Occupy All Streets

Scahill: Obama Has ‘Murdered’ People With Drone Strikes

Upset over President Barack Obama’s “kill list” and continued usage of drone striking throughout his administration, The Nation‘s national security correspondent Jeremy Scahill called the commander-in-chief’s actions “murderous.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, Scahill argued for the justification of labeling President Obama’s decisions to authorize the strikes as “murder,” specifically the drone attack on al-Qaeda America figure Anwar Al-Awlaki’s son in Yemen in 2011 recently covered by PBS’ Frontline.

“If someone goes into a shopping mall in pursuit of one of their enemies and opens fire on a crowd of people, and guns down a bunch of innocent people in a shopping mall, they’ve murdered those people,” Scahill said.

“If you go to Yemen where I was, and you see the unexploded cluster bombs, and you have the list and photographic evidence, as I do, of women and children that represented the vast majority of deaths in the first strike that Obama authorized on Yemen, those people were murdered by President Obama, on his orders, because there was believed to be someone from al-Qaeda in that area. There’s only one person that’s been identified that had any connection to al-Qaeda there. And 21 women and 14 children were killed in that strike.”

“And the U.S. tried to cover it up and say it was a Yemenize strike. And we know from the Wikileaks cables that David Petraus conspired with the president to lie to the world about who did that bombing. It’s murder, it’s mass murder. When you say, ‘We’re going to bomb this area because we believe a terrorist is there,’ and you know that women and children are there, [then] the United States has an obligation to not bomb that area if they believe women and children are there. That’s murder.”

Scahill added: “The most dangerous thing that the U.S. is doing, besides murdering innocent people in many cases, is giving people in Yemen or Somalia, or Pakistan, a non ideological reason to hate the United States, to fight the United States. Non-ideological reasons, meaning personal vendetta, is much more powerful than, ‘We hate your freedom, we hate your McDondalds, we have your Christianity, that’s real to them.”

Source

Report: Obama Has Waged Major Cyberweapons Campaign Against Iran

The New York Times has revealed President Obama has waged a major cyberweapons operation against Iran since the early days of his administration. The program, known as “Olympic Games,” has been used to sabotage the computer systems at Iran’s nuclear facilities. It began under the Bush administration, but was significantly expanded when Obama took office in 2009.

Obama decided to continue with the program in 2010 even after part of it became public when it accidentally unleashed a computer worm known as Stuxnet across the global internet. Developed with the help of Israeli intelligence, Stuxnet is said to have destroyed some of Iran’s centrifuges, but the full extent of the damage is unclear. The Obama administration’s cyber-campaign in Iran is believed to be the first sustained effort by one country to destroy another’s infrastructure through computer attacks.

Source

Energy And Commerce Investigation Reveals Obama Secretly Cut A Deal With Lobbyist Group PhRMA On Health Care Reform

It was first reported back in 2009 that the Obama administration cut a deal with the PhRMA to break specific campaign promises he made about health care reform in exchange for PhRMA spending money to politically support the bill. Thanks to some newly revealed emails via Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner we now have more details of how the deal was made.

Nancy DeParle, then director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote the following email to PhRMA’s chief lobbyist on June 3, 2009: “Yes – I pushed this to everyone (Messina, Rahm) is in Egypt with POTUS but Phil Schrillo, Dana Singlser and I made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on this bill.”

[…]

That September, top PhRMA lobbyist Bryant Hall reported to his coworkers in an email that he “had a good call w Messina,” and wrote: “Confidential: WH is working on some very explicit language on importation to kill it in health care reform. This has to stay quiet.”

Between May and August 2009, as the White House officials and key players in Congress were formulating the national health care law, the Obama administration held ongoing negotiations with PhRMA to secure industry support for the health care law as well as other policy concessions.

A report by the House Energy And Commerce goes into details:

“Documents obtained through the investigation confirm the existence of a deal between the White House and PhRMA. The deal included explicit policy commitments, affirmed in a closed-door meeting at the White House on July 7, 2009…And in its review of the tactics used by the White House, the investigation identified a potent combination of policy threats and private reassurances that industry would be protected against policies it disliked in exchange for support of the legislation and acceptance of other policies. Taken together, these findings help illuminate a previously opaque series of agreements that resulted in a fundamental reshaping of our nation’s health care system.”

