Infinite Unknown

More transparency we can believe in!

In a 6-5 ruling issued this afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Obama administration a major victory in its efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review, when the court upheld the Obama DOJ’s argument that Bush’s rendition program, used to send victims to be tortured, are “state secrets” and its legality thus cannot be adjudicated by courts.

The Obama DOJ had appealed to the full 9th Circuit from last year’s ruling by a 3-judge panel which rejected the “state secrets” argument and held that it cannot be used as a weapon to shield the Executive Branch from allegations in this case that it broke the law.

I’ve written multiple times about this case, brought by torture/rendition victim Binyam Mohamed and several others against the Boeing subsidiary which, at the behest of the Bush administration, rendered them to be tortured.

Flu permitting, I’ll have much more to say about this decision tomorrow, but for the moment, I wanted to highlight the first paragraph from The New York Times article on this ruling, written by Charlie Savage.  Just marvel, in particular, at the last sentence:

“The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power.”  That says it all.

The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege — as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents — is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy.  To see how true that is, just look at this article from Talking Points Memo, from April of last year, in which Zachary Roth consulted with numerous legal experts about my argument that Obama was abusing this weapon in exactly the same way Bush did.  His findings were encapsulated in the TPM headline:

Roth wrote:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald wrote that the move “demonstrates that the Obama DOJ plans to invoke the exact radical doctrines of executive secrecy which Bush used.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called it “deja vu all over again”.

Not having Greenwald’s training in constitutional law (and perhaps lacking Olbermann’s all-conquering self-confidence), we wanted to get a sense from a few independent experts as to how to assess the administration’s position on the case. Does it represent a continuation of the Bushies’ obsession with putting secrecy and executive power above basic constitutional rights? Is it a sweeping power grab by the executive branch, that sets set a broad and dangerous precedent for future cases by asserting that the government has the right to get lawsuits dismissed merely by claiming that state secrets are at stake, without giving judges any discretion whatsoever?

In a word, yes.

Suffice to say — with great understatement — Obama’s doing this doesn’t trigger the same level of outrage and objection as when Bush did it, at least not in most circles.  And I do so fondly recall the days back in the Spring of last year when civil libertarians who were vigorously objecting to Obama’s Bush-replicating legal positions were told by vocal Obama supporters that Obama was only doing this in order to ensure that Bush’s extremist legal theories were rejected by courts and thus we were all generously showered with the Magnanimous Gift of Good Precedent.  Again with great understatement, Obama’s appealing the 9th Circuit’s rejection of the Bush/Obama “state secrets” argument to the full court — and thus securing one of the most harmful judicial endorsements ever of this radical secrecy doctrine — is not exactly consistent with that Obama-justifying rationale. Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Bush administration, CIA, George Bush, Government, Interrogation, Obama administration, Politics, Torture, U.S.

Just in case you still haven’t watched this:

- George Carlin: The American Dream

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An ABC - Four Corners documentary about the coming economic crisis, featuring Gerald Celente and Peter Schiff. Original air date: 23rd August, 2010.

See also:

- Prof. Nouriel Roubini: No Defence Left Against Double-Dip Recession

- American Deaths In Afghanistan Surpass Highest Annual Record

- US: Record 1 in 6 Americans in Government Anti-Poverty Programs

- California Delays $2.9 Billion School, County Payments In September Amid Budget Impasse

- US Home Sales in July: Record Drop Of 27 Percent, The Largest Monthly Drop On Record

- US Cities Sell Parking, Airports, Zoo To Help Closing Budget Gaps

- Nearly 50 Percent leave Obama Mortgage-Relief Program

- The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: And Now We’re Headed For The GREATEST Depression

- US: Jobless Claims Jump to Highest Level Since November

- US: Bankruptcies Reach Nearly 5-Year High

- US Cities Face Up To MASSIVE Cuts

- Why the US is as busted as a busted flush - IMF analysis suggests the US is fiscally bankrupt

- John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy - Hyperinflation - Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life:

The government is effectively bankrupt. Using GAAP accounting principles, the annual deficit is running in the range of $4 trillion to $5 trillion. That’s beyond containment. The government can’t cover it with taxes. They’d still be in deficit if they took 100% of personal income and corporate profits. They’d also still be in deficit if they cut every penny of government spending except for Social Security and Medicare. Washington lacks the will to slash its social programs severely, to change its approach to ever bigger government. The only option left going forward is for the government eventually to print the money for the obligations it cannot otherwise cover, which sets up a hyperinflation.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bubble, Bush administration, Debt, Depression, Documentary, Dollar, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, George Bush, Gerald Celente, Global News, Government, Great Depression, Obama administration, Peter Schiff, Politics, U.S.

