Just when you thought our rulers could not get worse. Obama, taking time out from targeting teenagers for aerial assassination by drone, has surpassed the Bush regime by clamping new and extreme limitations on the right of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to meet the attorneys who are defending them in court. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to believe this stuff is true as you type it.
At least one attorney has been told he will have no access to his client unless he signs a “voluntary agreement” which accepts that any meetings with his client are entirely at the discretion of the US authorities and not a right.
In another “technical” adjustment, the Obama administration has altered flight rules to allow unpiloted drones to fly over the United States, in places where previously only piloted planes were allowed. There has been no official reason given for the change in regulations, but it opens the way for unlimited aerial surveillance of US citizens, and the eventual sci-fi scenario of citizens being zapped from the air without warning if Obama does not approve of them, just as has happened to hundreds of people in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. That may found far fetched – but so does anti-aircraft batteries on the roofs of London apartment blocks and 17,000 army personnel patrolling the streets of London. Civil liberties have disappeared so fast in the past decade there is no telling where it will end.
who is this obama, fake birth certificate, fake social security number, Fake selective service record. He is believed ot be a CIA agent, this is what John Pilger suspects, Geroge Bush Snr, CIA head then his son , and now a CIA agent run the USA.
No Larry, I’m afraid he’s not, he’s just a normal head of the hegemony. I’m sure his birth cert and SSN are perfectly OK. That’s not the problem. It’s not even worth writing any more because I doubt I can communicate with you.
It seems like they are in a hurry to complete whatever agenda they have.
Stripping citizens of their rights is definitely part of it. Militarising our Police another.
It has all happened in the blink of an eye. 911 still is the catalyst. Terrorism was the excuse. And now we have the pride of the British Army training them for combat against Assad’s regime. The US Govt. applauds acts of terrorism all of a sudden.
It’s all skewwif ! You couldn’t make it up.
It can and probably will get a lot worse yet, look what the Nazi’s achieved with their propaganda, and they didn’t have television.
Ah! Another paid assignment Larry ? I guess real estate closing is a bum earner right now.
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Emperor of drones Obama is providing drones to Kenya to combat Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia. This is of course utter bollocks because America’s so called
CIA spies‘trainers’ will use them to gather information on China’s overseas economic engagement with Africa ie Mining, Drilling and transportation in this area. Military exchange between China and Kenya has also dramatically increased in the last ten years according to reports from Nairobi..
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577539362229840378.html
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Maybe my miniature anti-drone drone complete with GPS and SHF jamming might be a runner if I can get the right financial backers?
I’m sorry to tell you that no Obamas birth certificate and ssn are fakes, forgeries and bad ones at that. It’s people like you that make this country look so unintelligent. You believe anything without looking at facts. The guys accrual name is Barry at least that’s what his Fake birth certificate says. The man may be just a pawn but the move to make this fake a president was a bad decision. Welcome to America home of the war hungry tyrants who want to know everything and show the public nothing!
O/T Sorry:
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UK report finds IDF tortures Palestinian children:
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http://www.europeanphoenix.com/en/component/content/article/46-diritti-umani/1959-britain-report-israel-army-tortures-palestinian-children.html
Does Obama’s birth certificate have to be fake for his militarism and his violence to be less acceptable to people? I’m quite happy to believe his certificate is perfectly valid – the only reason it’s an issue is the extreme right in the US (Tea Party and the Koch Brothers etc) would like to see him disqualified from office (under the US Constitution, only a person born in the US may be President).
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But for the rest of us around the world, it makes no odds. We should be concentrating on the destruction of rights and liberties under a “liberal” president – and why the 1% often gets away with it.
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That all said, I am hoping there is a natural limit to the current drive to strip people (in the Western developed world, not just the US) of their basic freedoms. Noam Chomsky was asked a very interesting question in a recent Occupy meeting: might the US might switch to a mode of open fascism? His answer was no, they would not, since the acquisition of civil liberties for ordinary people made this too hard to entirely reverse, and in a highly connected world, controlling people through the propaganda system was much easier than the jackboot.
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Now I am not saying we should be casual about these developments, but that there will come a point – if a much worse form of authoritarianism is widely introduced – that the middle classes (who are normally acquiescent as a result of being aspirational and consumerist) would strongly object.
Heard this fellow Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report, on the destructive policies of the Obama administration the other day. He was arguing that the black community’s voice in opposition has totally collapsed with this president. The left generally is hushed every time they dare speak negatively about Obama. This allows evil policies that even Dubbya wouldn’t have got away with.
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This won’t stop the drooling tea-baggers raving away about birth certificates, Muslim upbringing and influences, white-hating tendencies, and of course the hard-core Marxist agenda being perused by the Obama administration.
“but it opens the way for limit aerial surveillance of US citizens, and the eventual sci-fi secnario of citizens being zapped from the air without warning if Obama does not approve of them”
… or just for the fun of it.