Source/Credit

Obama Administration To Argue In Court That They Can Spy On Americans With Impunity

The Obama administration is set to argue to a federal appeals court Friday that the government may breach, with impunity, domestic spying laws adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

The case tests whether Americans may seek recourse or monetary damages when a sitting U.S. president bypasses Congress’s ban on warrantless spying on Americans — in this instance when President George W. Bush authorized his secret, warrantless domestic spying program in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks.

The government appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and arguments before a three-judge panel are set to be heard in Pasadena, California, this Friday.

Congress, with the vote of President Barack Obama — who was an Illinois senator at the time — subsequently legalized much of the warrantless spying in the summer of 2008. The legislation also provided the nation’s telecommunication companies immunity from lawsuits accusing them of being complicit with the government’s warrantless wiretapping.

The Obama Administration claims said it cannot be held liable under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act*, and that Congress has not waived sovereign immunity — meaning the government has not consented to being sued for breaching its own laws.

Fact: Barack Obama voted to legalize warrentless wiretapping (FISA) in the summer of 2008. His administration will appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this Friday to argue that they can spy on American citizens with impunity.

Obama To Arm Italy With Weaponized Drones

President Barack Obama’s administration appears set to notify the U.S. Congress of plans to arm a fleet of Italian MQ-9 Reaper drones, a step that may spur a wider spread of remotely piloted hunter-killer aircraft.

The administration could move ahead within two weeks on the proposal to let Italy join Britain in deploying U.S. drones with weapons such as laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles, U.S. officials said.

Italy has a fleet of six Reapers. The sale of the technology to arm them, including bomb racks and “weaponization” kits costing up to $17 million, would help the United States redistribute the burden of its global military operations as the Pentagon’s budget is being squeezed by deficit-reduction requirements.

The U.S. Military Will Spy On Afghanistan Decades After The War Is Over

America is supposed to wind down its war in Afghanistan by 2014. But U.S. forces may continue to track Afghans for years after the conflict is officially done. Palm-sized sensors, developed for the American military, will remain littered across the Afghan countryside — detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting their locations back to a remote headquarters.

Some of these surveillance tools could be buried in the ground, all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others might be disguised as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable batteries that could enable the sensors’ operation for perhaps as long as two decades, if their makers are to be believed.

“Were going to leave behind a lot of special operators in Afghanistan. And they need the kind of capability that’s easy to put out so they can monitor a village without a lot of overt U.S.-made material on pathways and roadways,” says Matt Plyburn, an executive at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor.

And they won’t just be used overseas. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol today employs more than 7,500 UGSs on the Mexican border to spot illegal migrants. Defense contractors believe one of the biggest markets for the next generation of the sensors will be here at home.

According to a Gallup Poll, Obama’s disapproval rate matches his approval rate. Obama’s slipping approval rate has tied him with his main competitor, Romney.

Source

More Immigrants Will Be Deported Under Obama Than Bush By 2013

The Obama administration had deported about 1.06 million as of September 12, 2011 against 1.57 million in Bush’s two full presidential terms.

Obama is on the verge of deporting more undocumented immigrants in a single term than Bush did his full eight years in office.

Despite the administration’s stated focus on unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, more than half of those deported had no criminal records, 54 percent to 46 percent. But that number doesn’t convey what percentage of removals categorized as criminal include serious or violent offenses as opposed to minor ones.

The Obama administration set a new record for deportations, removing nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants in the last fiscal year. If the number of deportation continues to increase at this rate, more immigrants will have been deported under Obama than Bush’s 8-year term by 2013.

Credit

Victory: Activist Sue Obama, Judge Rules NDAA Unconstitutional

In a stunning turnaround for an act of Congress, a judge ruled Wednesday that a counterterrorism provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense appropriations bill, is unconstitutional. Federal district Judge Katherine B. Forrest issued an injunction against use of the provision on behalf of a group of journalists and activists who had filed suit in March, claiming it would chill free speech./p>

In her decision published Wednesday, Forrest, in the Southern District of New York, ruled that Section 1021 of NDAA was facially unconstitutional — a rare finding — because of the potential that it could violate the 1st Amendment.

“Plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the First Amendment,” she wrote, addressing the constitutional challenge.

