War and the Economy:
We Must Take our Countries Back
This is a huge mistake.
Obama is now seen to be waffling, not decisive. Obama is seen as bowing down before Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.
Contrary to the GOP position, releasing these photos does not weaken national security. The actions DEPICTED in the photos endanger national security by creating enemies of this country and convincing those enemies that it is far better to die in battle than to be captured alive.
A former FBI agent who interrogated suspected terrorists told a Senate panel Wednesday that no actionable intelligence was gained from “enhanced interrogations” such as waterboarding.
“I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,” said Ali Soufan who worked for the FBI from 1997 to 2005. “These techniques, from an operational perspective, are slow, ineffective, unreliable, and harmed our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.”
Lees verder bij Raw Story
Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistaans terrorist en al minstens twee keer gestorven , eist de verantwoordelijkheid op voor de schietpartij in Binghamton, New York State....
En ondertussen wordt de strijd in Waziristan, Pakistan, opgevoerd.
“Behalve dan dat ik niet denk dat Obama zich zonder meer voor het karretje van de (extreme) Zionisten zal laten spannen. De VS en Israël hebben elkaar lange tijd in een soort verstikkende omklemming gehouden.”
Als we er van uit gaan dat Obama een onafhankelijke weg probeert te volgen heeft hij de eerste slag al verloren, met de haatcampagne door neoconservatieven en de Israel Lobby tegen Chas Freeman, die benoemd zou worden tot voorzitter van de Nationale Inlichtingenraad. Dit is uiteindelijk niet door gegaan.
Belangrijk om te weten is dat Freeman zeer kritisch is op de “war on terror” van de Bush-kliek, alsmede op de manier waarop Israël met de bezette gebieden omgaat.
Ten tweede is bv. de Nowruz-videoboodschap, waarin Obama zogezegd de hand reikt aan Iran, een behoorlijke instinker. Hoewel zeer sympathiek van toon, is het op leugenachtige wijze in de media gebracht:
“In die boodschap liet Obama Iran weten de verbroken banden weer aan te willen halen. Iran moet dan wel stoppen met de productie van kernwapens”
(o.a. RTL Nieuws ,ff googlen, ook op transcripties)
Obama noemt nergens nucleaire wapens in de toespraak, en verder is er ook volgens de IAEA en de Amerikaanse geheime diensten geen bewijs voor een streven naar Iraanse kernwapenproductie, al is het maar omdat het land nog lang niet in staat is de vereiste graad van uranium-verrijking te halen.
Dus in Iran denkt de bevolking wellicht dat er een oprechte Amerikaanse vredesboodschap is uitgezonden, terwijl via de Westerse media nog steeds de angst voor een nucleair Iran wordt gevoed aan de hand van dezelfde boodschap.
En dat brengt mij op Joop @24:
Ik heb The Boogeyman gelezen, en hoewel ik het een boeiend boek vind, die me aan het denken heeft gezet, ben ik er nog niet helemaal uit in hoeverre het ook werkelijk kloppend is. (dat weet de auteur overigens ook) Misschien ga ik daar nog wel eens dieper op in, bij een andere gelegenheid.
Maar waar de auteur zeker een punt heeft, net als vele andere auteurs, activisten en filmmakers, is dat de nieuwsstromen in de mainstream-media behoorlijk gestuurd lijken te worden door een relatief kleine groep belanghebbenden. Ook denkers als Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky en Naomi Klein maken gewag van dit soort mechanismen, en de oudere SP’er kent dit verschijnsel absoluut nog uit vroegere tijden, zelfs op lokaal nivo.
De gespleten presentatie in de media van Obama’s Nowruz-video lijkt me ook een duidelijk voorbeeld van media-manipulatie, en ik moet toegeven dat het mogelijk is dat Obama hiervan zich zelf niet eens bewust was.
Het loont in ieder geval de moeite om uit te zoeken welke media-conglomeraten de macht hebben, welke lobby’s daar een stevige vinger in de pap hebben. Heb ik zelf al gedaan, maar het is interessanter, beste meelezers
, om dat zelf te doen. Maar probeer wel je intuitie te gebruiken qua bronnen.
