Seymour Hersh: Obama puts his foot down

Rumsfeld, Defence Industries, 911, & Corporate Government in Retrospect

Rumsfeld, Defence Industries, 911, & Corporate Government in Retrospect

On September 10, 2001 Rummy said this in a speech at the Pentagon

“Today’s announcements are only the first of many. We will launch others ourselves, and we will ask Congress for legislative help as well. We have, for example, asked Congress for permission to begin the process of closing excess bases and consolidating the B-1 bomber force.”

One month later…

Rumsfeld Visits B-2 Bomber Base as Afghan Campaign Heats Up

By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo., Oct. 19, 2001 – Amid news reports that U.S. ground troops are aiding anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld flew to this Missouri air base today to meet B-2 Spirit bomber pilots and support crews.

Speaking to reporters en route here, Rumsfeld praised the air base’s service members and declared that the B-2’s more than 40-hour missions to Afghanistan are “amazing.”

The secretary declined to give specifics on reported U.S. ground operations in Afghanistan. He noted that providing operations information about U.S. air attacks or the involvement of U.S. troops could imperil lives, missions and damage national security.

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Jeremy Scahill mentioned the speech that Donald Rumsfeld made at the Pentagon on the day before September 11, 2001 in his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. In this address Rummy outlined the streamlining of the DOD and changes in CIA policy, where radical changes would be implemented in the military, especially in the organization of the National Guard and the three branches of the armed sevices.

This speech can be found on the DOD web site and should be required reading for those who are interested in the history of what is now being called The Long War.

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Gorbachev to Obama: ‘Prepare the ground for withdrawal’ in Afghanistan

By Jordan Fabian,  The Hill, Nov. 10, 2009

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Tuesday advised President Barack Obama to prepare to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, rather than adding more troops.

The USSR leader, who in 1986 began the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after a lengthy conflict there, said that adding more troops will be counterproductive.

Continues >>

 

Pilger: Breaking The Great Australian Silence

John Pilger | ZNet, Nov. 7, 2009

Editor’s Note: An important speech/article by a great writer who has stood for  truth and justice that  needs the attention of all of us around the world.

Thank you all for coming tonight, and my thanks to the City of Sydney and especially to the Sydney Peace Foundation for awarding me the Peace Prize. It’s an honour I cherish, because it comes from where I come from.

I am a seventh generation Australian. My great-great grandfather landed not far from here, on November 8th, 1821. He wore leg irons, each weighing four pounds. His name was Francis McCarty. He was an Irishman, convicted of the crime of insurrection and “uttering unlawful oaths”. In October of the same year, an 18 year old girl called Mary Palmer stood in the dock at Middlesex Gaol and was sentenced to be transported to New South Wales for the term of her natural life. Her crime was stealing in order to live. Only the fact that she was pregnant saved her from the gallows. She was my great-great grandmother. She was sent from the ship to the Female Factory at Parramatta, a notorious prison where every third Monday, male convicts were brought for a “courting day” – a rather desperate measure of social engineering. Mary and Francis met that way and were married on October 21st, 1823.

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Paid Lying – What Passes For Major Media Journalism

Stephen Lendman, Baltimore Chronicle, Noveber 9, 2009

Today’s major media journalism is biased, irresponsible, sensationalist reporting that distorts, exaggerates or misstates the truth. It’s misinformation or agitprop disinformation masquerading as fact to boost circulation, readership, viewers, or listeners, and on vital issues lie about or suppress uncomfortable truths to provide unqualified support for state and/or corporate interests – to the detriment of the greater good that’s always sacrificed for profits and imperial aims.

As a result, major media sources produce a daily propaganda diet and what Project Censored calls “junk food news,” and get most people to believe it. In their landmark book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the “propaganda model” that controls the public message by “filter(ing)” disturbing truths, “leaving (behind) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or air.

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No peace progress as Obama, Netanyahu meet

Middle East Online, November 10, 2009

‘Shame on you’, the hardline premier was told

Hardline Netanyahu leaves White House without Obama appearance amid Israeli defiance.

WASHINGTON – Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the White House Monday after spending an hour and forty minutes inside, emerging without US President Barack Obama.

It is not immediately clear whether Netanyahu spent the entire time in closed-door talks with Obama.