Added: 23. August 2010

From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (”No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

Tags: Banks, Barack Obama, Bush administration, Documentary, Economy, Financial Crisis, George Bush, Goldman Sachs, Government, inside job, Lehman Brothers, Obama administration, Politics, Stock Market, U.S., Wall Street

The truth is:

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
- Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary

Skip the introduction.

Introduction:

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Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Barack Obama, Bush administration, CIA, Cold War, Documentary, Drugs, Global News, Government, heroin, ISI, Jimmy Carter, Military, Mujahideen, Obama administration, Operation Cyclone, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Politics, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Terrorism, Terrorists, U.S., War, Zbigniew Brzezinski

All these soldiers could be still alive …

Obama: ‘I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.’

Grim milestone: The same number of American soldiers have died in Afghanistan during Barack Obama’s presidency as during George Bush’s entire time in office.

Afghanistan was dubbed ‘Obama’s War’ last night after it was revealed that as many American soldiers have died in the conflict during his presidency as during George Bush’s entire time in office.

According to the latest death tally, 575 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan in the 20 months since Barack Obama took office in January last year.

That is the same number of fatalities the U.S. military suffered under Mr Bush, who launched the Afghan invasion nine years ago in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

With his White House honeymoon well and truly over, Mr Obama is no longer able to blame his country’s travails on the previous administration.

Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Bush administration, George Bush, Global News, Government, Military, Politics, Soldiers, U.S., War

Listen to Gerald Celente America!
Rome is burning:

- John Williams: ‘Times That Try Our Souls’ (U.S. Bankruptcy - Hyperinflation - Great Depression), Preparedness Can Save Your Life

So what have the elitists planned for the US? Total collapse and/or WW III?

- Former CIA And Military Officials To Obama: Israel Prepares To Attack Iran This Month

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Added: 11. August 2010

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Added: 11. August 2010

Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Bush administration, Civil liberties, Civil rights, Congress, Constitution, Depression, Dictatorship, Dollar, Economy, Education, Egypt, Fed, Federal Reserve, Freedom, George Bush, Gerald Celente, Global News, Government, Great Depression, Iraq, Lew Rockwell, Middle East, Military, Obama administration, Pakistan, Politics, Ron Paul, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Taxes, Taxpayers, U.S., War

Mr. F. William Engdahl also mentions this in his article:

- Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange on 9/11 and Bilderberg:

What about 9/11?

“I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”

What about the Bilderberg conference?

“That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.”

F. William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl: Since the dramatic release of a US military film of a US airborne shooting of unarmed journalists in Iraq, Wiki-Leaks has gained global notoriety and credibility as a daring website that releases sensitive material to the public from whistleblowers within various governments. Their latest “coup” involved alleged leak of thousands of pages of supposedly sensitive documents regarding US informers within the Taliban in Afghanistan and their ties to senior people linked to Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence. The evidence suggests however that far from an honest leak, it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and Indian intelligence and a cover-up of the US and Western role in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan.

Since the posting of the Afghan documents some days ago the Obama White House has given the leaks credibility by claiming further leaks pose a threat to US national security. Yet details of the papers reveals little that is sensitive. The one figure most prominently mentioned, General (Retired) Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, ISI, is the man who during the 1980s coordinated the CIA-financed Mujahideen guerrilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviet regime there. In the latest Wikileaks documents, Gul is accused of regularly meeting Al Qaeda and Taliban leading people and orchestrating suicide attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The leaked documents also claim that Osama bin Laden, who was reported dead three years ago by the late Pakistan candidate Benazir Bhutto on BBC, was still alive, conveniently keeping the myth alove for the Obama Administration War on Terror at a point when most US Americans had forgotten the original reason the Bush Administration allegedly invaded Afghanistan to pursue the Saudi Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.

