Len Colby Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 Far-right Heritage Foundation // END Colby ################################################## THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU .....OBAMA CARE IS A RE-HASH of a Heritage Foundation Plan of years ago. LEFTY OBAMA ? COLBY AGREES , NO !!!!!!!! ############# Unbabble that for me. NIST TO OVERSEE OUR PRIVACY INVASION ...all comes full circle ,NO ?? Will it be 'overseen' by NIST or the DoD? Make up your mind. Thursday, November 15, 2012 Obama Secret Directive Gives Cyber-Control to Military For National Security Susanne Posel, Contributor Activist Post Google is stating in their most recent Transparency Report that the US government has stepped up their surveillance on civilians. According to the Internet giant, more personal data is being profiled on Americans and their habits on the Web. Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst at Google explains: [G]overnment demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report.” The only indication of whether the requests were legit is the "Percentage of data requests fully or partially complied with", the compliance for the US varried between 90 and 94% Google says that they have been refusing to comply with governmental requests to take down content on the Internet because of fake court orders that appear to be frivolous or illegitimate.Using the claim that content being removed is racist in nature or defaming of public figures, governments around the world are requesting that the Internet be censored. However, this new trend is indicative of the Big brother controls being enacted against the free speech of citizens in sovereign nations. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK have topped the list of countries that seek to control content on the Internet. The "Big Brother" part is of course the author's spin and what do the actions of "France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK" have to do with Obama? Back in May, it was made public that the <a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/us-spy-agency-keep-mum-google-ties-court-195145311.html">relationship between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Google is not going to be disclosed.A US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, ruled last week that the NSA does not need to confirm nor deny (known as a “Glomar” response) its collaborations with Google; how the two work together to spy on American citizens in the name of protecting the public from “cyber-attacks”. The court’s ruling states effectively that regardless of a filing by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) with the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents as to the relationship, the US government does not have to divulge any arrangement between the NSA and the search engine giant. It is now being reported that Obama has signed a secret policy directive that gives the military complete control over the Internet should the US come under a cyberattack. Being called Presidential Policy Directive 20, the alleged document (being classified) is a guideline that explains how specific federal agencies will be empowered by the Obama administration to intercept online “breaches of security” – including hacking and other digital attacks. This document assures that the US government is taking the offensive and proactive approach to digital security where network defense is recognized as operations designed to ensure defense of national security. Whether it means shutting down main servers or local computers that have been identified as targets, a complete shutdown of Internet access (although it requires cybersecurity legislation) would not be out of the realm of possibility. The military’s role in cybersecurity with regard to digital attacks will be to ensure that US digital information, data, and privacy be protected. This new responsibility will work in conjunction with law enforcement network defenses that are being used to para-militarize the Web using cyber units. Here's the cited article, compare it to her spin: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-signs-secret-cybersecurity-directive-allowing-more-aggressive-military-role/2012/11/14/7bf51512-2cde-11e2-9ac2-1c61452669c3_story.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted November 16, 2012 Author Share Posted November 16, 2012 Unbabble that for me.//end ColbyWhole thread is to show Obama not a lefty. Obamacare a remake of what "U" term a far-right foundation. THUS "U" have made my point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted November 16, 2012 Author Share Posted November 16, 2012 (edited) Lefty Obama ? Leaked “grand bargain” document details Obama's plan for cuts in entitlement programs By Barry Grey wsws.org 15 November 2012 In his first post-election press conference, President Barack Obama on Wednesday reiterated the claim that his focus in deficit-reduction talks with the Republicans is to provide jobs and help the struggling “middle class” recover from the economic crisis. To this end, Obama declared, he is determined to reach a “balanced” compromise that will require the wealthy to “pay a little bit more.” In practical terms, that means, at most, slightly raising the income tax rates of the richest 2 percent of US households—those making more than $250,000 a year—by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for this income group to expire on January 1st. Obama spoke, as always in the vaguest terms, of the need to “reform” Medicare and other social entitlements. He made no mention of the scheduled expiration at the new year of federally funded extended unemployment benefits, a cruel cost-cutting measure that will, if implemented, deprive over 2 million jobless workers of cash assistance. The real social and class interests served by the administration's fiscal policy were indicated by the next item on the president's calendar—a closed-door White House meeting with the CEOs of 12 of the biggest US corporations, including General Electric, Walmart, American Express, Honeywell, Ford, IBM, Pepsico and Chevron. This gathering of multi-millionaires was convened to ensure that the demands of the corporate elite for drastic cuts in social spending and further tax cuts for big business would be carried out. Obama's pretense of “fairness” and concern for working people, against the backdrop of the supposed looming disaster of the “fiscal cliff,” is a cynical sham. It is a cover for a calculated and ruthless assault on all that remains of the social reforms of the 20th century—most centrally, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—combined with a restructuring of the tax system that will cut taxes for corporations and the rich and increase the tax burden on working people. The far-reaching and reactionary substance of Obama's social policy emerges very clearly in secret documents that were leaked last weekend relating to negotiations in the summer of 2011 between the White House and Republican House Speaker John Boehner over raising the US debt limit. In response to Republican demands for massive spending cuts in return for an agreement on raising the debt limit, Obama proposed a “grand bargain” to slash the federal deficit by $4 trillion over ten years through a combination of cuts in social programs and increased revenues from “comprehensive tax reform.” Obama proposed more than $2 in cuts for every $1 dollar in revenue increases ($2.8 trillion in cuts, $1.2 trillion in increased tax revenues). However, the talks broke down due to opposition to any tax increases among House Republicans. This led to the deal to raise the debt limit that set the stage for the more than $700 billion in automatic across-the-board spending cuts and tax increases, beginning January 1, 2013, that are a major component of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” (See: “What is the fiscal cliff”?). Speaking on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program last Sunday, Washington Post investigative journalist and associate editor Bob Woodward announced that he had obtained a copy of the secret final offer from Obama to Boehner for a “grand bargain” on austerity and tax “reform.” NBC posted a portion of the document on the “Meet the Press” web site. Regarding the document, Woodward said, “But what it shows is a willingness to cut all kinds of things, like TRICARE, which is the sacred health insurance program for the military, for military retirees; to cut Social Security; to cut Medicare. And there are some lines in there about, ‘We want to get tax rates down, not only for individuals, but for businesses.’ So Obama and the White House were willing to go quite far.” In fact, the document, dated July 19, 2011, spells out an unprecedented assault on social welfare programs and a pro-corporate revamping of the tax system that would have been politically unthinkable for Republican presidents from Reagan to George W. Bush. On Medicare, the document proposed reducing spending by “at least $250 billion” from 2012 to 2021 and “at least $800 billion” from 2022 to 2031. This would be achieved, in part, by “alteration of the eligibility age for Medicare” and “adjustments to premiums collected for services and benefits currently covered under Part B and Part D.” In other words, the eligibility age for Medicare health coverage would be raised and premiums for a range of hospital and clinical services as well as for drugs would be hiked. On Social Security, the document proposed changing the formula for the consumer price index (CPI) as applied to cost-of-living increases in benefits so as to slash outlays by $112 billion over 10 years. The new CPI would also apply to veterans' disability payments, cutting $24 billion. The proposal further stipulated: “Reduce the 75-year estimated shortfall of the Social Security program by 0.7 percent… as a percentage of taxable payroll, with a balanced package of tax and benefit changes.” In plain English: increase payroll taxes and decrease benefits. In addition to these sweeping cuts in the two most basic entitlement programs, the document spelled out a list of additional reductions, including: * Civilian retirement, i.e., retirement benefits for civilian federal workers: $33 billion * Military retirement: $11 billion * TRICARE drug copayments/TRICARE for Life: $16 billion * Postal reform: $16 billion * Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation: $9 billion * Flood insurance: $4 billion * Agriculture subsidies/conservation programs: $33 billion * Nutrition assistance: $2 billion * Higher education: $10 billion. On the tax side, the document proposed to “Enact reform that improves international competitiveness and increases incentives for companies to invest in the United States and succeed globally.” This is an open-ended formula for cutting business taxes and increasing profits through the decimation of social programs and the further impoverishment of the working class. The document specifically endorsed cutting both corporate tax rates and individual income tax rates for the wealthy, with the injunction to “Reduce the number of individual and corporate income tax rates… reducing each rate to the lowest possible level consistent with the overall revenue target…” This “get richer, quicker” scheme for the American ruling class, whether or not it is enacted in precisely the form outlined by the White House in July 2011, remains the basic agenda of Obama and the Democratic Party. This was underscored by William Daley, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase who was White House chief of staff in the summer of 2011 and led the negotiations with Boehner and the Republicans. Last week, Daley told Bloomberg News that there was “80 to 85 percent” agreement between Obama and Boehner at the time and that the “grand bargain” offer should serve as the starting point for new talks on deficit reduction. “It’s logical that that’s where you'd go back to, the points where there was either agreement or close to an agreement, and try to begin there,” Daley said. ############################# Gaal = graph added Edited November 16, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Unbabble that for me.//end ColbyWhole thread is to show Obama not a lefty. Obamacare a remake of what "U" term a far-right foundation. THUS "U" have made my point A total nonsequitur. Where have you produced evidence "Obamacare a remake of..." something from the Herritage Foundation? As for Obama's negotiations with the Republicans (next post) he doesn't have much choice, they control the House. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted November 17, 2012 Author Share Posted November 17, 2012 (edited) A total nonsequitur. Where have you produced evidence "Obamacare a remake of..." something from the Herritage Foundation? // END COLBY ??????? Do you know the phrase common knowledge ????????????????? ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Click on October article if you wish. WSJ online Heritage Rewrites History The think tank proposed the individual mandate years before Clinton took office. By JAMES TARANTO In an October column, we recounted the origins of the ObamaCare individual mandate at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. In a USA Today op-ed earlier this week, Heritage's Stuart Butler offers his own account. But crucial elements of it are at variance with the facts. Here is the key paragraph: The confusion arises from the fact that 20 years ago, I held the view that as a technical matter, some form of requirement to purchase insurance was needed in a near-universal insurance market to avoid massive instability through "adverse selection" (insurers avoiding bad risks and healthy people declining coverage). At that time, President Clinton was proposing a universal health care plan, and Heritage and I devised a viable alternative. Even if you don't know the history, you can see that this is reminiscent of a John Kerry tale: "I remember spending Christmas Day of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese Allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real." Richard Nixon was not yet president in 1968, and neither was Bill Clinton 20 years ago, in 1992. To be sure, that's a quibble. Unlike Kerry, who cited a specific date, when Butler says "20 years ago" he is referring to a temporal order of magnitude. It would be close enough to say "20 years ago" if Heritage proposed the individual mandate in 1993 or 1994. Twitter.com Butler did it. But it didn't. Butler's approximation runs in the other direction. He first proposed the individual mandate almost 23 years ago, in a 1989 "Critical Issues" monograph titled "A National Health System for America." (The Heritage website lists the publication date as Jan. 2, 1989, but it was actually June 1 of that year, according to a contemporaneous Washington Post story.) For most purposes, "20 years ago" is a close enough approximation for 23. In this case, however, it gives the lie to Butler's claim that Heritage first embraced the individual mandate as an "alternative" to President Clinton's "universal health care plan." Bill Clinton became president more than 3½ years after the monograph's publication. Butler also writes: "My idea was hardly new. Heritage did not invent the individual mandate." He offers only one item of evidence for this assertion: "Even libertarian-conservative icon Milton Friedman, in a 1991 Wall Street Journal article, advocated replacing Medicare and Medicaid 'with a requirement that every U.S. family unit have a major medical insurance policy.' " That