25 December 2009 By Stephen Lendman
Obama Year One: Betrayal and Failure (Part I)
Obamacare Plans to Ration Healthcare
and Enrich Big Providers
After House passage in November, the Senate is now
about to pass a stealth scheme to ration care and
enrich insurers, the drug cartel, and large hospital
chains, the way Washington always works.
It plans market-based solutions, featuring
cost-containing measures, mostly affecting working
Americans, the poor, elderly, and chronically ill to
make a dysfunctional system worse, under the guise of
reform, the most dangerous and deceptive word in the
language to take cover from when announced.
Besides enriching providers, Obamacare will force
millions to pay more, get less, with millions still
uninsured and left out. Employers will be able to opt
out of providing coverage, but since insurance for
most will be mandated, those without it will have to
buy it or face hundreds of dollars in penalties,
whether or not they can afford it. Even with a public
option, looking less likely, insurers will get to skim
off the cream, charge what they wish, profit
handsomely at low risk, and leave Washington stuck
with ones industry doesn't want. For providers, it's a
win-win under any version being considered.
Most disturbing are planned Medicare cuts, around $400
- $570 billion, depending on which numbers are most
accurate, and these are for starters, a foot in the
door if enacted, toward the long-term aim ending
Medicare, then Medicaid and Social Security because,
at $106 trillion in unfunded liabilities, budget
constraints can't sustain them.
The Congressional Budget Office's June 2009 "Long-Term
Budget Outlook" suggests a nation in decline,
eventual hyperinflation, possible bankruptcy because
of a greater national debt than during the Great
Depression and near-surpassing WW II. The
administration's solution - end entitlements over 100
million Americans rely on, but it still may be too
little, too late given an overstretched budget, a
weakening dollar, and foreign investors looking for
safer returns on their capital, so are less willing to
fund Washington's excesses.
In Obama's America, the least advantaged will carry
the load, not privileged elites, but don't expect
congressional opposition to stop him or news reports
to explain it.
Obama's Permanent War Agenda
As president, he heads an imperial enterprise presided
over by a war cabinet engaged in lawless militarism,
aggressive wars, the permanent occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan, the planned conquest of Eurasia, and
world dominance overall, with a defense budget
exceeding the rest of the world combined at a time
America has no enemies.
Yet, as a candidate, he opposed imperial militarism,
promised limited escalation only, and pledged to
remove all combat troops from Iraq by August 31, 2010.
Then on February 27, he said:
"As a candidate for president, I made clear my support
for a timeline of 16 months to carry out this
drawdown, while pledging to consult closely with our
military commanders upon taking office to ensure that
we preserve the gains we've made and protect our
troops. Those consultations are now complete, and I
have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat
brigades over the next 18 months. Let me say this as
plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat
mission in Iraq will end."
Not so fast according to Defense Secretary Robert
Gates who told reporters that up to 50,000 will
remain, and Obama himself then suggested year end 2011
and maybe later - as always, depending on conditions
on the ground to provide an out for the real agenda,
permanent occupation with a reduced force if possible.
He also promised two more brigades maximum for
Afghanistan, or 10,000 troops. Instead, he ordered
17,000 sent initially, then after his December 1
announcement, the number reached five-fold his
original pledge, likely heading higher in the new year
as political promises are made to be broken.
Besides the Afghan escalation, he's also destabilizing
Pakistan to balkanize both countries, weakening them
to control the Caspian Sea's oil and gas riches and
their energy routes to secured ports for export. The
strategy includes encircling Russia, China, and Iran,
obstructing their solidarity and cohesion, defusing a
feared geopolitical alliance, toppling the Iranian
government, perhaps attacking its nuclear sites,
eliminating Israel's main regional rival, and securing
unchallenged Eurasian dominance over this resource
rich part of the world that includes China, Russia,
the Middle East, and Indian subcontinent.
Like his predecessor, Obama also plans more -
unchallengeable global control, the strategy first
revealed in the 1998 US Space Command document, Vision
for 2020. Later released in 2000 as DOD Joint Vision
2020, it called for "full spectrum dominance" over all
land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space,
electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with
enough overwhelming power to wage and win global wars
against any adversary, including preemptively with
nuclear weapons.
