A BLACK CALL TO OPPOSE WAR WITH DIRECT ACTION IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE: Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 1 PM

A BLACK CALL TO OPPOSE WAR WITH DIRECT ACTION IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE:

Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 1 PM

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The Guardian

August 30, 2013

Special Report: Syria intervention plans fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concerns

On 21 August, hundreds – perhaps over a thousand – people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the U.S., UK, Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad’s forces which, they say, carried out the attack.

To be sure, the latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that has increasingly taken ongenocidal characteristics. The case for action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad’s troops. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. International observers have overwhelmingly confirmed Assad’s complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising against it, is clear.

But the interests of the west are a different matter.

Chemical confusion

While the U.S. and Israel have taken a lead in claiming firm evidence that the latest attack was indeed a deployment of chemical weapons by Assad’s regime, justifying a military intervention of some sort, questions remain.

The main evidence cited by the U.S. linking the attacks to Syria are intercepted phone calls among other intelligence, the bulk of which was provided by Israel. “Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus,” reported Foreign Policy, “an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people.”

This account is hardly decisive proof of Assad’s culpability in the attack – what one can reasonably determine here is that Syrian defense officials do not seem to have issued specific orders for such a strike, and were attempting to investigate whether their own chemical weapons unit was indeed responsible.

On the attack itself, experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of civilians, including children, suffering the effects of some sort of chemical attack, is real – but remain divided on whether it involved military-grade chemical weapons associated with Assad’s arsenal, or were a more amateur concoction potentially linked to the rebels.

Many independent chemical weapons experts point out the insufficiency of evidence to draw any firm conclusions.Steven Johnson, chemical explosives experts at Cranfield Forensic Institute, pointed to inconsistencies in the video footage and the symptoms displayed by victims, raising questions about the nature of the agents used. Although trauma to the nervous system was clear: “At this stage everyone wants a ‘yes-no’ answer to chemical attack. But it is too early to draw a conclusion just from these videos.”

Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps, said: “None of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear, and despite that, none of them seem to be harmed… there are none of the other signs you would expect to see in the aftermath of a chemical attack, such as intermediate levels of casualties, severe visual problems, vomiting and loss of bowel control.”

Gwyn Winfield of chemical weapons journal CBRNe World said it was difficult to pin down a specific chemical from the symptoms seen in footage, but suggested it could be either a chemical weapon or a riot control agent: “The lack of conventional munition marks does suggest that it was a non-conventional munition, or an RCA (riot control agent) in a confined space, but who fired it and what it was has yet to be proved.”

Other experts cited by Agence France Presse (AFP) concur with these assessments – either disagreeing that the footage proved military-grade chemical weapons, or noting the inadequacy of evidence implicating a specific perpetrator.

What little evidence is available in the public record on past deployment of chemical agents has implicated both Assad and the rebels – not the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as a whole, but rather militant jihadist factions linked to al-Qaeda and funded by the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

In March this year, a major attack on the predominantly Shi’a town of Khan al-Assal killing 26 people including civilians and Syrian soldiers was apparently committed by rebels “with al-Qaeda sympathies.” U.S. weapons experts suspected that the victims were exposed to a “caustic” agent such as chlorine, not a military-grade chemical weapon but “an improvised chemical device.” As the Telegraph reports: “There has been extensive experimentation by insurgents in Iraq in the use of chlorine.”

Indeed, in May 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq had attempted a series of suicide attacks using bombs built from chlorine gas containers. Last year, Syrian jihadist groups led by the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusrah Front, linked to Iraqi al-Qaeda forces, captured several Syrian military bases stocking Scud and anti-aircraft missiles, as well as a chlorine factorynear Aleppo.

Yet eyewitness reports from victims and doctors have also alleged many other instances of chemical weapons attacks attributed by locals to Syrian government forces.

Just three months before the most recent attack, however, former war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, an independent UN war crimes investigator on Syria, told Channel 4 that evidence derived from interviews with victims, doctors and field hospitals confirmed that rebels had used the nerve agent sarin:

“I have seen that there are concrete suspicions if not irrefutable proof that there has been use of sarin gas… This use was made by the opponent rebels and not from the governmental authorities.”

According to Channel 4, “she had not found evidence of sarin’s use by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.”

Meanwhile, the latest UN report released in June 2013 confirms several allegations of chemical weapons attacks but concludes it:

“… has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator.”

Further complicating the matter, Dave Gavlak, a veteran Middle East correspondent for Associated Press, cites interviews with “doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families” who believe that “certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.” The arms were reportedly given by al-Nusrah fighters to ordinary rebels without informing them of their nature. “More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.” Gavlak’s report comes with the caveat that some of its information “cannot be independently verified.”

Could it be disinformation planted by Assad agents in Damascus, as happened with the Houla massacre?

We will have to wait for the findings of UN weapons inspectors to see whether any further clarity can be added with regards to the latest attack. In the words of Foreign Policy magazine:

“Given that U.N. inspectors with a mandate to investigate chemical weapons use were on the ground when the attack happened, the decision to deploy what appears to have been a nerve agent in a suburb east of Damascus has puzzled many observers. Why would Syria do such a thing when it is fully aware that the mass use of chemical weapons is the one thing that might require the United States to take military action against it? That’s a question U.S. intelligence analysts are puzzling over as well. ‘We don’t know exactly why it happened,’ the intelligence official said. ‘We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.'”

Imperial pretensions from Syria to Iran

U.S. agitation against Syria began long before today’s atrocities at least seven years ago in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.

In 2006, a little-known State Department committee – the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group – was meeting weekly to “coordinate actions such as curtailing Iran’s access to credit and banking institutions, organizing the sale of military equipment to Iran’s neighbors and supporting forces that oppose the two regimes.” U.S. officials said “the dissolution of the group was simply a bureaucratic reorganization” because of a “widespread public perception that it was designed to enact regime change.”

Despite the dissolution of the group, covert action continued. In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorized “nonlethal” CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh, reporting for the New Yorker. A range of U.S. government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had “cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations” intended to weaken the Shi’ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria,” wrote Hersh, “a byproduct” of which is “the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups” hostile to the United States and “sympathetic to al-Qaeda.” He noted that “the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria,” with a view to pressure him to be “more conciliatory and open to negotiations” with Israel. One faction receiving covert U.S. “political and financial support” through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

A year later, Alexander Cockburn revealed that a new finding authorized covert action undermining Iran “across a huge geographical are – from Lebanon to Afghanistan”, and would include support for a wide range of terrorist and military groups such as Mujahedin-e-Khalq and Jundullah in Balochistan, including al-Qaeda linked groups:

“Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran.  Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.”

It is perhaps not entirely surprising in this context that according to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business”, he told French television:

“I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.”

Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor included notes from a meeting with Pentagon officialsconfirming U.S.-UK covert operations in Syria since 2011:

“After a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special Operations Forces] teams (presumably from U.S., UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces…  I kept pressing on the question of what these SOF  teams would be working toward, and whether this would lead to an eventual air campaign to give a Syrian rebel group cover. They pretty quickly distanced themselves from that idea, saying that the idea ‘hypothetically’ is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within… They don’t believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Gaddafi move against Benghazi. They think the U.S. would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage.”

“Collapsing” Assad’s regime is thus a final goal, though military intervention would only be politically feasible – read domestically palatable for western populations – in the context of “a massacre” so grievous it would lead to a public outcry.

In another email to Stratfor executive Fred Burton from James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater and current CEO of another private security firm SCG International, Smith confirmed that he was part of “a fact finding mission for Congress” being deployed to “engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari).” The “true mission” for the “fact finding” team was how:

“… they can help in regime change.”

The email added that Smith intended to offer “his services to help protect the opposition members, like he had underway in Libya.” He also said that Booz Allen Hamilton – the same defence contractor that employed Edward Snowden to run NSA surveillance programmes – “is also working [with] the Agency on a similar request.”

Grand strategy: shoring up Gulf oil autocracies, “salafi jihadism” and sectarian violence

So what is this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria, Iran and so on, all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years.” A Pentagon officer familiar with the memo told him, “we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

As Glen Greenwald pointed out:

“… in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya… with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six – count ‘em: six – different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions.”

Indeed, much of the strategy currently at play in the region was candidly described in a 2008 U.S. Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War. The report noted that “the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource.” As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the U.S. has “motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states.” The report further acknowledges:

“The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized… For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources… The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”

In this context, the report identitied many potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:

“Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces… the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace…  U.S. leaders could also choose to capitalize on the ‘Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict’ trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world…. possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”

Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the U.S. may concentrate “on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.” Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by focusing jihadi activity on internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the U.S., thus bogging down both Iranian-sponsored groups like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda affiliated networks in mutual conflict:

“One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to U.S. interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations.”

The RAND document contextualised this strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the U.S.’s key allies and enemies – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran – to the converging crises of rapidly rising populations, a ‘youth bulge’, internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and water shortages, all of which could destabilize these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

The report noted especially that Syria is among several “downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow”, increasing a risk of conflict. Drought in Syria due to climate change, impacting food prices, did indeed play a major role in sparking the 2011 uprisings. Though the RAND document fell far short of recognizing the prospect of an  ‘Arab Spring’, it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, U.S. defense officials were alive to the region’s growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.

