama Administration has been applying extraordinary pressure on the Baghdad government for over a year to permit many thousands of U.S. troops to remain indefinitely after all American forces are supposed to withdraw at the end of this year.

President Obama received the Iraqi government’s rejection from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki October 21, and promptly issued a public statement intended to completely conceal the fact that a long-sought U.S. goal has just been obliterated, causing considerable disruption to U.S. plans. Obama made a virtue of necessity by stressing that “Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”

This article will first discuss the situation in Afghanistan after 10 years, then take up the Iraq question and what the U.S. may do to compensate for a humiliating and disruptive rebuff.

The United States is well aware it will never win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. At this point, the Obama Administration is anxious to convert the military stalemate into a form of permanent truce, if only the Taliban were willing to accept what amounts to a power sharing deal that would allow Washington to claim the semblance of success after a decade of war.

In addition, President Obama seeks to retain a large post-”withdrawal” military presence throughout the country mainly for these reasons:

• To protect its client regime in Kabul led by Karzai, as well as Washington’s other political and commercial interests in the country, and to maintain a menacing military presence on Iran’s eastern border, especially if U.S. troops cannot now remain in Iraq.

• To retain territory in Central Asia for U.S. and NATO military forces positioned close to what Washington perceives to be its two main (though never publicly identified) enemies — China and Russia — at a time when the American government is increasing its political pressure on both countries. Obama is intent upon transforming NATO from a regional into a global adjunct to Washington’s quest for retaining and extending world hegemony. NATO’s recent victory in Libya is a big advance for U.S. ambitions in Africa, even if the bulk of commercial spoils go to France and England. A permanent NATO presence in Central Asia is a logical next step. In essence, Washington’s geopolitical focus is expanding from the Middle East to Central Asia and Africa in the quest for resources, military expansion and unassailable hegemony, especially from the political and economic challenge of rising nations of the global south, led China.

There has been an element of public deception about withdrawing U.S. “combat troops” from Iraq and Afghanistan dating from the first Obama election campaign in 2007-8. Combat troops belong to combat brigades. In a variant of bait-and-switch trickery, the White House reported that all combat brigades departed Iraq in August 2010. Technically this is true, because those that did not depart were simply renamed “advise and assist brigades.” According to a 2009 Army field manual such brigades are entirely capable, “if necessary,” of shifting from “security force assistance” back to combat duties.

In Afghanistan, after the theoretical pull-out date, it is probable that many ”advise and assist brigades” will remain along with a large complement of elite Joint Special Operations Forces strike teams (SEALs, Green Berets, etc.) and other officially “non-combat” units — from the CIA, drone operators, fighter pilots, government security employees plus “contractor security” personnel, including mercenaries. Thousands of other “non-combat” American soldiers will remain to train the Afghan army.

According to an October 8 Associated Press dispatch, “Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 such [special operations-type] forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.”

Estimates of how long the Pentagon will remain in Afghanistan range from 2017 to 2024 to “indefinitely.”

Obama marked the 10th anniversary with a public statement alleging that “Thanks to the extraordinary service of these [military] Americans, our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure”— the most recent of the continuous praise of war-fighters and the conduct of these wars of choice from the White House since the 2001 bombing, invasion and occupation.

Just two days earlier a surprising Pew Social Trend poll of post-9/11 veterans was made public casting doubt about such a characterization. Half the vets said the Afghanistan war wasn’t worth fighting in terms of benefits and costs to the U.S. Only 44% thought the Iraq war was worth fighting. One-third opined that both wars were not worth waging. Opposition to the wars has been higher among the U.S. civilian population. But it’s unusual in a non-conscript army for its veterans to emerge with such views about the wars they volunteered to fight.

The U.S. and its NATO allies issued an unusually optimistic assessment of the Afghan war on October 15, but it immediately drew widespread skepticism. According to the New York Times the next day, “Despite a sharp increase in assassinations and a continuing flood of civilian casualties, NATO officials said that they had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency as enemy attacks were falling for the first time in years…. [This verdict] runs counter to dimmer appraisals from some Afghan officials and other international agencies, including the United Nations. With the United States preparing to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year and 23,000 more by next October, it raises questions about whether NATO’s claims of success can be sustained.”

Less than two weeks earlier German Gen. Harald Kujat, who planned his country’s military support mission in Afghanistan, declared that “the mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States. But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed.”

According to Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a critically important “long term commitment” and “we’re going to be there longer than 2014.” He made the disclosure to the Senate Armed Services Committee September 22, a week before he retired. In a statement October 3, the Pentagon’s new NATO commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, declared: “The plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. And so, while some folks might hear that we’re departing in 2014… we’re actually going to be here for a long time.”

Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, departing head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the AP October 8: “We’re moving toward an increased special operations role…,whether it’s counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency.” White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in mid-September that by 2014 “the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta strongly supports President Obama’s call for an “enduring presence” in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Former U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last year for his unflattering remarks about Obama Administration officials, said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations October 6 that after a decade of fighting in Afghanistan the U.S. was only “50% of the way” toward attaining its goals. “We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he said. “Most of us — me included — had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

Washington evidently had no idea that one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world — a society of 30 million people where the literacy rate is 28% and life expectancy is just 44 years — would fiercely fight to retain national sovereignty. The Bush Administration, which launched the Afghan war a few weeks after 9/11, evidently ignored the fact that the people of Afghanistan ousted every occupying army from that of Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn to the British Empire and the USSR.

The U.S. spends on average in excess of $2 billion a week in Afghanistan, not to mention the combined spending of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, but the critical needs of the Afghan people in terms of health, education, welfare and social services after a full decade of military involvement by the world’s richest countries remain essentially untended.

For example, 220,000 Afghan children under five — one in five — die every year due to pneumonia, poor nutrition, diarrhea and other preventable diseases, according to the State of the World’s Children report released by the UN Children’s Fund. UNICEF also reports the maternal mortality rate with about 1,600 deaths per every 100,000 live births. Save the Children says this amounts to over 18,000 women a year. It is also reported by the UN that 70% of school-age girls do not attend school for various reasons — conservative parents, lack of security, or fear for their lives. All told, about 92% of the Afghan population does not have access to proper sanitation.

Even after a decade of U.S. combat, the overwhelming majority of the Afghan people still have no clear idea why Washington launched the war. According to the UK’s Daily Mail September 9, a new survey by the International Council on Security and Development showed that 92% of 1,000 Afghan men polled had never even heard of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — the U.S. pretext for the invasion — and did not know why foreign troops were in the country. (Only men were queried in the poll because many more of them are literate, 43.1% compared to 12.6% of women.)

In another survey, conducted by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation and released October 18, 56% of Afghans view U.S./NATO troops as an occupying force, not allies as Washington prefers. The survey results show that “there appears to be an increasing amount of anxiety and fear rather than hope.”

Perhaps the most positive news about Afghanistan — and it is a thunderously mixed “blessing” — is that the agricultural economy boomed last year. But, reports the October 11 Business Insider, it’s because “rising opium prices have upped the ante in Afghanistan, and farmers have responded by posting a 61% increase in opium production.” Afghani farmers produce 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Half-hearted U.S.-NATO eradication efforts failed because insufficient attention was devoted to providing economic and agricultural substitutes for the cultivation of opium.

Another outcome of foreign intervention and U.S. training is the boundless brutality and corruption of the Afghan police toward civilians and especially Taliban “suspects.” Writing in Antiwar.com John Glaser reported:

“Detainees in Afghan prisons are hung from the ceilings by their wrists, severely beaten with cables and wooden sticks, have their toenails torn off, are treated with electric shock, and even have their genitals twisted until they lose consciousness, according to a study released October 10 by the United Nations. The study, which covered 47 facilities sites in 22 provinces, found ‘a compelling pattern and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment’ during interrogation by U.S.-supported Afghan authorities. Both U.S. and NATO military trainers and counterparts have been working closely with these authorities, consistently supervising the detention facilities and funding their operations.”

In mid-September Human Rights Watch documented that U.S.-supported anti-Taliban militias are responsible for many human rights abuses that are overlooked by their American overseers. At around the same time the American Open Society Foundations revealed that the Obama Administration has tripled the number of night time military raids on civilian homes, which terrorize many families. The report noted that “An estimated 12 to 20 raids now occur per night, resulting in thousands of detentions per year, many of whom are non-combatants.” The U.S. military admits that half the arrests are “mistakes.”

Meanwhile, it was reported in October that in the first nine months this year U.S.-NATO drones conducted nearly 23,000 surveillance missions in the Afghanistan sky. With nearly 85 flights a day, the Obama Administration has almost doubled the daily amount in the last two years. Hundreds of civilians, including nearly 170 children, have been killed in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas from drone attacks. Miniature killer/surveillance drones — small enough to be carried in backpacks— are soon expected to be distributed to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

So far the Afghanistan war has taken the lives of some 1,730 American troops and about a thousand from NATO. There are no reliable figures on the number of Afghan civilians killed since the beginning of the war. The UN’s Assistance Mission to Afghanistan did not start to count such casualties until 2007. According to the Voice of America October 7, “Each year, the civilian death toll has risen, from more than 1,500 dead in 2007 to more than 2,700 in 2010. And in the first half of this year, the UN office reported there were 2,400 civilians killed in war-related incidents.”

