Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, civil liberties, civil rights, DOJ, FBI, George Bush, government crimes, left right paradigm, nanny state, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Police State, search warrant, Surveillance, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: obama fraud, obama lie
The Obama DOJ’s warrantless demands for e-mails
Salon
April 15, 2010
 I want your emails. |
A very significant case involving core privacy protections is now being litigated, where the Obama Justice Department is seeking to obtain from Yahoo “all emails” sent and received by multiple Yahoo email accounts, despite the fact that DOJ has never sought, let alone obtained, a search warrant, and despite there being no notice of any kind to the email account holders:
- In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages — a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.
As part of a case conducted largely under seal and thus hidden from public view, the DOJ demanded these emails from Yahoo without any effort to demonstrate probable cause to believe the email user was involved in the commission of any crime, but instead merely based on the vague claim that there is “reasonable grounds to believe” the emails “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” If the DOJ position were accepted, Americans would have substantially less privacy protections in their email communications.
Federal law is crystal clear that a search warrant is required for the Government to obtain any emails that have been stored less than 180 days — one that requires a showing of probable cause and that the documents sought to be described with particularlity. In contrast to the nation’s largest telecoms’ eager cooperation with Bush’s illegal surveillance programs, Yahoo — to its credit — refused to turn over any such emails to the Government without a search warrant. As a result, the DOJ is now seeking a federal court Order compelling the company to comply with its demands, and a coalition of privacy groups and technology companies — led by EFF and including Google — have now filed a brief supporting Yahoo’s position. Both Yahoo and that coalition insist that federal law as well as the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protection bar the Obama DOJ from acquiring these emails without a search warrant.
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
Obama Supports Renewing The PATRIOT ACT
Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
Obama Votes YES on FISA Spy-Bill, McCain Skips
Obama Supports Giving Telecoms Amnesty for Illegal Wiretaps
Obama Implements ‘Precrime’ ‘Prolonged Detention’ for Detainees
Filed under: 2-party system, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, catastrophic event, civil unrest, Continuity of Government, DEBT, devaluation, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, DoD, domestic extremism, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Executive Order, FEMA, Fema Camps, George Bush, Great Depression, Homeland Security, HR 1585, hyperinflation, Inflation, Insurrection Act, katrina, left right paradigm, Martial Law, militarized police, national emergency, national guard, non compliance, North American Union, NORTHCOM, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, Pentagon, Police State, political dissent, Posse Comitatus, Protest, Troops, u.s. constitution, urban warfare, US Economy, War On Terror, White House | Tags: 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, BCT, Brigade Combat Team, Cable Splicer, civil disturbance, Council of Governors, EO 12656, EO 13528, Garden Plot, HSPD 20, HSPD-8, NSPD 51, Vigilant Shield 09
Obama Signed Plans For Martial Law Apparatus
Blacklisted News
January 16, 2010
 U.S. government is ratcheting up the militarized police state as they anticipate massive resistance to the economic collapse. |
In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year’s Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.
Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an “advisory panel” chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a “national emergency.”
According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.”
“When appointed” the announcement continues, “the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”
Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability.
One consequence of moves to “synchronize and integrate” state National Guard units with those of the Armed Forces would be to place them under the effective control of United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), created in 2002 by Bushist legislators in both capitalist parties under the pretext of imperialism’s endless “War on Terror.” At the time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called USNORTHCOM’s launch “the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946.”
The real-world consequences of those changes weren’t long in coming.
Following their criminal inaction during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, the Bush regime sought, but failed, to seize control of depleted Gulf Coast National Guard units, the bulk of which had been sent to Iraq along with equipment that might have aided the recovery. Bush demanded that then Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco sign over control of the Guard as well as state and local police units as the blood price for federal assistance.
At the height of the crisis, Bush cited presidential prerogatives for doing so under the Insurrection Act, a repressive statute which authorizes the President to federalize National Guard units when state governments fail to “suppress rebellion.” How the plight of citizens engulfed by Katrina’s flood waters could be twisted into an act of “rebellion” was achieved when Orwellian spin doctors, aided and abetted by a compliant media, invented a new criminal category to cover traumatized New Orleans residents: “Drowning while Black.”
Fast forward five years. Given the serious implications such proposals would have for a functioning democracy, the media’s deafening silence on Obama’s Executive Order is hardly surprising. Like their role as cheerleaders in the escalating wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, media self-censorship tell us much about the state of affairs in “new normal” America.
Like his predecessors in the Oval Office, stretching back to the 1960s with Pentagon “civil disturbance” plans such as Cable Splicer and Garden Plot, both of which are continuously updated, our “change” President will forge ahead and invest the permanent National Security bureaucracy with unprecedented power.
Under color of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, an unsavory piece of Bushist legislative detritus, “The President shall establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.”
The toothless Council, whose Executive Director will be designated by the Secretary of Defense no less, “shall meet at the call of the Secretary of Defense or the Co-Chairs of the Council.”
Will such a Council have veto power over administration deliberations? Hardly. They are relegated “to exchange views, information, or advice with the Secretary of Defense; the Secretary of Homeland Security” and “the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.”
Additional entities covered by the EO with whom the Governors Council will “exchange views” include, “the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs; the Commander, United States Northern Command; the Chief, National Guard Bureau; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; and other appropriate officials of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and appropriate officials of other executive departments or agencies as may be designated by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security.”
In other words, right from the get-go, the Council will serve as civilian cover for political decisions made by the Executive Branch and the security apparat. EO 13528 continues, “Such views, information, or advice shall concern: (a) matters involving the National Guard of the various States; (b) homeland defense; (c) civil support; (d) synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and (e) other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”
When news first broke last summer of Obama’s proposal to expand the military’s authority to respond to domestic disasters, it was opposed by the National Governors Association (NGA).
Congressional Quarterly reported that a letter sent on behalf of the NGA opposed creation of the Council on grounds that it “would invite confusion on critical command and control issues, complicate interagency planning, establish stove-piped response efforts, and interfere with governors’ constitutional responsibilities to ensure the safety and security of their citizens,” Govs. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., and Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., wrote.
According to their August letter to Paul N. Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, Douglas and Manchin III argued that “without assigning a governor tactical control” of military forces during a natural disaster such as a flood or earthquake, or an unnatural disaster such as a terrorist attack or other mass casualty event, the “strong potential exists for confusion in mission, execution and the dilution of governors’ control over situations with which they are more familiar and better capable of handling than a federal military commander.”
