Group items tagged

We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races.

The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.

But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try.On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Win in Israel Sets Netanyahu on Path to Rebuild and Redefine GovernmentMARCH 18, 2015 Palestinian Leaders See Validation of Their Statehood EffortMARCH 18, 2015 Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli ElectionsMARCH 17, 2015 News Analysis: Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter RaceMARCH 17, 2015 In strikingly strong criticism, the White House called Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against Israeli Arabs because they went out to vote, an attempt to “marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” and inconsistent with the values that bind Israel and the United States. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement was “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.”

And with Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute turnaround against a Palestinian state alongside Israel, several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps.Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to major Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank.

Such a Security Council resolution would be anathema to Mr. Netanyahu. Although the principles are United States policy, until now officials would never have endorsed them in the United Nations because the action would have been seen as too antagonistic to Israel.Continue reading the main story “The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a senior White House official said. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”

What’s worse: Launching a disastrous military campaign under false pretenses to achieve goals you wrongly believe are attainable? Or launching a disastrous military campaign you know is doomed in order to help your party win an election? I ask in light of today’s New York Times story about how President Obama asked the CIA a while back whether arming rebel forces – pretty much the agency’s signature strategy — had ever worked in the past. He was told that it almost never has. But then in June, once the political pressure for intervention in Syria got too great, he did just that — sending weapons to rebels fighting the Syrian military. Yes: He knew better, but he did it anyway.

Obama’s biggest such decision killed a lot of American servicemembers who he sent to fight and die in Afghanistan. During his 2008 presidential campaign, which was marked by his opposition to the war in Iraq, then-Senator Obama’s vow to re-engage in Afghanistan was seen by many as a ploy to avoid being cast as a dove, first by Hillary Clinton and then by John McCain. What’s not clear to this day is precisely when Obama knew better; when he realized that the war in Afghanistan was hopeless. By inauguration time, that conclusion seemed fairly obvious to many foreign-policy watchers. So why not him?

But one month into his presidency, Obama announced he was sending more troops there – 30,000, as it would turn out. Despite the obvious lack of what he himself had frequently described as a must — an exit strategy – he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 50 percent. And the monthly death tolls shot up. Over 1,600 American servicemembers  have died in Afghanistan since the summer of 2009 — well over half of all the dead during the entire war – along with countless Afghans. There were public signs in November 2009 that Obama was “rethinking” his plan. David Sanger, in his book Confront and Conceal, wrote that Obama actually began a “reassessment of whether the war was as necessary as he first believed” even earlier, in the summer of 2009. (At an off-the-record June 2009 dinner with historians the “main point” his guests tried to make was “that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson,” Garry Wills wrote  later.)

The November 24 deadline for Iran and world powers to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is quickly approaching.

If there is a deal on Nov. 24, the White House indicated, in an article authored by David E. Sanger in Sunday’s New York Times, that it would not seek an immediate vote on the agreement or sanctions relief, instead asserting that the administration can, and may need to, roll back some sanctions unilaterally as part of immediate sanctions relief guarantees in a possible agreement. Hawks in Congress may want to portray their position as representing the mainstream consensus but a letter signed by thirty-seven organizations and sent to members of Congress on Thursday offers some indication that many foreign policy groups in the beltway are concerned by Congress’ latest effort to meddle in the final weeks of sensitive diplomacy before the November deadline. The signatories—which include the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; J Street; MoveOn.org; the National Iranian American Council; Progressive Democrats of America; the United Methodist Church and VoteVets— expressed “deep concern with inaccurate and counterproductive rhetoric from a handful of Members of Congress regarding possible outcomes of the current negotiations.”

They continue: Particularly irresponsible are threats to oppose any comprehensive agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program that initially suspends US sanctions on Iran through lawful executive action. Congress’ authorization of the President’s power to suspend and re-impose US sanctions on Iran is clear and unmistakable in each piece of legislation it has passed on the subject. Use of these provisions by the President to implement the initial phase of an agreement that ensures Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon would reflect an affirmation, not a subversion, of Congress’ will. The echo chamber on Capitol Hill may give members of the House and Senate the impression that only the threat of military action or crushing sanctions are effective tools in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. (My colleague Ali Gharib and I discussed the disproportionate voice given to individuals from neoconservative organizations at congressional hearings on Iran in a July article in The Nation.)

Europe is being overrun by refugees from American bombing campaigns in Libya and Syria, which created a failed state in Libya, and which threaten to do the same in Syria. Europe is thus being forced to separate itself from endorsing the U.S. bombing campaign that focuses against the Syrian government forces of the secular Shiite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, instead of against his fundamentalist Sunni Islamic opponents, the jihadist groups (all of which are Sunni), such as ISIS, and Al Qaeda in Syria (al-Nusra).

Russia announced on October 2nd that their bombing campaign against America’s allies in Syria — ISIS and Al Nusra (the latter being Al Qaeda in Syria) — will intensify and will last “three or four months.” U.S. President Barack Obama is insisting upon excluding Russia from any peace talks on Syria; the U.S. will not move forward with peace talks unless Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad first steps down. But Russia is the only serious military power against the jihadists who are trying to defeat Assad, and Russia is now committing itself also to providing Lebanon with weapons against the jihadists, who are America’s allies in Lebanon too.