Pipeline politics

These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed by in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines. The pipeline would potentially allow Iran to supply gas to European markets.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

Israel also has a direct interest in countering the Iran-brokered pipeline. In 2003, just a month after the commencement of the Iraq War, U.S. and Israeli government sources told The Guardian of plans to “build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel” bypassing Syria. The basis for the plan, known as the Haifa project, goes back to a 1975 MoU signed by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, “whereby the U.S. would guarantee Israel’s oil reserves and energy supply in times of crisis.” As late as 2007, U.S. and Israeli government officials were in discussion on costs and contingencies for the Iraq-Israel pipeline project.

All the parties intervening in Syria’s escalating conflict – the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel on one side providing limited support to opposition forces, with Russia, China and Iran on the other shoring up Assad’s regime – are doing so for their own narrow, competing geopolitical interests.

Supporting al-Qaeda

Certainly, external support for the rebels funneled largely through Saudi Arabia and Qatar has empowered extremists. The New York Times found that most of the arms supplied with U.S. approval “are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups” – a process which continues. The support for militants is steadily transforming the Syrian landscape. “Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists”, reported NYT in April:

“Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

And there are even questions about the U.S.’ purported disavowal of the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra. NYT reports that “Nusra’s hand is felt most strongly in Aleppo”, where it has established in coordination with other rebel groups “a Shariah Commission” running “a police force and an Islamic court that hands down sentences that have included lashings.” Nusra fighters also “control the power plant and distribute flour to keep the city’s bakeries running.” Additionally, they “have seized government oil fields” in provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, and now make a “profit from the crude they produce.”

The problem is that al-Nusra’s bakery and oil operations are being supported by the U.S. and the European Union (EU) respectively. In one disturbing account, the Washington Post reports on a stealth mission in Aleppo “to deliver food and other aid to needy Syrians – all of it paid for by the U.S. government”, including the supply of flour. “The bakery is fully supplied with flour paid for by the United States”, the report continues, noting that local consumers, however, “credited Jabhat al-Nusra – a rebel group the United States has designated a terrorist organization because of its ties to al-Qaeda – with providing flour to the region, though he admitted he wasn’t sure where it comes from.” Similarly, the EU’s easing of an oil embargo to allow oil imports from rebel-controlled oil fields directly benefits al-Nusra fighters who control those former government fields.

No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

It would seem that contradictory Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of U.S. policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this – the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the U.S. and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria – that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said:

“Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor.”

What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it among other books. He writes for The Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises via his Earth insight blog.

Will Congress Now Save Obama’s Face By Selling Out Democracy and the Syrian People?

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

As I observed in previous columns, Obama was pushed out onto the end of the limb by Israel and the neoconservatives. The UN, NATO, the British Parliament, and the rest of the world left the White House Fool there, out on the limb where Israel put him, to make war on Syria all alone.

This proved to be beyond the Fool’s ability, but instead of crawling back off the limb and finding an excuse to get down, Obama decided to buy the Congress and to tell more lies.

The White House and its presstitute media are telling Congress that it is too humiliating for the President of “the world’s only superpower” to have to crawl back along the limb and get down just because he told a lie.  Congress must ”save face” for  the liar who is “America’s first black president,” or the prestige and credibility of the US will be lost.

What this really means, of course, is that the credibility of the Israel Lobby and the neoconservatives will be lost unless America again commits a war crime and destroys the life and prospects of many more people in the Middle East.

Heaven forbid that Washington lose prestige!  So money, lots of it, is speaking in Washington and in European capitals. We know that the despicable Cameron will do all in his power to prostitute the British government for Washington.

What has the “socialist” Hollande been promised that makes him so willing to demonstrate that France is Obama’s whore?

What larger share of NATO’s military budget is Washington promising to underwrite in exchange for NATO’s support for another American war crime?

Will bags of money enable Washington to gather support for its latest crime against humanity?

But first Congress has to be brought around.

Congress will be pressured “to show a common front” with the White House in order to maintain America’s credibility. Members of the House and Senate will be told that now that America has been abandoned by its allies, Congress cannot leave the President of the United States hanging out to dry.  Congress must rush to the rescue of America’s prestige or Washington will lose its clout and Congress will lose its campaign contributions from the Israel Lobby and the military/security complex.

This argument can even be effective with the strongest opponents to the attack on Syria.  Americans have a long tradition of jingoism, and the prospect of lost prestige rankles. But before Congress is pushed into wrapping itself in the flag and giving its OK to another war crime, Congress needs to consider whether endorsing Obama’s attack on Syria helps US prestige or hurts it.

It is clear that the American people overwhelming oppose an attack on Syria. Whether Americans have caught on over the years to Washington’s endless war lies or whether they simply see no point to the wars and no gain to America from 12 years of costly war, I cannot say. At a time when a large percentage of Americans are having difficulty paying their mortgages, car payments, and putting food on the table, Washington’s wars seem an expensive luxury.

It is not only the civilian populations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria who have suffered.  Tens of thousands of America’s young have either been killed, maimed for life, or are suffering permanent post-traumatic stress.

Washington’s wars have caused thousands of divorces, alcoholism, drug addiction, and homelessness for veterans who were deceived and had their humanity abused by the criminals that rule in Washington.

For Congress, allegedly the representatives of the American people, not the backstop for the executive branch’s undeclared agenda, to ignore the people’s will and to endorse a war that the American people do not support would be another decisive blow against democracy.  If Congress endorses Obama’s war, it will prove that American democracy is a hoax.

If the White House were to succeed in using Congress’ OK to a military attack on Syria to convince the British Parliament and NATO to go along, despite the strong opposition of the British and European peoples, Western Democracy would everywhere be discredited. Where is the democracy when a few elites at the top can do whatever they want, commit any crime, despite the majority opposition of citizens?

If Congress endorses Obama’s transparent lies, American democracy will never recover. If Congress makes itself the handmaiden of the executive branch, Congress will never again have an independent voice. Congress might as well close down.  It will have rendered itself superfluous and powerless.

If European governments endorse Obama’s lies, it means the end of the West’s democratic prestige and will strip away the cloak behind which the West has hidden its  crimes against humanity. The voice of the West will never again carry any moral authority.

The loss of Western credibility is a huge price to pay in order to rescue a discredited president whom no one believes, not even his supporters. Essentially Obama is a cipher whose term of office is complete. The obama regime epitomizes the degeneration of the American state.

Instead of voting on whether to allow Obama to attack Syria, Congress should be voting to impeach Obama and Kerry. Their blatant lies, dictatorial claims, and arrogant inhumanity are powerful arguments for removing them from office.

The lies told by the Obama regime are so transparent that it makes one wonder just how stupid the regime thinks the American people are. Little doubt the white house is relying on its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the presstitute media, to undermine Americans’ confidence in their common sense and to make them accept the latest fiction.  The tactic is to use the peer pressure of the prostitute media to silence Americans’ conscience.

Media insouciance is everywhere. Yesterday NPR calmly reported the lies about Assad that the Obama regime has concocted to cover another act of naked aggression. In the same breath, NPR voiced “the world’s outrage” over the rape and murder of one woman in India.

I, of course, do not agree with the raping and killing of anyone, but just imagine the raping and killing that will occur when Obama unleashes the dogs of war on Syria.

NPR is no longer an alternative voice. Yesterday NPR was beating the drums for war. NPR provided a forum for the head of one of the main neoconservative lobbies for war,  and in the next hour had Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders repeating all of Obama and Kerry’s lies about how America’s prestige cannot tolerate allowing Assad to use “chemical weapons against his own people.”  No one listening to NPR heard the voice of those demanding peace and truth. NPR was too busy lying for Obama to care about truth and certainly gave truth no voice on the program.

The presstitute media and the House and Senate “leaders” who report to the military/security complex and to the Israel Lobby keep talking about Assad’s “own people,”  but Assad’s own people support him.  Polls of Syrians show that Assad has more support from the Syrian people than every head of every Western country has from their citizens. Cameron’s, Hollande’s, Merkel’s and Obama’s poll numbers are dismal compared to the Syrian peoples’ support for Assad.

Just as there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” but the facts did not stop the Bush regime from telling its lies that resulted in massive deaths and destruction of Iraqis, deaths and destruction that continue as I write, Assad has not used chemical weapons “against his own people.”  All of the evidence points to a false flag event that Obama could seize upon to launch America’s 7th war in 12 years.

Moreover, al-Nusra fighters are not Assad’s “own people.” The al-Nusra front are Islamist extremists recruited from outside Syria and sent in by Washington and Saudi Arabia to overthrow an elected Syrian government, just as Washington used the Egyptian military to overthrow the first elected Egyptian government in history and to shoot down in the streets hundreds of Egyptians who were protesting the military’s overthrow of the government that they had elected.

Whether or not Assad used chemical weapons against Washington-supported al-Nusra jihadists, and US Intelligence says that there is “no conclusive evidence,” it is nevertheless a war crime for Washington to attack a country that has not attacked, or threatened to attack, the US. Under the Nuremberg standard established by the United States, naked aggression is a war crime regardless of the character of the country attacked or the weapons it uses against forces that attack it.

If Washington succeeds in enabling the al-Nusra terrorists to overthrow the secular Syrian government, how will Washington get Syria away from al-Nusra? In Iraq the death and destruction continues today at the same pace as under the attempted US military occupation.  The criminal Bush regime did not bring “freedom and democracy” to Iraq. The Bush regime brought death and destruction that continues long after Washington’s exit. In Iraq today, as many people are blown apart and murdered as during the height of Bush’s war of aggression.

