WHAT'S GOING ON?

Are U.S. Warships Gearing Up for a Confrontation With an Iranian Aid Flotilla to Gaza?

By Ira Chernus

June 21, 2010 "Alternet" -- Anchors aweigh. The United States Navy is sending an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, according to the British Arabic Language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, which reported that the ships carry infantry troops, armored vehicles, and ammunition.
The report was taken very seriously in Israel, where two major newspapers gave it headline coverage -- perhaps because the U.S. fleet is joined by at least one Israeli ship, according to eyewitnesses who saw it pass through the Canal.
Iran’s Press TV claims that the Defense Department has confirmed the movement of American ships. However, neither the U.S. nor the Israeli governments have made any statement about the fleet’s destination or purpose. So we’re left to speculate.
Can it be just coincidence that this is happening precisely when “two Iranian vessels are due to set sail for Gaza in the coming week,” according to Al Jazeera, sponsored by the Iranian Red Crescent, carrying food, medicine, and clothing? And when Iran is promising more aid flotillas after this first one?
When the Iranian flotilla was first announced, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said: "I don't think that Iran's intentions vis-a-vis Gaza are benign." Since then, the U.S. has remained silent.
Newsweeks.com’s Mark Hosenball says he has talked with U.S. and European officials and found them “surprisingly relaxed” about the Iranian challenge to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. They told him that “Tehran actually seems to have dialed back some of its rhetoric and threats for the moment,” and pointed out that the Navy is the weakest arm of Iran’s military.
But if U.S. officials are so relaxed, why spend a fortune (and it does cost a fortune) to move a whole war fleet including an aircraft carrier into the Red Sea and perhaps further, to the Persian Gulf -- where Israeli nuclear submarines are also headed?
Egypt, which controls the Canal, has a central role to play in this drama. Egyptian troops guarded the Canal, which was closed to other traffic, while the U.S. fleet passed through, despite criticism from leaders of Egyptian opposition parties.
It remains unclear how the Egyptians would deal with the Iranian aid ships. Those ships plan to pass through the Canal and then stay close enough to shore to be in Egyptian waters until reaching the area off the Gaza coast, which Israel claims as its territorial waters.
Israel radio has reported that Cairo rejected an Israeli request by for Egypt to block the Iranian ships, claiming that under international law the canal must be free to all ships. However, the Egyptians could delay the Iranians on technicalities for a long time.
Iranian officials have denied a report that their naval forces would escort the ships. “But if and when the Iranian ship reaches the Mediterranean,” as Hosenball says, “no one can be sure what will happen.” However we can be sure that an Iranian ship approaching Gaza would be a major crisis for both the Netanyahu government in Israel and the Obama administration. Very likely, the U.S. administration hopes that its war fleet, accompanied by a token Israeli ship for symbolic value, will head off the need to face that crisis.
In fact, though the threat of violent confrontation is very real, the whole unfolding drama is driven largely by concerns about symbolism. One European official told Hosenball that the Egyptians might well choose to stall the Iranians’ passage in order to reassert Cairo’s influence in the wake of efforts by Turkey and Brazil to broker a nuclear deal with Iran. Then there’s a point of view in Iran that its own government is sending the ships mainly as a way to reassert its influence in the region over a rising Turkey.
The U.S. show of naval force also seems to be freighted with symbolic value. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world, the U.S. has been using such shows of force to intimidate would-be competitors. The signal to Iran’s leaders will be unmistakable. If the inclusion of an Israeli warship is confirmed, it will deepen the symbolic message.
It will also tell the Netanyahu government that, whatever concessions the U.S. may demand toward Palestine, the U.S. - Israel military alliance is firm when it comes to Iran. For Washington, the underlying message may be: Therefore, Netanyahu, there’s no need to even think about unilateral Israeli action against Iran.
These issues of symbolism, which take politics into the realm of culture and psychology, are generally more important to policymakers than they are to journalists and pundits, who usually stick to “hard-headed” analyses of fact and “realpolitik.” If the mass media in the U.S. pick up the story of the fleet moving into the Red Sea at all, it will no doubt be reported as an understandable strategic move against a power that threatens U.S. interests. And in Israel it will be seen as welcome resistance to the one nation that threatens Israel’s very existence.
Yet why should Americans and Israelis believe such frightening narratives, when Iran has made no tangible aggressive moves against anyone? That key question is rarely explored, or even asked.
So it was a welcome surprise to see the Christian Science Monitor publish an article by its reporter in Tel Aviv, Scott Peterson, titled “Does Israel Suffer From Iranophobia?” It was probably just a coincidence that this piece appeared on the very same day that news of the U.S. war fleet broke -- but a most telling coincidence.
Peterson wrote only about the Israeli fear, which is “utterly irrational and exceedingly disproportionate,” according to Israeli scholar Haggai Ram, author of “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession.” “There is really no critical debate about this” in Israel, Ram added. Anyone who questions the need to fear Iran is “immediately rendered into these bizarre self-defeating, self-hating Jews, and seen as a fifth column.”
This despite the fact that Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak himself said just two months ago that Iran “does not pose an existential threat to Israel.” Barak did add that a nuclear-armed Iran in the future would pose such a threat.
But according to Peterson’s article, Israeli analysts see the Iranophobia rooted in memories of the past, not forecasts of the future. The prevailing Israeli mindset is that “we have no other choice, they want to destroy us,” according to scholar Reuven Pedatzur. “It’s a cultural issue, based on the Holocaust, that everybody wants to destroy the Jewish people.” This is the narrative that Netanyahu has used so incessantly, and apparently effectively, to hold on to political power.
It’s no secret in Israel. “Israeli analysts often describe how the Jewish state ‘needs’ an outside enemy,” Peterson rightly explained, “to justify continued oppression against the Palestinians and one of the largest per capita defense budgets in the Middle East.”
The idea that Israel is driven by a cultural-political narrative, not by realistic security needs, rarely gets even whispered in the U.S. mass media. Occasional articles like Peterson’s, or Henry Siegman’s New York Times op-ed, suggesting that Israeli fear is pathological, are all too rare. But at least they have appeared.
Where, in the U.S. mass media, will we find equivalent analyses suggesting that U.S. fear of a nuclear-armed Iran is “Iranophobic” and pathological, spawned by symbolic cultural narratives and the “need” for an enemy rather than realistic appraisals of reality? We’ve got too few voices even in the alternative media analyzing America’s pathology about Iran. I’ve seen none at all in the mainstream press.
When the world’s greatest military power (by far) sends an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships to head off two freighters bringing food, medicine, and clothing to desperate besieged civilians, something is seriously out of whack.
The anti-Iranian policies will continue until enough Americans recognize that it’s pathological. If our mass media help us see that pathology in Israel, perhaps we can begin to see it in ourselves too. Then we can also see how the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel is fed significantly by a shared narrative of danger, fear, and victimization.
And we can see how the U.S. Navy flotilla moving to the Red Sea is fundamentally a symbolic drama acting out that shared narrative. The danger is that symbolic dramas all too often end in the shedding of very real blood.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews on his blog: http://chernus.wordpress.com.

