Big Republican Gains in Congress. Is President Obama Secretly Celebrating?

Is Obama, in his heart of hearts, delighted at the results of last week's election? After all, it didn't take President Obama long to sell out the progressives in his first term when his cabinet picks didn’t include a single liberal and he extended, not to mention, expanded, many of the Bush administration's policies: from increasing drone strikes in foreign countries to drafting legal justification for killing U.S. citizens abroad to signing the Bush tax cuts into law to spying on Americans to deportation of immigrants. Unfortunately, President Obama has no problem helping his financial friends on Wall Street.

Now, Obama is very good at spouting liberal rhetoric and Fox News is very good at spreading the delusion that he's some extreme left-wing socialist, if one looks at Obama's actions, they clearly prove otherwise. Obama, as author and activist Cornel West said, is a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."  

“AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to be with you. So we’re right here in the president’s city. In fact, he just flew out on Wednesday after his re-election. Cornel West, the figures—who is ahead? Who isn’t? As your book is titled The Rich and the Rest of Us.

CORNEL WEST: Well, one, I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

One thing is for sure: the Republican Congress and President Obama certainly agree on one very important issue: prioritizing and fast tracking the very secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which virtually exempts multinational corporations from national laws.  In other words, even more protection for corporate profits..."NAFTA on steroids".

Fast-track legislation was introduced in January but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would not allow a vote. Many Democrats fear that opening markets to countries with lower wages and standards will cost American jobs. Republicans tend to be supportive, because from the small leaks, since the TPP is negotiated mostly in secret, seem to indicate favoring US big business above overseas consumers (e.g entertainment, pharmaceuticals etc.)

After the election, when Mitch McConnell was asked what specific areas he could work on with President Obama:

“ Trade agreements. The president and I were just talking about that right before I came over here. Most of his party is unenthusiastic about international trade. We think it’s good for America. And so, I’ve got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America. And the president and I discussed that right before I came over here, and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, "Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them." -- Sen. Mitch McConnell, November 5, 2014 

Links:

McConnell and Obama are Already Planning to Undercut Liberal Democrats in Congress

“Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he and President Barack Obama are already discussing plans to cut corporate tax rates and pass free trade agreements, following the GOP's major gains in Tuesday's elections.

...

“Obama has struggled to sell Democrats on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact his administration is negotiating with 11 other Pacific nations. Leaked drafts of the text have sparked a host of liberal concerns. Consumer advocates are worried about potential restrictions on food safety and other regulations, environmentalists fear it will undermine environmental protections, and global health experts are concerned it will curb access to low-cost generic medicines.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has a testy relationship with many Democrats in Congress and with many liberal policy organizations, who accuse him of making promises on key Democratic priorities and then retracting them as trade negotiations continue.

Large swaths of the Democratic Party are simply wary of free trade deals in the mode of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. Some studies have concluded that such deals exacerbate income inequality and depress wages. While the NAFTA and World Trade Organization treaties have helped to expand overall U.S. economic growth, many economists argue they have had substantial negative consequences for American workers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, is a strong supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been finalized. The pre-eminent American corporate lobbying group almost exclusively supports Republican candidates.

Trade and Income Distribution: The Debate and New Evidence

“Trade policy in particular has at times been hostage to the fears of some (including Ross Perot) that international trade and globalization are reducing living standards for American workers.

Stop TPP

Expose the TPP

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Co-opting Hollywood to Teach and Encourage Enrollment in Obamacare.

Hollywood can be a very effective political tool for manipulating public opinion, whether the issue at hand is the "war on terror", "war on drugs", climate change, or, as in this case, healthcare. The California Endowment announced a  $500,000 grant for Obamacare education.  to Hollywood Health and Society, "a program at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center that provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate and timely information for storylines on health and climate change."  This grant will be used to educate television writers, producers, and others involved in television programming on Obamacare facts and implementation information so that they can produce prime-time narratives that encourage Americans to enroll.

“Our experience has shown that the public gets just as much, if not more, information about current events and important issues from their favorite television shows and characters as they do from the news media and online resources,” said USC Annenberg professor Martin Kaplan, principal investigator of Hollywood, Health&Society since its start in 2001, and founding director of The Norman Lear Center. “This grant will allow us to ensure that industry practitioners have up-to-date, relevant facts on health care reform to integrate into their storylines and projects.”

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The Bought and Paid For Black Misleadership Class and the Neutraization of Black Politics

Glen Ford, creator of Black Agenda Report, who so often writes about the "Obama delusional state", where Black politics has been essentially neutralized, presented “The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy," to friends of Black Agenda Report gathered at New York City’s historic Riverside Church to celebrate the publication’s 7th anniversary on Friday, October 18.

