I’m still trying to figure out what’s up with the Obama Administration’s decision to bring some of the terrorists from Gitmo to New York City for trial in U.S. Courts – how does this help the country, or the President?

A controversial criminal defense lawyer from New York City, Scott L. Fenstermaker was thrust into the national spotlight on Monday after he announced that his client, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali — one of the five September 11th suspects being brought to trial in federal court in New York — would use his court case as a platform to express political views and religious beliefs.

In this video, Dick Cheney agrees with Fenstermaker that the terrorists who will be brought to New York have “no defense to speak of,” so the trials will serve no purpose other than giving them a public forum. Charles Krauthammer does commentary.

The New York City defense lawyer has long been a particularly zealous critic of the Bush administration — and now Obama White House’s — policies on suspected terrorist detention and trial. His protests have usually been in the form of legal activism. In 2005, Fenstermaker filed lawsuit in the Southern District of New York challenging the legality of the use of military commissions to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

The first evidence of what is to come is Fenstermaker himself, who demonstrates the type of wacko leftist nutjobs who come out of the woodwork when there’s a hater of America around to defend.

“The real problem here is an issue of trust,” he said. “I can’t imagine that these guys are going to voluntarily take any American lawyer other than me because of what is going on at Gitmo. The behavior and conduct of the military and civilian attorneys representing the detainees has been atrocious.”

While planting a political timebomb that will offer multiple explosions as 2012 approaches may be good for the GOP, I can’t for the life of me discern why the radicals in the White House think they improve their reelection chances.

How does the nation benefit?

Politico: War surtax – ‘Pay as you fight’

AP: Impatience with Obama trade policy grows

AFP: US firm on slapping tariffs on Chinese steel pipes

Reuters: Salazar blasts critics of U.S. energy policy

Huffington Post: Phil Carter Resigns – Key Pentagon Appointee Worked on Gitmo Detainee Issues

Times of India: Pakistanis see US as bigger threat than India, Taliban – poll

The Telegraph: Barack Obama’s delay in troop decision ‘hitting UK public support for Afghan mission’

AP: Gay marriage momentum stalls in liberal NY, NJ

Reuters: N.Y. governor seeks one-time authority to balance budget

CQPolitics: Hoffman – Owens the Winner in New York 23

CNN: 41 is the crucial number in 2010 battle for the House

Politico: The White House’s unprecedented use of ‘unprecedented’

The most recent USA Today/Gallup Poll shows Obama’s numbers continuing to tank. 

On Afghanistan:

His extended deliberations may be taking a toll: 55% disapprove of the way he is handling Afghanistan and 35% approve, a reversal of his 56% approval rating four months ago.

On Gitmo:

By more than 2-1, Americans say the United States shouldn’t close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, as Obama has promised.

On Health Care:

 By 49%-44%, they oppose passing a health care bill in Congress this year, which he calls critical.

On trying KSM in NYC:  

 A majority are against holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, and nearly six in 10 say the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind should be tried in a military rather than a civilian court. That’s at odds with the decision announced this month by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Put it all together and you get this:

When it comes to seven specific areas, Obama no longer commands majority support on any. On only two — energy policy and global warming — does he have a net positive rating. On the economy, health care, jobs and Afghanistan, a majority disapprove of how he’s doing. There’s an almost even divide on his handling of terrorism: 45% approve, 47% disapprove.

 Epic fail.

www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

ATLANTA—Animal rights groups across the country are urging U.S. citizens to choose turkey alternative, Tofurkey, this Thanksgiving citing animal retribution after vengeful ham attacks southern cooking television personality, Paula Deen. Deen, 62, suffered only minor injuries but was visibly shaken according to eyewitnesses at the Atlanta charity event.

The ham in question was immediately rushed to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where he was tortured by waterboarding and forced to listen to the early recordings of the Bee Gees, namely “Horizontal,” “Odessa,” and “Cucumber Castle” until he came forth with a confession of guilt.

Witnesses reportedly claim the suspect could be overheard exclaiming, “Death to the Infidels.”

Read the rest online at: http://www.jeffreypillow.com/index_files/Page529.htm

1.  “The chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee in 2001 told investigators Monday that elements of the Bush Administration were pushing for regime change in Iraq in early 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks and two years before President George W. Bush formally announced the Iraq war.
…

British investigators are probing how Britain got into the Iraq war and if officials misled the public. Already, a leaked report has shown that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair covered up British military plans for a full Iraq invasion throughout 2002, claiming at the time that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change.”

According to Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, the leaked report condemns the almost complete absence of contingency planning as a potential breach of Geneva Convention obligations to safeguard civilians. Coalition forces were “ill-prepared and equipped to deal with the problems in the first 100 days” of the occupation.

Blair’s lies to Parliament and the public, widespread problems with the Army’s supply chain and radio systems, and poor planning for “once Baghdad had fallen” are now confirmed in the public eye.

