Newsletter Barack Obama, Cove Point, fast track, FERC, FERCus, Fracking, Gas, Human Rights, killed by police, Militarization, police brutality, Police violence, TPP By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org
May 9th, 2015
Chelsea Manning writes this week about the lack of transparency and declining press freedom in the United States. Transparency and press freedom are fundamental to democracy. Manning also connects these issues to our right to criticize our government without fear. Assata Shakur, who is currently living in exile in Cuba, says something we’ve been hearing a lot lately: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Hundreds of Internet users – holding their lit up cell phones and laptops aloft in protest – joined more than 30 demonstrations across the U.S. on Thursday night. The protests were organized in just a few days after the leaking of an inadequate proposal being floated by Chair of the FCC, Tom Wheeler. People took to the streets in an outpouring of anger over reports that the Federal Communications Committee is planning to push a “hybrid” net neutrality proposal that opens the door for cable company censorship and abuse. Crowds turned out in dozens of other cities as well including Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Anchorage, AK; Chicago, IL; and New York, NY. They promised the protests would escalate unless the FCC recommends full reclassification of the Internet as a common carrier where there can be no discrimination and equal access for all. More than 100 people gathered in front of the White House in Washington, DC with lit-up signs reading “SAVE THE INTERNET,” chanting “Hey hey! Ho ho! Tom Wheeler has got to go.”
In its continued efforts around its Latinos United for Immigration Reform campaign, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of 39 of the nation’s preeminent Latino organizations, strongly encourages the President to listen to the perspectives of the Latino and undocumented community as he considers policy options on immigration matters. With 97 percent of the deportation population being Latino, the impact of separations due to the Administration’s deportation policy is hitting Latino families particularly hard. Underscoring NHLA’s commitment to an inclusive approach, the coalition decided at its quarterly board meeting last month to formally endorse the national boycott of meetings with the President on immigration matters if they do not include representatives of undocumented immigrants. Accordingly, NHLA will make every effort to include undocumented representatives in any meeting it has with President Obama on immigration matters. If the White House will not meet with undocumented immigrants, then NHLA members will decline to meet with the President. “NHLA stands with the hundreds of thousands of families that need President Obama to take swift action on deportation relief. Any delay of affirmative relief, as some have urged on the President, should not be contemplated before consulting directly with members of the Latino and undocumented communities as they would be the ones most seriously and irrevocably harmed,” said Hector Sanchez, NHLA Chair and Executive Director, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.
A Short Film by Brave New Films on the Lies of John Brennan Not only did Brennan obstruct justice and spy on the Senate Committee, which was tasked to oversee the agency’s use of torture, but he also claimed that there has been no civilian casualties caused by United States drones. Brennan’s statements have been proven false through the media and through the Inspector General. President Obama MUST Fire Him. John Brennan’s lies do more than just tarnish his name, his lies tarnish an entire agency which is steeped in secrecy. If the American people are to believe that these are the only fabrications he has made, we’re sadly mistaken. Brennan’s lies send the message that the CIA is an untouchable agency and not accountable to anyone. We remain concerned that Brennan will do whatever it takes to protect his best interest. We must reign in Brennan’s rouge leadership. It’s time for CIA Director John Brennan to go. TELL OBAMA TO FIRE HIM!
President Obama’s innovative, take-no-prisoners campaigns crafted an elite force of operatives, skilled in the political arts. Now that they’re done helping Obama, however, it appears they have a new goal: weakening and defeating organized labor. On Tuesday, Obama’s former top White House adviser and 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe signed on with Uber, the company known for its slick app and on-demand cars — and efforts to break taxi-union holds on urban transportation. Plouffe joins former top Obama campaign and White House communications strategist Robert Gibbs and Obama’s national press secretary for the 2012 campaign Ben LaBolt, who are using their talents in a campaign against the power of teacher’s unions. Along with them is Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina, who went to London to work for the reelection of England’s Conservative Party government, which is campaigning on a platform that includes new rules English labor says would make it “close to impossible” to go on strike. American labor is still wary of talking on the record about Obama, but union frustration with the path Obama’s campaign dream team has taken is palpable.