At minimum the war has cost American taxpayers about a half-trillion dollars since 2001. The U.S. will continue to spend billions in the country for many years to come and the final cost — including interest on war debts that will be carried for scores more years — will mount to multi-trillions that future generations will have to pay. At present there are 94,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan plus about 37,000 NATO troops. Another 45,000 well paid “contractors” perform military duties, and many are outright mercenaries.

Washington is presently organizing, arming, training and financing hundreds of thousands of Afghan troops and police forces, and is expected to continue paying some $5 billion a year for this purpose at least until 2025.

The U.S. government has articulated various different objectives for its engagement in Afghanistan over the years. Crushing al-Qaeda and defeating the Taliban have been most often mentioned, but as an October 7 article from the Council on Foreign Relations points out: “The main U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain. They have meandered from marginalizing the Taliban to state-building, to counterinsurgency, to counterterrorism, to — most recently — reconciliation and negotiation with the Taliban. But the peace talks remain nascent and riddled with setbacks. Karzai suspended the talks after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the government’s chief negotiator, which the Afghan officials blamed on the Pakistan-based Haqqani network. The group denies it.”

There is another incentive for the U.S. to continue fighting in Afghanistan — to eventually convey the impression of victory, an absolute domestic political necessity.

The most compelling reason for the Afghan war is geopolitical, as noted above — finally obtaining a secure military foothold for the U.S. and its NATO accessory in the Central Asian backyards of China and Russia . In addition, a presence in Afghanistan places the U.S. in close military proximity to two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

In Iraq, the Obama Administration’s justification for retaining troops after the end of this year was ostensibly to train the Iraqi military and police forces, but there were other reasons:

• Washington seeks to remain in Iraq to keep an eye on Baghdad because it fears a mutually beneficial alliance may develop between Iraq and neighboring Iran, two Shi’ite societies in an occasionally hostile Sunni Muslim world, weakening American hegemony in the strategically important oil-rich Persian Gulf region and ultimately throughout the Middle East/North Africa.

• The U.S. also seeks to safeguard lucrative economic investments in Iraq, and the huge future profits expected by American corporations, especially in the denationalized petroleum sector. Further, Pentagon and CIA forces were stationed — until now, it seems — in close proximity to Iran’s western border, a strategic position to invade or bring about regime change.

Under other conditions, the U.S. may simply have insisted on retaining its troops regardless of Iraqi misgivings, but the Status of Forces compact governing this matter can only be changed legally by mutual agreement between Washington and Baghdad. The concord was arranged in December 2008 between Prime Minister Maliki and President George W. Bush — not Obama, who now takes credit for ending the Iraq war despite attempting to extend the mission of a large number of U.S. troops.

At first Washington wanted to retain more than 30,000 troops plus a huge diplomatic and contractor presence in Iraq after “complete” withdrawal. Maliki — pushed by many of the country’s political factions, including some influenced by Iran’s opposition to long-term U.S. occupation — held out for a much smaller number.

Early in October Baghdad decided that 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in a training-only capacity was the most that could be accommodated. In addition, the Iraqis in effect declared a degree of independence from Washington by insisting that remaining American soldiers must be kept on military bases and not be granted legal immunity when in the larger society. Washington, which has troops stationed in countries throughout the world, routinely insists upon legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise.

The White House has indicated that an arrangement may yet be worked out to permit some American trainers and experts to remain, perhaps as civilians or contractors. Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a staunch opponent of the U.S. occupation, has suggested Iraq should employ trainers for its armed forces from other countries, but this is impractical for a country using American arms and planes.

Regardless, the White House is increasing the number of State Department employees in Iraq from 8,000 to an almost unbelievable 16,000, mostly stationed at the elephantine new embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone quasi-military enclave, in new American consulates in other cities, and in top “advisory” positions in many of the of the regime’s ministries, particularly the oil ministry. Half the State Department personnel, 8,000 people, will handle “security” duties, joined by some 5,000 new private “security contractors.”

Thus, at minimum the U.S. will possess 13,000 of its own armed “security” forces, and there’s still a possibility Baghdad and Washington will work out an arrangement for adding a limited number of “non-combat” military trainers, openly or by other means.

In his October 21 remarks, Obama sought to transform the total withdrawal he sought to avoid into a simulacrum of triumph for the troops and himself: “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops…. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.”