Demonizing Pakistan?

The naming of Gul today as a key liaison to the Afghan “Taliban” forms part of a larger pattern of US and British recent efforts to demonize the current Pakistan regime as a key part of the problems in Afghanistan. Such a demonization greatly boosts the position of recent US military ally, India. Furthermore, Pakistan is the only muslim country possessing atomic weapons. The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency reportedly would very much like to change that. A phoney campaign against the politically outspoken Gul via Wikileaks could be part of that geopolitical effort.

The London Financial Times says Gul’s name appears in about 10 of roughly 180 classified US files that allege Pakistan’s intelligence service supported Afghan militants fighting Nato forces. Gul told the newspaper the US has lost the war in Afghanistan, and that the leak of the documents would help the Obama administration deflect blame by suggesting that Pakistan was responsible. Gul told the paper, “I am a very favourite whipping boy of America. They can’t imagine the Afghans can win wars on their own. It would be an abiding shame that a 74-year-old general living a retired life manipulating the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan results in the defeat of America.” Continue reading »

Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Benazir Bhutto, Bush administration, F. William Engdahl, George Bush, Global News, Government, Julian Assange, Military, NATO, Obama administration, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Politics, Taliban, U.S., WIKILEAKS

Thousands of leaked US military papers from Afghanistan contain evidence of possible war crimes that must be urgently investigated, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says at press conference in London

Mustafa Khalili
Monday 26 July 2010

Source: The Guardian

More on Wikileaks:

- The Afghanistan War Logs: Wikileaks Condemned By White House Over War Documents

- Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange on 9/11 and Bilderberg

- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange emerges from hiding, next big leak to be of the ‘calibre’ of publishing information about the way the top secret Echelon system had been used

- Pentagon Hunts WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

- President Obama Has Already Outdone Every Previous President In Prosecuting Whistleblowers

Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Bush administration, George Bush, Global News, Government, Julian Assange, Military, Obama administration, Politics, U.S., War, War Crimes, WIKILEAKS

Wikileaks and Julian Assange get way to much attention in the corporate media, that is controlled and censored by the elite.

I am not saying that Julian Assange is an agent, but I am 100% sure that these news are allowed to be published for a reason, otherwise the mass media would not cover the Afghanistan war logs like that.

See also:

- Afghanistan war logs: live blog (Guardian)

- Afghanistan war logs: US covered up fatal Taliban missile strike on Chinook (Guardian):

The US military covered up a reported surface-to-air missile strike by the Taliban that shot down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand in 2007 and killed seven soldiers, including a British military photographer, the war logs show.

The strike on the twin-rotor helicopter shows the Taliban enjoyed sophisticated anti-aircraft capabilities earlier than previously thought, casting new light on the battle for the skies over Afghanistan.

Hundreds of files detail the efforts of insurgents, who have no aircraft, to shoot down western warplanes. The war logs detail at least 10 near-misses by missiles in four years against coalition aircraft, one while refuelling at 11,000ft and another involving a suspected Stinger missile of the kind supplied by the CIA to Afghan rebels in the 1980s.

- Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation (Guardian):

• Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops

• Covert unit hunts leaders for ‘kill or capture’

• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato

• Read the Guardian’s full war logs investigation

- Afghan war logs: inquiry launched into source of leaks (Telegraph)

- Pakistani spy agency denounces US intel docs (Guardian)

- Tens of thousands of alleged Afghan war documents go online (CNN):

“It is the total history of the Afghan war from 2004 to 2010, with some important exceptions — U.S. Special Forces, CIA activity and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups,” Assange said.

- White House says Wikileaks is endangering lives (Independent)

Leak of classified military reports puts lives of coalition troops in Afghanistan at risk and threatens security, claims US

White House national security adviser General Jim Jones stressed that the documents related to a period from January 2004 to December 2009, during the administration of President George Bush.

The White House today condemned whistleblower Wikileaks, accusing the website of putting the lives of US, UK and coalition troops in danger and threatening America’s national security of the US after it posted more than 90,000 leaked US military documents about the war in Afghanistan.