Particularly egregious are statements Blair made to Parliament in the build up to the invasion. On Sept 24, 2002, Mr. Blair told members of the British Parliament, “In respect of any military options, we are not at the stage of deciding those options but, of course, it is important — should we get to that point — that we have the fullest possible discussion of those options.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/21949

2.  “Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
…
The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it’s the contractors’ fault, not the government’s. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. “We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention,” said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. “In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it’s almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations.” Addicott added, “If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That’s one of the reasons we’re not members of the International Criminal Court.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill

3.  “Why They Hate Us (I): on military occupation

One of the many barriers to developing a saner U.S. foreign policy is our collective failure to appreciate why military occupations generate so much hatred, resentment, and resistance, and why we should therefore go to enormous lengths to avoid getting mired in them. Costly occupations are an activity you hope your adversaries undertake, especially in areas of little intrinsic strategic value. We blundered into Somalia in the early 1990s without realizing that we weren’t welcome; we invaded Iraq thinking we would be greeted as liberators, and we still don’t fully understand why many Afghans resent our presence and why some are driven to take up arms against us.
…
It is sometimes said that Americans don’t understand this phenomenon because the United States has never been conquered and occupied. But this simply isn’t true. After the Civil War, a “foreign army” occupied the former Confederacy and imposed a new political order that most white southerners found abhorrent. The first Reconstruction Act of 1867 put most southern states under formal military control, supervised the writing of new state constitutions, and sought to enfranchise and empower former slaves. It also attempted to rebuild the south economically, but the reconstruction effort was undermined by corruption and poor administration. Sound familiar? However laudable the aims may have been, the results were precisely what one would expect. Northern occupation eventually triggered violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan, White League, Red Shirts, and other insurgent groups, which helped thwart Reconstruction and paved the way for the Jim Crow system that lasted until the second half of the 20th century.
…
The bottom line is that you don’t need to be a sociologist, political scientist, or a student of colonialism or foreign cultures to understand why military occupation is such a poisonous activity and why it usually fails. If you’re an American, you just need to read a bit about Reconstruction and reflect on how its effects — along with the effects of slavery itself — have persisted across generations. If that’s not enough, visit a society that is currently experiencing occupation, and take the time to go through a checkpoint or two. Then you might understand why the local population doesn’t view the occupying forces as benevolent and isn’t as grateful as occupiers often think they ought to be. “

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/23/on_military_occupation

4.  “A hawk who claims the State can properly command the resources of its own citizens to invade or attack the citizens of another State confronts a very high bar of proof. And it is important to understand that the burden of proof is upon the hawk and not upon critics; in other words, the burden falls upon the person who advocates a process that kills non-combatants and not upon those who fundamentally object to the death of innocent human beings.”

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.2872

5.  “Have Israeli spies infiltrated international airports? South Africa deports airline official after investigation

South Africa deported an Israeli airline official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers.”

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16242

6.  “Canada ’s Guantanamo

A scandal erupted last week in sleepy Ottawa with the revelations of Canada’s chief diplomat in Kandahar in 2006-07, Richard Colvin, who told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan that Afghans arrested by Canadian military and handed over to Afghan authorities were knowingly tortured. His and others’ attempts to raise the alarm had been quashed by the ruling Conservative government and he felt a moral obligation to make public what was happening.

The startling allegations — the first of their kind from a senior official — have caused extreme embarrassment to the government, which has more than once stated categorically detainees were not passed to Afghan control if there was any danger of torture. Canada has 2,700 soldiers in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the hotbed of the insurgency, on a mission that is due to end in 2011.

Warnings to Colvin to keep quiet were not enough to cow him and he calmly told shocked MPs that he started sending reports soon after he arrived in Kandahar in early 2006 to top officials indicating the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) was abusing detainees. “For a year and half after they knew about the very high risk of torture, they continued to order military police in the field to hand our detainees to the NDS.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16259

7.  “By embracing and defending numerous Bush/Cheney policies he once deplored, “Obama hasn’t changed, just adjusted.”  He’s learned secret things that he can’t tell you about but which — you should accept — do justify his “adaptations.”  Whenever Bush followers would run out of arguments to defend their leader’s actions, that’s the same rationale they’d resort to:   he knows secret things that you don’t know and therefore we should trust him.   So Obama has “learned” things that caused him to abandon his vehement condemnations of indefinite detention, state secrets, military commissions and denial of habeas corpus as unjust and un-American travesties and come to embrace them as important and necessary policies?   Wow:  that must have been quite an education.  Don’t he and his supporters owe George Bush and Dick Cheney a sincere apology for criticizing them all those years for these policies when, as it turns out, they were necessary and just all along?
…
Whether Obama has adopted every last radical Bush/Cheney terrorism policy — he hasn’t — is not the point.  And the question of whether “Obama is as bad as Bush” — he isn’t — is no more relevant than the excuse that Bush’s torture program shouldn’t be criticized because at least it never reached the level of Saddam’s rape rooms and limb removals.  As even Time now recognizes, many of the policies once widely declared by Democrats to be a grave threat to the Constitution are now explicitly adopted by the Obama administration.  And it’s flatly inconsistent to invoke “the rule of law” to defend Obama’s decision to give trials to a few Guantanamo detainees without pointing out that he’s violating that very same precept by denying trials to so many.
…
McClatchy reports that Obama has made a decision to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan which, if true, means, as Juan Cole says, that “Gen. Stanley McChrystal has won the struggle for policy decisively.”

So, to recap:  we have indefinite detention, military commissions, Blackwater assassination squads, escalation in Afghanistan, extreme secrecy to shield executive lawbreaking from judicial review, renditions, and denials of habeas corpus.  These are not policies Obama has failed yet to uproot; they are policies he has explicitly advocated and affirmatively embraced as his own.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

8.  “Republican members of Congress and what masquerades as a “conservative” media are outraged that the Obama administration intends to try in federal court Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and four alleged co-conspirators.