The "Black Mis-Leadership Class", according to Glen Ford, "sees its own personal financial and social interests as being synonymous with the progress of black people as a whole. This class does not seek transformation of society, it seeks only their own elevation within the existing structures. The rest of Black Amereica,, as far as they're concerned, is supposed to applaud their individual success no matter what is actually happening to the masses of black people at the bottom. It is the politics of putting black faces in high places and to hell with those of us stuck at the bottom, or those of us who are below the bottom in the U.S. prison gulag."

Ford used the examples of rising political star, Cory Booker and already established political star President Barack Obama, who, in reality, are both front men for capital, front men for "the man" and front men for the empire, to illustrate the inherent danger of the black establishment to the American black population. What danger? The disastrous consequences that will result if these self-serving politicians succeed--and it appears as if they most certainly are-- at eliminating the mass movement of African Americans who traditionally acted as a "countervailing force to the power of capital," becoming even more influential internally in Black America, leaving "little hope of effective progressive resistance to the rule of Wall Street, its servants in government, and for peace."

“Has the fake-progressive, fake-liberal and in fact deeply conservative FTBP not been granted far too much of a pass on the power-friendly and authoritarian content of his character by those who have been bamboozled into thinking there was something inherently and magically progressive, egalitarian, and democratic about the initially and outwardly startling fact of a black family entering the White House in the land of chattel slavery? As some of us on the Left said from the beginning of Obama’s celebrity, the real story behind the Obama phenomenon has been the ruling class playing the race card in a different way than in King’s time, flipping it, so to speak – a winning strategy for the Democrats at the national level in the post-Civil Rights era, when changing demographics and the more superficial victories of the Civil Rights Movement have made victory possible for nonwhite candidates in national elections. -- Paul Street

Martin Luther King, Jr. is, undoubtedly, rolling in his grave, ironically,  at the election of the first "Black" President, who has managed to crush MLK's dream of:

“...forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of out society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”

Going "Beyond Obama" requires successfully passing through and politically defeating that ancient black American political current that holds that achieving the maximum number of black faces in high places is thee root to black progress, to black upward mobility, to black nirvana."



Links:

Black is Back Coalition

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American Exceptionalism: Yes We Can Do Whatever We Want Wherever We Want..

In 1630, Governor John Winthrop, a leading figure in the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony, in his famous sermon, said, “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us." In other words, the New Jerusalem, or a Model of Christian Charity. Today, according to a fairly recent survey, "58% of Americans believe God has granted America a special role in human history."

From 1900...

“God has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are trustees of the world's progress, guardians of its righteous peace." -- Senator Albert J. Beveridge in support of the annexation of the Philippines

To 2013:

“Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional --in part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self interest, but for the interests of all." -- Presiden Barack Obama to the United Nations

The United States government continues to prey upon the weak while donning the wings of a savior. The beltway politicians proclaim "American Exceptionalism", implying America is ordained by God, as if this claim of a "sacred decree" places the U.S. above the law and justifies the right to impose whatever the U.S. wants, wherever it wants. Needless to say, as all empires before us, this claim is most certainly false.

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Is Selective NASA/Government Shutdown Merely a Distraction?

This selective government shutdown over Obamacare, the first since 1996, where an an estimated 800,000 federal employees have been furloughed, with NASA leading the pack with 97% of its workforce impacted, is highly suspicious because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Obamacare launched its insurance exchanges the same day as the shutdown, yet the shutdown continues.  Talk about closing the barn door after the horses flee.

This "shutdown", which will  shut down what used to be accessible information to interested folks, occurs just as Comet ISON is due to pass Mars.. In addition, BRISSON (Balloon Rapid Response for Comet ISON failed in its mission to collect data, the Air Force Command discontinues its space surveillance due to "resource constraints", and then, coincidentally NASA is out of commission?

Meanwhile, aside from the fire in the sky-- record number of  fireballs and meteorites over the last week, not to mention the meteor that just missed earth, and a huge filament erupted from the sun producing a beautiful coronal mass ejection (CME) and solar energetic particle event, sparking a G2-class geomagnetic storm, an earthquake in Pakistan created a new island.

As the New York Times reports: As Worries Over the Power Grid Rises, a Drill Will Simulate a Knockout Blow. scheduled for the same time, October 1, is a drill called GridEx II, an EMP simulation,  will be in its final planning phase. 

“ The electrical grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the "glass jaw" of American industry.  If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks [if not much longer]; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline,  diesal fuel, and fresh food; shut down communication, and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and events of 9/11.

This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers FBI antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid."

There is lots of Internet chatter concerning the subject of Comet ISON, ranging from  the possibility of a mini "solar system" of companion comets, meteorites and space dust moving into ours (lots of military activity around Learmonth (Project Wormwood-joint US/Aussie) Observatory in Australia), to what sounds more plausible: Comet ISON, disrupting the asteroid belt. Maybe, it's something as simple as they do not want us to find out that comets are not dirty snowballs.  I do not know, so I do not subscribe to any of  these rumors, however, I have no doubt that the government is trying to not only distract us, which is par for the course, but also limiting our access to what's really going on in space.

