Fuck Obama

[ninakat]

Today's Greenwald:

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent
Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – 'disposition matrix' – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim


The National Counterterrorism Center, the site of a new
bureaucracy to institutionalize the 'kill list'. Photograph: FBI

[ninakat]

Today's Chris Floyd (same subject as Greenwald's: "disposition matrix") - emphasis mine.

Welcome to the Age of Hell: Entrenching Murder as the American Way
Written by Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 24 October 2012 15:30

The Washington Post has just laid out, in horrifying, soul-slaughtering detail, the Obama Administration's ongoing effort to expand, entrench and "codify" the practice of murder and terrorism by the United States government. The avowed, deliberate intent of these sinister machinations is to embed the use of death squads and drone terror attacks into the policy apparatus of future administrations, so that the killing of human beings outside all pretense of legal process will go on, year after year after year, even when the Nobel Peace Laureate has left office.

They have even come up with a new euphemism for state murder: "disposition." The new "counterterrorism matrix" is "designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the 'disposition' of suspects beyond the reach of American drones," the Post reports.

In other words, it involves expanding and varying the menu of arbitrary murder, mixing the blunderbuss of drone blasts and night raids with more selective "bullet-in-the-brain," "bomb-in-the-car-engine," "polonium-in-the-pea-soup," and "doping-and-defenestration" approaches. Arbitrary murder by unaccountable elites and their spies, paid for by money taken from ordinary citizens who have no say in and no knowledge of what is being done in their names (and who will be the victims of the inevitable blowback from the state terror and murder campaign): this is now being "codified," officially, formally, as the American way.

To be fair -- and by all means, let us be fair with these butchers -- the term 'disposition' is also stretched to cover a multitude of sins: kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, turning captives over to proxy torturers. But it is worth remembering that all of these dispositions -- including the murders, wholesale and retail -- involve "alleged" terrorists, terrorist "suspects," people who have found themselves, for whatever reason (or no reason at all) on one of the innumerable "lists" gathered by whatever method (or no method at all) by the many fatly-funded agencies now involved in "counter-terrorism."

But that's not all, not by a long shot. These codified murders are also being inflicted on people who are not on any list whatsoever: their names, affiliations, beliefs, intentions -- indeed, their dispositions -- are completely unknown to those who kill them. They are the faceless targets of "signature strikes," which allow American death squads to kill people based on "patterns of activity" which may -- or may not -- signal some possible malign intent -- or none -- toward someone -- or no one -- somewhere -- or nowhere. This rigorous process rests entirely on in the magical mind-reading abilities of drone jockeys ogling a computer screen. If the armchair warrior doesn't like the cut of someone's jib, then he squeezes his joystick and turns the stranger into "bug splatter," to use the term favored by our bold defenders of civilization.

Like last year's NY Times piece that first detailed the murder racket being run directly out of the White House, the new Washington Post story is replete with quotes from "senior Administration officials" who have obviously been authorized to speak. Once again, this is a story that Obama and his team WANT to tell. They want you to know about the murder program and their strenuous exertions to make it permanent; they are proud of this, they think it makes them look good. They want it to be part of their legacy, something they can pass on to future generations: arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder.

Perhaps this fact should be borne in mind by all those anguished progressives out there who keep telling themselves that Obama will "be different, that he will "turn to the left," if we can only get him a second term. No; the legacy of arbitrary, lawless, systematic murder is the legacy he wants. It is the legacy he has been building, with remarkable energy and meticulous attention to detail, day after day, week after week, for the past four years. This is what he cares about. And it is this -- not jobs, not peace, not the environment, not equal rights for women and ethnic and sexual minorities, not the poor, not the middle class, not education, not infrastructure, not science, not diplomacy -- that he will apply himself to in a second term. (Along with his only other political passion: forging a "grand bargain" with Big Money to gut the remaining shreds of the New Deal.)