The Republican and right-wing rant that a trial is too good for these people proves what I have written for a number of years: Republicans and many Americans who think of themselves as conservatives have no regard for the US Constitution or for civil liberties. They have no appreciation for the point made by Thomas Paine in his Dissertations on First Principles of Government (1790): “An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Republicans and American conservatives regard civil liberties as coddling devices for criminals and terrorists. They assume that police and prosecutors are morally pure and, in addition, never make mistakes. An accused person is guilty or government wouldn’t have accused him. All of my life I have heard self-described conservatives disparage lawyers who defend criminals. Such “conservatives” live in an ideal, not real, world. They desperately need to read The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
…
The price that Mohammed will pay will be small compared to the price we Americans will pay. The outcome of Mohammed’s trial will complete the transformation of the US legal system from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state. Feige writes that Mohammed’s statements obtained by torture will not be suppressed, that witnesses against him will not be produced (“national security”), that documents that compromise the prosecution will be redacted.

At each stage of Mohammed’s appeals process, higher courts will enshrine into legal precedents the denial of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial, thus enshrining indefinite detention, the denial of the right against damning pretrial publicity, thus allowing demonization prior to trial, and the denial of the right to have witnesses and documents produced, thus eviscerating a defendant’s rights to exculpatory evidence and to confront adverse witnesses, The twisted logic necessary to disentangle Mohammed’s torture from his confession will also be upheld and will “provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they’ve been after all this time–a legal way both to torture and to prosecute.” http://www.slate.com/id/2236146

It took Hitler a while to corrupt the German courts. Hitler first had to create new courts, like President George W. Bush’s military tribunals, that did not require evidence, using in place of evidence hearsay, secret charges, and self-incrimination obtained by torture.

Every American should be concerned that the Obama administration has decided to use Mohammed’s trial to complete the corruption of the American court system. When Mohammed’s trial is over, an American Joe Stalin or Adolf Hitler will be able to convict America’s Founding Fathers on charges of treason and terrorism. No one will be safe.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24040.htm

9.  “

The Indian [was thought] as less than human and worthy only of extermination. We did shoot down defenseless men, and women and children at places like Camp Grant, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee. We did feed strychnine to red warriors. We did set whole villages of people out naked to freeze in the iron cold of Montana winters. And we did confine thousands in what amounted to concentration camps. — Wellman, The Indian Wars of the West, 1934

European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24039.htm

10.  “In a similar vein, I am sure that many European immigrants, who came to America during the last three hundred years, thought that they, too, were carrying out positive actions when they eradicated indigenous tribes at the behest of their community leaders. I am, also, convinced that many of those conducting the killings felt relieved that such a strange scourge (as the “dirty savages” seemed to be) was systematically obliterated. Indeed, there probably was little remorse on the part of the majority of the butchers as the so-called Indians were viewed as subhuman, just as were Blacks, Jews, Asians and many other persecuted peoples in this country. Indeed, the killers’ sense of identity, doubtlessly, was strengthened individually and as members of a culturally cohesive unit (i.e., an exclusive social assemblage) in the process of carrying out their communally sanctioned, xenophobic brutality.

In this manner, the murderers managed to avoid acknowledging any sense of shared and universal humanity in the maligned others with whom they refused to identify. As such, they recognized few, if any, commonalities. Instead they called the natives alienating terms (such as “blood thirsty vermin,” “Indian giver” and “scalpers”) that further strengthened a feeling of estrangement, made it easier to destroy them and assigned them to the position of “The Other,” an unfortunate and dangerous category in which to be placed.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24044.htm

« Yes we can » – Barack Obama, slogan de sa campagne électorale, automne 2008

« Au cours de périodes où règne le mensonge et la manipulation, dire la vérité devient un acte révolutionnaire » – George Orwell

« Vous pouvez avoir du pouvoir sur autrui tout aussi longtemps que vous ne leur enlevez pas tout ce qu’il possède. Mais lorsque vous avez tout volé à un homme, il n’est désormais plus sous votre pouvoir – il est libre de nouveau » – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Voilà déjà une année d’écoulée depuis l’élection de Barack Obama. Comme je le prédisais à l’automne dernier, ce nouveau gouvernement élu sur un vent de changement, se révèlera n’être qu’une vaste illusion, une campagne de promesses vides et de faux espoirs. L’administration Obama n’est rien de plus que la continuité de celle de Bush. L’illusion du paradigme de la gauche et la droite, des Républicains et des Démocrates s’effondre. Il n’y a qu’UN parti politique aux États-Unis: Le parti de la guerre et de Wall Street, le tout orchestré par les banquiers privés de la banque centrale, la Federal Reserve Bank (Fed). Que les Américains votent pour un parti ou l’autre, l’agenda est le même. Il y a longtemps que les États-Unis sont tombés sous un coup d’État silencieux, probablement depuis la mort de JFK.

Voici de nombreux exemples de ce bilan négatif de l’administration Obama:

- L’administration Obama tente d’étouffer le dossier des courriels manquants de la Maison Blanche

Obama avait promis à l’Amérique plus de transparence. Cela ne s’est jamais vraiment concrétisé. Nombreux sont les exemples. L’administration Obama a décidé de suivre les pas de l’ancien président George W. Bush en tentant d’étouffer une poursuite judiciaire visant récupérer des millions de courriels manquants liés à la Maison Blanche pouvant contenir des informations importantes quant à la gestion de l’administration Bush, effaçant ainsi potentiellement des évidences de crimes.

- L’argument identique du « secret d’État » utilisé par Bush est mis de l’avant par l’administration Obama pour empêcher la divulgation d’informations troublantes et incriminant.

- Le département de la Justice imite l’administration Bush en invoquant le privilège du « secret d’État » face à des poursuites judiciaires dans le dossier du programme de capture extraordinaire de la CIA (rendition program), mis en place par Bush, Cheney et Rumsfeld. La raison évoquée pour éviter que les poursuites judiciaires se poursuivent contre ce programme d’enlèvement de suspects à travers le monde, transportés secrètement vers des prisons non identifiées publiquement pour se faire torturer, est que ces poursuites pourraient révéler des informations secrètes relatives à la sécurité nationale.