Posted by Chuck

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Published on Sunday, June 20, 2010 by the Sunday Observer/UK
Obama's Liberal Critics Find Their Voice
We on the left have been in numb denial about President Obama's failures. But as the crises pile up we can't remain silent
by Clancy Sigal

Until President Obama's first ever Oval Office address-to-the-nation the other night BP's chief executive Tony Hayward was winning the booby prize as "America's most clueless man" for his gaffe-prone TV interviews. But Obama is gaining fast. His self-exonerating speech, full of sparkling generalities and with no hint of frank accountability for his administration's culpability in the nation's worst environmental disaster, was like the man himself, bloodless and emotionally detached from the human costs of an oil invasion that's now spreading from Louisiana to Texas, Florida and as far north as the Carolinas.

Instead, to cover his impotence to cope with the seemingly unstoppable 60,000 barrel a day spillage, and his deference to BP he's appointing - what else? - one of those tired old wheezes, a "tsar" to oversee the Gulf spill effort and a "commission" to investigate its causes which by now are well known by everyone except the clueless White House. Don't they listen to their own scientific advisers?

Tony Hayward must feel a little relief that the spotlight on him as a 24-karat fool shifted momentarily on Tuesday night to our do-nothing-except-make-war president.

But the dogs are waking up and barking in the night.

Until BP's blowout in the Gulf eight weeks ago the American left (what there is of it) trailed poodle-like after Barack Obama, refusing to criticise, let alone, attack "our guy in the White House". We had worked our butts off for his election, and now we were punched out or perhaps felt we had nowhere else to go - and isn't it nice for a change to have a president who can parse a complicated sentence? Any lingering doubts we had were stifled after one scary look at Obama's yowling enemies - racist and crazy about Palin - which was enough to send us whimpering back to our kennels.

