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by Montag » Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:58 pm
by Sweejak » Thu Jul 08, 2010 12:48 am
by Simulist » Fri Jul 09, 2010 9:23 pm
by ninakat » Fri Jul 09, 2010 9:29 pm
by Simulist » Fri Jul 09, 2010 9:47 pm
by Jeff » Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:15 am
Obama Hires Fmr. Wellpoint Exec to Implement Health Care Law
by: David Sirota
Wed Jul 14, 2010 at 19:31
From the Department of You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up, check out this little-noticed report from the Billings Gazette today:
Liz Fowler, a key staffer for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus who helped draft the federal health reform bill enacted in March, is joining the Obama administration to help implement the new law...
Fowler headed up a team of 20-some Senate Finance Committee staffers who helped draft the bill in the Senate. She was Baucus' top health care aide from 2001-2005 and left that job in 2006 to become an executive at WellPoint, the nation's largest private insurer. She was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, helping develop public-policy positions for the company. In 2008, she rejoined Baucus to work on health reform legislation.
For some good background on Fowler and the insidious role she played in killing the public option, watch Bill Moyers' recent segment here.
Clearly, this is a telling indictment of the health care law itself, strongly suggesting that it was constructed by the Obama administration - as some progressives argued - as a massive taxpayer-financed giveaway to private insurers like Wellpoint. And let's be honest: In investment terms, Fowler has been a jackpot for the health industry. The industry maximized her public policy experience for their own uses when they plucked her out of the Senate. Then, having lined her pockets, they deposited her first into a key Senate committee to write the new health care law that they will operate under, and now into the administration that will implement said law. Any bets on how much Fowler will make when Wellpoint (or another health insurer) inevitably rehires her in a few years?
This story is also a telling indictment of the Washington media. You'll notice that the Obama administration's move was reported by the Billings Gazette, but (save for a blog entry on the Hill's website, one context-free line at the bottom of the Washington Post's gossip column, and a blurb in Congressional Quarterly's HealthBeat newsletter) was almost completely ignored by national Washington-based publications. That's not because D.C. reporters didn't know it was happening - more likely, it is because the political press corps in the nation's capital no longer sees this kind of revolving door corruption as even mildly problematic, much less newsworthy. That's how pervasive corruption is these days - ubiquitous to the point of invisible in the eyes of most of the so-called watchdogs.
by Bruce Dazzling » Thu Jul 15, 2010 10:56 am
by Nordic » Thu Jul 15, 2010 2:32 pm
by Simulist » Thu Jul 15, 2010 3:56 pm
by Sweejak » Thu Jul 15, 2010 4:26 pm
Forget the Bar-Ilan University speech, forget the virtual achievements in his last visit to the United States; this is the real Netanyahu. No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he's even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse's mouth.
And how did he do it? He recalled how he conditioned his signing of the 1997 Hebron agreement on American consent that there be no withdrawals from "specified military locations," and insisted he choose those same locations, such as the whole of the Jordan Valley, for example. "Why is that important? Because from that moment on I stopped the Oslo Accords," he boasts. The real Netanyahu also brags about his knowledge of America: "I know what America is. America is something that can be moved easily." For the White House's information.
by Nordic » Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:26 pm
By Michael Krieger, of KAM LP
If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime.
-Jack Kerouac
Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
-Buddha
Having fallen from the eternal, the Evil One's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always. He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he destroys. Certainly he rules the material, as he is called the Prince of this World in the gospels - but only of the things of this world.
-Denis de Rougemont
I have been calling Barrack Obama’s Presidency a failure for at least six months now and it seems that I now have considerable company in this assessment as it becomes obvious to most. It is not a failure because of the Republicans. It is not a failure because of events beyond his control. It is a failure because this was a man that filled a depressed and downtrodden nation with the audacity of hope. When I voted for the man I knew it was against my personal financial interests. It was clear what he would do with taxes. Nevertheless, I got to the polls and voted for this fifth avenue creation thinking maybe, just maybe he might do some of the things he said. Most important to me were two issues related to the military-industrial complex (see Eisenhower’s warning on this during his Farewell Address http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY) and civil liberties. George W Bush was turning America into a depressed police state with perpetual war and consolidation of power between a corporate oligarchy and entrenched political class. A nation where the masses voluntarily gave up many of the liberties the founding fathers fought for merely to ease the fear that consumed them and which was propagated by the administration and the media. I and many others that voted for him even though they disagreed strongly with his economic policies thought he would at least reverse this trend. Why did we think this? Cause he said so. How foolish we were.