What conclusion can be made when all the government solar monitoring sites go down at the same time so many large events are taking place? NASA already received its funding so there is no reason to shut down operational servers-- over 60 satellites and telescopes it is using to observe ISON--unless they want to shut it down.

“ ...comet ISON recently turned GREEN showing it is connecting electrically with Mars as i predicted ... this started on the 24th ... standard science claims this is due to UV light from the sun ... more fairy tale science ... if that is the case there is UV light all over the solar system ... why do some comets not show green at all and others are very green ... they never explain such dichotomies (they do not have to since in the controlled press no one else gets to insert even a comment) ... i predicted this brightening as the comet connects electrically with mars ... heading for a close bypass on october 1st ... more as this develops ... jim mccanney (and note the internet nut cases will be creating all kinds of WOO WOO scare stories using this as a basis ... many of which are controlled by the disinfo crew and many trying to misuse my name and work ... the disinfo engine is in full swing to keep the public dumb about the electrical nature of comets ... why ??? because if the public knew they would ask why we cannot connect to outer space to power our society with energy from the electrical solar system that surrounds us ... read my books especially THE DIAMOND PRINCIPLE for details ) -- Jim McCanney

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Are We Slowly being Converted to a Part-time Worker Society?

To be sure, job cuts--and some might say, massive job cuts--are a daily event, but what about jobs created? According to the Household Survey, of the 953,000 jobs created in 2013, 77%, or 731,000 are part-time (full-time=35 hours or more per week, part-time=less than 35 hours per week) so as Zero Hedge has been saying for over three years, the workplace in America is radically changing right before our eyes, although, unlike Zero Hedge, I certainly don't think Obamacare is the reason behind the transition to a part-time work force. Jobs were sent away a long time ago and our current economy was/is a creation decades in the making. Don't forget that the financial crisis started under 'W' who started two wars, created the TSA, passed the Patriot Act, pushed for the bailouts, and spent more than every president prior to him.

Moreover, we're fighting for full-time jobs that should be paying at least 40-60k but are instead paying 15-30k with less benefits and no job security, not to mention, the huge student loan debt that most people have to pay off no matter what kind of job they get.

Sadly, for the first time ever, this generation will not be better off than its parents, and paradoxically, the cost of living can be higher, much higher for the poor, a segment of our population that is growing larger everyday, a segment of our population that our younger generations can look forward to inclusion because Good luck finding full-time employment!

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It's "Always Nigger Season" Even When the President is Black

Or I might add especially when the President is black. At least when 'W' did something horribly  racist and criminal, as he often did, there were loud voices protesting  in opposition. But when Obama does the same thing, it’s considered good leadership. President Obama received 95% of the black vote. In return, African Americans received a check that came back stamped: insufficient funds. He tells African Americans to stop whining and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps while his actions set these same people up to fail and keep them trapped by his support of legislation--specifically, in this case, by actively trying to maintain racially discriminatory prison sentences--that further empowers and emboldens the New Jim Crow Lulled to sleep by the rhetoric of color-blindness and the appearance of great racial progress, most of us are blind this new form, or should I say, formless invisible institutional racism.

In UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. CORNELIUS DEMORRIS BLEWETT (12-5226) and JARREOUS JAMONE BLEWITT (12-5582),, "a crack cocaine case brought by two currently incarcerated defendants seeking retroactive relief from racially discriminatory mandatory minimum sentences imposed on them in 2005," President Obama quietly tried to enforce racially biased federal crack cocaine laws that have since been repealed" by the  2010 Fair Sentencing Act. The Obama administration asked a federal appeals court to make sure thousands of people--almost all of them poor and most of them black--remain locked in prison despite a total lack of justification.

Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are "pharmacologically identical," the only difference being who consumes these pharmacologically identical substances: crack cocaine, the drug of mostly poor black folk, and powder cocaine, the drug of wealthier white folk. To be sure, young African American males are the most disposable, yet at the same time, profitable--for the for-profit prison industry--demographic in this prison nation. Not only do the private prisons prosper, corporations can put these people to work for a few cents an hour, not to mention, these human-beings are excluded from poverty statistics and unemployment data thus masking the severity of issues more than they already are.

Although Black people make up only 34% of crack users, they are 85% of those convicted on crack charges. As early as 2011, 30,000 people were serving time for crack charges in federal prison, 85% of them Black.

“…persistent bias occurred with respect to the contemporary enforcement of drug laws where, in the 1990s and early 2000s, blacks constituted a minority of regular users of crack cocaine but more than 80 percent of crack defendants.” -- Harvard Professor William J. Stuntz

As legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues, "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." One such strategy is through targeting black men and women (often mothers) through the "War on Drugs," decimating communities of color.