With slim prospects of congressional authorization for the scheme, in fact the 2008 language was removed from subsequent Defense spending legislation, other means were required. Playing bureaucratic hardball with the governors, this has now been accomplished by presidential fiat, further eroding clear constitutional limits on Executive Branch power.
These maneuvers as I have previously written, have very little to do with responding to a catastrophic emergency. Indeed, EO 13528 is only the latest iteration of plans to expand the National Security State’s writ and as such, have everything to do with decades-old Continuity of Government (COG) programs kept secret from Congress and the American people.
Derided by neocons, neoliberals and other corporatists as a quaint backwater for “conspiracy theorists” railing against “FEMA concentration camps,” Continuity of Government, and the nexus of “civil support” programs that have proliferated like noxious weeds are no laughing matter.
Indeed, even members of Congress are considered “unauthorized parties” denied access “to information on COG plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities,” according to a Pentagon document published by the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks, as are the classified annexes of National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20). In a new twist on administration promises of transparency and open government, even the redacted version of these documents have been removed from the White House web site.
As Antifascist Calling previously reported (see: “Vigilant Shield 09: A Cover for Illegal Domestic Operations?“), the Congressional Research Service issued a 46-pagereport in 2008 that provided details on the COG-related National Exercise Program, a “civil support” operation that war games various disaster scenarios.
Among other things, the document outlines the serious domestic implications of military participation in national emergency preparedness drills. CRS researchers pointed to the Reagan-era Executive Order 12656 (EO 12656) that “directs FEMA to coordinate the planning, conduct, and evaluation of national security emergency exercises.” EO 12656 defines a national security emergency as “as any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”
Such programs, greatly expanded by the Bush-era Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 (HSPD-8), also removed from the White House web site, established “a national program and a multi-year planning system to conduct homeland security preparedness-related exercises.” CRS avers, “The program is to be carried out in collaboration with state and local governments and private sector entities.”
The Defense Department’s role during such emergencies were intended to focus “principally on domestic incident management, either for terrorism or non terrorist catastrophic events.” DoD would play a “significant role” in the overall response. Such murky definitions cover a lot of ground and are ripe with a potential for abuse by unscrupulous securocrats and their corporate partners.
The primary DoD entity responsible for “civil support,” a focus of Obama’s EO is USNORTHCOM and its active combat component, U.S. Army North. However, as with almost everything relating to COG and current plans under EO 13528 that propose to “synchronize and integrate State and Federal military activities,” USNORTHCOM’s role is shrouded in secrecy.
As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed in 2008, when Congressman Peter DeFazio, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney sought access to classified COG annexes, their request was denied by the White House. Scott wrote: “DeFazio’s inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.”
One hammer blow followed another. In 2008, Army Times reported, that the “3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they’re training for the same mission–with a twist–at home.”
Analyst Michel Chossudovsky commented, “What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a ‘war theater’ thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.” According to Chossudovsky, “The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.”
“It is noteworthy, the World Socialist Web Site commented, “that the deployment of US combat troops ‘as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters’ … coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
“Justified as a response to terrorist threats,” socialist critic Bill Van Auken averred, “the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America’s borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability.”
Since USNORTHCOM’s deployment of a combat brigade on U.S. soil, the capitalist crisis has deepened and intensified. With unemployment at a post-war high and the perilous economic and social conditions of the working class growing grimmer by the day, EO 13258 is a practical demonstration of ruling class consensus when it comes to undermining the democratic rights of the American people.
After all, where the defense of wealth and privileges are concerned corporate thugs and war criminals have no friends, only interests…
Filed under: Africa, africom, army, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, Colonialism, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, future wars, gas prices, Genocide, George Bush, gulf of Aden, impirialism, indian ocean, kenya, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obamas war, occupation, Oil, Petrol, recolonization, resource war, Somalia, War On Terror, yemen
Africom – Latest U.S. Bid to Recolonise Continent
All Africa
January 7, 2010
AFRICAN revolutionaries now have to sleep with one eye open because the United States of America is not stopping at anything in its bid to establish Africom, a highly-equipped US army that will be permanently resident in Africa to oversee the country’s imperialist interests.
Towards the end of last year, the US government intensified its efforts to bring a permanent army to settle in Africa, dubbed the African Command (Africom) as a latest tool for the subtle recolonisation of Africa.
Just before end of last year, General William E. Garret, Commander US Army for Africa, met with defence attaches from all African embassies in Washington to lure them into selling the idea of an American army based in Africa to their governments.
Latest reports from the White House this January indicate that 75 percent of the army’s establishment work has been done through a military unit based in Stuttgart, Germany, and that what is left is to get an African country to host the army and get things moving.
Liberia and Morocco have offered to host Africom while Sadc has closed out any possibility of any of its member states hosting the US army.
Other individual countries have remained quiet.
Liberia has longstanding ties with the US due to its slave history while errant Morocco, which is not a member of the African Union and does not hold elections, might want the US army to assist it to suppress any future democratic uprising.
Sadc’s refusal is a small victory for the people of Africa in their struggle for total independence but the rest of the regional blocs in Africa are yet to come up with a common position. This is worrying.
The US itself wanted a more strategic country than Morocco and Liberia since the army will be the epicentre of influencing, articulating and safeguarding US foreign and economic policies.
The other danger is that Africom will open up Africa as a battleground between America and anti-US terrorist groups.
Africom is a smokescreen behind which America wants to hide its means to secure Africa’s oil and other natural resources, nothing more.
African leaders must not forget that military might has been used by America and Europe again and again as the only effective way of accomplishing their agenda in ensuring that governments in each country are run by people who toe their line.
By virtue of its being resident in Africa, Africom will ensure that America has its tentacles easily reaching every African country and influencing every event to the American advantage.
By hosting the army, Africa will have sub-contracted its military independence to America and will have accepted the process that starts its recolonisation through an army that can subdue any attempts by Africa to show its own military prowess.
The major question is: Who will remove Africom once it is established? By what means?
By its origin Africom will be technically and financially superior to any African country’s army and will dictate the pace for regime change in any country at will and also give depth, direction and impetus to the US natural resource exploitation scheme.
There is no doubt that as soon as the army gets operational in Africa, all the gains of independence will be reversed.
If the current leadership in Africa succumbs to the whims of the US and accept the operation of this army in Africa, they will go down in the annals of history as that generation of politicians who accepted the evil to prevail.