- Barack Obama avait promis que les États-Unis ne torturerait pas sous sa garde.

Mais tout comme Bush, Obama se bat pour empêcher des milliers de photos documentant la torture made by America, alors que Guantanamo n’a toujours pas fermé ses portes et que la torture se poursuit inlassablement sous son administration, tel que rapporté par une enquête espagnole. Cette dernière explique différentes techniques pratiquées comme l’écrasement de testicules, la détention dans des cellules souterraines dans un les ténèbres totales avec privation de sommeil et de nourriture pour une durée de trois semaines, inoculation à l’aide d’injections de maladies canines, torture à l’eau (waterboarding), etc. Tout cela sous l’autorité de personnel militaire américain, parfois conduit en présence de professionnels médicaux.

Le président Obama refuse de rendre public les photos de torture parce qu’il « croit que leur publication pourrait mettre en danger les troupes ».

En réalité, non seulement Obama ne poursuivra pas les responsables de la torture en justice, mais en fait, il planifie donner de l’expansion à cette torture et continuer sa pratique. Des centres de détention secrets pour des suspects terroristes seront ouverts en Mauritanie, en Éthiopie, dans quelques pays de l’Afrique du nord, du Moyen-Orient et en Asie.

- Obama a passé outre le Congrès américain pour permettre la détention de suspects terroristes pour une durée de temps illimitée, sans qu’aucune accusation formelle ne soit déposée. Dans d’autres pays du monde, on appelle cela des pouvoirs dictatoriaux.  Cela permet au président de détenir unilatéralement des « ennemis combattants » sans habeas corpus, un terme légal qui signifie que les plaignants sont forcés de vous accuser formellement d’un crime pour justifier la détention d’un suspect. Le terme « ennemi combattant » qui faisait en sorte que les Accords de Genève sur les prisonniers de guerre ne s’appliquaient plus, a été abandonné par Obama dans le cas des détenus de Guantanamo, mais il a gardé le terme pour les autres prisons à l’étranger, s’assurant ainsi encore une fois de conserver des pouvoirs exécutifs impérialistes.

- Obama est du même avis que Bush: les prisonniers de Bagram, Afghanistan n’ont pas de droits constitutionnels. Pourtant, les droits ne sont pas donnés par la Constitution, ils sont reconnus. Lorsque les droits peuvent être retirés, ce ne sont pas des droits, mais bien seulement des indulgences octroyées par un maître inspirant la crainte à des esclaves qui se comportent particulièrement bien.
Obama Sides With Bush: No Rights for Bagram Prisoners

- Obama est allé jusqu’à menacer l’Angleterre de cesser leur coopération d’échange du renseignement pour éviter que des évidences de torture soient révélées.

- Trois provisions controversées du Patriot Act instauré Bush reçoivent l’appui d’Obama.

Le département de la Justice a indiqué que l’administration Obama donne son soutien pour le renouvellement de trois sections controversées du USA Patriot Act qui expire en décembre. La première est la Section 206 qui permet au FBI de faire de l’écoute électronique des lignes téléphoniques ou des ordinateurs des Américains. La suivante est la Section 215 qui permet aux enquêteurs d’obtenir les archives médicales, d’affaires, de librairie, bancaires et autres de quiconque, avec l’approbation de la Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. La dernière, surnommée le « loup solitaire », permet d’accumuler des renseignements à propos de personnes qui ne sont pas suspectées d’être part d’un gouvernement étranger ou d’une organisation terroriste.

- Toutes les pièces de législation adoptées sous l’administration Bush qui étaient profondément liberticides et allant à l’encontre de la transparence, de la Constitution et de la démocratie, sont maintenant embrassées par le régime de continuité d’Obama, qui a brisé une fois de plus une importante promesse électorale. Il en est de même pour le Commissions militaires (Military Commissions Act), qui permet de juger des détenus dans des tribunaux militaires établis à Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

- La NSA a filtré toutes les communications des Américains et a ciblé des journalistes depuis l’instauration de ces mesures draconiennes par Bush, dans le cadre de sa guerre bidon au terrorisme. Tout le trafic de ces communications transigeant par de grandes firmes privées de communication comme AT&T étaient directement reliées à la NSA, agence d’espionnage américaine. Depuis que les Démocrates sont au pouvoir, rien n’a changé. Obama ne veut pas tenir Bush et ses acolytes responsables de leurs crimes et violations de la Constitution parce qu’il veut conserver ces pouvoirs. Idem pour l’enlèvement d’individus étrangers, leur transport vers des nations étrangères pour ensuite être torturés.

Ainsi, l’administration Obama bloque les poursuites judiciaires contre les écoutes électroniques illégales, donne de l’expansion à la défense légale de Bush en ce domaine et invoque constamment le « secret d’État » pour défendre le programme envahisseur et criminel de surveillance de Bush.

- Le parti de guerre est toujours l’oeuvre. L’industrie de la mort poursuit ses bonnes affaires sous Obama

Les États-Unis planifient déployer 25 000 troupes militaires en Géorgie d’ici 2015, à la frontière de la Russie. Les Américains ont l’intention de construire deux bases militaires sur le territoire de la Géorgie et une base navale. Ce déploiement fait suite à la provocation de la Russie en août 2008 par les États-Unis et Israël, via l’Ossétie du sud. Une guerre contre l’Iran signifierait une confrontation contre la Russie qui a déclaré qu’elle considèrerait une attaque contre l’Iran comme une attaque personnelle.