With other means as well, including propaganda,
compromised NGOs, Color Revolutions for regime change,
expanding NATO eastward, and various other ways for
unchallengeable control - including over resource rich
parts of Africa like Nigeria, Sudan, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Somalia on its
strategic Horn adjacent to the Red Sea, Suez Canal,
and vital commercial waterways. War rages there with
America backing Transitional Federal Government (TFG)/African
Union forces to keep the Islamist resistance from
regaining power - the same forces under which Somalia
had its only stability in the last two decades or
more.
Closer to home, the June 28 Honduran coup deposing
democratically elected Manuel Zelaya was a coordinated
State Department - Pentagon project working closely
with Honduran commanders and top opposition political
figures to establish a de facto dictatorship. The
staged November 29 presidential election was meant for
closure with a new president/oligarch taking over on
January 27 as Zelaya can't succeed himself.
According to Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)
Director Larry Birns, the episode represents Obama's
"First Latin American Waterloo" as Washington's
"solution" remains a "profound problem for much of the
rest of the hemisphere, as well as for long-term ties
with such major regional actors as Brazil, Argentina,
and the Venezuelan-led ALBA nations." They won't
recognize an illegitimately elected leader, so for
now, call it stalemate with round two to come,
involving a determined popular resistance against
fascist coup plotters they want removed and out of
power.
Obama's overall Latin American policy is just as
troubling. It allocated half a billion dollars in
military and related aid to Mexico's right-wing
Calderon regime and to militarize the nation's border.
Plan Colombia supplies more, billions for new weapons
and technology on the pretext of fighting drugs
trafficking and protecting regional security. Not so.
It's about lawless imperialism and raw power, not
drugs or other subterfuge.
During his late June White House visit, Colombian
president Alvaro Uribe gave the Pentagon access to
seven new military bases, plus nine others currently
stationing US forces supplemented by the April 2008
Fourth Fleet reactivation after a 60 year hiatus.
Meant to militarize the continent and intimidate
Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and other center-left
governments, the move sparked outrage and concern with
Hugo Chavez saying:
"They are surrounding Venezuela (and regional nations)
with military bases (and may) soon start sending
thousands of North American soldiers to Colombia.
(They're) contract soldiers who are nothing more than
paramilitary mercenaries and assassins. Airplanes,
radar, sophisticated weapons, bombs - and, of course,
they say it's to fight drug trafficking."
Given past coup attempts against Chavez and the June
Honduran one, perhaps also to topple leaders not
firmly in Washington's camp to give America regional
dominance, not diplomatically but with raw power under
a rogue leader like the others.
Travesty in Oslo - Peace Prize to a War Criminal
In choosing Obama, the Nobel Committee's October 9
announcement followed its long, ignoble tradition by
anointing another war criminal, a man heading an
imperial war machine, disdainful of peace, and
currently escalating America's global dominance
agenda, potentially threatening planetary survival.
Yet, the corporate media defended the award and
practically gushed over Obama's acceptance speech. On
December 10, New York Times writer Jeff Zeleny
highlighted his claim that "some wars (are) necessary
and just....in the fight against oppression."
The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson said "President
Obama accepted the Nobel for peacemaking by delivering
an eloquent, often grim treatise on the nature and
necessity of warfare (and) drew a clear distinction
between the world as we would like it to be and the
world as it is."
Unsurprising, the Nation magazine concurred on
National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" with
editor Katrina vanden Heuvel (a notorious Obama and
Democrat party flack masquerading as a progressive)
praising the speech's "humility and grace."
According to the magazine's political writer, John
Nichols:
"The president's frankness about the controversies and
concerns regarding the award of a Peace Prize to a man
who just last week ordered 30,000 US new troops into
the Afghanistan quagmire, and the humility he
displayed....offered a glimpse of Obama at his best.
As such, the speech was important and, dare we say,
hopeful."
For what, more war?
In Oslo, Obama's message was clear - expect permanent
wars in the wake of his Afghan escalation, widening it
to Pakistan, threatening Iran, destabilizing Eurasia,
militarizing South America, claiming "all responsible
nations must embrace the role that militaries with a
clear mandate can play to keep the peace," then saying
warriors should be honored "not as makers of war, but
as wagers of peace."
"War is peace," Orwell's message and why the award
legitimizes wars and the leaders who wage them.
Torture as Official US Policy Under Obama
Given a year of betrayal and failure, continuing the
Bush torture policy is unsurprising despite Obama's
January 22 Executive Order (EO) directing the CIA to
shut its secret prisons network and close Guantanamo
"as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from
the date of this order." That was then. This is now
with a new president as lawless and ruthless as George
Bush, and in some respects much worse.