Friedman piece ran in the Journal Nov. 12, 1991--more than 20 years ago, but 29 months after Heritage published the monograph. Forbes's Avik Roy reports that he attempted without success to substantiate Butler's claim of unoriginality: "As far as I have been able to find, Stuart's 1989 brief is the first published proposal of an individual mandate in the context of private-sector-managed health systems." Butler writes that the Heritage proposal "focused on 'catastrophic' costs" and did not envision mandating as costly a package of benefits as ObamaCare does, and that the Heritage plan, unlike ObamaCare, would include "a fundamental reform of the tax treatment of health coverage." The latter statement is true, and to our mind is an advantage of the Heritage plan over ObamaCare. But it is irrelevant to the question of the individual mandate's provenance. As to the former assertion, it's unclear. The 1989 monograph, which listed the mandate as "Element #1" of 3, left the extent of the mandate unspecified but the basic idea unambiguous: "The degree of financial protection can be debated, but the principle of mandatory family protection is central to a universal health care system in America." A third Butler distinction is highly misleading: "In the legislation we helped craft that ultimately became a preferred alternative to ClintonCare, the 'mandate' was actually the loss of certain tax breaks for those not choosing to buy coverage, not a legal requirement." That may be true of a specific legislative proposal developed four or five years after the conception of the individual mandate. But here is Butler's original description of how the mandate would be enforced, from page 51 of the 1989 monograph: The requirement to obtain basic insurance would have to be enforced. The easiest way to monitor compliance might be for households to furnish proof of insurance when they file their tax returns. If a family were to cancel its insurance, the insurer would be required to notify the government. If the family did not enroll in another plan before the first insurance coverage lapsed and did not provide evidence of financial problems, a fine might be imposed. An April 2010 Congressional Research Service memo on "The PPACA Penalty Provision and the Internal Revenue Service" makes clear that ObamaCare incorporates every element of the original Heritage enforcement proposal, including the imposition of a "reporting requirement . . . on anyone who 'provides minimum essential coverage to an individual during a calendar year.' " That is, if you cancel your policy, your insurer must report you to Uncle Sam, just as Butler recommended. We even noticed a foreshadowing of President Obama's rhetoric in Butler's 1989 proposal. In introducing the mandate, Butler stated: "This requirement would imply a compact between the U.S. government and its citizens: in return for the government's accepting an obligation to devise a market-based system guaranteeing access to care and protecting all families from financial distress due to the cost of an illness, each individual must agree to obtain a minimum level of protection." Obama likes to talk about "the social compact," too. To judge by opinion polls, however, the government never bothered obtaining the consent of its citizens before imposing the ObamaCare compact. Heritage in 1989 and Obama in 2010 both underestimated the extent to which the idea of compelling individuals to purchase a product or service goes against the American grain. Heritage has changed its mind, and Butler concludes his op-ed with a mea culpa of sorts: "I've altered my views on many things. The individual mandate in health care is one of them." Acknowledging error is a sign of integrity, but you have to be truthful about it. Edited November 17, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ??? Humanitarian Coverup: Why is Obama Silent Over the New Congo War? By Shamus Cooke Global Research, November 26, 2012 The last Congo war that ended in 2003 killed 5.4 million people, the worst humanitarian disaster since World War II. The killing was directly enabled by international silence over the issue; the war was ignored and the causes obscured because governments were backing groups involved in the fighting. Now a new Congo war has begun and the silence is, again, deafening. President Obama seems not to have noticed a new war has broken out in the war-scarred Congo; he appears blind to the refugee crisis and the war crimes committed by the invading M23 militia against the democratically elected government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But appearances can be deceiving. The U.S. government has their bloody hands all over this conflict, just as they did during the last Congo war when Bill Clinton was President. President Obama’s inaction is a conscious act of encouragement for the invaders, just as Clinton’s was. Instead of Obama denouncing the invasion and the approaching overthrow of a democratically elected government, silence becomes a very powerful action of intentional complicity on the side of the invaders. Why would Obama do this? The invaders are armed and financed by Rwanda, a “strong ally” and puppet of the United States. The United Nations released a report conclusively proving that the Rwandan government is backing the rebels, but the U.S. government and U.S. media cartoonishly pretend that the issue is debatable. The last Congo War that killed 5.4 million people was also the result of the U.S.-backed invading armies of Rwanda and Uganda, as explained in the excellently researched book “Africa’s World War,” by French journalist Gerard Prunier. In fact, many of the same Rwandan war criminals involved in the last Congo War, such as Bosco Ntaganda, are in charge of the M23 militia and wanted for war crimes by the U.N. international criminal court. The current Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, is a “good friend” of the U.S. government and one of the most notorious war criminals on the planet, due to his leading roles in the Rwandan genocide and consequent Congo War. A group of Congolese and Rwandan activists have been demanding that Kagame be tried for his key role in the Rwandan genocide. As Prunier’s book explains, the Rwandan genocide was sparked by Kagame’s invasion of Rwanda — from U.S. ally Uganda. After Kagame took power in post-genocide Rwanda, he then informed the U.S. — during a trip to Washington D.C. — that he would be invading the Congo. Prunier quotes Kagame in Africa’s World War: “I delivered a veiled warning [to the U.S.]: the failure of the international community to take action [against the Congo] would mean that Rwanda would take action… But their [the Clinton Administration’s] response was really no response at all” (pg 68). In international diplomacy speak, such a lack of response — to a threat of military invasion — acts as a glaring diplomatic green light.The same blinding green light is now being offered by Obama to the exact same war criminals as they again invade the Congo. But why again? The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s current President, Joseph Kabila, helped lead the military invasion during the last Congo war. As a good stooge, he delivered Congo’s immense mining and oil wealth to multi-national corporations. But then his puppet strings started to fray. Kabila later distanced himself from U.S. puppets Rwanda and Uganda, not to mention the U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The IMF, for example, warned Kabila against a strategic infrastructural and development aid package with China, but Kabila shrugged them off. The Economist explains: “…[The Congo] appears to have gained the upper hand in a row with foreign donors over a mining and infrastructure package worth $9 billion that was agreed a year ago with China. The IMF objected to it, on the ground that it would saddle Congo with a massive new debt, so [the IMF] is delaying forgiveness of most of the $10 billion-plus that Congo already owes.” This act instantly transformed Kabila from an unreliable friend to an enemy. The U.S. and China have been madly scrambling for Africa’s immense wealth of raw materials, and Kabila’s new alliance with China was too much for the U.S. to bear. Kabila further inflamed his former allies by demanding that the international corporations exploiting the Congo’s precious metals have their super-profit contracts re-negotiated, so that the country might actually receive some benefit from its riches. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is home to 80 percent of the world’s cobalt, an extremely precious mineral needed to construct many modern technologies, including weaponry, cell phones, and computers. The DRC is possibly the most mineral/resource rich country in the world — overflowing with everything from diamonds to oil — though its people are among the world’s poorest, due to generations of corporate plunder of its wealth. Now, a new war is underway and the U.N. is literally sitting on their hands. There are 17,500 U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC, not to mention U.S. Special Forces. The invading M23 militia has 3,000 fighters. What was the U.N.’s response to the invasion? The New York Times reports: “United Nations officials have said that they did not have the numbers to beat back the rebels and that they were worried about collateral damage, but many Congolese have rendered their own verdict. On Wednesday, rioters in Bunia, north of Goma, ransacked the houses of United Nations’ personnel.” If Obama and/or the U.N. made one public statement about militarily defending the elected Congolese government against invasion, the M23 militia would have never acted. Human Rights Watch and other groups have correctly labeled the M23’s commanders as responsible for “ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions and torture.” But at the U.N. the Obama administration has been actively protecting this group. The New York Times continues: “Some human rights groups say that Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations and a leading contender to be President Obama’s next secretary of state, has been far too soft on Rwanda, which is a close American ally and whose president, Paul Kagame, has known Ms. Rice for years. The activists have accused her of watering down language in a Security Council resolution that would have mentioned Rwanda’s links to the [M23] rebels and say she also tried to block the publication of part of a [u.N.] report that detailed Rwanda’s covert support for the M23.” It’s likely that the Obama administration will jump into action as soon as his M23 allies complete their military objective of regime change, and re-open the Congo’s military wealth to U.S. corporations to profit from. There are currently talks occurring in U.S.-puppet Uganda between the M23 and the Congo government. It is unlikely that these talks will produce much of a result unless Kabila stands down and allows the M23 and its Rwandan backers to take over the country. The M23 knows it’s in an excellent bargaining position, given the silence of the U.N. and the United States government. If the war drags on, expect more international silence. Expect more massacres and ethnic cleansing too, and expect the still-recovering people of the Congo to be re-tossed into massive refugee camps where they can again expect militia-sponsored killings, rape, starvation, and the various barbarisms that have accompanied this especially brutal war, a brutality that grows most viciously in environments of silence. Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com Notes http://news.national...for-war-crimes/http://www.economist...f603b9fd9577f0e http://www.nytimes.c...-kinshasha.html Edited November 27, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 3, 2012 Author Share Posted December 3, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? US set to establish new spy network as big as CIA: Report A view of the Pentagon Sun Dec 2, 2012 10:21AM GMT 38 The Pentagon has embarked on an ambitious plan to establish an overseas espionage network which is expected to incorporate a colossal structure of operatives as big as the CIA, a report says. According to the US officials, the new scenario has been devised to transform the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) into a spy service more focused than the CIA on military aspects, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. Based on the planned structure, the DIA is expected to recruit an unprecedented number of 1,600 clandestine operatives called “collectors” across the world over the next five years. The DIA operatives will be trained by the CIA and cooperate with the US Joint Special Operations Command, but they will receive their espionage assignments from the Department of Defense. “This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA… This is a major adjustment for national security,” said DIA Director Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn at a recent conference in which he outlined the transformations without mentioning the details. The new US espionage scenario is spearheaded by Michael G. Vickers, who is a senior intelligence official at the Pentagon and a CIA veteran. The DIA and CIA have agreed to share resources overseas, including technical equipment, logistics support, space in facilities and vehicles. The DIA has also adopted some structural features of the CIA by establishing a group called “Persia House,” tasked with collecting resources on Iran, the Post said. Pentagon and DIA officials have declined to elaborate on the specifics of the project. Pentagon’s is also establishing a new espionage network, the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS), which is expected to be closely aligned with the CIA and the military commando units. Pundits say the DCS espionage unmasks the Obama administration’s strategy of preference for espionage and covert action over conventional force. The plan, however, faces obstacles ahead as it needs to create “cover” jobs for hundreds of additional spies. According to the report, US embassies typically have a number of positions for intelligence operatives to work under the guise of diplomats, but most of the slots are already filled by the CIA. The DCS espionage project has also faced opposition from the lawmakers at the US Congress. Edited December 3, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 8, 2012 Author Share Posted December 8, 2012 LEFTY OBAMA ?? Administration Weighs Legal Action Against States That Legalized Marijuana Use By CHARLIE SAVAGE Published: December 6, 2012 NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/us/marijuana-initiatives-in-2-states-set-federal-officials-scrambling.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 12, 2012 Author Share Posted December 12, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? The Courts: How Obama Dropped the Ball The president’s slow pace and anemic support for judicial appointments has kept the courts in conservative hands. Robert Kuttner prospect.org December 12, 2012 . http://prospect.org/...ma-dropped-ball Edited December 12, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 12, 2012 Author Share Posted December 12, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2012 by The Guardian HSBC, Too Big to Jail, and the US Two-Tiered Justice System by Glenn Greenwald The US is the world's largest prison state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any nation on earth, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. It imprisons people for longer periods of time, more mercilessly, and for more trivial transgressions than any nation in the west. This sprawling penal state has been constructed over decades, by both political parties, and it punishes the poor and racial minorities at overwhelmingly disproportionate rates.Assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said taking away HSBC's US banking licence could have cost thousands of jobs. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP) But not everyone is subjected to that system of penal harshness. It all changes radically when the nation's most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans' communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. This two-tiered justice system was the subject of my last book, "With Liberty and Justice for Some", and what was most striking to me as I traced the recent history of this phenomenon is how explicit it has become. Obviously, those with money and power always enjoyed substantial advantages in the US justice system, but lip service was at least always paid to the core precept of the rule of law: that - regardless of power, position and prestige - all stand equal before the blindness of Lady Justice. It really is the case that this principle is now not only routinely violated, as was always true, but explicitly repudiated, right out in the open. It is commonplace to hear US elites unblinkingly insisting that those who become sufficiently important and influential are - and should be - immunized from the system of criminal punishment to which everyone else is subjected. Worse, we are constantly told that immunizing those with the greatest power is not for their good, but for our good, for our collective good: because it's better for all of us if society is free of the disruptions that come from trying to punish the most powerful, if we're free of the deprivations that we would collectively experience if we lose their extraordinary value and contributions by prosecuting them. This rationale was popularized in 1974 when Gerald Ford explained why Richard Nixon - who built his career as a "law-and-order" politician demanding harsh punishments and unforgiving prosecutions for ordinary criminals - would never see the inside of a courtroom after being caught committing multiple felonies; his pardon was for the good not of Nixon, but of all of us. That was the same reasoning hauled out to justify immunity for officials of the National Security State who tortured and telecom giants who illegally spied on Americans (we need them to keep us safe and can't disrupt them with prosecutions), as well as the refusal to prosecute any Wall Street criminals for their fraud (prosecutions for these financial crimes would disrupt our collective economic recovery). A new episode unveiled on Tuesday is one of the most vivid examples yet of this mentality. Over the last year, federal investigators found that one of the world's largest banks, HSBC, spent years committing serious crimes, involving money laundering for terrorists; "facilitat[ing] money laundering by Mexican drug cartels"; and "mov[ing] tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups". Those investigations uncovered substantial evidence "that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity." As but one example, "an HSBC executive at one point argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank, which has supported Al Qaeda." Needless to say, these are the kinds of crimes for which ordinary and powerless people are prosecuted and imprisoned with the greatest aggression possible. If you're Muslim and your conduct gets anywhere near helping a terrorist group, even by accident, you're going to prison for a long, long time. In fact, powerless, obscure, low-level employees are routinely sentenced to long prison terms for engaging in relatively petty money laundering schemes, unrelated to terrorism, and on a scale that is a tiny fraction of what HSBC and its senior officials are alleged to have done. But not HSBC. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for our common good. We should not be angry, but grateful, for the extraordinary gift bestowed on the global banking giant: "US authorities defended their decision not to prosecute HSBC for accepting the tainted money of rogue states and drug lords on Tuesday, insisting that a $1.9bn fine for a litany of offences was preferable to the 'collateral consequences' of taking the bank to court. . . . "Announcing the record fine at a press conference in New York, assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said that despite HSBC"s 'blatant failure' to implement anti-money laundering controls and its wilful flouting of US sanctions, the consequences of a criminal prosecution would have been dire. "Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges, HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking licence in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilised. "HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, said it was 'profoundly sorry' for what it called 'past mistakes' that allowed terrorists and narcotics traffickers to move billions around the financial system and circumvent US banking laws. . . . "As part of the deal, HSBC has undertaken a five-year agreement with the US department of justice under which it will install an independent monitor to assess reformed internal controls. The bank's top executives will defer part of their bonuses for the whole of the five-year period, while bonuses have been clawed back from a number of former and current executives, including those in the US directly involved at the time. "John Coffee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York, said the fine was consistent with how US regulators have been treating bank infractions in recent years. 'These days they rarely sue individuals in any meaningful way when the entity will settle. This is largely a function of resource constraints, but also risk aversion, and a willingness to take the course of least resistance,' he said." DOJ officials touted the $1.9 billion fine HSBC would pay, the largest ever for such a case. As the Guardian's Nils Pratley noted, "the sum represents about four weeks' earnings given the bank's pre-tax profits of $21.9bn last year." Unsurprisingly, "the steady upward progress of HSBC's share price since the scandal exploded in July was unaffected on Tuesday morning." The New York Times Editors this morning announced: "It is a dark day for the rule of law." There is, said the NYT editors, "no doubt that the wrongdoing at HSBC was serious and pervasive." But the bank is simply too big, too powerful, too important to prosecute. That's not merely a dark day for the rule of law. It's a wholesale repudiation of it. The US government is expressly saying that banking giants reside outside of - above - the rule of law, that they will not be punished when they get caught red-handed committing criminal offenses for which ordinary people are imprisoned for decades. Aside from the grotesque injustice, the signal it sends is as clear as it is destructive: you are free to commit whatever crimes you want without fear of prosecution. And obviously, if the US government would not prosecute these banks on the ground that they're too big and important, it would - yet again, or rather still - never let them fail. But this case is the opposite of an anomaly. That the most powerful actors should be immunized from the rule of law - not merely treated better, but fully immunized - is a constant, widely affirmed precept in US justice. It's applied to powerful political and private sector actors alike. Over the past four years, the CIA and NSA have received the same gift, as have top Executive Branch officials, as has the telecom industry, as has most of the banking industry. This is how I described it in "With Liberty and Justice for Some": "To