But like tiny buds of spring little fragile flowers of dissent are springing up all over the place, sometimes unexpectedly. I live in West Los Angeles, an incubator for the Obama-voting intelligentsia. A few days ago I drove past an ultra-liberal private academy in Santa Monica for the children of affluent Obama-ites, and the lawn sign in big letters proclaimed a snide reference to Obama's dismal failure get a handle on BP's environmental crime. Garry Trudeau's daily cartoon Doonesbury, which bashed Bush for years, now satirises the Obama presidency for its incomprehensible torpor in the national emergency. "The White House grows more passive every day," a Doonesbury character says in a dig at No Drama Obama's habit of lofty detachment.

Once faithful Obama retainers like syndicated columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich are turning on the president for his crushing indifference to the simple human predicament of the disaster's victims. Even TV's Keith Olberman, until now virtually an Obama PR man, complains that the Oval Office speech "was great ... if you were on another planet for the past 67 days". And Rachel Maddow, until now a fervent Obama cheerleader, has criticised his way-off-the-mark speech.

George W Bush gave the (false) impression, fostered by his flacks, of actually liking ordinary people. Obama prefers photo ops to human contact, such as the ridiculous posed pictures of him earnestly examining "tar balls" washed ashore in LaFourche Parish and promising Gulf residents, "I'm here to tell you that you are not alone. You will not be abandoned, and you will not be left behind" - only to promptly leave for a Chicago vacation.

He's not only tone deaf but also growing hostile to public criticism. Indeed, Obama goes after whistleblowers with more punishing venom than ever did George W Bush who whined about leaks but did not indict. In Obama's 17 months in office he has outdone all his Oval Office predecessors in going after anyone in government who dares spill the beans to the media. For example, instead of ordering court-martials for the army helicopter gunmen who murdered unarmed Baghdad civilians - a video shown worldwide by Wikileaks - the young GI leaker, 22-year old Bradley Manning, has been arrested, and the Pentagon cops are frantically trying to smoke out, and shut down, Wikileak's Pimpernel-like founder, Julian Assange. I did not think it possible, but our President Obama has an even thinner skin than Bush.

With each passing day, as crises pile up, from out-of-control unemployment to the Gulf to Gaza to the failed Afghanistan adventure, the underlying liberal authoritarianism of the Obama White House becomes clearer. We, Obama's "liberal base", of which I'm a charter member, were in numb denial that our former community organiser, who elicited such an outpouring of love from his vast network of volunteers, is actually just another Illinois pol - but with a better vocabulary.

But the dogs of dissent are waking up and starting to howl.

Posted by Chuck

BETTER NEVER THAN LATE

Amr Moussa Finally Visits Gaza

By RANNIE AMIRI

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa was warmly greeted by Hamas representatives when the Middle East’s top diplomat paid a visit to Gaza on Sunday. It was the first time Moussa—or any senior Arab official for that matter—had set foot in the coastal enclave since Hamas’ June 2007 break with Fatah resulted in the latter’s expulsion from the territory.

The 12-hour stop was hailed “as historic” by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Despite the gracious reception accorded, ordinary Gazans likely seethed at Moussa’s audacity and opportunism.

What were they to think, after all, when he toured Gaza’s ravaged al-Zeitoun district and met with families who had relatives killed or homes destroyed during Israel’s vicious 2008-2009 assault? Were they expected to forget that the monarchs and dictators comprising the 22-member body Moussa represents did nothing to stop, and had silently lauded, Israel’s attack?

The disingenuous expressions of sympathy and solidarity with Gaza’s imprisoned population by the head of the Arab League, one-and-a-half years after the war’s end, surely fell on deaf ears.

The role played by the Arab client states in this tragedy must be understood in order to appreciate these present-day feelings of betrayal.

In January 2006, Palestinians held parliamentary elections, characterized as free, fair and democratic by all independent and impartial observers. The unexpected outcome was a decisive Hamas victory.

After their win, economic sanctions were slapped on the Palestinian territories by Israel, the United States and the European Union. The punitive measures were supported by several U.S.-allied Arab countries, notably Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

In the following months, and again with the assistance of the aforementioned nations, the U.S. directly funded Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction with weapons and training in a bid to displace Hamas by instigating a Palestinian civil war (if not an outright coup). Consequently, political disputes over power-sharing between the two factions soon erupted into street battles.