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US Generals Flood Israel for Exercise against ‘Specific Threats’

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Israel National News, Nov. 3, 2009

An unprecedented number of American generals, along with 1,400 U.S. army soldiers, are participating with top IDF brass in the high-level Juniper Cobra military exercise that one U.S. Navy commander said is aimed at “specific threats.” Public affairs officials interrupted the naval commander in order to divert the conversation from the scenario of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and defending itself from a counter-attack.

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Bipartisan Attack on International Humanitarian Law

Professor Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy In Focus, November 4, 2009

In a stunning blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday attacking the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict. The report was authored by the well-respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone and three other noted authorities on international humanitarian law, who had been widely praised for taking leadership in previous investigations of war crimes in Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. Since this report documented apparent war crimes by a key U.S. ally, however, Congress has taken the unprecedented action of passing a resolution condemning it. Perhaps most ominously, the resolution also endorses Israel’s right to attack Syria and Iran on the grounds that they are “state sponsors of terrorism.”

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CIA agents convicted in Italy rendition trial

Morning Star Online, Thursday 05 November 2009

by Paul Haste

Prosecutor Armando Spataro speaking in court in Milan

An Italian court’s conviction of 23 CIA agents for extraordinary rendition has been hailed by human rights campaigners as a “historic repudiation” of the US intelligence agency’s crimes.

The agents, including one alleged to have been a CIA station chief in Milan, were given jail sentences ranging up to eight years for the crime of kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and secretly transporting him to Egypt to be tortured.

Mr Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was snatched in Milan on 17 February 2003 in a joint operation between the CIA and Italian military intelligence.

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Hope, Change And One Year Later

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”

Barack Obama,
November 4, 2008

November 4, 2009. It’s been exactly one year since Barack Obama was elected, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the president hasn’t fixed the whole world yet. Then again, he never promised such a thing. But despite some “setbacks and false starts,” we’re in considerably better shape than we were when the president delivered the above words on election night in Chicago.

One of his central goals, going all the way back to his 2004 convention speech, of building common ground between Americans of different ideologies and backgrounds is going to be more difficult than was previously anticipated. However, what’s beginning to take shape is common ground between the far-right and the far-left insofar as they’re both angrily lining up in opposition to this White House.

Of course the wingnut right — the Beck-Limbaugh-Palin Industrial Complex — has a significant head start. Plus, they’re immovable. Nothing this president does, short of resignation, will ever be greeted positively and everything will be pegged as a Nazi-Communist-Nixon-Carter-Terrorist usurping of American exceptionalism. However, on the left, there’s a growing discontentment that’s rapidly metastasizing into a similarly virulent and unchangeable anger. It not only threatens to fracture the president’s progressive base, but it could also force the president to retreat to the middle.

Afghanistan: Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose

Immanuel Wallerstein, Agence Global, November 1, 2009

The war in Afghanistan is a war in which whatever the United States does now, or that President Obama does now, both the United States and Obama will lose. The country and its president are in a situation of perfect lockjaw.

Consider the basic situation. The Afghan government in Kabul has no legitimacy with the majority of the Afghan people. It also has no army worthy of the name. It also has no financial base. There is almost no military or personal security anywhere. It is faced with a guerilla opposition, the Taliban, who control half the country and who have grown steadily stronger since the Taliban government was overthrown by a foreign (largely United States) invasion in 2002. The New York Times reports that the Taliban “are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations,” which American officials are struggling, unsuccessfully, to cut off.

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Michael Hilton Broke And No Corporate Backing For Hardin Jail

Michael Hilton

Hilton Admits: I’m Broke And Had No Corporate Backing for Jail Bid

TPMMuckraker– Zachary Roth | November 2, 2009, 9:57AM

“I’m out of the game. I’m done,” Michael Hilton has told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

The California grifter had just testified in court that he’s broke, is struggling to pay rent on his apartment, and recently borrowed money from his girlfriend. And he appeared to come close, perhaps for the first time, to admitting that he had deceived local officials in Montana about his effort to take control of an empty jail.

Hilton was in court for a hearing in a 2000 civil judgment against him which is now estimated at $700,000.