There is little point in going through the Post story and offering detailed comment. The sickening nature of this perpetual-motion death-machine -- and the husk-like inhumanity of those who operate it and the sycophants who applaud it -- are all too plain. Just read the whole thing, and see for yourself. See how these butchers -- our bipartisan elites, our whole respectable, self-righteous establishment -- have trapped us all in an Age of Hell.

[Aurataur]

Welcome to the Age of Hell: Entrenching Murder as the American Way
Written by Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 24 October 2012 15:30

How appropriate that this is the first post on the hundredth page of this thread.

[ninakat]

^^^ Indeed, and I wonder what horrors page 111 will bring (because I believe The Big O will continue for 4 more years, although I'm not a particularly big believer in numerology).

[Project Willow]

I think this deserves its own thread.

[JackRiddler]

@

[ninakat]

November 07, 2012
Salman Rushdie and the Kill List
Obama’s Fatwa
by DOUG NOBLE

I just read Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton, describing his nine years in hiding from Ayatollah Khomenei’s death sentence (fatwa), imposed for his “heretical” novel Satanic Verses. The entire world deplored this murderous threat on the writer’s life.

I could not help but compare Rushdie’s dire plight with that suffered by the many civilians targeted by President Obama’s “kill list” for their alleged “terrorist” activities. There are few differences between these two forms of murderous decree – the fatwa and the kill list. Yet the world stands largely silent about the latter.

One difference is that those people whose names are added to the Obama kill list, unlike Rushdie, rarely know their fate beforehand, since names and criteria for inclusion are top secret. But the relentless buzzing of drones overhead in places like Waziristan, threatening death at any moment, terrorizes those potential victims as surely as the fatwa terrorized Rushdie.

In one rare instance, suspected terrorist Anwar Al-Awlaqi knew his fate beforehand. Because he was a U.S. citizen, his inclusion on the kill list was approved by the National Security Council, which The New York Times then reported. His father desperately proclaimed his son’s innocence, saying: “I am now afraid of what they will do with my son. There are missiles raining down… He has to hide.” But even an ACLU lawsuit could not protect him from his fate.

A second, major difference between a rare fatwa death sentence and the Administration’s kill list was revealed in an October 23 Washington Post article by Greg Miller. He wrote that “targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining” an approach it considers “so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.” Miller describes the institutionalization of a new “dispositional matrix,” a database of terrorism suspects “designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects,” i.e, ways to dispose of them. This killing program is not a single, rare decree but instead a repeated systematic, sanctioned program of murder.

Administration officials claim, of course, that drone assassinations and the kill list are justified by targeting militants and terrorists who pose imminent danger to the US. But these same officials concede that most of the hundreds of victims are-low level operatives, denied any semblance of due process, or else innocent bystanders, posing no threat at all.

A third difference between the fatwa against Rushdie and the kill list against suspected militants is this: Rushdie was afforded maximum protection by UK police throughout his ordeal, while targeted individuals on the Obama kill list have little or no protection from sudden death by drone attack.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators of drone attacks themselves get undue protection. In a recent instance of astonishing irony, a commander of the Hancock Air National Guard Base near Syracuse, which remotely pilots killer drones over Afghanistan, won a court order of protection against the nonviolent peace activists demonstrating outside. Apparently the largest military in the world warrants greater protection from the threat of nonviolence than the victims of its killing machine deserve from the horror it rains down from the sky.

Such irony would be a worthy subject for a Rushdie novel, now that he’s free from the terror of the fatwa. It’s up to the rest of us to determine when, and how, those unfortunates targeted by Obama’s kill list will ever be set free from their own horror.

Doug Noble is an activist with Occupy Rochester NY and Rochester Against War.

[ninakat]

November 07, 2012
Who Will Stand Up to Obama Now?
TKO by the Technocrats
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Barack Obama is a technocrat and he just won a technocratic victory. His reelection campaign, lacking any kind of arching philosophy or defense of his own disturbing tenure as president, became a bland exercise in political calculus, targeting individual precincts, swing counties and fractionated demographic sectors.

