An interesting book by Christopher Hitchens...Quote:
Originally Posted by fivekatz
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An interesting book by Christopher Hitchens...Quote:
Originally Posted by fivekatz
"Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe:
"Astoundingly Disturbing": Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe - YouTube
Well the power was created post 9-11 and there isn't a President who will give it back without a fight. Whether you are Cheney or Obama you believe that you are a just custodian of such power and you won't release it.
What we may see is the Obama Administration basically roll back the unlimited blank check to engage in war actions under the umbrella of the war on terror at the end of their administration.
Rumors were out there that they had a whole series of papers ready to release if they lost this election.
Nothing new. The Korean war's still going with a tentative ceasefire. Where was the declaration? The entire cold war was done piecemeal like this one. Can't even use that as an excuse for all the military interventionism throughout our history. The argument goes back to Jefferson & the fight with the Barbary pirates. Maybe before that. This is a problem, but it won't be fixed by Congress whining a little bit then rubber-stamping authorizations in perpetuity.
Governments, like corporations, have one responsibility: to maximize their own power. (It's slightly different with corporations... as they must, under legal obligation, maximize power/profits/market share. But, by all accounts, corporations are private governments. Again, they deviate on certain things. I mean, governments aren't, of course, legally obligated to make as much money as they can.)Quote:
Originally Posted by fivekatz
Glenn Greenwald, and one can agree or disagree, said that political actors crave war because it maximizes their power. It's not to say President Obama is a bad person. Again, much like corporate structures, we're talking about institutions. Not people. I mean, I'm sure Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, is deeply concerned about global warming. In his private life. But in his institutional role, as the CEO of the biggest energy/oil company, he MUST set his personal feelings aside. If he cannot do that, well, he is out.
So, it's happening to Obama... and it's bound to happen... without serious constraints on power. And since President Cheney (yes!, he was the de facto President) power in the executive branch has become more extreme and: "... absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Lord Acton: ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Not all Presidents crave war. Lyndon Johnson found war and foreign policy to be distracting from his goal which was to create The Great Society and in the process maximize his legacy with the New Deal being his benchmark.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
But every President wishes all their actions were unfettered by Congress or the Supreme Court. Human nature as you point out. The Congress has not learned from history by allowing not 1 but now 3 Presidents to start wars without the need for Congress to declare them.
The last authorization was so well written by David Addington (Cheney's attorney) and so poor edited by Congress that it grants almost blanket war powers to the President. The incumbent always thinks he/she will do no harm with unfettered power, so for folks to expect Obama to give back any of the power granted Cheney and 43, IMHO it is unrealistic and expects more of Obama than should expected.
I won't speak for the rest of the world, but the US government isn't a corporation. It isn't structured like a corporation, although modern corporate structure is loosely based on our model. It isn't single-mindedly focused on one agenda. It can't be. There's no "absolute power" hereQuote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Greenwald is just a doom monger. He sounds like one of those paranoid John Birchers of the '50s & '60s, or an Alex Joneser. Everything's a plot, & there's no solution to the doom scenario. I keep picturing some bozo in sack cloth, carrying a sign that says: "The end is nigh!". Why doesn't he just drink the "kook-aid" instead of trying to pass it out to everybody else?
Corporations have a responsibility to make profits for their shareholders. The are organization that consist OF workers, are run BY ceo's and exist FOR shareholders.Quote:
Governments, like corporations, have one responsibility: to...
Our government's responsibilities are described in the Constitution and in summary they are to secure and protect our rights and liberties are stated therein. The responsibility of the government, like the government itself is of, by and for the people.
Because the security of our governance rests on the structure of checks and balances, no branch of government is going abdicate power to another bran...no wait...it was Congress, to avoid a political awkwardness, that in essence abdicated its prerogative to declare war and since then those powers have been eroding to the advantage of the executive.
