obamessiah updates: the coming criminal cabinet

obama’s council on foreign relations crew
from steve watson: Meet some of president elect Obama’s leading foreign and domestic policy advisors and likely administration members, every one of them a prominent member of the Council On Foreign Relations. Will these people bring about "change" or will they continue to hold up the same entrenched system forged by the corporate elite for decades?


Susan E. Rice - Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution - ...ill disposed towards Europe, has little understanding of the Middle East and would essentially follow the same policies of Condoleeza Rice if appointed the next Secretary of State or the National Security Adviser.

Anthony Lake - CFR, PNAC - Bill Clinton’s first national security adviser, who was criticized for the administration’s failure to confront the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and now acknowledges the inaction as a major mistake.

Zbigniew Brzezinski - CFR, Trilateral Commission - Brzezinski is widely seen as the man who created Al Qaeda, and was involved in the Carter Administration plan to give arms, funding and training to the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Richard Clarke - CFR - Former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Bush. Notoriously turned against the Bush administration after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Also advised Madeleine Albright during the Genocide in Rwanda.

Ivo Daalder - CFR, BI, PNAC - Co-authored a Washington Post op-ed with neocon Robert Kagan arguing that interventionism is a bipartisan affair that should be undertaken with the approval of our democratic allies.

Dennis Ross - CFR, TC, PNAC - Served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton. A noted supporter of the Iraq war, Ross is also a Foreign Affairs Analyst for the Fox News Channel.

Lawrence Korb - CFR, BI - Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Has criticized manor of the invasion of Iraq but has detailed plans to increase the manpower of the United States Army to fight the war on terror and to "spread liberal democratic values throughout the Middle East".

Bruce Reidel - CFR, BI - Former CIA analyst who wishes to expand the war on terror to fight Al Qaeda across the globe. Considered to be the reason behind Barack Obama’s Hawkish views on Pakistan and his Pro India leanings on Kashmir.

Stephen Flynn - CFR - Has been attributed with the idea for Obama’s much vaunted "Civilian Security Force". Flynn has written: "The United States should roughly replicate the Federal Reserve model by creating a Federal Security Reserve System (FSRS) with a national board of governors, 10 regional Homeland Security Districts, and 92 local branches called Metropolitan Anti-Terrorism Committees. The objective of this system would be to develop self-funding mechanisms to more fully engage a broad cross-section of American society to protect the country’s critical foundations from the widespread disruption that would arise from a terrorist attack."

Madeline Albright - CFR, BI - Currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors. Secretary of State and US Ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton. Did not take action against the genocide in Rwanda. Defended the sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein. When asked by CBS’s 60 Minutes about the effects of sanctions: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."

obama team cautious on homeland security appointment

janet napolitano picked to head homeland stupidity
from raw story: "Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Obama," Politico's Mike Allen reported late Wednesday night. "Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security's myriad functions."

daschle accepts job as health secretary
from thinkprogress: Roll Call reports that Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), who is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, “has been offered the job of Health and Human Services secretary by President-elect Barack Obama and has accepted the job.” Daschle is also set to take on the position of “health care czar” in the Obama White House. CNN’s Ed Henry is also reporting he negotiated the “health care czar” position in order to be “the point person on all White House health-related issues.”

hillary to accept obama's offer of secretary of state job
from guardian: Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned. Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

war criminal & international fugitive, henry kissinger,
says hillary would be outstanding secretary of state
from bloomberg: Henry Kissinger said Hillary Clinton, a leading contender to be the Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, would be an “outstanding” appointment. “She is a lady of great intelligence, demonstrated enormous determination and would be an outstanding appointment,” Kissinger, who served in the post from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, told the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit in New Delhi today.

skull & bones ghoulsbee to head obama economics team
from upi: University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee will be U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead the White House economic team, sources say. Without naming sources, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday Goolsbee, 39, is expected to be named head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers when Obama takes office Jan. 20.

obama team tilts toward gates
from consortium news: Barack Obama’s Pentagon transition team is sitting down with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a move that some Beltway observers believe signals that the President-elect does plan to keep Gates on despite protests from Iraq War opponents. Another sign that Obama may be close to retaining Gates has been the lack of chatter from transition officials about alternative candidates – beyond cursory references to names like former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel and Democratic Sen. Jack Reed. It was Danzig, chief of the Navy under President Bill Clinton and a senior Obama adviser, who prominently praised Gates during the campaign. He said Gates “is a very good Secretary of Defense and would be an even better one in an Obama administration.”

soros think tank becomes obama policy front
from bloomberg: Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup. In many ways it is. The product is ideas. Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.

