Showing all posts tagged Barack Obama
The Obama rationale for intervention in Libya
A fascinating investigation by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone – this is one journalist (and friend) with a fine record of uncovering secrets – on the internal American dialogue over military intervention in Libya. A key theme, repeated over and over again by various officials, is the desire by elements within the Obama administration to…
Protesting the proposed dirty tar sands from Canada to Obama’s US
Now that’s imaginative civil disobedience: Occupy Wall Street take note: when garnering headlines that don’t have anything to do with NYPD brutality, nudity—or more specifically, orgies—may be the way to go. At a meeting between British and Canadian officials yesterday in London, to discuss the UK’s purchase of Canada’s sweet sweet tar sands oil, two…
Codifying secrecy as a way of doing business, thanks to Obama
In case anybody still had any illusions about the obsession of the Obama administration to pursue whistle-blowers or anybody who seriously embarrasses them, read on (via the Wall Street Journal): The U.S. government has obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force GoogleInc. and small Internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information…
The out of control drone future
So this is where our supposed civilised world is heading. A disturbing piece in the weekend’s New York Times: At the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored…
Obama’s Wikileaks executive order that guarantees more secrecy
A government that truly believes in transparency would behave in the opposite way, reducing the increasingly secretive nature of officialdom. Obama fail: By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in…
What legitimate civil disobedience against a war criminal looks like
Bravo: On Monday 26 September, three members of Veterans For Peace and a member of Code Pink confronted Donald Rumsfeld at a Boston stop of his book tour. I attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Police hustled all four of us out, while a hostile rightwing crowd shouted and jeered. To get in, we had…
Murdering Awlaki by Obama is illegal and immoral (and won’t make us safer)
Forget the media cheering. Or the political hailing of a major blow to international terrorism. I completely agree with Salon’s Green Greenwald, here speaking on Democracy Now!, that this killing breaches all levels of legality and decency and reveals Barack Obama’s true side. This is an Israeli style assassination, which will do nothing to protect…