Guantanamo is still open. "Black site" torture-prisons
remain active globally, and the practice continues
virulently as official US policy, despite
international and US laws prohibiting it at all times,
under all conditions with no allowed exceptions.
The Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 bans:
-- "violence to life and person, in particular murder
of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
-- carrying out sentences or executions "without
previous judgment pronounced by a regularly
constituted court affording all the judicial
guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by
civilized peoples;" and
-- caring for the wounded and sick, including by an
impartial body like the ICRC "offer(ing) its services
to the Parties to the conflict."
At least two US laws are also explicit - the 1996 War
Crimes Act and 1994 Torture Statute. The Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court Explanatory
Memorandum calls torture a crime against humanity - a
"particularly odious (offense and) a serious attack on
human dignity," (the result of) government policy (or)
condoned by a government or a de facto authority." For
decades and under Obama, America is a serial abuser in
defiance of the law and civilized human behavior.
Gutting Constitutional Cruel and Unusual Punishments
Prohibition and Due Process Protection
The Fifth Amendment says no person shall "be deprived
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law." The Fourteenth Amendment holds government
subservient to the law and guarantees due process
respect for everyone's legal right to judicial
fairness on matters relating to life, liberty, or
property. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and
unusual punishments.
No longer after the Supreme Court in mid-December, at
the behest of the Obama administration, upheld a lower
court decision declaring torture an ordinary, expected
consequence of military detention and directing future
courts, by presidential order, to treat "suspected
enemy combatant(s)" as non-persons with no rights or
judicial standing.
Henceforth, torture-extracted confessions will be
admissible in civil or military commission trials,
despite earlier High Courts ruling them
unconstitutional. In Brown v. Mississippi (February
1936), the Court ruled that:
"The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted
for the witness stand" in citing Fisher v. State
(November 1926) stating:
"Coercing the supposed state's criminals into
confessions and using such confessions so coerced from
them against them in trials has been the curse of all
countries. It was the chief iniquity, the crowing
infamy of the Star Chamber (the notorious 15th - 17th
century English court), and the Inquisition, and other
similar institutions. The Constitution recognized the
evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited
them in this country....wherever the court is clearly
satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse
to sanction such violation and will apply the
corrective."
The Constitution also affirms judicial fairness for
everyone under the law. No longer after the High Court
acquiesced to Obama's request to deny it to
administration-declared non-persons.
Obama's War on Labor
On March 30, Obama told Detroit's auto giants: "We
cannot....must not (and) will not let (this) industry
vanish," then laid down a clear marker that labor, not
business, must take the pain through:
-- fewer jobs;
-- less pay;
-- reduced benefits, including lost pensions and free
retiree healthcare; and
-- gutted work rules, including health and safety
on-the-job protections, on top of everything
sacrificed in 2007 negotiations when the UAW
leadership sold out to management, then muscled the
rank and file to go along.
The fate of the nation's auto workers is spreading
nationally as low-pay/few or no benefits jobs replace
once solid manufacturing ones, increasingly offshored
to low-wage countries leaving fewer opportunities for
skilled workers at home.
For decades, America's organized labor has been in
decline, especially since the 1980s, but the Employee
Free Choice Act (EFCA) offers hope. After failing in
the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses, March 2009
House and Senate bills aim to restore worker rights at
a time they're seriously eroded, given that 90% of
employers oppose unions with government on their side.
If pressured to offer more, nearly half threaten to
close plants and other work sites. Many coerce,
threaten and/or bribe workers to be union-free, and
around 30% illegally fire pro-union employees and get
away with it.
EFCA offers hope by creating a level playing field. If
enacted, it will enforce fair collective bargaining
and let workers freely decide, by majority vote,
whether or not to form a union, without fear of
employer retribution. It's the first pro-labor bill
since the 1935 Wagner Act let workers bargain on equal
terms with management, and a reversal of decades of
lost rights.
Thus far, House and Senate bills are stalled in
committees, and despite earlier administration
support, getting the required 60 Senate votes won't
come without as much Obama pressure as he's applying
on healthcare. His silence shows non-support and the
likelihood that EFCA is dead in 2009, perhaps in the
111th Congress, and the 112th one to follow.