A February 2007 deal brokered by Saudi Arabia resulted in a ceasefire and the formation of a national unity government. Continued clashes, however, meant its quick demise.

Abbas dissolved the unity government in June 2007 and said he would rule by presidential decree. With the majority of support for Hamas found in Gaza though, Fatah officials were ultimately forced to return to their West Bank strongholds.

After the ouster of Abbas’ U.S. and Israeli-supported fighters, both Israel and Egypt sealed their border with Gaza. A crippling land, sea, and air embargo was instituted and remains in place today.

After Gazans had been sufficiently deprived of basic humanitarian necessities, Operation “Cast Lead” was launched by Israel in late December 2008. Many Arab countries quietly hoped that democratically-elected Hamas, an Islamist party rejecting acquiescence to Israel, would be swept aside—irrespective of the civilian toll it would exact.

Gazans withered in the aftermath of this devastating war and continue to do so under the three-year-old siege. Although there have been increasingly vocal calls to lift it, the Arab League has been largely mute, as have its member states.

Although Moussa did not have the decency to visit the beleaguered territory before now he nonetheless had the temerity to declare, “The siege must be lifted. All the world is now standing with the people of Palestine and the people of Gaza.”

The motive behind Moussa’s trip was, of course, worldwide outrage over the Israeli commando raid of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, resulting in the killing of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara with scores more injured.

Indeed, Moussa was shamed into going to Gaza. Still some will see his presence as a sign the Arab League has finally recognized they can no longer stand on the sidelines while the deplorable conditions there worsen, especially when Turkey receives accolades for taking a demonstrable stand.

So, better late than never?

Gazans who have endured the collective punishment meted out by the U.S, Israel and the Arab states since 2006 probably had a much different take on the timing of the Secretary-General’s visit. I suspect they would say: better never, than late.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Posted by Chuck

OBAMA: TRYING TO SAVE HIS YOU-KNOW-WHAT

Separating Fact From Fiction
Deconstructing Obama's BP Speech
By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

Obama’s speech to the nation addressing the gulf disaster was filled with more eye candy than substance, laden with propaganda and deception. It was primarily intended to exonerate his administration for its inaction and incompetence in dealing with the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. A close examination of Obama’s speech is in order to sort through the misinformation that’s been disseminated to the public. Below I include excerpts from Obama’s speech, interspersed with my own clarifications of his distortions and lies.

Obama: Good evening. As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges. At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American. Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to Al Qaeda wherever it exists.

AD: The “War on Terror” and attempts to combat economic troubles at home run directly contrary to each other. U.S. education and health care are in such dire straits precisely because U.S. leaders prefer to spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on militarism, while states cry poor and demand massive budget cuts that throw thousands out of work at a time when they’re at their most vulnerable. U.S. officials know that, if given the choice, the public favors cuts in military spending and a renewed focus on job creation, economic rehabilitation, and other social spending. This is why Democrats and Republicans spend so much time on fear mongering, drumming up support for indefinite war among a reluctant public.

Obama: And tonight, I've returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we're waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.

On April 20, an explosion ripped through BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven workers lost their lives. Seventeen others were injured. And soon, nearly a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, oil began spewing into the water.

Because there's never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That's why, just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge, a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

AD: It should be common knowledge that Obama has not been active in managing this crisis. The New York Times reported in April that it took until a week and a half after the onset of the spill for Obama to begin publicly criticizing BP for its negligence. The Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security took nine days to classify the incident as “a spill of national significance,” and to establish a mobile command center. The “national significance” declaration itself was absurdly conservative, considering that it was based on assessments supported by an administration that assumed the Deepwater Horizon site was spewing just 5,000 barrels a day. Realistically, the flow was probably closer to 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day, although no one would have known this from Obama and BP’s lackadaisical response.

Obama: As a result of these efforts, we've directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that's expected to stop the leak completely.

Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it's not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.

But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.

Tonight, I'd like to lay out for you what our battle plan is going forward: what we're doing to clean up the oil, what we're doing to help our neighbors in the Gulf, and what we're doing to make sure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.

First, the cleanup.

From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history, an effort led by Adm. Thad Allen, who has almost 40 years of experience responding to disasters.

