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Our Bombs Good, Their Bombs Bad

May 28, 2009

by Christopher Cooper |  CommonDreams.org, May 28, 2009

I woke Monday morning to the sound of BBC radio hyperventilating over North Korea’s latest underground test of a nuclear bomb. This concern was extended and amplified as the day progressed: radio, television, Internet and newspaper reports and discussion settled on pretty much the same two points: This is bad. Very bad. And it will not stand unanswered.Well, Ok, fine. There is no good reason North Korea should test or build or own nuclear weapons. It is a foolishness as preposterous as to allow the public to carry loaded concealed weapons in our national parks. But of course the motivation is the same and explains the nukes as nicely as the Smith and Wessons: We are afraid. Very afraid.

Oh, yes, and just a touch crazy, too, of course. Kim Jong Il and his dad Kim Il-sung before him (“Great Leader” and “Dear Leader” respectively) do not inspire the confidence we have come to expect from our conventionally coifed and suited Western presidents and prime ministers. We prefer the dull and somnolent, the plodding, cautious, reflective and slow-speaking. Donald Rumsfeld looked about right. And his calm assurances that we must and should bull ahead on the course he recommended was very reassuring. Wrong, of course. But comforting.

So let’s just agree that there is more than one way to be a crazy player in the great game of geopolitics, shall we? But the Chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (among several other titles) is often described as a “saber-rattler”, and to return to an earlier point, no good will come of such a man rattling nuclear missiles instead of old ceremonial swords.

But what country should have nuclear weapons? Oh, yes, of course-we should. Because we do. We invented them. We have more of them than anybody else. We only keep the things around to deter other nations from using theirs. Such as Russia and other states once part of the Soviet Union, who have theirs, they say only to keep us from using ours. Not that we ever would. Use them, I mean. That would be unthinkable.

My mother used to threaten to “tear off your arm and beat you over the head with the bloody stump”, a frightening enough prospect to a young boy and a grievous overreaction to my own undoubtedly bad behavior. (I argued of course that she was misrepresenting which part of the appendage she might strike me with, the “stump” being still attached to my body, a distinction that only further infuriated the woman.) But it was all talk, we both knew it, and it therefore had no deterrent value whatsoever. So it is with nuclear weapons. In any event mom never acted on her threat and I believe the practice has now been banned in all states except Texas.

President Obama said “North Korea is directly and recklessly challenging the international community.” Yes. Precisely. With all the finesse of an eight-year-old amusing himself at mother’s expense, Kim seeks to provoke by his bad behavior. Shortly after the bomb test he lobbed another missile or two a hundred kilometers or so into the Sea of Japan, just to show he had a delivery system of a sort too. (A recent long-range missile test also went with the fishes, which should ease tensions somewhat in Seattle and San Francisco.}

The United Nations Security Council “condemned” the test. It will now work on a “Resolution.” Well, I guess you have to do something. Or do you? If all our agitation changes nothing, why raise our own blood pressure so precipitously?

Agreeing that we need to better understand what fears and instabilities and regional imbalances and personal nuttiness have set Great Leader on this course, and that every reasonable effort ought be made to convince him to redirect his energies toward peaceful and productive purposes, I still do not understand the high level of international agitation.

North Korea, of course, was once a part of the boy president George W. Bush’s “Axis Of Evil”, but let’s not think any more about our own ludicrous and unbalanced leaders, shall we?

Let’s just look for a moment at the history of nuclear weapons on planet Earth. There are thousands of them loose in our world. The United States has ten or eleven thousand, Russia a similar number. France and China own about four hundred each, Israel and England a couple hundred. Pakistan (now there’s a stable, solid, well-run nation for you-no axis of evil there) has raised a dozen or two. So, all together, more than twenty thousand atomic bombs. North Korea is testing some. Iran might well want a few. All for deterrent purposes only, of course.

Of course. Agreed. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Only one nation has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Twice. On civilians. You know-women, children, housepets, museums, churches, ginkgo trees and koi. Taught those Jap bastards quite a lesson, didn’t we? And how does that fact go down around the world? All is not always as it seems from the point of view put forth in our own newsreels and textbooks and history classes and churches.

Last month a week to ten days was given over to beating the small news of the dreaded swine flu (quickly re-introduced as H1N1-2009 strain to make the pig-butchers happier). This week North Korea scares us half to death. At least there was plenty of gasoline available over the holiday weekend. Keep driving. See the USA in your Chevrolet (or Toyota or Hyundai.) Later or sooner the unraveling climate will come to the attention of the public and the news analysts perhaps, and we’ll see what a real problem looks like.