“There are more African American adults under correctional  control today, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. As of 2004, more black men were disenfranchised than in 1870, the year the 15th amendment was ratified explicitly prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote on the basis or race....During the Jim Crow era, poll taxes and literacy tests, circumvented the 15th amendment and operated to deny African Americans the right to vote. A black child born today has less of a chance of being raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. This is due in large part to the mass incarceration of black men....The mass incarceration of black men take them out of the dating pool at the years they would be most likely to commit to a partner, to a family.  But, what's worse is that by branding them criminals and felons at early ages, often before they're even old enough to vote, they're rendered permanently unemployable in the legal job market, virtually guaranteeing that most will cycle in and out of prison, sometimes, for the rest of their lives. 
[...]
Today, in many states, felon disenfranchisement laws accomplish what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not. This does not effect some small segment of the African American community. To the contrary, in many large urban areas, more than half of working age African American men now have criminal records and thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. In some cities--Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago (80%), DC--the statistics are far worse." -- Michelle Anderson, highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State

The incarceration rate has quintupled over the last 30 years, from a prison population of 300,000 in the early 1970s to well over 2 million! During this same period of time that the incarceration rates increased exponentially, crime rates have fluctuated, leading most sociologists and criminologists to admit that incarceration rates and crime rates have moved independently of one another.

So for now the grant of en banc review puts Blewett relief for Sixth Circuit prisoners on hold. Why?  Is  the Department of Justice afraid of re-hearing thousands of old cases?  If so, can't President Obama just commute all of the pre-Fair-Sentencing-Act minimums to their equivalent minimums under the new law? Or is the reason for en banc review far more nefarious?

Links:

How the mass incarceration of black men harms black women.


Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer

Stop the Drug War

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It Appears Only the Good Journalists Die Young.

33-year old journalist, Michael Hastings, winner of a Polk Award,  author of the article "The Runaway General" in Rolling Stone Magazine, as well as the book, "The Operators ", and who will most likely be remembered for taking down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, died yesterday in a fiery car crash.




One witness to the crash said it "sounded like a bomb went off. " Hollywood producer, Gary Grossman, described the scene by saying, "I couldn't have written a scene like this for a movie where the engine flies from the car which was about 60 yards up right down here to this telephone pole." While single car accidents are certainly not uncommon, a car exploding and throwing the engine almost the length of a football field certainly is uncommon. Especially a brand new Mercedes.



Hastings was about to start work on an article about Barrett Brown, the investigative journalist (Salon, Vanity Fair amongst others), author and alleged mastermind behind Anonymous who is currently awaiting trial in prison for allegedly sharing data hacked from Stratfor. Hastings also had harsh words for President Obama's drone speech.

“Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide." -- Michael Hastings

A few other relatively young journalists who died before their time:

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist. Webb was best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled coc aine into the U.S. Their smuggled coc aine was distributed as crack coc aine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied coc aine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack coc aine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the coc aine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel.

On December 10, 2004, Gary Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head.[25] Sacramento County coroner Robert Lyons ruled that it was suicide, noting that a suicide note was found at the scene.

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Whistleblower Bradley Manning Has Zero Chance of Recieving a Fair Trial.

US Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of leaking large numbers of classified documents to WikiLeaks, including the video now entitled, "Collateral Murder" (below) said he wanted to "spark a public debate on the role of US military and foreign policy."  He pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him, pleading not guilty to the most serious charge of all, aiding the enemy, an enemy that is classified, even to Bradley Manning. A classified enemy?  Don't feel bad, it even stumps legal scholars.

“The "classified enemy" designation attached to one of the three entities that WikiLeaker Bradley Manning is accused of aiding has perplexed and divided professors of military law.
Manning, a 25-year-old former intelligence specialist, has been incarcerated for more than three years in connection with the largest intelligence disclosure in U.S. history. He recently admitted that he leaked hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, incident reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Guantanamo detainee profiles, and, most famously, footage of a Baghdad airstrike.

In a statement he prepared in prison, Manning said that he exposed what he believed to be low-sensitivity files to promote a global dialogue about how the United States conducts war and diplomacy.

Prosecutors accuse him of "aiding the enemy," and three in particular: al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and a "classified enemy" referred to by a Bates number, which is a form of legal document identification.

Three professors of military law - Yale Law School's Eugene Fidell, Duke University School of Law's Scott Silliman and Texas Tech University School of Law's Richard Rosen - told Courthouse News they had never heard of a case involving a "classified enemy."

Considering all of the documents were released publicly, that enemy must be us, we, the enemies people.  Right?  Because that charge is for directly handing information to an enemy, not leaking it to the public.

So, what are his chances of recieving a fair trial? Well, President Obama has already said he "broke the law."

"President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning “broke the law.” Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.

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President Obama: The More Effective Evil?

For some time now, Black Agenda Report has been calling the Obama administration not the lesser of two but the more effective evil, able to enact measures that white Democrats or Republicans could not without massive public opposition.