AD: This claim is not substantiated by the historical record. As mentioned above, the Obama administration preferred a “let BP handle it” response from the beginning, to the point where even liberal pundits in the corporate media attacked Obama for his unwillingness to intervene. More than a month after the onset of the crisis, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs argued that BP had “the technical expertise to plug the hole...It is their responsibility.” When asked by a reporter if a federal government takeover of the cleanup was possible, Gibbs answered a resounding “no,” contending that the Obama administration lacked the power to play anything more than a supervisory role.

Obama: We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil...As the cleanup continues, we will offer whatever additional resources and assistance our coastal states may need.
Now, a mobilization of this speed and magnitude will never be perfect, and new challenges will always arise. I saw and heard evidence of that during this trip. So if something isn't working, we want to hear about it. If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them.

But we have to recognize that, despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife. And sadly, no matter how effective our response is, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done.

That's why the second thing we're focused on is the recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast.

You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home have made their living from the water. That living is now in jeopardy. I've talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don't know how they're going to support their families this year. I've seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers, even in areas where the beaches are not yet affected.

I've talked to owners of shops and hotels who wonder when the tourists might start coming back. The sadness and the anger they feel is not just about the money they've lost; it's about a wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.

AD: What Obama doesn’t mention when talking about his photo-op meetings with gulf coasters is that they overwhelmingly blame him for failing to control the spread of the spill when he had the chance. The American public has not been fooled by the media and Obama’s claims that they are on top of the spill. According to a USA Today poll published on June 15th, 71 percent of Americans feel that Obama “hasn’t been tough enough when dealing with BP.” According to an AP poll from June 14th, just 39 percent of the public approve “of the way Barack Obama is handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Obama: I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness.

And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent third party...The third part of our response plan is the steps we're taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again.

A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe, that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken.

AD: Obama is attempting to project a false sincerity here in terms of his alleged concern with regulating big oil. In reality, Obama came out as strongly supportive of offshore drilling by discounting the possibility of a major spill. He claimed that “it turns out that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills...they are technologically very advanced.” When confronted with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Obama initially plunged forward with his blind faith in BP and the “drill baby drill” mantra. Disturbingly, and as reported in the last few days, the Minerals Management Service (supervised under Obama by the Department of the Interior) approved 198 leases for oil wells following the April 20th Deepwater explosion. Americans may be appalled to know that BP was the winner for 13 of those bids.

Obama: That obviously was not the case [that drilling was safe] in the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why. The American people deserve to know why. The families I met with last week who lost their loved ones in the explosion, these families deserve to know why.

AD: For those who “want to know why” the explosion took place, the recent investigation by Rolling Stone paints a picture of an Obama administration that was blissfully ignorant of the dangers that BP was taking in pushing ahead with its production schedule at the Deepwater Horizon. As the Associated Press reports, BP documents now reveal that the company had a history of “cutting corners in the well design [at Deepwater Horizon], cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of key safety devices”. The company attempted to unsustainably accelerate its production schedule in an effort to save money. As the Times of London reports, “the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon...came after the well was capped with a relatively cheap type of casting...in the days before the blast, the oil giant selected a casing that provided only a single layer of protection to prevent gas from leaking into the well...the decision to use the riskier method to finish its well was taken partly on cost grounds”. Simply put, Obama should have known the dangers involved with drilling, as proper regulation of BP would have revealed the perils involved in offshore drilling. That he still wants to “know why” the oil site was dangerous is a sign more of his willful incompetence than anything else.

Obama: And so I've established a national commission to understand the causes of this disaster and offer recommendations on what additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place. Already I've issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue. And while I urge the commission to complete its work as quickly as possible, I expect them to do that work thoroughly and impartially.

Now, one place we've already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility, a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves.

At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

AD: Obama’s own blissful ignorance of the criminal recklessness of MMS employees helped set the stage for the oil spill. The sad fact is that the spill could have been avoided if MMS bureaucrats had behaved more diligently in regulating the oil companies, and if Obama would have pushed for overhauling the MMS when it mattered most – before the Deepwater Horizon disaster (for more on Obama’s complicity, see the recent piece: “How the Obama Administration Made the Oil Spill Happen”. Obama did little to rein in the MMS upon assuming office. Investigative reports find that as of late 2009, the MMS provided permission to BP and other companies to drill in the gulf without obtaining the needed permits (the Deepwater Horizon well was one of the approved sites). The MMS had a history of overruling its own scientists and engineers whenever they raised questions about the lack of safety of drilling operations in the gulf.

Obama: For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we've talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.