Seven individuals, including Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and “Pentagon Papers” activist Daniel Ellsberg, had sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and a host of other government officials, stating they were forced to curtail some of their reporting and activist activities for fear of violating Section 1021. That section prohibits providing substantial support for terrorist groups, but gives little definition of what that means. Environmental activists were also poised to join the suit if it expanded.

The suit demands that Congress cut or reform this section of the law, which allows the U.S. military to indefinitely detain without charges anyone — including U.S. citizens — who may have “substantially supported” terrorists or their “associated forces,” without defining what those terms mean. President Obama signed the bill on Dec 31, 2011, with a signing statement saying that the law was redundant of powers already provided to the government under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (passed after 9/11), and that these powers would not be used against U.S. citizens. The next administration may decide differently, however.

Source

NDAA 2013: The House Approves Indefinite Detention of American Citizens, Pro-Government Propaganda, Gay Marriage Prohibition In The Military, etc.

Reauthorizing the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge might be the scariest provision in next year’s defense spending bill, but it certainly isn’t the only one worth worrying about.

An amendment tagged on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 would allow for the United States government to create and distribute pro-American propaganda within the country’s own borders under the alleged purpose of putting al-Qaeda’s attempts at persuading the world against Western ideals on ice. Former US representatives went out of there way to ensure their citizens that they’d be excluded from government-created media blasts, but two lawmakers currently serving the country are looking to change all that.

Congressmen Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced “The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012” (H.R. 5736) last week during discussions for the NDAA 2013. It was voted on by the US House of Representatives to be included in next year’s defense spending bill, which was then voted on as a whole and approved. The amendment updates the antiquated Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987, essentially clarifying that the US State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors may “prepare, disseminate and use public diplomacy information abroad,” but while also striking down a long-lasting ban on the domestic dissemination in America.

Source /NDAA 2013 Text

Debka: Obama Secretly Approved Shipment of Anti-Tank Missile To Syria

This week’s NATO and G-8 Summits came and went without participating nations agreeing on a way to handle the uprising in Syria, but it is now being reported that the US may already be taking the matter into their own hands.

Military sources speaking with Israel’s Debka news agency report that the administration of US President Barack Obama has cut a deal with foreign intelligence that involves equipping Syrian rebels with modern anti-tank missiles. After 14 months of ongoing battles between the country’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, and opposition to his regime, suddenly the rebel forces are responding with weaponry reportedly sent with the blessing of President Obama.

Sources close to the matter speaking on condition of anonymity tell Debka that a recent rash of explosions decimating Assad’s fleet of heavy T-72 tanks can be credited to “third generation” anti-tank weapons, specifically 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E, supplied by US forces. According to the source, the firepower is being extended by way of Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies under the urging of America’s commander-in-chief sent through a secret message.

More Afghan Civilians Died In 2011 Than NATO Troops In The Last Decade

Last year’s 3,021 civilian deaths marked the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, UN figures show, while 3,007 NATO soldiers have died since the 2001 US-led invasion, according to icasualties.org.

Meanwhile the number of internal refugees last year hit nearly half a million, the highest for about a decade, part of what Amnesty International has called “a largely hidden but horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis”.

And more than 30,000 Afghans sought asylum abroad last year — another 10-year high. Thousands of others make their way abroad illegally.

U.S. Ambassador: A Battle Plan For Iran Is ‘Ready’

The Pentagon has a ready plan for a military attack on Iran, the American ambassador to Israel warned days before a key meeting over the controversial nuclear program of the Islamic Republic. Western countries and Israel are exerting pressure on Iran to stop uranium enrichment, saying that Tehran is secretly trying to build a nuclear bomb. Iran insists that its nuclear program is strictly civil.

“It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically and through the use of pressure than to use military force.’ ‘But that doesn’t mean that option is not fully available – not just available, but it’s ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready,” US Ambassador Dan Shapiro said in remarks about Iran aired by Israel’s Army Radio on Thursday.

The conflict is to be discussed in Baghdad on May 23, when envoys from the P5+1 group, which includes Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US, are to meet Iranian negotiators. The previous round of talks was held in Istanbul on April 14.

Earlier there were numerous reports that Iran may face a pre-emptive strike either by Israel alone or by Israel and its NATO allies, if they see no other option to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities. However, intelligence communities both in Israel and the US believe that Iran has not taken a political decision to build the bomb yet.