Is President Obama the black face of white supremacy?
So what has the impact of Barack Obama's presidency--America's first black presidency--been on the African American community, who has always possessed an "instinctive distrust of power" as Glen Ford says, and humanity at large?  What happens when that power has a black face? Is the Obama administration simply the continuation of the Bush administration?  Is President Obama the white establishment's perfect weapon to pacify the black community, normally the most progressive constituency?  Is Obama's "Race to the Top" Bush's "No Child Left Behind" on steroids?What impact has Obama's presidency had on the legacy of African American's resisting and opposing the United States' imperial wars?  What impact have Barack Obama's policies had on the African continent?  Was the election of Barack Obama the death of black politics?  All of these questions and more are answered in the documentary below.

"The more we have black people reaching the higher ranks of the presidency, the business world, politics, entertainment, even...it  makes it appear to people on the outside looking in that we're co-signing onto this or that we actually are doing much better than we are.  You wouldn't know that there are 2.3 million people in prison--we make up almost half of them--that we're being murdered in the streets...and you can just go through the list of all the social problems that exist.  But it makes it look as though we're doing much better than we are even though things are just as bad, if not worse since Martin Luther King died.  It makes it look as if we're co-signing onto these things being done."--  Ben Woods, Students Against Mass Incarceration

Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish "recovery" that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between non-Hispanic white Americans and most minority groups, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. “It was already dismal,” Darrick Hamilton, a professor at the New School in New York, said of the wealth gap between black and white households. “It got even worse.”

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Association of 34,000 Black Churches Strongly Against Drones.

Apparently, waging the war on terror using terrorist tactics is acceptable to 62% of American citizens, if, in fact, the Pew poll (left) is accurate.

Ironically, for Americans, the very idea of living in a country occupied by another nation's troops, and/or experiencing terror from the skies by  another nation's drone strikes, is unimaginable, and that may be the problem right there,  we, the people can't imagine it. Because the closest we've come to being attacked on our own soil is 9/11, and almost 12 years later, we're far from over it.  Our attitude--at least the people who approve the drone strikes--is one of being above the rule of law.  Not surprising considering the righteous "Manifest Destiny" and "American Exceptionalism" indoctrination inflicted upon us before we could speak in full sentences.

However, the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), which is comprised of 34,000 churches representing some 15.7 million black Americans from 15 different denominations, slammed President Obama's drone policy as "evil in the Christian tradition."  If only the rest of us felt the same way.

"I do not know what to say after the pronouncement of his evil policy. This policy has led me to a life of prayer for the soul of this administration and for this president. Anyone who has anything to do with formulating a policy like this either in the Bush or Obama administration will have to answer before God one day. May God have mercy on their souls."--NCBI President Rev. Anthony Evans

Consider this.  Supposedly, when President Obama's press secretary was asked why they had killed the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Aulaqi, he responded, because he was the son of Anwar al-Aulaqi. As if that's enough to justify murder.  Sadly, as long as the order to kill comes from the executive branch--the judge, jury and executioner--even on American soil, it's not murder.

"Brennan, currently President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, is the architect and director of the program of drone missile assassinations that is run out of the White House with the personal participation of Obama. Asked squarely, “Could the Administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?” Brennan replied, “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.”

This is what is known as a non-responsive answer. It is reasonable to assume that if the answer was “no,” Brennan would simply have written, “no.” Instead, in order to avoid a giving straightforward “yes,” he answered a different question than the one that was asked.

Brennan’s answers to the written questions make clear that there was nothing accidental about his refusal to rule out drone assassinations within the United States at his February 7 confirmation hearing before the Senate committee. It was, rather, an expression of a deliberate policy adopted by the Obama White House and the military/intelligence agencies.

When asked at the hearing whether he believed that the Obama administration could carry out drone assassinations on US soil, Brennan responded that he was determined to “optimize transparency on these issues, but at the same time, optimize secrecy and the protection of our national security.” He thus completely evaded the question, and no member of the committee, Democrat or Republican, pursued the matter further.

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Resubmitting CISPA Under the Guise of National Security

Imagine, if you will, an Internet surveillance grid of the future that includes an Internet ID system, Internet licenses, Internet blacklists, an Internet taxation system, giant firewalls used as a blockade to information, etc. Imagine biometric gate-keeping sensors that control and watch everything you do on the Internet. Imagine being accountable and responsible to the Big Brother Internet. This might sound far out, but that's what DARPA had in mind when they created the Internet. Now, they just need the legislation in place to make it happen. What's more is that the same tech corporations that claim they believe in an open Internet and online freedom--Facebook (who overtly supports CISPA) Google, Yahoo, etc.-- will aid and abet the government when it comes time to install these restrictions. However, the powers that be, know that in order to accomplish this goal, they must gradually increase the heat on the proverbial pot of water, rather than switch it to boil right away.