Even William Shakespeare would turn and twist in his grave and say: “I told you guys that it takes good men to do nothing for evil to prevail.”
We must not forget that Africans, who are still smarting from colonialism-induced humiliation, subjugation, brutality and inferiority complex, do not need to be taken back to another form of colonialism, albeit subtle.
Africom has been controversial on the continent ever since former US president George W. Bush first announced it in February 2007.
African leaders must not forget that under the Barack Obama administration, US policy towards Africa and the rest of the developing world has not changed an inch. It remains militaristic and materialistic.
Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations argue that the major objective of Africom is to professionalise security forces in key countries across Africa.
However, both administrations do not attempt to address the impact of the setting up of Africom on minority parties, governments and strong leaders considered errant or whether the US will not use Africom to promote friendly dictators.
Training and weapons programmes and arms transfers from Ukraine to Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Ethiopia and the transitional government in Somalia, clearly indicate the use of military might to maintain influence in governments in Africa, remains a priority of US foreign policy.
Ukraine’s current leadership was put into power by the US under the Orange Revolution and is being given a free role to supply weaponry in African conflicts.
African leaders must show solidarity and block every move by America to set up its bases in the motherland unless they want to see a new round of colonisation.
Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Mugabe, Sam Nujoma, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Kenneth Kaunda, Augustino Neto and Samora Machel, among others, will have fought liberation wars for nothing, if Africom is allowed a base in Africa.
Thousands of Africans who died in colonial prisons and in war fronts during the liberation struggles, will have shed their blood for nothing if Africa is recolonised.
Why should the current crop of African leaders accept systematic recolonisation when they have learnt a lot from colonialism, apartheid and racism? Why should the current crop of African leaders fail to stand measure for measure against the US administration and tell it straight in the face that Africa does not need a foreign army since the AU is working out its own army.
African leaders do not need prophets from Mars to know that US’s fascination with oil, the war on terrorism and the military will now be centred on Africa, after that escapade in Iraq.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, airstrikes, alqaeda, Arabian Peninsula, Barack Obama, Britain, bush, bush = obama, Caspian Sea, China, Colonialism, Coup, Dictatorship, drone attacks, Empire, Europe, european union, Flight 253, future wars, gas prices, George Bush, gulf, gulf of Aden, impirialism, India, indian ocean, Iran, Iraq, islamist, Israel, left right paradigm, middle east, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, mutallab, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obamas war, occupation, Oil, Oman, Pakistan, Petrol, puppet governments, resource wars, Robert Gates, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Somalia, staged terrorist attack, sunni, Turkmenistan, uav, United Kingdom, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, WW3, ww4, yemen | Tags: christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, underwear bomber
Obama’s Yemeni odyssey targets China
Asia Times
January 9, 2010
A cursory look at the map of region will show that Yemen is one of the most strategic lands adjoining waters of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. It flanks Saudi Arabia and Oman, which are vital American protectorates. In effect, Uncle Sam is “marking territory” – like a dog on a lamppost. Russia has been toying with the idea of reopening its Soviet-era base in Aden. Well, the US has pipped Moscow in the race.
The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn’t end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean’s western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China’s options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence. (are western military puppet governments)
The American intervention in Yemen is not going to be on the pattern of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will ensure he doesn’t receive any body bags of American servicemen serving in Yemen. That is what the American public expects from him. He will only deploy drone aircraft and special forces and “focus on providing intelligence and training to help Yemen counter al-Qaeda militants”, according to the US military. Obama’s main core objective will be to establish an enduring military presence in Yemen. This serves many purposes.
A new great game begins
First, the US move has to be viewed against the historic backdrop of the Shi’ite awakening in the region. The Shi’ites (mostly of the Zaidi group) have been traditionally suppressed in Yemen. Shi’ite uprisings have been a recurring theme in Yemen’s history. There has been a deliberate attempt to minimize the percentage of Shi’ites in Yemen, but they could be anywhere up to 45%.
More importantly, in the northern part of the country, they constitute the majority. What bothers the US and moderate Sunni Arab states – and Israel – is that the Believing Youth Organization led by Hussein Badr al-Houthi, which is entrenched in northern Yemen, is modeled after Hezbollah in Lebanon in all respects – politically, economically, socially and culturally.
Yemenis are an intelligent people and are famous in the Arabian Peninsula for their democratic temperament. The Yemeni Shi’ite empowerment on a Hezbollah-model would have far-reaching regional implications. Next-door Oman, which is a key American base, is predominantly Shi’ite. Even more sensitive is the likelihood of the dangerous idea of Shi’ite empowerment spreading to Saudi Arabia’s highly restive Shi’ite regions adjoining Yemen, which on top of it all, also happen to be the reservoir of the country’s fabulous oil wealth.
Saudi Arabia is entering a highly sensitive phase of political transition as a new generation is set to take over the leadership in Riyadh, and the palace intrigues and fault lines within the royal family are likely to get exacerbated. To put it mildly, given the vast scale of institutionalized Shi’ite persecution in Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabi establishment, Shi’ite empowerment is a veritable minefield that Riyadh is petrified about at this juncture. Its threshold of patience is wearing thin, as the recent uncharacteristic resort to military power against the north Yemeni Shi’ite communities bordering Saudi Arabia testifies.
The US faces a classic dilemma. It is all right for Obama to highlight the need of reform in Muslim societies – as he did eloquently in his Cairo speech last June. But democratization in the Yemeni context – ironically, in the Arab context – would involve Shi’ite empowerment. After the searing experience in Iraq, Washington is literally perched like a cat on a hot tin roof. It would much rather be aligned with the repressive, autocratic government of Saleh than let the genie of reform out of the bottle in the oil rich-region in which it has profound interests.
Obama has an erudite mind and he is not unaware that what Yemen desperately needs is reform, but he simply doesn’t want to think about it. The paradox he faces is that with all its imperfections, Iran happens to be the only “democratic” system operating in that entire region.
Iran’s shadow over the Yemeni Shi’ite consciousness worries the US to no end. Simply put, in the ideological struggle going on in the region, Obama finds himself with the ultra-conservative and brutally autocratic oligarchies that constitute the ruling class in the region. Conceivably, he isn’t finding it easy. If his own memoirs are to be believed, there could be times when the vague recollections of his childhood in Indonesia and his precious memories of his own mother, who from all accounts was a free-wheeling intellectual and humanist, must be stalking him in the White House corridors.
