2010/02/05: TSun: Wars sending U.S. into ruin -- Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford
U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America’s economic health.
In fact, it’s another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug -- debt.
More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion.
[...]
If Obama really were serious about restoring America’s economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation’s giant Frankenbanks.
2010/01/14: FP: The Carter Syndrome
Barack Obama might yet revolutionize America's foreign policy. But if he can't reconcile his inner Thomas Jefferson with his inner Woodrow Wilson, the 44th president could end up like No. 39.
2009/12/20: NYT:PK: The WYSIWYG president
There’s a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn’t the man progressives thought they were voting for.
But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that
(a) There wasn’t a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders
(b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressive
Now it’s true that many progressives were ardent Obama supporters, with their ardency mixed in with a fair bit of demonization of Hillary Clinton. And maybe they were right -- but not on policy grounds. (I still remember people angrily telling me that if Hillary got in, she’d fill her economics team with Rubinites).
So what you’re getting is what you should have seen.
2009/12/09: RS: Obama's Big Sellout
The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway
2009/12/03: NYRB: Afghanistan: The Betrayal
I did not think he would lose me so soon -- sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was deeply invested in the success of our first African-American president. I had written op-ed pieces and articles to support him in The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. My wife and I had maxed out in donations for him. Our children had been ardent for his cause.
Others I respect have given up on him before now. I can see why. His backtracking on the treatment of torture (and photographs of torture), his hesitations to give up on rendition, on detentions, on military commissions, and on signing statements, are disheartening continuations of George W. Bush’s heritage. But I kept hoping that he was using these concessions to buy leeway for his most important position, for the ground on which his presidential bid was predicated.
There was only one thing that brought him to the attention of the nation as a future president. It was opposition to the Iraq war. None of his serious rivals for the Democratic nomination had that credential—not Hillary Clinton, not Joseph Biden, not John Edwards. It set him apart. He put in clarion terms the truth about that war—that it was a dumb war, that it went after an enemy where he was not hiding, that it had no indigenous base of support, that it had no sensible goal and no foreseeable cutoff point.
He said that he would not oppose war in general, but dumb wars. On that basis, we went for him. And now he betrays us.
2009/11/30: BBC: Obama orders Afghan troop surge
US President Barack Obama has issued new orders for the US military in Afghanistan after deciding how many more troops to send, officials say.
Mr Obama told senior military leaders about his long-awaited decision on troop numbers on Sunday night, a White House spokesman said.
2009/11/24: AntiWar: Obama Quietly Backs PATRIOT Act Provisions
With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA PATRIOT Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
2009/11/18: BBC: Obama admits delay on Guantanamo
US President Barack Obama has for the first time admitted that the US will miss the January 2010 deadline he set for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Mr Obama made the admission in interviews with US TV networks during his tour of Asia.
He said he was "not disappointed" that the deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard".
Officials are trying to determine what to do with some 215 detainees still held at the US prison in Cuba.
2009/11/16: MondoWeiss: Clinton to Palestinians: Settlement policy has changed. Get over it
In what should go down as one of the most humiliating episodes in the history of Israel-US relations, former President Bill Clinton told the Saban Forum in Jerusalem on Sunday that Palestinians must "accept America’s modification of its anti-settlement policy and return to the bargaining table," according to a report in the Jerusalem Post which the US media apparently ignored
It was the last nail in the coffin of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s earlier demand for an Israeli settlement freeze.
2009/11/15: MondoWeiss: Slaves of the peace process
Despite all its efforts to retract the moment, the Obama Administration’s embrace of Netanyahu 2 weeks ago for "unprecedented" progress was hugely-clarifying to many of us. A shattering moment, it has liberated people to think about the failed peace process in new ways. It has made me vow not to be trusting about officials’ statements in the light of real conditions.
2009/11/14: CBC: Gates blocks detainee abuse photos
Defence Secretary Robert Gates has blocked the public release of any more pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors, saying their release would endanger American soldiers.