Which brings us to the latest State of the Union address, where President Obama said he signed an executive order to strengthen the nation's cyber defenses by increasing information sharing and by developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs and our privacy. Sure, on the surface, that sounds good, because, of course, our national security infrastructure should be protected. But, guess what? It already is. I mean, do you really think our national security infrastructure is available online...on the same Internet, we the people, surf? Hell no! So what is this CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act) legislation the Obama administration claims must be passed to secure our networks and prevent attacks? Well, it basically provides a framework of legal authority to, for example, give the "trustworthy" corporations, immunity from their actions. In fact, the text of this legislation states that private information may be shared "notwithstanding any other provision of law."
You know, provisions of law like the the Fourth amendment.

Anyway, the very next day, after the State of the Union address, Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, along with other members of Congress resubmitted CISPA--a rehashed version that has not been released yet. Yes, the one that failed to reach the Senate during the last Capitol Hill session. The problem is that the language of this bill is so vague and so broad that once this framework is put in place, the potential to destroy our civil liberties--yes, even more than they've already been destroyed--is boundless, possibly resulting--at some time in the future-- in the aforementioned scenario.

As President Obama told us, he has already signed the executive order to lay the groundwork for the cooperation between the private and the public sectors, which like I said before, gives full immunity to the private sector, so if the private sector uses your information for whatever reason, you cannot sue them. And it's not just the government that has an interest in eliminating what's left of "freedom" on the Internet. The large corporations want to control what information is allowed to flow on the internet as well. They too don't want disgruntled consumers, dissenting opinions, whistle blowers, and fact checkers alerting the public of their nefarious activities. The bottom line is this bill is not about security, this is all about the wealthy and powerful struggling to maintain the status quo, to maintain their place of privilege and authority in a world that, given enough freedom, could severely threaten and/or undermine their sense of entitlement and position of great advantage.

"Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee which frameth mischief by a law." -- Psalm 94:20

From CISPA is Back:

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Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'

Princeton professor Cornel West says President Obama is not only "no messiah," he's a "war criminal." West, the prominent black academic and activist who has consistently been a harsh Obama critic, took issue with the White House's covert drone program, saying that "the chickens are coming home to roost." Appearing on Tavis Smiley's radio program on Thursday, West said: "We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

Expectations were very high in January 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated...too high. Barack Obama was/is not the world's savior. However, at the very least, the expectations were that President Obama would not carry on former President Bush's Constitution shredding and military industrial complex empowering policies. Closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the war in Afghanistan, restoring habeas corpus, reversing the power grab by the executive branch, and putting a halt to the all-encompassing "big brother" surveillance grid were just a few of his campaign promises. Yet, Guantanamo Bay remains open, habeas corpus is not even close to being restored, and the all encompassing "big brother" surveillance grid grows bigger everyday. Add to that, "kill lists", undeclared wars all over the world, an escalated drone program, his unprecedented prosecution of whistle-blowers, more Wall Street bailouts, and it's as if Bush never left office. I mean, just look as some of his cabinet choices, unaccountable/un-vetted/unconfirmed czars (often labeled as policy advisers, thus failing to fall under the Freedom of Information act, not required to testify before Congress), special advisor's, and 'officers' he has chosen to come to the White House to have direct access to him.

Just a few examples:

John Holdren, science czar, a neo-Malthusian who advocates for population control using the most extreme measures, such as mandating the number of children Americans can have. He is also a proponent of 'de-developing' the US, sending its agricultural practices and technology back to the 19th century, and suggested that infants and chronically ill elderly do not fit his definition of 'human,' and therefore can be expendable.

Timothy Geithner, and Larry Summers, both deeply involved in crafting and implementing the policies that led to the 2008 meltdown. This is when I knew we were in trouble the minute Obama appointed his economic team.

Gene Sperling, a Goldman Sachs adviser appointed head of the National Economic Council, replacing Larry Summers who made millions as the economy tanked in 2008. According to the Huffington Post, "[he] has overseen monumental deregulation of the financial sector, but has also collected hefty paychecks from its leading firms."

John Brennan to be CIA director.

"I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture." -- John Kiriakou

There is no doubt that the Republicans have been reprehensible from the very beginning of his presidency, but he did start out with a super majority in the Senate, not to mention, it's very clear that on many issues, such as bank bailouts, social spending austerity, war and human rights violations, Obama has been front and center, pushing the hard right agenda, which, of course, the Republicans, who love to criticize Obama, stay silent.

Is he the worst president in recent times? No, but probably the most disappointing because he seemed to embody his message of "Hope and Change." But what has really changed? The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer, and the middle class continues to shrink. In other words, keeping the wars and the profits going.

"This White House openly brags about its “Terror Tuesday” meetings in which US special forces and drones have been dispatched to and from dozens of undisclosed countries to kidnap, torture or murder thousands of people, in the case of drone strikes mostly innocents, to the cheers and jokes of cruise missile liberals like Ed Schulz and Bill Maher, who calls Obama the “black ninja president.” The potent symbol of a black face in that high place has normalized the conduct of lawless aggressive war and secretive state murder among parts of the population which had no trouble calling a crime a crime when committed by a white Republican. In that sense, the First Black President is a little bit unlike, but mostly very much like his nefarious predecessors.