Israel moves in
But Obama is first and foremost a realist. Emotions and personal beliefs drain away and strategic considerations weigh uppermost when he works in the Oval Office. With the military presence in Yemen, the US has tightened the cordon around Iran. In the event of a military attack on Iran, Yemen could be put to use as a springboard by the Israelis. These are weighty considerations for Obama.
The fact is that no one is in control as a Yemeni authority. It is a cakewalk for the formidable Israeli intelligence to carve out a niche in Yemen – just as it did in northern Iraq under somewhat comparable circumstances.
Islamism doesn’t deter Israel at all. Saleh couldn’t have been far off the mark when he alleged last year that Israeli intelligence had been exposed as having kept links with Yemeni Islamists. The point is, Yemeni Islamists are a highly fragmented lot and no one is sure who owes what sort of allegiance to whom. Israeli intelligence operates marvelously in such twilight zones when the horizon is lacerated with the blood of the vanishing sun.
Israel will find a toehold in Yemen to be a god-sent gift insofar as it registers its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a dream come true for Israel, whose effectiveness as a regional power has always been seriously handicapped by its lack of access to the Persian Gulf region. The overarching US military presence helps Israel politically to consolidate its Yemeni chapter. Without doubt, Petraeus is moving on Yemen in tandem with Israel (and Britain). But the “pro-West” Arab states with their rentier mentality have no choice except to remain as mute spectators on the sidelines.
Some among them may actually acquiesce with the Israeli security presence in the region as a safer bet than the spread of the dangerous ideas of Shi’ite empowerment emanating out of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Also, at some stage, Israeli intelligence will begin to infiltrate the extremist Sunni outfits in Yemen, which are commonly known as affiliates of al-Qaeda. That is, if it hasn’t done that already. Any such link makes Israel an invaluable ally for the US in its fight against al-Qaeda. In sum, infinite possibilities exist in the paradigm that is taking shape in the Muslim world abutting into the strategic Persian Gulf.
It’s all about China
Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the “great game” of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China’s economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.
In the Indian Ocean region, China is increasingly coming under pressure. India is a natural ally of the US in the Indian Ocean region. Both disfavor any significant Chinese naval presence. India is mediating a rapprochement between Washington and Colombo that would help roll back Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. The US has taken a u-turn in its Myanmar policy and is engaging the regime there with the primary intent of eroding China’s influence with the military rulers. The Chinese strategy aimed at strengthening influence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar so as to open a new transportation route towards the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Africa, where it has begun contesting traditional Western economic dominance.
China is keen to whittle down its dependence on the Malacca Strait for its commerce with Europe and West Asia. The US, on the contrary, is determined that China remains vulnerable to the choke point between Indonesia and Malaysia.
An engrossing struggle is breaking out. The US is unhappy with China’s efforts to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf through the Central Asian region and Pakistan. Slowly but steadily, Washington is tightening the noose around the neck of the Pakistani elites – civilian and military – and forcing them to make a strategic choice between the US and China. This will put those elites in an unenviable dilemma. Like their Indian counterparts, they are inherently “pro-Western” (even when they are “anti-American”) and if the Chinese connection is important for Islamabad, that is primarily because it balances perceived Indian hegemony.
The existential questions with which the Pakistani elites are grappling are apparent. They are seeking answers from Obama. Can Obama maintain a balanced relationship vis-a-vis Pakistan and India? Or, will Obama lapse back to the George W Bush era strategy of building up India as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean under whose shadow Pakistan will have to learn to live?
US-India-Israel axis
On the other hand, the Indian elites are in no compromising mood. Delhi was on a roll during the Bush days. Now, after the initial misgivings about Obama’s political philosophy, Delhi is concluding that he is all but a clone of his illustrious predecessor as regards the broad contours of the US’s global strategy – of which containment of China is a core template.
The comfort level is palpably rising in Delhi with regard to the Obama presidency. Delhi takes the surge of the Israeli lobby in Washington as the litmus test for the Obama presidency. The surge suits Delhi, since the Jewish lobby was always a helpful ally in cultivating influence in the US Congress, media and the rabble-rousing think-tankers as well as successive administrations. And all this is happening at a time when the India-Israel security relationship is gaining greater momentum.
United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Delhi in the coming days. The Obama administration is reportedly adopting an increasingly accommodative attitude toward India’s longstanding quest for “dual-use” technology from the US. If so, a massive avenue of military cooperation is about to open between the two countries, which will make India a serious challenger to China’s growing military prowess. It is a win-win situation as the great Indian arms bazaar offers highly lucrative business for American companies.
Clearly, a cozy three-way US-Israel-India alliance provides the underpinning for all the maneuvering that is going on. It will have significance for the security of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Last year, India formalized a naval presence in Oman.
All-in-all, terrorism experts are counting the trees and missing the wood when they analyze the US foray into Yemen in the limited terms of hunting down al-Qaeda. The hard reality is that Obama, whose main plank used to be “change”, has careened away and increasingly defaults to the global strategies of the Bush era. The freshness of the Obama magic is dissipating. Traces of the “revisionism” in his foreign policy orientation are beginning to surface. We can see them already with regard to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine problem, Central Asia and towards China and Russia.
Arguably, this sort of “return of the native” by Obama was inevitable. For one thing, he is but a creature of his circumstances. As someone put it brilliantly, Obama’s presidency is like driving a train rather than a car: a train cannot be “steered”, the driver can at best set its speed, but ultimately, it must run on its tracks.
Besides, history has no instances of a declining world power meekly accepting its destiny and walking into the sunset. The US cannot give up on its global dominance without putting up a real fight. And the reality of all such momentous struggles is that they cannot be fought piece-meal. You cannot fight China without occupying Yemen.
Russia, China, Iran redraw energy map
Asia Times
January 9, 2010
The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran’s northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan’s vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is “apocalypse now” for the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?
The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran’s Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports.
We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world’s largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.
Filed under: 2-party system, airstrikes, Barack Obama, bush = obama, civilian casualties, Dictatorship, Empire, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obamas war, occupation, Saudi Arabia, Shock and Awe, State Sponsored Terrorism, yemen
U.S. Strike on Yemen Kills 120, Including Children
Filed under: 2-party system, Africa, africom, alqaeda, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, bush, bush = obama, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Empire, ethiopia, fake alqaeda, George Bush, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, obama, obama = bush, occupation, oligarchy, Somalia, Troops, War On Terror
Obama Moves Ahead With US African Command
Pambazuka News
December 17, 2009
Concerned over the supply of oil to the US and a supposed need to continue the global ‘War on Terror’, President Barack Obama has essentially maintained the militarised approach to Africa that was the hallmark of his immediate predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The escalation of AFRICOM (United States African Command) activities underlines a troubling commitment to an approach based on might and dominance, one entirely at the expense of promoting sustainable economic development and democracy.