The Obama administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court late Friday saying that Gates has invoked new powers blocking the release of the photos.
The American Civil Liberties Union had sued for the release of 21 colour photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans.
Federal courts had rejected the government's arguments to block their release, so Congress gave Gates new powers to keep them private under a law signed by President Barack Obama last month.
2009/11/04: CCurrents: Noam Chomsky: No Change In US 'Mafia Principle'
As civilised people across the world breathed a sigh of relief to see the back of former US president George W. Bush, top American intellectual Noam Chomsky warned against assuming or expecting significant changes in the basis of Washington's foreign policy under President Barack Obama.
During two lectures organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Chomsky cited numerous examples of the driving doctrines behind US foreign policy since the end of World War II.
"As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," said Chomsky.
2009/10/31: Google:AP: Obama administration: Toss wiretap lawsuit
Attorney General Eric Holder says a lawsuit in San Francisco over warrantless wiretapping threatens to expose ongoing intelligence work and must be thrown out.
In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate.
Holder's effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult.
2009/10/29: Yahoo: Obama's real death panels
Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed two executive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law.
They still do.
The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone--including an American citizen--an "unlawful enemy combatant." A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration--and now to the Obama Administration--he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it--well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.
In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said "enemy combatants"--again, including American citizens.
2009/10/19: Nation: 'War on Terror' II
We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place. Conservatives hit the panic button on the right-wing noise machine anyway, keeping the delicate ecosystem in balance by creating the false impression that something has changed. We've watched the formula play out with Guantánamo Bay, torture prosecutions and the invocation of "state secrets." We appear to be on the verge of doing the same with national security surveillance.
2009/10/17: TPR: Presidential Power Grows: Will You Love Every Future President?
Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn’t be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute.
2009/10/13: P&S: Can the Lot of Them
How is it that a United States president who just won the Nobel Peace Prize is having such a tough time telling one of his generals that he doesn’t want to escalate a war that doesn’t enhance America’s national security?
2009/10/02: WaTimes: Obama agrees to keep Israel's nukes secret
President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.
The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.
Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.
2009/09/17: BBC: Obama shelves Europe missile plan
US President Barack Obama has shelved plans for controversial bases in Poland and the Czech Republic in a major overhaul of missile defence in Europe.
The bases are to be scrapped after a review of the threat from Iran.
Mr Obama said there would be a "proven, cost-effective" system using land- and sea-based interceptors against Iran's short- and medium-range missile threat.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has welcomed the US decision, calling it a "responsible move".
Russia had always seen the shield as a threat.
However, there has been criticism of the decision in conservative circles in the US.
2009/09/13: TStar: Obama not much better than Bush on rights
Barack Obama won well-deserved applause for banning torture and promising to shut down Guantanamo Bay. But his overall record and that of the Democratic-controlled Congress in restoring the rule of law and human rights leave a lot to be desired.
2009/09/05: JWN: "The White House regrets... "
The statement the White House issued yesterday in response to Netanyahu's announcement that he would unleash the construction of hundreds of additional settler housing units before he considered submitting to any possible freeze on additional construction was weak and pathetic...
2009/09/03: ScienceInsider: Obama Keeps Head of Nuclear Weapons Program
The Obama Administration announced today that it will retain Thomas D'Agostino as head of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. The decision was met with dismay by many in the arms control and non-proliferation community, who fear that it will be harder to implement the soaring vision for a nuclear-free future that President Obama has articulated while retaining key figures from a Bush Administration that supported expansion of the country's nuclear arsenal.
2009/09/03: AlterNet: Obama Is Leading the U.S. Into a Hellish Quagmire
America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan -- a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what's now being called "Obama's War."
2009/08/28: Rabble: Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: 'A better world is being created'
U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.
[...]