There are people on this forum who know much more about Government than others, who knows....? There may be a Mega-Minded Mutant somewhere who knows ALL the answers. DOESN"T MATTER. If he tried to influence things, he'd be attacked from all sides. Hitler laughed about FDR's power in a Democracy, like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back. A few years later he sighed "the war is over" when he got a report that the New London shipyards were turning out a ship a day. America's strength is MONEY, not freedom, not God's Will. And as we all know, when money is involved, the game gets much more interesting.........Dis-information suddenly becomes as important as information.
The Preamble to the US Constitution is its statement of purpose. It's simple & straight forward. The whole document itself lays out the structure for achieving that purpose. The only reason for people to gather in societies is to pool their resources. Everything else is details & bullshit.
Interesting slant on Prism from Friday's Guardian:
Giving evidence to parliament's intelligence and security committee last year, the head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters made a simple statement. "Communications data is extremely helpful to us," he told the committee in a closed hearing. Given GCHQ's function is to eavesdrop on electronic communications here and around the world, Sir Iain Lobban's words may seem a statement of the obvious. But this rare comment by the head of an agency whose stock in trade is global online and telephone-derived intelligence helps to illuminate why the Guardian's latest allegations about US government data-trawling have now firmly crossed the Atlantic, requiring serious public answers not just from American officials but now from British ones too.
The new allegations – which follow evidence that America's National Security Agency (NSA) now enjoys routine access to communications data from the US's largest telecoms companies – are focused not on telephone records but on internet data. According to the documents obtained by the Guardian, the NSA uses a programme called Prism, authorised under a Bush-era law, since renewed by the Obama administration, to obtain direct access to the systems of internet companies, search engines and social media including Google, Facebook, Apple, Skype, Yahoo and other household names. Although all these companies are obliged, under US law, to comply with NSA or FBI requests for users' communications, the unique feature of the Prism programme seems – at least according to internal evidence – to be that it allows the US agencies direct access to the companies' traffic.
Although all this surveillance is generated and conducted in the United States under sweeping powers granted by post-9/11 US law, it is now alleged that GCHQ – which is essentially the UK equivalent of the massive NSA – is able to drink from the same trough too. The Guardian's documents show that GCHQ has had access to Prism material since at least June 2010 – the programme began in 2007 – and that in the year to May 2012 GCHQ was able to generate 197 intelligence reports to its customers (normally MI6 and MI5) from it – more than double the number generated in the year to May 2011. According to the documents, special programmes exist within Prism for GCHQ's intelligence needs, suggesting that parts of the system were developed with UK input.
If these allegations are correct, the implications are huge. They suggest that the UK's security and intelligence agencies are using GCHQ and NSA channels to obtain far more extensive communications data and, through Prism, communications content than has ever been revealed, let alone publicly authorised. The trawling appears to go far further than the powers contained in the "snooper's charter" communications data bill, which has been dropped by the UK government but which is supported by Conservative and Labour parties at Westminster. As NSA trawling covers communications between the US and the UK, it also seems possible that British agencies are already obtaining much more through the back door than they would like through the front.
"All our operations," says GCHQ on its website, "are conducted within a framework of legislation that defines our roles and activities." GCHQ "takes its obligations under the law very seriously", the agency said on Friday. The Guardian's Prism documents pose a striking question: whose laws? The powers revealed in these documents do not exist under UK law. They raise questions about US-UK intelligence-gathering, including that from British citizens, which should urgently be debated in parliament. There are certainly terrorists out there from whose activities we must be protected, including by clandestine means. But there are also the civil liberties of ordinary British citizens out there. And they must be protected too.
Remember Hope -- and Change -- :)
Glenn Greenwald: U.S. wants to destroy privacy worldwide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL8q0xv8gUY
More from The Guardian, this time by Jonathan Freedland.
Among the guests at the fabled Bilderberg meeting, held this weekend just outside London, are the top brass of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. How appropriate they should be there, alongside luminaries of the US political and military establishment. For this was the week that seemed to confirm all the old bug-eyed conspiracy theories about governments and corporations colluding to enslave the rest of us.