Time and again, the path forward has been blocked, not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor...The transition away from fossil fuels is going to take some time. But over the last year- and-a-half, we've already taken unprecedented action to jump-start the clean-energy industry.

As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean-energy technologies that someday will lead to entire new industries... You know, when I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill, a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses.

Now, there are costs associated with this transition, and there are some who believe that we can't afford those costs right now. I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy, because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security and our environment are far greater.

AD: Obama is clearly one of the naysayers who believes the transition from a petroleum economy to a renewable one is too expensive and requires too many sacrifices. His entire foreign policy, like his predecessors, is based upon using massive military force to prop up dictators in a region that sells the U.S. cheap oil. I’ve gone through the historical record at great length regarding American officials’ admissions that foreign wars are pursued in the name of dominating global oil reserves (see my recent book, When Media Goes to War, Monthly Review Press, 2010). The U.S. spends $1 trillion a year on its military empire in order to prop up its oil economy, while spending a pittance (comparably) on renewable energies that could help wean the U.S. off of oil. Obama’s 2009 federal budget included a meager $15 billion for developing renewable energy sources. The imbalance, then, between yearly spending on the oil economy and spending on renewables is a massive 67:1. Clearly, Obama hasn’t made renewable energy the serious priority that it needs to be.

Obama: Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings, like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development, and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.

All of these approaches have merit and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead. But the one approach I will not accept is inaction. The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is somehow too big and too difficult to meet.

You know, the same thing was said about our ability to produce enough planes and tanks in World War II. The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon.

And yet, time and again, we have refused to settle for the paltry limits of conventional wisdom.

Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny, our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like, even if we don't yet precisely know how we're going to get there, we know we'll get there.

AD: The glittering generalities pushed by Obama above are insulting to those who actually follow the Obama administration’s militaristic policies in the Middle East, which buttress America’s continued addiction to oil. Generic references to the greatness of the American people are the essence of propaganda, designed to satiate Americans who are susceptible to appeals to their vanity, at the expense of real discussion of America’s problems. Sadly, such appeals to American vanity are often successful in the hyper-nationalistic American political culture, which typically places arrogance above open and level-headed dialogue in times of crisis.

Anthony DiMaggio is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010). He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edpOS
pOSTED BY cHUCK

OBAMA: TIPTOEING IN GOVERNANCE

Barack Obama: No Radicalism to Be Found
by Sheldon Richman, Posted June 15, 2010

A portion of the American people believe that President Barack Obama is a left-wing radical bent on transforming U.S. society in his image. There’s an easy way to dispel that misconception: Look at what he does and what he says.
In domestic affairs Obama has stayed within the narrow establishment zone. The health-care “debate,” for example, has featured no radical ideas but only an internecine dispute between the two factions of the ruling elite, which Auburn University political philosopher Roderick Long calls the plutocrats (those who want business to be the dominant partner) and the statocrats (those who want the politicians and bureaucrats to hold that position).
It is easy to become distracted by the relatively minor disagreements and overlook the broad accord that a government-corporate partnership should be in command, with the rest of us taking what they give us. Want evidence? Insurance-company stock prices rose as the Senate bill headed toward a vote.
But perhaps we should look to foreign and military policy. Here we were hoping for a little radicalism in the form of a rejection of the power elite’s commitment to U.S. global hegemony and American exceptionalism. But, alas, it was not to be. The stealth radical turns out to be in good standing with the establishment Council on Foreign Relations. Obama is alleged to be winding down an occupation (Iraq) that his predecessor was alleged to have been winding down, and he’s escalating one (Afghanistan and Pakistan) that his predecessor would have escalated. He said he’d close the prison at Guantanamo, but that’s been delayed. He says no more torture, but do we know what he really means? For one thing, he’s endorsed indefinite preventive detention. Moreover, his Justice Department took his predecessor’s position and defended a lower court ruling that protected Bush administration officials from a lawsuit for the torture and religious humiliation of four British detainees at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court declined to review the case, which suited the Obama administration just fine.
As William Fisher wrote at Antiwar.com, “Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.” Or, in other words, the detainees are not persons. As a defense lawyer in the case, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explained,
In many ways the opinion the Supreme Court left standing today is worse when one gets past the bottom line — no accountability for torture and religious abuse — and digs into the legal reasoning. One set of claims are [sic] dismissed because torture is said to be a foreseeable consequence of military detention. How will the parents of our troops captured in future foreign wars react to that? Another set of claims are [sic] dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not “persons” within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow.
Obama’s endorsement of war
Obama’s words speak as loud as his actions. His Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech provides the proof. Obama did acknowledge the irony of accepting the prize while overseeing two occupations. (He neglected to mention the “secret” war, fought with pilotless Predators, in Pakistan.)
“Still, we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed,” he said.
He continued, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”
Well, he might be right about not eradicating violent conflict, but mightn’t he make some small contribution in that direction by not dropping bombs on people? It is not nations that find the use of force necessary and morally justified; it is governments — make that hack politicians — who then proceed to hoodwink their populations into believing them.
He went on:
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life [sic] work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