Come back with me to 1965, and Tom Lehrer’s introduction to his song “Who’s Next?”: “One of the big news items of the past year concerned the fact that China, which we call “Red China,” exploded a nuclear bomb, which we called a device. Then Indonesia announced that it was going to have one soon, and proliferation became the word of the day. Here’s a song about that.” Get out your old vinyl LP.

There’s more wisdom and proportion in the old math professor’s song than I’ve heard all week from Congress, the White House, the press or the troubled undercurrent of fear and ignorance that underlies most of what we think and what we have allowed ourselves to become.

Tuesday morning the BBC people revealed that Twitter may be ruined by SPAM. Now there’s a bit of unalloyed good news at last-one blight destroying another.

Regular readers will know that Mr. Cooper has no answers, no solutions to the issues that vex you and him. He has no faith, places no hope in any change promised by any major party politician, and he does not exhort anyone to write their legislators. All any of us can do is to live honest, decent lives, raise our children to be better than we are, and to speak and write bluntly and honestly in every forum available. To this end he abuses the space afforded him in The Wiscasset Newspaper. He fights the status quo and the annual blackfly plague in Alna, Maine, where he may be engaged at coop@tidewater.net.

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Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel?

May 28, 2009

by Paul Craig Roberts | VDARE.com, May 28, 2009

“Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up to’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet the president of the U.S. thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Hamdi, José Padilla, Sami al-Arian, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by former secretary of defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forgo civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question: who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?

Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?

Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts who today rule Israel.

Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to North Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?

Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately 1 million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population?

Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced 4 million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?

Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?

Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?

Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced 1 million refugees?

“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Whom is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Whom is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the U.S. and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the U.S. and Israel for barbaric, murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the U.S. will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?

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Posted in imperialism, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, War Criminals, warmongers, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Shadow Wars

May 27, 2009

by Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy In Focus, May 26, 2009

Sudan: The two F-16s caught the trucks deep in the northern desert. Within minutes, the column of vehicles was a string of shattered wrecks burning fiercely in the January sun. Surveillance drones spotted a few vehicles that had survived the storm of bombs and cannon shells, and the fighter-bombers returned to finish the job.

Syria: Four Blackhawk helicopters skimmed across the Iraqi border, landing at a small farmhouse near the town of al-Sukkariyeh. Black-clad soldiers poured from the choppers, laying down a withering hail of automatic weapons fire. When the shooting stopped, eight Syrians lay dead on the ground. Four others, cuffed and blindfolded, were dragged to the helicopters, which vanished back into Iraq.

Pakistan: a group of villagers were sipping tea in a courtyard when the world exploded. The Hellfire missiles seemed to come out of nowhere, scattering pieces of their victims across the village and demolishing several houses. Between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, 60 such attacks took place. They killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda members along with 687 civilians.

In each of the above incidents, no country took responsibility or claimed credit. There were no sharp exchanges of diplomatic notes before the attacks, just sudden death and mayhem.
War without Declaration

The F-16s were Israeli, their target an alleged shipment of arms headed for the Gaza Strip. The Blackhawk soldiers were likely from Task Force 88, an ultra-secret U.S. Special Forces group. The Pakistanis were victims of a Predator drone directed from an airbase in southern Nevada.

Each attack was an act of war and drew angry responses from the country whose sovereignty was violated. But since no one admitted carrying them out, the diplomatic protests had no place to go.

Continued >>

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Obama’s Guantánamo Appeasement Plan

May 27, 2009

by Marjorie Cohn | The Huffington Post, May 26, 2009

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within one year.  The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new president.  They claimed his plan would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released terrorists to resume fighting against our troops.  Fox News agitator Sean Hannity and Bush team players like torture-memo lawyer John Yoo filled the airwaves and print media with paranoia.

The Republican attacks were bogus.  A 2008 McClatchy investigation revealed that the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo detainees taken into custody in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent of wrongdoing or bit players with little intelligence value.  A substantial number of those prisoners were literally sold to U.S. officials in exchange for bounty payments offered by the U.S. military. A Seton Hall Law Center report has debunked Pentagon claims that many released detainees have “returned to the fight.” And no one has ever escaped from one of the U.S. super-max prisons, which house hundreds of people convicted of terrorist offenses.