The chaos in which Washington left Iraq is a far cry from “freedom and democracy.” The Obama war criminal did the same to Libya. In Afghanistan Washington added 12 years of war on top of the 10 years of war that Afghans fought with the Red Army.  The purpose of Washington’s war in Afghanistan has never been stated. No one knows what the war is about or why it continues.

According to the Bush regime, Afghanistan was attacked because the Taliban would not hand over Osama bin Laden without proof that he was responsible for 911. So why does the war continue after his death?

The lies being told by Obama and Kerry are so transparent that it makes one wonder if their strategy is to make such a poor case for war that the control Israel and the neocons have over US foreign policy will be broken.  What else is one to make of such absurd statements as John Kerry’s claim that “this is our Munich moment!”  There is no comparison between Assad’s defensive effort to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government by foreign jihadists supported by Washington and Hitler’s aggressive stance toward Czechoslovakia.

The Syrian government has initiated no war and has threatened no one.

America as my generation knew it no longer exists. Criminals have taken over and now rule.  Financial policy is in the hands of a small handful of banksters who control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the financial regulatory agencies and who run the world for their own greed and profit. Foreign policy is the preserve of the Israel Lobby and the neoconservatives, every one of which is tightly tied to Israel.  Americans have no voice, and no representation. Whatever America is, the government is not influenced by the voices of the American people.

Whatever America is, it most certainly is not a democracy in which government is accountable to the people.

America is a country where a tiny elite has all power and does as it wishes.

If Congress rallies to obama’s war, Congress will have pushed the world closer to nuclear war. Russia and China see that the UN is powerless to prevent aggression and that Washington’s  aggression is aimed at them. As Russia and China build their nuclear forces, they will draw a starker line at Iran. Iran is Russia’s underbelly, and Iran is 20 percent of China’s oil supply.

From what I have been able to discern, both the Russian and Chinese governments have lost all confidence in Washington.  Neither government believes any of Washington’s lies and both countries are aware of Washington’s attempt to isolate them diplomatically and to surround them with military bases. Both countries know that they can expect the same demonization from the presstitute western media as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Assad have received. They understand that western demonization is the prelude to destabilization and to military attack.

With the hubris, arrogance, and insanity of Washington an established fact, Russia and China perceive an enemy that intends their destruction.  As neither country is going to accept their demise, Congress’ acquiescence to obama’s lies in order to save “America’s prestige” sets the stage for nuclear war.

However, if Congress refuses to be committed to a war crime based on a lie, rejects Obama’s bribes and intimidation, and vetoes the war criminal’s attack on Syria, it means,  the end of the influence of the Israeli Lobby, the bloodthirsty neoconservatives, and war mongers John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

Without Washington’s neoconservative belligerence, the governments of the world might, despite powerful and selfish private interests, be able to come together to sustain life on earth by protecting an increasingly vulnerable ecology from the predations of private capitalism.

If Congress fails to restrain the war that Obama seeks, the world doesn’t have long to exist before the life-destroying bombs drop.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.

Obama’s Impeachment Trap

by KEVIN ZEESE

The irony of the Obama presidency may hinge on whether he attacks Syria.  He began his presidency prematurely winning the Nobel Peace Prize and could end it being impeached for starting an illegal war without congressional or UN approval – violating both domestic and international law.

Yesterday 163 Members of Congress sent letters to President Obama telling him that under the US Constitution he is required to get congressional approval before beginning a military attack. Theletter drafted by Rep. Scott Rigel (R-VA) had 140 signatures, 119 Republicans and 21 Dems.  Rep. Barbara Lee also circulated a letter that had 53 signers, that calls on the president to seek congressional approval.

The Rigel letter warned Obama that engaging in military action “would violate the Separation of Powers Clause that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.” They also note that the justification for war in Libya also violated the Constitution.  The Lee letter warns that “we all swore to uphold and defend” the Constitution; and that we should not engage in an “unwise war – especially without adhering to our own Constitutional requirements.”   In their concluding paragraph they warn “Before weighing the use of military force, Congress must fully debate and consider the facts and every alternative . . .”

President Obama knows the limits of his powers.  In fact, if there is an impeachment proceeding his own words will be quoted. When he was running for president, Obama told the Boston Globe: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Vice President Biden, in a 2007 campaign event in Iowa, went further, not only stating clearly that the president does not have unilateral power to conduct military attacks but threatening impeachment of President Bush if he did so.

The Green Shadow Cabinet of the United States was explicit calling on President Obama to seek congressional approval before going to war, noted that under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution, it is the Congress that determines whether the United States goes to war. They also highlight the potential of impeachment writing: “If President Obama launches an attack without prior explicit authorization by Congress, he will have committed an offense worthy of impeachment.” [Disclosure, I serve as Attorney General in the alternative cabinet.]

If impeachment proceedings are held all of the doubts about the war will come out.  People in the military have protected themselves by telling President Obama that they have serious doubts about a military attack.  The have warned Obama about potential blowback, misusing the military to send a message with no clear strategy, drawing the US into a vexing war when they are already burdened by a complicated withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some have used words like “potentially devastating consequences” Reportedly, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of U.S. military intervention in Syria, warning “deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

If the war goes wrong, and wars almost always go wrong, President Obama will see the memorandums of various members of the military who warned him.  And, they will be called to testify and tell the world that President Obama was warned but went ahead anyway – without congressional approval in violation of the Constitution.

What could go wrong? Syria has the ability to defend itself and attack US military vessels. Iran and Russia have already indicated they will be drawn into the conflict. Threats of retaliation are already being made and troop movements are occurring. Russia is moving two additional naval ships, a missile cruiser and a large anti-submarine vessel, into the Mediterranean to strengthen its presence in case of a US attack. Russia and Saudi Arabia have exchanged threats over Syria.  Russia threatening an attack on Saudi Arabia if the US attacks Syria with President Putin ordering a “massive military strike” against Saudi Arabia in the event that the West attacks Syria.  Saudi Arabia is threatening Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia at the Olympics.

Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have threatened to retaliate against Israel and other US allies in the Middle East in the event of a US attack on Syria. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, told the Tasnim news website, that an attack on Syria “means the immediate destruction of Israel.”

Obama could be starting a much larger war than he realizes and doing so without congressional or UN approval. Why would Obama take this tremendous risk?

The military attack does not seem to be based on reliable intelligence. The intelligence community is also protecting itself. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported there are lots of gaps in U.S. intelligence including who ordered the use of chemical weapons and where those chemical weapons are now. President Obama himself has provided no evidence to support the administration’s claim that the chemical weapons came from Assad. In addition, people who turn off the corporate media and think about the situation realize that the claim that Assad used chemical weapons makes no sense from Assad’s point of view.  He has been defeating the rebel forces. Why would he take an action that would give the US an excuse to enter the war?

And, the Guardian is reporting that the United States is acting based on Israeli intelligence that supposedly intercepted communications in Syria.  Does President Obama want to risk the unpredictable consequences of war and impeachment based on reports from the government of Binyamin Netanyahu; a political leader he has had a stormy relationship with and who would like nothing more than to see the Democrats replaced by the neocon Republicans. Does he want to trust a government that has its own conflicts with Syria over the Golan Heights and that has wanted Assad replaced for a long time? Israeli has its own agenda, should they be trusted here?

What is the Obama administration doing to investigate the reports that in fact it was Saudi Arabia that provided the chemical weapons that was used to the rebels?  Multiple witnesses are making these claims.  Is Obama going to go to war without investigating this possibility?  Maybe he has the wrong target and it was not Assad who is responsible?

If the war goes badly after Obama attacks without congressional approval, you can be sure that the fact that the closest ally of the United States, Great Britain, voted against intervention will be used against him.  On the coalition front, President Obama will be standing very alone.  Not only has Britain backed out but Egypt has said the Suez Canal can’t be used, and Jordan has said their land can’t be used.  The solo-cowboy approach would make the phony Bush “coalition of the willing” that joined in the mistaken attack on Iraq look like brilliant diplomacy.

And, then there is international law. Great Britain has asked the Security Council to consider a resolution on Syria. The UN inspectors are returning with their initial investigation on Saturday.  Reports are President Obama may attack Syria as soon as they leave.  With the report and Security Council resolution pending an attack would look reckless and show incredible hubris.  He will have blatantly violated international law and committed “the supreme international crime.”

This all adds up to a major blunder in the making if President Obama does not find a way to back track from his war threats. While I believe that an attack on Syria would be a mistake no matter what Congress does, those who believe a military strike is necessary should at a minimum bring the matter to Congress and wait for the UN inspectors report and a decision from the Security Council.

The risk of impeachment needs to be part of the balance in Obama’s thinking. The Republicans have been out to destroy him since he was elected.  Attacking Syria without congressional approval will give them a weapon.  And, you can be sure they will use it, and with their majority control of the House, a vote for impeachment in that Chamber is not unlikely.

If Obama proceeds to war without going to Congress for approval, the irony of an impeachment conviction for an illegal war by the president who won a Nobel Peace Prize may indeed come to pass.  President Obama’s legacy will be that of a president who started an illegal war.