Obama’s victory, at the cost of $2 billion, is about as thrilling as completing a game of Sudoku. Obama was propelled to his slender popular vote victory by those that the Republicans almost ritually abused: women, blacks, gays and Hispanics. Ironically, these are people that the Obama administration has also ruthlessly strafed for four years. But Obama smiled as he cut the lower-classes adrift in the midsts of a cratering economy, while Romney expressed only contempt for them.

Mitt Romney ran an inept campaign. As a candidate, he was even more aloof, arrogant and emotionally distant than Obama. If Obama’s campaign lacked any unifying message, Romney’s resembled a kind of political Brownian Motion of constantly drifting themes in a tank of rancid and racially-charged sludge. He doomed his chances with his peculiar choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate, who personified the budgetary cruelties of the Republican right and alienated aging white voters who otherwise might have wandered into his camp.

Where does Obama go now? The House remains firmly in the hands of militant right-wingers. The Senate will continue to be paralyzed by the filibuster-happy minority and a spineless Democratic majority. Stalemate? Probably not. Second terms are almost always about polishing a presidential legacy, already being harped upon by the withered likes of Tom Brokaw. Obama will be desperate for some signature legislative victories.

So what to expect from Obama? An aggressive new plan to combat climate change? A real federal jobs program aimed at full-employment? Liberalization of immigration policies? Decriminalization of marijuana? Deep cuts in the defense budget? Rollback of the Patriot Act? A ban on assassinations by drones? Movement toward single-payer health care? Sure.

No. Clinton will be his template: the Clinton who pushed for the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act, the gutting of welfare and the war on Serbia. Obama will pursue bi-partisanship with a vengeance. Obama has always been a committed neoliberal, a closeted agent of austerity. Now he no longer needs to even play-act for his political base. He can openly betray their interests.

In a few months, the president will reach out to his old pal Paul Ryan to take a stroll across that tragic terrain known as the common ground in pursuit of those twin obsessions of the elites: deficit reduction and entitlement reform. In the name of political conciliation, Obama will piously move to slash away at Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the last frail fabrics of the federal social welfare programs. These savage cuts will be enthusiastically cheered by the mainstream press, Wall Street and the Washington establishment.

Who will stand up to challenge him?

That is the real question posed by this enervating election.

Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest books are Born Under a Bad Sky and Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is now available in Kindle format. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net

[8bitagent]

I'm going to keep my anti Obama rhetoric at bay for a bit, just to not damper the mood for my friends on facebook or on forums. It's an understandably exciting time for people. However, I can't get the image of
that 15 year old Colorado born teenager that was killed by one of Obama's kill list drones. "His father was a terrorist" Obama reps will say, yet this "terrorist" also was dining at the Pentagon months after 9/11.
I guess it's like the Ghadafi thing...my buddy one minute, enemy the next.

I do think the double tap charter(technically a war crime) of drones and bragging of the kill list, along with the assassination and drone usage in general should be the most known of Obama's misdeeds.
If this was Bush, the left would be defeaning about it. Remember: Cheney was accused of only contemplating black op death squads...

[Luther Blissett]

Obama Bombs Yemen Hours After Winning Reelection

Not even a full day had passed before newly reelected President Obama ordered another drone strike in Yemen.

A U.S. drone strike targeted a group of al-Qaida militants on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday night, killing at least three terrorists, government officials said.

Huffington Post:

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. If it were a American strike, of course, it would have to have been authorized by Obama.

The drone war violates both domestic and international law, and the Obama administration’s vehement disdain for transparency in government is the only thing keeping it from public and legal scrutiny. Beyond the law, it’s terrorism.

[Six Hits of Sunshine]

Election Results Writes ‘Fuck Obama’ on His Will Before Taking His Own Life
Neetzan Zimmerman
A Florida tanning salon owner is believed to have taken his own life after becoming inconsolable over President Obama's reelection.

64-year-old Henry Hamilton of Key West was found dead last Thursday next to two empty prescription bottles. His will was also found nearby; the words "fuck Obama" were reportedly scrawled over it.