Quoi de mieux que d’avoir le prix Nobel de la Paix pour plaider en faveur du recrutement de mineurs pour l’armée? Obama veut son armée, il entend lever une armée de jeunes qui ne serviraient pas la Constitution, mais le président directement. Le plan d’Obama se nomme le « Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act», ou plus simplement, le « GIVE Act ». Ce projet de loi a été voté, à 321 contre 105, le 18 mars 2009. Ce projet de loi H.R. 1388 est donc présentement « à l’étude » au Sénat américain.

Obama a d’ailleurs annoncé, de pair avec Rahm Emanuel, qu’il comptait avoir un corps de volontaires de type milice paramilitaire aux États-Unis aussi bien financé et équipé que l’armée US elle-même.
Heil Obama! Des enfants-soldats sur tout le territoire américain…

- La guerre est toujours une option sur la table, comme on a pu le voir toute l’année dans le cas de l’Iran., quitte à nommer un anti-iranien pour gérer cette situation.

- L’administration Obama continue la doctrine américaine de dominance militaire globale.

Obama n’a pas diminué le budget militaire, au contraire. Il n’y aura pas de renversement de l’agenda militaire ni de la politique étrangère des États-Unis. Surtout pas avec Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates et Rahm Emanuel et son frère. Les États-Unis viennent de briser son record de la guerre du Vietnam en étant en Afghanistan depuis plus de 8 ans. Cela n’est pas près de se terminer, au contraire de ce Obama avait promis durant sa campagne électorale.

- Obama, son administration et différentes agences gouvernementales comme la NSA reçoivent d’ailleurs leurs instructions et conseils par la même élite dirigeante, dont fait partie Henry Kissinger, la Ford Fondation, et la quatrième branche du gouvernement, Goldman Sachs et les banquiers et financiers de Wall Sreet qui pullulent au sein du gouvernement Obama, comme Geithner.

- Obama refuse toujours de toucher à la Fed. Tant qu’il ne forcera pas une reforme entière de la Fed pour récupérer le pouvoir de la création de la monnaie, au lieu de le laisser entre les mains de banquiers la créant de nulle part et la prêtant à crédit au gouvernement (lire le peuple) avec intérêts, l’économie entière sera sous l’étroit contrôle des banquiers privés qui ont ruiné les États-Unis depuis 1913, date de la création de la Fed.

- Obama avait promis que les lobbyistes ne se retrouveraient pas dans son organisation. Une autre fausse promesse lamentablement vendue au public américain. Une douzaine de lobbyistes ont trouvé un poste au sommet de l’administration Obama. On y trouve des gens nommés au département de la Défense ayant travaillé pour Raytheon, un manufacturier d’armement, un ancien VP de Monsanto à la FDA, des anciens généraux et du Pentagone partout dans le gouvernement, et ainsi de suite.

- Obama agit de manière similaire à Bush dans le domaine des pétrolières, des énergies et est même allé jusqu’à approuver la décapitation des montagnes pour y retirer du charbon, une politique qui fut sévèrement condamnée lorsque Bush s’y adonnait. L’étroite collaboration entre les exécutifs du pétrole et Washington se poursuit de plus belle.

Il y a fort à parier qu’avec un tel bilan, les Américains ne seront pas dupes très longtemps et qu’Obama sera un président d’un terme seulement. En attendant le prochain poulain de l’establishment, du parti de la guerre et de Wall Street, nous pouvons aussi parier que l’Amérique aura le temps de s’appauvrir énormément, au point où la classe moyenne aura pratiquement disparue et où le pays sera complètement ruiné et en banqueroute, affligé d’hyperinflation et de la plus grande dépression depuis les années 30. On annoncera alors l’arrivée d’un autre président… sauveur de tous, charismatique au sourire charmeur.

« Yes we can »

« Change we can believe in »

François Marginean

ALGIERS

Two men who had been held for seven years in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of belonging to an extremist group were acquitted in an Algerian court on Sunday, state media reported.

The two men alleged during their trial in Algeria on terrorism charges that they were “brutally tortured” while in detention in Guantanamo Bay, Algeria’s official APS news agency cited court documents as saying.

The men were arrested in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and transferred to Guantanamo Bay where they were held without trial before being sent home to Algeria last year, the agency reported.

The court in Algiers rejected prosecution arguments the two men, named as Faghoul Abdelli and Mohamed Terari, were members of a terrorist group and acquitted them, the agency said.

The United States set up the prison at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, after the Sept. 11 attacks to detain terrorism suspects. Human rights activists say the detentions are in violation of international law.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said the prison will be closed by Jan. 22, 2010, although his officials have since acknowledged it will be difficult to meet that deadline.

Twelve Algerian citizens remain in the prison, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S. non-governmental group that has represented many of the detainees seeking release. [.alarabiya 11/23/09]

Operation Marketing

Esteban N. Martínez for CubaDebate – (Español): Operación Marketing

Translation: Machetera

The interview President Barack Obama granted the “blogger” Yoani Sánchez is the culmination of a project I feel like calling Operation Marketing; aimed as it is at the promotion and visibility of a new counter-revolutionary figure in Cuba, in the face of the worn out and battered “dissidence,” fighting like a pack of wolves with fangs bared in search of their prey…money.

The promotion of Yoani Sánchez began some time ago, when Grupo PRISA granted her the Ortega y Gasset prize and another publication put her on their list of the “World’s  (100) Most Influential People,” although in her country she was completely unknown.

The torrent of prizes and recognition began to fall like “manna from heaven,” while press agencies, newspapers and websites, for the most part run by the rightwing, gave her the space to make her visible to the eyes of the world.

From the very beginning, Generación Y, the media platform designed for this digital project, counted on a broad architecture: German servers, replication in 18 languages and other technological means to set up the machinery, conceived outside Cuba and launched on the Internet under the duplicitous label of sourcing from Cuba.

