Obama administration out to destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power says Chris Hedges

Hedges reveals what’s behind Obama’s assault on whistleblowers and press freedom

No 749 Posted by fw, May 17, 2013

“So what they do is they pass [legislation] … in the name of the war on terror, but then they can use it. Anybody can become a terrorist…. So when we allow this kind of thing to go forward, we essentially shut down any ability not only to ferret out what’s happening internally within the mechanisms of power, but to protest or carry out dissent.” —Chris Hedges

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and author of The Death of Truth talks to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about the significance of the Obama administration’s continuing attempts to criminalize any form of dissent. “What we’ve undergone… [is] a kind of corporate coup d’état.”

What Obama is doing in the US is not unlike what Harper is trying to do in Canada.

Click on the following linked title to watch the interview and access the complete transcript. Or scroll down to watch an embedded copy of the 19-minute interview and read an abridged version of the transcript with added subheadings.

Chris Hedges Monitoring of AP Phones a “Terrifying” Step in State Assault on Press Freedom, Chris Hedges interview, Democracy Now, May 15, 2013

ABRIDGED TRANSCRIPT

[Introduction]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press…. The action likely came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story on the U.S. intelligence operation that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. Hedges…calls the monitoring “one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press.” Highlighting the Obama administration’s targeting of government whistleblowers, Hedges adds: “Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they’re terrified of going to jail.”

[Chris Hedges is the sole source for all following passages]

Monitoring of Associated Press staff cellphone records is part of Obama admin pattern to silence whistleblowers

Well, it’s part of a pattern. That’s what’s so frightening. And it’s a pattern that we’ve seen, with the use of the Espionage Act, to essentially silence whistleblowers within the government—Kiriakou, Drake and others, although Kiriakou went to jail on—pled out on another charge—the FISA Amendment Act, which allows for warrantless wiretapping, the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the stripping of American citizens of due process and indefinite detention. And it is one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press. And I would also, of course, throw in the persecution of Julian Assange at WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning as part of that process.

Obama using Espionage Act to terrify investigative journalists

Well, it’s been used six times by the Obama administration. It was written in 1917 and was—is our Foreign Secrets Act. It is never meant—it was not designed to shut down whistleblowers, first used against Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers. So, three times from 1917 until Obama takes office in 2009, six times. And if you talk to investigative journalists in this country, who must investigate the inner workings of government, no one will talk, even on background. People are terrified. And this is, of course—the seizure of two months of records, of AP records, is not really about going after AP; it’s about going after that person or those people who leaked this story and shutting them down. And this canard that it endangered American life is—you know, there’s no evidence for this.

Anyone who digs out cases of torture and war crimes is going to be ruthlessly silenced

Well, I find, you know, all of these measures to essentially shut down the freedom of information, including the persecution of Assange and Manning, as symptomatic of a reconfiguration of our society into a totalitarian security and surveillance state, one where anyone who challenges the official narrative, who digs out cases of torture, war crimes—which is, of course, what Manning and Assange presented to the American public—is going to be ruthlessly silenced.

The mainstream press has no conception of what this is all about – Obama’s attempt to criminalize any form of dissent

And I find the passivity on the part of the mainstream press, publications like The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Der Spiegel, all of which, of course, used this information, and turning their backs on Manning and Assange, to be very shortsighted for precisely this reason. If they think it’s just about Manning and Assange, then they have no conception of what it is that’s happening.

And, you know, everyone knows, within the administration, within the National Security Council, the effects of climate change, the instability that that will cause, the economic deterioration, which is irreversible, and they want the mechanisms by which they can criminalize any form of dissent. And that’s finally what this is about.

Obama using war on terror as excuse to ferret out and destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power

Well, you know, it becomes the same paradigm in the war against communism. It’s an excuse to ferret out and destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power. And that’s, of course, how the war on terror has worked in exactly the same way. But we are seeing environmental activists, Occupy activists, people who function, like Manning, as a whistleblower being caught up in this war on terror and silenced through these rules.

So what they do is they pass, you know, for instance, Section 1021 of the NDAA. They pass it in the name of the war on terror, but then they can use it. Anybody can become a terrorist. I mean, in the trial in federal court, which we brought against—in the Southern District, we used, in the Stratfor-leaked emails that were put out by WikiLeaks, where they were trying to link a group that was close to Occupy, US Day of Rage, and al-Qaeda. That’s precisely what happened. So when we allow this kind of thing to go forward, we essentially shut down any ability not only to ferret out what’s happening internally within the mechanisms of power, but to protest or carry out dissent.