Targeting Public Education for Destruction -
Reinventing No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Enacted in January 2002, NCLB claimed it would close
the achievement gap between inner city and rural
schools and more affluent ones by setting high reading
and math standards, then testing to assure they're
achieved. However, the law's real aim is to commodify
education, end government's responsibility for it, and
make it another business profit center, thereby
depriving millions of the nation's youths (mostly
disadvantaged ones) of the education they deserve.
Reauthorizing NCLB stalled in Congress for good
reason. It's long on testing, school choice, and
market-based reforms, but short on real achievement.
It's built around rote learning, standardized test,
requiring teachers to teach to the test, assessing
results by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, and
punishing failure by firing teachers and principals,
closing schools, and transforming them from public to
charter or for-profit ones.
Obama plans to invent a failed policy, rename it,
claim NCLB's shortcomings are fixed, and have his
education secretary, Arne Duncan, do for the nation
what he did to Chicago as CEO of the city's public
schools - deny their students real education as
repeated underperformance results showed, and no
wonder. During his tenure and continuing today,
privatization schemes continue, inner city schools are
being closed, remaining ones are neglected and
decrepit, classroom sizes are increasing, and
children, as a result, are sacrificed on the alter of
marketplace triumphalism.
Obama-ed promises more of the same:
-- favoring charter or for-profit schools over public
ones;
-- running them by marketplace rules;
-- requiring state laws conform to federal ones, in
violation of the 10th Amendment mandating "powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States, or to the people;" education isn't
mentioned in the Constitution;
-- linking teacher pay to student performance as
determined by standardized tests that measure rote
memory, not real learning;
-- putting Washington bureaucrats in charge of
undermining states, local school boards, and the right
of parents to decide what's best for their children;
-- requiring federal mandates be followed to qualify
for funding;
-- creating a two-tiered, class and income-based
system favoring affluent school districts over
inner-city ones; and
-- effectively destroying public education in Obama's
America.
Promoting Dangerous Vaccines for a Non-Existent Threat
For months, Obama officials and the complicit media
hyped a fake Swine Flu threat. Then on June 11, the
WHO declared its highest Level 6 influenza pandemic
alert followed by its Director-General, Dr. Margaret
Chan, warning that H1N1 is "unstoppable" while
admitting that most cases are mild, no different than
seasonal flu, and many people recover unaided.
Many experts, including the world's foremost
authority, Dr. Viera Scheibner, in her writings and on
The Lendman News Hour, warn that all vaccines are
ineffective, dangerous, and often cause the illnesses
they're designed to prevent, and no wonder. Their
harmful toxins include mercury, aluminum,
formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), and
squalene adjuvants known to weaken the human immune
system, making it vulnerable to serious auto-immune
diseases like paralysis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis,
ALS, severe allergies, arthritis, encephalitis, and
many others.
Disturbing evidence suggests that Swine Flu vaccines
were bioengineered, are extremely dangerous,
potentially lethal, and must be avoided. So why did
Obama declare a public health emergency in October,
and why are his officials stoking fear to encourage,
then perhaps mandate, that everyone take them - ones
rushed to market without safety testing that are
already causing troublesome problems and reported
deaths.
It's no coincidence that a declared emergency
coincides with an economic crisis causing millions to
lose jobs, homes, savings, and better futures. Or that
drug giants see a profit bonanza from the global
vaccination campaign. Perhaps a diabolical
depopulation scheme also, based on the flawed
assumption that global economic sustainability depends
on reducing world numbers drastically because
available resources are inadequate for 6.8 billion
people (by US Census Bureau estimates), and they're
taking up space anyway so get rid of them, including
millions of Americans. Obama may be heading a global
cabal to do it.
Denying Budget-Strapped States Financial Help
At a time 48 of the 50 states have growing budget
shortfalls, and a new Pew Center on the States (PCS)
report shows 10 in fiscal peril, the Obama
administration is denying needed aid, forcing them to
freeze hiring, cut jobs, lower wages, and impose
austerity by gutting welfare programs, education,
health care for the poor, and other vital services at
a time they're most needed. Ahead expect extended hard
times that will impact the disadvantaged most while
official Washington steps up imperial madness and more
handouts to the rich.