Kevin Zeese serves as Attorney General in the Green Shadow Cabinet, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network and an organizer of Popular Resistance

Russia gave UN 100-page report in July blaming Syrian rebels for Aleppo sarin attack

By Matthew Schofield | McClatchy Foreign Staff

last updated: September 05, 2013 06:37:13 PM

BERLIN — ]

Russia says a deadly March sarin attack in an Aleppo suburb was carried out by Syrian rebels, not forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, and it has delivered a 100-page report laying out its evidence to the United Nations.

A statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website late Wednesday said the report included detailed scientific analysis of samples that Russian technicians collected at the site of the alleged attack, Khan al Asal in northern Syria. The attack killed 26 people.

A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, confirmed that Russia delivered the report in July.

The report itself was not released. But the statement drew a pointed comparison between what it said was the scientific detail of the report and the far shorter intelligence summaries that the United States, Britain and France have released to justify their assertion that the Syrian government launched chemical weapons against Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21. The longest of those summaries, by the French, ran nine pages. Each relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to make its case, and they disagree with one another on some details, including the number of people who died in the attack.

The Russian statement warned the United States and its allies not to conduct a military strike against Syria until the United Nations had completed a similarly detailed scientific study into the Aug. 21 attack. It charged that what it called the current “hysteria” about a possible military strike in the West was similar to the false claims and poor intelligence that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Russia said its investigation of the March 19 incident was conducted under strict protocols established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international agency that governs adherence to treaties prohibiting the use of chemical weapons. It said samples that Russian technicians had collected had been sent to OPCW-certified laboratories in Russia.

“The Russian report is specific,” the ministry statement said. “It is a scientific and technical document.”

The Russian statement said Russian officials had broken the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ code of silence on such probes only because Western nations appear to be “preparing the ground for military action” in retaliation for the Aug. 21 incident.

A U.N. team spent four days late last month investigating the Aug. 21 incident. The samples it collected from the site and alleged victims of the attack are currently being examined at the chemical weapons organization’s labs in Europe. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the United States to delay any strike until after the results of that investigation are known. But U.S. officials have dismissed the U.N. probe, saying it won’t tell them anything they don’t already know.

White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said U.S. officials were unmoved by the Russian report and held the Assad government responsible for both the Khan al Asal attack in March and the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus.

“We have studied the Russian report but have found no reason to change our assessment,” she said.

Independent chemical weapons experts contacted by McClatchy said they were not familiar with the report and had not read the Russian statement, which was posted as Secretary of State John Kerry was appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to make the Obama administration’s case for a retaliatory strike on Syria as punishment for the August attack. But they were cautious about the details made public in the Russian statement.

Richard Guthrie, formerly project leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the Russian statement on the makeup of the sarin found at Khan al Asal, which the Russians indicated was not military grade, might reflect only that “there are a lot of different ways to make sarin.”

He added: “The messy mix described by the Russians might also be the result of an old sarin stock being used. Sarin degrades (the molecules break up) over time and this would explain a dirty mix.”

He also said there could be doubts about the Russian conclusion that the rockets that delivered the sarin in the March 19 incident were not likely to have come from Syrian military stocks because of their use of RDX, an explosive that is also known as hexogen and T4.

“Militaries don’t tend to use it because it’s too expensive,” Guthrie said. He added in a later email, however, that it’s not inconceivable that the Syrian military would use RDX “if the government side was developing a semi-improvised short-range rocket” and “if there happened to be a stock available.”

“While I would agree that it would be unlikely for a traditional, well-planned short-range rocket development program to use RDX in that role, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that, as the Syrian government did not seem to have an earlier short-range rocket program, it may have been developing rockets with some haste and so using materials that are at hand,” he wrote.

Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies, questioned a Russian assertion that the sarin mix appeared to be a Western World War II vintage.

“The Western Allies were not aware of the nerve agents until after the occupation of Germany,” he wrote in an email. “The USA, for example, struggled with the sarin (despite having some of the German scientists) until the 1950s, when the CW program expanded considerably.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry posted the statement shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin had asked a Russian interviewer what the American reaction would be if evidence showed that Syrian rebels, not the Assad regime, had been behind a chemical weapons attack.

The report dealt with an incident that occurred March 19 in Khan al Asal, outside Aleppo, in which 26 people died and 86 were sickened. It was that incident that the U.N. team now probing the Aug. 21 attack was originally assigned to investigate, and the Russian statement noted that the investigation had been sidetracked by the sudden focus on the later incident.

Haq, the U.N. spokesman, acknowledged that the most recent attack “has pushed the investigation of the Aleppo incident to the back burner for now.” But he said that “the inspectors will get back to it as soon as is possible.”

The statement’s summary of the report said that neither the munitions nor the poison gas in the Khan al Asal attack appeared to fit what is possessed by the Syrian government. The statement said Russian investigators studied the site, sent the materials they found to study to the Russian laboratories of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and followed agreed-upon United Nations investigation standards.

According to the statement, the report said the shell “was not regular Syrian army ammunition but was an artisan-type similar to unguided rocket projectiles produced in the north of Syria by the so-called gang ‘Bashair An-Nasr.’”

The Russian analysis found soil and shell samples contained a sarin gas “not synthesized in an industrial environment,” the statement said. The report said the chemical mix did not appear to be a modern version of the deadly agent but was closer to those “used by Western states for producing chemical weapons during World War II.”

The statement said the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons team had examined Syrian soldiers injured in the March attack and said that no reaction to the more recent alleged chemical account should be considered without also considering that the rebels, too, have used chemical weapons.

“It is obvious that any objective investigation of the incident on Aug. 21 in East Ghouta is impossible without considering the circumstances of the March attack,” the statement said. Ghouta is the area near Damascus where the Aug. 21 attack took place.

(Lesley Clark contributed to this report from St. Petersburg, Russia.)

Email: mschofield@mcclatchydc.com Twitter: @mattschodcnews

Jan 19th Occupy Harlem Emergency Demonstration – THE 99% MUST HOLD OBAMA ACCOUNTABLE! IF WE DON’T WHO WILL?

OCCUPY HARLEM CALLS FOR EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATION

Oppose Obama’s NDAA Police State & Resource Wars to Pillage the World

Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 6:00 PM
Where: Across the street from the Apollo Theater  253 West 125th Street
(Frederick Douglass Boulevard & Adam Clayton Powell Blvd)

THE 99% MUST HOLD OBAMA ACCOUNTABLE! IF WE DON’T WHO WILL?

–

On December 31, 2011 President Barack Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 The Act authorizes $662 billion in funding for “the defense of the United States and its interests abroad”. The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons indefinitely without right to legal counsel or even a trial. NDAA, a sweeping expansion of executive powers that goes far beyond the Bush administration. This law poses the greatest threat to “principles” of US democracy. Die heart Obama supporters bully, threaten and berate those who hold the President accountable for ANYTHING most of all his lies to and betrayal of the 99%!  The military industrial complex and Wall Street oligarchy owns lock, stock and barrel the US Presidency, Congress and both political parties, Democrat and Republican!  It’s not about the “lesser of two evils” but who is the more effective of the two evils! We have to ask ourselves, how do we hold any elected official accountable, most of all a President who has insisted the people hold him accountable!  Occupy Movements across the country are hitting the streets every day to confront and end the deadly reign of the 1%. Let’s us do our job on January 19th. History will absolve us!!

We, the 99%, must hold this White House accountable for its numerous crimes against the 99% at home and abroad: an economic depression caused by gangster banks that received a 16 trillion dollar bailout under Obama; endless illegal resource wars; “shock and awe” military aggression; free trade agreements that kill jobs; deportation of one million immigrants; violation of international laws and human rights; global military expansion to dominate the world; depraved indifference to Mother Earth and continuation of a racist drug war that has given rise to the new Jim Crow mass incarceration.

Bring your issues, signs, & fellow 99ers!

Directions: Take the A, B, C or D trains to 125th Street and walk east or take the 2 or 3 trains to 125th Street and walk west.

Additional Info: (718) 218-4523 Email: occupyharlemgeneralassembly@gmail.com Web:  http://tradejutice.net * https://harlemfightback.wordpress.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/#!/occupyharlemnow

Endorsers: Occupy Harlem, Harlem FightBack Against War at Home and Abroad, Black is Back Coalition, Occupy Wall Street Trade Justice, TradeJustice New York Metro, Occupy4Jobs, & Global Justice for Animals and the Environment.  Contact occupyharlemgeneralassembly@gmail.com or ows@tradejustice.net to have your organization added to this list!

Download New Flyer For Occupy Harlem Mobilization October 28th

CLICK HERE FOR OCCUPY HARLEM FLYER!!!

From NYT – Protesters of Police Stop-and-Frisk Practice Are Arrested

Nellie Bailey from Harlem Fightback Against War at Home & Abroad can be seen being arrested right after Cornell West in this video from RT via Youtube:

Nellie Bailey from Harlem Fightback Against War at Home & Abroad arrested with Professor Cornel West and 33 others in Stop-and-Frisk protest in front of the 28th Police Pct. in Harlem.

New York Times October 21, 2011, 6:47 pm

Protesters of Police Stop-and-Frisk Practice Are Arrested

About 30 people, including the civil rights campaigner and Princeton professor Cornel West, were arrested Friday outside a police station in Harlem during a protest of the police practice known as stop-and-frisk.

