Ron Paul Open Letter to President Obama ………….
http://www.dailypaul.com
Submitted by JohnPhillipSousaon Tue, 11/01/2011 – 03:47
“Dear President Obama,
“As a Doctor, an Air Force Veteran, and Congressman, who serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and has always fought for the best interest of our troops, I was deeply concerned to learn that our military retirees are now facing benefit cuts under your proposed $1.5 trillion dollar tax hike.
“Our military men and women have fought bravely. In exchange, our country made a promise to them, and we must honor it.
“There are trillions of dollars in unwise and unconstitutional spending we must cut. There are few other leaders in Washington willing to cut spending as deeply as I am and truly balance our budget. But, we must make sure we take care of our Veterans who fought to take care of us.
“We have put our troops in harm’s way, and we must honor our promises. And, our troops have paid a heavy price these past ten years. Over 5,000 have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, 40,000 have seen crushing injuries, and hundreds of thousands more suffer from brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.
“Failing to meet the promises we have made to our troops would be unjust and immoral. The cuts you announced yesterday, combined with the rumored cuts in benefits reported in publications like Army Times, have our soldiers and Veterans deeply concerned.
“Mr. President, instead of cutting our Veterans benefits, I call on you to support our troops. Support them by bringing them home to our shores, to protect our borders and defend our country. Ensure that they are rested and equipped to repel any real credible attack. Re-unite them with their families. And, make sure they no longer play policeman in dangerous foreign civil wars.
“Cutting the benefits of our Veterans benefits while we subsidize the security of other wealthy nations like Germany and Japan and play World Policeman makes no sense. The money we would save extracting our fighting men and women and our equipment from overseas conflicts and regions will more than offset the savings you seek by upending the manner in which veterans receive care.
“Bringing our troops home would ensure that we keep the promise to our Veterans, strengthen our national defense and secure our borders.
“Do not mistake me for a pacifist or a person solely focused on the economics of the unsustainable global security and state-building that has helped our country arrive at the shores of financial ruin. On the contrary, I consider my military service as an Air Force flight surgeon during the Cold War to be among my highest personal and professional achievements.
“Authentic, Constitutionally-sound national security — a strong national defense — begins with guarding our borders and not the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
“Mr. President, I call upon your to support our troops, honor our Veterans, and ensure our wounded get the care they deserve. To do so, we must end these protracted, trillion-dollar wars and bring them home.”
In Liberty,
Ron Paul
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U.S.-Canada Perimeter Security and the Consolidation of North America ………
http://dprogram.net
by Dana Gabriel
September 20th, 2011
(BeYourOwnLeader) – The U.S. and Canada are very close to unveiling a North American perimeter security deal that would promote greater integration between both countries. This includes expanding collaboration in areas of law enforcement and intelligence sharing which could dramatically affect sovereignty and privacy rights. While there is a need for more public scrutiny, incrementalism has been used to advance North American integration. In many ways this has kept the agenda under the radar. Much like NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a U.S.-Canada perimeter security agreement would represent another step in the consolidation of North America.
During his speech at a recent meeting of northern border states, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told participants that the U.S. and Canada are set to launch a pilot project next year which will allow law enforcement officers to operate on both sides of the border. Holder explained that, “the creation of ‘NextGen’ teams of cross-designated officers would allow us to more effectively identify, assess, and interdict persons and organizations involved in transnational crime.” He went on to say, “In conjunction with the other provisions included in the Beyond the Border Initiative, such a move would enhance our cross-border efforts and advance our information-sharing abilities.” The declaration, Beyond the Border: Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness issued by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper last February, identified joint law enforcement operations and information sharing as a high priority. There are already examples of what we could expect from a security perimeter as some Canadians have been denied entry into the U.S. after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
While further details of the new joint law enforcement project are not yet available, Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians pointed out that the plans are well advanced. This prompted him to question, “why is Harper consulting with Canadians on a done deal? We haven’t had a chance to yea or nay the perimeter agreement which is expected to be released as an ‘action plan’ within weeks. But a pilot project that legalizes and normalizes US policing activities in Canada is already set to begin next year.” He added that this confirms, “the Harper government will use its limited public consultations earlier this year to move ahead quickly with whatever new cross-border policing and information sharing commitments it wants, regardless of privacy and other concerns.” Last month, the Canadian government released two reports which summarized public input received concerning regulatory cooperation, as well as security and trade across the border. While improving the movement of goods and people was the priority for business groups, many individuals expressed concerns over the loss of sovereignty, along with the protection of personal information.
On top of announcing plans to create teams of cross-designated officers, Attorney General Eric Holder took time to praise bilateral relations between the two countries, but acknowledged, “there are areas in which the U.S. and Canada can enhance cooperation in criminal investigations and prosecutions. And I believe we must consider how extradition, and mutual legal assistance, processes could be streamlined.” He also stated, “As Canada’s national government considers various anti-crime policies and approaches, we will continue working to implement a comprehensive anti-crime framework.” Does this mean that as part of a security perimeter, Canada would have to change its legal system to better reflect U.S. laws? As the fall session of Parliament gets underway, the Harper government is set to table tough new criminal reform legislation.
In the report entitled Shared Vision or Myopia: The Politics of Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, former Foreign Service officer Gar Pardy warns that a perimeter security deal with the U.S. could sacrifice Canadians privacy while doing nothing to improve the flow of trade across the border. In his report, Pardy reveals that “The concessions the Americans want is the transfer of enormous amounts of information about Canadians and others about whom Canada collects information. It is evident that to meet such expectations Canadian privacy laws will need to be ignored, violated or weakened.” He also stated that, “The Shared Vision approach essentially promotes the idea that in order to restore the status quo ante implicit in the free trade agreements there have to be large political concessions by Canada that will satisfy American security concerns.” This could explain the Conservative government’s announcement that it will reintroduce anti-terrorism measures which have expired and are on par with sections of the liberty-stripping U.S. Patriot Act. The move is tied to plans for a security perimeter and is aimed more at satisfying U.S. fears.
In his report released by the Rideau Institute, Gar Pardy also warns that, “when Canada–United States privacy protection principles are under bilateral discussion, privacy protection will not be increased. A more likely result is that existing Canadian privacy laws, as flawed as they are, will erode to meet the demands of the United States.” As part of his report, he recommended measures that would better protect privacy rights and encourage transparency. This included all new agreements with the U.S. affecting the privacy rights of Canadians, be reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner. Pardy called for the creation of a single authority to oversee all federal police and security organizations participating in information transfers between both countries. He also recommended a separate treaty that would protect personal information transferred to the U.S. for national security purposes. With regards to a perimeter security deal, Pardy concluded that, “If Canadian concessions on security and privacy rules do result in the lessening of American border restrictions and controls then such results would always be hostage to future events over which Canada has no control.”
It is important to keep in mind that the move towards a North American security perimeter is being done without congressional or parliamentary approval. There is no reason to trust that our governments will strike any kind of balance between security and freedom. That is why it is imperative that we demand more transparency and input. With a joint action plan expected to be released soon, it is my hope that Canadians and Americans will reject any perimeter security deal that reduces privacy rights and further puts our sovereignty at risk.
Source: Be Your Own Leader
Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, security, as well as other issues. Contact:beyourownleader@hotmail.com
Related articles by Dana Gabriel
The Push for a Single Unified North American Regulatory Regime
U.S. Dictating North American Air Travel Security
Canada-U.S. Deep Integration Agenda Continues Unabated
Advancing U.S.-Canada Economic, Energy and Security Integration
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich: The ‘WAR’ in Libya is illegal – U.S. Constitution Article 1 Section 8 ( filed under : “Who cares about the Law anymore ?”) …….
Watch what Obama has to say about the Involvement of the US Troops in Libya .(at the end of the Video)
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Osama died in 2001: MSNBC hit piece unwittingly reveals corroboration for Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik’s assertion
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by Paul Joseph Watson
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Global Research, May 13, 2011
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An MSNBC hit piece that attempts to debunk Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik’s assertion that Osama Bin Laden died from Marfan syndrome in 2001 unwittingly provides corroboration from a top Cornell doctor who first made similar statements in an interview with Salon magazine two months after 9/11.
Pieczenik, a State Department official in three different administrations and an award-winning Harvard Medical School luminary, told The Alex Jones Show last week that the alleged raid on Bin Laden’s compound was a fable because Osama had already been dead for the best part of a decade. Pieczenik originally appeared on the show back in April 2002 when he asserted that Bin Laden had been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.
According to French intelligence reports, CIA agents visited Bin Laden at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months before 9/11.
It was also widely acknowledged at the time that Bin Laden needed a kidney dialysis machine because of renal health problems. Indeed, CBS News reported that Bin Laden was having kidney dialysis treatment the night before 9/11. No dialysis machine was found in the alleged compound in Pakistan, which prompted the corporate media to backtrack and report that that he actually had kidney stones, not kidney disease, despite the fact that the CIA admitted back in 2008 that Bin Laden had suffered from kidney failure.
Other accounts from 2000-2001 claimed that Osama was also suffering from Hepatitis C and had only two more years to live. Despite all these health problems, on Saturday the White House released video footage of Bin Laden which it claimed was filmed in fall 2010, although the clips show a younger and healthier looking Osama compared with video footage from 2001.
Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer and can cause instant death from the sudden rupture of the aorta.
“Back then, after the 9/11 terror attacks, medical experts weighed in on bin Laden’s tall, frame, lanky limbs and long face, all classic physical symptoms of Marfan syndrome,” states the MSNBC report.
The article then quotes Dr. Richard Devereux, a clinician who treats patients with the illness at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. In a November 9, 2001 interview with Salon magazine, Devereux said of Bin Laden, “He is Marfanoid. He seems to have long fingers and long arms. His head appears to be elongated and his face narrow … It’s certainly conceivable that he has the Marfan syndrome and could be evaluated for it.”