"[He was] very upset about the election results," Hamilton's partner Michael Cossey told police officer Anna Dykes.

It was Cossey and another police officer who found Hamilton's body in the bedroom of the South Roosevelt Boulevard condo the couple shared.

Hamilton had been "very stressed about his business," said Cossey who last spoke with Hamilton on election night.

Dykes said in her report that the bottles discovered at the scene were for Xanax, which is used to treat anxiety, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic often given to individuals with schizophrenia, but is also used in the treatment of depression.

http://gawker.com/5960453/florida-man-a ... s-own-life

[beeline]

^^^^^
Well I'd be a little depressed, too, if I owned a tanning salon in Florida. Talk about not knowing your marketplace.

[2012 Countdown]

Cornel West: Obama is 'Republican in Blackface'


Published on Nov 13, 2012 by TheYoungTurks

"In a recent interview on Democracy Now!, ex-Princeton professor and frequent Obama critic Dr. Cornel West lashed out against the president as well as pundits Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris-Perry and Rev. Al Sharpton.

West called Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface" and said Dyson, Harris-Perry and Sharpton were all "for sale."

West, along with TV personality Tavis Smiley, has been one of President Barack Obama's loudest and harshest African-American critics. Although West endorsed and campaigned for Obama during the 2008 campaign, he has since complained that the first black president turned his back on impoverished Americans."

Cenk Uygur and Jayar Jackson discuss West's comments and racial attitudes toward Obama in general. Is there a way he should act as both the president and a leader for the black community? How would he manage that?

*Read more from The Grio:
http://thegrio.com/2012/11/12/cornel-we ... blackface/

View the original video from Democracy Now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... nCOutrlRRQ


===

Cornel West: Sharpton Sold Soul for Obama


Published on Nov 13, 2012 by TheYoungTurks

"Cornel West is no stranger to controversy, and this time his fervent slingshot is aimed at black MSNBC hosts.

During an interview on "Democracy Now" West criticized Al Sharpton, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, and frequent guest host Michael Eric Dyson for "selling their souls" in exchange for insider access to Obama.

"They want to turn their back to poor and working people. And it's a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way, given the kind of critical background that all of them have had at some point."

The activist also made a shot at the MSNBC personalities lack of dedication to black interests by inviting "them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves."

West didn't hold back when it came to Obama either. During the interview he called President Obama a "Rockefeller republican in blackface."*

Cenk Uygue breaks down Cornel West's comments, as well as Al Sharpton, who has been accused of never criticizing Obama on anything. Jayar Jackson weighs in on the West's and Sharpton's respective comments and attitudes toward Obama.

*Read more from Michelle Marques/ Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... -msnbc-h...

View the original video from Democracy Now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... nCOutrlRRQ

[justdrew]

Election Results Writes ‘Fuck Obama’ on His Will Before Taking His Own Life
Neetzan Zimmerman
A Florida tanning salon owner is believed to have taken his own life after becoming inconsolable over President Obama's reelection.

64-year-old Henry Hamilton of Key West was found dead last Thursday next to two empty prescription bottles. His will was also found nearby; the words "fuck Obama" were reportedly scrawled over it.

"[He was] very upset about the election results," Hamilton's partner Michael Cossey told police officer Anna Dykes.

It was Cossey and another police officer who found Hamilton's body in the bedroom of the South Roosevelt Boulevard condo the couple shared.

Hamilton had been "very stressed about his business," said Cossey who last spoke with Hamilton on election night.

Dykes said in her report that the bottles discovered at the scene were for Xanax, which is used to treat anxiety, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic often given to individuals with schizophrenia, but is also used in the treatment of depression.

http://gawker.com/5960453/florida-man-a ... s-own-life

If I change my name to Fuck Obama, can I have his stuff?

[2012 Countdown]

btw, I used to absolutely love Maddow. She still does good things, but good lord is she a fucking apologist and covers for him. Wipe the shit off your nose Maddow. It stinks.

I'm so glad Cenk told those MSNBC puppetmasters/controllers to fuck off.