Chomsky also addressed the media and freedom of expression in the U.S. "In the United States the socio-economic system is designed so that the control over the media is in the hands of a minority who own large corporations... and the result is that the financial interests of those groups are always behind the so-called freedom of expression," he said.
Chomsky said the growing disappointment with the Obama administration in the U.S. was predictable because the corporate media marketed Obama's presidential candidacy on the slogan of "Change We Can Believe In" but omitted concrete proposals for effective changes, and the Obama administration has since shown an incapacity to institute such changes.
2009/08/25: Grist: Barack Obama is not Bagger Vance
Things are pretty grim among progressives these days, what with health care bogging down and climate legislation on indefinite delay; right wing crazies everywhere and Blue Dogs intransigent; the organized coalition that brought Obama to office fractured and ineffective. Disillusionment is in the air.
In response, on listservs and private conversations, I’m hearing more and more people express some version of the following sentiment: Barack Obama should save us. According to this line of thinking, if Obama really got serious, got his messaging right, did a really good speech, exercised his extraordinary popularity with the American people, he could right the ship for his two main domestic initiatives, both of which are drifting perilously close to the shoals.
It’s understandable. Everyone still remembers the extraordinary high of the campaign, the rare and almost forgotten feeling of being genuinely moved by a civic-minded politician. Everyone wants that high back, as an escape from the lies, bottlenecks, and general unpleasantness that now beset us.
But let me be blunt: Barack Obama is not our magic negro. He’s not Bagger Vance.
2009/08/17: NakedCapitalism: Is This the Start of the Big One?
[...]
Lack of political leadership. The health care fiasco is going to be a defining event for Obama, in a negative way. His inability to respond effectively to simply absurd distortions of his plan and of the record of public supported programs overseas (including that many are government funded but still privately run, for instance) may dispel the illusion that he is or can be an effective leader. His banking policy, which is vital to recovery, became hostage to Geithner and Summer's deep loyalty to the industry, and his lack or interest in rocking any boats. All Team Obama has done on the banking front is write a lot of blank check, hold some bogus "stress tests" in lieu of doing the real thing, and raise a stink on a few symbolic issues to try to paper over the failure to embark on real and badly needed reforms.
Ed Harrison has called him a black Herbert Hoover. If the economy takes another down leg, it will further confirm his inability to do anything other than compromise and try to spin it as success. The confidence game worked when he was a new President, but nice talk and not much action is already wearing thin. We could use someone at the helm who is willing to plot a course and stick with it, and instead what we have is someone long on charisma and short on resolve.
2009/08/13: WSWS: Obama’s Abu Ghraib solution
[...] Five years later, the Bush administration is history, and a Democratic president has taken office, verbally repudiating torture and promising "transparency."
Nonetheless, according to published reports, President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, are dusting off the Abu Ghraib tactic of prosecuting a few supposed "bad apples" at the bottom of the chain of command in order to whitewash the far more serious crimes committed by those at the top.
2009/08/03: EmpireBurlesque: Obama Sends a Signal to the Few Remaining Suckers Who Believe in the Rule of Law
For anyone still harboring a few scraps of vestigial hope that the change of administration effected by the 2008 election would restore even a thin, weak, straggly lineament thin of the rule of law in the United States, the recent opinion piece by Barack Obama's hand-picked CIA chief, the doleful Establishment water-toter Leon Panetta, will tell you all you need to know.
In the friendly confines of the authoritarian newsletter known as the Washington Post -- Panetta, the weak reed appointed precisely because of his weakness and reedness by Obama, who then surrounded the little puppet with some of the most complicit torture mavens of the Bush Regime to really run the CIA show -- delivered himself of one of the most cringe-worthy performances by a high public official since the ritual abasements of Stalin's 1930s show trials. In this case, however, Panetta was not making a ludicrous, outrageous confession of false crimes he never committed; instead, he was making a ludicrous, outrageous defense of real crimes committed by Obama's predecessors -- and in the process justifying his boss's craven (if entirely predictable) failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, as he swore to do in front of so many swooning millions just a few months ago, and prosecute the top Bushists for their manifest (not to mention openly confessed) high crimes.