After MSNBC attempted to speak to the doctor again on the topic in light of Bin Laden’s alleged assassination, they were told by a hospital spokesman that Devereux “doesn’t want to talk about bin Laden now.”
Despite MSNBC’s best efforts to debunk Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died from Marfan syndrome in 2001 – they go on to quote another doctor who claims that Bin Laden never had the illness – Pieczenik’s source for the information comes directly from intelligence files that he saw over nine years ago confirming that the terror leader was dead. This means that the entire narrative of Bin Laden’s alleged assassination put out by the Obama administration is an act of mass public deception. Obama has benefited enormously from cultivating a ‘tough guy’ image out of the fabled raid, enjoying a 13 point approval rating bounce according to an Associated Press poll.
Pieczenik’s credibility is beyond reproach (bio). As well as serving under five US presidents, he wrote the book on psychological warfare and counter terrorism for the State Department, while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world. He also won two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards while studying at Harvard Medical School.
Pieczenik’s record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus. He was a top spymaster involved in all manner of black-ops, undercover missions and classified work.
Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden has been dead for years is also backed up by a myriad of other intelligence professionals and heads of state, including Former CIA officer and hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert Robert Baer, as well as former FBI counter-terror head Dale Watson, who have all gone on the record to state that Osama was dead long before the raid on his alleged Pakistani compound earlier this month.
Paul Joseph Watson is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Joseph Watson
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Kourosh Ziabari: Satisfying the Zionists, Obama’s first priority
http://www.veteranstoday.com
April 25, 2011 posted by Kourosh Ziabari
By Kourosh Ziabari / STAFF WRITER
When Barack Obama entered the oval office with his luminous and glowing slogan of “change” which appealed to millions of frustrated Americans who couldn’t tolerate the hawkish and warmongering policies of George Bush anymore, it was hardly predictable that he would be going to simply present a moderated example of his aggressive predecessor who owed his legitimacy and power to the Zionist lobby in the United States.
Barack Obama had deceitfully convinced the world that the United States under his presidency would start a new era of dialogue and friendship with the oppressed nations, refrain from intervening in the internal affairs of other countries, take care of its black human rights record, pull out its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and hand over the administration of these countries to their people, draw an end to the atrocities of the Zionist regime, bring about wellbeing and peace for the Palestinian nation and engage in peaceful diplomacy with Iran; that was why more than 130 political leaders from around the world jubilantly sent him congratulatory messages upon his election as the president of the United States. However, all of these politicians recognized that they were shrewdly tricked by the “snowman of change” as soon as he made his first trip to Israel and announced his sincerest commitment to the security of Israel and implicitly made us understand that pleasing his Zionist bosses is his first priority. That was where all of us realized that Obama is another Israel agent put in the place of the executive administrator of the United States to satisfy the needs and demands of the Zionist lobby.
In a January 2010 article in Huffington Post, journalist and activist Steve Sheffey presented a detailed record of Obama’s pro-Israeli decisions and statements during his first year in office as the U.S. President, elaborately arguing that Obama has been one of the most loyal and faithful people to the cause of Israel and the Zionist lobby.
According to Sheffey, Obama is the first U.S. President who has ever hosted a “Seder” in the White House. Seder is a Jewish ritual service and ceremonial dinner for the first night or first two nights of Passover, a major spring festival which commemorates what the Zionists claim is the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian servitude.
On December 21, President Obama signed a defense spending bill that includes $202 million in funds for Israel’s missile defense programs. “We are tremendously pleased with the ongoing cooperation between the United States and the State of Israel in the area of missile defense,” an Israeli official said after Obama signed the bill.
Sheffey adds that “no Administration in history has come into office with a Vice President, Secretary of State, and Chief of Staff with stronger pro-Israel credentials than this one.”
On June 4 in Cairo, President Obama told the Arab and Muslim world that America’s connection with Israel is “unbreakable.” He told the Arab and Muslim world that to deny the Holocaust is “baseless, ignorant, and hateful.” He told them that threatening Israel with destruction is “deeply wrong.” He said that “Palestinians must abandon violence” and that “it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.” And he said that “Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
All of these actions and statements which are purely directed at gratifying the Zionist regime and the active Zionist lobby in the United States indicate that President Obama is no different than George W. Bush and those before him who considered the security and stability of Israel their vital and crucial commitment.
Today, it’s almost clear to everyone that no politician with an anti-Zionist mindset could ever dream of living in the White House. This is what Prof. Naseer Aruri, the renowned political scientist and author has mentioned in his recent interview published on Veterans Today: “the American political system has institutional and constitutional barriers against anti-Zionists winning the U.S. presidency. Take for example the Electoral College by which Americans elect their presidents. The EC stipulates that a candidate to the presidency must gain plurality and the winner takes all. These two factors (plurality and winner takes all) tend to polarize the system and promote the two party system. In that setting, there is no place for a minority, which is likely to be the anti-Zionist mindset.”
Now, Barack Obama has launched his electoral campaign for the 2012 presidential elections and faces a painstaking mission to accomplish. From one hand, he has lost the confidence of the ordinary American citizens who had come to believe that his slogan of change was a genuine and authentic one. On the other hand, he should seek the indispensable vote of the American Jews who have always played a vital role in determining the results of the presidential elections in the United States.
Obama has recently encountered a quandary which the Zionist Jews in the United States has created for him. According to the Agence France Presse Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi Yonah Metzger on Sunday called on U.S. President Barack Obama to free Jewish-American spy Jonathan Pollard if he wants Jews to vote for his reelection.
Metzger warned Obama that he would do well to free Pollard if he wanted another term in the White House. “I’m not making a prophesy, but rather echoing the frustrations of numerous American Jews who voted for him and are disappointed by his lackadaisical approach to the numerous appeals for Pollard’s released,” he said.
However, the emancipation of Pollard is not the only order of the Zionist lobby for Barack Obama. The U.S. House of Representatives introduced the resolution 1734 on December 15, 2010 in which it was categorically demanded from President Obama to refuse to recognize an independent Palestinian nation. Former BBC Panorama presenter Alan Hart believes that this resolution was drafted by AIPAC and is considered to be the Zionist lobby’s new order for Obama. The resolution has expressively called upon the Administration “to affirm that the United States would deny any recognition, legitimacy, or support of any kind to any unilaterally declared “Palestinian state” and would urge other responsible nations to follow suit, and to make clear that any such unilateral declaration would constitute a grievous violation of the principles underlying the Oslo Accords and the Middle East peace process.”
Anyway, Barack Obama will be facing a serious dilemma in his path toward the 2012 Presidential Elections. Satisfying the Zionist lobby, regaining the confidence of the American public and compelling the international community that he deserves to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate are all the responsibilities which seem to be quite unachievable and far-fetched for the so-called man of change.
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist and media correspondent. Read more about him here
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PRESIDENT OBAMA, “GET REAL” ON 9/11 AND PHONY TERROR
“you can’t handle the truth”
“WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH, SOME OF US ANYWAY”
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
America is in its 10th year of war in Afghanistan and losing. Everyone there hates us, we haven’t won a single “heart” or “mind.” We have succeeded in building an empire of opium and heroin on a scale never before imagined.
Millions at home, tens of millions in Russia, Europe and around the world have been destroyed by the flood of narcotics distributed with deadly efficiency by a combination of rogue military and intelligence operations and the contracting firms we payed to protect us.
American corruption, incompetence and brutality has recruited hundreds of thousands into a war against the United States who could otherwise have been our allies. This is the simple truth of it.
The entire premise for Afghanistan was a lie. Not long ago, Ron Paul exposed even the first Gulf War as a lie, Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was authorized and supported by the United States. This is one of the uncelebrated Wikileaks accomplishments.
Everybody knows, and I do so love saying this, that there were no WMDs in Iraq, that the whole thing was set up by Israel. 5000 Americans died uselessly. Let’s face it, “uselessly” is the right term, no way about it. We can handle the truth.
Handle this:
- 9/11 was pure “false flag” staged by Israel with help from Pentagon, CIA and White House “friends”
- There were NO 9/11 hijackers, no “box cutters,” no airplane drama, no passengers storming the cockpit, no phone calls, it was all made up
- No plane hit the Pentagon, it was a missile
- Two airplanes didn’t knock down the 3 WTC towers.
- Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA and died 10 years ago
- Al Qaeda never existed until we invented it. It still doesn’t, not really, though millions of Muslims now wish it did so they could join.
There is so much “hard proof” of these things, you could convict “OJ,” even with Alan Dershowitz defending him.
The “proof” of the cover story dissolved years ago, the phony investigation, the phony engineering study, all a sick joke, with the emphasis on “sick.” Anyone who accepts this bilk is simply too stupid to live.
We are preparing to put a “hijacker” on trial soon.
First of all, it isn’t really a trial at all, its some sort of military kangaroo court thing, quite illegal, quite unconstitutional, no surprise there.
Hey, it gets even better.
We aren’t even sure who we have. Not only did this guy have nothing to do with 9/11, according to intelligence sources, he probably is just so schmo we “bought” back during the Bush administration, some nameless victim like the dozens or even hundreds, perhaps thousands, we kidnapped, tortured (and executed) by “mistake.”
It was never a mistake. It was a “ploy.” Bush and Cheney needed “numbers” to sell the idea that they were winning the “GWOT.” (Global War on Terror) They gave these instructions:
- Get us “warm bodies,” for “suspects,” we don’t care who or why, we need “results”
- Get us “confessions,” the more outlandish, the better…
- Go out and recruit “terrorists,” inside the US, Europe and around the world. We want to be able to stage terror attacks on demand, based on election and news cycles or when we need a distraction
This is the truth. This is what the facts support. This is what we need to admit to and these are the crimes we need to redress, to our own people and people around the world.
We have become everything we ourselves fear most. No more fairy tales, no more bedtime stories, no more lies.