In his July 11, 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, US President Barack Obama declared, ‘America has a responsibility to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there is genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems – they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response. That is why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy, technical assistance, and logistical support, and will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world.’
And yet all the available evidence demonstrates that he is determined to continue the expansion of US military activity on the continent initiated by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and dramatically escalated by President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. While many expected the Obama administration to adopt a security policy toward Africa that would be far less militaristic and unilateral than that pursued by his predecessor, the facts show that he is in fact essentially following the same policy that has guided US military involvement in Africa for more than a decade.
Filed under: 2-party system, Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush, bush = obama, Child Abuse, child torture, civil liberties, civil rights, Detainees, DOJ, Extraordinary Rendition, Geneva Convention, George Bush, gitmo, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, human rights, interrogation, Iraq, john yoo, left right paradigm, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obamas war, occupation, rendition, Torture, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Protecting Bush’s “Testicle Crusher” Attorney
San Francisco Chronicle
December 8, 2009
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,” Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Other sanctions are available for government lawyers who commit misconduct, the department said. It noted that its Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004 and has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution.
The office has not made its conclusions public. However, The Chronicle and other media reported in May that the office will recommend that Yoo be referred to the bar association for possible discipline, but that he not be prosecuted.
Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, 9/11 Truth, afghan casualties, Afghanistan, alqaeda, Barack Obama, bush = obama, cheney, CIA, drone, False Flag, fearmongering, George Bush, heroin, inside job, Iraq, mccain, michael savage, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obama surge, obamas war, occupation, Oil, Opium, Pakistan, Propaganda, Rachel Maddow, Saudi Arabia, soldiers, Soviet Union, State Sponsored Terrorism, surge, terrorist funding, terrorist training, Troops, uav, war casualties, War On Terror, WMD, WMDs
Rachel Maddow: Obama is Continuing the Bush Doctrine
NoWorldSystem.com
December 3, 2009
She’s right;
Obama “19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder 3,000 people. . . As we know the men belonged to alqaeda . . . Alqaeda’s base of operations were in Afghanistan.”
Actually the ’19 hijackers’ were Saudi Arabians.
Obama “(Afghanistan) is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by alqaeda, from (Afghanistan) we were attacked on 9/11, and it’s from here that new attacks are being plotted as i speak. Because we know that alqaeda and other extremist seek nuclear weapons and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.” “We have to take away the tools of mass destruction. . . “
This is precisely what the Bush administration’s rationale; “The attacks from 9/11 came from Iraq or Afghanistan so we must fight alqaeda there so they don’t come to our shores with weapons of mass destruction.”. One shouldn’t have to argue any longer that Obama is just another puppet like George W. Bush, bending-over for the royal internationalist oligarchs that want global military dominance throughout the mideast region.
Many have warned long before the 2008 elections that Obama is a war candidate and is no different from McCain, Bush or Cheney on foreign policy. Many didn’t listen, and now we are stuck in Afghanistan which will cost us financially, spiritually and not to mention many more lives of U.S. soldiers. Obama is continuing to besmirch the name of Americans, causing more tension against Americans and incubating violent hatred against the west, terrorism that supposedly Obama wants to prevent from happening.
Even the former Soviet Union is warning Obama that a war against the Taliban futile and will only create more resistance in the region.:
The same enemy that Obama says that we must fight were once U.S. allies, Osama Bin Laden worked for the United States until 9/11, and the Taliban were funded and trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, the U.S. was already caught paying the Taliban not to kill U.S. troops and some are most likely on the CIA payroll.
Afghanis just want to be left alone, the entire Alqaeda/Taliban fraud is all a front for the real reasons for the war, and that is oil and heroin.
Michael Savage Reaction To Obama Afghanistan Speech
Obama ‘to expand drone strikes’ in Pakistan
Press TV
December 3, 2009
The administration of the Nobel peace laureate, President Barack Obama, has authorized an expansion of drone attacks on Pakistan’s troubled tribal regions, a new report says.
The New York Times report also says US and Pakistani officials are discussing the possibility of CIA operated drone strikes in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province for the first time.
The purported aim of the American air strikes is to target militants. But Pakistani media outlets say the raids have mostly killed civilians.
The unpopular strikes were initiated under the George W Bush administration in 2006.
Use of drones has increased since the Nobel peace laureate, Obama, became president.
Obama has repeatedly vowed to expand the controversial strikes that have raised anti-US sentiments across Pakistan.
The development also comes as Obama has announced his intention to deploy 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan and his top commander in Afghanistan says that Washington is not planning an early exit from Afghanistan.
Although nearly 110,000 foreign troops are present in Afghanistan after more than eight years of US-led invasion, they have not been able to establish stability in the war-ravaged country.
Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan was condemned by Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich.
“The war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our soldiers’ lives on the line,” the Ohio congressman said in a statement.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Britain, british troops, bush, bush = obama, Colonialism, Europe, France, George Bush, gordon brown, imperialism, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama surge, occupation, Sarkozy, soldiers, surge, Troops, u.s. soldiers, War On Terror
Obama orders 30-35,000 more troops for Afghanistan, surge to begin by Christmas
AP
November 30, 2009
After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas.
Obama has said that he prefers “not to hand off anything to the next president” and that his strategy will “put us on a path toward ending the war.” But he doesn’t plan to give any more exact timetable than that Tuesday night.
The president will end his 92-day review of the war with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He spent part of Monday briefing foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls.
Before Obama’s call to Britain’s Gordon Brown, the prime minister announced that 500 more U.K. troops would arrive in southern Afghanistan next month — making a British total of about 10,000 in the country. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose nation has more than 3,000 in Afghanistan, said French troops would stay “as long as necessary” to stabilize the country.
Obama’s war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. There also will be a fresh focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave.
Filed under: 2-party system, Barack Obama, bush = obama, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deficit, deficit spending, deflation, Dollar, dollar collapse, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, George Bush, george w. bush, Great Depression, Greenback, health care reform, House, hyperinflation, Inflation, left right paradigm, Mitch McConnell, national debt, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama stimulus, obamacare, Senate, stimulus, Stock Market, US Economy, Wall Street
Dems Looking To Raise Debt Ceiling To $13 Trillion
Washington Post
October 22, 2009
Within the next few weeks, probably as soon as the votes on health-care reform have been taken, the Senate faces the painful duty of once again raising the statutory limit on the national debt, as the House already has done.