2009/08/07: NakedCapitalism: "The Health Insurers Have Already Won"
One of the guest bloggers here, the esteemed Ed Harrison, was initially more hopeful about Obama than some of us (I an sufficiently cynical that I find it hard to get excited about any politician, although I will confess to falling for Australia's Kevin Rudd) but is now calling him a black Herbert Hoover.
Even that is not quite sufficient, but is directionally correct. One of the defining characteristics of Team Obama its preference for spin in lieu of substance. Admiittedly, the Bushies had a variant of that, in their obsession with the visual staging of any presidential appearance (the attention to props and lighting detail would do Annie Liebowitz proud).
But with the Obama cohort, the focus is Orwellian, the use of language to misrepresent substance. Recall the totally mislabeled "stress tests" which were not tests. The tests were self-administered and the result pre-determined, since Administration officials said repeatedly that the point of the exercise was to show that the banks were sufficiently well capitalized. And since there were doubts about the seriousness of the exercise, it was helpful to the PR process that the banks got pissy and pushed back, which gave the misleading impression that they were being handled roughly (as opposed to they were given a yard and wanted to see if they could take a mile).
2009/08/04: CCurrents: Why The U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
[...] Having lost in the realm of ideas, those supporting capitalism must compensate by other means. Barack Obama is a very outspoken devotee of capitalism, and has shown by his coup in Honduras -- and also the military build-up in Colombia -- that he will go to any length to prop-up U.S. corporations and rich investors in the region.
There can be absolutely no doubt that Obama will seek to undermine the Venezuelan government by any means available, including the very real possibility of a proxy invasion through Colombia. None of these attempts to undermine the advances in Venezuela and other countries will benefit the peoples of Latin America or the United States, minus a tiny minority of the super wealthy.
2009/07/17: WSWS: Obama’s war
With Obama approaching the end of his sixth month in the White House, there is growing evidence that his administration is in only the first stages of what is shaping up to be a major and sustained escalation of the US war in Afghanistan.
Elected in large part because of the hostility of American working people to the militarist policies of the Bush administration, Obama and the Pentagon are waging an intensified and brutal counter-insurgency campaign that has the potential of dwarfing the carnage in Iraq and dragging on for another decade.
2009/07/15: OLJ: Quo vadis, Barack Obama?
[...] It has painfully taken me almost six months to realize that Barack Obama is not the agent of change this nation needs; an agent we are unlikely to get through political evolution in a corrupt two-party system. Nonetheless, better Obama at the helm than one of the many Republican nuts itching to deliver us to Armageddon.
2009/07/10: SF Gate: Obama quoted in wiretap lawsuit in S.F.
An Islamic charity challenging former President George W. Bush's wiretapping program in a San Francisco federal court cited candidate Barack Obama's words Thursday in arguing that a president has no power to unilaterally order eavesdropping on Americans.
Lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation introduced their brief by quoting Obama's words in December 2007: "Warrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional."
FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, requires the government to get a warrant from a court that meets in secret before intercepting messages between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists. Bush acknowledged in 2005 that he authorized such surveillance four years earlier and said he had constitutional authority to take such actions during wartime.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco has scheduled a hearing Sept. 1 on whether Al-Haramain has the right to sue the government and, if so, whether it was wiretapped unconstitutionally.
The government accidentally gave Al-Haramain a classified document in 2004 that reportedly showed that two of the organization's lawyers had been wiretapped before the Bush administration designated it as a terrorist group.
2009/07/10: Guardian(UK): Obama administration plans forceful policy to end conflicts in Africa
US president to emphasise democratic goals for African countries during speech to Ghanaian parliament
The US is planning a dramatically more assertive policy in Africa, sometimes backed by a threat of force, to end conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria that are seen as among the principal obstacles to the continent's revival.