Heads held high, proud of success — for an unjust, illegal war based on lies that is said to have cost over a million Iraqi lives and created four million refugees! It has been estimated that the final U.S. costs of the Iraq war will be over $5 trillion when the debt and interest are finally paid off decades from now.

If President Obama is reelected— even should the Iraq war actually end — he will be coordinating U.S. involvement in wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Uganda (where American 100 combat troops have just been inserted). Add to this various expanding drone campaigns, and such adventures as Washington’s support for Israel against the Palestinians and for the Egyptian military regime against popular aspirations for full democracy, followed by the backing of dictatorial regimes in a half-dozen countries, and continual threats against Iran.

Washington’s $1.4 trillion annual military and national security expenditures are a major factor behind America’s monumental national debt and the cutbacks in social services for the people, but aside from White House rhetoric about reducing redundant Pentagon expenditures, overall war/security budgets are expected to increase over the next several years.

The Bush and Obama Administrations have manipulated reality to convince American public opinion that the Iraq and Afghan wars are ending in U.S. successes. Washington fears the resurrection of the “Vietnam Syndrome” that resulted after the April 1975 U.S. defeat in Indochina. The “syndrome” led to a 15-year disinclination by the American people to support aggressive, large-scale U.S. wars against small, poor countries in the developing third world until the January 1991 Gulf War, part one of the two-part Iraq war that continued in March 2003.

According to an article in the October 9 New York Times titled “The Other War Haunting Obama,” author, journalist and Harvard emeritus professor Marvin Kalb wrote: “Ten years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, an odd specter haunts the Obama White House — the specter of Vietnam, a war lost decades before. Like Banquo’s ghost, it hovers over the White House still, an unwelcome memory of where America went wrong, a warning of what may yet go wrong.”

This fear of losing another war to a much smaller adversary — and perhaps suffering the one-term fate of President Lyndon Johnson who presided over the Vietnam debacle — evidently was a factor behind President Obama’s decision to vastly expand the size of the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan and why the White House is now planning a long-term troop presence beyond the original pullout date.

Today’s combat directly touches the lives of only a small minority of Americans — military members and families — and much of the majority remains uninformed or misinformed about many of the causes and effects of the Iraq/Afghan adventures. Obama may thus eventually be able to convey the illusion of military success, which will help pave the way for future imperial violence unless the people of the United States wise up and act en masse to prevent future aggressive wars.

Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter and a former editor of the Guardian (US) radical newsweekly. He may be reached at: jacdon@earthlink.net. Read other articles by Jack.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

President Obama’s “Unforced Errors”

CommonDreams.org


On January 27, 2010, Rachel Maddow said, “Republicans have been as unanimous as they can be in opposition to every major thing this president has tried to do and they expect to continue to be as best as I can tell, calculating that the political benefit of stopping a president from accomplishing anything is worth a lot more than any risk of being seen as obstructionist.”

Are the Republicans to blame for Obama’s apparent deviation from his campaign promises, as many now claim, or does plain evidence demonstrate that the problem is much deeper, residing within President Obama himself? From economic policy to drug policy to foreign policy and human rights to his policies on the environment, President Obama has repeatedly made unilateral decisions that call this conventional storyline into question.

It has been thoroughly documented that the President is a Constitutional scholar. Yet, President Obama has declared the innocence of those responsible for the national and global financial collapse, despite ongoing investigations, stating, “One of the biggest problems…is that a lot of this stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless.” In an attempt to comfort those who suffered the consequences of the perfectly legal misrepresentation and fraud perpetrated by the financial sector, the President reminds us that the members of the financial sector were simply doing their job. Can we really blame them for “looking for ways to make money”? Meanwhile, President Obama has been pressuring U.S. attorneys general to accept a settlement that includes blanket immunity from future prosecution, which is confusing considering the lack of illegal behavior. But the confusion lifts once one sees the revolving door at the White House.

President Obama promised change. Yet, he reserved many of the most important and influential positions for former Clinton officials, the same officials candidate Obama criticized for their role in creating the conditions that would be exploited by all those innocent bankers. The appointment of Larry Summers as Director of the National Economic Council, a position free of the need for Senate confirmation, is incomprehensible. It was Summers, along with Robert Rubin, who encouraged Congress to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, effectively overturning Glass-Steagall. Lawrence Summers, as published in the Wall Street Journal in April 2009, “received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.” Those major financial institutions included J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Nothing to see here; no conflict of interests.