It is never fun for the party in power, but this year will be harder than ever on the Democrats. The final accounting on the just-ended fiscal year, delivered last week, showed a record deficit of $1.4 trillion, a gap that is the largest since the end of World War II when measured against the size of the overall economy.
This is what $1 Trillion dollars looks like. The Obama administration spent One-Trillion-Four-Hundred-Billion dollars in just one year.
The Republicans are poised to pounce. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell accused the Democrats of “acting like a teenager on a spending spree with his parent’s credit card with no regard to who pays the bill.”
The Democrats, in turn, blamed the George W. Bush administration for starting the deficit spending and say that they themselves had no choice but to spread the red ink in order to deal with the potential economic collapse they inherited.
The one barely possible benefit from this predictably futile partisan bloodbath is the opportunity it could offer to leverage support for a long-standing bipartisan effort to force Congress to confront the hard steps needed to put the nation on a safer fiscal course.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, alqaeda, army, Barack Obama, Britain, bush, bush = obama, bush surge, Colonialism, Dictatorship, Empire, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, left right paradigm, Marines, McChrystal, middle east, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, obama surge, occupation, oligarchy, rome, Stanley McChrystal, steny hoyer, surge, Taliban, Troops, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawks, White House
Obama to Announce 45,000 Troop Surge in Afghanistan
Obama tops Bush in troop buildup
AntiWar.com
October 14, 2009
The Obama Administration has reportedly told the British government that it intends to announce an escalation of another 45,000 troops in Afghanistan, potentially as soon as next week.
The report comes despite claims that the Obama Administration is continuing to hold talks about the strategy, though this seems to be more based on the question of whether to emphasize the failed battle against the Taliban or focus what will soon be over 100,000 troops on fighting the roughly 100 al-Qaeda members reportedly in the nation.
Britain announced that it intends to send another 500 soldiers to Afghanistan to bolster its 9,000-strong force. The announcement reportedly came as a result of the US assurances, and despite the growing domestic opposition to the war.
Several Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, have expressed reservations about the massive escalation, particularly coming just seven months after the administration’s last escalation. Yet Rep. Hoyer urged fellow Democrats to go along with whatever President Obama decides.
Obama tops Bush in troop buildup
Bill Van Auken
WSWS
October 14, 2009
The combined US troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have now reached a higher level than existed at any time under the presidency of George W. Bush. This surge past the record set by its predecessor marks another grim milestone in the Obama administration’s escalation of American militarism.
In addition to the 21,000 US soldiers and Marines that Obama ordered deployed to Afghanistan as part of the escalation he unveiled last March, another 13,000 “support” troops are being quietly sent to the country with no official announcement, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
This stealth buildup is a replay of the methods used by the Bush administration in its Iraq surge, when it announced the deployment of an additional 20,000 combat troops while saying nothing about the 8,000 support troops sent with them.
In neither case was the failure to declare the full number an oversight. Obama, like Bush before him, recognizes that the military interventions he oversees are deeply unpopular with the majority of the American people.
According to the troop numbers provided by the Post, there are now 65,000 US troops in Afghanistan, with another 124,000 still in Iraq, for a total of 189,000 American military personnel waging two colonial-style wars and occupations. At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, for a total of 186,000.
There is every indication that the policies being pursued by the Obama White House will send these numbers significantly higher.
Over the weekend, military officials revealed to the media that the proposal for increased troop levels in Afghanistan submitted by the American commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, included a high-end figure of 80,000—in addition to the 68,000 that are to be deployed by the end of this year.
The New York Times, echoing official sources, commented that this highest request was “highly unlikely to be considered seriously by the White House.” While this may well be true—for now—the leaking of the number serves a definite political purpose, making Obama’s ultimate agreement to a smaller surge—still involving tens of thousands of additional troops in Afghanistan—seem like a reasonable compromise between the White House and the Pentagon.
While visiting Britain this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the US commitment to continuing the Afghanistan war. “We are not changing our strategy, our strategy remains to achieve the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and denying them safe haven and the capacity to strike us here in London, or New York or anywhere else,” she said in a radio interview. “One should never doubt our commitment or our leadership, we intend to pursue the goal,” Clinton continued. “We will not rest until we do defeat Al Qaeda.”
Clinton’s remarks make clear that the Obama administration, while dropping the term “war on terrorism” coined by the Bush White House, continues to embrace the methods underlying this terminology—in particular, the attempt to terrorize the American people into accepting US wars of conquest and aggression.
The claim that 68,000 US troops—with tens of thousands more likely to follow—are in Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and prevent another 9/11 is a transparent pretext. Top US security and military officials have concurred that there are a grand total of approximately 100 individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda presently in Afghanistan, without any means of carrying out an attack on another country. If and when McChrystal’s request for additional troops is met, there will be 1,000 or more US soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan for every Al Qaeda member.
The target of the military escalation is not Al Qaeda, but rather the people of Afghanistan. Washington is attempting to suppress growing popular resistance to the occupation and is prepared to sacrifice the lives of untold numbers of Afghans, as well as those of hundreds if not thousands more US soldiers, to that end.
The defeat of “terrorism” is no more the strategic aim pursued by Washington in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq. US military might has been unleashed in both countries to assert the hegemony of American imperialism over Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, which are the two largest sources of the world’s energy supplies.
The potential costs of this venture are immense. A report prepared by the Pentagon last January describes the stated US goal of achieving a stable client state in Afghanistan as an operation that “will last, at a minimum, decades.” Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret.) was slightly more optimistic, saying that it would take “10 years of $5 billion a month,” in addition to major fighting.
In Iraq, meanwhile, there is no reason to believe that the stated deadline for pulling US troops out by 2012 will be met. On the contrary, the instability and continued resistance created by the American occupation and the destruction of Iraqi society will be used as a justification for continuing the occupation and asserting US control over the country’s oil fields.
And the threat that the US interventions will provoke new and potentially far bloodier conflicts is growing, as evidenced by the mounting crisis in Pakistan and increasing tensions throughout the Indian subcontinent flowing from the war in Afghanistan.
The debate that is now taking place in the Obama White House is over committing generations of young Americans to endless wars and occupations.