At this point Obama made a move that could go down in history as one of the dumbest ever:
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies....
In reply to which, I can do no better than to quote Roderick Long:
[Obama] has the nerve to tell an audience of Scandinavians that “a nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.”
That’s right: the president of the country that turned away Jews who were attempting to escape the Holocaust belittles the accomplishments of the people who actually saved their Jews from Hitler’s goons through the use of nonviolent resistance....
Long quotes from George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan’s catalogue of Scandinavia’s successful nonviolent resistance to Hitler’s forces — which saved nearly all the Jewish residents of the region. (See details at http://tinyurl.com/y9xp36u.)
If you are wondering why the record of nonviolent resistance to tyranny isn’t better known, recall the maxim (usually attributed, without evidence, to Winston Churchill), “History is written by the victors.”
Obama acknowledged that “there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”
Reflexive suspicion? That’s all it is? Is there no possibility that it is a reasoned conclusion based on decades of brutal U.S. conduct in other countries?
No, for Obama that couldn’t be the case. He explained:
Whatever mistakes [sic] we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. [!] We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.


Taking the world for fools
What does Obama take the world for, the same kind of ignorant fools he assumes Americans are? The “mistakes” he might have been referring to were not errors. They were policies based on the ruling elite’s agenda and conviction that the U.S. government must be the world’s policeman if that world is to be amenable to American economic interests. Sure, security and stability (for U.S. “interests”) were the objectives. But insecurity and instability often had to be instigated along the way, as when a head of state “we” did not like was elected or when a society sought to be independent of the U.S.-led global order. The list of such places is long and spans several continents and decades. The details have been recorded for anyone who cares to know. (One can profitably start with Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, but there are many other good sources.)
“I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation,” Obama declared — failing to note that the U.S. government has regularly acted unilaterally when it had nothing whatsoever to do with defense — the blowback to which then justified more military action. Governments can be counted on to act as they wish and call it defense. None has done this so often or so easily as the U.S. government.
Obama then went on to endorse George H.W. Bush’s New World Order war to eject Iraq from Kuwait — but what did that have to do with defense? Here Obama casually assumes that America has been anointed to lead coalitions on crusades to right all wrongs. Apparently his only beef with George W. Bush is that not enough countries had been signed up.
Obama did concede that defense is not the only justifiable ground for military action. After stating that the United States should not expect other nations to follow rules it does not follow, he added, “And this becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor.”
What other kinds of conflict had he in mind?
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That’s why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
Armed intervention in other countries has always been justified as “humanitarian.” It’s like one of those oxymorons found in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. But innocents are always killed at the hands of the interveners and the population of the intervening nation is subjected to further aggression through taxation, inflation, and sometimes conscription.
Obama is no pacifist or peacenik. He has no intention of pulling back American forces or American influence from the rest of the world and letting others go their own way. He may seem to deny American exceptionalism when he says the U.S. government must follow the same rules as others, but it is clear from this speech that America has prerogatives possessed by no one else. While he is in office, the American people will keep paying and foreigners will keep dying.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association” or send him email.
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 edition of Freedom Daily. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.
Posted by A Nony Mouse

THEY'RE STILL TRYING

Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US
By Declan McCullagh, CNET.com on June 15th, 2010 (1 day ago)

A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.

The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.

Due to there being few limits on the US President's emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and "the potential for absolute power". And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill's emergency powers "include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems."

The idea of an internet "kill switch" that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia's sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to "declare a cybersecurity emergency", and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to "order the disconnection" of certain networks or websites.

On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman's Bill, which is formally titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said "I commend" the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up at a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that "we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources".

Under PCNAA, the Federal Government's power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also "relies on" the internet, the telephone system or any other component of the US "information infrastructure" would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC's emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman Bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over wiretapping without a warrant. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to "conduct surveillance" of Americans unless it's otherwise legally authorised.