Destroy the national and global economy, leading to massive unemployment and home foreclosures and you are declared innocent by our president before the conclusion of an investigation, grow and distribute medical marijuana to those who benefit from it, including cancer patients, and to whom it is prescribed by licensed doctors and face the wrath of President Obama. In 2007, Senator Obama stated, “The Justice Department going after sick individuals using this as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense.” Apparently, the President has changed his mind. In Rhode Island, Governor Chafee has decided not to move forward with the licensing of three medical marijuana dispensaries or, as Chafee refers to them, “medical marijuana compassion centers.” Why? Because Chafee has received communications from Obama’s Department of Justice that dispensaries “will be potential targets of ‘vigorous’ criminal and civil enforcement efforts by the federal government.”

In April, the President made another foray into the judiciary, announcing his verdict in the case of Bradley Manning, whistleblower and alleged Wikileaks source, claiming that Manning “broke the law.” Manning spent ten months in solitary confinement and was forced to undergo degrading treatment such as forced nudity. The UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture believe solitary confinement alone could amount to violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both of which the U.S. has ratified. Yet, President Obama stated that Manning’s confinement met “our basic standards.” The President doubled-down on this assessment, forcing PJ Crowley, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, to resign because of his honest assessment that Manning’s conditions of confinement were “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Despite Manning’s obvious guilt and the just conditions in which he was imprisoned, Obama has refused repeated requests from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, for private access to Manning. This led Mendez to say, “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr. Manning.” That might not sound like much, but in diplomatic-speak that’s a serious tongue-lashing.

Though President Obama chose “to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” when it comes to members of the Bush Administration, who have openly admitted to authorizing torture, and the activities of many on Wall Street, his Department of Justice has waged an unprecedented assault on whistleblowers. Notwithstanding the President’s 2009 expression of esteem for whistleblowers who are “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government,” the Obama administration has charged five individuals with violating the Espionage Act, more than all previous administrations combined. Take for example Thomas Drake, former senior official with the NSA and decorated veteran of the U.S. military. Drake was accused of espionage, the charge being motivated by his blowing the whistle on illegal NSA activities and mismanagement of billions of dollars.

The Bush administration executed a search warrant of Drake’s home in 2007. By the time President Bush left office, no indictment was forthcoming. Yet, 2 ½ years later, Obama’s DOJ decided to move forward with the case. Judge Richard Bennett lambasted the DOJ, stating, “That’s four years of hell that a citizen goes through. It was not proper. It doesn’t pass the smell test…I don’t think that deterrence should include an American citizen waiting two and a half years after their home is searched to find out if they’re going to be indicted or not. I find that unconscionable. Unconscionable.” This case was dead until President Obama decided to resuscitate it. Fortunately, Judge Bennett had the wisdom to put it back down.

Perhaps President Obama’s record on human rights is stronger abroad. If we were to judge him on his words alone, the answer would be a resounding ‘yes’. In May, the President threw his support behind the Arab Spring’s demand for the fulfillment of their rights, stating that “every man and woman is endowed with certain inalienable rights.” He continued, “And now we cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights, knowing that their success will bring about a world that is more peaceful, more stable, and more just.” Obama’s support for human rights, of course, all depends on whether we need the cooperation of an oppressive government in allowing the U.S. to assassinate its own citizens, including teenagers, within the oppressive regime’s territory. Remember, indefinite detention bad, targeted assassinations and summary executions good.

And let us not forget all of the innocent victims of our human-guided robot warfare. In a 2010 speech, Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman stated, “We also support the fight against terror. However, we do not accept that this fight against terror be carried out at the expense of innocent civilians….This is what happened exactly in 2009 in December, when tens of women and children were killed in Majalah, in Abyan. They were killed by U.S. drone airplanes, with a shameful coordination with the Yemeni government.” Karman provides just one example of an ever growing list of deaths that continue to soak this country’s hands in blood.

As witnessed in Yemen, as well as Bahrain, President Obama wasn’t actually talking about all movements for more responsive government and more rights. In Bahrain, dozens have been killed, many more injured, and even more arrested and fired from their jobs for participating in the Arab Spring, not to mention the arrest of medics who provided care for injured protesters, but their movement happens to be in the wrong country. Instead of Security Council resolutions condemning Bahrain, the government awaits a $53 million weapons contract with the U.S. Republicans had nothing to do with this, President Obama could have chosen a different path, but didn’t.

It could be that Obama’s policies on Yemen and Bahrain are but bad apples. It could be, but isn’t. The President is currently pressuring Congress to waive restrictions on military aid to Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan was designated by Freedom House as one of the nine “Worst of the Worst” countries in the world in terms of political rights and civil liberties. In the report it states, “Having silenced nearly all critics and perceived opponents of the regime—including independent journalists, rights activists, and political opponents—in 2010, the state went after individuals who spoke about or showed aspects of the country that the government felt damaged Uzbekistan’s image both domestically and abroad.” To the people of Uzbekistan, I am sorry that President Obama sees our war in Afghanistan as more important than supporting your inalienable rights.