so, when will obamazoids experience their 'oh shit' moment?
castro says new president can't change the empire*
ayers: idea of 'secret link' with obama 'just a myth' (video)*
who is the president elect: obama or aipac?*
rahm emanuel: 1 of the biggest recipients of wall street money in congress*
obama consigliere 'rahmbo' emanuel sent dead fish to foe*
no 'change' in israeli manipulation of US foreign policy under obama*
what wayne madsen said about rahmbo*
webster tarpley: obama’s 1st appointee is an ominous portent*
obama cabinet: good news/bad news*
the chicago machine goes to washington?*
obama to announce transition economic advisory board members*
obama gets his secret service codename: renegade*
obama resigns senate seat*
this is change? 20 hawks, clintonites & neocons to watch for in criminal cabinet*
air patrols & cameras to watch big inaugural crowd*
gates: as bad as rumsfeld?*
get ready for the obama 'green brigades'*
obama picks treasury secretary*
obama picks cfr insider to head treasury*

obamessiah updates: status quo, crowds, questions & more

a million dupes could attend obama inauguration
from ap: President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is expected to draw 1 million-plus to the capital, and already some lawmakers have stopped taking ticket requests and hotels have booked up. Some people are bartering on Craigslist for places to stay for the Jan. 20 ceremony when the Illinois senator takes the oath of office. They are offering cash or even help with dishes for residents willing to open up their homes... The inauguration will come at the end of a four-day holiday for federal workers, following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Jan. 19. Many area schools and some universities have canceled classes or are considering it.

west virginia hotels filling up for obama inauguration

imperialism you can believe in
from paul joseph watson: While naive, giddy and myopic establishment leftists have been celebrating the great “change” heralded by the election of Barack Obama, the President elect has been busy appointing people to key positions who advocate the same Neo-Con imperialist foreign policy crafted during eight years of the Bush administration. The New York Times, widely recognized as the voice of the establishment Democratic left, set the tone of what we can expect from an Obama foreign policy in a lead editorial last Sunday entitled, "A military for a dangerous new world." The editorial calls for U.S. military imperialism not to be scaled back under Obama, but to be vastly expanded both in terms of budget and scope.

obama won't stop the collapse of the american empire

obama calls on his obamazoid army to march again
from mcclatchy: President-elect Barack Obama's 3 million campaign volunteers got re-enlistment notices this week. Campaign manager David Plouffe, in a mass e-mail sent Wednesday to former workers, asked how much time they can spare for four missions integral to Obama's effort to transform his victory into a broader political movement.

video: o'reilly gives airtime to crazy ‘f*ck obama’ video

obama: return to elite status quo
from online journal: The election triumph of Barack Obama and the return of power to the Democrats was a cause for a split second of relief, but not elation. What the world learned is that it will not be subjected to a McCain-Palin presidency, which certainly would have ushered in horrors, violence, and insanity that likely would have dwarfed those of Bush-Cheney. But the arrival of Obama as the new imperial figurehead of the Anglo-American empire is not a victory of, or for, the people. It will not signify a dramatic upheaval, in any way, and by no means is any sort of revolution at hand. Nor is Obama’s ascendancy about “you.” It is about “them.” This election was a necessary rotation of management, scripted at the highest levels of the Anglo-American elite.

video: get your war on: new world order

secret directed-energy tech protecting the president?
from danger room: The Secret Service is tasked with protecting the President of the United States from assailants; and given that President-elect Obama has already been the target of assassination plots they may have their work cut out after January. But they have more than earpiece radios and armored limos to help them; the Secret Service can call on the very latest technology. Documents from a recent court case indicate that they have advanced directed-energy devices which are highly classified. You may remember Donald Friedman, who claims that government agencies are misusing non-lethal directed-energy weapons. It’s easy to dismiss him as a crank. But his obsessive digging has turned up valuable information. For instance, one of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests unearthed a 1998 U.S. Army program looking at a microwave device to beam sound directly into the target's skull which the rest of us had missed. (The same technology underlies the Medusa non-lethal weapon.) Now he's found something else. Friedman's current court case involves attempts to extract information about any directed-energy weapons such as lasers and microwaves used by the Secret Service. Do they really have anything of the kind? A "Motion for an Enlargement of Time" (in other words, a request for a few more weeks) by the Secret Service's attorney indicates that they have something, and it's pretty secret.

obama will 'make government cool again'*
the mysterious 'project houdini' aided in obama victory*
video: south park satirizes phony election & mindless obama supporters*
with all eyes on obama, port of los angeles security under control of chinese president’s son*
continuity trumps change*
obama's promise: change you can wait for!*
conned again*
progressives need to dump obama & the corporatist democrat party*
can we 'change' archaic pot laws?*
obama emphasizes economic proposals in 1st press conference*

daily dose of terror: drills, darpa, sims & dew

darpa sims, directed energy weapons

darpa wants sim to 'resurrect' battlefield trauma
from danger room: Far-off commanders can already watch battles unfold, thanks to spy drones, streaming video overhead. They can read after-action reports, to learn how troops on the ground experienced the fight. But those officers don't have detailed, digitally-animated simulations, merging all that info - and showing how similar fights might go, in the future. Which is a situation Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm, would like to fix. The agency is holding a mid-December meeting in Virginia to launch its "RESURRECT" (REstoring SURvivability by REConstructing Trauma) project. It aims to "create high-fidelity computer simulations" of warzone events "for tactical, operational and strategic review."