The documents have revealed unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and information about secret operations against Taliban leaders, as well as highlighting US fears that Pakistan’s intelligence service was aiding the Afghan uprising.

The White House “strongly” criticised the leaks in a statement, which it said, “could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security”. It said that Wikileaks had made no effort to contact US security services, but insisted that what it called the “irresponsible leaks” would not “impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people”. Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Barack Obama, Bush administration, George Bush, Global News, Government, Julian Assange, Military, Obama administration, Pakistan, Taliban, U.S., War, WIKILEAKS

“BP Atlantis”!

President Obama in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, May 28, 2010.

This article originally appeared in RS 1107 from June 24, 2010.

(Rolling Stone Magazine) — On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. “They have the technical expertise to plug the hole,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. “It is their responsibility.” The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. “If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?” a reporter asked. “No,” Gibbs replied.

Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. “In case you were wondering who’s responsible,” Obama told the nation, “I take responsibility.” Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. “There wasn’t sufficient urgency,” the president said. “Absolutely I take responsibility for that.” He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: “I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.” He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. “The buck,” he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, “stops with me.”

What didn’t stop was the gusher. Hours before the president’s press conference, an ominous plume of oil six miles wide and 22 miles long was discovered snaking its way toward Mobile Bay from BP’s wellhead next to the wreckage of its Deepwater Horizon rig. Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. commander overseeing the cleanup, framed the spill explicitly as an invasion: “The enemy is coming ashore,” he said. Louisiana beaches were assaulted by blobs of oil that began to seep beneath the sand; acres of marshland at the “Bird’s Foot,” where the Mississippi meets the Gulf, were befouled by shit-brown crude – a death sentence for wetlands that serve as the cradle for much of the region’s vital marine life. By the time Obama spoke, it was increasingly evident that this was not merely an ecological disaster. It was the most devastating assault on American soil since 9/11.

Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency’s culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years. He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP – and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.

Hours after BP’s rig sank on April 22nd, a white board in NOAA’s “war room” in Seattle displays the administration’s initial, worst-case estimate of the spill — 64,000 to 110,000 barrels a day.

Even after the president’s press conference, Rolling Stone has learned, the administration knew the spill could be far worse than its “best estimate” acknowledged. That same day, the president’s Flow Rate Technical Group – a team of scientists charged with establishing the gusher’s output – announced a new estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels, based on calculations from video of the plume. In fact, according to interviews with team members and scientists familiar with its work, that figure represents the plume group’s minimum estimate. The upper range was not included in their report because scientists analyzing the flow were unable to reach a consensus on how bad it could be. “The upper bound from the plume group, if it had come out, is very high,” says Timothy Crone, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University who has consulted with the government’s team. “That’s why they had resistance internally. We’re talking 100,000 barrels a day.”

The median figure for Crone’s independent calculations is 55,000 barrels a day – the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez every five days. “That’s what the plume team’s numbers show too,” Crone says. A source privy to internal discussions at one of the world’s top oil companies confirms that the industry privately agrees with such estimates. “The industry definitely believes the higher-end values,” the source says. “That’s accurate – if not more than that.” The reason, he adds, is that BP appears to have unleashed one of the 10 most productive wells in the Gulf. “BP screwed up a really big, big find,” the source says. “And if they can’t cap this, it’s not going to blow itself out anytime soon.”

Even worse, the “moratorium” on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Cabinet-level official appointed by Obama to rein in the oil industry, boasts that “the moratorium is not a moratorium that will affect production” – which continues at 5,106 wells in the Gulf, including 591 in deep water.

Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic” errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. “We are very concerned,” they wrote, “that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis.”

The administration’s response to the looming threat? According to an e-mail to a congressional aide from a staff member at MMS, the agency has had “zero contact” with Atlantis about its safety risks since the Deepwater rig went down. Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, BP, Bush administration, Corporations, DHS, Disaster, Environment, George Bush, Government, Gulf of Mexico, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Ken Salazar, Larry Summers, Minerals Management Service, NOAA, Obama administration, Politics, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Science, Scientists, U.S., White House