I would be remiss if I omitted the very real dangers faced by union leaders and labor activists in Colombia, the lucky recipient of a free trade agreement facilitated by, you guessed it, President Obama. In 2008, according to Amnesty International, “Year after year, Colombia has symbolised the most serious and consistent abuses of this human right [to form and join trade unions]…So far this year, some 22 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia, a significant increase on the number killed in the same period last year.”

Thank goodness for the President’s record on the environment. Otherwise, this would all be bad news. President Obama, he who was going to facilitate “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” stated in North Carolina on Monday that the Republican plan for this country means “dirtier air, dirtier water.” Yet the President, from his own volition, continued use of BP’s low estimates of the rate of the spill in the Gulf, despite both the Wikileaks revelation that the administration was fully aware of similar manipulation by BP in Azerbaijan and the findings by research scientists that the flow was significantly higher than official estimates. In May 2010, NPR conducted an analysis of the flow rate. Steven Wereley, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, concluded the rate of the spill was 70,000 barrels a day, while the President continued to propagate the rate being 5,000 barrels a day. There is also the President’s unilateral decision not to change the smog standards, as recommended by the EPA, from 75 parts per billion measured over eight hours to 70 parts per billion. In other words, it is the President’s plan that means dirtier air.

Blaming the Republicans for all of President Obama’s failed policies and weak compromises is a failure to understand reality. That the Republicans have not bargained in good faith is something I fully recognize, but I also recognize the need to objectively assess the policies of this president. Failure to do so leads to the partisan trap, one in which members of both sides of the partisan divide vehemently defend the indefensible and use terms like ‘pragmatic’ to do so. Lucky for us, the only thing that stands in the way of the indefensible Keystone XL pipeline is President Barack Obama. As stated by James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the President’s next unforced error, approval of the pipeline, would mean “game over” for the long-term health of this planet.

Jeff Bachman

Jeff Bachman is currently writing his dissertation for a PhD in Law and Public Policy from Northeastern University. His focus is in international law and human rights. He is also currently a Visiting Lecturer in Political Science and Women's Studies at University of Rhode Island.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Financial Polarization and Corruption: Obama’s Politics of Deception






The seeds for President Obama’s demagogic press conference on Thursday were planted last summer when he assigned his right-wing Committee of 13 the role of resolving the obvious and inevitable Congressional budget standoff by forging an anti-labor policy that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and uses the savings to bail out banks from even more loans that will go bad as a result of the IMF-style austerity program that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed to back.

The problem facing Mr. Obama is obvious enough: How can he hold the support of moderates and independents (or as Fox News calls them, socialists and anti-capitalists), students and labor, minorities and others who campaigned so heavily for him in 2008? He has double-crossed them – smoothly, with a gentle smile and patronizing patter talk, but with an iron determination to hand federal monetary and tax policy over to his largest campaign contributors: Wall Street and assorted special interests – the Democratic Party’s Rubinomics and Clintonomics core operators, plus smooth Bush Administration holdovers such as Tim Geithner, not to mention quasi-Cheney factotums in the Justice Department.

President Obama’s solution has been to do what any political demagogue does: Come out with loud populist campaign speeches that have no chance of becoming the law of the land, while quietly giving his campaign contributors what they’ve paid him for: giveaways to Wall Street, tax cuts for the wealthy (euphemized as tax “exemptions” and mark-to-model accounting, plus an agreement to count their income as “capital gains” taxed at a much lower rate).

So here’s the deal the Democratic leadership has made with the Republicans. The Republicans will run someone from their present gamut of guaranteed losers, enabling Mr. Obama to run as the “voice of reason,” as if this somehow is Middle America. This will throw the 2012 election his way for a second term if he adopts their program – a set of rules paid for by the leading campaign contributors to both parties.

President Obama’s policies have not been the voice of reason. They are even further to the right than George W. Bush could have achieved. At least a Republican president would have confronted a Democratic Congress blocking the kind of program that Mr. Obama has rammed through. But the Democrats seem stymied when it comes to standing up to a president who ran as a Democrat rather than the Tea Partier he seems to be so close to in his ideology.

So here’s where the Committee of 13 comes into play. Given (1) the agreement that if the Republicans and Democrats do NOT agree on Mr. Obama’s dead-on-arrival “job-creation” ploy, and (2) Republican House Leader Boehner’s statement that his party will reject the populist rhetoric that President Obama is voicing these days, then (3) the Committee will get its chance to wield its ax and cut federal social spending in keeping with its professed ideology.