The Republicans have continued to oppose the effort to close Guantánamo. In an attempt to burnish his image and forestall war crimes charges, Dick Cheney now leads the charge, making ubiquitous attacks on Obama. Keeping Guantánamo open is “important,” Cheney declares. He claims that closing Guantánamo would endanger Americans, and warns that if detainees are brought to the United States, they would “acquire all kinds of legal rights.”  Obama is also taking heat from the intelligence community.  Those officials, like Cheney, seek to justify what they did under the Bush regime.

And now even the Democrats are piling on the bandwagon.  Reacting defensively to the Republican attack campaign, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to deny Obama funds to close Guantánamo until he comes up with a “plan” for relocating the detainees there. “We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions on Guantánamo to try these cases,” said Democratic Senator Jim Webb on ABC News. “I do not believe they should be tried in the United States,” he added.

The pressure has caused Obama to buckle.  Timed to coincide with a Cheney speech to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Obama announced an appeasement plan to deal with the 240 remaining Guantánamo detainees.  Parts of his plan would threaten the very foundation of our legal system – that no one should be held in custody if he has committed no crime.  These are Obama’s five categories for disposition of detainees once Guantánamo is closed:

1) Those who violated the laws of war will be tried in military commissions.

Obama’s plan would backtrack on an early promise to shut down the military commissions.  Obama now claims that such commissions can be fair because they will no longer permit the use of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods. He fails to mention, however, that the Pentagon is using “clean teams” to re-interrogate people who were previously interrogated using the prohibited methods. When they once again give the same information, it miraculously becomes untainted. Obama also fails to acknowledge that those tried in the military commissions are forbidden from seeing all the evidence against them, a violation of the bedrock principle that the accused must have an opportunity to confront his accusers.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has disagreed with this part of Obama’s proposed plan of action.  In Ex parte Milligan, the Supreme Court declared military trials of civilians to be unconstitutional if civil courts are available.

Prisoners falling in this category should be tried in the courts of the United States, because the laws of war are actually part of U.S. law.  The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. The Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention, which the United States has ratified, contain the laws of war.

2) Those who have been ordered released from Guantánamo will remain in custody.

Seventeen Uighurs from China were ordered released after they were found not to be enemy combatants. But they continue to languish in custody because they would be imperiled if returned to China, which considers them enemies of the state. Suggestions that they be brought to the United States have been met with paranoid NIMBY (not in my backyard!) protestations.  So, under Obama’s plan they will remain incarcerated in a state of legal limbo.

3)   Those who cannot be prosecuted yet “pose a clear danger to the American people” will remain in custody with no right to legal process of any kind.

These are people who have never been charged with a crime. Obama did not say why they cannot be prosecuted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claims as many as 100 people may fall into this category. Included in this group are those who have “expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.” They will suffer “prolonged detention.”

Obama’s plan for “prolonged detention” is nothing more than a newly-coined phrase for “preventive detention,” a policy that harks back to the bad old days of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the internment of people of Japanese extraction in the 1940’s.   If Obama succeeds in convincing Congress to legalize “prolonged detention,” the United States will continue to be a pariah state among justice-loving nations.  The U.S. Congress, still rendered catatonic by post-9/11 rhetoric, will probably capitulate along with Obama.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Obama’s new system of preventive detention will just “move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name.”

4) Those who can be safely transferred to other countries will be transferred.

Obama noted that 50 men fall into this category.  It is unclear what will happen to them when they reach their destinations.

5) Those who violated U.S. criminal laws will be tried in federal courts.

Obama cited the examples of Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker. Both were tried and convicted in U.S. courts and both are serving life sentences.

This is the only clearly acceptable part of Obama’s plan.  All detainees slated to remain in custody should be placed into this category.  The federal courts provide due process as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which does not limit due process rights to U.S. citizens: “No person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The federal courts are well suited to deal with accused terrorists. Indeed, federal judges who have presided over such cases say that the Classified Information Procedures Act can effectively protect classified intelligence in federal court trials.