Whoever has followed Yoani’s trajectory and those who sponsor her, know how the “blogger’s” positions have gone from a lukewarm criticism of the revolutionary Cuban project, to more openly aggressive ones, in search of a confrontation.

One of the first actions in this escalation had to do with the self-titled musician Gorki Águila, when the new “star” of citizen journalism launched a campaign in favor of the rocker, who’d starred in more than one scandal, but that story dissolved when the Cuban authorities only fined him.  According to Yoani they tried to sentence him to a long prison term and now he’s wandering about elsewhere.

The Havana Book Fair was the other stage chosen by those who pay Yoani Sánchez to make her presence felt.  At that event and to a miniscule audience, she was the star in another production staged on the outskirts of the main event dedicated to books and reading in Cuba.

Afterwards, there were other activities outside the Cuban capital. Yoani took her Ortega y Gasset prize to leave it at the shrine to the Virgin “Caridad del Cobre” in Santiago on the eastern end of the island, taking advantage of the trip to try to seek converts, manipulating and deceiving young people in order to try to get them to jump in her counter-revolutionary car, and then doing the same at the other end of the island, Pinar del Río, where she went with the same subversive intentions.

For “PRISA’s daughter” as she had now come to be known by certain media, she aligned herself increasingly with the enemies of the revolution, appearing frequently in articles and interviews with Radio Martí and Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, mouthpieces for the most retrograde positions and loudspeaker for the Cuban-American mafia located in Florida.

The story of skirmishes and other incidents is a long one, as she began to seek at all costs to make herself visible; counting on the complacency of the major media, charged by shadowy forces with making people believe that there is a transcendent political figure in Cuba who is opposed to the project which sustains the Cuban people.

With this voluminous record, Yoani Sánchez and her sponsors began the real Operation Marketing in recent weeks, beginning with a ridiculous episode: the “blogger” showed up disguised as a German tourist at a debate sponsored by Temas magazine, where to her surprise she was recognized, despite her wig, colorful clothing and garish handbag.

Coming off badly in the eyes of the “Montagues and Capulets,” Generación Y’s queen began to weave a new story, where she reported to the four winds that she’d been “kidnapped,” and beaten by state security agents.

Without cross-checking the facts and without verifying anything, plenty of media ran with the story about the “kidnapping” and “beating” of the famous “blogger.”  Hundreds of articles circled the planet from one end to the other on that story, which Yoani herself could not back up, even with the BBC, when she could not present any proof of the blows she’d received.

But not everyone got on the boat of lies, and many have been questioning the script.  One skeptic was the La República newspaper, who went to look for the doctors who attended Yoani and found that none of them found the least physical evidence for the supposed aggression.

Certainly, in a country where even lost dogs are called for on the radio by their owners, it sounded odd, like a media fabrication; something that even “classic dissidents” could appreciate once they saw their dollars endangered, heading now toward the “competition.”  In a desperate attempt to call for attention, Martha Beatriz Roque and her acolytes put on their own “show,” complete with “hunger strike” and news of her “serious health problems,” but the climax was yet to come, and it came on Thursday with Obama’s answers to Yoani Sánchez’s questionnaire.

Doubting the legitimacy of the answers and wondering whether they were written by Obama or his advisers adds nothing to the debate.  What’s interesting are the questions and the head of the empire’s answers to them.

Yoani Sánchez’s questions were aimed at subjects that would allow the person being asked the ability to drive forward his points of view, trying to blame the Cuban side for not moving forward on a path to better relations on both sides of the Florida Straits.  Questions about essential subjects in the Cuba-United States dispute remained outside the journalistic realm of inquiry.

The economic and financial blockade by the world’s greatest power against the Cuban people was barely hinted at, left aside, without delving into the billions of dollars that this criminal policy has caused the Cuban economy and which constitutes the biggest drag on the island’s economy.  Nor were the effects or strategies of a blockade designed to “kill through hunger or disease” and which has caused so much suffering for the Cuban family and is today repudiated by the entire planet, touched upon.

Nor were the consequences of the biological war against Cuba promoted by previous administrations among the questions – a war which through the introduction of plagues and illnesses damaged crops, animals and caused the death of Cubans, including more than a hundred children, when murderous hands introduced the dengue virus during the 1980’s.

The inconsistent position of the North American government in the struggle against terrorism was off the table, whereby a confessed killer like Luís Posada Carriles struts around the streets of Miami along with other terrorists and not a finger is lifted to extradite him to Venezuela, where he is wanted for blowing up a civilian Cuban airliner with 73 people on board, while five anti-terrorist fighters are enduring long sentences following a dirty, rigged trial in Miami, the capital of terrorism against Cuba.

The consequences of the Cuban Adjustment Act, a legal monstrosity classified as a “murderous law” for its role in promoting and stimulating illegal departures from Cuba, the cause of a slew of incidents and a long list of deaths in the waters of the Florida Straits, and which today fosters an unscrupulous business in human trafficking involving the Miami mafia along with criminals from other countries – also off the table.

The presidential response to the questioner about military intentions against Cuba is contradicted by factual reality; a Fourth Fleet armed to the teeth is sailing throughout the region, the permanency of the illegal Guantánamo Naval Base on a portion of Cuban soil and the construction of seven North American military bases in Colombia tell a different tale and constitute a threat not only to Cuba but to the entire continent.