Dozens of activists and people who described themselves as victims of stop-and-frisk began their demonstration in front of the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on 125th Street, on a corner that Dr. West, an organizer of the rally, said had been “consecrated by giants like Malcolm X.” The group, chanting and holding signs, marched along 125th Street, past the Apollo Theater, to the 28th Police Precinct station house, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

The practice of stop-and-frisk, in which the police stop people on the street and sometimes frisk them, has been criticized by minority and civil rights groups that complain that blacks and Hispanics are unfairly singled out. Last year the department made more than 600,000 of the warrantless stops, and it is on pace to exceed that number this year. While the police say there is a valid reason for the stops, including suspicious behavior, opponents of the practice note that very few stops result in arrests.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the tactic on his Friday morning radio show on WOR.

“It’s used in communities where we have lots of guns and lots of murder victims,” he said. “And we’ve brought crime down 35 percent in the last 10 years. We have — I don’t know — I don’t think we’re going to set a record for low murders, but we’ll have the second best year in the history of the city this year, and there’s a reason for those things, and this is one of the tactics.

“People say, ‘Oh, you can do it without that’; well, you know you have — nobody is ever going to — some people don’t want you to do anything,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

The result of doing nothing, he said, would be “a society you can’t live in.”

The demonstrators, surrounded by officers and fenced in by steel barricades at the police station, voiced anger about the policy, which they said was racist, intimidating and unjust because of its focus on young blacks and Hispanics.

“We have to come to terms with arbitrary police power,” Dr. West said as he kicked off the march, his words repeated, in Occupy Wall Street fashion, by a crowd that consisted of several drumming and chanting activists who came up from Zuccotti Park.

Dr. West underscored the solidarity of the protests, in what he called a unified front against financial and racial inequality, and he said the goal of the uptown rally was to “ensure that the rights of young folks, disproportionately poor and black and brown, are acknowledged and affirmed.”

Dr. West and other organizers had said that they intended to get arrested. Around 2:30, the police began to arrest the protesters who were close to the entrance to the station house.

Also among those arrested were Carl Dix, a national spokesman for the Revolutionary Communist Party; several local religious leaders; and James Vrettos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Those who were arrested were loaded onto police trucks and vans.

While virtually all of the arrests were uneventful, one activist, a member of a group called the People’s Patrol of New York City, was carried away by officers by his arms and legs — a scene that for a time angered dozens of demonstrators.

The police said that they did not have an exact number of those arrested and that charges were pending.

From Black Agenda Report – Occupy Wall Street: What You Can Demand versus What You Must DO

From Black Agenda Report

Occupy Wall Street: What You Can Demand versus What You Must DO

"Since it is patently clear that plutocrats and democracy cannot coexist, the project is to rid us of the plutocrats, while there’s still time to save our world. Once that’s understood, the rest is in the details."

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Occupy Wall Street activists are under some pressures to come up with demands to make of the powerful. However, “in many cases, there is no point in demanding anything from your enemy, except that he drop dead in a hurry.” If Wall Street is an unadulterated evil as many OWS folks claim – and they are right – then what is to be demanded of the banksters and their friends? That they commit suicide, forthwith? And how do you reform a cancer away? “Well before 1999, Wall Street power had passed the point where it could be controlled by conventional regulation.”

“What does a movement of the 99% versus the 1% mean by democracy, when measured against the privileges of money?”

If the signage at the Wall Street occupation site and its thousands of satellites around the country tells the tale, the dominant sentiment in the nascent movement is that finance capital be ejected from the commanding heights of power. True, there are myriad other issues in the churning mix of leaderless people power, but this is the tie that binds, without which centrifugal forces would have hurled the small, founding band of organizers into oblivion. Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza, the other pole of the occupation force field, was established by significantly older, veteran activists, some of whom have wished Wall Street dead since the days before the bankers murdered and cannibalized (liquidated!) the last Titan of Industry.

Having challenged the plutocrats and all their minions – and gaining majority support of the American people in the process – the “movement” is called upon, from inside and out, to make specific demands. Of course, Old Fred taught us that power concedes nothing without a demand. But the wrong demands can undo a popular project, so this is not something to rush into. And, in many cases, there is no point in demanding anything from your enemy, except that he drop dead in a hurry.

It is by no means clear to me that all of the folks who claim to be bankster-slayers really want to kill the beast, or merely attempt to shrink or tame it. The logic of political economy, historical experience and common sense dictates that, if the vast wealth and power that flows from concentrated private capital is what allowed Wall Street to achieve hegemony over every important aspect of U.S. society, then concentrated capital must be vanquished; that it be given no space or opportunity to regroup to make further war on democracy.

“The wrong demands can undo a popular project, so this is not something to rush into.”

Ah, democracy, the other dominant current in the occupation conversation. What does a movement of the 99% versus the 1% mean by democracy, when measured against the privileges of money? Is it acceptable that any human being wield a million times as much influence on society as the average Josephine, by virtue of his wealth or connections to money? What about the only somewhat rich, with a few thousand times as much societal clout? Would they be prevented, like parolees, from fraternizing with their peers, lest they combine to exercise mega-clout? And, what about when these rich guys put on their masks and call themselves “The Markets.” Will we allow them to run around freely, buying and selling stuff to make millions (and then billions and derivative trillions) for themselves while, as a byproduct, affecting the terms of life for all the rest of us, wholly outside the democratic process or any civilized notion of development?

Does anyone seriously believe that today’s Masters of the Universe will allow themselves to be shut out – as a class – of the electoral pathways to state power, without wreaking havoc on an impudent society through their current control of every lever of power and the sheer crush of their money? One cannot simply leave the hegemon intact, allowing him to retain all the powers of concentrated capital that made him Master, and expect him to accept the new limitations.

The idea that the plutocrats can be quarantined from power, while remaining plutocrats, is absurd. And no, there is no difference between Warren Buffet, the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Walton (Mal-Mart) family and the late Steven Jobs. Their very existence is an insult to any legitimate concept of democracy. Every one of them would kill a million people to preserve his billions. They already do.

“The idea that the plutocrats can be quarantined from power, while remaining plutocrats, is absurd.”

A movement must be prepared to break the plutocrats’ power – confiscate his fortune or make it impossible to spend – or find themselves like Lilliputians trying to tie down a huge and vicious unchained Gulliver while he stomps on you like roaches.

There is a nostalgia and romanticism in some neighborhoods of the movement – understanding that anyone is welcome to wander in and claim membership – that has echoes in the Tea Party. A Washington Postcolumn by Barry Ritholtz, an author and head of a quantitative research firm, offers advice to the OWS movement. He wants to “bring back real capitalism,” with no bank bailouts. His closely related position is to end “too big to fail” banks in order to “restore competition.” None of this works, however, if the “real” finance capitalism at this stage in its development is exactly what we have experienced: an inherently unstable system that inexorably moves toward further consolidation, suborning every social institution along the way as a consequence of its very nature. If capitalism is in deep crisis – which is the case – and if the nature of that crisis compels finance capitalist institutions to search for ever-increasing returns through rigged markets, derivatives, systematic looting of vulnerable communities, overseas plunder under U.S. military protection and wholesale privatization of public assets in the developed capitalist countries, all of which requires massive corruption of the political and moral life of the home society, then we have simply experienced late-stage finance capitalism as it actually exists. Ritholtz would have us send the banks back to some previous era, where they will regain the vigor and moral uplift of youth.

Ritholtz clearly loves banks, or the idea of banks, and would never transfer their societal functions – which they no longer fulfill – to public entities under democratic direction. He thinks “competition” will solve the problem. However, Ritholtz does support a constitutional amendment to keep corporate money out of congressional elections, which I suppose gets his nose under the broad OWS tent, so to speak.

“Finance capital preys on the real economy and is most responsible for devouring and privatizing the public sector.”

What about bringing back Glass-Steagall, the 1932 law that separated investment banking from commercial banking, but was repealed in 1999 under President Bill Clinton? Would reinstatement of Glass-Steagall fit the bill for meaningful reform worthy of OWS? I don’t think so. If the power of Wall Street was such in 1999 that a Democratic administration would collaborate in repeal of a foundational New Deal economic pillar, then finance capital was already hegemonic. Well before 1999, Wall Street power had passed the point where it could be controlled by conventional regulation. Rather, the struggle is to free society from its fatal embrace. There is no reforming Wall Street, only its dismantling and simultaneous replacement by public institutions for allocating capital for human needs and development.

The crisis of capitalism is the hegemony of finance capital, which is beyond repair. $16 trillion dollars in infusions from the public sector under President Obama – more than the gross domestic product of the United States – have failed to cause Wall Street to function as a social asset of the nation or the global economy. Quite the opposite; finance capital preys on the real economy and is most responsible for devouring and privatizing the public sector, leaving the people naked to the predations of a dying and parasitic system.

People can choose to be ruled by rich men who call themselves “markets” or they can trust themselves to erect public institutions that are responsive to human needs. For four weeks now, the swelling OWS movement has claimed to be contemplating how to harness democracy and end plutocracy. Since it is patently clear that plutocrats and democracy cannot coexist, the project is to rid us of the plutocrats, while there’s still time to save our world. Once that’s understood, the rest is in the details.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Occupy Harlem Mobilization!!