“We are now in the last moments of an effort to, in essence, effectively extinguish press freedom”

I find what’s happening terrifying, truly frightening. And when you look closely at all of the documents that were purportedly given to WikiLeaks by Bradley Manning and published through Assange, none of them were top-secret. I mean, as a former investigative reporter for The New York Times, it was my job to go and find out often top-secret information. And that’s why I can’t understand the inability of the traditional press to grasp that we are now in the last moments of an effort to, in essence, effectively extinguish press freedom.

Obama has succeeded in dividing members of the press against themselves

And if you—I mean, AP is an — like The New York Times – an amazingly cautious organization, but read the comments. I mean, they get it, internally. But, unfortunately, you know, they have divided us against ourselves, and—and this is—you know, what we’ve undergone, as John Ralston says and as I’ve said many times, a kind of corporate coup d’état.

Obama is carrying out policies Bush put in place, but with a difference – he’s smarter

What we are seeing is a system put into place where it’s all propaganda. And anybody who challenges—I mean, look, this constant reference to a shield law is absurd, because they just violated the shield law by not going to court and informing AP of a subpoena but doing it secretly. So, I mean, you’ve got to hand it to the Obama administration. They’re far more clever than their predecessors in the Bush administration, but they’re carrying out exactly the same policy of snuffing out our most basic civil liberties and our most important press freedoms.

What we’re witnessing is a corporate coup d’état

And that’s because they know what’s coming, and they are going to legally put in a place by which any challenge to the centers of corporate power become ineffectual or impossible.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I claim no ownership of such materials. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing.

Obama’s new budget fails to deliver on promised climate change action

Nothing in his new budget follows through on his rhetoric and promises. And if the budget doesn’t, what will?

No 717 Posted by fw, April 14, 2013

“…the budget released this week makes it clear that Obama’s surprising appeal to Congress was an empty piece of rhetoric. The phrase “climate change” appears twenty-nine times in the new budget, but there is no new plan for Congress to take up in Obama’s otherwise ambitious legislative blueprint. There are some worthy energy initiatives that could achieve modest reductions in emissions, but the budget is silent on what Obama will do to aggressively reduce carbon pollution by the biggest emitters, like power plants and automobiles.” —Ryan Lizza

To read Lizza’s original article, click on the following hyperlinked title. Alternatively, a slightly abridged version is reprinted below.

And don’t miss the SEE ALSO link at the bottom, which features budget highlights of Obama’s two new energy goals. Read the budget highlights and then decide for yourself whether or not Lizza’s contention that Obama has given up on climate change is justified.

Has Obama Already Given Up On Climate Change? By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, April 12, 2013

New budget represents “a major dodge on climate change”

The budget released this week by the White House is by far Obama’s most ambitious statement of his legislative priorities since 2009, when, as a newly elected President, he produced a plan brimming over with initiatives like Obamacare, education reform, new spending to aid the depressed economy, and a cap-and-trade régime to curb carbon pollution. Obama’s 2009 budget presaged two years in office that were so legislatively far-reaching that, in Washington policy circles, the document was sometimes called the Big Bang.

This new budget approaches the ambitions of 2009—with one glaring omission. … [Obama’s FY 2014 budget], the second Big Bang, also represents a major dodge on climate change. Over the last two years, Obama has consistently talked about his second term as the time when he would forcefully confront the challenges of a warming planet. As I reported last year, in private conversations he has told people that dealing with climate change is one of the few ways that he believes he could fundamentally improve the world decades after he’s gone from office.

Obama’s glittering but empty rhetoric and promised action

In his three most important speeches of the last year, he promised to confront this threat.

• In his convention speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, last September, he vowed, “my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet, because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future.”

• More powerfully, in his Inaugural Address, on January 21st, he said:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.

• And in his State of the Union address, on February 12th, he seemed to go beyond the vagueness of his campaign rhetoric and promise action. He pointed out that the last fifteen years have included twelve of the hottest years ever recorded, and he noted that “heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods all are now more frequent and more intense.” He promised he would “act before it’s too late.”

Indeed, he called on Congress to enact a comprehensive plan. The phrase “cap and trade” has become politically poisonous since the death of Obama’s own legislation, in 2010, but there was no mistaking what he meant. Obama demanded a “bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago.”