President Obama signaled this long in advance, at the outset of his administration when he appointed his Deficit Reduction Commission headed by former Republican Sen. Simpson and Rubinomics advisor to the Clinton administration Bowles to recommend how to cut federal social spending while giving even more money away to Wall Street. He confirmed suspicions of a sellout by reappointing bank lobbyist Tim Geithner to the Treasury, and tunnel-visioned Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve Board.

Yet on Wednesday, October 4, the president tried to represent the OccupyWallStreet movement as support for his efforts. He pretended to endorse a pro-consumer regulator to limit bank fraud, as if he had not dumped Elizabeth Warren on the advice of Mr. Geithner – who seems to be settling into the role of bagman for campaign contributors from Wall Street.

Can President Obama get away with it? Can he jump in front of the parade and represent himself as a friend of labor and consumers while his appointees support Wall Street and his Committee of 13 is waiting in the wings to perform its designated function of guillotining Social Security?

When I visited the OccupyWallStreet site on Wednesday, it was clear that the disgust with the political system went so deep that there is no single set of demands that can fix a system so fundamentally broken and dysfunctional. One can’t paste-up a regime that is impoverishing the economy, accelerating foreclosures, pushing state and city budgets further into deficit, and forcing cuts in social spending.

The situation is much like that from Iceland to Greece: Governments no longer represent the people. They represent predatory financial interests that are impoverishing the economy. This is not democracy. It is financial oligarchy. And oligarchies do not give their victims a voice.

So the great question is, where do we go from here? There’s no solvable path within the way that the economy and the political system is structured these days. Any attempt to come up with a neat “fix-it” plan can only suggest bandages for what looks like a fatal political-economic wound.

The Democrats are as much a part of the septic disease as the Republicans. Other countries face a similar problem. The Social Democratic regime in Iceland is acting as the party of bankers, and its government’s approval rating has fallen to 12 percent. But they refuse to step down. So earlier last week, voters brought steel oil drums to their own Occupation outside the Althing and banged when the Prime Minister started to speak, to drown out her advocacy of the bankers (and foreign vulture bankers at that!).

Likewise in Greece, the demonstrators are showing foreign bank interests that any agreement the European Central Bank makes to bail out French and German bondholders at the cost of increasing taxes on Greek labor (but not Greek property and wealth) cannot be viewed as democratically entered into. Hence, any debts that are claimed, and any real estate or public enterprises given sold off to the creditor powers under distress conditions, can be reversed once voters are given a democratic voice in whether to impose a decade of poverty on the country and force emigration.

That is the spirit of civil disobedience that is growing in this country. It is a quandary – that is, a problem with no solution. All that one can do under such conditions is to describe the disease and its symptoms. The cure will follow logically from the diagnosis. The role of OccupyWallStreet is to diagnose the financial polarization and corruption of the political process that extends right into the Supreme Court, the Presidency, and Mr. Obama’s soon-to-be notorious Committee of 13 once the happy-smoke settles from his present pretensions.


Michael Hudson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Michael Hudson

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Obama’s Analysts: Oops! We Put Muslim Radicals in Charge of Libya

Impeach Obama Campaign


Obama’s Analysts: Oops! We Put Muslim Radicals in Charge of Libya

Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

Even as the Obama administration celebrates the killing of American-born al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki and his traitorous friend Samir Khan in Yemen, its analysts are beginning to admit their war by decree in Libya empowered Islamic extremists bent on exporting jihad throughout the region. Thanks to Obama’s policies, al-Qaeda-linked radicals may be pillaging Muammar Qaddafi’s stockpile of weapons and receiving shipments of contraband from overseas.

In the closest thing to an admission Obama administration figures lied us into war, Reuters reports:

During the half-year campaign by rebels to drive Muammar Gaddafi from power, U.S. and NATO officials downplayed fears that al Qaeda or other militants would infiltrate anti-Gaddafi forces or take advantage of disorder to establish footholds in Libya.

Since then, however, the assessment of top experts inside the U.S. government has sharpened.

Former CIA asset and Obama adviser Bruce Riedel summarizes, “There is a great deal of concern that the jihadi cadre now are going to be exporting their ideas and weapons toward the east and west.”

This author reported the cause of their alarm a month ago. The National Transitional Council (NTC), the body the United States now exclusively recognizes as the official government of Libya, elected Abdel Hakim Belhaj commander of the Tripoli Military Council in late August. Belhaj is the co-founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which the State Department designated a foreign terrorist organization in December 2004. The New York Times relates that LIFG members received “combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan” — fighting the United States. Belhaj, who met Osama bin Laden twice, now commands 8,000 troops, Libya’s largest fighting force.