They seemed to enjoy the snuff movie they commissioned with regard to the ‘deathing’ of bin Laden.
Last comment … are you following the Prof Rancourt case over in Canada? http://uofowatch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/latest-article-on-students-eye-view.html
Very interesting if you’re interested in, (i) pedagogy, (ii) democracy, (iii) oppression
And don’t forget his recent executive order granting him the “right” to take over the communications systems of the U.S. should he wish to do so. Don’t we all feel safer now? I know I do.
Enjoy the Olympics, Brit friends. Try not to buy French fries and stay out of the way of the security folks. In other words, stay home.
“Try not to buy French fries”
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They’re generally called chips in this part of the world, but I don’t see why not anyway.
Sleep with the dogs and get with flees, as they say, whilst the world has been witnessing the despots of the Mid East, who are in fact the charge hands of the corporate CEO and appointed through the leverage proxy of the US government.
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We find in Saudi the outspoken cleric Sheikh Namar, who is the voice of two thirds of the Saudi citizens living in poverty despite the countries riches and the flood of the petrodollars that are recycled back to the US, instead of feeding, educating, housing the citizens of the land which the resources belong to.
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Sheikh Namar was kidnapped whilst working on his farm (not the usual free loading cleric) by the Saudi security forces, and post his brutal torture he has been subject to surgical procedures on his thigh, and currently is kept in the security forces’ “hospital”.
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The subsequent protest of the poor and dispossessed, in support of sheikh Namar has resulted in four protesters getting shot and killed alongside twenty more severely injured protesters. These events are not reported , and there is a blanket media black out, helping the Saudi leadership to suppress any dissent and protest in their usual brutal fashion. In fact Saudi are busy helping the Bahrain government and Yemeni government, to suppress their people, whilst funding the terrorists in Syria.
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Furthermore the brutal suppression of the Muslims in Burma that is going so far as ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas with the tacit approval of the “international community”; one million Muslim refugees are subject of genocide and taking flight, leaving behind the smouldering remains of their homesteads that have been set on fire by their attackers.
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Compounded effect of the decades of the isreali abuse of the Palestinians rights have made normal the total disregard of human rights and the gross abuse of human rights, hence it should come as no surprise that now a bit of over there is making its way over here, and into the US. If the flapping wings of a butterfly in the outer Mongolian desert can be affecting the storms in the North Sea, then the human rights abuses of the people from without the mainland US, UK, et al, inevitably would come to affect the rights of those sanguine resident bystanders whom always believed those people overseas deserved no better.
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We are all Palestinians now.
“MarketWatch”
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pauls-audit-the-fed-bill-up-for-house-vote-2012-07-25
how anyone can still be partisan in these time is beyond me:
25 July: Guardian: Mitt Romney puts Tony Blair at the heart of ‘grip and grin’ charm offensiveIn London for diplomatic meetings, the US Republican nominee is expected to get the red-carpet treatment from David Cameron
Tony Blair will be the star attraction for Mitt Romney in London when the US Republican presidential election nominee embarks on a series of “grip and grin” meetings to burnish his diplomatic credentials.
The former prime minister, who still enjoys a high profile in the US, is expected to be the first senior British politician to meet Romney on Thursday…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/25/mitt-romney-tony-blair-london
I know where I would like to grip him Oddie.
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Radio 4 Today were aiding Romney’s propaganda m/c this morning when they had Ms Stacy Hilliard on. She repeated that Romney goes to Israel and Poland afterwards. I bet he does and we can easily precict what his script will be in those countries.
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0721 http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
The Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is visiting the UK tomorrow, but what does he stand for exactly? North America Editor Mark Mardell muses on the UK leg of Romney’s World tour, and Stacy Hilliard, who worked on Mitt Romney’s campaign to become a Governor in Massachusetts, gives her impressions on who the Real Mitt Romney is.
Felicity Arbuthnot’s account of hust some of the chaos created from the wars of Bush and Blair.
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http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/07/syria-syrians-iraqis-palestinians-no-place-to-hide/
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The maelstrom than ensued was widely predicted. May the gods that Bush and Blair profess to worship never ever give them forgiveness.
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I think someone else mentioned that Israelis are observing the fighting in Syria from the Golan Heights (more of their stolen land) just as they viewed Gaza during Cast Lead from binoculars whilst sitting in picnic chairs.
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Israeli tourists flock to Golan Heights to watch Syrians in battle
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
{http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/25/228307.html}
As president, I will treat our allies and friends like friends and allies
Here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/03/06/romney-to-aipac-israel-needs-our-support-not-lectures/
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Sorry if you thought he meant the UK…
“I know where I would like to grip him Oddie.” Mary.
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ROFL
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Excellent post, Jon.
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Now, on another note, who will dare to put up a set of Olympic rings in their window?