Under conditions in which resources are being denied for desperately needed jobs and basic social services, even more social wealth will be diverted to build up the US military.
Expanding the ranks of the Army is necessary if any significant escalation of the war in Afghanistan is to be sustained. The military is stretched to the breaking point by the two occupations. Even if Obama approves 40,000 more troops, nowhere near that number are immediately available.
While the American political establishment is no doubt counting on a double-digit unemployment rate driving jobless youth into the military, there is growing objective pressure for the reintroduction of conscription, with youth once again drafted to fight in colonial wars.
Millions of people voted for Barack Obama last November in the vain hope that his election would reverse the escalation of militarism initiated under Bush. Their votes, like the growing popular sentiment against the Afghan war, have been disregarded as the Obama administration continues this escalation in the interest of the financial oligarchy that it serves.
Filed under: 2-party system, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, bush = obama, Colonialism, George Bush, Iraq, iraq surge, left right paradigm, Mainstream Media, McChrystal, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, NATO, Neolibs, obama, obama = bush, obama surge, occupation, Pentagon, Stanley McChrystal, Troops, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror
Obama Approved 13K More Troops To Afghanistan Unannounced
AFP
October 13, 2009
In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The additional forces are primarily support forces — such as engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police — the Post said, bringing the total buildup Obama has approved for the war-torn nation to 34,000.
“Obama authorized the whole thing. The only thing you saw announced in a press release was the 21,000,” a defense official familiar with the troop-approval process told the daily.
The report, posted on the newspaper’s website late Monday, came as Obama weighs a request from the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for more combat, training and support troops, with several options including one for 40,000 more forces.
But the newspaper noted that the maximum number of US service members expected in Afghanistan by year’s end — 68,000 — would remain the same.
Major deployments of support troops have not been publicized by the Pentagon and the White House in the past. When former president George W. Bush announced a US troop increase in Iraq, he only mentioned 20,000 combat troops and not the accompanying 8,000 support troops.
The troop increase approved by Obama brought the level of US forces deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters to a total greater than during the peak of the surge in Iraq in late 2007 and early 2008.
At the start of this month, some 65,000 US forces are currently in Afghanistan and about 124,000 in Iraq, compared to around 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq at the height of the Iraq surge, according to a troop count by the Post.
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, ACLU, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, EFF, FBI, federal crimes, FOIA, George Bush, government bureaucrat, government control, government takeover, Homeland Security, immunity, left right paradigm, Military, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, privacy rights, roving wiretaps, Russ Feingold, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, us constituion, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, White House
Dem-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee extends PATRIOT Act provisions
Capitol Hill Blue
October 9, 2009
Key US lawmakers passed legislation Thursday extending three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the sweeping intelligence bill enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Backing a White House request, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the measure 11 votes to 8 to extend until 2013 three clauses that would have expired by 31 December. The bill now heads to the full Senate for a vote.
The provisions include the “roving wiretap” clause, used to monitor mobile communications of individuals using multiple telephone lines, and the “lone-wolf” provision, which enables spying on individuals suspected of terrorist activity but with no obvious connection to extremist groups.
Lawmakers also extended the life of controversial section 215, known as the “library records provision” that allows government agencies to access individual’s library history.
The committee had earlier met in a closed-door meeting with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community on ensuring their actions would not impede investigations already underway.
The senators also debated freeing up law enforcement actions that have been hampered by legislation and court rulings since the first program was launched by former president George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, which enabled collecting sensitive information for years without a court order.
Republicans senators have remained critical of placing restrictions on the intelligence community, saying they should more of a free hand in the early stages of investigations.
But their Democratic counterparts have decried the fact that the provisions still do not in their view adequately respect the privacy of ordinary Americans.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold said he feared handing a “blank check” to law enforcement agencies and criticized the Democrat-controlled committee for not passing safeguards that even Republicans supported during the Bush administration.
“Among the most significant problems is the failure to include an improved standard for Section 215 orders, even though a Republican controlled Judiciary Committee unanimously supported including the same standard in 2005,” he said in a media advisory.
“But what was most upsetting was the apparent willingness of too many members to defer completely to behind the scenes complaints from the FBI and the Justice Department, even though the administration has yet to take a public position on any of the improvements that I and other senators have proposed. … [While] I am left scratching my head trying to understand how a committee controlled by a wide Democratic margin could support the bill it approved today, I will continue to work with my colleagues to try to make improvements to this bill.”
Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office said the rights group was “disappointed” that further moves were not made to protect civil liberties.
“This truly was a missed opportunity for the Senate Judiciary Committee to right the wrongs of the PATRIOT Act,” he said.
“We urge the Senate to adopt amendments on the floor that will bring this bill in line with the Constitution.”
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, EFF, federal crimes, FOIA, George Bush, government bureaucrat, government control, government takeover, Homeland Security, immunity, left right paradigm, Military, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, privacy rights, roving wiretaps, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, us constituion, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Telephone Companies Are An Arm Of Government Admits DOJ
Wired News
October 9, 2009
 AT&T was the first of many telcos sued for helping the NSA spy on Americans without warrants |
The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: the nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.
Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn’t enough to squash a rights group’s open records request for communications between the nation’s telecoms and the feds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom lobbying of Justice Department played when the government began its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on American citizens.
The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as “intra-agency” records:
“The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest.”
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffery White disagreed and ruled on September 24 that the feds had to release the names of the telecom employees that contacted the Justice Department and the White House to lobby for a get-out-of-court-free card.
“Here, the telecommunications companies communicated with the government to ensure that Congress would pass legislation to grant them immunity from legal liability for their participation in the surveillance,” White wrote. “Those documents are not protected from disclosure because the companies communicated with the government agencies “with their own … interests in mind,” rather than the agency’s interests.”
The feds were supposed to make the documents available Friday, but in a motion late Thursday, the Obama administration is asking for a 30-day emergency stay (.pdf) so it can file a further appeal.
Filed under: 2-party system, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, airstrikes, alqaeda, Barack Obama, bin laden, bush = obama, east africa, Europe, George Bush, global war on terror, Iran, Iraq, left right paradigm, military strike, nation building, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, occupation, osama bin laden, Pakistan, Pentagon, preemptive war, proxy war, State Sponsored Terrorism, Tehran, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror | Tags: National Counterterrorism Center
U.S. Will Disregard Borders In Terrorist Hunt Says Obama
Press TV
October 7, 2009
Afghanistan and Pakistan are not the Pentagon’s sole targets in its war on terror, says Obama adding that the US will not hesitate to attack anywhere it deems a threat.