Lieberman said on Thursday that enactment of his Bill needed to be a top congressional priority. "For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets," he said. "Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies — cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals."

A new cybersecurity bureaucracy
Lieberman's proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including "no less" than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. (How much the NCCC director's duties would overlap with those of the existing assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is not clear.)

The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the "security status" of private sector websites, broadband providers and other internet components. Lieberman's legislation requires the NCCC to provide "situational awareness of the security status" of the portions of the internet that are inside the United States — and also those portions in other countries that, if disrupted, could cause significant harm.

Selected private companies would be required to participate in "information sharing" with the Feds. They must "certify in writing to the director" of the NCCC whether they have "developed and implemented" federally approved security measures, which could be anything from encryption to physical security mechanisms, or programming techniques that have been "approved by the director". The NCCC director can "issue an order" in cases of non-compliance.

The prospect of a vast new cybersecurity bureaucracy with power to command the private sector worries some privacy advocates. "This is a plan for an auto-immune reaction," says Jim Harper, director of information studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "When something goes wrong, the government will attack our infrastructure and make society weaker."

To sweeten the deal for industry groups, Lieberman has included a tantalising offer absent from earlier drafts: immunity from civil lawsuits. If a software company's programming error costs customers billions, or a broadband provider intentionally cuts off its customers in response to a federal command, neither would be liable.

If there's an "incident related to a cyber vulnerability" after the President has declared an emergency and the affected company has followed federal standards, plaintiffs' lawyers cannot collect damages for economic harm. And if the harm is caused by an emergency order from the Feds, not only does the possibility of damages virtually disappear, but the US Treasury will even pick up the private company's tab.

Another sweetener: a new White House office would be charged with forcing federal agencies to take cybersecurity more seriously, with the power to jeopardise their budgets if they fail to comply. The likely effect would be to increase government agencies' demand for security products.

Tom Gann, McAfee's vice president for government relations, stopped short of criticising the Lieberman Bill, calling it a "very important piece of legislation".

McAfee is paying attention to "a number of provisions of the Bill that could use work," Gann said, and "we've certainly put some focus on the emergency provisions."

Posted by Chuck

THE "I WON'T" PRESIDENT

President Obama’s oft-repeated “Yes, we can,” has morphed into a sickening “No, I won’t:” He won’t keep his promises as a candidate to close Guantanamo; he won’t stop secret renditions to Bagram; he won’t make his administration more transparent; he won’t prosecute Bush, Cheney and the rest of that duo’s administration who defecated on our Constitution and admittedly violated International Law; he won’t do away with the Patriot Act and FISA or any other unconstitutional legislation passed because of 9/11; he won’t stop his assassinations and other killings abroad through the use of drones, hit men and other paid mercenaries; he won’t really stop the occupation of and killing in Iraq; he won’t stop expanding the war in Afghanistan; he won’t stop invading the sovereign State of Pakistan; he won’t stop threatening the sovereign State of Iran with crippling sanctions and with a potential use of nuclear weapons; he won’t stop renditions; he won’t stop surrounding himself with Wall Street cronies; he won’t support an audit of the Fed; he won’t cut the military budget; he won’t bail out Main Street; and, most recently, he won’t even condemn or even criticize the outrageous piracy, murder (including a 19-year old U.S. citizen), and kidnapping by Israel in International Waters in violation of International Law; and he won’t call for support of Turkey, a member of NATO. In short, he won’t do anything other than maintain the status quo, pose for photo ops, make eloquent speeches and attempt to persuade us he’s fully “engaged.” He’s “engaged” alright…engaged in the biggest rip-off and criminal conspiracy in the history of our country, except, perhaps, the establishment of a Central Bank (the FED).

When is this pathetic sequel to G.W. Bush going to become a leader and not just another shill for the Wall Street billionaires? When? Never! He is nothing more than a corporate pimp and will rate no more than a footnote in American history as the first of his color to be elected President. No more. No less. It’s a shame, too. He seemed to show much promise. He made a lot of them and, to date, has broken most of them. The man is an inveterate liar and dissembler, much like the infamous Richard the III, but with a teleprompter to guide him as he hype-notizes his adoring fans. One thing he apparently will do is to continue to lie, prevaricate, equivocate and a perpetrate a bunch of other “cates” we don’t know about. Hopefully we’ll see the last of him, come 2012. Perhaps the Mayans had him in mind?

Written and posted by Chuck