The Guardian revealed that the US National Security Agency has cracked open our online lives, that it can rifle through your emails, listen to your calls on Skype, watching "your ideas form as you type", as a US intelligence officer put it – apparently in cahoots with the corporate titans of the web.
This disgraces all involved, but it damages the head of the US government most. Barack Obama always had much in common with the Apple and Facebook crowd. Like them, he held out the promise of modernity – a slick, cool contrast to their creaky, throwback rivals. (Obama was rarely without BlackBerry and iPod; McCain and Romney came from the age of the manual typewriter.) But, like those early internet giants, he promised more than just an open-necked, hipper style. He would be better too. Google's informal motto is Don't be Evil. Obama's was Hope.
Perhaps people lost their innocence about Google and Facebook long ago, realising that, just because their founders were kids in jeans, they were no less red-toothed than any other capitalist behemoth. But now the president's reputation will suffer the same treatment. This Prism will dim the halo that once adorned him.
For he has authorised not merely the continuation of a programme of state surveillance that he once opposed, but has actively expanded it. That officers who serve him could brag in a 41-page presentation – one, incidentally, laced with David Brent-style grandiosity, starting with the naffness of the Prism logo – of their ability to collect data "directly from the servers" of the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo, will be a lasting stain on his record. In this, he is George W Obama.
There is a mirthless chuckle to be had from a president repeatedly slammed as a "liberal" whose legacy will be marred by a series of gravely illiberal acts.
He promised but failed to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, where men have been held for more than a decade without charge (though Congress shares the blame for that). He has made routine the use of drones, assassinating enemies from the sky – repeatedly taking the innocent in the process, as he's admitted. Last month it emerged that Obama's justice department had spied on a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, tracking his movements, seizing his telephone records and taking two days' worth of his personal emails, in pursuit of a state department leak. That came after Obama had made "no apologies" for seizing two months of telephone records from Associated Press. Little wonder that the high citadel of US liberalism, the editorial column of the New York Times, this week declared that "The administration has now lost all credibility", later softening the blow by adding the words, "on this issue".
It is becoming ever harder for liberals to defend Obama. One forlorn effort I heard this week was that perhaps he did not know what the NSA was up to, even though we're told Prism is now the prime generator of material for the president's daily brief. When you're reduced to saying your hero is not evil, just useless, you know you're in trouble.
As for the web companies, their role remains unclear. Initially they insisted that the access-all-areas relationship described in Prism's PowerPoint presentation is false and there was no such collaboration. Yet one industry insider tells me that "it's very hard to think the companies did not know" the NSA was collecting their data, since such an intrusion "would show up pretty damn quick". That leaves a third possibility: that the Prism pitch was exaggerated, in order to make it a more attractive sell to its potential customers among the US – and UK – intelligence fraternity.
Whatever the truth, it's unlikely to have a lasting impact on the web giants' success. That's partly because of cynicism: plenty of us assumed these big companies abused our privacy anyway. But it's also because our relationship is one of dependence. When it emerged that Starbucks, Amazon and Google had all been paying negligible tax in the UK, it was obvious Starbucks would feel the consumer heat most, simply because it's easy to walk across the street to get a cup of coffee somewhere else. Amazon is harder to avoid and Google all but impossible. So reliant are we on these companies' services, we simply shrug and move on.
And here lies the heart of the matter, the shift in our lives that has made Prism possible. Back in the le Carré days of cold war espionage, private information was hard to get. Spies relied on papers stuffed in manila files, or operatives hanging around on street corners, forced to gain each bit of knowledge by hand. Back then, people gave up their personal details sparingly and reluctantly.
Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet. Perhaps we assume that our name, address and search preferences will be viewed by some unseen pair of corporate eyes, probably not human, and don't mind that much. We guess the worst that can happen is Google bothering us with an annoying ad or Spotify recommending Taylor Swift.
But if that knowledge goes elsewhere, if governments can get it when they ask for it, or even without asking for it, then that means something else entirely. It means that the intelligence agencies can now watch the entire population, albeit by privatised means, having in effect outsourced the job of spying to the web mega-companies.