Will the Senate hold a vote less than two months before the midterm elections to authorize military strikes in Iraq? Democrats in both chambers have called for Congress to take action, but it’s a vote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) almost certainly wants to avoid as he seeks to keep the upper chamber majority in his party’s hands. Democratic strategists warn that voting on a use-of-force authorization before the election could prove disastrous to Democratic candidates in tough races. “The base doesn’t want airstrikes and Democratic swing voters who tend to be more blue-collar don’t want re-involvement in Iraq. So I think many Democrats would face a challenge voting for this thing,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster and strategist. Lake said Democrats are in a box because if President Obama continues military action without congressional approval, that is likely to have political reverberations as well. “The second problem with airstrikes is that if they’re unauthorized all the controversy hurts the president’s job performance numbers, which is bad for Democrats too. You really need the president’s job performance numbers higher,” she said.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen is not mincing words about President Barack Obama. Risen has been fighting the Obama administration’s efforts to get him to testify about his sources for six years. The Department of Justice has ordered him to testify against former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who it believes leaked information about a failed CIA operation in Iran that Risen reported on in his book. Risen recently lost his bid to have the Supreme Court revisit his case. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spoke to Risen for her Sunday column “Where’s the Justice at Justice?” “How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who ‘tortured some folks,’ and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?” Dowd wrote. Risen had one word to describe Obama’s actions: “hypocritical.”
President Obama gave a speech last night purporting to justify today’s U.S. military strikes in Iraq. Unfortunately, the president’s speech failed to clearly answer key questions related to the issue of Congressional war powers under the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution; that is, he failed to clearly explain why his decision to order airstrikes in Iraq without Congressional authorization is Constitutional and legal. These questions are crucial because regardless of what you think right now of the president’s current military action — and the situation is still unfolding, and it is not at all clear right now what the limits, if any, of the president’s action will be — Americans who want the U.S. to be using military force less frequently are engaged in a “long game” against the presidency — not just this president, any president — about the Constitutional, legal, and political scope of the president for unilateral decisions on the use of force in the absence of an attack or imminent threat of attack on the U.S. And every time the president — this president or any president — is allowed to “cut corners” on the Constitutional question of Congressional war powers, it sets a bad precedent for the future, eroding a key Constitutional, democratic speed bump against unnecessary wars of choice.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama voiced strong support for Net Neutrality and opposition to the type of pay-for-priority Internet rules now being proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “One of the issues around Net Neutrality is whether you are creating different rates or charges for different content providers. That’s the big controversy here,” Obama said in response to a journalist’s question at the U.S. Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. “You have big, wealthy media companies who might be willing to pay more and also charge more for spectrum, more bandwidth on the Internet so they can stream movies faster. I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users. You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.” Obama’s position contradicts Chairman Wheeler’s current proposal, which would allow Internet access providers to favor the content of a few wealthy companies over other websites and services. The president’s remarks were first reported by Bloomberg BNA.
Obama just admitted that the United States tortured people. Apparently, he’s softening up the public for the imminent release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the CIA. The Committee’s report “will reveal new and shocking details about the CIA’s detention, rendition and interrogation program in the years following the 9/11 attacks,” according to people who have seen or been briefed on the report. The media, in classic form, is distracting the public from the actual issue of torture by focusing on the issue of CIA spying on the Senate. However, internal disputes between the Senate and the executive branch are irrelevant, because both are complicit in torture. For example, immediately after 9/11, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was fully briefed on the use of so-called “harsh interrogation techniques” – what Obama now identifies as “torture.” Predictably, John Yoo, a lawyer and adviser of President George W. Bush, is already part of this debate, stating that his “general sympathies” are with the CIA. That is not surprising since John Yoo’s fingerprints are all over the legal memoranda allegedly justifying techniques Obama now identifies as torture. Yoo was the principal author on the memoranda that allegedly provided the legal basis for the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation/torture immediately after 9/11. This is the time frame during which, Obama says, torture occurred.