Beyond questions and answers, the intention of Yoani Sánchez and those who promote her is to gain greater global visibility in a Marketing Operation, a game which Barack Obama has joined, whether consciously or encouraged by his advisers, and one which leads to a well worn path where he will find that the firmness of the Cuban people is an insurmountable hurdle.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

I’m proud to say that once again my state of Illinois has produced a politician that doesn’t care about his constituency, the constitution, or the safety of the people of Illinois. His name is Dickie Durban, a school teacher turned yellow. He votes for any bill being sponsored by his good buddy Obama. He is in the elite club of Illinois politicians like George Ryan, Roland Burris, and Rod Blagojevich. WHat does he care about except his legacy and his pension? 

The latest ploy by Durban is to house the GITMO terrorists in  Illinois. He proposes the Federal Government to buy a brand new prison in Thomson, Illinois and to convert it into a super-max prison. He will then bring jobs to Illinois by staffing the prison to care for the GITMO guys. A while back I wrote a piece titled “A Gitmo Proposal“ which gave my proposal for housing the same guys in  Illinois. My proposal was more interesting than Dickie’s. I wanted to give BO some extra income by housing the terrorists in BO’s vacant house in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

I have a quandary about the prison in Illinois. It is a relatively new facility in Thomson, Illinois. It currently houses about one hundred and eighty inmates. It has capacity for eighteen hundred. How is it that it is only ten percent utilized? The words I hear are that the state can’t afford to staff it. Didn’t they think about staffing when they built the damn place?  It is my guess that this prison was built with ear marks put on some obscure bill by Dickie Durbin.

Illinois has a history of projects that are under utilized. There is a very large air port in southern Illinois near Saint Louis that doesn’t have any air traffic. The old “Field of Dreams” principle of “build it they will come” never materialized but we have a beauty of an air port in an area that  no one will ever visit or hear about in the next thousand years. Now we have a prison in the same category. At least this time Dickie is being creative, and is trying to double dip for good old Illinois.

Copio y pego el primer párrafo de un extenso artículo publicado en el blog de Noam Chomsky en el mes de mayo y recientemente traducido al español.

Lo dejo aquí porque Chomsky pone en evidencia la hipocresía de un gobierno, el norteamericano, y de unos ciudadanos, muchos de nosotros, que damos a la espalda a una realidad evidente, haciendo como que no la vemos o justificándola en aras de un ‘mal menor’ o un hipotético ‘bien mayor’.

Está claro y Chomsky lo explica con todo detalle: ¡No hay mejor ciego que el que no quiere ver!

Tortura y amnesia histórica

Noam Chomsky
La Jornada, 30 de mayo de 2009 y 31 de mayo de 2009
Los memorandos sobre tortura revelados por la Casa Blanca suscitaron asombro, indignación y sorpresa. El asombro y la indignación eran entendibles; la sorpresa, no tanto. Por principio de cuentas, aun sin investigación, era razonable suponer que Guantánamo era una cámara de tortura. ¿Para qué, si no, enviar prisioneros a un lugar donde estarían fuera del alcance de la ley; un lugar, por cierto, que Washington utiliza en violación de un tratado impuesto a Cuba a punta de pistola? Desde luego, se adujeron razones de seguridad, pero sigue siendo difícil tomarlas en serio. Las mismas sombrías expectativas se tuvieron acerca de los “sitios negros”, prisiones secretas del gobierno de Bush, y por la “rendición extraordinaria”, o captura extrajudicial de sospechosos en otros países, y se cumplieron.

Seguir leyendo

La Alianza del Atlántico Norte, que incluye a los países más ricos y mejor armados del mundo, ha decidido invitar a la marina israelí  a participar en unas maniobras conjuntas, es decir, al igual que Ucrania o Rusia, pasar al estatuto semi-oficial de potencia aliada que aun no es miembro de pleno derecho de la Alianza. Sólo Turquía ha puesto pegas a esta invitación, lo cual puede a la larga acarrear no solamente que se retrase para siempre su entrada en la Unión Europea, sino que en un momento dado también su expulsión de la OTAN. Esta invitación es una declaración no-oficial de guerra a Palestina, al no-Estado de Palestina en el territorio ocupado donde colonizan, explotan y asesinan a la población palestina no reconocida y desprotegida legalmente ante los ataques cotidianos de soldados y colonos israelíes.

La OTAN está por lo tanto en guerra simultáneamente contra Afganistán y Palestina, mientras mantiene contingentes de ocupación en numerosos países africanos y en Irak. Desde este punto de vista, es decir, desde el punto de vista de los agredidos por la OTAN, parece evidente que la OTAN ataca a los países más débiles de manera sistemática. Ahora bien, como la explicación oficial de las maniobras conjuntas con Israel es que forman parte de una estrategia global contra el terror, cabe hacer una síntesis y deducir de ambas perspectivas que la OTAN es una organización terrorista de una enorme magnitud que condena a los pobres a la miseria y a la violencia sin límite que merecen los terroristas. Es evidentemente una antisituación sádica en la que los ricos machacan a los pobres y los llaman, entre otras cosas, terroristas. El sadismo del capitalismo se encauza por lo tanto en la OTAN a la que pertenecemos. Nuestro Estado es por lo tanto cómplice de una agresión sádica y colectiva cuya ideología no asume en absoluto su sadismo. Si no lo asume es porque no puede hacerlo, por lo tanto hay una mala conciencia. Es la razón por la cual debemos seguir aireándola, porque así el Estado llegará a un punto crítico: cambiar o aplastar la libertad de expresión.

President Obama has made shutting down Guantanamo Bay a priority since he began running for the Democratic nomination a couple years ago. The detention facility in Cuba has been the target of much criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. The interrogation methods used there have violated international law, damaged America’s standing in the world, and served as a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda that thrive on propaganda.

Just two days after assuming office, President Obama signed an executive order suspending military commissions at Guantanamo and ordering that the facility be shut down within the year.

But that was more than nine months ago and progress has been slow since then on the logistics of moving the detainees. A military judge ruled in January that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri could not be put on trial, rejecting the White House’s request and creating an early hurdle for the administration. In May, the Senate voted 90-6 to block the funds needed to transfer the detainees to the United States.

Despite the volatile nature of this issue, some countries have agreed to accept a limited number of the detainees. A group of innocent Chinese Uighur Muslims were transferred to Palau. In June, Saudi Arabia agreed to accept three, while Iraq and Chad agreed to accept one each. A small controversy erupted that same week over the decision to send another four Uighur detainees to Bermuda – a British territory – without informing the British government. Other countries that have accepted prisoners include Italy and Ireland, not to mention some of the member states of the European Union.

In spite of these transfers, more than two hundred detainees remain at Guantanamo, which leaves meeting the January deadline for closing the facility increasingly less probable. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration has continued to look for maximum security facilities in the U.S. to house the detainees. One potential location is the Thomson prison here in Illinois.

Built in 2001 for $145 million, the Thomson maximum security prison remains completely empty. Many local leaders and politicians from Thomson Village President Jerry Hebeler to Senator Dick Durbin have supported the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to Thomson. At the local level, the move has the potential to bring in around $200 million and create 3,000 jobs, which would cut regional unemployment in half. And nationally, the move could help resolve the problems surrounding the closing of Guantanamo.

It comes as no surprise that plenty of people have opposed this move. One of the loudest voices of dissent has come from Congressman Don Manzullo, a man not known for his dazzling wit or intelligence. Manzullo recently came under fire for calling Islam a “savage religion,” a remark for which he hurriedly apologized once it began to receive national spotlight.

Manzullo has been even more outspoken about his opposition to the Thomson proposal. He has supported the efforts of extreme members of his party such as Congressman Mark Kirk, who recently bought the domain noterroristsinillinois.com as a campaign tactic, and who is now darkly warning of a “flow of terrorists” through O’Hare airport, leaving the Willis (Sears) Tower vulnerable to attack. Manzullo has also posted on his Twitter that he thinks that “Gitmo in Illinois” would give “evil the opportunity to… make dedicated jihadists lick their chops.”

These outrageous scare tactics are the sort of thing I would expect from a schoolyard bully, not a United States Congressman. It’s just another example of the sort of knee-jerk opposition to any Democratic proposal that has come to define the Republican Party since President Obama took office. I’ll borrow the sentiment from Saturday Night Live – Congressman Manzullo needs to grow a pair, and if he can’t then he should get Hillary to lend him hers.

In the broader context, the coarsening of the debate is not helping his party’s position at all. Just a few weeks ago, the Republicans lost the NY-23 primary for the first time since Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Americans want solutions, not fear mongering and knee-jerk opposition.

But even when you put aside his fear tactics aside for a moment, the arguments Manzullo is making don’t seem to hold much weight. Federal facilities already house many terrorists – including 216 international and 139 domestic terrorists. Thirty-five of these terrorists are housed in Illinois. None have ever escaped. There is also no evidence linking the imprisonment of terrorists to increased levels of local terrorism.

Manzullo also seems out of touch with his constituents in Thomson. Jerry Hebeler, the Village President, said after meeting with federal officials:

“We need this to help our community, our communities around us and us are hurting big… I would never chase jobs if I thought it would jeopardize the safety and security of my friends and neighbors. Bottom line is I want to make sure the bad guys are off the street. This is what maximum security prison is all about. From what I’ve heard so far, Thomson would be even more secure [than other places], and that’s what would make me sleep better.”

Local residents have expressed similar feelings. Their main concerns are jobs and the state of the local economy, which has taken a hit in recent years. They say that the potential for job creation is worth the minimal risk, in their mind.

In looking forward, I would urge Congressman Manzullo and other local leaders considering the Thomson proposal to maintain a much-needed tone of civility. There may be a legitimate debate to be had, but it’s not one that includes fear mongering and scare tactics.

“Iraq is a War.
Afghanistan is an Occupation.
Suicide-Bombing is a Terrorism.
Guantanamo is a Concentration Camp.
Detention without Charge is an Inquisition.”

- Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi

Global Warming:
In this NYTimes article on the hacked emails of scientists concerning global warming data you get this quote:

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.

In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.

That’s right, its so “widely accepted” – except that more people believe in haunted houses than in human caused global warming……Newspapers – telling you what to believe for years now.
………………………..
KSM
The DOJ does not have the right to tell the DOD to hand over KSM. Only Obama can do that so he’s going to have to step up to the plate…..unless he can convince Gates to go ahead and do the handover without his official stamp.

The attorney general has no constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally order the Defense Department to hand over military detainees so they can stand trial in civilian court. He can no more order the military to transfer such prisoners than he can order the Air Force to bomb a particular target. (Similarly, the defense secretary has no authority to order the Justice Department to do anything.)………..

For this to be done legally, it can’t be Holder’s decision alone. Either Obama must step up to the plate and personally order the transfer of the detainees or Defense Secretary Robert Gates must jointly agree with Holder to transfer custody of the detainees.

……………………..

Taxes
50% seems to be the cutoff for what people will put up with. Great Britain is losing their own rich with this attitude: From Will Hunton – Journalist and think tank member:

“Nobody wants a 50p tax rate. We are having it only because the public finances are in a serious state and we need to restore balance. People may mock this, but I would say we are in it together and people who earn more than others should pay more into the pot.”

This from Sir Michael Cain:

“I will not pay the government more than I get. No way, ever. So they’ve reached their limit with me. That’s the lot.”

]]>