Growing Poverty, Hunger, Homelessness, and Numbers of
Uninsured
Under Obama, like his predecessor, America helps the
rich at the expense of all others, especially the
least advantaged. The data are alarming and growing
worse:
-- state budget deficits are in free fall due to the
worst decline in tax receipts in decades, and
conditions in 2010 and 2011 may get worse;
-- revised 2008 US census data show 47.4 million
Americans (one in six) below the poverty line - a
conservative estimate compared to others placing it
much higher based on a more accurate definition of
poverty;
-- USDA data show food stamp use at record highs at a
time 49 million Americans (again one in six)
experience hunger, including 17 million children;
-- up to three million experience homelessness,
including many low-wage earners and others at risk in
case of an unexpected financial burden like a missed
paycheck or health emergency;
-- a 2008 OECD report on inequality and poverty ranked
America highest among its 30 members, only ahead of
Mexico and Turkey;
-- a 2008 Working Poor Families Project study shows
these households keep getting poorer as the wealth
disparity between rich and all others widens;
-- other reports show disturbing evidence of economic
duress affecting growing millions of Americans while
officials and media reports hail recession's end and
credit Obama for achieving it - at a time the true
picture is dire for a growing majority;
-- at least 50 million are uninsured; thousands more
join them weekly; and
-- unemployment tops 20% with all excluded categories
included.
Overall, it's America's dark side that politicians and
media pundits suppress at a time Wall Street is having
a party, courtesy of bailout billions, licensed fraud,
manipulated markets, and Washington turning a blind
eye while millions struggle to get by and many more
can't.
Legislation to License Pollution, Fraud, and Unbridled
Speculation
Introduced in May, HR 2454: American Clean Energy and
Security Act of 2009 (ACESA) lets corporate polluters
reap huge windfall profits by charging consumers more
for energy and fuel, yet does nothing to address
environmental issues. On June 26, the House narrowly
passed it, then sent it to the Senate where it remains
stalled.
Ahead of the House vote, Obama lied in hailing the
"historic proportions (of this) legislation that will
open the door to a new, clean energy economy."
Polluters love it and with good reason. So does Wall
Street lobbying hard for passage.
If enacted, it will increase speculation through a new
carbon trading derivatives bonanza with a potential
market value of up to $10 trillion annually according
to some estimates - so watch out for the mother of all
bubbles Wall Street is lobbying hard to get passed.
It's a scam that, according to Catherine Austin Fitts,
will "make the housing and derivatives bubbles look
like target practice" as well as license pollution and
fraud. More evidence of official corruption under a
crime boss president, who promised UN Climate Change
Conference (COP 15 Copenhagen) participants that
America plans substantial greenhouse gas cuts over the
next decade while concealing his real commitment and
that of the conference.
Purportedly for a draft treaty replacing Kyoto's
expiration in 2012, it's a power grab, according to
some, including former Margaret Thatcher advisor, Lord
Christopher Monckton. He warns of an unprecedented
transnational government scheme under an unnamed,
unelected UN body, empowered to intervene in the
financial, economic, tax, and environmental affairs of
all signatories and thus violate their sovereignty. He
warned Americans that "unless you stop it, your
president will sign your freedom, your democracy and
your prosperity away forever."
It will also further a global carbon trading
derivatives scheme huge enough to "make the housing
and derivatives bubbles look like target practice,"
and be another betrayal by a president promising
change.
On December 7, AP reported that:
"The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step
(today) toward regulating greenhouse gases, concluding
that climate changing pollution threatens the public
health and the environment," and that carbon dioxide
should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
According to some, this ruling may let Obama bypass
Congress, and effectively pass the cap and trade bill
without the consent of the Senate. According to
others, however, doing so would be a lawless
impeachable act. At issue is whether he'll risk it.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement's (ACTA)
Assault on Net Neutrality, Consumer Privacy, and Civil
Liberties
Launched in October 2007, secret negotiations continue
for a new intellectual property enforcement treaty
that if adopted will subvert Net Neutrality, privacy,
and personal freedom, and pressure all nations to
comply under universally binding top-down rules
overriding national sovereignty.
What's been leaked so far includes:
-- a proposed top-down enforcement regime requiring
ISPs to disclose customer information;
-- mandating ISPs cooperate with right holders to
remove infringing content;
-- new anti-camcording rules; and
-- network-level filtering to enforce a
three-strikes-and-you're-out rule against consumers
found three times to have infringed copyrighted
content; the penalty - Internet connection
termination.