2009/07/03: WaPo: New Evidence Cheney Swayed Reaction to Leak -- Discussions of CIA Agent Listed in Filing
A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations.
The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial.
A list of at least seven related conversations involving Cheney appears in a new court filing approved by Obama appointees at the Justice Department. In the filing, the officials argue that the substance of what Cheney told special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in 2004 must remain secret.
No such agreement was reached between Fitzgerald and Cheney at the time of their chat, according to a 2008 Fitzgerald letter to lawmakers. But the Bush administration rejected requests by Congress and a nonprofit group for access to two FBI accounts of the conversation, saying the material was exempt from disclosure under subpoena or the Freedom of Information Act.
The Obama administration has since agreed that the material should not be disclosed.
2009/06/26: TheHill: Obama issues signing statement on $106B war bill
President Obama signed the $106 billion war-spending bill into law Friday, but not without taking a page from his predecessor and ignoring a few elements in the legislation.
Obama included a five-paragraph signing statement with the bill, including a final paragraph that outlined his objections to at least four areas of the bill.
President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his use of signing statements, declaring he'd ignore some elements of legislation by invoking presidential prerogative.
The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
2009/06/26: WSWS: Obama administration seeks to quash suit by 9/11 families
The Obama administration has intervened to quash a civil suit filed against Saudi Arabia by survivors and family members of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The suit seeks to hold the Saudi royal family liable, charging that it provided financial and other support to Al Qaeda and was thereby complicit in the hijack bombings that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC.
According to an article by Eric Lichtblau in the June 24 New York Times, documents assembled by lawyers for the 9/11 families "provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family." However, the article states, the documents may never find their way into court because of legal challenges by Saudi Arabia, which are being supported by the US Justice Department.
2009/06/12: ACLU: Obama Administration Seeks To Keep Torture Victims From Having Day In Court
Justice Department Asks Court For Rehearing In Extraordinary Rendition Lawsuit Against Boeing Subsidiary.
The Justice Department today argued that the victims of the "extraordinary rendition" program should not have their day in court, asking a federal appeals court to block a landmark case the court had earlier ruled could go forward. In April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen DataPlan Inc., for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful "extraordinary rendition" program could proceed, but today the government asked the appeals court's full panel of judges to rehear that decision.
"The Obama administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration's shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, who argued the case for the plaintiffs. "The CIA's rendition and torture program is not a 'state secret;' it's an international scandal. If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability."
2009/05/30: CNN: U.S. vows to keep using 'state secrets' defense
Obama administration in legal battle with Islamic charity suspected of funding terror - Islamic group sues U.S., alleging wiretapping; demands classified information -
U.S. tells judge it will invoke "state secrets" privilege and not release documents - "State secrets" privilege used if U.S. thinks litigation could harm national security
2009/05/26: DVoice: Beyond Obama’s Rhetoric
With each passing day, president Barack Obama provides more and more evidence that the line distinguishing him from his predecessor George W. Bush is one of style rather than of substance.
2009/05/26: WaPo: Showdown Looming On 'State Secrets' -- Judge Threatens To Penalize U.S. In Wiretap Case
President Obama vowed last week to rein in the use of a legal privilege that allows the administration to discard lawsuits that involve "state secrets," promising that a new policy is in the works that will quell criticism by civil libertarians.
But hours after Obama's speech laid out a "delicate balance" on national security, his Justice Department was criticized by a federal judge in California overseeing a case that has delved deeper than any other into one of the government's most highly classified data-gathering programs.
The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping.
2009/05/18: WSWS: Right-wing rampage by Obama administration
The past week has provided a definitive demonstration of the subservience of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to the military-intelligence apparatus of American imperialism.
2009/05/13: CNN: Obama reverses course on alleged prison abuse photos
Obama says releasing photos would "further flame anti-American opinion" - ACLU attorney says Obama's decision goes against his promise -
Gates says commanders "expressed very serious reservations" about release - Photos show detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006
2009/05/13: BBC: Obama U-turn on abuse photographs
US President Barack Obama has changed his mind and will now attempt to block the publication of photographs showing the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers.