hear our politicians and our press tell it, the conclusion is inescapable: we're far better off when political and financial elites - and they alone - are shielded from criminal accountability. "It has become a virtual consensus among the elites that their members are so indispensable to the running of American society that vesting them with immunity from prosecution - even for the most egregious crimes - is not only in their interest but in our interest, too. Prosecutions, courtrooms, and prisons, it's hinted - and sometimes even explicitly stated - are for the rabble, like the street-side drug peddlers we occasionally glimpse from our car windows, not for the political and financial leaders who manage our nation and fuel our prosperity. "It is simply too disruptive, distracting, and unjust, we are told, to subject them to the burden of legal consequences." That is precisely the rationale explicitly invoked by DOJ officials to justify their decision to protect HSBC from criminal accountability. These are the same officials who previously immunized Bush-era torturers and warrantless eavesdroppers, telecom giants, and Wall Street executives, even as they continue to persecute whistleblowers at record rates and prosecute ordinary citizens - particularly poor and minorities - with extreme harshness even for trivial offenses. The administration that now offers the excuse that HSBC is too big to prosecute is the same one that quite consciously refused to attempt to break up these banks in the aftermath of the "too-big-to-fail" crisis of 2008, as former TARP overseer Neil Barofsky, among others, has spent years arguing. And, of course, these HSBC-protectors in the Obama DOJ are the same officials responsible for maintaining and expanding what NYT Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal has accurately described as "essentially a separate justice system for Muslims," one in which "the principle of due process is twisted and selectively applied, if it is applied at all." What has been created is not so much a "two-tiered justice system" as a multi-tiered one, entirely dependent on the identity of the alleged offender rather than the crimes of which they are accused. Having different "justice systems" for citizens based on their status, wealth, power and prestige is exactly what the US founders argued most strenuously had to be avoided (even as they themselves maintained exactly such a system). But here we have in undeniable clarity not merely proof of exactly how this system functions, but also the rotted and fundamentally corrupt precept on which it's based: that some actors are simply too important and too powerful to punish criminally. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned in 2010, exempting the largest banks from criminal prosecution has meant that lawlessness and "venality" is now "at a higher level" in the US even than that which prevailed in the pervasively corrupt and lawless privatizing era in Russia. Having the US government act specially to protect the most powerful factions, particularly banks, was a major impetus that sent people into the streets protesting both as part of the early Tea Party movement as well as the Occupy movement. As well as it should: it is truly difficult to imagine corruption and lawlessness more extreme than having the government explicitly place the most powerful factions above the rule of law even as it continues to subject everyone else to disgracefully harsh "justice". If this HSBC gift makes more manifest this radical corruption, then it will at least have achieved some good. UPDATE By coincidence, on the very same day that the DOJ announced that HSBC would not be indicted for its multiple money-laundering felonies, the New York Times published a story featuring the harrowing story of an African-American single mother of three who was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 27 for a minor drug offense: "Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the lockbox, containing a half-kilogram of cocaine, to be evidence of her guilt. "But the defendant and the judge fully agreed about the fairness of the sentence he imposed in federal court. "'Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing,' Judge Vinson told Ms. George, 'your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence.' "Yet the judge had no other option on that morning 15 years ago. As her stunned family watched, Ms. George, then 27, who had never been accused of violence, was led from the courtroom to serve a sentence of life without parole. "'I remember my mom crying out and asking the Lord why,' said Ms. George, now 42, in an interview at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. 'Sometimes I still can't believe myself it could happen in America.'" As the NYT notes - and read her whole story to get the full flavor of it - this is commonplace for the poor and for minorities in the US justice system. Contrast that deeply oppressive, merciless punishment system with the full-scale immunity bestowed on HSBC - along with virtually every powerful and rich lawbreaking faction in America over the last decade - and that is the living, breathing two-tiered US justice system. How this glaringly disparate, and explicitly status-based, treatment under the criminal law does not produce serious social unrest is mystifying. Edited December 12, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 14, 2012 Author Share Posted December 14, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? Everyone is fair game: Spy agency conducts surveillance on all US citizens Posted on December 14, 2012 by # 1 NWO Hatr RT News The Obama administration overruled recommendations from within the US Department of Homeland Security and implemented new guidelines earlier this year that allow the government to gather and analyze intelligence on every single US citizen. Since the spring, a little-know intelligence agency outside of Washington, DC has been able to circumvent the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and conduct dragnet surveillance of the entire country, combing massive datasets using advanced algorithms to search and seize personal info on anyone this wish, reports the Wall Street Journal this week. There’s no safeguard that says only Americans with criminal records are the ones included, and it’s not just suspected terrorists that are considered in the searches either. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has been provided with entire government databases and given nearly endless access to intelligence on everyone in the country, regardless of whether or not they’ve done anything that would have made them a person of interest. As long as data is “reasonably believed” to contain “terrorism information,” the agency can do as they wish. What’s more is the NCTC can retain that information for years, reviewing it whenever they’d like to take a look. The update to the agency’s policies, reported by RT at the time and reexamined this week in the Journal, expose any person in the country to invasive and nearly endless government surveillance. “This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public,” Mary Ellen Callahan is reported by the Journal to have said during a Situation Room meeting earlier this year within the walls of the White House. At the time, Callahan was chief privacy officer at DHS as well as one of the only staffers inside the Obama administration concerned with what was about to happen. According to documents obtained by the Journal through Freedom of Information Act requests and conversations between the paper and persons familiar with that Situation Room sound-off, Ms. Callahan unsuccessfully argued against updating a 2008 Justice Department memo about what intel the NCTC can have and how they use it. Just weeks after that meeting, new