US President Barack Obama, speaking at the Counterterrorism Center in McLean Virginia on Tuesday, pledged that the US would target al-Qaeda “wherever they take root” and do everything to wipe out safe havens, where Osama bin Laden’s network can plot against the United States.
“The United States and our partners have sent an unmistakable message: We will target al-Qaida wherever they take root,” he said, Xinhua reported.
The US president cited East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf in addition to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the hotbeds for terrorist activities and what he called threats against Washington.
Obama’s speech was reminiscent of his predecessor George W. Bush’s notorious ‘Bush doctrine’, which says the United States has ‘the right’ to launch preemptive strikes on countries that pose a threat to the US security.
“We will not yield in our pursuit; and we are developing the capacity and the cooperation to deny a safe haven to any who threaten America and its allies,” said Obama.
With its primary mission to synchronize the fight on terrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was established in 2001 on the hills of the 9/11 attacks on the US soil.
The center, a government agency under the Director of National Intelligence, coordinate and share data with US government departments and agencies and US foreign partners.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th amendment, Barack Obama, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainee, Detainees, detention, DOJ, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Marines, Military, military commissions act, Military Industrial Complex, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, soldiers, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, USMC, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap
Obama will bypass Congress to detain suspects indefinitely
John Byrne
Raw Story
September 24, 2009
President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold “combatants” without habeas corpus — a legal term literally meaning “you shall have the body” — which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect’s detention.
Obama’s decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times’ New York edition on Thursday. It didn’t appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, “Richest Russian’s Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.”)
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions — including the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.
“The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” the Times‘ Peter Baker writes. “In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Constitutional scholar and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald discussed the policy in a column in May. He warned that the ability for a president to “preventively” detain suspects could mushroom into broader, potentially abusive activity.
“It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding,” Greenwald wrote. “That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, ‘preventive detention’ allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally ‘dangerous’ by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they ‘expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden’ or ‘otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans’). That’s what ‘preventive’ means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be ‘combatants.’”
“Once known, the details of the proposal could — and likely will — make this even more extreme by extending the ‘preventive detention’ power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a ‘combatant,’” Greenwald continues. “After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based — namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain “dangerous” people even when they can’t prove they violated any laws — there’s no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly ‘dangerous’ combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S.”
The Obama Administration appears to have embraced “preventive detention” in part because of problems with how Guantanamo prisoners’ cases — and incarceration — were handled under President Bush. Military prosecutors have said that numerous cases could not be brought successfully in civilian courts because evidence was obtained in ways that wouldn’t be admissible on US soil. The Bush Administration originally sought to try numerous detainees in military tribunals, but the Supreme Court ruled that at least some have the rights to challenge their detention in US courts.
Baker notes that Obama’s decision to hold suspects without charges doesn’t propose as broad an executive authority claimed by President Bush.
“Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress,” Baker writes.
In a statement to Baker, the Justice Department said, “The administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress [and] is not currently seeking additional authorization.”
“The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the statement added.
Roughly 50 detainees of the more than 200 still held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are thought to be affected by the decision.
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 4th amendment, amnesty, AT&T, Barack Obama, Big Brother, bush = obama, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Detainees, DHS, domeestic terrorism, domestic terror, Extraordinary Rendition, federal crimes, FISA, forced detention, George Bush, Habeas Corpus, Homeland Security, HR 6166, left right paradigm, mandatory detention, Military, military commissions act, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, obama, obama = bush, obama deception, orwell, Patriot Act, preventative detention, quantanamo, rendition, roving wiretaps, Senate, Sprint, Spy, Surveillance, telecoms, Torture, US Constitution, verison, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap | Tags: obama = bush
Obama Pushes For Renewal of Warrantless Spying
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
September 16, 2009
President Barack Obama has once again betrayed his promise to restore liberties eviscerated by the Bush regime by pushing Congress to renew Patriot Act provisions that allow for warrantless spying on American citizens, even in cases where there is no link to terrorism whatsoever.
According to a Wired News report, the “Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.”
Obama’s support for the provisions should come as little surprise because he first voted for warrantless wiretapping of Americans in 2008 when he was an Illinois Senator, while also lending support for immunizing the nation’s telecommunications companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program.
One of the provisions Obama is pushing to renew is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, which allows for the electronic monitoring of an individual without the government having to prove that the case has any relation whatsoever to terrorism or a foreign power. This is in effect a carte blanche for the government to use every method at their disposal to spy on any American citizen they choose.
The “lone wolf” provision is opposed by the ACLU, whose legislative counsel Michelle Richardson told Wired, “The justification for FISA and these lower standards and letting it operate in secret was all about terrorist groups and foreign governments, that they posed a unique threat other than the normal criminal element. This lone wolf provision undercuts that justification.”
Another Patriot Act provision Obama wants Congress to renew gives the government access to business, library and medical records, with the authorities generally having to prove that the investigation is terrorism related. However, since according to Homeland Security guidelines the new breed of terrorist is classified as someone who supports a third party, puts a political bumper sticker on their car, is part of the alternative media, or merely someone who disagrees with the authorities’ official version of events on any given issue, the scope for the government to use this power against their political adversaries is wide open.
The third provision Obama is pushing to renew allows a FISA court to grant “roving wiretaps” without the government having to even identify their target. This is another carte blanche power that gives the state the power to monitor telephone calls, e mails and any other form of electronic communication.
Barack Obama swept into office on a mandate of “change” and a commitment to restore liberties that were eviscerated under the Bush regime. Despite promising to do so, he has failed completely to overturn Bush signing statements and executive orders that, according to Obama, “trampled on liberties.” Indeed, despite promising to end the use of signing statements, he has continued to use them.
Obama has failed to close Guantanamo Bay or any other CIA torture “black site” as he promised to do.
Obama has failed in his promise to “reject the Military Commissions Act” and instead has supported the use of military commissions.
Obama has continued to allow the rendition and torture of detainees, while protecting Bush administration officials who ordered torture from prosecution and blocking the release of evidence related to torture.
Obama has gone even further than the Bush administration in introducing “preventative detention” of detainees, ensuring people will never get a trial.
In restating his support for warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, Obama has once again proven that his promise of “change” was nothing more than a hollow and deceptive political platitude to ensure his election. Since he took office, Obama has betrayed almost every promise he made and effectively become nothing more than the third term of the Bush administration.
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