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Muammar Kadhafi’s Letter to Barack Obama
http://www.voltairenet.org
| by Muammar al-Gaddafi*
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5 April 2011 Countries |
Our son, Excellency, We have been hurt more morally that physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the U.S.A. We Endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne. You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action. I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that. Enough evidence is available, Bearing in mind that you are the president of the strongest power in the world nowadays, and since Nato is waging an unjust war against a small people of a developing country. This country had already been subjected to embargo and sanctions, furthermore it also suffered a direct military armed aggression during Reagan’s time. This country is Libya. Hence, to serving world peace … Friendship between our peoples … and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror, you are in a position to keep Nato off the Libyan affair for good. As you know too well democracy and building of civil society cannot be achieved by means of missiles and aircraft, or by backing armed member of AlQuaeda in Benghazi. You — yourself — said on many occasions, one of them in the UN General Assembly, I was witness to that personally, that America is not responsible for the security of other peoples. That America helps only. This is the right logic. Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama, your intervention is the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair. Libya should be left to Libyans within the African union frame. The problem now stands as follows:- 1. There is Nato intervention politically as well as military. 2. Terror conducted by AlQaueda gangs that have been armed in some cities, and by force refused to allow people to go back to their normal life, and carry on with exercising their social people’s power as usual.
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President Obama’s top 5 broken campaign promises
http://www.rawstory.com

President Barack Obama came to office on a tide of voters eager to see a change in more than just the White House’s occupant. Two years into his presidency — and one day after he launched his 2012 reelection campaign — and even some of his most ardent supporters are having trouble coming to terms with the answer to Sarah Palin’s 2010 question: “How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out?”
Polls show that less than half the country believes President Obama deserves reelection, with disaffected liberals now a fast growing demographic.
Even though Obama clearly leads all of the likely Republican front-runners at this point, the deep dissatisfaction brewing within his core constituency could make the president, and his whole party, uniquely vulnerable in next year’s elections.
Below are five of the biggest campaign pledges Obama failed to keep — for which he’ll likely have to answer before election day 2012.
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1. Health care for all
If you’re an American making less than $30,000 a year, chances are you still have trouble seeing a doctor, despite the passage of President Obama’s health care reform plan. In 2007, then-Senator Obama said he wanted to make sure no American is without access to vital medical attention and proposed using revenues from the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts to fund it. When the campaign laid out their specific plans in 2008, they included a “public option” that would be paid for by the public at large and made available to anyone who could not obtain coverage through their employer or other public program.
Ultimately, the debate in Washington became so heated and rife with disinformation that the administration and its allies in Congress agreed to forgo the public option, using it as a bargaining chip to ensure other proposals, like ending the “pre-existing condition” exclusion in private insurance policies, were passed in the final bill. They also gave in to Republican demands and extended the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, promising to take on the issue again in 2012. In spite of the modest legislative victory of actually getting health reform passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that even after all the elements take effect in 2014, over 22 million Americans will still lack access to basic health services.
2. Close Guantanamo
As a symbol of everything that liberals thought to be wrong with the Bush-era, closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba should have been an easy target for the new and popular president and his Democratic super-majority in Congress — and, in fact, then-candidate Obama promised to do just that. But as he soon found out, strategic and political calculations have made it almost impossible to shuck.
Today, Obama has turned away from his promise to close the facility and embraced the controversial terror war symbol, ordering the resumption of military tribunals and even moving the accused 9/11 plotters’ trial from a civilian court in New York City to the secret military court at Guantanamo.
3. Defend labor rights
“Understand this,” Obama said during a campaign rally in 2007. “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.” (Watch.)
Despite efforts by state-level Republicans in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Florida and Indiana to curtail collective bargaining rights, the President has yet to appear at a single protest or picket line.
4. Reform the Patriot Act
Contrary to popular belief, Obama has never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration’s sweeping, post-9/11 security initiatives, which were passed with a mandatory “sunset” clause to overrule the concerns of civil libertarians at the time. Instead, Obama has consistently said he favors enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback from some warrantless searches — like the provisions that allow the FBI to access library records without a warrant.
But every time the emergency laws have been due to expire, President Obama has pushed to extend them without any reforms. Most recently, the administration sought an extension of the Patriot Act that was even longer than the one Republicans wanted. They gave it to him and continued the sweeping spy powers through 2013, ensuring that the next extension doesn’t become an election year issue.
5. End the wars
Even as a candidate, Obama maintained that Afghanistan should be “the focus” of Bush’s terror war, and he pledged to make it so. But the president was also swept into power on a wave of anti-war fervor behind his calls to end the occupation of Iraq. Iraq has calmed down quite a bit as U.S. troops steadily stream out of the country, but Afghanistan is more violent than ever amid Obama’s own “surge.”
Even though the president promised his Afghan occupation would conclude in July 2011, military officials have admitted that sometime in 2014 is more likely. Elsewhere, American forces are dropping more bombs on more countries today than at any point during the Bush administration, with continued occupation forces in two massive countries even as they stage aerial bombardments of Pakistan, Libya and Yemen.
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Speaker Boehner Letter to President Obama on Military Action in Libya
http://www.speaker.gov
Washington (Mar 23) House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today sent the following letter to President Obama regarding U.S. military action taking place in Libya. A PDF of the letter can be found here.
March 23, 2011
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Thank you for your letter dated March 21, 2011, outlining your Administration’s actions regarding Libya and Operation Odyssey Dawn. The United States has long stood with those who seek freedom from oppression through self-government and an underlying structure of basic human rights. The news yesterday that a U.S. fighter jet involved in this operation crashed is a reminder of the high stakes of any military action abroad and the high price our Nation has paid in blood and treasure to advance the cause of freedom through our history.
I respect your authority as Commander-in-Chief and support our troops as they carry out their mission. But I and many other members of the House of Representatives are troubled that U.S. military resources were committed to war without clearly defining for the American people, the Congress, and our troops what the mission in Libya is and what America’s role is in achieving that mission. In fact, the limited, sometimes contradictory, case made to the American people by members of your Administration has left some fundamental questions about our engagement unanswered. At the same time, by contrast, it appears your Administration has consulted extensively on these same matters with foreign entities such as the United Nations and the Arab League.
It is my hope that you will provide the American people and Congress a clear and robust assessment of the scope, objective, and purpose of our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved. Here are some of the questions I believe must be answered:
- A United Nations Security Council resolution does not substitute for a U.S. political and military strategy. You have stated that Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi must go, consistent with U.S. policy goals. But the U.N. resolution the U.S. helped develop and signed onto makes clear that regime change is not part of this mission. In light of this contradiction, is it an acceptable outcome for Qadhafi to remain in power after the military effort concludes in Libya? If not, how will he be removed from power? Why would the U.S. commit American resources to enforcing a U.N. resolution that is inconsistent with our stated policy goals and national interests?
- In announcing that our Armed Forces would lead the preliminary strikes in Libya, you said it was necessary to “enable the enforcement of a no-fly zone that will be led by our international partners.” Do we know which partners will be taking the lead? Are there clear lines of authority and responsibility and a chain of command? Operationally, does enforcement of a no-fly zone require U.S. forces to attack non-air or command and control operations for land-based battlefield activities, such as armored vehicles, tanks, and combatants?
- You have said that the support of the international community was critical to your decision to strike Libya. But, like many Americans, it appears many of our coalition partners are themselves unclear on the policy goals of this mission. If the coalition dissolves or partners continue to disengage, will the American military take on an increased role? Will we disengage?
- Since the stated U.S. policy goal is removing Qadhafi from power, do you have an engagement strategy for the opposition forces? If the strife in Libya becomes a protracted conflict, what are your Administration’s objectives for engaging with opposition forces, and what standards must a new regime meet to be recognized by our government?
- Your Administration has repeatedly said our engagement in this military action will be a matter of “days, not weeks.” After four days of U.S. military action, how soon do you expect to hand control to these other nations? After the transition to coalition forces is completed, how long will American military forces remain engaged in this action? If Qadhafi remains in power, how long will a no-fly zone will be enforced?
- We are currently in the process of setting priorities for the coming year in the budget. Has the Department of Defense estimated the total cost, direct and indirect, associated with this mission? While you said yesterday that the cost of this mission could be paid for out of already-appropriated funds, do you anticipate requesting any supplemental funds from Congress to pay for ongoing operations in Libya?
- Because of the conflicting messages from the Administration and our coalition partners, there is a lack of clarity over the objectives of this mission, what our national security interests are, and how it fits into our overarching policy for the Middle East. The American people deserve answers to these questions. And all of these concerns point to a fundamental question: what is your benchmark for success in Libya?
The American people take the use of military action seriously, as does the House of Representatives. It is regrettable that no opportunity was afforded to consult with Congressional leaders, as was the custom of your predecessors, before your decision as Commander-in-Chief to deploy into combat the men and women of our Armed Forces. Understanding some information required to respond may be classified, I look forward to a complete response.
Sincerely,
John A. Boehner
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Russia Reports France Threat Against Obama Brought US Into Libya War
Posted by EU Times on Mar 25th, 2011

A shocking report written by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the meetings held between President Medvedev and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates this past week says that America’s war on Libya was “forced” onto it after French President Nicolas Sarkozy [photo top right with Libyan leader Gaddafi] threatened President Barack Obama with “total exposure” if the US didn’t attack.
Upon hearing Gates shocking admission of why the US began its war on Libya, this report says, Medvedev issued a warning that should too many civilians be killed America could expect Russian forces to move into the region to protect them, a warning that fell on deaf ears as Gates walked out of the meeting saying that he found Russia’s arguments “difficult to comprehend.”
Especially upsetting to Gates, this report continues, was Prime Minister Putin stating that United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya resembled the “medieval calls for crusades,”, a statement quickly rebutted by Medvedev as “unacceptable,” and who further warned that comments such as Putin’s could “lead to a clash of civilizations.”
The “total exposure” threatened by Sarkozy unless the US attacked Libya regards the American President’s most senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who, according to this report, is the Iranian born “handler” of Obama for the “Moon Cult” factions of the Islamic World seeking to bring about the return of the prophesied redeemer of Islam known as the Mehdi.