That leaves us with a choice. Either we try to stuff this genie back in the bottle and return to the privacy habits of old. Unlikely. Or we demand companies stand firm when pressed by governments to disclose our data. Not easy. Or we demand lawmakers change the rules, restraining the executive branch's limitless appetite for information on us.
It's hard to be optimistic, for technology has made the pickings available too rich, too tempting, for the spies to resist. And, strangest of all, it is us who made this possible – by becoming informants on ourselves.
Yes! Corporations have to maximize their own power which translates into serving shareholders. Not, say, stakeholders. Meaning: people, the wider population. And there is nothing in economic or business principle that says corporations have to serve shareholders and not, say, stakeholders. I mean, the legal obligation to serve shareholders came about through the courts and not through parliament, as it were. So, it wasn't a democratic decision.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Corporations, by design, don't and can't care about future generations.... I mean, corporations, again, have an institutional imperative to trash the planet. Do we really think oil companies can care about the impact of global climate change on future generations? Do corporations care about pollution? Whether it be soil, water or air pollution? No, of course not. It's not to say that people within those institutions are awful people. They have a job to do. And if they don't do it, well, they're out.
Simply put: corporate entities can't care about future generations.
According to environmental lawyer Thomas Linzey: "... the folks that wrote the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the DNA or hardwiring for this country, in essence worshiped English common law. We got rid of the King but we didn't get rid of an English structure of law that placed property and commerce over the rights of communities and nature."
So, the Constitution was set up to serve the concentration of capital and not people.
Is Obama worse than Bush? That's beside the point
Obama's transformation from national security dove to hawk is the norm: any president is captive to America's imperial power:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ush?CMP=twt_fd
Don't expect this in America...
Obama called "war criminal" & "hypocrite of the century" in Irish Parliament:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIMucHfUMyg
Obama Is Laying The Foundations Of A Dystopian Future by Oliver Stone:
http://www.zcommunications.org/obama...y-oliver-stone
Obama holds historic phone call with Rouhani and hints at end to sanctions:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...sident-rouhani
Addendum -- :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Brian Williams' Iran propaganda:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ran-propaganda
Worse Than Nixon? Committee to Protect Journalists Warns About Obama Crackdown on Press Freedom:
Worse Than Nixon? Committee to Protect Journalists Warns About Obama Crackdown on Press Freedom - YouTube
Malala Yousafzai tells Obama drones are 'fueling terrorism':
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/1...meet-with.html
U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium, Plutonium
President Obama has repeatedly said his top counterterrorism goal is to prevent terrorists from acquiring the building blocks to make nuclear or “dirty” bombs. In April of 2009, Obama announced a new international effort to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” Since then, the Department of Energy has dispatched scientists around the globe to collect hundreds of pounds of the stuff.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/uranium-mia/
While President Obama is being slated in other threads over the Affordable Health Care Act, perhaps one should acknowledge some recent successes which might have long-term benefits for the US and also in the Middle East: in this last quarter, the US has pulled back from direct military engagement with the armed forces of Syria, and has played an integral part in the agreement with Iran that will slow (but not halt) the pace of its nuclear development and open the process to more direct scrutiny. In both cases, the Obama presidency has preferred diplomacy over military action, but in both cases the administration has and will continue to attract the opposition of those elements in Congress addicted to violence as a solution to political problems.
A guarded welcome is due because the isolation of Iran has been a problem inside the country. Rouhani's election and his 'moderate' stance has already paid dividends, but does set up a potential conflict with the Republican Guard that sees itself as the guarantor of Khomeini's legacy if they feel that Rouhani is trying to gradually undo all they achieved since 1979. Potentially, the now open channels of communication between Washington and Tehran could benefit the crisis in Syria where the opposition has failed to make any significant military gains, and has actually lost territory in the north to Islamic extremists who don't share their long-term agenda. It is true that the powerful position Iran seems to have been in since regime change in Iraq has worried Saudi Arabia and Israel -the Saudis were not aware of the secret channels the US opened with Iran (possibly initially via Mrs Clinton through Oman where Kerry went over a year ago) and have to face the fact that their sponsorship of the opposition in Syria has got nowhere on the battlefield, while the leader of the Syrian opposition's 'Free Syrian Army' is refusing to go to the talks in Geneva next month. Benjamin Netanyahu has denounced the deal with Iran at the same time as claiming it was his pressure on the US that prevented them from giving Iran even more 'concessions' -and has been rightly pilloried in the Israeli press as a result.