Hiss recent bid to take control of an empty jail in Hardin, Montana ran aground after news surfaced of his history of criminal fraud, and several of the public claims about his security contracting company, American Private Police Force, were called into question.

But this seems to be the first time that Hilton himself has edged up to acknowledging that he misled Hardin officials from the start. In court, he admitted that the substantial corporate backing he had claimed for his jail bid in fact never existed. Instead, he said he had four investors, one of whom was his girlfriend.

And according to a lawyer for the building contractor in the 2000 case, as reported by the Billings Gazette, Hilton also testified that he had no experience, training or licensing for police or prison work, and that APPF had no parent company and no other staff. Hilton had previously represented to Hardin that his company was an established security contractor active in all 50 states and working with the U.S. government.

Hilton also said that back in July, he told Greg Smith, then the head of Hardin’s economic development arm, about his criminal past, and was told it wouldn’t be a problem. Smith, who led the effort to work with Hilton, was put on administrative leave in September, for reasons that have not been made public.

 

Who speaks for Islam?

Everyone, it seems, has a party line about who the good Muslims and bad Muslims are. Sadly, many of the dichotomies distort as much as they reveal, and use simple labels based on superficial preconceptions and over-simplifications, says Meena Sharify-Funk.

Middle East Online, Oct 30, 2009

Waterloo, Canada – Ever since the tragic events of 9/11, the diverse voices claiming to speak with authority about Islam have become increasingly cacophonous. Few contemporary topics are more controversial than that of how to interpret Islamic practices and beliefs.

In the West as well as in the Muslim world, interpreting Islam has become a virtual cottage industry. The ranks of interpreters are incredibly diverse, including counter-terrorism experts, policymakers and journalists, as well as religious studies academics, political scientists, Muslim ulama (Islamic legal scholars), Muslim feminists in the West, and people speaking on behalf of various religious groups. Interest in how Islam is understood and practiced has expanded dramatically in recent years, and it’s not always clear whom to listen to amongst the din.

Continues >>

Beck Predicts Palin Is Positioning Herself For Third-Party Run…

Beck’s prediction: Sarah Palin positioning herself for third-party run — and a third party will win in 2012

Crooks & Liars- By David Neiwert Saturday Oct 31, 2009 8:00am

Bill O’Reilly is “fascinated” with Sarah Palin, and has been featuring segments on her a lot of late. He had Glenn Beck on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday night to talk about her prospects.

They agreed that her upcoming book tour is a “make or break” situation regarding her political future — but that if she fares well with the media, she’ll be well positioned for 2012. They also agree that resigning as governor before had even completed her first term was a “smart move.”

Which gave Beck a launching pad for his prophesying mode:

Beck: Smart move. And I think she’s also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I’m sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win.

Presumably, by “wake up” Beck means “embrace the tea party philosophy of small government and big wingnuttery”. The Democrats won’t, but most likely the Republicans will. But I don’t think it’s going to be the recipe for victory Glenn Beck thinks it will be.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Video compliments of The Onion

The Best Entourage $263.4 Million of Lobbying Money Can Buy

Change.org

by Tim Foley

Published August 14, 2009 @ 11:01PM PT

An optimist sees the glass as half-full. A pessimist sees the glass, sees the water, and begins to wonder how it got there, who paid for the service, and what favor they’re going to expect in return. According to Bloomberg, the amount of money and staff supplied by the health care industries over the past six months is an order of magnitude larger than either those industries’ campaign contributions to politicians or their advertising budgets. The most colorful statistic is that there are six industry lobbyists for every member of Congress. If you’re a legislator working on health care reform, your life might have begun to resemble a Washington DC version of Entourage.

President Obama rode into town declaring that the era of special interests and lobbyists standing in the way of progress is over. Apparently, Congress didn’t get the memo, and the health care industry flat-out ignored it. The numbers are gaudy. $263.4 million in lobbying alone in the past six months. $20.5 million in political contributions to, yes, both political parties, including over $382,000 for Majority Leader Harry Reid. $320,000 for a Ferrari for Turtle, and an extra $100,000 so Kanye West’s entourage could all be wearing designer outfits. OK, I made that last sentence up. But there’s no doubt that in a year of reform, the industry that makes money off the system is livin’ large down by the Potomac.

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