Important to note about Sarkozy’s threatening to expose Jarrett for her extensive ties to the Persian Nation was her stunning revelation a fortnight ago before the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in Washington that she is of Jewish heritage herself, and not a Muslim as those in the US elite power structure had believed.
Though Jarrett’s Jewish background may have taken Washington by surprise, this report says it was long known to Sarkozy, who, according to the French daily Le Figaro, has long been a spy for Israel’s MOSSAD intelligence agency, and as we can, in part, read:
“A report reveals that French President Nicolas Sarkozy worked for Israeli intelligence for a long time before he was elected president. French daily Le Figaro has revealed the French leader once worked for the Zionist regime as a sayan, Hebrew for ‘collaborator’.
Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky says sayans, who perform many roles, are Jewish citizens of other nationalities assisting Mossad. Le Figaro claimed that French police officials managed to keep secret a letter, which exposed Sarkozy’s past participation in espionage activities for Mossad.
The letter fixed Sarkozy’s alleged spying activities as far back as 1983.”
The reason for Sarkozy wanting the complete and total destruction of Libya lies in the threats made against him last week by the Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who threatened to reveal a “grave secret” that would bring down the embattled French President.
The “grave secret” feared by Sarkozy we can further read about as reported London’s Guardian News Service, and which, in part, says:
“Muammar Gaddafi’s son has claimed that Libya helped finance Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful election campaign in 2007, and demanded that the French president return the money to “the Libyan people”.
In an interview with the Euronews TV channel, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said Libya had details of bank transfers and was ready to make them public in a move designed to punish Sarkozy for throwing his weight behind opposition forces.”
Important to note about France’s relationship with Libya is that should it win this war it will have secured its energy security for the rest of this century as this North African Nation holds the largest oil reserves on the continent estimated at over 41 Billion barrels. Even more critical to note about Libya’s oil is that is the lightest, sweetest and easiest-to-extract black gold left on Earth and costs just $1.00 to extract.
Equally critical to note about France’s relationship with Libya was its having signed over $27 Billion in agreements with this North African country this past January, all of which is endangering the collapse of the French economy should they be cancelled.
As we had, also, noted in our March 8th report Global Resource War Warned Has Begun Between East-West, the vast water reserves of Libya (the largest ever discovered on the African continent) make this country a “prize” the West must have, and its military might will seek to ensure it gets.
Most appalling of the West’s war upon Libya is that it is coming at the expense of the African Nation of Ivory Coast where the UN estimates today over 1 million have fled their homes as civil war fears grow.
Most unfortunate for the hundreds of thousands of innocents set to die in the Ivory Coast is that their Nation has no massive oil or water resources for the West to attack them for, and leaving one to wonder if these Westerners have, indeed, lost what little moral conscious they had left.
To the outcome of the battle between the United States and France over the fate of Libya it is not in our knowing, other than to note the obvious that with each passing day this World of ours grows more dangerous by the hour.
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Bradley Manning Now “Catatonic”; Obama ENOUGH!
http://www.uruknet.info
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pic courtesy : http://www.fullissue.com
Ralph Lopez
War Is A Crime, March 8, 2011
As Obama’s crime of the destruction of Bradley Manning continues to unfold before our very eyes, Manning friend David House now tells us that over 8 months in isolation with movement and sleep restrictions placed on him have been having their intended effect. House has told MSNBC that by the end of January Manning appeared “catatonic” and that he had “severe problems communicating,” with it having taken House nearly 45 minutes on a recent visit to engage in any meaningful way (video below.) House said Manning’s demeanor was as “if he had just woken up and didn’t know what was going on around him.” Manning was “utterly exhausted physically and mentally…it was difficult to have any kind of social engagement.”
Also, a full month after Congressman Dennis Kucinich formally requested a visit, the Army has stalled on the request.
All for the crime of reporting war crimes and criminal behavior even among the highest-ranking military officials in Iraq.
In 2005, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member [in Iraq], if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to try to stop it.”
Chase Mader writes in HuffPo that soon after deployment to Iraq, Manning:
“soon found himself helping the Iraqi authorities detain civilians for distributing “anti-Iraqi literature” — which turned out to be an investigative report into financial corruption in their own government entitled “Where does the money go?” The penalty for this “crime” in Iraq was not a slap on the wrist. Imprisonment and torture, as well as systematic abuse of prisoners, are widespread in the new Iraq. From the military’s own Sigacts (Significant Actions) reports, we have a multitude of credible accounts of Iraqi police and soldiers shooting prisoners, beating them to death, pulling out fingernails or teeth, cutting off fingers, burning with acid, torturing with electric shocks or the use of suffocation, and various kinds of sexual abuse including sodomization with gun barrels and forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts on guards and each other…
Like any good soldier, Manning immediately took these concerns up the chain of command. And how did his superiors respond? His commanding officer told him to “shut up” and get back to rounding up more prisoners for the Iraqi Federal Police to treat however they cared to…”
Manning also found a video and an official report on American air strikes on the village of Granai in Afghanistan’s Farah Province (also known as “the Granai massacre”). According to the Afghan government, 140 civilians, including women and a large number of children, died in those strikes.
War crimes? What war crimes? This is the point of view of the Pentagon as it destroys Bradley Manning.
On the Haditha killings (found to be “collateral damage” by the Army despite an American officer’s unearthing and handing up the chain of command a video showing close up bullet wounds) a recent Counterpunch article by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis recounts:
” Consider what happened to the U.S. soldiers who, over a period of hours – not minutes – went house to house in the Iraqi town of Haditha and executed 24 men, women and children in retaliation for a roadside bombing. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head,” said one of the two surviving eyewitnesses to the massacre, nine-year-old Eman Waleed. “Then they killed my granny.” Almost five years later, not one of the men involved in the incident is behind bars. And despite an Army investigation revealing that statements made by the chain of command “suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives,” with the murder of brown-skinned innocents considered “just the cost of doing business,” none of their superiors are behind bars either.”
Massacres of civilians in retaliation for IEDs seems to have been standard fare in Iraq. Ethan McCord says his unit was ordered to engage in “360 rotational” fireand “kill every mother&* in the street” in the event of an IED. The officer who gave the order was Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, “the lost Kauz” who is featured in David Finkel’s book “The Good Soldiers.” Col. K is also the executive officer who led the first investigation into the death of Pat Tillman.
Josh Stieber, a McCord unit-mate who also witnessed the order, said the logic was to get residents to be “pro-active” in preventing the planting of roadside bombs. Brass knew that the people in the houses nearest probably saw it planted and didn’t say anything.
Stieber on Antiwarradio.com:
“Yeah, it was an order that came from Kauzlarich himself, and it had the philosophy that, you know, as Finkel does describe in the book, that we were under pretty constant threat, and what he leaves out is the response to that threat. But the philosophy was that if each time one of these roadside bombs went off where you don’t know who set it … the way we were told to respond was to open fire on anyone in the area, with the philosophy that that would intimidate them, to be proactive in stopping people from making these bombs …”
Now nine Afghan children have been killed after what the Army says was mistaken identity after a nearby rocket attack on American forces. These boys could have been the boys some on this site got to know well in the New Year’s Global Call for Peace (they weren’t, but they were just as precious.)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said people like Bradley Manning have “blood on their hands” for releasing documents which might identify Afghan informants. But look down Robert, and don’t flinch. They are dripping.
Commander-in-Chief Obama, order Bradley Manning released!
The White House
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
Webform for email: www.whitehouse.gov/contact
You can also comment on the WH FaceBook page.
Also demand your congressman speak up and castigate this administration for the treatment of Bradley Manning, leave a voicemail if it is after-hours (24/7):
Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121
January 3: Psychologists for Social Responsibility write an open letter highlighting the severely deleterious effects on the psychological well-being
January 24: Amnesty International called on US authorities “to alleviate the harsh pre-trial detention conditions of Bradley Manning”
:: Article nr. 75688 sent on 09-mar-2011 08:21 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=75688
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ALLEN L ROLAND: World War III – A Class War between The people and Corpocracy
World War III has already started. It is not a military war but instead an economic class war by the people against the corporate global elite whose puppet spoke person is President Obama. The economically oppressed masses of people in Egypt realized they could literally shut down the government and that empowering message has reached the United States where the masses of enraged people in Wisconsin are taking to the streets in a revolt against their own corporate welfare state. Obama take note ~ this is the beginning of world wide shift in consciousness which will culminate in 2012 and politically sweep away the Oligarchy in the process: Allen L Roland
Wikipedia defines Oligarchy as a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy. As such, my use of the term corpocracy should be taken in the same context as the Oligarchy and plutocracy ~ rule by the privileged few or global elite.
Our founded Republic is a state under a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain supreme control of the government and where most decisions are made with reference to established laws, rather than the discretion of a head of state, a monarch or appointed Czars.
The epicenter of the Middle East people’s revolt is the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel ~ which is a constant and humiliating reminder to the Arab world that they are servants of the global elite who maintain their oppressive regimes through military power and economic control.
The epicenter of the blossoming people’s revolt in the United States is the 9/11 conspiracy where Vice President Dick Cheney created a shadow government committed to corporate welfare and beholden to the global elite. That’s when the Republic began its death throes and the corpocracy emerged from the twin towers ashes ~ where it controlled, and still does control the masses through fear, demonizing, and fabrications with the ultimate big lie being the 9/11 cover up story.
Fueled by greed, arrogance and false patriotism the Corpocracy, under Cheney’s active direction, went to war with Afghanistan and falsely rationalized another war with Iraq, again under Cheney’s active direction, and virtually imprisoned the Middle East through its control of their oppressive monarchies and its unholy alliance with its ongoing partner in crime, Israel. Obama’s continued support of an illegal war and occupation of Afghanistan was an early indication of his allegiance to the corpocracy ~ much to the continued chagrin of progressives and the majority of Americans.