A cautious welcome, because as long as the military conflict in Syria continues factions will continue to make demands that in reality cannot be met. Some of the refugees in the Zaatari camp in Jordan have decided to leave the squalor there and take their chances back home; and at some point in the future the Syrian opposition will have to deal with the al-Qaeda franchise which is undermining its claims of legitimacy.
One hopes that the diplomatic process can bring the politicians back into the equation -this conflict is going nowhere and is destroying lives; solutions are available, if the parties have the courage to face up to them.
I have read several commentary pieces on the deal with Iran and the skeptics hold a line of reasoning I don't really understand. They say that if negotiations break down, this will be an impetus for Iran to "race" to complete development of nukes, and this will spark off an arms race with other Middle East rivals, including Saudi Arabia.
The purpose of the sanctions as I understood it is to prevent Iran from developing nukes. The premise must be then that undeterred they would develop nuclear weapons. So they do not need to wait for sanctions to fail to encourage them to develop nuclear weapons. Diplomacy as far as I see it has a potential upside and no downside, but I am what the Republicans would call naive.
I do not understand the idea that failed diplomacy does anything but keep Iran on the track they've been on. Maybe it accelerates the pace of development because diplomacy will have failed and Iran will have no reason to hold back...but for the West a diplomatic solution has been the only realistic option for a long time. The military option is simply not feasible. If it were feasible, it would be feasible after a failed diplomatic effort. But it's neither feasible if diplomacy fails or never begins.
Oh, I guess the idea is that in the interim we take the squeeze off Iran, which is letting them off the hook. This means that further negotiation could fail and the sanctions will not have been doing their work. While this is true I am not sure Iran was ever going to unilaterally submit based on the effects of the sanctions. Something would have to be negotiated and you do have to make some good-faith concessions to get them to the table.
The criticism is based on the various deals on nuclear proliferation with North Korea in exchange for food which the North Koreans then repudiated; the question is can Iran be trusted any better than North Korea?Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
The Conservative opinion bank (Ted Cruz, John Bolton, Claude Chafin and Frank Gaffney in the first link, Jiri Valenta in the second) has already lodged its complaints that Obama has been duped by the Iranians, though the argument that joint missile development between Iran and North Korea will threaten the US is a bit far fetched given that North Korea's missiles so far have ended up in the sea rather than Long Island.
Yes, the US and its allies should be cautious, but as you say diplomacy must first be exhausted, and the 'taking out' of targets, as Cheney suggested isn't as easy as it sounds.
The discussion and prediction of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has been going on since the 1970s when Iran sought US backing for its nuclear option...
http://freebeacon.com/iran-north-kor...-nuclear-deal/
http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/jvlv/?id_4=837
Refreshing....
Obama... speaking, frankly, about the corrupt nature of the system:
Obama on Citizens United Ruling - YouTube
Does Obama Joking Like This Bother You?
Does Obama Joking Like This Bother You? - YouTube
Gary Younge in Monday's Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...presidency-for
The Leader Obama Wanted to Become and What Became of Him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-...b_4932145.html
Jimmy Carter is a huge fan of Obama. He will make Carter's presidential term look at least mediocre.
This thread appears to have gone sideways way away from its original intention.
http://kevinwhiteman.com/wp-content/...1433985915.jpg
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/7c/7cf11...117914e618.jpg
Creepy Obama Worship - YouTube
Would you drink my water? :Bowdown:Quote:
Originally Posted by ashlyn
Do you have balanced bodily fluids?Quote:
Originally Posted by mrtrebus