If Mr. Obama proceeds with the plan he announced this week he will empower those who point to U.S. hypocrisy on human rights as a justification to do us harm. Obama’s capitulation to the intelligence gurus and the right-wing attack dogs will not only imperil the rule of law; it will actually make us more vulnerable to future acts of terrorism.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and President of the National Lawyers Guild.  She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd).  Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

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ANALYSIS / Netanyahu bringing Israel closer to war with Iran

May 26, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking during a faction meeting in the Knesset on Monday.
 (AP)

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent | Haaretz/Israel, May 26, 2009
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers the lifting of the Iranian nuclear threat his life’s mission. Before coming to power, he had mentioned that such an operation might cost thousands of lives, but the price was justified in view of the threat’s severity. His comments yesterday at the meeting of Likud’s Knesset faction put to rest Ariel Sharon’s doctrine that Iran is not just Israel’s problem but the entire world’s problem, and Israel must not be at the forefront of the struggle. Israel is now at the forefront.

The leaders of Iran and Israel escalated the verbal confrontation yesterday. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said discussions on the nuclear issue are over, which means Iran does not intend to give up enriching uranium. Netanyahu said that if Israel does not lead the defense against the Iranian threat and bring in the United States and other countries, no one else will.

In both cases, in Tehran and Jerusalem, it’s possible to justify the leaders’ comments by citing domestic political needs. But even if the immediate motive is domestic politics, the strategic implications cannot be ignored.


Netanyahu reiterated that he has come to an understanding with U.S. President Barack Obama on preventing Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability. Unlike the dispute between Netanyahu and the United States on the Palestinian question, the Americans have not denied his statements on understandings reached on Iran.

A senior source close to the Obama administration has said that the dialogue Obama has offered Iran will come to nothing and that the U.S. will not strike Iran unless something unusual and unexpected happens. If this turns out to be the case, the Netanyahu government may have to decide whether to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Three arguments are normally made to reject the likelihood of an Israeli military option: the complexity of the mission, the U.S. veto and opposition in the government. It is usually assumed that Israel will seek to repeat the 1981 bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq. This is only one scenario and not a likely one.

There are other possibilities to consider: a war in the north that drags Iran in, or a strike against a valuable target for the Iranian regime, which leads Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to take action against “the Zionist regime.” If Iran attacks Israel first, the element of surprise will be lost, but then Israel’s strike against the nuclear installations will be considered self-defense.

The second argument, regarding American opposition to a strike, depends on the circumstances. It’s hard to imagine that Obama will order the interception of Israeli aircraft on the way to Natanz if all other ways of stopping the centrifuges have failed. Clearly the administration will have to chastise Israel, and let’s not forget the statements by CIA chief Leon Panetta, who warned against any operation not coordinated with the United States. But no one knows how Obama will behave in the moment of truth. He told Newsweek that he will not tell Israelis what their defense requirements are. Netanyahu liked this very much.

The third claim, about political opposition at home, is entirely mistaken. In talks on going to war, the ministers and officers compete over who is more patriotic, not who is wiser or more rational. At decision time, no one will dare go down in history as having reservations and risk being portrayed as a coward. If the Second Lebanon War is anything to go by, all the “heroes” who criticized the war in retrospect had voted to go to war. This will be the case if Netanyahu brings to the cabinet a plan to attack Iran, and the Israel Defense Forces will say that it can.

A war with Iran is not inevitable. But the prime minister took another step yesterday toward preparing the general public for the possibility that it might break out.

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Rethinking the Costs of Peace

May 25, 2009
The US has provided to Israel more than $100 billion in military and economic assistance.

By Josh Ruebner | The Palestine Chronicle, May 24, 2009

In pledging to trim ineffective spending, President Obama declared that “there will be no sacred cows and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it’s time their government did the same.”

By asking earlier this month for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel in his FY2010 budget request, it would seem that on this important policy issue President Obama’s commitment is more rhetorical than substantive. Since 1949, according to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has provided to Israel more than $100 billion in military and economic assistance. In 2007, the United States and Israel signed an agreement for $30 billion in additional military aid through FY2018.

Yet the provision of U.S. weapons to Israel at taxpayer expense has done nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to achieving a just and lasting peace. Rather, these weapons have had the exact opposite effect, as documented recently by Amnesty International, which pointed to U.S. weapons as a prime factor “fueling” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, during the Bush Administration, Israel killed more than 3,000 innocent Palestinian civilians, including more than 1,000 children. During its December 2008-January 2009 war on the occupied Gaza Strip alone, Israel killed nearly 1,200 non-combatants.

On average, for each day that President Bush sat in the Oval Office, Israel killed one Palestinian civilian, often with U.S. weapons. Before Congress appropriates any additional military aid to Israel, it should insist upon President Obama providing a comprehensive and transparent review of the effects U.S. weapons transfers to Israel have on Palestinian civilians. The Arms Export Control Act limits the use of U.S. weapons given to a foreign country to “internal security” and “legitimate self-defense.”