That being said, the real answer was certainly not John McCain as I think we would be in just as bad shape with him. I think that what this experience has taught us is that the President of the United States answers to others behind the scene. There are many theories on who these others are but I will keep it very simple. There is clearly a power elite that consists of a union between big corporate and financial oligarchs and career bureaucrats in Washington D.C. These are the folks that pull the strings of all administrations. All you have to do is look at the trends that have been in place since George W Bush and continue under Obama to see what these players want. Bigger government and thus more Federal power, more wealth for the oligarchs (thank you Federal Reserve) and an erosion of the middle class, and reduction of civil liberties in the name of the 1984-like never-ending “war on terror.” I believe in a war on terror of my own. A war against the terror that Washington D.C. is constantly trying to inject into your head so that you sheepishly give away all you rights and power to them. That’s my war on terror.
Ok, so what do I mean by “The Dangers of a Failed Presidency.” I mean that it is July of an election year and Obama’s magic spell that held sway over the American people and the world for about three months has completely washed away. I mean that the printed money mirage recovery that we have had to tragically watch is ending and we have no job growth to speak of other than a few hundred thousand census workers. The public has no appetite for more spending and Bernanke has no cover to print more money (yet). As such, if people think things are in freefall now for this administration just wait and see how the next several months pan out. This then brings me to the following quote:
The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
I found this quote in an FT article earlier in the week and it sent chills all over my body. This is how the strategists in Washington D.C. think. They are sick, twisted people. This guy doesn’t even realize how sick and twisted what he said is which is why he said it. Imagine what they say off the record! You can take this quote in many different ways but none of them are good. I am not going to say anything beyond the fact that I would be VERY suspicious if some sort of event occurred before the elections. Google the term “false flag.” Also remember Rahm Emmanuel’s famous quote of “you don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Think about this deeply. This doesn’t mean do what the public wants, or follow the constitution. It means that that those pulling the strings of power have the opportunity to do what THEY want, what fits THEIR ideology. Hitler is the most famous modern example of a leader that used a crisis to form his fascist state. Again, I am not talking about Obama in isolation. I am referring to the power structure that has been firmly in place since the 9/11 attacks. Many call it a silent coup. I agree with this assessment.
This email is not meant to create fear. It is actually meant to get people ready if things get crazy for whatever reason. It is a challenge to people. I challenge everyone to think about how they would react should another terrorist attack or something along those lines occur. I was there for 9/11 and I saw the buildings go down in person. I know what it was like to be manipulated by my own government and media in the wake of such an emotional trauma. I also see that what we have done since, with things such as the Patriot Act and two wars that are still ongoing, and I have reflected on how they have changed America for the worse and provided a fertile ground for the elite to take away more of our rights and our wealth. So my rallying cry is that we must be strong and fearless in the face of fearful events. In the wake of anything that may occur in the years ahead we must not react on emotion and NEVER give away our inalienable rights in the name of protection from big brother. Be fearless, strong and resolute. Spend more time with your neighbors and build things up at the local level. If we have those supports then we will be less inclined to cry to the magicians in D.C. and the Federal Reserve for “help.”
by The Consul » Fri Jul 16, 2010 1:33 am
by Nordic » Thu Jul 22, 2010 2:01 am
by Chris Floyd
First published on Empire Burlesque yesterday, 8 April 2010
It does not matter if you think Obama's opponents are "worse" than he is in some measure. The issue is if you support him, it is arbitrary murder that you are supporting. It is the absolute negation of every single principle of enlightenment and human rights professed by honorable people of every political stripe for centuries.
Let us hear no more excuses for Barack Obama. Let us hear no more defenses, no more special pleading, no more extenuations. Let us have no more reciting of the "pressures" he is under, of the "many obstacles" that balk him in his quest to do us good, of the "bad advisors" who are swaying him to unworthy acts against his will. Let us be done at last with all these wretched lies, these complicitous self-deceptions that are facilitating atrocity and tyranny on a monstrous scale.
Barack Obama has ordered the murder of an American citizen, without trial, without due process, without the production of any evidence. All it takes to kill any American citizen in this way is Barack Obama's signature on a piece of paper, his arbitrary designation of the target as a "suspected terrorist." In precisely the same way -- precisely the same way -- Josef Stalin would place a mark by a name in a list of "suspected terrorists" or "counterrevolutionaries," and the bearer of that name would die. This is the system we have now, the same as the Soviets had then: a leader with the unchallengeable power to kill citizens without due process.