guidelines were authorized and, within months, Ms. Callahan was working elsewhere. Despite her efforts, a 32-page document, “Guidelines for Access, Retention, Use and Dissemination by the National Counterterrorism Center and other Agencies of Information in Datasets Containing Non-Terrorism Information,” went into effect, and with that the NCTC was no longer restricted to only terrorism-related intelligence and instead “The 2008 memo’s title referred to NCTC’s access to ‘terrorism information’ contained in non-terrorism datasets. The 2012 title simply refers to ‘information’ in those datasets,” reports the Journal. “The removal of the world ‘terrorism’ is an indication of how this memo expands NCTC’s mandate to allow surveillance of US citizens based on more than just the terrorism information.’” Indeed, the changes aren’t just within the name of the document. The 2012 update to the NCTC’s data-mining policies expand the intelligence the agency can comb while at the same time removing safeguards that were in place for privacy’s sake. Under the new rules, data on innocent Americans can be retained for five years, and intel on anyone “reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information” can be kept until the end of time. “It’s breathtaking” in its scope, one former senior administration official tells the Journal. According to the paper, “flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others” can be collected indefinitely and searched at will within the NCTC, an agency only nine years old and not nearly as well-known as her sister spy groups: the CIA and FBI. Once the NCTC has the info, though, they can decide who else can be made privy to it. If the US government is so inclined, intelligence on specific citizens can be sent to any foreign nation in the world. “Literally anything the government collects would be fair game, and the original agency in charge of protecting the privacy of those records would have little say over whether this happened, or what the spy agency did with the information afterward,” writes Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s DC branch. Calabrese testified before Congress earlier this year, and in a blog post authored by him in July, he describes just how detrimental the new policies are to personal privacy. “That sharing can happen in relation to national security and safety, drug investigations [or] if it’s evidence of a crime or to evaluate sources or contacts. This boundless sharing is broad enough to encompass disclosures to an employer or landlord about someone who NCTC may think is potentially a criminal, or at the request of local law enforcement for vetting an informant,” he writes. On the blog PrivacySOS, civil liberties advocate Kade Crockford condemns the spy program by saying any safeguard that could be implemented wouldn’t end what appears to be a serious constitutional violation. “And even if it was an effective anti-terrorism technique, widespread, warrantless surveillance of every single living human being – suspicious or not – damn sure isn’t democratic practice. We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, not the other way around,” Crockford writes. In his post from earlier this year, the ACLU’s Calabrese says the real dangers could come if the government decides to supplement their statistics with other private information purchased from third-parties. “What if that spy agency could add commercial information, anything it – or any other federal agency – could buy from the huge data aggregators that are monitoring our every move?” he asks. Meanwhile, in-between Calabrese’s original post and the Journal’s article from this week, search giant Googleconfirmed that the federal government has sent more requests for personal user data in 2012 than ever before. “This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise,” Google explained last month. The latest revelation from the Journal of course is but the most recent installation in what has become a remarkable year in terms of finding out the truth about Uncle Sam’s shocking full-fledged surveillance. Throughout 2012, several former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) have stepped up and given interviews about the grievances with the office, particularly their disregard for the privacy of Americans. “When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake told Current TV host Eliot Spitzer earlier this year. Journalist Julia Angwin writes for the Journal that the DHS is currently working out the details on how to provide the NCTC with new lists of data, but acknowledges that every federal agency can come up with their own rules regarding what they want handed over. Earlier this month, former NSA analyst William Binney spoke with RT and said that the FBI — who maintains databases that can be requested by the NCTC under their latest policies — has been storing the emails of every person in America for at least a decade. “So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least,” he said. Upon winning a Callaway award for civic courage in DC last month, Mr. Binney explained that he and other former NSA agents “could not be accessories to violations of the US Constitution.” Ms. Callahan has since left her post within the NCTC and is now practicing law in the nation’s capital focusing specifically on privacy. http://rt.com/usa/news/agency-us-nctc-surveillance-998/ Edited December 14, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 14, 2012 Author Share Posted December 14, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? Robert Dreyfuss The US Military Approves Bombing Children Robert Dreyfuss on December 4, 2012 - 11:34 AM ET THE NATION In October, I blogged about an incident in Afghanistan in which three small children were killed in a US airstrike. In that one small incident, which drew little attention at the time and since, three children aged 12, 10 and 8 were blown to smithereens in a NATO bombing while they were out gathering dung for fuel. Now, in a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids. In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way: The…case of three children allegedly killed in a coalition strike was reported by local officials in Helmand Province’s Nawa district. The officials said that the children were killed in a NATO strike on Sunday afternoon as they were gathering dung to burn as fuel, a common practice in the desert reaches of southern Afghanistan where there are few trees. “When we reached the area I saw the three bodies of children, two boys and one girl, ages 8 to 12 years old. They were from the same family,” said Haji Hayatullah, a member of the tribal council in the Nawa district. Their family is in the livestock business and raises goats and sheep on government land, he said. Mr. Hayatullah added: “They had been collecting the animal dung and were heading home. I saw a sack of dung and another sack that was contaminated with their blood, and I saw three to four holes in the area. It seems the insurgents were digging them to plant mines, but I did not see any men’s bodies.” The children were identified as Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, said Haji Abdul Manaf Khan, the governor of the neighboring Marja district. The deaths occurred near the border of the Marja and Nawa districts. The Marja governor said that NATO forces watched as improvised explosive devices were being planted, and targeted the insurgents planting them. “As a result two I.E.D. planters were killed and the shrapnel killed the three children who were wandering nearby,” he said. Other reports said that three insurgents had been killed. A spokesman for the international forces, Maj. Adam Wojack, said that the coalition forces were aware of the allegations and that the episode was being investigated. “I.S.A.F. did