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The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama

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Buddy Kat
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Joined: Sep 21 2006
May 17, 2012 - 2:11am
#91

The US is turning itself into what they used to fear the most ...there is only one  logical reason.... they are just one major incident away from total collapse or revolt? I haven't heard this kind of desperation and fear since the Mcarthy era.


NDPP
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Joined: Dec 28 2008
May 31, 2012 - 3:24pm
#92

Americans To Wage Civil War Against Capitalist One-Percenters: Analyst (and vid)

http://presstv.com/detail/2012/05/31/244010/us-on-brink-of-civil-war-on-...

 Discussion of Obama's Asassination drones, and one percenters continuing crimes of international agression, as well as possible consquences and domestic resistance.


Catchfire
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Joined: Apr 16 2003
May 31, 2012 - 3:30pm
#93

The Kill List

Quote:
I talked to Cornel West for another piece I'm working on, and one thing he said sticks with me:

Quote:
You have Martin Luther King's statue in your office, but you are sending these unmanned drones out, and bombs are dropping on innocent people. That's not a small thing. That's not a small thing. We know from historic examples that if you engage in a certain kind of foreign policy it eats at your soul on the domestic front.

And there is no real sense of an "end." Has there ever been a point since America's inception when someone, somewhere, wasn't plotting our downfall? I have great difficulty perceiving a time when this won't be true. And so drone strategy comes to self-replicate. We bomb your village. You declare war on us for the bombing. We deem you a terrorist and bomb again. Rinse. Repeat.

The Obama administration considers any military-age male in the vicinity of a bombing to  be a combatant. That is an amazing standard that shares an ugly synergy with the sort of broad-swath logic that we see employed in Stop and Frisk,  with NYPD national spy network, with the killer of Trayvon Martin.

Policy is informed by the morality of a country. I think the repercussions of this unending era of death by silver bird will be profound.


mmphosis
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Joined: Apr 28 2009
June 1, 2012 - 8:59pm
#94

Obama At Large: Where Are The Lawyers? (nader.org)


contrarianna
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Joined: Aug 15 2006
June 4, 2012 - 11:45am
#95

Quote:
Monday, Jun 4, 2012 02:39 AM PDT
U.S. again bombs mourners
The Obama policy of attacking rescuers and grieving rituals continues this weekend in Pakistan
By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals: “the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.” As The New York Times summarized those findings: “at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile” while “the bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals....


http://www.salon.com/2012/06/04/obama_again_bombs_mourners/singleton/


knownothing
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Joined: Mar 24 2011
June 4, 2012 - 6:42pm
#96

Webster Tarpley destroys Adam Kokesh on Ron Paul debate at Occupy Bilderberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i7bzyKUBoU


Caissa
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Joined: Jun 14 2006
June 5, 2012 - 1:51pm
#97

Senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on Monday, a US official has told the BBC.

US officials said Libi was the target of a drone strike which hit a volatile tribal area of Pakistan's north-west, killing 15 suspected militants.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18334377

contrarianna
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Joined: Aug 15 2006
June 5, 2012 - 4:26pm
#98

Caissa wrote:


Senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on Monday, a US official has told the BBC.

US officials said Libi was the target of a drone strike which hit a volatile tribal area of Pakistan's north-west, killing 15 suspected militants.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18334377


The quoted passage is revealing--but not necessarily of what took place.

The BBC article, while hedging their bets on whether or not Libi was in fact killed (stating that he was previously reported killed by the US, and by saying "Reporters are prevented by the authorities from travelling to the area.") the BBC demonstrates the same subservience to the US disinformation propaganda as the US press.

The exact phrasing as used by the BBC here is discussed by Glen Greenwald as revealed US policy to describe those killed as "militants" to hide civilian deaths.

Quote:
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration, in order to conceal civilian deaths caused by their drone attacks, “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.” Although I wrote at length about the NYT‘s various revelations, I wrote separately about that specific disclosure, in order to emphasize the implications for media outlets reporting on American drone attacks:

    What kind of self-respecting media outlet would be party to this practice? Here’s the New York Times documenting that this is what the term “militant” means when used by government officials. Any media outlet that continues using it while knowing this is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda
....
There is, as usual, no indication that these media outlets have any idea whatsoever about who was killed in these strikes. All they know is that “officials” (whether American or Pakistani) told them that they were “militants,” so they blindly repeat that as fact. They “report” this not only without having the slightest idea whether it’s true, but worse, with the full knowledge that the word “militant” is being aggressively distorted by deceitful U.S. government propaganda that defines the term to mean: any “military-age males” whom we kill (the use of the phrase “suspected militants” in the body of the article suffers the same infirmity)....

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/02/deliberate_media_propaganda/singleton/

Additionally, the BBC article, without spelling it out, illustrates the Obama policy of targetting rescuers as described in my previous post (a tactic described elsewhere by the US administration as a hallmark of depraved terrorist bombers):
Quote:
The first missile struck the compound, killing three militants, Pakistani security officials said.

A second missile then killed 12 more militants who had arrived at the scene, they added. 


Slumberjack
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Joined: Aug 8 2005
June 5, 2012 - 5:14pm
#99

Salon wrote:
Any media outlet that continues using it while knowing this is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda.

There's no choosing for the outlets because they are nothing other than instruments of state propaganda, just as there's nothing anyone working within them can do about it if they wish to remain employed in their role as propagandists.


NDPP
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Joined: Dec 28 2008
June 6, 2012 - 8:49am
#100

From Dreams to Drones: Who is the Real Barack Obama  -  by Pankaj Mishra

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31510.htm

"The Guardian - Barack Obama, according to Foreign Policy magazine, 'has become George W Bush on steroids'. Armed with a 'kill list' the Nobel peace laureate now hosts 'Tuesday terror' meetings at the White House to discuss targets of drone attacks in Pakistan and at least five other countries. The latest of these killed 17 people near the border with Afghanistan.."

 


Rebecca West
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Joined: Nov 28 2001
June 6, 2012 - 9:47am
#101

CFL


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