It's worth noting that in the debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, kill-at-will drone wars, the militarization of Africa, Wall Street's immunity from prosecution, and the push to privatize and charterize public education were points upon which both candidates were in complete agreement. But if Mitt Romney were president today wouldn't many more of us be in the street about these things? Black apologists, as Davey D notes, try to shut criticism of this president down in the misguided name of black unity, and some white activists stay home because they don't want to be seen as racist whites hating on the black president. -- Bruce A. Dixon

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Lawfully Killing Americans Without Due Process: Just Trust Us?

A newly leaked Department of Justice (DOJ) 16-page memo says the government has the right to kill American citizens who are al-Qaida operatives and/or members of other terrorist organizations whether or not they're working on a specific plot against America. This white paper says the U.S. doesn't need clear evidence of a specific attack to strike, so, in other words, without due process. Moreover, keep in mind that this memo is not a legal document. It only lets us take a peek at the authority that the government is claiming, but the actual legal memos are still secret. The ACLU has litigated for those memos for two years, but the administration has refused to release them.

Early on in the memo, the document states the government will only target people who present an "imminent threat," however, Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said that it “redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.”

"... it’s a very significant document, and it’s a remarkable document, and it’s something that everybody really ought to read, in the same way that everybody ought to read the torture memos from the last administration. It sets out, or professes to set out, the power that the government has to carry out the targeted killing of American citizens who are located far away from any battlefield, even when they have not been charged with a crime, even when they do not present any imminent threat in any ordinary meaning of that word. So it’s a pretty sweeping power that’s been set out. And the memo purports to provide a legal justification for that power and explain why the limits on that power can’t be enforced in any court.
[...]
If you look at the memo ... there’s no geographic line. "The Obama administration is making, in some ways, a greater claim of authority [than President Bush]. They’re arguing that the authority to kill American citizens has no geographic limit." --Jameel Jaffer

Prior to this leak, a group of 11 senators wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, asking him to release all Justice Department memos on the practice of targeting US citizens suspected of being terrorist leaders with lethal force, particularly drone airstrikes. The request comes as the administration seeks Senate approval for John Brennan, Obama's nomination for CIA chief.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of eleven senators who are demanding more details about the administration's drone program says the bottom line here is that the Obama administration is telling Congress and the American people to, "just trust us."

 Is "just trust us" an appropriate standard for oversight? I don't think so. But even if you implicitly trust President Obama and his administration, this document, which potentially can be used to justify the assassination of U.S. citizens worldwide without a shred of due process or judicial oversight should still scare you to death.  Why? Because you may not trust the next guy in office who now has justification to act accordingly.

Links:

Obama Administration Claims Power To Authorize Pre-emptive Cyberwar Strikes -- A Pentagon document on the US cyber war doctrine will be put on President Barack Obama’s table in the next few weeks. Part of the US military doctrine, the cyber warfare doctrine stipulates launching pre-emptive cyber-attacks against potential enemies.

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Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says John Brennan is a Terrible Choice to Lead the CIA

John Kiriakou served in the CIA from 1990 until March 2004. As a senior operations officer, he became chief of counterterrorist operations in Pakistan following the September 11 attacks. This tour culminated in the March 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah, al-Qa’ida’s third-ranking official. Upon his return from Pakistan, John was named Executive Assistant to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations, where he was principal Iraq briefer for the Director of the CIA. In addition, he was a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he focused on international terrorism, piracy, and counternarcotics. He also served as senior intelligence advisor.

On December 10, 2007, Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News where he was described as participating in the capture and questioning of Abu Zubaydah, who is accused of having been an aide to Osama Bin Laden. According to Kiriakou, based on what he had been told by the CIA, it had taken only a single brief instance of waterboarding to extract answers to an interrogator's questions from Abu Zubaydah. In reality, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, and that little or no useful extra information may have been gained by "harsh methods". However, even when Kiriakou believed-- from the CIA--that Zubayda was waterboarded only once, he acknowledged that even the "mild" waterboarding he described constituted a form of torture and he expressed reservations about whether the value of the information was worth the damage done to the U.S. reputation.

Fast forward to Monday, January 23, 2012, and Kiriakou was charged as the first official to confirm the waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, which he described as torture. On April 5, he was indicted: one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, three counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917--only used three times prior to the Obama administration, who has used it against six government officials-- and one count of making false statements for allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA. Soon after, Kiriakou pleaded not guilty, and was released on bail.

In a plea deal, on Monday, October 22, 2012, he changed his mind and agreed to plead guilty to one count of passing classified information to the media thereby violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; sparing journalists from testifying in a trial.  Then, on January 25, 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months--two-and-a-half years-- in prison.