If, after reviewing the impact of Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons, the President and Congress cannot find the political will to sanction Israel for its violations of the Arms Export Control Act and prohibit future arms transfers as is required by law, then there are still steps that the U.S. government should take to ensure that any future transfers are not used to commit human rights abuses but instead to promote U.S. policy goals. For example, previous U.S. loan guarantees to Israel have stipulated that funds cannot be used to support Israeli activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel in the same way would prevent these weapons from being used to kill innocent Palestinian civilians.

As President Obama has stated, “We can’t sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars, on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of politicians, lobbyists or interest groups. We simply can’t afford it.” In regard to U.S. aid to Israel, this is true as much from a budgetary standpoint as it is from a moral one.

– Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. This article was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com. (Originally published in the Detroit Free Press, May 21, 2009)

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America’s Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia

May 24, 2009
Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry

by Andrew Hughes
.
Global Research, May 23, 2009
After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the “Great Black Hope” in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. “Change” was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic  nightmare.

Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.

The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.

The “War on terrorism” has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.

Homeland Security now defines “Terrorists” as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A  “Terrorist Watchlist” of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.

Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody’s feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.

“Cyberterrorism” is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it’s getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of “Change” Obama intended to deliver.

There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.

This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.

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The CIA’s Silent War in Pakistan

May 24, 2009
By Mark Thompson/Washington | Time, Monday, Jun. 01, 2009

Al-Qaeda operatives and Taliban fighters like Abu Omar are the target of the CIA's drone campaign.
Al-Qaeda operatives and Taliban fighters like Abu Omar are the target of the CIA’s drone campaign.
Ethan Miller / Getty
The wilds of Waziristan, the tribal belt along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, make an unlikely showcase for the future of warfare. This is a land stuck in the past: there are few roads, electricity is scarce, and entire communities of ethnic Pashtun tribesmen live as they have for millenniums. And yet it is over this medieval landscape that the U.S. has deployed some of the most sophisticated killing machines ever created, against an enemy that has survived or evaded all other weaponry. If al-Qaeda and the Taliban could not be eliminated by tanks, gunships and missiles, then perhaps they can be stamped out by CIA-operated unmanned drone aircraft, the Predator and the Reaper. (See a diagram of a Reaper here.)

That was the bet President George W. Bush placed during his final months in office, when the CIA greatly increased drone sorties and strikes in Pakistan. The accelerated attacks have been stepped up under President Barack Obama. Nowadays, the low hum of the drones has become a familiar sound in Waziristan, where tribesmen call them machay, or red bees. Their lethal sting has been felt in villages and hamlets across the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). The main objectives of the campaign: to take out al-Qaeda’s top tier of leadership, including Osama bin Laden, and deny sanctuary in FATA for the Taliban and those fighters who routinely slip across the border to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Combining high-tech video surveillance with the ability to deliver deadly fire, drones allow joystick-wielding operators on the far side of the world–Creech Air Force Base, near Las Vegas–to track moving targets in real time and destroy them. All this, without spilling American blood and for a small fraction of the cost of conventional battle.

But is the drone war winnable? The White House routinely dodges questions on the subject, and neither the CIA nor the State Department would talk about the program on the record. But officials familiar with the CIA’s operations say at least nine of the top 20 high-value al-Qaeda targets identified last fall have been killed by drone strikes, along with dozens of lesser figures. Many bases and safe houses have been destroyed. On the other hand, Pakistani officials say the majority of strikes have either missed their targets or, worse, killed innocent civilians. The News, a Pakistani daily, reported recently that 60 strikes since early 2006 had killed 687 civilians and only 14 al-Qaeda leaders, a ratio few Pakistanis would find acceptable. The campaign, in fact, may be contributing to a swelling of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and weakening the fragile government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

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‘Israel won’t yield to U.S. demands, won’t halt settlement construction’

May 24, 2009

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, left, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending a Likud faction meeting.
 Emile Salman / Jini

Last update – 05:49 24/05/2009
By Haaertz Service
Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon spoke to Channel 2 on Saturday about the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, held earlier this week, saying that Israel’s government will not allow the U.S. to dictate its policy, and that “settlement construction will not be halted.””Settlements are not the reason that the peace process is failing, they were never an obstacle, not at any stage,” Ya’alon told Channel 2 News. “Even when Israel pulled out of [Palestinian] territory, the terror continued. Even when we uprooted [Jewish] communities, we got ‘Hamastan.’ That is why I propose that we think about it – not in slogans and not with decrees.”