U.S. analysts, who covered up the links the “rebels” have to Islamic fundamentalists, now worry Belhaj and his LIFG warriors have raided Qaddafi’s arsenal, despoiling it of anti-aircraft weapons that could one day be turned against U.S. or NATO planes.

The radicals may not need Qaddafi’s weapons, as other nations in the area are reportedly replenishing their cache. Rebels in the city of Zintan intercepted a cargo shipment to Belhaj from the nation of Qatar, which Belhaj insisted contained food and milk. Those who opened it say it contained weapons. Taking note of the interference Mohamed Benrasali, a leading figure in the Libyan government, replied, “We are very sorry the Qataris have taken the decision to support Belhaj’s brigade. This will backfire on our Qatari friends.”

Despite Benrasali’s tough talk, one suspects the fire will aimed in his direction.

Qatar was influenced to support the rebels by Sheik Ali Salabi, a Libyan Islamic scholar who lives in the monarchy….

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Impeach Obama: Obama Double Crosses The Environmentalists



October 2, 2011 at 10:38:04

Obama Double Crosses The Environmentalists



By Sherwood Ross (about the author)

President Obama's betrayal of the environmental protection movement could cause him to lose his activist base and ruin his bid for re-election next year. That's the editorial opinion of "The Nation" magazine in its October 3rd issue and there's a lot to it.


"Obama has 13 months to persuade voters that they should blame not him but the GOP for his presidency's shortcomings. He has much less time to convince the thousands of activists nationwide---who do the grunt work of getting out the vote---that he's worth their sweat and sacrifices one more time," the editorial said.


While noting that Obama "has done some good things on the environment," including the fuel efficiency standards he pushed through this year, "he has done bad things as well, including opening vast tracts of the West to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives," "The Nation" said.


One of those "bad things," the liberal magazine charged, was his decision September 2nd "ordering the EPA to delay new regulations on ozone emissions because the rules pose undue 'burdens' on corporate polluters." Environmental activists want Obama to live up to the pledge he made when running for office that during his watch the global warming trend would slow.


Environmentalists want Obama to block the "climate-killing tar sands pipeline projected to run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico," "The Nation" said. That's the 1,700-mile-long Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to be built at a cost of $13 billion from Alberta and which would, in the words of activist Bill McKibben, "transport the dirtiest fossil fuel on earth" across the American heartland, including over the Ogallala aquifer.


Citing EPA's estimate the Alberta, Canada, tar sands, if burned, would emit 82% more greenhouse gases than conventional fossil fuels, one environmental activist called the pipeline "a fuse to the second-largest pool of carbon on the planet," after Saudi Arabia.


"If Obama approves the pipeline, explains Courtney Hight, his Florida youth-vote director in 2008 who was arrested in the protest outside the White House, 'it is just human nature that the resulting disappointment will sap the enthusiasm that drove us to work so hard last time." Hight was one of 1,253 arrested outside the White House in the two weeks ending September 3rd demonstrating against environmental degradation. It was the largest such pro-environmental non-violent protest in U.S. history.


By delaying his promised action against ozone emissions, the magazine said, Obama "repudiated science," as the independent panel of experts advising EPA were unanimous in recommending tougher regulations "which would reduce the incidence of child asthma and avoid 12,000 deaths a year."


"Obama blatantly double-cross environmentalists," the magazine said, "who were suing the EPA over these regulations when Obama took office. His aides persuaded them to drop the suit because Obama's EPA would soon strengthen the regulations."


"Overriding the EPA in this manner," the magazine continued, "sets an ominous precedent for the tar sands decision which Obama is scheduled to make by year's end."


Obama's action also undercut EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, raising questions about whether she will resign. If she does, the liberal weekly said, it will cost the administration "its strongest environmental voice."


The president has already turned off countless supporters by launching wars without first seeking the approval of Congress; by expanding the illegal use of drone assassinations; by taking it upon himself to assassinate American citizens without a court order; by failing to close Guantanamo prison; by compromising on universal health care; and by following the pro-Big Oil /CIA policy line, which calls for building a pipeline across Afghanistan.


There's some suspense as to whether Obama will decide for or against the Keystone XL pipeline route from Canada, until, of course, one looks at his war in Afghanistan and all the blood he is spilling there to secure control of that pipeline route. Any wagers? #


(Sherwood Ross is an American public relations consultant who also writes on military and political topics.)

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...)

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