Days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, John Kiriakou — the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program — denounces President Obama’s appointment of John Brennan to head the CIA.

"I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture." -- John Kiriakou

The bottom line is that out of all of the people involved in the CIA's illegal torture program, he's the only person who will go to jail, not for torturing anyone, but for exposing the use of this suffocation technique.



Links:

Talk About Politicizing Intelligence! Meet John Brennan, CIA Chief Designee

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Remember All The Children, Mr. President.

Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights posted the following:

Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Including those whose lives were destroyed by United States policies, actions and inaction.
by Bill Quigley

"Remember the 20 children who died in Newtown Connecticut.

Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments.

Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006.

Remember the 231 children killed in Afghanistan in the first 6 months of this year.

Remember the 400 other children in the US under the age of 15 who die from gunshot wounds each year.

Remember the 921 children killed by US air strikes against insurgents in Iraq.

Remember the 1,770 US children who die each year from child abuse and maltreatment.

Remember the 16,000 children who die each day around the world from hunger.

These tragedies must end.

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Drone War Civilian Casualties Including 178 Children

The Drone War continues with barely a mention in the U.S. media despite--since the beginning of Obama's presidency--drone strikes occurring every four days. When the Drone War does make the news, there is no mention of the extensive number of civilian casualties, and much is made of striking high level militants, which only represent 2% of total killed by drones.

Currently, it is estimated that there have been 800 civilian casualties, and of that number, 178  children. That, combined with frightened populations living under constant threat from a distant enemy should be enough to make Americans stand up against these illegal drone wars.



Links:


Effects of Drones on Children in Targeted Areas

Obama's Drone Program Escapes Liberal Scrutiny in Campaign

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Why Was President Obama's Seemingly Important Press Release Ignored by Mainstream Media?

On November 21, while aboard Air Force One, President Obama dictated a press release that has been virtually ignored by the Western Press. He announced that the White House was going to investigate and mitigate the possible systematic infiltration of violent traitors within the executive branch. According to Senior editor of Veterans Today, Gordon Duff, "There is, currently, within the U.S. military, the Executive branch of government and among extremist "power brokers" in America an active plot to "alter" America's form of government through "decapitation"

From the White House:

"Presidential Memorandum -- National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs

This Presidential Memorandum transmits the National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs (Minimum Standards) to provide direction and guidance to promote the development of effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security. These threats encompass potential espionage, violent acts against the Government or the Nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information, including the vast amounts of classified data available on interconnected United States Government computer networks and systems.

The Minimum Standards provide departments and agencies with the minimum elements necessary to establish effective insider threat programs. These elements include the capability to gather, integrate, and centrally analyze and respond to key threat-related information; monitor employee use of classified networks; provide the workforce with insider threat awareness training; and protect the civil liberties and privacy of all personnel.

The resulting insider threat capabilities will strengthen the protection of classified information across the executive branch and reinforce our defenses against both adversaries and insiders who misuse their access and endanger our national security.

BARACK OBAMA

Or, as one commenter [to the Duff article], Kathryn, said, is this "a government smokescreen to arrest more 'Bradley Mannings'?" In other words, is this another smokescreen to continue the war on whistle blowers? Shielding the real enemy to America, to humanity: the power elite?

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Voting Charade

As someone commented on the George Carlin video below, "Fuck this illusory nonsense. It's hypocrisy disguised as righteousness and I'm sick of it."

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Continuous Cycle of Child Poverty: US 2nd Highest Rate In the Developed World

After hearing the US is #2, to be sure, Mitt Romney exclaimed, "Why aren't we #1, dammit?!?"  while, under his breath,  President Obama mutters, "I got Osama."  Anyway.......... 

Child Poverty Rates in Developed World

The most recent U.S. Census Bureau  poverty data shows millions of families struggling fiercely to keep their heads above water.  According to the census, fourteen states saw statistically significant increases in their child poverty rates, 26 states saw small increases, and nine states and the District of Columbia saw small declines in child poverty rates last year. The bottom line is that 16.1 million children are living in poverty in our wealthy nation with more than 7 million living in extreme poverty.

Moreover, if you use the definition of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which states a child is living in poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and compensation, is less than 50% of the median disposable income, 30 million children are living in relative poverty.

So, given America's immense wealth, the U.S. has/has had unusually high rates of child poverty and income inequality, even prior to the 2008 financial meltdown. In fact, the U.S. has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world.  Only Romania surpasses the U.S.

One of the problems is that the U.S. does little to assist low-income working families who, despite each adult working 40 hours per week or more, do not earn enough to make ends meet. 

Yet despite the toxic toll a high child poverty rate takes on a nation as wealthy as the U.S., our political leaders rarely if ever mention it.  It's only very recently that  President Obama broke his silence on child poverty while Mitt Romney ignores the issue completely.  After all, children do not vote and they do not pay taxes. 

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