That this power has not been used on the same scale in the American system as in the Stalinist state -- yet -- does not alter the equivalence of this governing principle. In both cases, the leader signs arbitrary death warrants; the security services carry out the task; and the 'great and good' of society accept this draconian power as necessary and right.
This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. It does not matter if you think his opponents in the factional infighting to control a bloodsoaked empire and its war machine are "worse" than he is in some measure. When you support him, when you defend him, when you excuse him, it is arbitrary murder that you are supporting. It is the absolute negation of every single principle of enlightenment and human rights professed by liberals, progressives -- indeed, by honorable people of every political stripe -- for centuries.
There is nothing particularly remarkable about Obama's order to kill an American citizen without trial or evidence, of course. George W. Bush claimed the same powers. As I have noted here and elsewhere for many years, our American presidents now claim the right to kill any person on earth whom they arbitrarily designate as an enemy -- or even a suspected enemy -- of the United States. Barack Obama embraced this power as soon as he took office, ordering a "surge" in the "targeted killings" on "suspected terrorists" in Pakistan. Hundreds and hundreds of innocent human beings have been murdered in these drone attacks; many thousands more have been driven from their homes, and terrorized into lives of mental anguish, their psyches lamed by trauma, upheaval and the ever-present dread of death raining down on them from the skies.
And of course, thousands of innocent people continue to die in the wars of dominion and profiteering that Obama has so eagerly embraced. In Afghanistan, they die directly at the hands of American forces -- including secret assassins who raid villages by night, often slaughtering civilians, even those cooperating with the military occupation. As Obama's hand-picked commander in the region, Stanley McChrystal, has openly admitted: “We have shot an amazing number of people [at checkpoints and on the roads], but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." And in Iraq -- the scene of the abominable, Nazi-like war crime of military aggression whose continuation by Bush's "surge" was hailed by Obama as "an extraordinary achievement" -- innocent people continue to die in droves at the hands of the vicious and violent forces unleashed and empowered by the American invasion and occupation, while they wait to see which brutal "hard man" will seize power over their riven and ruined society.
No, the only remarkable thing about Obama's direct order to murder his fellow American citizen, Anwar al-Alwaki, is its openness. A few weeks ago, he sent his intelligence chieftain, Dennis Blair, to Congress to openly proclaim the president's "right" to kill American citizens arbitrarily. Bush had kept this claimed power obscured, letting it out in dribs and drabs of directed leaks, and hints and winks in public statements; but Obama has taken us beyond that, to the open declaration and institutional entrenchment of the principle of death without due process for citizens. This indeed is "change" -- with a vengeance.
(And to think that only a few years ago, capital punishment -- with its vast and cumbersome legal machinery -- was banished in America as too unjust and arbitrary in its application; now a president need not trouble himself with the slightest bit of legal process if he wants to have someone killed. I suppose this too is "progress": more streamlined, more efficient, quicker, more modern -- like wireless broadband. It's simply there all the time at the president's pleasure.)
Now, there can be no shuffling, no waffling on the matter. Obama has made it crystal clear for even the most avidly self-duping progressive: He will murder his fellow citizens without trial or evidence if he sees fit. The state can murder whom it pleases. This is the system we have. This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. You cannot escape this logic, this judgment. If you support Obama now, in this, then there is no crime he can commit that you will not support.
And thus you become one of those people that we all used to puzzle over, the accomodationists to brutal tyranny: "How did all those people go along with the Nazis? Why wasn't there more opposition to Stalin? How could they countenance all those obvious abominations? What kind of people were they?"
Now you know. They were you. You are them.
* * *
NOTE 1: I should make it clear that I do not think that it is somehow more heinous for the American government to target and kill its own citizens, as opposed to killing foreigners by the thousands, which it has done, on a bipartisan basis, for many a year. I am merely laying out the case in this way so that American "progressives" -- almost of all whom are deeply marinated in their own brand of American exceptionalism -- can see that even by the standards of this exceptionalism, which puts American lives and 'values' above all else, Barack Obama is acting -- undeniably -- in a criminal, tyrannical manner.
NOTE 2: While I was writing this piece, I got the welcome news that Arthur Silber was back, after a long hiatus due to his chronic ill health. And, as usual, his insights cut straight to the heart of the matter. As I noted here the other day, Silber was one of the very few writers who saw through the shining cloud that surrounded the Obama campaign to the corroded core within. He also noted the greatest danger of an Obama presidency: that it would confirm, entrench, expand -- and normalize -- the worst aspects of the American imperium, precisely because the system's crimes and atrocities would now be presented in a more pleasing package, with all "progressive" opposition to them completely disarmed by partisan adherence to their standard-bearer.