Forgive the tongue-in-cheek, but it is almost as if the only person who reads and responds to my work on torture is President Obama. There was a cascade of coverage of the President’s August 1 remarks concerning John Brennan and his defense of his embattled CIA chief, as Obama was also widely derided for his seeming defense of those who tortured “some folks” after 9/11. (Obama did not mention that the order to torture came from the Oval Office.) “Well, at least he called the crimes out as ‘torture,” some observers noted. Others, including some in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), called for John Brennan’s resignation as CIA director after he admitted the CIA had spied on Congressional investigators who were writing a thousands-of-pages-long report on the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program. An Executive Summary of that report, in a censored version produced by the CIA itself, is now back in the hands of the SSCI, who may or may not release it soon. The Committee has already decided the full 6000 or so page report itself will not be released for years (if ever), a cover-up of immense proportions. Jason Leopold, who has been covering the story for Al Jazeera America and VICE, noted astutely in a tweet the other day, that Obama’s comments at his August 1 press conference included a reference to his only banning “some” of the CIA’s torture techniques. Leopold believed Obama previously had always been more absolute in his prohibition of torture.
In this clip from the full-length Acronym TV program, Gaza Solidarity Grows as Israel Continues Massacre (http://bit.ly/1ALhy5l) Kash Nikazmrad, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, discusses the current siege on Gaza with host Dennis Trainor, Jr. Nikazmrad echoed the statement issued by Palestinian civil society organizations (http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-orgs-justice-delayed-justice-denied/992) on 3 October 2009, which reads in part: “Justice delayed is justice denied. All victims have a legitimate right to an effective judicial remedy, and the equal protection of the law. These rights are universal: they are not subject to political considerations. In the nine months since Operation Cast Lead, no effective judicial investigations have been conducted into the conflict. Impunity prevails. In such situations, international law demands recourse to international judicial mechanisms. Victims’ rights must be upheld. Those responsible must be held to account.
I don’t want to understate how seriously wrong it is that the CIA searched Senate computers. Our constitutional order is seriously out of whack when the executive branch acts with that kind of impunity — to its overseers, no less. But given everything else that’s been going on lately, the single biggest — and arguably most constructive — thing to focus on is how outrageously CIA Director John Brennan lied to everyone about it. “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth,” Brennan told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell in March. “We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.” Earlier, he had castigated “some members of the Senate” for making “spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts.” He called for an end to “outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and Congressional overseers.” And what compelled Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein to make a dramatic floor speech in the first place, bringing everything out in the open, was that Brennan had responded to her initial concerns not by acknowledging the CIA’s misconduct — but by firing back with an allegation of criminal activity by her own staff.
Citing President Obama’s major 2013 counter terrorism speech, wherein he acknowledged that a US drone had targeted and killed a U.S. citizen (Anwar Al-Awlaki) and where the President was forced to discuss GITMO because, “it was the height of a hunger strike and it attracted attention around the world.” In that speech, Leopold notes, Obama lifted a moratorium, “that he put into place and here we are year later and there have been no Yemeni’s released. As we saw with the swap with the Taliban of the five prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, that was a fight he was willing to wage with Congress.”
In November of 2009, the newly-formed Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations marched from Malcolm X Park through the gentrifying streets of Washington to the White House, loudly denouncing the First Black President of the United States. Barack Obama had been in office only ten months, but the militarist and corporatist trajectory of his regime was already quite clear. Obama had retained George Bush’s Secretary of Defense, escalated the drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, placed Bill Clinton’s Wall Street operatives in charge of the economy, announced his intention to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, even as he pushed through Congress a health care bill that was largely written by private drug and insurance companies. Like George Bush before him, Obama sabotaged the Durban II World Conference Against Racism, in order to derail demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism. And, only 100 days into his administration, Obama had served notice to African Americans that he would propose no programs to alleviate the suffering of Black America, which had been hit hardest by the economic meltdown. The Black is Back Coalition was determined that the first politician in history to spend a billion dollars to win the presidency would not get a free pass from all of Black America – even if his father was an African. One of the biggest contingents in that first anti-Obama march and rally was the Newark, New Jersey-based People’s Organization for Progress, “POP” – perhaps Black America’s most dynamic regional grassroots organization. POP’s membership, after much debate, had endorsed Obama in the 2008 election, but that did not stop them from chanting their outrage at his policies at the gates of the White House.
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