obama bypasses senate process, filling 15 posts from nytimes: President Obama, making a muscular show of his executive authority just one day after Congress left for spring recess, said Saturday that he would bypass the Senate and install 15 appointees, including a union lawyer whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was blocked last month with the help of two Democrats.
Coming on the heels of Mr. Obama’s big victory on health care legislation, Saturday’s move suggests a newly emboldened president who is unafraid to provoke a confrontation with the minority party.
Just two days ago, all 41 Senate Republicans sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him not to appoint the union lawyer, Craig Becker, during the recess. Mr. Obama’s action, in defiance of the Republicans, was hailed by union leaders, but it also seemed certain to intensify the partisan rancor that has enveloped Washington.
“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disprove of my nominees,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.”
It was the first time the president has used his constitutional authority to fill vacant federal positions by making recess appointments, thus avoiding the requirement for the advice and consent of the Senate. Mr. Obama, who currently has 217 nominees pending and 77 awaiting action on the Senate floor, said Republicans had given him little choice.
It is the first legislative challenge by the Democratic majority Congress to U.S. involvement in the conflict since Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and an offensive began last month to retake the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province.
Supporters of the resolution say it is time for U.S. lawmakers to consider if they want to continue the nearly nine-year-old war in which about 1,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed. The United States is already planning to pull its forces out of Iraq by the end of next year.
"This (debate) is a first step. It's like an alarm going off and people begin to wake up," Kucinich told Reuters. Although Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Afghanistan in 2001 following the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States, "that wasn't intended to be a blank check for war without end," Kucinich said. He voted for the 2001 resolution.
Aware that many liberal Democrats are unhappy about the continuing Afghan war, Obama has said the plan is to start pulling out U.S. forces from Afghanistan from July 2011. But Kucinich does not want to wait and says Congress must not just be a compliant partner of the president, a role for which it was criticized during the Iraq invasion under the Bush administration.
prince of peace prize acts like changing name is ending war... from afp: President Barack Obama's administration plans to rebrand its military operation in Iraq "Operation New Dawn," beginning September 1, a Pentagon memorandum shows.
The memo, signed by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, shows the Pentagon approving a request to switch the name of the US military effort in Iraq from its current designation - "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
in other news, freedom is slavery & ignorance is strength...
from latimes: President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize [in Oslo] today, acknowledging the irony of winning it as a wartime president and calling his own accomplishments "slight" in comparison to past winners.
But in his speech to the Nobel Committee, Obama spoke of the concept of a "just war" and the pursuit of a "just peace," which he said sometimes depends on more than simply refraining from violence.
Lauding the commitment of past Nobel laureates to nonviolence, Obama said that, as a head of state and commander-in-chief of a military at war sworn to protect and defend his nation, he cannot follow their examples alone.
"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Obama said. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
With his remarks, delivered in the brief sunlight of the Norwegian winter's midday, Obama answered critics who complain that he was receiving the award before he has really done anything to achieve peace.
The award also comes just days after the president announced a military buildup in Afghanistan, a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops which the White House hopes will disable the terrorist headquarters in the region and bring the eight-year war to an end.
December arrives with a lot of news to cover on this latest episode of New World Next Week. The official announcement of another Afghanisurge provides the backdrop for stories about explosive documents; some of which have been leaked & others that will probably remain classified. James Corbett of CorbettReport.com & James Evan Pilato of MediaMonarchy.com also go over the latest on the Obamessiah, Osama dying & the continuing Climategate scandal.
And as always, please support James Evan Pilato and his incredible work by subscribing to the MediaMonarchy.com podcast here ... For more news & information, visit The Corbett Report
from latimes: President Obama plans to send 30,000 to 35,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Monday, the largest single U.S. deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The additional troops, Obama's second major escalation of the conflict this year, will bring the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to about 100,000. But even as he dramatically escalates the war, Obama is expected to emphasize that there are limits to the length of U.S. military involvement in the region, White House officials said, though he is not prepared to set concrete deadlines for withdrawal. Obama will announce his newest Afghan strategy in a televised speech tonight before cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
obama refuses to order release of decades-old intel docs from allgov: Millions of secret government documents are scheduled to be declassified at the end of this year—unless President Barack Obama extends the deadline like his predecessors have done. Reports out of Washington indicate the White House is hurriedly preparing an executive order that will postpone the classified material from being revealed in order to assuage various departments unwilling to part with their secrets. Dating from World War II to the early 1980s, the documents cover foreign relations, spy operations and military activities that have remained hidden from the public. Agencies currently affected by the secret material include the CIA and the National Security Agency, as well as the departments of Justice, State, Defense, and Energy. Under current law, classified material involving more than one agency and that is 25 years old or more is supposed to be automatically released. If President Obama issues his executive order, it will mark the third time the deadline has been extended. President Bill Clinton did so in 2000 and President George W. Bush in 2003. Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, wrote on the Secrecy News blog, “If the ‘automatic declassification’ procedures that were prescribed in prior executive orders are not ‘automatic’ after all, and if binding deadlines can be extended more or less at will, then any new declassification requirements in the Obama order will be similarly subject to doubt or defiance.”
scotus lets pentagon keep detainee photos secret from csmonitor: The Supreme Court Monday threw out a federal appeals court ruling requiring the release of photos that allegedly show abuse of US-held detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court cited a new law that allows the Defense Secretary to withhold such photos.