Ironically, one of Silber's most incisive pieces on this subject was provoked by what many people -- and almost all "progressives" -- still consider Obama's finest moment during the campaign: his speech calling for a "national dialogue on race" -- part of a particularly brutal effort to knife his long-time friend, mentor and pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, deeply and repeatedly in the back.
Go read the new piece now, and follow the links, which provide chilling chapter and verse to underscore the insights. But here is brief excerpt, one of the conclusions that Silber draws today from that early speech:
If one truly and comprehensively understood Obama's speech on race -- the unending, deadly lies on which it was based, and the terrible consequences to which those lies have led and the devastation they will continue to cause -- that speech told you everything you needed to know about Obama.
That is not hyperbole, not if you understood all of that: it told you everything. .. And what has already occurred during the Obama presidency is very far from all or the worst of the destruction that can reasonably be expected to transpire over the coming years.
UPDATE: David Swanson at Counterpunch nails the situation well: "Murder is the new torture," indeed. As Swanson notes, now that torture -- always with us, but previously shrouded -- has been mainstreamed, acceptance of outright murder is the logical next step. And as Swanson observes, it is actually a much more efficient tool of imperial policy:
President Obama has ordered the murder of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Like the innocent but tortured Abu Zubayda (innocent at least of any of the crimes he was accused of), Awlaki is now the mastermind terrorist of the universe. And once he's dead, who's to say he wasn't? Who can demand a trail or access to documents? He'll be dead. See the beauty of it?
If the top mastermind is in Yemen, what the hell are we doing building a quagmire in Afghanistan? Don't ask. But notice this: we have dramatically increased the use of missile strikes to assassinate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we have increased the use of murderous night-time raids to such an extent that we now kill more civilians in that way than we do with drones. They're the "wrong people," or neighbors who came to help, or family members clinging to loved ones. Sometimes they're young students with their hands tied behind their backs. Accidents will happen. But no U.S. officials' future book tours are going to be interrupted by protesters, since there's no torture involved. Civilization is on the march!
by jam.fuse » Mon Aug 02, 2010 8:28 pm
by elfismiles » Tue Aug 03, 2010 1:32 pm
Unnoticed: Obama drops 2009 pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, Aug 3, 2010 (IPS) - Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.
Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that "America's combat mission in Iraq" would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of "supporting and training Iraqi security forces".
That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months." Obama said nothing in his speech Monday about withdrawing "combat brigades" or "combat troops" from Iraq until the end of 2011.
Even the concept of "ending the U.S. combat mission" may be highly misleading, much like the concept of "withdrawing U.S. combat brigades" was in 2009.
Under the administration's definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces.
An official who spoke with IPS on condition that his statements would be attributed to a "senior administration official" acknowledged that the 50,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline will have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn.
The official also acknowledged that the troops will engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be "mostly" for defensive purposes.
That language implied that there might be circumstances in which U.S. forces would carry out offensive operations as well.
IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat U.S. troops might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by U.S. troops if it feels it necessary.
Obama's jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.
Obama's apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the Sep. 1 deadline in his Feb. 27, 2009 speech generated headlines across the commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue.
At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic forces backing a long- term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011.
He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the evidence indicated it was a falsehood.
Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press Mar. 1, 2009, Gates said the "transition force" remaining after Aug. 31, 2010 would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterised differently".
"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."
But "advisory and assistance brigades" were configured with the same combat capabilities as the "combat brigade teams" which had been the basic U.S. military unit of combat organisation for six years, as IPS reported in March 20009.
Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama's combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.
That plan had been developed in late 2008 by Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
They came up with the idea of "remissioning" – sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams -- as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.
The "remissioning" scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in Chicago on Dec. 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later.
It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the "remissioning" ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years.
Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama's public declaration and the reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the news media – including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories about the military's "remissioning" scheme – failed to report on it.
The "senior administration official" told IPS that Obama is still "committed to withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011". That is the withdrawal deadline in the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008.
But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government.
In November 2008, after Obama's election, Gen. Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks "what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015". Odierno said he "would like to see a …force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000", which would still be carrying out combat operations.
Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the region's oil resources – and that it be openly labeled as such – according to Ricks.
In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno's "remissioning" dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.
Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were still ongoing.
In July, Odierno suggested that a U.N. peacekeeping force might be needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued U.S. presence there might be requested by the Iraqi government.
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
This article was originally published at IPS News.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52366
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0803/unnoti ... oops-iraq/
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