Corporate welfare is a term describing a government’s bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations which is precisely what the Cheney/Bush administration did in order to achieve the monetary allegiance and goals of the corpocracy ~ while America’s middle class virtually died as their jobs were either shipped overseas or eliminated by corporate welfare.
President Obama eagerly sensed where the power was and signed on board with the corpocracy leaving his progressive base in shambles. This marriage was recently consummated between President Obama and the financial elite with the appointment of J.P. Morgan’s William Daly as his chief of staff, former Goldman executive Gene Sterling as his economic council chief and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness ( Chuckle ).
The stage was set for economic welfare you can believe in and the people and Republic be damned.
With the corpocracy now financially firmly behind him ~ it would be clear sailing for Obama’s 2012 reelection ~ that is, until the people of Egypt finally woke up, took to the streets and toppled the Mubarak regime which sent a shock wave through the corpocracy and left Obama reacting like a deer in the headlights.
Whoops, the Middle East and North African masses began to realize they could break the chains of their American sanctioned oppression by taking to the streets, voicing their concerns and not only demanding change but not settling for anything less than true change. The seed was dropped and it rapidly took root throughout the world and eventually America ~ what would happen if the American people, who voted for change in 2008, suddenly demanded change?
A wave of revolt spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa and that wave has now become a Tsunami which has finally reached America and in particular Wisconsin. As David DeGraw, Amped Status Report, correctly writes; “ We (America) have all the ingredients for a revolution ~ 59 million people without healthcare, 52 million in poverty, 44 million on food stamps, 30 million in need of work, seven million foreclosed upon and five million homes over two months late in their mortgage payments. Meanwhile, all new political policies and proposals on the table, on the state and federal level, are committed to major cuts in social services. In a sign of what’s to come, Obama’s first disclosed spending cut targets the poor… While continuing their attacks on American small businesses and private-sector workers, the global financial elite are now stepping up their attacks on public workers. In this context, the Wisconsin state government attacks against the state teachers’ union doesn’t have anything to do with the old Democrat vs. Republican divide and conquer debates of the past. This is about people fighting back against their economic oppressors. In Egypt, Mubarak was the Neo-Liberal Aristocracy’s local enforcer. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is the Neo-Liberal Aristocracy’s local enforcer…..This battle in Madison, Wisconsin, between the American people and the global financial elite, represents the opening salvo, the awakening of an American resistance movement and a sign of what’s to come.” See article ~
By the way, without the tax cuts to big corporations made by Governor Walker and the other Republicans, Wisconsin would have had a surplus, according to the Wisconsin Federal Bureau, a non-partisan group. Just last month, Walker and the Legislature gave away $117 million in tax breaks, mostly for businesses that expand and for private health savings accounts. That’s corporate welfare and a choice lawmakers made. Had it not been for those decisions and a few others, according to the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state would have had a surplus
Oh my, obviously a global shift of consciousness is happening and it’s exhilarating. It’s a bottom up shift beginning with the economically downtrodden masses who are finding their voices, the power of their numbers as well as their ability to stop the corpocracy in its tracks by refusing to play by their oppressive rules. What’s happening now in Wisconsin will soon happen throughout the United States. As DeGraw concludes “The economic top one-tenth of one percent of the global population has launched an economic war on us. They are hoarding $39 Trillion in investible wealth, not counting the vast sums they have hidden in offshore accounts. In the United States, we now have the highest and most severe inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. While there is a record number of American citizens currently living paycheck to paycheck, in debt, unemployed, underemployed, without healthcare, on food stamps and in poverty, as our society is breaking down, global bankers have taken our tax dollars and given themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. The same people who destroyed our economy have been rewarded with trillions of dollars in national wealth. It is now evident that both political parties and all three branches of government, along with the mainstream corporate media, have been bought off by a global economic elite.”
This is not Obama’s shining moment and his true allegiance to the Old World Order as well as the corpocracy and global elite is now being witnessed by the world in the glaring headlights of the bottom-up Egyptian people’s revolution ~ a revolution which most assuredly is now seen as a direct threat to America’s rapidly crumbling empire. Norm Chomsky correctly identifies that threat ~ “ It’s not radical Islam that worries the US, it’s Independence ~ The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains.”
Well, the nature of the corpocracy is to ignore the people until they break the chains of control by demanding change as is now happening in Wisconsin and throughout the world. For example, Palestinians are now planning a ‘Day of Rage’ after US Vetoed a UN Resolution condemning illegal Israeli Settlements. Anti-US rallies took place in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Jenin this weekend after the 14-1 vote on the resolution, in which the US stood alone against the rest of the security council, including Britain, Germany and France. We actually voted in contradiction of our own stated policy which is the height of hypocrisy and infuriates the masses throughout the Middle East and the world.
World War III has begun and it’s a class battle between the people and the corpocracy but on a larger scale it‘s a battle for our lost Republic, our lost freedoms, our lost soul and our forgotten global evolutionary innate urge to unite and prosper in the spirit of love, altruism and social cooperation instead of survival of the strong or most wealthy. As such, it is a shift in consciousness which will become apparent to all in 2012 and nothing can stop it from evolving.
We cannot deny our destiny and it is divine.
About the Author: Allen L Roland is a Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist. Allen L Roland is also available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations. Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website www.allenroland.com . He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
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Argentina accuses US of trying to smuggle weapons into country
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Diplomatic row over cargo US claims was intended for training programme further sours already poor relationship
- Ewen MacAskill in Washington
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 February 2011 00.09 GMT
- Article history

Relations between the US and Argentina have deteriorated after Buenos Aires lodged a formal complaint over a US military plane that landed late last week carrying guns, drugs and satellite phones.
The Argentinian government claimed the US was trying to sneak the weapons into the country, though it didn’t offer an explanation of why Washington might want to do this.
The US state department said the consignment was intended for a police training programme in Argentina.
Officials from Argentina and the state department have been in talks aimed at resolving the row.
The relationship between the two countries has been poor since Barack Obama released details of a Latin American tour next month that includes Brazil, Chile and El Salvador but not Argentina.
The Argentinian foreign ministry, in a statement on Sunday night, said “sensitive material” had been seized that had not been declared on the inventory submitted by the US embassy, including weapons, GPS equipment and drugs such as morphine.
It asked the US why its air force had attempted “to violate Argentine laws by bringing in camouflaged material in an official shipment”.
Héctor Timerman, the Argentine foreign minister, said he had spoken with the US assistant secretary of state, Arturo Valenzuela, who “refused to explain why they tried to pass this material”.
The undeclared cargo has been confiscated.
The state department said all the material had been declared and was destined for a training course Argentina had asked for in hostage rescue, adding that the drugs were routine medical kit.
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FLASHBACK : Obama: “You Can Take That To The Bank”
http://dailybail.com/home
Video – Obama’s broken promises
The federal government borrowed 43 cents of every dollar spent in the 2010 budget. The cost of war is bankrupting the United States…
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Cut defense first…
Max Pappas, the vice president of public policy at FreedomWorks and Benjamin H. Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute discuss the possibility of defense cuts and how to move forward. To date, the only US administration to cut defense spending during war time was the Nixon administration.
—
Tea Party supports Defense cuts…
Video – Rand Paul on budget cuts
Earlier today…
Kill Switch: Obama Administration Fears Egypt-Style Revolt In U.S.
http://dprogram.net
January 31st, 2011
(PaulWatson) – The Obama administration is busy attempting to pass legislation that would give the President a kill switch for the Internet in the United States while at the same time decrying Egyptian authorities for shutting down the Internet in a bid to deflate the unfolding revolution against Hosni Mubarak. The reason is simple – the government fears an Egypt-style revolt occurring in the U.S. and wants to block access to the world wide web if and when it happens.
Chicago radio host and occasional Alex Jones Show guest Mancow Muller called it right during an appearance on Mike Huckabee’s show this weekend.
“It’s in all the newspapers, ‘Ohblahblah’, we’ve got to free up Twitter, we’ve got to free up the Internet and Facebook for these poor Egyptians – this is the President that let Wikileaks and all of this stuff happen,” said Mancow.
“They create the problems and we react to fear — the the four letter f-word that controls the masses and they offer the solution, “they” being the government. This is the President that wants the kill switch for the Internet….he wants a kill switch.”
“They fear….social networking, Twitter, Facebook, all of this stuff, but oh, no, we must have it in Egypt, but we don’t want to have it in America.”
Mancow also pointed out how Egyptians were rioting over an economic fallout that has led to crippling tax hikes, wage reductions and spiraling food prices, a similar situation to what is unfolding in America, making reference to how Illinois state authorities recently agreed to hike taxes by a whopping 66 percent.
As we have illustrated, despite invoking supposedly genuine security concerns, the only time governments have resorted to shutting down the world wide web is when they feel the need to crush legitimate dissent against the state.
Indeed, at the height of the Stuxnet worm attack, the crisis was cited as another reason why cybersecurity legislation giving government control of the Internet was necessary. It later emerged that the Stuxnet virus itself was created by the US and Israel to target Iran’s nuclear program.
The Communist Chinese government is now blocking searches for the word “Egypt” on social networking websites in China, reflecting “the government’s fears that the protests in Egypt could whip up unrest in China.”
Sina.com public relations officer Ma Taotao confirms that Chinese searches for Egypt are blocked on its instant messaging site, Sina Weibo.
Ma says the company itself did not make the decision, but is only following the “relevant Chinese laws and regulations.” He gives no details and does not say which government department is responsible. He says he does not know how long the restriction will be in force.
The authoritarian Chinese government routinely blocks Internet access when it wishes to derail organized protests and marches, a telling lesson for Americans given the fact that cybersecurity guru Senator Joseph Lieberman openly admitted that the goal of the new kill switch in the U.S. was to mimic the Chinese system of Internet censorship.
“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley last year.