conduct a precision airstrike on three insurgents in Nawa district, and the strike killed all three insurgents,” he said. “None of our reporting shows any civilian casualties or any children.” But on December 3 Gannett, which owns Military Times, ran an article headlined: “Some Afghan Kids Aren’t Bystanders.” It said: When Marines in Helmand province sized up shadowy figures that appeared to be emplacing an improvised explosive device, it looked like a straightforward mission. They got clearance for an airstrike, a Marine official said, and took out the targets. It wasn’t that simple, however. Three individuals hit were 12, 10 and 8 years old, leading the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul to say it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.” But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission. Shockingly, the article quotes a senior officer saying that the military isn’t just out to bomb “military age males,” anymore, but kids, too: “It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.” “Opens our aperture,” indeed. How did a former community organizer and law professor come to preside over such extrajudicial killings? Check out Tom Engelhardt’s “The Barack Obama Story.” Edited December 14, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 18, 2012 Author Share Posted December 18, 2012 (edited) LEFTY OBAMA ?? NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT OR SPIN IT : OBAMA PLANING ON Social Security cuts. Ronald Reagan: 'Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.' the REBUP GOD HAS SPOKEN Edited December 19, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted December 25, 2012 Author Share Posted December 25, 2012 LEFTY OBAMA ?? Obama Gets Four More Years to Bash Hugo Chavez and the Latin American Left President Obama's crass comments about newly-elected Chavez only serve to further alienate himself from Latin America. December 18, 2012 | Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Photo Credit: Victor Soares/ABr President Obama went too far in throwing gratuitous insults at President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on Friday, in an interview in Miami. By doing so, he not only offended the majority of Venezuelans, who voted to re-elect their president on October 7, but even many who did not. Chavez is fighting for his life, recovering from a difficult cancer operation; in Latin America, as in most of the world, this wholly unnecessary vilification of Chavez by Obama is a breach not only of diplomatic protocol but also of ordinary standards of civility. Perhaps even more importantly, Obama's ill-timed aspersions sent an unpleasant message to the rest of the region. While Obama can get away with anything in the major media outlets, you can be sure that his remarks were noticed by the presidents and foreign ministries of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and others. The message was clear: Expect four more years of the same failed, Cold War policies toward Latin America that President George W Bush championed and Obama continued in his first term. These presidents see Chavez as a close friend and ally, someone who has helped them and the region; like millions of Venezuelans they are praying for his recovery. They also see Washington as responsible for the bad relations between the US and Venezuela (as well as the hemisphere generally), and these unfortunate remarks are additional confirmation. At the 2012 Summit of the Americas, Obama found himself as isolated as George W Bush was at the notorious 2005 summit. It was a sea change from the 2009 Summit, where everyone - including Chavez - greeted Obama warmly and saw in him the potential for a new era of US-Latin American relations. To these governments, Obama's broadsides about Chavez's "authoritarian policies" and "suppression of dissent" have a bad smell, even ignoring the offensive timing. Venezuela just had an election in which the opposition, which has most of the income and wealth of the country, as well as most of the media, mobilised millions of voters. The turnout was 81 percent of registered voters, with about 97 percent of the voting-age population registered. The government did not "suppress dissent", nor has it done so in other elections; or even when the dissenters shut down the oil industry and crippled the economy in 2002-2003 - actions which would have been illegal and blocked by the force of the state in the United States. Peaceful protesters in Venezuela are far less likely to get beaten or tear-gassed or shot with rubber bullets by security forces than , and probably most other democracies. Yes, there have been abuses of authority in Venezuela, as in all of the hemisphere - as President Obama should know. It was Obama who defended the imprisonment without trial for more than two-and-a-half years, and abuse in custody, of Bradley Manning, which was condemned by the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture. It is Obama who has refused to grant freedom to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, widely seen throughout the world as a political prisoner, now in a US prison for 37 years. It is Obama who claims the right, and has used it, to kill American citizens without arrest or trial. Venezuela is a middle-income country where the rule of law is relatively weak, as is the state generally (hence the absurdity of calling it "authoritarian"). But compared to other countries of its income level, it does not stand out for anything in the realm of human rights abuses. Certainly there is nothing in Venezuela comparable to the abuses by Washington allies such as Mexico; or Honduras - where candidates for political office, opposition activists, and journalists are regularly murdered. And much of the scholarly research on Venezuela under Chavez shows that it is more democratic and has more civil liberties than ever before in its own history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted December 27, 2012 Share Posted December 27, 2012 It is Obama who has refused to grant freedom to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, widely seen throughout the world as a political prisoner, now in a US prison for 37 years. Like me Paul DeMain long believed in Peltier's innocence. He is a Native American and founder/publisher/editor of Indian Country News and frequently championed the former AIM leader's cause; but then he noticed that the convicted murderer gave various mutually contradictory accounts of where he was and what he did at the time. Finally DeMain became aware of the testimony of a former AIM associate he trusted that Peltier spoke of killing one of the agents in her presence. Peltier's contradictory alibis are very damming, if he was telling the truth his account should have remained consistent. In a few of those accounts he describe a barrage of gunfire coming from the FBI even though the two agents were only armed with hand guns. In one he admitted that he and others “fired off a few shots above their heads, not trying to hit anything or anyone, just to show that we had some kind of defense so they didn't just roll in and slaughter us...” Passage from the book The Individual and Tradition: Folkloristic Perspectives, by Ray Cashman, Tom Mould and Pravina Shukla ( Indiana University Press.) about DeMain's change of heart http://books.google.com/books?id=5n3cxnDeAZ0C&pg=PA229 DeMain's article discussing Peltier's various accounts: http://www.indiancountrynews.info/views.cfm.htm The complete account given to Alden in which Peltier spoke of shooting at the agents: http://www.amazon.co...ader_0312263805 The Alden book excerpt for those without access to Amazon Reader: http://wwwnoparolepe...nother-lie.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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