The US government had previously said it would not fight a court ruling ordering the release of the pictures.
Mr Obama now believes the release of the photos would make the job of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan more difficult, White House officials said.
2009/05/06: DVoice: Is Bush Still President?
"Obama’s acquiescence to the old regime is outrageous in part because it is politically unnecessary."
On January 20th of this year, George W. Bush left Washington and headed back to Texas after the inauguration of Barrack Obama. Or are those memories merely figments of our collective imagination? A quick perusal of government policy has to make one wonder, is Bush still in the White House? According to the New York Times, the Obama administration is considering resuming the use of military tribunals to prosecute Guantanamo detainees.
2009/04/30: G&M: Canada placed on copyright blacklist
The Obama administration added Canada Thursday to a notorious blacklist of countries where Internet piracy flourishes, reflecting a new, tougher line in Washington over the Harper government's chronic failure to deliver on promises of new copyright laws
2009/04/24: MediaMatters: 100 days of myths and falsehoods
Summary: As media figures prepare to recognize President Obama's 100th day in office, Media Matters has reviewed coverage since the inauguration and identified numerous myths and falsehoods about the administration and its policies.
2009/04/08: Ha'aretz: Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu
In an unprecedented move, the Obama administration is readying for a possible confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by briefing Democratic congressmen on the peace process and the positions of the new government in Israel regarding a two-state solution.
The Obama administration is expecting a clash with Netanyahu over his refusal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
2009/04/07: SF Gate: Government opts for secrecy in wiretap suit
The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration's wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.
Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, "which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security," Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.
Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign's "unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency."
2009/03/26: BBerg: Obama Backs Banks, Seeks to Block Fair-Lending Probe
The Obama administration’s call for greater financial regulation may have its limits.
The administration late yesterday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to bar New York and other states from enforcing their fair-lending and other consumer-protection laws against federally chartered banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.
The legal brief, which adopts the Bush administration’s position, is a setback for consumer and civil-rights groups that had urged President Barack Obama’s team to switch positions. The filing puts the administration at odds with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over the respective roles of state and federal regulators. The high court will hear arguments April 28.
2009/03/17: Wired:27B/6: Obama Administration: Constitution Does Not Protect Cell-Site Records
The Obama administration says the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to cell-site information mobile phone carriers retain on their customers.
The position is being staked out in a little-noticed surveillance case pending before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The case has wide-ranging implications for Americans, as most citizens have or will carry a mobile phone in their lifespan.
At issue is whether the government can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause -- the standard required for a search warrant. While judges have varied on the issue, the resulting evidence can be used in a criminal prosecution.
2009/03/06: WSJ: Obama Channels Cheney -- Obama adopts Bush view on the powers of the presidency
The Obama Administration this week released its predecessor's post-9/11 legal memoranda in the name of "transparency," producing another round of feel-good Bush criticism. Anyone interested in President Obama's actual executive-power policies, however, should look at his position on warrantless wiretapping. Dick Cheney must be smiling.
In a federal lawsuit, the Obama legal team is arguing that judges lack the authority to enforce their own rulings in classified matters of national security. The standoff concerns the Oregon chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi Arabian charity that was shut down in 2004 on evidence that it was financing al Qaeda. Al-Haramain sued the Bush Administration in 2005, claiming it had been illegally wiretapped.
2009/02/26: AntiWar: Freeing Up Resources... for More War
[...]
Those who are fond of talking and writing about President Obama's admirable progressive values will, sooner or later, need to come to terms with the particulars of his actual policies. In foreign affairs, the realities now include the ominous pairing of his anti-terrorism rhetoric and his avowed commitment to ratchet up the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.