OCCUPY HARLEM MOBILIZATION!!!
We stand in solidarity with Occupiers of Wall Street

Friday, October 28, 2011
6:30 – 9:30 PM
St. Philip’s Church
204 West 134th Street
(Adam Clayton Powell Blvd)

A call to Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants to occupy their communities against predatory investors, displacement, privatization and state repression. Let us assert our Dignity! WE MUST DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES! THIS IS OUR STRUGGLE, THIS IS OUR MOMENT IN HISTORY. THIS IS PEOPLE’S POWER!

We stand in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters occupying cities, towns and neighborhoods in the United States. We stand in solidarity with poor and working class people across the globe rising up against criminal predatory finance capital that has no regard for humanity, that has no regard for Mother Earth.

Wall Street, the epicenter of international finance capital, began its financial prosperity with slave profiteering firms, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia Bank and Bank of America.  In fact, Wall Street and most of the city’s financial district were built on the burial ground of captured Africans forced into genocidal free labor for centuries, a crime against humanity. The legacy of that crime against humanity manifested today in Jim Crow mass incarceration, a crisis of massive Black unemployment and the greatest loss of wealth for people of color from subprime lending frauds estimated between $164 billion and $213 billion.

Finance capital plutocrats have always controlled the US political system. They threaten and received a $16 trillion bank bailout, the greatest thief of taxpayers’ money in modern US history. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg because the banks have an estimated $700 trillion of worthless derivatives, the BULL in the china shop that might very well bring down Wall Street.

Let us, the 99 percent, build a united people’s movement of the poor, the working class and the middle class to reign in the one percent. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!

Join us for this Occupy Harlem mobilization with guest speakers and the occupy site to be announced.

NO MORE BANK BAILOUTS!  NO MORE WARS! WE WANT MONEY FOR JOBS, HOUSING, EDUCATION AND MEDICAL CARE.

Endorsements:  Harlem Fightback Against War at Home & Abroad, People Organization for Progress, International Action Center, United National Anti-war Coalition, All African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), Kwame Ture Institute, Jersey City Peace Movement, Pakistan Solidarity Network, Pakistan USA Freedom Forum, BAYAN USA, DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) and more to be announced.

Telephone: 646-812-5188
Email:harlemfightbackagainstwar@gmail.com
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From BAR: Lynch Law and Summary Executions in Rebel-Held Libya

From Black Agenda Report:  Lynch Law and Summary Executions in Rebel-Held Libya

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“The world’s most imperial-dependent, ill-disciplined and whining ‘liberation movement’ is still blaming black ‘mercenaries’ and soldiers from Chad for its failures in the field.” Chad, meanwhile, has officially asked the “international coalition” to protect its civilians from the rebels, who have executed “dozens” of Chadian migrant workers. In rebel-held Libya, black Africans and Gaddafi supporters are the people in need of protection.

Lynch Law and Summary Executions in Rebel-Held Libya

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“Dozens of Chadians have been ‘singled out’ and ‘executed,’ falsely accused of acting as mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, according to Chad.”

The African nation of Chad has called on Libya’s Euro-American “humanitarian” overseers to protect Chadian citizens from lynching at the hands of rebels backed by the West. The government in N’Djamena, which certainly has no interest in antagonizing the Euro-American juggernaut that has assumed a “responsibility to protect” whomever it designates as “civilians” in the territory of its northern neighbor, issued a formal request for “international coalition forces involved in Libya and international human rights organizations to stop these abuses against Chadians and other migrant Africa workers.” Dozens of Chadians have been “singled out” and “executed,” falsely accused of acting as mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, according to Chad, 300,000 of whose citizens were among the 1.5 million black African migrant laborers in Libya at the time of the February revolt.

Numerous reports from migrant workers who escaped from rebel-held areas indicate hundreds of black Africans have been lynched, including black Libyan citizens. (See “Race and Arab Nationalism in Libya,” BAR, March 9.) A Turkish oil worker related an especially horrific account to NPR: “We left behind our friends from Chad. We left behind their bodies,” he said. “We had 70 or 80 people from Chad working for our company. They cut them dead with pruning shears and axes, attacking them, saying you’re providing troops for Gadhafi. The Sudanese, the Chadians were massacred. We saw it ourselves.”

“Western media have lent sympathetic ears to rebel claims that assaults by Gaddafi’s black ‘mercenaries’ drove ‘the people’ to commit ‘excesses.’”

Although many western journalists have been all but embedded with the rebels for many weeks, until recently there has been precious little high profile corporate media reporting on the political complexion of Gaddafi’s armed opposition, atrocities against black Africans, or summary executions of prisoners, which are war crimes under international law. Western media have lent sympathetic ears to rebel claims that assaults by Gaddafi’s black “mercenaries” drove “the people” to commit “excesses.”

As usual, it is only after the U.S. government has embarked irrevocably on the warpath that corporate media reveal the flaws in the rationale. In the April 3 New York Times Sunday Magazine, reporter Robert F. Worth passes on the rebel’s version of one of their first confrontations with “mercenaries” in Benghazi:

“The next day, the protests resumed and grew more violent as the first groups of mercenaries appeared, in yellow construction hats, to fight the protesters. Some were Africans; some appeared to be foreign workers, including Bangladeshis and Chinese. Many were not mercenaries at all, but dark-skinned men from southern Libya or hapless African migrants in search of work. Some of the ones I talked to, in makeshift rebel prisons, said they had been tricked with promises of jobs and never paid at all.”

What is obvious from the account, is that the anti-Gaddafi crowd (mob) encountered polyglot groups of yellow-hatted foreign construction laborers (total foreign workers in Libya numbered over 3 million) in their march through Benghazi, and assaulted them, with black Africans receiving especially brutal attention.

“They wanted to kill the black soldier.”

The April 1 edition of Britain’s Globe and Mail reports on a “bitter struggle” among the rebels on “how to contain the anger unleashed after decades of oppression.” Translation: How to stop the summary executions of captured, or reputed, Gaddafi supporters – especially the black ones.

“Rebels have frequently treated dark-skinned prisoners more harshly than men of Arab ancestry,” Graeme Smith reported:

“That distinction was made brutally obvious to doctors at the intensive care unit of Al Bayda’s main hospital on Feb. 17 when they admitted two men – one black, the other with the local olive-skinned complexion – who stood accused of fighting the rebels. A crowd gathered outside the hospital, calling for blood. Some armed rebels pushed their way into the ward.

“’They had guns and knives,’ said Mahmoud Anass, 27, a resident on duty that night. ‘It was really scary. They wanted to kill the black soldier.’

“Doctors managed to hold off the enraged youths until a few hours after midnight, when the rebels dragged the two patients into the street.

“’An old man tried to stop them,’ said Faraj Khalifa, a doctor. ‘He said our religion does not permit the killing of unarmed men. But the youths were very, very angry. They hanged the black man in front of the hospital.’

“The patient with lighter skin was beaten, shot, and returned to the emergency room, Dr. Khalifa said.”

“Racism against black Africans, including black Libyans, appears endemic in eastern Libya.”

Here we have both a war crime and a racial hate crime – a microcosm of the mob rule that has swept regions of rebel control. As the Globe and Mail wrote: “Paranoia about mercenaries remains strong among the rebels, despite assurances from human-rights groups that most of the fighters among the pro-Gadhafi forces are Libyan citizens.”

More accurately, racism against black Africans, including black Libyans, appears endemic in eastern Libya.

The same article shows convincingly that rebels executed more than a dozen captured government soldiers at the town of Darna early in the rebellion, then buried their bodies at a crossroads next to a wall on which it is written, “killed by Gadhafi.”

It is likely that scores of soldiers whose bodies were found in a Benghazi barracks, burned beyond recognition, met the same fate. Rebels initially claimed the men were killed by Gaddafi officers for refusing to fight their own people.

The Super-Powered ‘Revolution’

The world’s most imperial-dependent, ill-disciplined and whining “liberation movement” is still blaming black “mercenaries” and soldiers from Chad for its failures in the field – that is, when they aren’t crying about not having a 24/7 umbrella of full-spectrum American dominance of the skies. On March 31, the Interim Transitional National Council (ITNC) – half of whose members remain “secret” and many of whom may now be mere fronts – claimed that a unit of 3,600 Chadian troops have killed and wounded thousands of rebels since hostilities began. This phantom Chadian army, fighting more than a thousand miles from its impoverished homeland and supply lines, was supposedly to blame for the rebels’ military setbacks around the city of Brega, according to ITNC spokesman Ahmed Bani – evidence that “paranoia” about black enemies of the Libyan “revolution” is not limited to the mob.

The rebels are in fact stymied by the Americans, who show their Libyan dependents who is boss by periodically withdrawing the protection of U.S. airborne kill-at-will systems. President Obama signaled loud and clear that the council in Benghazi will not rule the country, when he intoned, from Chile, that “forty years of tyranny has left Libya fractured and without strong civil institutions. The transition to a legitimate government that is responsive to the Libyan people will be a difficult task.” That’s U.S. Imperial-Speak for: We will run the country for you, until you are ready to stand on your own, traumatized feet. Like Haiti.

“The Americans show their Libyan dependents who is boss by periodically withdrawing the protection of U.S. airborne kill-at-will systems.”

The U.S. is attempting to regain its regional balance as the winds of the Reawakening whip the Arab world. Washington has seized the opportunity in Libya to appear as an uber-protector of emerging forces for change, while positioning itself to quash any substantive threat to imperial interests. As added bonuses, the largest oil reserves in Africa are to be pillaged by multinationals, and the U.S. military can envision a huge new arena for AFRICOM, much larger than the U.S. facility in tiny Djibouti, on eastern coast.