Phrase “climate change” appears 29 times but no reference to cutting CO2 emissions by biggest polluters

But the budget released this week makes it clear that Obama’s surprising appeal to Congress was an empty piece of rhetoric. The phrase “climate change” appears twenty-nine times in the new budget, but there is no new plan for Congress to take up in Obama’s otherwise ambitious legislative blueprint. There are some worthy energy initiatives that could achieve modest reductions in emissions, but the budget is silent on what Obama will do to aggressively reduce carbon pollution by the biggest emitters, like power plants and automobiles.

Obama has the authority to reduce carbon emissions, but he hasn’t acted on ultimatums, and his new budget cuts EPA funding

It is not as if Obama doesn’t have the power to act. On many issues the President is at the mercy of Congress. He can’t reform gun laws or the immigration system, or rewrite the tax code, without cooperation from the House and Senate. Climate change is different. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, backed by the force of a Supreme Court ruling, has the authority to reduce carbon pollution through regulation. In 2010, when White House negotiators were trying to pass cap and trade, they presented reluctant senators with a promise (some called it a threat): pass a comprehensive bill to deal with the problem or the E.P.A. would move forward on its own. Three years later, the Administration has still not acted on that ultimatum. And, ominously for those who care about tackling climate change, Obama’s new budget proposes to reduce funding for the E.P.A. by 3.5 per cent compared to the current year.

In his State of the Union, Obama renewed his 2010 threat. “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations,” he said, “I will.”

Nothing in his new budget follows through on that promise. And if that doesn’t, what will?

Ryan Lizza is The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent. He covers the 2012 Presidential campaign and national politics.

SEE ALSO

• Obama’s 2014 Budget Sets New Energy Goals, Environment News Service, April 10, 2013 – “President Barack Obama today introduced his Fiscal Year 2014 budget, which sets two new goals – to cut U.S. net oil imports in half by 2020 and to double American energy productivity by 2030.” Although the budget proposes tax incentives for renewable energy production, commitment to improve ability to manage climate impacts, and elimination of “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, cutting CO2 emissions receives short shrift.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I claim no ownership of such materials. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing.

US diplomats have been shilling for Israel for decades –“Brokers of Deceit”, scholar calls them

And now Obama claims to support Palestinian state while seeking to convince international diplomats to reject one

No 701 Posted by fw, March 20, 2013

“It [US policy] was never designed to achieve independent Palestinian statehood. It was never designed to end the occupation. I try and show in the book [Brokers of Deceit] that it really was designed, of all people, by Menachem Begin, to make permanent Israeli control over the Occupied Territories. And that is what it has succeeded in doing up ’til now.” — Rashid Khalidi

In his new book, Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, Palestinian-American scholar Rashid Khalidi argues that the United States could in fact play a decisive role in achieving Middle East peace if it simply reversed decades of policy backing the Israeli occupation. Khalidi draws on his research as a historian, and on his own experience as an advisor to Palestinian negotiators, to argue that far from being an impartial broker, the United States has effectively acted as Israel’s lawyer.

To watch an interview with Khalidi and access a full transcript, click on the following linked title. Alternatively, posted below is the embedded 18-minute video along with an abridged transcript, featuring subheadings, added links, and text highlighting.

Brokers of Deceit: As Obama Visits Israel, Scholar Rashid Khalidi on How the U.S. Undermines Peace, interview with Rashid Khalidi on Democracy Now, March 19, 2013

ABRIDGED TRANSCIPT

[Introduction] As the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is marked around the world today, President Obama is heading to the Middle East. He’ll be visiting Israel, making the first trip there of his presidency. Obama’s three-day tour also includes stops in the occupied West Bank on Thursday and in Jordan on Friday….Obama will not be visiting Gaza, which continues to languish under an Israeli blockade and recover from the most recent Israeli assault in November…. The White House has taken pains to play down expectations, billing Obama’s trip a “listening tour.” Obama’s supporters say the mission reflects the reality of the Middle East conflict, with the U.S. unable to forcefully change an intractable dispute.

[Unless otherwise noted, all the following comments were made by Rashid Khalidi]

What Obama should do, but won’t, is to reverse several decades of failed policy

Well, what he should do is probably what he won’t do, which is to reverse, as you suggested, several decades of policy. The approach that’s been followed until now has failed comprehensively.