2009/03/05: OLJ: Obama’s change could be just cosmetic
US President Barack Obama has been in office for only five weeks so no one should expect miracles, and especially since he’s been busy fixing the economy. Like most people around the world, I cheered his election victory and hoped it heralded a new era in which the superpower would once again lead by example. That may happen yet, but thus far, the signs are not exactly reassuring.
He rode to the White House on a ticket of ‘change’ but has surrounded himself with the old guard. Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Special Adviser on Iran Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, a leftover from the Bush camp, are hardly agents for change. Where are the fresh faces? Is there anyone in his cabinet bursting with new ideas and prepared to implement out-of-the-box solutions for longtime problems?
Admittedly, he’s altered the tone and I’m convinced he won’t be pasting up "Wanted. Dead or Alive" posters any time soon, but I’m getting a niggling feeling that ‘change’ in Obama’s book may be little more than cosmetic.
2009/03/01: OttawaSun: U.S. influence in Iraq far from over
Barack Obama won the votes of many Americans by promising to swiftly end the Iraq War and bring U.S. troops home. He denounced George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq as a "violation of international law."
So will U.S. troops leave Iraq? Will those responsible for this trumped-up war face justice?
No, on both counts.
President Obama says U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq by August 2010. However, the U.S. military occupation will not end. What we are seeing is a public relations shell game.
2009/02/27: CBC: Court rejects Obama bid to stop wiretapping lawsuit
The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security is grounds to stop a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program.
A federal Appeals Court in San Francisco on Friday rejected the Justice Department's request for an emergency stay in a case involving a defunct Islamic charity.
Yet government lawyers signaled they would continue fighting to keep the information secret, setting up a new showdown between the courts and the White House over national security.
The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, claimed national security would be compromised if a lawsuit brought by the Oregon chapter of the charity, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, were allowed to proceed.
2009/02/21: Google:AP: Obama administration tries to kill e-mail case
The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.
Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.
2009/02/21: BBC: 'No US rights' for Bagram inmates
Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says.
The justice department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights.
Most have been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of waging a terrorist war against the US.
The move has disappointed human rights lawyers who had hoped the Obama administration would take a different line to that of George W Bush.
2009/02/20: SMH: US must face Jakarta's cruel past
Australian and United States policies towards Indonesia have long been quite close, and it is going to be interesting to see the impact of the change in Washington. Both countries in the past supported the Soeharto regime, including its illegal seizure of East Timor, where both governments helped shield the regime from allegations of war crimes by the TNI, the Indonesian Army.
However, many Americans, including congressmen, mostly Democrats, have long condemned this support, and they are pressing President Barack Obama to shift away from the US's longstanding close relationship with the Indonesian military.
2009/02/18: NYT: Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas
Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s "war on terrorism," the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.
In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.
The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the "state secrets" doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.
And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government "for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information."
These and other signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared -- prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.
2009/02/11: EmpireBurlesque: Shock Absorbers: Progressives Stunned by Obama Non-Surprises
There is certainly a great deal of slack-jawed shock going around these days, especially in progressive circles, where pundits, commentators, analysts and kibitzers continually find themselves reeling from yet another "inexplicable" move by the Obama Administration to uphold the core principles of their predecessors: enriching the rich, extending the empire, and enhancing the authoritarian power of a thoroughly militarized state.
For example, Glenn Greenwald and Scott Horton at Harper's (among many others) are deeply shocked by Team Obama's draconian maneuvers to quash a court case based on clear, abundant and credible evidence that American security forces -- and their corporate accomplices -- colluded to inflict horrendous tortures on a gulag captive (whose only "crime," it turns out, was reading a satirical magazine article). While Horton struggles to find some small justification for what he sees as an unwise decision, Greenwald is scathing and detailed in denouncing Obama's action, in which the new president seeks to uphold -- and to seize for himself -- some of the most egregious claims of arbitrary, tyrannical power once advanced by George "Unitary Executive" Bush.