from raw replay: In a Special Comment, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann argues that in the face political and financial opportunism, not to mention outright lies about the war in Afghanistan, and the stark historical warning represented by Vietnam, President Obama should make the change he promised during his campaign and pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Nov. 30, 2009.
maybe he should make a documentary about how the war of terror is based on the lies of 9/11 ... oh wait, he kinda already did from raw replay: Filmmaker Michael Moore told CNN’s Larry King that it’s time for President Barack Obama to wind down the war in Afghanistan. This video is from CNN’s Larry King Live, broadcast Oct. 29, 2009.
the use of terms like 'theater' & 'enablers' should really tell you what's going on here... thisisallaboutthedrugs. from time: Afghanistan became President Obama's war on Tuesday [feb17], when he ordered two more U.S. combat brigades into the fight. He will send 17,000 combat troops to join the 36,000-strong U.S. force already in the theater. The fact that the units now ordered to Afghanistan had originally been slated for Iraq underscores the new Administration's shift in priorities. The reinforcements include about 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., who should be in Afghanistan by late spring, and a 4,000-strong Army brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., which should arrive in the summer. Those units will be joined by about 5,000 more Army "enablers" to provide logistical support.
two-thirds of afghan police are hooked on drugs from bbc: Sixty per cent of the Afghan police in the country's southern province of Helmand use drugs, it is claimed. The estimate, made by a UK official working in the province, was contained in emails obtained by the BBC. International forces are fighting a fierce counter-insurgency campaign against Taleban militants and other insurgents in Helmand. But British officials are clearly worried about the reliability of the Afghan police. "We are very concerned by the levels of drug abuse among the police," the British Foreign Office said in a statement.
how much of our debt comes from drug money? from business insider: Allen Stanford forfeited $3 million in drug money back in 1999, and it's a sure thing that within his multi-billion empire he had many more drug dollars under his care. This is true not just of Stanford, but of the whole Caribbean offshore banking complex, as drug dealers are obviously interested in the regulation-light, few-questions-asked private banking system. Offshore banks, meanwhile, have grown rapidly as major purchasers of US treasuries over the years. As you can see in the chart below, they really spiked in the 04-05 range, right as Japanese holdings leveled off. According this table, Caribbean banks are now the fourth biggest holders of treasuries, having surpassed Brazil and all the oil states combined in just the last year. So again, how much drug money goes into financing our debt? And if you doubt the premise of our question, here's famed rapper KRS-One making basically the same point...
torture evidence 'hidden from obama' from guardian: US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week. Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it. In the letter to the president [292kb PDF], Stafford Smith urges him to order the disclosure of the evidence.
progressives surprised by obama non-surprises from chris floyd: 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?
video: leahy says truth commission may be only way to get truth from raw replay: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, wants to put together a commission to investigate possible Bush-era abuses. Leahy joined MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to talk about his proposal. After speaking with Leahy, Maddow concludes that most Democratic leaders in Congress support conditional prosecution of officials for crimes committed during the Bush administration. This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Feb 10, 2009.
video: turley pleads for prosecution of bush crimes from raw replay: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has suggested a bipartisan panel to seek the truth about accusations of criminal wrongdoing by the Bush administration. Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley discusses why Leahy wants this panel to have the power to grant immunity and serve subpoenas. This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Feb 10, 2009.
time for a civilian afghanisurge? from danger room: Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has a message for the State Department and other civilian agencies: It's time to step up to the plate in Afghanistan. Yesterday, the Obama administration kicked off a 60-day policy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy; options may include reinforcing the Afghanistan mission by sending as many as 20,000 to 30,000 more troops. Speaking Monday to soldiers at Fort Drum, N.Y., Mullen said it was time for a "commensurate surge" of diplomats and U.S. government civilians to reinforce stability operations and reconstruction. "It is not possible to win this or succeed in Afghanistan militarily alone," Mullen said, according to a Pentagon news item.
obama’s change: expanding the power of the nsc & shadow govt from kurt nimmo: On February 8, Karen DeYoung, writing for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, reported that “President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.” According to national security adviser and former Marine commandant James L. Jones, the “world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful.” Obama will issue a presidential directive that will “expand the NSC’s reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues and turn it into a much more elastic body.” So dangerous is the world now, according to the argument offered by Jones, the NSC will apparently encompass “the Energy Department, Commerce Department and Treasury, all the law enforcement agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, all of those things.” After Obama issues his directive, the NSC will strive to “embrace a broader membership” and roll these government agencies into the National Security State, initially created in 1947 when Congress passed the National Security Act. In addition to the NSC, this legislation created the CIA and institutionalized under the rubric of “national security” the justification for new weapons systems, huge military expenditures, and military interventions in the third world.
from shreveport times: People who live near or around Barksdale Air Force Base may notice an increase in noise Thursday and Monday, installation representatives say. Early Thursday, a dozen B-52 bombers will practice for a “surge,” where bombers take off in quick succession. The real MITO, or “minimum-interval takeoff,” will be held at the base early Monday. This is in addition to increased noise and activity associated with "Green Flag" exercises involving German fighter jets that have occurred over the past few weeks.
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from nytimes: President Obama, making a muscular show of his executive authority just one day after Congress left for spring recess, said Saturday that he would bypass the Senate and install 15 appointees, including a union lawyer whose nomination to the National Labor Relations Board was blocked last month with the help of two Democrats.