The militant Islamist presence among the rebels will be worked to U.S. advantage, an embedded rationale to bring Libya wholly and permanently into the War on Terror theater of operations. Should an “insurgency” erupt with the fall of Gaddafi, all the better for a U.S. war machine that runs on bogeymen.

But, don’t be overly shocked and awed by the ferocity of the Euro-American counter-offensive. Arab nationalism, in its many manifestations, represents an existential threat to imperial survival. After generations of suppression of the Left in Arab lands, nationalism (and anti-imperialism) now often finds its expression from the Right, in religious form and language. Nevertheless, all nationalisms among subject peoples are ultimately antithetical to imperial rule.

Racism is often a strong component of particular nationalisms. (White American nationalism is a dramatic example.) Arab Muslim identity in the North African Maghreb, for some, is defined in opposition to darker, “Africans,” whether they are Muslim or not. Without doubt, this strain of racism is a huge barrier to South-North Pan-Africanism, and useful to the Euro-Americans. But, even nationalists who are afflicted with racism will fight to control their own land and resources – which is U.S. imperialism’s fundamental – and insoluble — problem.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Obama’s 5th Column Crumbles

Obama’s supporters in the Left have found it increasingly difficult to justify the administration’s actions; see articles below.  Also check out our posts on Bill Fletcher and Amiri Baraka.

Exclusive: Cornel West and other such political opportunists

By Larry Pinkney
Posted on April 8, 2011 by Larry Pinkney

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”—Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.”—African Proverb

The most insidiously dangerous of all systemic gatekeepers are those who masquerade as progressives or so-called leftists but who in reality act as the fifth column for the maintenance of U.S. Empire abroad and internal repression at home.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this can be found in those alleged ‘progressive’ members of the Black and White ‘intelligentsia’ who urged the struggling, everyday, Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation to support the 2008 then U.S. presidential candidacy of the corporate-backed, war mongering, silver tongued Barack Obama.

Thanks in no small measure to support from black systemic gatekeepers such as Cornel West, Amiri Baraka (aka Leroi Jones), Al Sharpton, and Henry Louis Gates, et al; Barack Obama became and was installed as the 44th president of the United States—the first nominally-black head of the U.S. Empire. It is now the year 2011, and the poor and disenfrachised people of all colors in this nation are suffering increased economic austerity, massive joblessness and home foreclosures, the largest incarceration rate in the world, a de facto police state, an extension and expansion of the unconstitutional ‘PATRIOT Act,’ a continuation of the outrageous ‘extraordinary rendition’ program, the continuance of the U.S. gulag at Guantanamo, and last but by no means least, the bloody U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and now north Africa.

The above-mentioned systemic gatekeeping opportunists knew full well by the middle of the year 2008, that Barack Obama was the darling of the blood sucking U.S. corporate/military elite. Nevertheless, they supported him and urged others to do so. They shamelessly urged that Obama be supported whether “critically” or otherwise. Thus, these systemic gatekeepers did all in their power to neutralize, ignore, marginalize, or stifle those, including Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon, The Black Commentator’s Larry Pinkney and Dr. Lenore Jean Daniels, and former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and her running mate Rosa Clemente etc., who for at least four years now, have been repeatedly disseminating the clarion call as to the enormous systemic dangers of supporting the corporate groomed and backed Barack Obama. On the other hand, the systemic political opportunists, and most particularly those of the Black and White intelligentsia masquerading as ‘progressives,’ were well aware of the fact they were urging everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation to go against their own interests and court economic and political disaster in the person of Barack Obama.

Article continues at following link:

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1451

Awakening From Obama’s Seductive Spell

by Gary Olson

President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, expected to cost more than $1 billion, is underway. Given incumbency and likely opponents, he’ll probably win. Of course ZNet readers understand that won’t make a whit of difference for most Americans. But if you know someone still slumbering in an Obamamania-induced trance, I have a guaranteed spell breaker. Paul Street’s book, The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2010, paperback) demolishes any remaining misapprehension that Obama is anything other than a Wall Street/military-friendly, seductive-sounding servant of concentrated wealth and power. I assigned it as a text this term in my course “U.S. Workers in the Global Economy” and for many students it was a game changer.

This week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expressed deep disappointment in the president and asserted that “Mr. Obama is still clearly clinging to his vision of himself as a figure who can transcend America’s partisan differences” (April 11, 2011). Perhaps, but given the facts, Obama’s record as president shouldn’t come as a surprise: Recycling discredited economic advisors like Rubin and Geithner, rescuing ruthless Wall Street speculators, extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the super-rich, abandoning his healthcare “public option” and quickly selling out to private insurers, going back on his pledge to close GITMO, maintaining 50,000 troops in Iraq while substituting mercenaries for others, a pitifully inadequate stimulus package, doing virtually nothing about the real unemployment rate of 18 percent and shrinking paychecks, a record-setting Pentagon budget, pushing anti-labor trade deals, reneging on his campaign promise to reform management-friendly labor laws and reducing payments to social security. Finally, in Obama’s Vietnam, the disastrous and immoral Afghanistan War which costs taxpayers $2 billion per month, 98,000 U.S. troops remain on the ground. In 2010 alone, 499 U.S. soldiers died there and 440 Afghan civilians were killed by U.S. led forces. Last year, U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered a tripling of amputations of more than one limb. And this is only a short list from Obama’s first term which feels more like Bush’s third term.

More of Obama’s true colors emerged when he refused to utter a word of solidarity with besieged public workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere. This is the same person who, while campaigning in 2007, eloquently proclaimed “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collective bargaining when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself and I’ll walk the picket line with you as President of the United States of America because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.” And only a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations could contribute unlimited funds to politicians, Obama named Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, notorious for exporting job and tax avoidance, as his “jobs czar.”

However, contrary to complaints from a few disgruntled liberals, Obama isn’t a morally compromised, spineless individual, betraying his most cherished ideals. Quite the contrary, Street documents via exhaustive examples that Obama has been consistently to the right of center throughout his public career and is doing what he was groomed to do. It was the combination of a brilliant marketing strategy, beguiling rhetoric, and something approaching a cult of personality that put him over the top in 2008.

Article continues at following link:

http://www.zcommunications.org/awakening-from-obamas-seductive-spell-by-gary-olson

The President Is Missing

by Paul Krugman

What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular?

I realize that with hostile Republicans controlling the House, there’s not much Mr. Obama can get done in the way of concrete policy. Arguably, all he has left is the bully pulpit. But he isn’t even using that — or, rather, he’s using it to reinforce his enemies’ narrative.

His remarks after last week’s budget deal were a case in point.

Maybe that terrible deal, in which Republicans ended up getting more than their opening bid, was the best he could achieve — although it looks from here as if the president’s idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions.

And bear in mind that this was just the first of several chances for Republicans to hold the budget hostage and threaten a government shutdown; by caving in so completely on the first round, Mr. Obama set a baseline for even bigger concessions over the next few months.

But let’s give the president the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that $38 billion in spending cuts — and a much larger cut relative to his own budget proposals — was the best deal available. Even so, did Mr. Obama have to celebrate his defeat? Did he have to praise Congress for enacting “the largest annual spending cut in our history,” as if shortsighted budget cuts in the face of high unemployment — cuts that will slow growth and increase unemployment — are actually a good idea?

Among other things, the latest budget deal more than wipes out any positive economic effects of the big prize Mr. Obama supposedly won from last December’s deal, a temporary extension of his 2009 tax cuts for working Americans. And the price of that deal, let’s remember, was a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, at an immediate cost of $363 billion, and a potential cost that’s much larger — because it’s now looking increasingly likely that those irresponsible tax cuts will be made permanent.

More broadly, Mr. Obama is conspicuously failing to mount any kind of challenge to the philosophy now dominating Washington discussion — a philosophy that says the poor must accept big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps; the middle class must accept big cuts in Medicare (actually a dismantling of the whole program); and corporations and the rich must accept big cuts in the taxes they have to pay. Shared sacrifice!

I’m not exaggerating. The House budget proposal that was unveiled last week — and was praised as “bold” and “serious” by all of Washington’s Very Serious People — includes savage cuts in Medicaid and other programs that help the neediest, which would among other things deprive 34 million Americans of health insurance. It includes a plan to privatize and defund Medicare that would leave many if not most seniors unable to afford health care. And it includes a plan to sharply cut taxes on corporations and to bring the tax rate on high earners down to its lowest level since 1931.

Article continues at following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html

In President Obama, Republicans find a patsy
while progressives get man who wasn’t there

Apr 5th, 2011

by S.W. Anderson.

 

Two years plus in the White House, and President Obama still doesn’t get it that caving in to Republicans only convinces them that all they have to do to get what they want is to be ever more hostile, more demanding and more uncompromising.Case in point, the wrangle over the 2011 budget, about which a frustrated Obama today exclaimed (emphasis ours):

In fact, what we’ve been able to do is to present to the House Republicans a budget framework that would cut the same amount of spending as Speaker Boehner and Chairman Rogers originally proposed — their original proposal for how much would be cut.

And several weeks ago, there were discussions between the White House and Speaker Boehner’s office in which we said, let’s start negotiating off of that number, $73 billion. We are now closer than we have ever been to getting an agreement. There’s no reason why we should not get an agreement. As I said before, we have now matched the number that the Speaker originally sought.