That’s hardly the only ‘legacy’ issue for Obama — his war against Russia, via overthrowing Gaddafi, then Yanukovych, and his still trying to overthrow Assad — which is now forcing the break-up of the Western Alliance, over the resulting refugee-crisis. An even bigger such conflict within the Alliance concerns Obama’s proposed treaty with European states, the TTIP, which would give international corporations rights to sue national governments in non-appealable global private arbitration panels, the dictates from which will stand above any member-nation’s laws. Elected government officials will have no control over them. This supra-national mega-corporate effort by Obama is also part of his similar effort in his proposed TPP treaty with Asian nations, both of which are additionally aimed to isolate from international trade not just Russia, but China, so as to leave America’s large international corporations controlling virtually the entire world. As things now stand regarding these ‘trade’ deals, Obama will either need to eliminate some of his demands, or else the European Commission won’t be able to muster enough of its members to support Obama’s proposed treaty with the EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Also, some key European nations might reject Obama’s proposed treaty on regulations regarding financial and other services: TISA (Trade In Services Agreement). All three of Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ deals, including the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) between the U.S. and Asian countries, are the actual culmination of Obama’s Presidency, and they’re all about far more than just trade and economics. The main proposed deal with Europe might now be dead.

Finally, we’re reminded of a commencement speech Obama delivered in 2009 at Arizona State University, after university officials declined to give Obama an honorary doctorate. Obama “joked” that “[university president Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.” Clearly, that wasn’t much of a joke.

Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks. The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said. “It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned. The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said. Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

The “New American Century” proclaimed by the neoconservatives came to an abrupt end on September 6 at the G20 meeting in Russia. The leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US government attacks Syria without UN authorization. Putin told the assembled world leaders that the chemical weapons attack was “a provocation on behalf of the armed insurgents in hope of the help from the outside, from the countries which supported them from day one.” In other words, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Washington–the axis of evil. China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.” In other words, if you defy the world, obama, you are a war criminal.

We are yet to see an american president who can stand up to Israel. Or, for that matter, a Congress that can. Or a media. The obama regime tried to counter its smashing defeat at the G20 Summit by forcing its puppet states to sign a joint statement condemning Syria. However the puppet states qualified their position by stating that they opposed military action and awaited the UN report.

What this reveals is that the support behind the liar obama is feeble and limited. The ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a cover for self-interest, murder, and genocide.

It would seem the CIA has gone back into their archives, blown the dust off the Phoenix Program, and put it into play again as the “Drone War.” The similarities with the Drone War are readily evident to anyone old enough to know of the Phoenix Program. For those who aren’t old enough or who have forgotten, the Phoenix Program is usually referred to as an assassination program and was the subject of investigation by the Senate’s “Church Committee.” Indisputably, thousands of South Vietnamese civilians were killed under this CIA directed program.

Phoenix was far more than a mere assassination program , however. It was a Counter-Insurgency, COIN, program, using the tactic of counter-terrorism, including assassination, against the insurgent’s so-called infrastructure. This was the Vietnamese civilian population in which the insurgent, the Viet Cong guerilla, operated and from some of whom they drew their support. To the U.S., these civilians were the Viet Cong Infrastructure, the VCI. And the VCI was the target to be terrorized by any means necessary in the hope that they would turn against the Viet Cong. The VCI would have included the families, close and extended kinship groups, of alleged active Viet Cong combatants, fellow villagers, and other Vietnamese civilians who were not actively opposed to the Viet Cong. Some of this “support” was voluntary and some coerced. As the Phoenix Program went on, with its assassinations, torture practices, and “disappearances,” more support became voluntary as Vietnamese peasants turned against the U.S. and the South Vietnamese government as a result of the program. An error in identification of a victim was irrelevant to those in control of the program, the CIA, as it still served the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, which was the true purpose of the program.

For the Viet Cong, this was a classic example of achieving the guerilla’s goal of having a civilian population turn against a government by a government’s own harsh over-reaction to the guerilla threat. Today, a guerilla and the people whom they are amongst are deemed “terrorists” if they find themselves on the wrong side of a domestic conflict that the U.S. has taken a side in, such as Yemen. As we saw in Libya, and see in Syria, these guerillas can become instant U.S. allies who must be supported, if, or when, the U.S. makes policy changes. But unless those U.S. policy changes occur, these groups remain part of the global terrorist network of “associated forces” with al Qaeda, in the eyes of CIA and military officials, and targeted with drones. From the relatively large number of civilian victims of drone attacks as claimed by residents of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the political party, Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), this Drone Program has all the hallmarks of the Phoenix Program.

During an investigation of President Barack Hussein Obama’s political appointees and White House aides, FBI agents discovered secret government email accounts they say were used as primary means for Obama’s staff to interact with IRS officials for day-to-day business.

With my five-year budget, millions of jobs would be created by cutting the corporate income tax in half, by creating a flat personal income tax of 17%, and by cutting the regulations that are strangling American businesses.

America has much greatness left in her. We will begin to thrive again when we begin to believe in ourselves again, when we regain our respect for our founding documents, when we balance our budget, when we understand that capitalism and free markets and free individuals are what creates our nation’s prosperity.

It appears that any US action in Syria will be delayed after Obama said he would wait for authorisation from Congress before launching air strikes. The president said he would wait for a debate and a vote on action in Syria, but said he will not call Congress back from recess early. That will seemingly postpone any action until 9 September at the earliest – the date Congress is due back in Washington. This is a big change for Obama. Military strikes had been expected to take place over the weekend, but now there is no guarantee they will occur at all.