fighting with photons: the most famous weapon of science fiction is rapidly becoming fact
from economist: Like so much else in science fiction, the ray gun was invented by H.G. Wells. In the tentacles of Wells’s Martians it was a weapon as unanswerable by earthlings as the Maxim gun in the hands of British troops was unanswerable by Africans. Science fiction, though, it has remained. Neither hand-held pistols nor giant, orbiting anti-missile versions of the weapon have worked. But that is about to change. The first serious battlefield ray gun is now being deployed. And the next generation, now in the laboratory, is coming soon. The deployed ray gun (or “directed-energy weapon”, in the tedious jargon that military men seem compelled to use to describe technology) is known as Zeus. It is not designed to kill. Rather, its purpose is to allow you to remain at a safe distance when you detonate unexploded ordnance, such as the homemade roadside bombs that plague foreign troops in Iraq... The Missile Defence Agency releases a fact sheet about its Airborne Laser. Raytheon has a video and a press release about LADS.

please see: history of 'directed energy weapons'

eads north america's tentainer(tm) mobile shelter
from marketwatch: A compact and highly deployable mobile shelter for military medical support missions, emergency response and disaster relief will be unveiled by EADS North America at this month's Association of Military Surgeons of the United States (AMSUS) annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, beginning Monday, Nov. 10. The new unit, called Tentainer, is a hybrid shelter that combines a rigid-walled, lightweight lower container with a multi-cell inflatable tent upper portion. Built by EADS North America Integrated Shelter Systems in Russellville, Ark., Tentainer is tailored for applications such as military forward surgical stations, trauma treatment facilities, first aid stations and mobile command posts.

kuwaiti navy, nato conclude military drills in gulf
from rtt news: Kuwaiti Navy and ships from the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2) concluded strategic military exercises Sunday, the first of their kind in the Gulf region. The joint exercises were part of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and a security agreement with the NATO on information exchange. The six-day drills included fast inshore attack training, anti-piracy demonstration, an air defense exercise, and a demonstration of firepower.

miami pandemic drill, russia/nato, china space

test drill at miami international airport aims to slow pandemics
from miami herald: About 400 people participated in the nation's first pandemic flu exercise at Miami International Airport. What if a deadly global pandemic were sweeping across the world and the United States needed to try to delay its effect on our shores? For the first time, at Miami International Airport on Wednesday [nov5], about a dozen federal, state and local agencies participated in a simulation exercise to review the steps needed to screen international passengers arriving in the face of a severe influenza pandemic. "It's an opportunity to test the plan, see how it works and what needs to be improved, so that when we need to use it for real we are ready," said Christine Pearson, spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. About 400 people participated in the test drill, including about 200 voluntary actors. CDC, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation led the effort... "A pandemic is inevitable, but we can't say it's imminent," said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the CDC.

navy intercepts ballistic missile target in fleet exercise
from spacewar: Vice Adm. Samuel J. Locklear, Commander, U.S. Third Fleet has announced the successful Navy intercept of a ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean during Fleet Exercise Pacific Blitz. This was the first Fleet operational firing to employ the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) against a ballistic missile target. Command and control of this mission resided with Commander, U.S. Third Fleet, based in San Diego, Calif... "The successful engagement of ballistic missile targets from ships at sea is extraordinary... Pacific Blitz highlights the successful transition from developmental test flights to operational fleet execution and demonstrates the viability of the Maritime BMD Concept of Operations."

nato voices serious worries about russian missile plans
from afp: NATO has "serious worries" about the compatibility of Russian plans to deploy missiles in a western Russian enclave with arm control "arrangements," an alliance spokesman said Wednesday. "We have seen the press reports on the statement of President (Dmitry) Medvedev regarding deployment of Iskander missiles to the Kaliningrad region," spokesman Robert Pszczel told AFP. "If confirmed, it would raise serious worries concerning the conformity with existing arms control arrangements which are important for European security," he added.

venezuela & russia discuss nuclear energy & flights
from ap: Top Venezuelan and Russian officials met Thursday to discuss bilateral agreements on everything from nuclear energy to direct flights connecting Caracas to Moscow. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin headed a delegation of business leaders visiting Venezuela to discuss development plans prior to Russian President Dimitri Medvedev's visit later this month. "In a moment when the banks of the developing world are going bankrupt and disappearing, our two countries are negotiating the creation of a binational bank that will allow the financing of development," Venezuelan Vice President Ramon Carrizalez said.

china's space industry takes off
from spacedaily: China put another two satellites into orbit on Wednesday, just weeks after its third successful manned space mission and the first space walk by Chinese astronauts in September. The space industry is taking off, thanks to the 30-year-old Reform and Opening-up Drive, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the manned space program. China established its space sector in the 1950s, an era of difficulty and hardship.

postal anthrax aftermath: has biodefense spending made us safer?
from sciam: As the Federal Bureau of Investigation was about to move in, U.S. Army biodefense scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide, thus possibly closing the chapter on the first—and so far only—fatal bioattack in U.S. history. The FBI alleges that Ivins, who worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md., mailed anthrax-laden letters in September and October 2001 that killed five people. The incidents sparked a massive infusion of research funds to counter civilian bioterrorism, $41 billion spread over seven federal departments and agencies. Yet some observers argue that those funds have done little to guard against another bioterror incident, especially if the FBI is right about Ivins.