Transcript van Obama's boodschap
Eliot Spitzer, the former New York Governor who was set-up in a sex scandal to prevent him investigating Wall Street’s financial gangsterism, pointed out on March 17 that the real scandal is the billions of taxpayer dollars paid to the counter-parties of AIG’s financial deals. These payments, Spitzer writes, are “a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.”...
Lees verder op Counterpunch
The Bush/Obama bailouts require serious investigation. Were these bailouts necessary, or were they a scam, like “weapons of mass destruction,” used to advance a private agenda behind a wall of fear?
Secretary Clinton apparently did not believe that the Iranian President’s remarks during last month’s 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution celebration that his nation was ready to talk with the United States constituted a response. Nor apparently did the numerous other times since President Obama’s elections in which the Iranian government spoke of its eagerness to improve relations.
We didn’t elect President Obama to preserve the Bush administration’s anti-contistutional executive power grab. We elected him to end it.
The fact is, most Pakistanis believe religion is a private matter and should be separate from the public sphere. But that doesn't inhibit the TTP and other jihadist outfits from imposing their sectarian will by force and now, with the complicity of the state.
While the Western media portray the country as a hot-bed of fundamentalist extremism, the Taliban-linked parties were shown the door in the 2008 national elections, installing "secular" parties busily negotiating their rights away. Closely associated with the venal Musharraf regime, the five-party alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which had garnered some 15% of the vote in 2002 and controlled the NWFP government suffered a devastating loss. As socialist critic and historian Tariq Ali wrote on the deadly embrace of Pakistani elites and their American neocolonial partners,
Back in the heart of Pakistan the most difficult and explosive issue remains social and economic inequality. This is not unrelated to the increase in the number of madrassas. If there were a half-decent state education system, poor families might not feel the need to hand over a son or kdaughter to the clerics in the hope that at least one child will be clothed, fed, and educated. Were there even the semblance of a health care system, many would be saved from illnesses contracted as a result of fatigue and poverty. No government since 1947 has done much to reduce inequality. ...
I spent my last day in Karachi with fishermen in a village near Korangi Creek. The government has signed away the mangroves where shellfish and lobsters flourish, and land is being reclaimed to build Diamond City, Sugar City, and other monstrosities on the Gulf model. The fishermen had been campaigning against these encroachments, but with little success. "We need a tsunami," one of them half joked. We talked about their living conditions. "All we dream of is schools for our children, medicines and clinics in our villages, clean water and electricity in our homes," one woman said. "Is that too much to ask for?" Nobody even mentioned religion. (The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, New York: Scribner, 2008, p. 27)
Lees verder: Tom Burghardt op Global Research
By GARY LEUPP
There’s really only one solution. Only one way for Obama to get himself out of the box his predecessor Bush, Dick Cheney and the neocons have put him in. He has to affirm Iran’s inalienable right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium.
Somewhere along the road American public opinion, which history shows can be easily persuaded of things that just aren’t true, has bought several highly questionable propositions:
1. Iran has a nuclear weapons program.
2. Iran’s nuclear program can have only one purpose, the production of nuclear weapons.
3. The Iranian leadership wishes to, and has threatened to, wipe Israel off the face of the map.
4. Given all of the above, Iran’s progress towards nuclear enrichment must be stopped in order to prevent a second, “nuclear” Holocaust.
These propositions — Big Lies that that become better established with each retelling — are in fact easily refutable.
aldus Witte Huis-woordvoerder Scott Stanzel.
"But there is no credible threat at this point to the inauguration that is precipitating this."
Misschien, en dat valt te hopen, is het te vergezocht. Maar er is reden genoeg om dit bericht even te bewaren. Zeker met het oog op de ontwikkelingen rond Gaza, alsmede de aanhoudende herrieschopperij rond Iran."I'm not going to go into the details of it, but it is a disaster scenario where the government would be very much tested," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.
But neocons and neoliberals are very similar to each other. Neocons are alot more similar to neoliberals than to true conservatives; neoliberalss are more similar to neocons than to real liberals.
Do you get it? Both the Republican and Democratic party are now run by people with identical agendas: make the big corporations richer and expand the American empire.
Or it could be a setup for the next 9-11.