According to Ayalon, “we will not halt the construction in the settlements within the framework of natural growth. There are people here who are living their lives, raising children. Housing is required ? it wasn’t housing that has prevented peace.”

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In reference to the illegal West Bank outposts, which Israel has vowed to evacuate and has begun to do so, Ya’alon stressed that “the government will not permit illegal settlement, as we’ve proven with our actions this week.”

Some believe that the evacuation of the outpost of Maoz Esther on Thursday morning, which came a day after Defense Ministry sources told Haaretz that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had agreed on a plan to evacuate illegal outposts in the West Bank, was carried out in accordance with U.S. pressure. However, Barak denied any correlation between the Netanyahu-Obama meeting on Monday, and the evacuation.

Ya’alon also addressed reports that the U.S. had upped its demands and was trying to dictate Israel’s next moves in the negotiations with the Palestinians. “What the U.S. is asking is not a demand, we’ll see whether their declaration become actual demands,” he said.

“[U.S. envoy to the Middle East George] Mitchell will come, and we’ll talk to him. I suggest that Israel and the U.S. don’t set a timetable. We won’t let them threaten us,” Ya’alon added.

“From the banks of the Potomac in Washington it is not always clear what the real situation here is,” Ya’alon concluded. “This is where Israel must step in and help her ally understand the situation.”

Ya’alon also criticized Israel, saying that “the Israeli discourse paints us as hostile, the problem is within us.”

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US President Gives Green Light for Israel to Continue Its Nuclear Arms Program

May 24, 2009

The Alternative Information Center, May 20, 2009

The Dimona nuclear reactor in the south of Israel.The Dimona nuclear reactor in the south of Israel.

According to the Israeli press, US President Barak Obama promised Prime Minister Netanyahu that he would maintain the current understandings between the two countries regarding Israel’s nuclear program.

Before the Obama-Netanyahu summit, at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Rose Gottemoeller, declared that Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea should sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These are the only four recognized sovereign states that are not parties to the treaty.

In Israel, those declarations increased the public sense of insecurity regarding US-Israel relations. The press feared that the Obama administration would review its 40 year old nuclear ambiguity policy and demand international inspection of Israel’s nuclear facilities.

As part of its nuclear ambiguity policies, Israel does not need to confirm or deny the possession of nuclear weapons. However, Israel is believed to have begun full scale production of nuclear weapons following the war in 1967, although it may have had nuclear bomb parts earlier. According to Avner Cohen’s book Israel and the Bomb, a CIA report from early stated that Israel had the materials to construct a bomb in six to eight weeks.

The CIA believed that Israel’s first bombs may have been made with highly enriched uranium stolen in the mid-1960s from the US Navy nuclear fuel plant operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, where sloppy material accounting would have masked the theft.

The understandings between the US and Israel regarding Israel’s nuclear capabilities date back to 1969, when President Nixon pressed Israel to “make no visible introduction of nuclear weapons or undertake a nuclear test program,” in exchange, the US will not request Israel to joint the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli former nuclear technician revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program in Britain to the press. He was subsequently lured to Italy and kidnapped by Israeli agents. He was transported to Israel and convicted of treason.

Although no official statistics exist, a report published on 14 March by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington based foreign policy think-tank, it is estimated that Israel possesses between 60 to 400 thermonuclear weapons.

Israeli military forces also possess land, air, and sea-based methods for deploying their nuclear weapons, thus forming a rudimentary nuclear triad.

The Israeli nuclear program is part of a deterrence military doctrine that assumes that Israel has to maintain its absolute regional military superiority. Israel’s long-range missiles, nuclear capable aircraft, and its submarines present effective second strike deterrence against unconventional and conventional attacks.

In order to maintain its absolute military superiority, Israel must prevent other Middle Eastern countries from acquiring nuclear capabilities. It also requires Israel to remain outside of the international nuclear non-proliferation system.

According to Haaretz, an Israeli daily newspaper, in the past, Netanyahu asked President Clinton and received a written promise that the US will help to maintain Israel’s strategic deterrent capabilities and make sure that weapons control initiatives will not damage it. President Obama has now ratified this commitment.

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