However, China’s “war” is not against foreign terrorists or hackers, it’s against people who dare to use the Internet to express dissent against government atrocities or corruption. China’s system of Internet policing is about crushing freedom of speech during times of political upheaval and has nothing to do with legitimate security concerns.
It’s a system concentrated around state oppression of any individual or group that seeks to use the Internet to draw attention to political causes frowned upon by the authorities.
China has exercised its power to shut down the Internet, something that Lieberman wants to introduce in the U.S., at politically sensitive times in order to stem the flow of information about government abuse of its citizens. During the anti-government riots which occurred in July 2009, the Chinese government completely shut down the Internet across the entire northwestern region of Xinjiang for days. In several regions, the authorities completely cut off the Internet for nearly a year. Major news and discussion portals used by the Muslim Uighurs in the area remain blocked. Similarly, Internet access in parts of Tibet is routinely restricted as part of government efforts to pre-empt and neutralize unrest.
Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are all banned in China and even sanitized government approved versions of these websites are now being shut down for long periods of time so that they can “remove all politically sensitive content under orders from Chinese internet authorities”.
Web censorship in China intensified after a micro-blogger began to expose the fact that many government officials, executives and judges had lied about obtaining degrees from prestigious universities. The government responded to the embarrassment by ordering websites to temporarily go into “maintenance” mode while they removed the pertinent material. What this has to do with fighting a “war,” as Lieberman claims, is anyone’s guess.
The Chinese system that Lieberman wants to bring to the United States is not only about censoring material critical of the state, it’s about identifying those who post it and thereby creating a chilling atmosphere that discourages others from exercising free speech in fear that they might be the next victims of the thought police. News websites in China now require users to register their true identities in order to leave comments.
This move towards abolishing Internet anonymity and creating a virtual ID card is a key centerpiece of Lieberman’s cybersecurity agenda.
This strategy revolves around, “The creation of a system for identity management that would allow citizens to use additional authentication techniques, such as physical tokens or modules on mobile phones, to verify who they are before buying things online or accessing such sensitive information as health or banking records.”
Only with this government-issued “token” will Internet users be allowed to “able to move from website to website,” a system not too far removed from what China proposed and rejected for being too authoritarian.
The examples of Egypt and China in shutting down Internet access to quell dissent against the state tell us everything we need to know about the motivations behind this odious policy and why it has no place in America, a supposedly free country.
While Obama criticizes Egyptian authorities for shutting down web access to disrupt protesters, his own administration prepares to launch a fresh attempt at instituting the exact same powers in America, which as recent history clearly demonstrates, represent tools for tyrannical regimes who wish to silence legitimate political opposition.
Source: Prison Planet
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Barack Obama: We Must Embrace Globalism And The Emerging One World Economy
http://dprogram.net
(EconomicCollapse) – Although it received very little coverage in the mainstream media, Barack Obama made some comments about globalism during his speech in Mumbai, India that were very eye-opening. As he was discussing the new realities of world trade in 2010, Obama warned against “those who see globalization as a threat” and he spoke of the “integrated world” in which we all now live. But is merging the entire globe into a one world economy, a one world financial system and a one world labor market really the best thing for the American people?
For the past two decades, all U.S. presidents have been heralding the benefits of merging the American economy with the rest of the globe. George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all steadfastly supported the emerging one world economy. These presidents have each used different terms to describe this process such as “globalism”, “globalization”, “an integrated world”, “the global economy” and even “a New World Order”, but they have all meant the same thing. All of these presidents have sought to integrate the United States even more deeply into the developing one world economic system.
Barack Obama showed very clearly how he feels about globalism when he made the following statement during his speech in Mumbai….
“This will keep America on its toes. America is going to have to compete. There is going to be a tug-of-war within the US between those who see globalization as a threat and those who accept we live in a open integrated world, which has challenges and opportunities.”
This is something that Barack Obama has obviously thought quite a bit about. In fact, during the same speech he warned that those supporting globalization will need to “guard against” those who would seek to put up barriers to the full integration of the economies of the world….
“If the American people feel that trade is just a one-way street where everybody is selling to the enormous US market but we can never sell what we make anywhere else, then the people of the US will start thinking that this is a bad deal for us and it could end up leading to a more protectionist instinct in both parties, not just among Democrats but also Republicans. So, that we have to guard against.”
But in this new “global economy”, aren’t jobs leaving the United States and heading to developing nations at a blinding pace? Of course, but apparently we are just supposed to shut up and accept this new reality. In fact, Obama says that persistently high unemployment is “a new normal” that we are all just going to have to get used to.
Virtually all of the proponents of globalism understand that the process of merging the United States into a one world economy will be at least somewhat painful for the American people. Our wages are going to have to go down and our standards of living are going to have to fall, according to them.
During this period of “adjustment”, a “struggling economy” is just going to have to be tolerated. In fact, Obama says that the U.S. economy might not be “fixed” for quite some time. Obama now claims that there is a limit to what the U.S. government can do to help the economy….
“Especially an economy this big, there are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.”
But couldn’t Obama and the U.S. Congress pass laws that would discourage the offshoring and outsourcing of our jobs?
Of course.
Couldn’t they cut regulations and taxes and encourage firms to keep factories in the United States?
Of course.
But instead, Obama and the U.S. Congress have just been piling on more taxes and more regulations and have made the business environment in the U.S. so toxic that it is amazing that anyone is willing to stay in this country at this point.
Meanwhile, every single month more of our jobs, more of our factories and more of our wealth gets shipped overseas never to return.
Every day there is more depressing news about the U.S. economy. For example, it has just been announced that Harley-Davidson has decided to open a shiny new assembly plant in India. Meanwhile, formerly great American manufacturing cities such as Detroit have turned into rotting hellholes.
The American people are not being told the truth. The following are 20 reasons why Barack Obama is wrong, wrong, wrong about globalization….
#1 American workers are being merged into a global labor pool where they must directly compete for jobs with workers on the other side of the globe that make less than ten percent of what an average American worker makes. In such an environment, it is inevitable that jobs are going to flow away from areas where labor is expensive and to areas where labor is cheaper.
#2 Globalization has caused the U.S. trade deficit to absolutely explode. In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year. In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.
#3 Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States. This represents a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to China.
#4 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#5 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.
#6 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#7 Even high technology industries are leaving America. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#8 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent.
#9 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#10 With so much manufacturing leaving the United States, is it any wonder why people can’t find jobs? The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.
#11 Today, there are at least 1.5 million “99ers” – those Americans that have completely exhausted all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and that still do not have jobs.
#12 Our dependence on foreign oil also represents an absolutely shocking transfer of wealth from the American people to the oil exporters of the Middle East. Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of the oil that we use. Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.
#13 Energy imports account for about approximately one-fourth of the U.S. trade deficit.
#14 In states such as Mississippi, people spend approximately 6.35 percent of their incomes just on gasoline, according to a recent report by the National Resources Defense Council.
#15 Americans end up paying to support American workers one way or another. Either they buy American-made products and services that provide jobs for American workers, or they pay to support unemployed American workers on welfare. Today, over 42 million Americans are on food stamps. A record number of Americans are receiving long-term unemployment benefits. One way or another, Americans are going to pay to take care of American workers.
#16 The U.S. trade deficit is running about 40 or 50 billion dollars a month in 2010. The United States spends 40 to 50 billion more on goods and services from the rest of the world each month than they spend on goods and services from us. That means that by the end of the year, approximately half a trillion dollars (or more) of our wealth will have left the United States for good.
#17 All of this wealth leaving the United States is having a huge impact on the standard of living of average Americans. Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.
#18 It is now just a matter of time until India is going to pass us as an economic power. In fact, the economy of India is projected to become larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2050.
#19 It is now being projected that China will soon dwarf us as an economic power. One prominent economist now says that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040. According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.
#20 China has been accumulating a gigantic mountain of dollars from all of the wealth we have been sending them each month, and they have been lending massive amounts of money back to us. Over the past few decades, the communist Chinese have been able to accumulate approximately $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, and the U.S. government now owes them close to 900 billion dollars. We constantly have to send top government officials over there to beg them to continue to lend us money. This is a direct threat not only to our financial system, but also to our national security.
So, in light of all of those facts, can anyone out there possibly defend Barack Obama’s position that globalization is good and that we should be happy that we are being merged into a one world economy?
Sadly, there are very, very few politicians in either major political party that will even talk about the negative effects of the emerging one world economy. It is almost as if there is an unspoken consensus that globalism is the future and that it is a good thing for America.
But it is not a good thing for America. Unless fundamental changes are made, America will continue to bleed wealth, will continue to bleed factories and will continue to bleed jobs.
The American people need to wake up and starting saying “NO” to globalization. If we continue to vote for politicians that support merging our economy with economies that allow workers to be paid slave labor wages, then we are going to see even more waves of horrific unemployment and we will continue to see the standard of living of middle class Americans diminish.
This is not a drill. America is being deindustrialized. The greatest economic machine in the history of the world is being dismantled.
Eventually, all of our cities are going to end up looking just like Detroit if we allow this to continue.
Is that what you want?
Source: The Economic Collapse
Bomb Scare is BS
Obama lies about the Bomb at Midlands UK airport, BBC don’t even try to hide it. As the producer in V for Vendetta says “It’s not our job to make up the news, that’s the governments”
The FAKE bomb attack comes 4 days before the Midterms, and 3 days after British Airways said security was to tight and that naked body scanners were too intrusive, how convenient for those America scanner makers that this story would break.
related News :
Suspicious Package to U.S. not from Yemen; Yemenia Air Cargo Director
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Obama hope was all hype
http://www.guardian.co.uk
The US president has caved into vested interests and preserved extraordinary rendition. Not so different to his predecessor, then
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- Tariq Ali
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010 22.00 BST
- Article history
As the midterms approach, 15 million Americans are out of work and Obama’s ratings hover at about 40% to 45%. There is no doubt Democrat majorities in house and Senate may disappear. Democrats in marginal seats keep the president at arm’s length, aware that the mood of the electorate reflects the desperate straits in which the country finds itself.
