Archive for the ‘President Barack Obama’ Category
May 5, 2010
While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they’ve taken from the oil and gas giant over the years.
BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.
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Tags:BP's donations, Erika Lovley, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico
Posted in Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, USA | Leave a Comment »
May 4, 2010
by Tom Burghardt, Dissident Voice, May 3rd, 2010
As America continues its uncontrolled flight towards disaster, Israeli-style “targeted killings” (assassinations) of alleged militants and unarmed civilians in the “Afpak theatre” are on the rise.
With indiscriminate attacks by armed drones soaring since President Obama was sworn into office, the Pentagon’s mad dash to achieve what it describes as “full-spectrum dominance” in this regional “battlespace,” has sought to leverage its dominant position as the world leader in robotized forms of state killing and obtain a decisive technological edge over their adversaries.
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Tags:“Afpak theatre” and killings, Pakistan, Panetta and American drone war, President Obama and drone attacks, Tom Burghardt, United States
Posted in Afghanistan, imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, war | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2010
By Joanne Mariner, Counterpunch, April 28, 2010
Congress is holding hearings this week on the legality of the US government’s drone warfare program. Conducted by the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the hearings will examine the CIA’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles – commonly known as drones – to fire missiles at suspected militants in Pakistan and elsewhere.
While the Bush administration had an active drone warfare program, US reliance on drones increased greatly after President Obama took office. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation, who have carried out a study of the drone program, the Bush administration carried out a total of 45 drone strikes in eight years, whereas the Obama administration carried out 53 strikes in 2009 alone. The pace of such attacks quickened even further in 2010.
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Tags:Joanne Mariner, legality of drone attacks, Obama and drones, Pakistan, US government's drone warfare
Posted in Human rights, imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
By James Cogan, wsws.org, 27 April 2010
The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June.
Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.
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Tags:Afghanistan, Bagram and torture of detainees, escalation of troops and war in Afghanistan, James Cogan, Kandahar offensive, objective of Afghan occupation
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
Why We Won’t Leave Afghanistan or Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt, ZNet, April 26, 2010
Source: TomDispatch
Tom Engelhardt’s ZSpace Page
Yes, we could. No kidding. We really could withdraw our massive armies, now close to 200,000 troops combined, from Afghanistan and Iraq (and that’s not even counting our similarly large stealth army of private contractors, which helps keep the true size of our double occupations in the shadows). We could undoubtedly withdraw them all reasonably quickly and reasonably painlessly.
Not that you would know it from listening to the debates in Washington or catching the mainstream news. There, withdrawal, when discussed at all, seems like an undertaking beyond the waking imagination. In Iraq alone, all those bases to dismantle and millions of pieces of equipment to send home in a draw-down operation worthy of years of intensive effort, the sort of thing that makes the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II look like a Sunday stroll in the park. And that’s only the technical side of the matter.
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Tags:American occupation of Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan, South Vietnam, Tom Engelhardt, US armies, US withdrawal
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April 26, 2010
Few Notable Militants Reported Killed
After killing a record 700 civilians last year in at least 44 distinct drone strikes against Pakistan in 2009, the Obama Administration looks to be escalating the rate even further in 2010, to the point that drone strikes have become a decidedly ordinary occurrence.
Less than four months into the new year, the US has already launched 40 attacks and killed at least 268 people. The most recent strike yesteray in North Waziristan killed at least nine people.
The identities of the victims are never particularly easy to ascertain, but the number of named militants killed so far this year is trivial, as it was last year, when most of the “suspects” turned out to have no discernible relation to any militant faction.
Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly escalated the drone strikes against the tribal areas, to the point where multiple attacks a week are a matter of course. With the normal winter lull seeing such a large number of strikes, a new record for killings seems all but assured again in 2010.
Tags:Civialins killed in Pakistan, civilians killed in Pakistan, escalation under President Obama, Jason Ditz, North Waziristan, US drone attacks
Posted in Human rights, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
By William Pfaff, Future Fastforward, April 25, 2010
Tribune Media,
It is a dismaying reflection that the facilitator of major violence thus far in the twenty-first century have been lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed “existential” menace posed by Iran to Israel, America and (if you believe some European leaders) to Western Europe.
One can say there is nothing new about lies. I would argue that the influence of mendacious official propaganda in the western democracies is probably greater today than in the last century.
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Tags:fascists, Germany under hitler, Glasnost, Iran, Iraq, United States, William Pfaff
Posted in Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2010
Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune
U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war is the authoritative opinion of the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counsel attached to Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
The domestic and international outcry in opposition to the Drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – started during the previous Bush administration in 2002 and increasingly used by the current Obama administration – is for the collateral damage – the vast civilian deaths – that results.
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Tags:Chief Legal Counsel Harold Hongju Koh, civilian deaths, Daya Gamage, drone attacks under Obama administration, Pakistan and Aghnistan targeted, U.S. drone attacks, unlawful extrajudicial killing
Posted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2010
Before the US House of Representatives, April 22, 2010, Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act.
I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war with Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one-trillion-dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.
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Tags:Iran sactions, Iran sanctions, Rep. Ron Paul, sanctions bill, United States, war advocates
Posted in Commentary, Iran, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 20, 2010
Inter Press Service
An opinion survey of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers”.
The survey, conducted by a private U.S. contractor last December, covered Kandahar City and other districts in the province into which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is planning to introduce more troops in the biggest operation of the entire war. Those districts include Arghandab, Zhari, rural Kandahar and Panjwayi.
Afghan interviewers conducted the survey only in areas which were not under Taliban control.
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Tags:Afghanistan, Gareth Porter, Kandahar province, U.S. military offensive
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
Peace and Justice Post 
Obama Biggest Recipient of BP Cash
May 5, 2010BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.
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Tags:BP's donations, Erika Lovley, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico
Posted in Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, USA | Leave a Comment »