Menachem Begin influenced US policy to give Israel permanent control over Occupied Territories

It was never designed to achieve independent Palestinian statehood. It was never designed to end the occupation. I try and show in the book [Brokers of Deceit] that it really was designed, of all people, by Menachem Begin, to make permanent Israeli control over the Occupied Territories. And that is what it has succeeded in doing up ’til now.

Obama should stop funding policies that have created obstacles to peace

So, I think what the president should do is lay down a couple of markers: The United States is fundamentally opposed to occupation, which has to be ended, and the United States is fundamentally opposed to the absorption of territory into Israel through this settlement process. I don’t think that, by and of itself, that will solve the problem, but at least it would separate the United States from Israel and would make it clear that we will no longer bankroll policies that have, in my view, already made a two-state solution virtually impossible, and that have created obstacles that will be almost impossible to overcome in the short term.

For the past 35 years the US has made the conflict much worse

Well, the U.S. could do a lot more than it’s doing. What it has done up ’til now, in my view, certainly for the past 35 years, is to exacerbate the conflict, to make it much worse, by, in effect, supporting an Israeli position which really wasn’t directed at ending the conflict or at ending the occupation or at stopping settlement. By supporting that, in a variety of ways, we have made this thing infinitely more intractable. So, yes, the United States could play a role, but it has played a very negative role up ’til now.

Palestinian negotiators failed to get an Oslo agreement that could have led to statehood

Unfortunately, the people who negotiated Oslo from the Palestinian side didn’t take advantage of the experiences and lessons that we had gone through in Washington for two years, and did negotiate an agreement which did not lead to statehood. In fact, as he said in the clip that you just played, there was nothing in there about recognition of the Palestinian right to statehood or self-determination, which is one of many, many flaws in this agreement. This is why I said to Amy a minute ago, this was not a deal. This is not a structure that was designed to lead to a resolution of the conflict.

US is to blame for going along with Oslo agreement, a “grotesque, Orwellian process”

This is actually conflict maintenance, at best, that the United States is engaged in. And you can blame the Israelis, but I think we should blame our own government for going along with this charade. This is a travesty. This is a grotesque, Orwellian process. They use the word “peace process.” There is no peace. You’ve been at it for 35 years, and you haven’t produced peace, and you still talk about peace? Say this is a process in which the United States will, you know, do a Monte game in front of people, but don’t pretend that it’s a peace process.

Obama studiously avoided Middle East land mines on his road to the White House

Well, when I left Chicago in 2003, he was still a state senator, had not yet announced even for U.S. Senate. So, his publicly expressed views, with the exception of one speech he gave opposing the Iraq War just before it started—his publicly expressed views, at least, had nothing to do with the Middle East. And even privately, he was not someone who was expansive on the subject. He listened. We had had—there were various conversations. And this is a man who was worldly and knew something about the world, very intelligent, and I had the sense that he had some kind of understanding of things.

But he was a politician with eyes on higher office, and he understood perfectly well what the political train in Chicago, in Illinois, in the United States was. And so, long after I ceased to see him, after we left Chicago, it was very clear that he was an extraordinarily careful politician in not stepping on the various land mines that would have absolutely prevented his reaching higher office. So, I had very low expectations. And I think those expectations have been fully realized, unfortunately.

In his 2011 UN speech, Obama claims to support Palestinian state while seeking to convince diplomats to reject one –

We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. And there’s no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. It is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and so much effort in the building of a Palestinian state and the negotiations that can deliver a Palestinian state.

America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day. Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses.

Once again we see a striking gap between Obama’s expectations and his words

Well, I think you could hear in that speech a repetition of some of the traditional tropes of the Israeli narrative of victimization. And if you start from there, that Israel is the country that needs security, Palestinian security is never mentioned, if you start from the idea that this is a country that represents the latest in a long line of persecution of the Jews, going back into history from the Holocaust all the back through the Inquisition and so forth, which the president actually, unfortunately, has done in many, many of his speeches. I mean, one of the things I go through in the book is the difference between expectations of President Obama and what he has actually said on this topic. And those are—that’s a perfect example of it.

For Israelis, their ‘security’ includes keeping Palestinians from water and preventing pasta from getting into Gaza

The Palestinians are a people who have lived either expelled from their homeland under authoritarian Arab governments or under occupation for the entirety of the past 60 years. And nobody talks about their security. Of course the Israelis need security. But the expansive nature of that term in the Israeli lexicon includes things like keeping poor villagers in the southern part of the West Bank from getting water. That would threaten Israeli security. It includes preventing pasta from getting into the Gaza Strip. I mean, those are the kinds of things that are done in the name of security, because this term is so expansive in the Israeli-American lexicon.

