Jane Mayer in the New Yorker teases out the issues: There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military…
Showing all posts tagged Barack Obama
Countless CIA prisoners still missing
The Obama administration may talk about resetting America’s behaviour after the extremism of the Bush years but there’s copious evidence to the contrary. Take this from Pro Publica: In one of President Barack Obama first acts in the White House, he ordered the closure of the CIA’s so-called “black-site” prisons, where terror suspects had been…
Resisting America’s endless war should be key task of the Left
The general failure of the Left to oppose Barack Obama’s endless war policies, including the use of drones, shows how tribal and fickle much of the progressive side of politics really is. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is a notable exception: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy So is The Nation’s…
Obama admin as secretive as Bush admin over legal reasons for killing “enemies”
Good editorial by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that challenges the dictatorial style of government in Washington that provides little or no reason why America has the right to murder its own citizens by drone strike: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Obama’s drone policy so broad as to include every table tennis player in Michigan
I’m not exaggerating that much (via NBC): A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders”… of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no… intelligence… indicating they… are… engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S. The… 16-page memo,…
America’s freedom of the press? Dream on
Disturbing post from Freedom of the Press Foundation (great new group, support them) on the serious threats from the Obama administration to transparency and democracy in America: A… disturbing report in Saturday’s Washington Post describes… an FBI investigation of a large number of government officials suspected of leaking classified information to the press, engulfing an unknown group…
Ongoing Wall Street criminality is key Obama failing
Fascinating documentary by PBS Frontline that outlines the far-too-cosy relationship, along with gutlessness, between Wall Street and the Obama administration. No Wall Street executives have done jail time for the massive fraud uncovered during the global financial crisis. This is as much a scandal as Washington’s drone war in the far-reaches of the world. Unaccountable…
More on Dirty Wars and covert US wars ignored by corporate press
Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley speak to Huffington Post Live:
Mali shows that West understands little about failures of “war on terror”
History repeats. Leaders learn nothing or don’t want to. Countless media hacks repeat the talking points about fighting “terrorism” and ask few questions. The “war on terror” has been a catastrophic debacle from day one. If you ask the civilians who suffer under its wrath, which most reporters don’t, you’ll know that. Seumas Milne in…