These provisions way exceed current treaty obligations
by imposing binding copyright demands requiring that:
-- ISPs police copyrighted material and deter
unauthorized storage and transmission of alleged
infringed content;
-- ISPs terminate Internet access of alleged repeat
offenders or be liable;
-- alleged infringed material be removed;
-- digital rights management (DRM) rules be enforced
relating to systems that identify, track, authorize,
and restrict access to digital media - purportedly to
protect and enforce copyrights, patents, trademarks,
and other intellectual property forms; and
-- global Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
rules be imposed relating to intellectual property
that will effectively censor online content, subvert
free expression, invade privacy, deny due process, and
undermine innovation.
If ACTA is adopted, consumer Internet communications
and content will be monitored, threatening privacy,
civil liberties, and a free and open Internet.
Empowering Agribusiness Under the Guise of Enhancing
Food Safety
In July, the House passed the 2009 Food Safety
Enhancement Act (FSEA) and referred it to the Senate,
where the 2009 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)
is being considered. It's been passed out of committee
for debate by the full body, perhaps before year end
or sometime in January.
If enacted, it will empower agribusiness and adversely
impact small farmers and food producers. While
omitting effective food safety reforms, both House and
Senate versions impose costly, burdensome regulations
that will put many small growers and producers out of
business for greater industry consolidation.
Included will be new standards based only on a "reason
to believe" food may be adulterated, misbranded or
otherwise in violation of the new law. In other words,
suspicion alone, without proof, will prohibit food
sales or recalls as well as force area quarantines if
ordered, not applicable to food giants because their
officials staff the FDA, the enforcing body they
control. In addition, imprisonment and/or heavy fines
may be imposed for failing to register a facility,
misbranding, not conducting a hazard analysis, or
failing to fill out the required paperwork - all of
which greatly burdens small operators without staff
enough to comply.
For effective food safety, measures should target
agribusiness and imports, not the nation's safe local
food system. Obama's plan does the opposite.
Obama Endorses Preventive Detention
On May 21, Obama addressed national security and civil
liberties issues, including the Guantanamo detainees,
military commissions, and torture. Saying his "single
most important responsibility as president is to keep
the American people safe," he claimed Al Qaeda "is
actively planning to attack us again (and) this threat
will be with us for a long time...." He then announced
the following:
-- prohibiting "enhanced interrogation techniques"
that continue unchanged to the present;
-- closing Guantanamo that's still open with no
progress on his "order;"
-- trying "detainees who violate the laws of war (by)
military commissions" that assure no possibility of
due process or judicial fairness; and
-- including detainees ordered released, prevention
detention of those at Guantanamo "who cannot be
prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American
people," without seeking statutory power to
institutionalize it.
These men, about four or five dozen, will be held
without charges or trials indefinitely on the dubious
post-9/11 power authorizing the president to use force
against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
No civilized state does this, uses military
commissions in lieu of civil courts, practices
torture, then uses evidence from it to convict.
Following Obama's speech, Michael Ratner, President of
the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said:
"The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and
then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would
send people before irredeemably flawed military
commissions and seek to create a preventive detention
scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new
location and give it a new name." Or perhaps keep it
operating as now appears likely.
CCR's Guantanamo project Managing Attorney, Shayana
Kadidal added: "Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. We have courts and laws in place that we respect and rely on because we have been a nation of laws for hundreds of years; we should not simply discard them when they are inconvenient.
The new president is looking a lot like the old one."
The nation looks increasingly despotic, no different
from history's worst under a rogue leader waging
global imperial wars and destroying at home civil
liberties.
Obama's Discrimination Against Haitian Immigrants
It's a familiar story for the hemisphere's poorest,
least wanted, and most abused people at home and in
America. Currently, about 35,000 undocumented Haitians
reside in US cities, the result of deplorable
conditions at home, including deep poverty and a
repressive UN paramilitary Blue Helmet occupation
after the Bush administration's 2004 coup d'etat
against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, democratically elected
and now deposed into forced exile.
For months, they've sought but not received Temporary
Protected Status (TPS) after the Bush administration
denied it, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) officials ordered forced deportations to the
worst of conditions at home.
Immigration lawyer and long-time TPS advocate, Steve
Forester, represents them in South Florida for the
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. After
months into the new Obama administration, he expressed
surprise and anger that:
"we have not yet gotten a response to our request to
at least give people the dignity of the right to work
while the administration continues, month after month,
to review the propriety of granting TPS, which to us
and every objective observer is a no-brainer, based on
the four hurricanes and storms that hit Haiti in a
one-month period a year ago," and devastation from
them remains.
After Congress established TPS in 1990, Washington
granted 260,000 Salvadorans, 82,000 Hondurans, and
5,000 Nicaraguans protection, then extended it as
deadlines expired. It grants temporary immigration
status to undocumented residents unable to return home
due to armed conflict, environmental disasters, or
other "extraordinary temporary conditions." Nationals
from numerous other nations got it, but not Haitians,
most in need, least helped, and thus far scorned by
America's first black president, no different than the
rest.
S. 1261: Pass ID Act
Introduced in the Senate in June, now in committee
awaiting debate by the full body, it's a measure to
revive the enacted Real ID Act of 2005 that if
enforced would mandate every US citizen and legal
resident have a national identity card that in most
cases will be a driver's license. It requires it to
contain personal information to open a bank account,
board an airplane, be able to vote, or conduct
virtually any other essential business.
If embedded, as some fear, with an RFID chip,
universal monitoring will be possible of everyone,
everywhere at all times, a ghoulish nightmare civil
libertarians stress must be avoided as well as
mandating national ID cards. So do many states.
Many derailed it, some with statutes prohibiting its
implementation, others from a resolution denouncing
it. Now it's revived in Senate committee awaiting a
full debate in 2010 under an administration seeking
new police state powers beyond the many he inherited.
Obama Opposes Whisleblowers and Journalists Who
Protect Their Anonymity
In February, the 2009 Free Flow of Information Act was
introduced in the House and Senate. In March, the
lower body overwhelmingly passed it, and it's now in
Senate committee awaiting floor debate for a measure
"to maintain the free flow of information to the
public...."
Yet Obama worked to weaken it in opposition to strong
congressional support. The House measure lets judges
weigh the public's right to know against national
security considerations in cases where prosecutors
judicially challenge reporters to reveal their
sources. Obama wants them revealed whenever the White
House says national security issues are at stake and
got its way in a late October compromise.
Not yet passed in the Senate, spokesman Ben LaBolt
said the president expects to sign the measure in
weakened form that excludes cases of leaked classified
information or if the administration claims sources
must be revealed to prevent or mitigate terrorism or
any acts harmful to national security that can include
almost anything with no substantiating corroboration.
Other Anti-Democratic Measures
Providing continuity, not progressive change, Obama
also:
-- continues extraordinary renditions to hellhole
prisons and torture as official US policy;
-- opposes detainee habeas lawsuits in them;
-- won't prosecute Bush administration high-level
officials involved in torturing and killing detainees;
-- withholds evidence proving their culpability;
-- invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent
lawsuits by victims of rendition, torture, abuse, and
by those opposing warrantless wiretapping; and
-- governs with lawless police state authority as
extreme, and in some cases, worse than George Bush.
Final Comments
After less than one year in office, Obama:
-- presides over a bogus democracy under a homeland
police state apparatus;
-- embraces militarism, imperial wars, and lawlessness
like his predecessor;
-- erodes human rights, civil liberties, and
constitutional freedoms;
-- keeps looting the federal Treasury for Wall Street;
-- plans new global monetary measures to control the
world's money;
-- targets whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, Latino
immigrants, environmental and animal rights activists,
and lawyers who defend them too vigorously;
-- illegally spies on Americans as aggressively as
George Bush;
-- destroyed decades of hard won labor rights;
-- wants public education privatized as another
business profit center to destroy a 375 year
tradition;
-- disdains the public interest in times of growing
economic duress;
-- wants everyone inoculated with dangerous, toxic
vaccines for a non-existent health threat;
-- backs so-called reform that will ration care and
enrich insurers, the drug cartel, and large hospital
chains;
-- wants legislation passed to let corporate polluters
reap huge windfall profits by raising energy costs and
create a speculative bonanza with a new carbon trading
derivatives scheme;
-- other legislation to empower agribusiness; and
-- a mandated national ID card for all citizens and
legal residents to be able to monitor them everywhere
at all times. Obama wants to do George Bush one better by continuing the worst of his policies, enact more of his own, and destroy the middle class to turn America into Guatamala with ruling elites governing a nation of serfs. Well on his way, he's got three more years to succeed unless mass public outrage stops him.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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