Shades of the beginning of the health care reform debate, when Obama kicked off the proceedings by taking a single-payer approach off the table and making it clear he wasn’t that enthused about a public option.Just like that, Obama gave away his bargaining chips. No need for anyone to get huffy because he was going to be oh so reasonable.That’s why 2010 will be forever remembered as the year Obama bound up the nation’s partisan wounds and beat Republicans’ swords into plowshares to be used in a cooperative, fruitful quest for health care reform everyone could support and feel good about.

Only in Obama’s sappy, pushover dreams.

Ever the ones to bargain in bad faith and move the goal post once their demands are met, Republicans suddenly decided if Obama would so easily cave to $33 billion in 2011 domestic spending cuts, he could be made to cave for $40 billion.

Faced with mounting “tea party” resistance, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has rejected the reductions as inadequate and called the Democrats’ proposal “smoke and mirrors.”

According to a senior administration official, Boehner said at the White House meeting that he wanted what amounted to $40 billion in cuts.

That surprised White House aides, who believed Boehner had accepted the $33-billion number, at least if details could be hammered out.

If Obama had a clue about economics and good economic advisors giving him sound pointers, he’d have started out fighting tooth and nail against anycuts to the 12 percent of the budget mostly allotted to helping children, the elderly and needy of all ages. If Obama had a clue, he would’ve insisted that while the economy still needs stimulus spending to promote job creation, and while the states are shredding their safety nets, he’d tolerate no cuts to the 2011 budget.And, if Obama had the courage of any Democratic political convictions, he would’ve been the one to become more hostile, more demanding and more uncompromising.An Obama demonstrating that kind of unbending resolve, that willingness to stand behind and fight for what’s right, is the one we thought were voting for in 2008. It’s the one we’ve needed along.

Sadly, maddeningly, that kind of Obama is the man who wasn’t there.

http://ohpblog.ohpinion.com/?p=4453

Billion dollar Obama rocks Yemen

From Asia Times: THE ROVING EYE Billion-dollar Obama rocks Yemen By Pepe Escobar To follow Pepe’s articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here. Go, go, you coward; you are an American agent – Protesters chanting in Sana’a, March 24 So far no R2P (“responsibility to protect”). No United Nations resolution. No no-fly zone. No “coalition of the willing”. No Tomahawks. No Predator drones. No C-130 gun ships. No humanitarian imperialism. Yet so far, protesters are being killed; a dictator refuses to step down; al-Qaeda is thriving, and in the open; counter-insurgency rolls; there’s a lot of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the ground; and civil war looms. Welcome to the curious case of not-fit-for-humanitarian-imperialism Yemen. United States President Barack Obama’s mantra on Libya is that “Muammar Gaddafi must go”. Pentagon supremo Robert Gates, asked about the Yemeni Gaddafi, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, answered, with a straight face, that Washington had no opinion, because it does not interfere in internal affairs of other countries. The evidence points otherwise. The first African-American president – a Nobel Peace Prize laureate – now also holds the dubious distinction of being the only American president to launch a war on an African nation. He has also launched his re-election campaign, which is bound to gobble up a cool US$1 billion. Meanwhile, Saleh kept killing his own people, and injuring hundreds – like in the southwestern city of Taizz this Monday. Obama had to do something, so he has “quietly shifted positions”, in the quaint words of the New York Times; the new mantra is “Saleh must go”. Contorted rhetoric suggests Washington now wants Saleh to go because it has come to the conclusion that his days in power are gone, even though for over two months, killing spree included, he enjoyed full US backing. Our cunning bastard Yemen festers with George W Bush-era special forces-led counter-terrorism – widely expanded under Obama. Saleh is the local contractor. The target is bogeyman al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP), which is hit by frequent bursts of “kinetic military action” (in White House speak). “Collateral damage” may have reached the low hundreds. A March 2011 Glevum Stability Assessment found out that no less than 96% of Yemenis believe “the West is at war with Islam”; only 4% approve of the US “war on terror” chapter in their lands; and a majority regards AQAP as involved in “self-defense”. Yet as far as Washington is concerned, the only thing that matters in Yemen is counter-terrorism – not what the locals think. There are at least 60 million lethal weapons in Yemen. Yet the Yemeni youth uprising has been a model of pacifism. Saleh, truthful to the standard Arab dictator script, branded them “drug dealers”, money launderers and a “small minority”. North Yemen and South Yemen were united in 1994. Saleh delegates control over much of Yemen to tribal sheikhs whose loyalty is dodgy, to say the least. Saud Arabia runs riot, buying everyone in sight and bankrolling the influence of hardcore Wahhabism. AQAP is just a minor detail in a complex political landscape. In the north, Zeydi Shi’ites are fighting for autonomy. Saleh’s tactics are to massively bomb their villages, displace hundreds of thousands of civilians, and then attack them. No, no one will slap him with a no-fly zone for it. In the south a peaceful secessionist movement struggling for more equality has been savagely crushed. Some of its members went the guerrilla way. Saleh has been very clever into instrumentalizing AQAP against his domestic enemies, while using the AQAP threat to extort weapons, intelligence and hundreds of million of dollars from the Americans. It worked, up to now. Obama ramped up “military assistance” for Yemen from $67 million in 2009 to $150 million in 2010. WikiLeaks widely exposed dirty deals between Washington and Saleh – including General David Petraeus lying to Yemenis about who was killing Yemeni civilians during the “war on terror”. But unlike demonized terrorist/rehab/thug Gaddafi, Saleh is one of “our bastards”. He’s cunning enough to smash Zeydis, southern Yemenis, journalists and peaceful student protesters instead of smashing his golden egg, AQAP. Now that Obama hinted he must go, bets can be made on a scenario of the CIA using AQAP against Saleh. Target: to balkanize Yemen. This is where the legacy of Said al-Shihri comes in – a Saudi freed from Guantanamo sent to Yemen by the Bush administration, and killed on February 12; as well as the influence of American-born Anwar Awlaki, a classic CIA double agent. The CIA is already instrumentalizing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Libya; with or without Gaddafi in power as part of a balkanized Libya, AQIM is already a destabilizing factor in the big picture. The modus operandi is the same: the CIA/Pentagon use the al-Qaeda specter to justify the endless war on terror, be it in northern Africa or in the Arabic Peninsula. For its part, the House of Saud has been fighting tooth and nail for Saleh to stay; he is as much a House of Saud lackey as the al-Khalifas in Bahrain. But without support from the Obama administration, the best the House of Saud can hope for is the usual “stability” and “smooth transition of power” – as in yet one more Saudi Arabia-friendly General. Saudi Arabia wants a “smooth” military coup. They would not be exactly displeased with hard line commander Major General Ali Mohsin Saleh Ahmar as the new leader. After waves of political, ministerial, ambassadorial and military defections either Saleh goes or there’s civil war (true to script, he says there won’t be civil war only if he stays). The new government in Sana’a has installed a state of emergency. Saleh may last a while longer – as he counts on the Republican Guard, Special Forces and internal security, led by his son and nephews. As for the opposition party coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), it now poses as a true representative of the masses protesting in the streets when they have always been court jesters. The fact is Yemeni power elites have co-opted the peaceful revolution. What will be precluded is a real road to democracy, what the people in the streets of Yemen have been fighting – and dying – for. The protests in Yemen started on February 11 with less than 200 Sana’a university students and young activists and only two women. Then the Zeydi in the north pledged their cooperation, and the secessionists in the south stopped their demonstrations and started calling for suqut al nidham (“the fall of the regime”) – the rallying call across the Arab world. As Yemeni political scientist Abdulghani al Iryani told Nir Rosen, “We’ve never had real street mobilizations … Before Tunisia the opposition had a demonstration of 200. After Tunisia they came in the thousands. After Egypt it became an avalanche. There is a new appreciation of collective power. What the formal political establishment could not do, to bring the people together, the youth protest has succeeded in doing.” Their key demands remain constitutional reform and a new electoral law. And what about al-Qaeda? The sprawling US “war on terror” industry – corporate media included – considers it as deadly as a Star Wars plot, unfolding in this ultimate Orientalist dream, the “dangerous deserts and mountains of Yemen”. Yet AQAP is a joke. Its record of “success” is a failed underwear bomb and a package bomb that, well, bombed. Saleh himself knows they are a joke – an absolutely marginal movement not only in Yemen but all across the Middle East. The real reason the US is in Yemen is because the country is supremely strategic – bordering the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Saudi Arabia, the key crossroads between the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. The vicious 2011 Arab counter-revolution keeps working its mysterious ways. Turkey and the BRIC countries are perplexed that the US is now arming the AQIM-infested “rebels” – and may be showering them with juicy bits of the $32 billion in frozen Libyan government assets, plus a share in upcoming oil sales. Talk about a hot Club Med. Under the Bush administration, al-Qaeda was used as the perfect excuse for bombing and pre-emptive wars. Now, under Obama, al-Qaeda – as in AQIM and AQAP – is being used in the balkanization of selected nations, facilitating the breakdown along tribal, sectarian and criminal lines. The ghost of Osama bin Laden continues to pull a Cheshire cat. The al-Qaeda franchise is booming like never before. It may even be back in the game in its original status – as a CIA guerrilla army. There’s no war like an endless war. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.