It is good to see these worthy gentlemen -- lawyers both -- give us chapter and verse on this act of evil, yet one still must ask: why all the surprise? From the beginning of his presidential campaign to this very day, Obama has always made it perfectly clear -- as another great unitary executive used to say -- that he has no intention whatsoever of dismantling the unbridled powers of the "imperial presidency."
2009/02/09: Guardian(UK): Obama administration maintains Bush's 'state secrets' policy
Barack Obama's justice department has repeated a Bush administration policy of citing "state secrets" to prevent the release of evidence concerning extraordinary renditions.
The decision, revealed at a hearing in a San Francisco appeals court, came days after the British high court ruled that evidence of renditions and torture must remain secret so as not to endanger the intelligence relationship between the two countries.
2009/02/07: Salon: Obama's team of zombies
Even under the new president, Washington is the same one-party town it always has been -- controlled not by Democrats or Republicans, but by thieves.
2009/02/04: ACLU: Obama Endorses Bush Secrecy On Torture And Rendition
After the British High Court ruled that evidence of British resident Binyam Mohamed's extraordinary rendition and torture at Guantánamo Bay must remain secret because of threats made by the Bush administration to halt intelligence sharing, the Obama administration told the BBC today in a written statement: "The United States thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."
2009/02/03: NYT: Obama’s Pledge to Reform Ethics Faces an Early Test
During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a "new era of responsibility." What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.
The exceptions that went unmentioned now include a pair of cabinet nominees who did not pay all of their taxes. Then there is the lobbyist for a military contractor who is now slated to become the No. 2 official in the Pentagon. And there are the others brought into government from the influence industry even if not formally registered as lobbyists.
President Obama said Monday that he was "absolutely" standing behind former Senator Tom Daschle, his nominee for health and human services secretary, and Mr. Daschle, who met late in the day with leading senators in an effort to keep his confirmation on track, said he had "no excuse" and wanted to "deeply apologize" for his failure to pay $128,000 in federal taxes.
But the episode has already shown how, when faced with the perennial clash between campaign rhetoric and Washington reality, Mr. Obama has proved willing to compromise.
2009/01/28: OLJ: We can be fooled again
Letting go of an ideal and a sense of hopefulness came sooner than expected. Resignation set in faster than had been anticipated, leaving no illusions about the nature of the Obama administration’s plans for foreign policy.
2009/01/27: TPMM: Ball In Obama's Court On Rove's US Attorney Testimony
On the question of whether we'll get to the bottom of the Bush White House's role in the US Attorney firings, it's starting to look more and more like the ball is squarely in President Obama's court.
Yesterday, as we noted, House Judiciary chair John Conyers issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, ordering him to testify about the affair February 2nd and declaring ominously: "It's time for him to talk."
(Rove, making a claim to executive privilege backed by President Bush, had defied a subpoena issued by the last Congress. That Congress ended before the full House could vote on contempt charges against Rove.)
And just now, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told TPMmuckraker that he had already forwarded Conyers' subpoena to the Obama White House, asking them to give an opinion as to whether President Bush retains his ability to assert executive privilege.
In other words, the Obama White House will decide, essentially, whether to back Rove's claim of privilege, or to deny it. (And given that Rove is supposed to appear February 2, that decision from the White House should come soon.) In the latter case, said Luskin, a negotiation would ensue between the Obama White House, President Bush, and Rove. That would likely result in the matter going to court.
2009/01/22: Wired:27B/6: Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case
The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
In a filing in San Francisco federal court, President Barack Obama adopted the same position as his predecessor.
2009/01/19: WaPo: Obama and Chávez Start Sparring Early
In an interview shown in the past week on the Spanish-language network Univision, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said that Venezuela's firebrand president, Hugo Chávez, has hindered progress in Latin America, and he expressed concern that Chávez's leftist government has assisted Colombia's biggest guerrilla movement, a group the United States considers a terrorist organization. Chávez responded this weekend by saying that Obama had "the same stench" as President Bush, a frequent target of Chávez's remarks.