By following a pro-Israeli narrative for decades the US has “consecrated a very bad status quo”

So, starting from that point, you’re not going to get to a resolution. If the United States continues to adopt this one-sided Israeli narrative, which it has under several presidents—I don’t just fault this president; I talk about President Carter, President Bush Sr. and so forth—you’re not going to get to a resolution. You’re going to get where you are: a pro-Israel position that leads to further consecration of a very, very bad status quo.

For decades Israeli planners have contrived to make a viable Palestinian state impossible

Because for decades Israeli planners have systematically acted in ways to make a state impossible, by building settlements in regions that make it impossible to create a contiguous, viable Palestinian state—the settlement of Ariel, the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. These are designed to cut the West Bank into strips, such that Israel controls most of it, if these so-called settlement blocs stay where they are.

And with tax dollars, the US bankrolls Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories

And we are bankrolling this. We give Israel $3 billion, with which it defends its occupation. I mean, these are weapons supposedly just for self-defense, but defending an illegal occupation is not self-defense. And a lot of those weapons are used for that purpose. And through 501(c)(3) so-called charities, which funnel money to extremist, violent, radical, racist settlers in the Occupied Territories. We—our tax dollars, in effect, are being used to subsidize the very settlements themselves.

So, all of this has created a reality, which—I mean, Tony Judt [historian, advocate of a one-state solution] once said, what any politician has done, another politician can undo. Any one of our politicians could stop those policies. Any Israeli politician could start to reverse that process. I just don’t see that happening. That’s why I say it’s virtually impossible. We’re stuck, in effect, with a one-state outcome right now. There’s one state between the Mediterranean and the sea—sorry, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

American people can do two things about this situation – push for policy changes and press for scrutiny of US charitable donations

We should be pushing for a change in our country’s policies, OK? You can’t force the Israelis to do anything at this stage. You can’t force the Palestinians to do anything, either. But what you can do is change your own policies. I mean, are our weapons being used for self-defense? That’s $3 billion a year of our weapons. $115 billion in aid have gone to Israel, most of it since 1973. That’s the most any country has gotten. Don’t we have the obligation to investigate how that money is being used, for what purposes?

The second thing we can do is to see to it that tax dollars that are going to these so-called charitable organizations are in fact going to charities. I mean, if it’s going to a hospital in Tel Aviv, fine. If it’s going to the Occupied Territories, I don’t understand why the IRS and the Treasury Department aren’t cracking down on that the way they’re cracking down on other things. So, I think there many things we, as citizens, can do to ensure that the United States is no longer the enabler and the bankroller of policies that most Americans—and, for that matter, most Israelis, actually—find reprehensible.

Until the PA – Hamas split is resolved Palestinians have no hope of changing their situation

It’s a huge obstacle. And it’s a terrible, divisive issue. And this is the Palestinians’ fault. I mean, you can blame the United States or Israel until the cows come home for exacerbating the split, but you can’t blame them for the split. This is the Palestinians’ responsibility. And until this split is healed—and, in fact, until the policies that both of these groups, in my view, represent, which are bankrupt, are changed—the Palestinians have no hope of changing their situation. And that is—that’s down to them. That’s up to the Palestinians. And there’s enormous dissatisfaction with the policies of the PA in Ramallah. There’s enormous dissatisfaction in Gaza with the Hamas government, and public opinion, really, is very much against them. The problem is, these are people strongly supported from outside and who have vested interests in the status quo, whether they’re sitting in luxury in Ramallah or whether they’re enjoying the perks of government in Gaza. So, this is a Palestinian responsibility, and without changing these realities, the Palestinians are not going to be able to get off square one.

Why Khalidi refers to the U.S. as “Israel’s lawyer” in his book Brokers of Deceit?

Well, I’m quoting Aaron David Miller, who was talking about himself and his fellow American diplomats, who in fact were not doing the job that they were supposed to do nominally, which was to be, you know, disinterested mediators, but instead were shilling for Israel, in effect. And he, in turn—Miller in his book and in an article he wrote with that title—was quoting Henry Kissinger. So, this is not my description; this is Henry Kissinger and Aaron David Miller’s description. And I heartily endorse it.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing