Footage of US Slaughter Leaked

[Park Life 71]

In fact i agree with everything apart from the 'Obama is just a cunt like the rest of them' bit. Which you didnt say.

 

He's had ample opportunity to state that there are problems with Bush's legacy laws even if he admitted he coudn't change them - instead he has defended, strengthened and extended them - I don't see how citing the power of the institution of government is any excuse.

 

 

Bet he'll soften up a bit just before re-election time with some bunch of flowers legislation or other.

[ChezGiven 0]

The Dalai Lama could become President and you lot would complain he hadnt solved world poverty in his first term.

[Guest alex]

The Dalai Lama could become President and you lot would complain he hadnt solved world poverty in his first term.

He couldn't though, apart from not being born in the US, which is perhaps the point.

[Happy Face 29]

In fact i agree with everything apart from the 'Obama is just a cunt like the rest of them' bit. Which you didnt say.

 

He's had ample opportunity to state that there are problems with Bush's legacy laws even if he admitted he coudn't change them - instead he has defended, strengthened and extended them - I don't see how citing the power of the institution of government is any excuse.

 

Which ones did you have specifically in mind?

 

I admit to no detailed knowledge (as ever) but I understood he introduced the one where he can order an assassination of anyone including US citizens based on intelligence with no due legal process.

 

He's strengthened every one of them that he's defended and used. By virtue of the fact that these methods are no longer used by one party and opposed by the other. They are now embraced across the political spectrum in the US. There's no alternative party who we can hope will restore civil liberties when they get in.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a report called "America Unrestored" detailing where Obama had failed to act as required....

 

http://www.aclu.org/files/pages/americaunr...11_20100119.pdf

 

The condensed result was...

 

Our original report contained 142 discrete recommendations to address 66 specific problems or issues. The administration has acted on just over one‐third of our recommendations – carrying out 24 outright, and substantively fulfilling another 25, though with qualification. The administration took no action on 66 of our recommendations, while on another 27 actions, the administration substantively failed to comply with our request, but took some positive steps toward achieving the objective.

 

On our highest‐priority “Day One” items, the record is mixed. On torture and abuse, the administration carried out seven of our nine recommendations within the first year. In one of three bold executive orders signed on his second full day in office, President Obama put an end to the prior administration’s torture policies. He also ordered the shuttering of the notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year – but the prison remains open. In fact, only one of our four recommendations on Guantanamo has been carried out. Notably, our recommendation on the extraordinary rendition issue was not.

 

Many of our other top priorities (those we recommended action on within President Obama’s First 100 Days) involved domestic national security and privacy issues. The Bush administration had a terrible record in this area, bringing more and more Americans under the purview of a more powerful, surveillance‐oriented security establishment. On many of these issues – including spying on Americans, monitoring of activists, terrorism watchlists, the Real ID Act, Secure Flight, and DNA databases, the administration carried out none of our recommendations.

 

Because the Bush administration embraced unprecedented privacy‐invading domestic security policies, we at the ACLU were hopeful that the next president would reject those radical changes, restoring our nation’s long tradition of respect for privacy and the rule of law. Our report shows that the administration’s performance in that regard has been a significant disappointment. If these policies are not reversed, they become not an aberration, but a precedent – and potentially, a permanent part of American life.

 

The administration, on a positive note, did fairly well on issues of open government, civil rights, freedom of speech, and reproductive freedom, areas in which they acted on about half of our recommendations.

Edited July 7, 2010 by Happy Face

[ChezGiven 0]

A a group who campaigns for civil liberites isnt going to proclaim satisfaction with a partial result. That would make them ineffective lobbyists, wouldnt it?

Edited July 7, 2010 by ChezGiven

[Happy Face 29]

A a group who campaigns for civil liberites isnt going to proclaim satisfaction with a partial result. That would make them ineffective lobbyists, wouldnt it?

 

They give credit where it's due when they get just half of what they're lobbying for....

 

The administration, on a positive note, did fairly well on issues of open government, civil rights, freedom of speech, and reproductive freedom, areas in which they acted on about half of our recommendations.

[Park Life 71]

Not sure how he's going to win a second term on the 'change' platform again.

[ChezGiven 0]

Not sure how he's going to win a second term on the 'change' platform again.

"Sick of social economic policies? Hate the way we now collaborate with the Chinese? Thats right, its time for change, vote Limbaugh."

[Happy Face 29]

Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment. As Mario Cuomo famously observed, candidates campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Still, Obama supporters have been asked to swallow some painfully "prosaic" compromises. In order to pass his healthcare legislation, for instance, Obama was required to specifically repudiate his pledge to prochoice voters to "make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as president." That promise apparently was lost in the same drawer as his insistence that "Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option." Labor unions were among his most fervent and dedicated foot soldiers, as well as the key to any likely progressive political renaissance, and many were no doubt inspired by his pledge "to fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act." Yet that act appears deader than Jimmy Hoffa. Environmentalists were no doubt steeled through the frigid days of New Hampshire canvassing by Obama's promise that "As president, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming—an 80 percent reduction by 2050." That goal appears to have gone up the chimney in thick black smoke. And remember when Obama promised, right before the election, to "put in place the common-sense regulations and rules of the road I've been calling for since March—rules that will keep our market free, fair and honest; rules that will restore accountability and responsibility in our corporate boardrooms"? Neither, apparently, does he… Indeed, if one examines the gamut of legislation passed and executive orders issued that relate to the promises made by candidate Obama, one can only wince at the slightly hyperbolic joke made by late night comedian Jimmy Fallon, who quipped that the president's goal appeared to be to "finally deliver on the campaign promises made by John McCain."

 

None of us know what lies inside the president's heart. It's possible that he fooled gullible progressives during the election into believing he was a left-liberal partisan when in fact he is much closer to a conservative corporate shill. An awful lot of progressives, including two I happen to know who sport Nobel Prizes on their shelves, feel this way, and their perspective cannot be completely discounted. The Beltway view of Obama, meanwhile, posits just the opposite. That view—insistently repeated, for instance, by the Wall Street Journal's nonpartisan, non-ideological news columnist, Gerald Seib—is that the president's problem is that he and his allies in the Democratic Party "just overplayed their hand in the last year and a half, moving policy too far left, sparking an equal and opposite reaction in the rightward direction." And Newt Gingrich, speaking from what is actually considered by these same Beltway types as the responsible center of the Republican Party, calls him "the most radical president in American history" and "potentially, the most dangerous" as he urges his minions to resist the president's "secular, socialist machine."

 

Personally, I tend more toward the view expressed by the young, conservative New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, that Obama is "a doctrinaire liberal who's always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf. He has the policy preferences of a progressive blogger, but the governing style of a seasoned Beltway wheeler-dealer." Or as one of Obama's early Chicago mentors, Denny Jacobs, explained to his biographer David Remnick, Obama is a pol who learned early that "sometimes you can't get the whole hog, so you take the ham sandwich."

 

But the truth, dear reader, is that it does not much matter who is right about what Barack Obama dreams of in his political imagination. Nor is it all that important whether Obama's team either did or didn't make major strategic errors in its first year of governance: in choosing to do healthcare before financial reform; in not holding out for a larger, more people-focused stimulus bill, in eschewing a carbon tax; or in failing to nationalize banks and break up those that are "too big to fail." Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us. Sure, presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence. But what they cannot do, even with supermajorities in both houses of Congress behind them, is pass the kind of transformative progressive legislation that Barack Obama promised in his 2008 presidential campaign. Here's why.

 

***

 

The American political system is nothing if not complicated and so too are the reasons for its myriad points of democratic dysfunction. Some are endemic to our constitutional regime and all but impossible to address save by the extremely cumbersome (and profoundly unlikely) prospect of amending the Constitution. Others are the result of a corrupt capital culture that likes it that way and has little incentive to change. Many are the result of the peculiar commercial and ideological structure of our media, which not only frame our political debate but also determine which issues will be addressed. A few are purely functions of the politics of the moment or just serendipitous bad luck. And if we really mean to change things, instead of just complaining about them, it would behoove us to figure out which of these choke points can be opened up and which cannot. For if our politicians cannot keep the promises they make as candidates, then our commitment to political democracy becomes a kind of Kabuki exercise; it resembles a democratic process at great distance but mocks its genuine intentions in substance.

 

We live, as Tony Judt has written, in an "age of forgetting," and nowhere is this truer than in our political discourse. Rarely do we stop to remind ourselves that, as a New York Times editorial put it, Obama "took office under an extraordinary burden of problems created by President George W. Bush's ineptness and blind ideology." The economy was tanking: for the decade between 2000 and 2009, real growth was at its lowest point since the 1930s, and the fact that two-thirds of all economic gains went to the top 1 percent of the population meant stagnation at best for most workers, actual decline for many. Clear environmental threats had been allowed to fester. The Bush Justice Department was engaged in what appears to be widespread criminal action in a host of areas. We were fighting two wars, hamstrung by the hatred of most of the world's citizens, and operating torture chambers (and lying about it) across the globe. What's more, based on the theory of the "unitary executive" Bush and Cheney were claiming near dictatorial powers to ignore both houses of Congress and even the courts when it suited their purposes. What was his successor to do? Should he bail out the banks? Nationalize them? Break them up? Allow Detroit to die? Invite the firing of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of teachers, police, firefighters and emergency workers by state and local governments strapped by falling tax revenues? Allow the deficit to explode or the economy to implode? Should he close Guantánamo and Bagram prisons? End rendition? Get out of Iraq? Reverse signing-statements? Outlaw domestic spying? Cut carbon emissions? And by the way, exactly how would he accomplish these things—and simultaneously? By legislation? By executive fiat? By magic? Believe me, I could go on.

 

Article continues

[Park Life 71]

Got in using magic.

[Happy Face 29]

In fact i agree with everything apart from the 'Obama is just a cunt like the rest of them' bit. Which you didnt say.

 

He's had ample opportunity to state that there are problems with Bush's legacy laws even if he admitted he coudn't change them - instead he has defended, strengthened and extended them - I don't see how citing the power of the institution of government is any excuse.

 

Which ones did you have specifically in mind?

 

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

 

 

 

The decision bolstered an array of ways in which the Obama administration has pressed forward with broad counter-terrorism policies after taking over from the Bush team, a degree of continuity that has departed from the expectations fostered by President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, which was often sharply critical of President Bush’s approach.

 

Among other policies, the Obama team has also placed a United States citizen on a targeted-killings list without a trial, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas-corpus lawsuits challenging their indefinite imprisonment, and continued the C.I.A. rendition program . . . .

 

As a senator and candidate for the White House, President Obama had criticized the Bush administration’s frequent use of the state-secrets privilege. In February 2009, when his weeks-old administration reaffirmed the Bush administration's view on the case, civil libertarian groups that had supported his campaign expressed shock and dismay.

 

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8053

[Park Life 71]

He's really pulled the smoke and mirrors over the average american Joe. Though nobody inc me thought he would be this bad at continuing all the fortress America policies.

[Meenzer 15869]

He's really pulled the smoke and mirrors over the average american Joe.

So much so that they all think he's an Islam.

[Happy Face 29]

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

 

Baghdad – Iraq has quietly agreed to pay $400 million in claims to American citizens who say they were tortured or traumatized by Saddam Hussein’s regime after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

 

The controversial settlement ends years of legal battles and could help Iraq emerge from United Nations sanctions put in place two decades ago – a step Iraqi leaders see as a prerequisite to becoming fully sovereign.

 

The Iraqi foreign ministry said the $400 million settlement, signed last week with James Jeffrey, the new US ambassador to Iraq, resolves legal claims inherited from the former regime and was in line with negotiations to end the sanctions.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100909/wl_csm/324625

 

 

The nerve.

[Happy Face 29]

Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

 

Private Manning is in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. For one hour a day, he is allowed to walk around a room in shackles. He is forced to remove all his clothes every night. And every morning he is required to stand outside his cell, naked, until he passes inspection and is given his clothes back.

 

Military officials say, without explanation, that these precautions are necessary to prevent Private Manning from injuring himself. They have put him on “prevention of injury” watch, yet his lawyers say there is no indication that he is suicidal and the military has not placed him on a suicide watch. (He apparently made a sarcastic comment about suicide.)

 

Forced nudity is a classic humiliation technique. During the early years of the Bush administration’s war on terror, C.I.A. interrogators regularly stripped prisoners to break down barriers of resistance, increase compliance and extract information. One C.I.A. report from 2004 said that nudity, along with sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation, was used to create a mind-set in which the prisoner “learns to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting.”

 

Private Manning is not an enemy combatant, and there is no indication that the military is trying to extract information from him. Many military and government officials remain furious at the huge dump of classified materials to WikiLeaks. But if this treatment is someone’s way of expressing that emotion, it would be useful to revisit the presumption of innocence and the Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Philip Crowley, a State Department spokesman, committed the classic mistake of a Washington mouthpiece by telling the truth about Private Manning to a small group (including a blogger): that the military’s treatment of Private Manning was “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” He resigned on Sunday.

 

Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private’s confinement “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.” He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15tue3.html?_r=1

 

Seems some of the less right wing US media are slowly starting to realise the injustice being done here, after Crowley's damning comments about his what his boss is doing.