Obama’s electoral triumph of 2008 coincided with the most colossal economic crisis since the Great Depression (and far more global in scope); to add to his troubles, two wars were under way on difficult terrain in far away Islamic lands. The first few months of 2009 became the most abbreviated honeymoon period granted a new president in recent memory.
In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power, unless they do something that makes a change. Obama has not done so. Instead, both at home and abroad, the continuities between Obama’s administration and that of Bush-Cheney far outweigh any differences.
Whenever vested interests resisted, Obama caved. On the economy, despite the advice of Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz, the president defended the very orthodoxy that led to the Wall Street crash. And this at a time when inequality in the US was much higher than it had been 40 years ago.
The healthcare “reforms” also saw a total capitulation to the corporations: the insurance companies, the pharmaceuticals, the for-profit hospitals and the top of the range specialists will benefit. Even the loyal Los Angeles Times felt compelled to complain: “As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry’s chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman, Billy Tauzin … [for] preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices … Tauzin has morphed into the president’s partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months.”
Vested interests resisted. Obama caved. The healthcare “reform” was actually crafted by Liz Fowler, former executive for a private health insurer and an employee of Senator Max Baucus, who presides over the Senate finance committee and is, according to John R MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s Magazine, “a beneficiary of millions of dollars in contributions from insurance and health care companies”.
To dissociate politicians from capitalists is slightly disingenuous, to put it mildly. US lawmakers are competitive and auction themselves to the highest bidder via the lobby system. As a result, the story of the healthcare reforms is replicated in numerous other spheres. The “new” education policies based on privatisation and charter schools that have been a disaster in parts of the country are to be continued as managers replace educationalists. Guantánamo remains open. Obama’s legal guru now embedded in the state department, Harold Koh, publicly insists the drone attacks in Pakistan that kill more civilians than “terrorists” are perfectly legal. Elena Kagan, Obama’s offering to the supreme court, told Congress that she agreed with John Yoo, a Bushman who served as an assistant attorney general, that a “terrorist” captured anywhere was subject to “battlefield law”. Like his Republican predecessor, the new attorney general, Eric Holder, happily invoked “state secrets” to stop a trial, while Obama’s CIA boss (a former Clinton employee), Leon Panetta, was in feisty mood after he got the job, boasting that he fully intended to preserve “extraordinary rendition”, that is, sending prisoners to be tortured in Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan or Pakistan.
The hope of 2008 soon morphed into hype. Admirers in the liberal media who had linked Obama vicariously to the civil rights movement sounded increasingly ridiculous; claiming the mantle of Martin Luther King for their man was an extravagance that had to be rapidly discarded. In one of his last big speeches, a year before he was assassinated, King had argued “that if our nation can spend $35bn a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and $20bn to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth”. What had any of this to do with a seasoned machine politician from Chicago?
As a candidate, Obama projected himself as a new Reagan, above narrow party politics. He wanted to please all, but has ended up annoying many. And if the Republicans can find a halfway decent candidate (perhaps a uniformed one) I doubt the incumbent will get a second term. Will the Clintons even let him be the candidate?
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Fox News: 9/11 Commission “a whitewash”
http://www.sott.net
Gordon Duff
Veterans Today
Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:24 CDT
Do we all have to apologize to the Iranian president? Who’s going to tell Jon Stewart? Will he be less of a “bigot” now? Coincidences are piling up. Will he admit to his “anal/rectal confluence?”
Two weeks ago, President Ahmadinejad of Iran called for a UN investigation of 9/11. He was called a lunatic by President Obama. Now, Fox News, new owner of Farsi 1, Iran’s biggest entertainment network, has blown the lid off 9/11, calling it a “whitewash” and saying that the 9/11 Commissioners staged a coverup.
What can we say we have proven? Can we prove Israel was involved? No. Can we make a case, based on both direct testimony, documentary and circumstantial evidence, that they were involved and that failing to investigate this is part of a conspiracy? Yes.
Do we have to prove how it was done? No. Was Osama bin Laden involved? We don’t know. It depends. The only way he could have been involved is if he were still working for the CIA and under their control.
Who should the next guest be? Attorney General Eric Holder?
“Mr. Holder, based on what we have just heard from these two highly reliable sources, clear evidence of a massive criminal conspiracy within the United States government, how do you suggest dealing with this problem?”
Obama administration fingerprints on Ecuador coup attempt
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Banner on Penn. Ave: ”MR. OBAMA: END THESE FUCKING WARS! WAR IS THE OBSCENITY!”
http://warisacrime.org
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2010-10-01 14:05

Click for large photo.
Photo by Ellen Davidson
Veterans’ 25 x 17 banner tells it straight to Obama at 555 PA Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
Today at 1:00pm eastern time, U.S. military veterans hung an enormous banner on the front of the Newseum, wrapping their message around the First Amendment chiseled in five stories of limestone.
Opposed to the wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, the vets’ message said loud and clear: “MR. OBAMA: END THESE FUCKING WARS! WAR IS THE OBSCENITY.”
Several veterans dropped the banner down the front of the Newseum, while others distributed special edition copies of the War Crimes Times, explaining the action and what they considered obscene.
“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers — that’s what’s truly obscene,” said Mike Ferner,59 who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots– that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our misson.”
Veterans and activists taking part in the event include Ken Mayers, Kim Carlyle, Mike Ferner, Bruce Berry, Debbie Tolson, Nic Abramson,Tarak Kauff, Mike Hearington, Will Covert and Elliott Adams of Veterans For Peace.
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So You Think Know About the American Empire? — 11 Questions to Test Your Knowledge
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Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top.
Oh, those madcap Pentagon bureaucrats and the zany horde of generals and admirals who go with them! Give them credit: no one on Earth knows how to throw a war like they do — and they never go home.
In fact, when it comes to linking “profligate” to “war,” with all the lies, manipulations, and cost overruns that give it that proverbial pizzazz, Americans should stand tall. We are absolutely #1!
Hence, the very first TomDispatch American Way of War Quiz. Admittedly, it covers only the last four weeks of war news you wouldn’t believe if it weren’t in the papers, but we could have done this for any month since October 2001.
Now’s your chance to pit your wits (and your ability to suspend disbelief) against the best the Pentagon has to offer — and we’re talking about all seventeen-and-a-half miles of corridors in that five-sided, five-story edifice that has triple the square footage of the Empire State Building. To weigh your skills on the TomDispatch Scales of War™, take the 11-question pop quiz below, checking your answers against ours (with accompanying explanations), and see if you deserve to be a four-star general, a gun-totin’ mercenary, or a mere private.
1. With President Obama’s Afghan surge of 30,000 U.S. troops complete, an administration review of war policy due in December, and fears rising that new war commander General David Petraeus might then ask for more troops, what did the general do last week?
a. He informed the White House that he now had too many troops for reasonable operations in Afghanistan and proposed that a drawdown begin immediately.
b. He assured the White House that he was satisfied with the massive surge in troops (civilian employees, contractors, and CIA personnel) and would proceed as planned.
c. He asked for more troops now.
Correct answer: c. General Petraeus has already reportedly requested an extra mini-surge of 2,000 more troops from NATO, and probably from U.S. reserves as well, including more trainers for the Afghan military. In interviews as August ended, he was still insisting that he had “the structures, people, concepts, and resources required to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign.” But that was the summer silly season. This is September, a time for cooler heads and larger demands.
2. With President Obama’s announced July 2011 drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in mind, the Pentagon has already:
a. Begun organizing an orderly early 2011 withdrawal of troops from combat outposts and forward operating bases to larger facilities to facilitate the president’s plan.
b. Launched a new U.S. base-building binge in Afghanistan, including contracts for three $100 million facilities not to be completed, no less completely occupied, until late 2011.
c. Announced plans to shut down Kandahar Air Base’s covered boardwalk, including a TGI Friday’s, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria, and cancelled the opening of a Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs as part of its preparations for an American drawdown.
Correct answer: b. According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, construction is slated to begin on at least three $100 million air base projects — “a $100 million area at Shindand Air Base for Special Operations helicopters and unmanned intelligence and surveillance aircraft”; another $100 million to expand the airfield at Camp Dwyer, a Marine base in Helmand Province, also to support Special Operations forces; and a final $100 million for expanded air facilities at Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. None of these projects are to be completed until well after July 2011. “[R]equests for $1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan are pending before Congress.” And fear not, there are no indications that the fast-food joints at Kandahar are going anywhere.
3. The U.S. military has more generals and admirals than:
a. Al-Qaeda members in Yemen.
b. Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.
c. Al-Qaeda members in Pakistan.
d. Al-Qaeda members in all three countries.
Correct answer: a, b, c, and d. According to CIA Director Leon Panetta, there are 50 to 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, possibly less. Best estimates suggest that there are perhaps “several hundred” al-Qaeda members in poverty-stricken, desertifying, strife-torn Yemen. There are also an estimated “several hundred” members and leaders of the original al-Qaeda in the Pakistani borderlands. The high-end total for al-Qaeda members in the three countries, then, would be 800, though the actual figure could be significantly smaller. According to Ginger Thompson and Thom Shanker of the New York Times, the U.S. military has 963 generals and admirals, approximately 100 more than on September 11, 2001. (The average salary for a general, by the way, is $180,000, which means that the cost of these “stars,” not including pensions, health-care plans, and perks, is approximately $170 million a year.) The U.S. military has 40 four-star generals and admirals at the moment, which may represent more star-power than there are al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that, as a belt-tightening measure, he might cut the top-heavy U.S. military by 50 positions — that is, by half the increase since 9/11.
4. With the U.S. military obliged, by agreement with the Iraqi government, to withdraw all U.S. military personnel from Iraq by the end of 2011, the Pentagon has:
a. Decided that, in the interests of Iraqi sovereignty and to save U.S. taxpayers money, all U.S. troops will depart ahead of schedule, leaving Iraq no later than next February.
b. Instituted austerity measures, halted renovations on remaining American bases, and handed over all base construction efforts to the Iraqi government.
c. Continued to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into military base improvements.
Correct answer: c. Jackie Soohen recently toured Balad Air Base in Central Iraq for Democracy Now! That base, described in the past as an American town, has, she points out, “three large gyms, multiple shopping centers, recreation areas, and a movie theater,” not to speak of multiple bus routes and the usual range of fast-food parlors, PXs, and the like. The base, she reports, is still expanding and “on bases like this one…, the military continues to invest hundred of millions in infrastructure improvements, and it is difficult to imagine them fully abandoning everything they are building here.” They are, in fact, not likely to do so anytime soon. There are still more than 5,800 U.S. Air Force personnel in Iraq. Thanks to previous American policies, that country, which once had a large air force, today has only a rudimentary one. The new Iraqi air force is now eager to purchase its first jet fighters, F-16s from Lockheed Martin, but no agreement has been signed or date set for delivery. The Iraqis will still need further years of pilot training to fly those planes when they do arrive in 2013 or later. In the meantime, the U.S. Air Force is almost guaranteed to be the Iraqi Air Force, and U.S. Air Force personnel will undoubtedly remain at Balad Air Base in significant numbers, “withdrawal” or no.
5. What did the Pentagon recently hand over to Iraq?
a. A check for one trillion dollars to reconstruct a country which the U.S. invasion and occupation plunged into a ruinous civil war that cost millions of Iraqis their homes, their jobs, their economic security, their peace of mind, or their lives.
b. An IOU for two trillion dollars to reconstruct a country which the U.S. invasion and occupation plunged into a ruinous civil war that cost millions of Iraqis their homes, their jobs, their economic security, their peace of mind, or their lives.
c. Some hot air.
Correct answer: c. We’ll bet you didn’t know that, in 2003, the U.S. military occupied not only the land of Iraq, but its air, too. Just recently, according to a Pentagon press-release-cum-news-story, “the U.S. Air Force handed over the Kirkuk sector of airspace, 15,000 feet and above, to the ICAA [Iraq Civil Aviation Authority] at Baghdad International Airport.” In November, the U.S. plans to hand over even more hot air, this time in the south of the country — but not all of it. Iraq will not control all of its air until some time in 2011. Of course, once they have their air back, the Iraqi Air Force will only need planes and trained pilots to make use of it. (See question 4.)
6. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, a “combat-capable brigade-sized unit,” has been deployed three times (according to the U.S. Army) “during Operation Iraqi Freedom — serving successfully in tough areas including Fallujah, Tall Afar, Ramadi, and Baghdad.” Its lead elements were recently sent from Fort Hood, Texas, to where?
a. Afghanistan as the final installment of President Obama’s surge of U.S. troops into that country.
b. Camp Justice, the U.S. military base in Oman, as a warning to insurgents in neighboring Yemen.
c. Camp Darby in Livorno, Italy, because the war there didn’t end all that long ago and, besides, Switzerland sits threateningly to the north.
d. Juarez, Mexico, because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently declared Mexico’s drug war an “insurgency,” and insurgencies are now an area of U.S. military expertise.
e. Iraq, the country that the “last U.S. combat troops” left less than a month ago.
Correct answer: e. Of course, the “Brave Rifles,” as the unit is known, are not — we repeat not — combat troops. They’re just, says the Army, “combat capable.” Yes, they’re trained for combat. But take our word for it, they’re NOT combat troops. Yes they’re well armed. But NOT for combat. And yes, they’re an “Armored Cavalry” unit. But it’s NOT about combat, OK? They’re in Iraq strictly in an “advise and assist” capacity. Did we mention that they aren’t a combat unit?
7. With the U.S. military occupation of Iraq due to end in 2011, the American mission there is officially being left to the State Department, representing the civilian side of U.S. foreign policy, which is planning to:
a. Spend about $1.5 billion dollars to set up and run two embassy branch offices and two or more “enduring presence posts” (they used to be called “consulates”), including hiring the necessary armed private contractors.
b. Employ 2,400 people in its (“largest in the world”) embassy, the size of the Vatican (but far better defended) in Baghdad’s Green Zone and at its other posts.
c. More than double its force of private civilian contractors to 6,000-7,000, arm them with cast-off Pentagon heavy weaponry and Apache helicopters, and form them into “quick reaction teams.”
d. Spend another $800 million on a program to train the Iraqi police.
e. Take on more than 1,200 specific tasks previously handled by the U.S. military.
Correct answer: a, b, c, d, and e (and even they don’t cover the subject adequately). Michael Gordon of the New York Times supplied most of the numbers above. Who knows what those 1,200 previously military tasks may be, but, reports the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, those five “enduring presence posts” are to be set up on what are now U.S. military bases, assumedly so that the Pentagon’s costly base-building won’t go completely to waste. It all represents a unique arrangement, since the civilian State Department’s corps of mercenary warriors will then be used to “operate radar to warn of enemy fire, search for roadside bombs, and fly surveillance drones,” among other jobs. Oh, and good news — if you happen to be a private contractor at least — that police-training program will be run by private contractors; and even better, just in case the private contractors don’t act on the up-and-up, there will be people specially assigned to provide oversight and they will be… private contractors, of course. How can the new diplomats from the remodeled five-sided State Department go wrong, advancing as they are encased in the latest mine-resistant vehicles known as MRAPS and ever prepared to give peace a chance?
8. When private military contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) found itself in hot water after some of its guards slaughtered 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square in 2007, the company responded by:
a. Admitting error, while begging forgiveness from, and rapidly paying generous compensation to, the families of the dead Iraqi civilians.
b. Vowing to avoid all armed work in the future and to transform the company into a community-services and elderly care operation.
c. Setting up at least 31 shell companies and subsidiaries through which it could still be awarded contracts by the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. Army without embarrassment to anyone.
Correct answer: c. So James Risen and Mark Mazzetti reported earlier this month in the New York Times. The company, which is “facing a string of legal problems, including the indictment in April of five former Blackwater officials on weapons and obstruction charges, and civil suits stemming from the 2007 shootings in Iraq,” hasn’t suffered in pocket-book terms. Just this year, it received contracts for $120 million to provide the State Department with security in Afghanistan, and another $100 million to protect the CIA in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (The Agency has awarded Blackwater and its shell companies $600 million since 2001, according to Risen and Mazzetti.)
9. Recently, Iran unveiled a new armed drone, billed as a long-range unmanned aerial bomber and dubbed the “Ambassador of Death” by the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Afterwards, the Pentagon:
a. Cut out drone strikes in Pakistan to send Iran a message that conducting regular attacks on a country with which you are not officially at war is impermissible.
b. Announced plans to rethink the fast-and-loose rules of robotic assassination used in its Terminator wars for the better part of a decade so that Iran could not cite U.S. actions as precedent.
c. Stepped up drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, sometimes carrying out more than one a day.
Correct answer: c. In discussing Washington’s desire to export drone technology to allies, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has termed Iranian drones a “concern.” The U.S. has, however, not only continued to pave the way for Iran (and every other nation and non-state actor) to conduct drone attacks with utter impunity, but accelerated the process. For his part, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley recently echoed Gates, calling Iran’s drones a “concern to us and concern to Iran’s neighbors.” Of the new Iranian drone’s hyperbolic unofficial moniker, he said with a laugh, “It’s a curious name for a system.” Perhaps he’s unaware that his own government has dubbed its two marquee armed drones — with a straight face, mind you — Predator and Reaper (as in “Grim…”) and that those aircraft launch “Hellfire” missiles. The official name of the Iranian drone is actually the least inflammatory of the three: “Karrar” or “striker.”
10. Five hundred million dollars is approximately the amount:
a. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged in July to development projects for Pakistan to “build broader support for the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.”
b. Afghanistan’s troubled Kabul Bank had in cash just weeks ago before its panicked depositors bled it dry.
c. The amount of money the U.S. military will spend on its musical bands this year.
Correct answer: a, b, and c. According to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, the U.S. military may now spend $500 million or more annually on its musical bands — the U.S. Army alone has more than 100 of them — the same amount used to sway a critically impoverished country of 166 million people in what’s been portrayed as a multigenerational war of paramount importance. At least Kabul Bank now knows where to go for a loan, assuming that Afghans will accept trombones instead of cash.
Blast-from-the-Past Bonus Question
11. Who said, “I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire”?
a. Bob Dylan, mumbled during a live performance in April 2002.
b. Dick Cheney in 1991 when he was George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense.
c. George Steinbrenner in an interview with the New York Daily News after the Yankees won the 1998 World Series.
Correct answer: b. If only Cheney had listened to himself when he became vice president. “Several years after occupied Iraq had become the quagmire he once warned about,” writes historian John Dower in his striking new book Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq, “Cheney was asked how to reconcile what he argued in 1991 and disregarded later. ‘Well, I stand by what I said in ’91,’ he replied. ‘But look what’s happened since then — we had 9/11.’” Sigh.
And believe it or not, folks, that’s it for the wild and wacky world of American war this month. If you answered at least 10 of the American Way of War Quiz questions correctly, consider yourself a four-star general. If you answered 5 to 9 correctly, you qualify as a gun totin’ mercenary (with all the usual Lord of the Flies perks). If you did worse, you’re a buck private in a U.S. Army woodwind ensemble that’s just been dispatched to Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books), has just been published. You can catch him discussing war American-style and his book in a Timothy MacBain TomCast audio interview by clicking here or, to download it to your iPod, here.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), has just been published. He discusses why withdrawal hasn’t been on the American agenda in Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview, which can be accessed by clicking here or downloaded to your iPod here. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. His website is NickTurse.com.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation,and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, will be published later this month. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on at http://nickturse.tumblr.com/Tumblr, and on NickTurse.com.