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If you do, you risk being rendered to Belmarsh or Long Lartin and thence, vis the Extradition Act, to a Federal Penitentiary somewhere in the Mid-West, courtesy of Sebastian Coe’s Secret Police. If you wish to escape, I recommend you dig a tunnel and while you are digging, ‘Shawshank Redemption’-style, cover the entrance with a large poster of Anthony Blair, grinning.
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Send a small child on a ‘plane to Rome – a revolutionary act. Put up five Olympic rings – something that has been commonplace for a century – a revolutionary act.
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Now, we hear of NYPD spying on Muslim Americans in normal social situations in the Big Apple – watching sports, chatting in cafes, breathing…
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All of these things, therefore, now are revolutionary acts. Existence has been overtly politicised.
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Obama is merely the current figurehead manager. It is driven by the MICC but more profoundly concerning, it is simply a consequence of the structure, the system, the very architectonic of the economic-political system. It is the ‘Wizard of Oz’.
Now, who will be the strawman?
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“…to build files on liberal advocacy groups…”
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NOT on Islmaist terrorists, please note. NOT even on Islamists, but on Liberal Advocacy Groups. What’s new, eh?
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In US parlance, that’s you and me, people, that’s you and me – those who blog here.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/nypd-spying-new-brunswick-muslim-surveillance-new-jersey_n_1701340.html
Liberal, bad, neoliberal good, eh?
Well exactly, Komodo. Of course, in the USA, the term, ‘liberal’ refers to anyone with political or social views to the Left of Genghis Khan’s maiden aunt. The term, ‘socialist’ is unknown there nowadays, except among those who tend not to feature on the MSM – Social Forum delegates, etc. Indeed, to posit the term ‘socialist’ on many US-dominated social media networks (and given that they were invented there and all the companies are there, and in Anglophonia, the computer-web-linked population is big, aren’t they all?) is akin to attempting to describe a third dimension to those dwelling on Flatland. This applies equally, I have found, to those ‘Amrikans’ of South Asian origin, some of whom who seem to regard anything that smacks of ‘liberal’ as being a cardinal sign of psychosis. I am making a gross generalisation, of course.
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Even today (I mean, I know they’re all a bunch of…), the average Conservative Party MP is probably equivalent to the average Democratic Party Senator/Representative in terms of their place on the political spectrum. Labour used to be to the Left of that, but not since the early-to-mid-1990s.
I was assuming everyone knew that, Suhayl… even a weak jest gains* immeasurably from being explained in detail, though.
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*Or, more likely, not.
The neoliberal viewpoint….
Small victory,the bliar was forced to use the back door on Tuesday at the Methodist Hall where he was debating with Rowan Williams.The air rang with cries of Terrorist etc,most heartening.It is only since that torturing little pschopath came to power that we have seen sub-machine guns on the streets of London,will we ever now get rid of them? And Romney wants to press his flesh.Sick sick sick.Try looking up the countries the u.s.a.has bombsd since 1945,way to go if you want to get seriously rich.Theft murder and torture.They do it their way,oh yeah.
…part 2….
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/673701/posts
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Mandatory balance for treehugging hippie socialists here:
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{http://spydersden.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/conservative-lexicon/}
In Room 101: conservative and palaeoliberal lexicons for comparison. The hatred is common to both sides.
Well, I think it is more complicated than just Obama being worse than Bush. It is also not for the first time when Democratic president behaved in the worse inhumane manner. Remember Bill Clinton and his complete ignorance of Rwandan Genocide, or how Washington was persuaded by Europe to intervene in Yugoslavia (not the other way around).
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Since the end of Cold War US struggles to find its place in the world. Do not get me wrong, it happily accepted its “honour” of sole remaining superpower. But at the same time one can easily observe the political and strategic vacuum in the US in the 1990th. Globalisation and all that was created out of this vacuum and although it benefited US enormously, at the same time it was not the idea that was fully and equally accepted by everyone in the establishment, not at least by traditionally more influential conservatives, who were worried more about corrupting American values by primitive un-Americanism.
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9/11 was the tipping point after which neocons decided to push for re-assertiveness of American values, or speaking in normal language to Americanise the remaining not American population of the world. Arguments that it worked in Europe and Japan/Taiwan and it will work in the rest of the world were quite popular at that time. But then US faced enormous challenge that they were not ready to overcome, rejection on American hegemony by not only world’s poorest but also by those who (as Americans thought) would benefit from Americanisation.
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That made US even more radical in pursuing American hegemony, which in turn made US foreign and domestic policy more radical and less liberal.
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Predictions are that whoever is next US president, it is very unlikely that both US foreign and domestic political course will change significantly.
Suhayl Saadi
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What is indeed the most fascinating here, that all that anti-Muslim paranoia in both US and Europe is one big misleading discourse. The most serious challenge US and indeed west will face from China and the rest of rapidly developing economies of East Asia and not from the Muslims.
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One another challenge will come from all time significant polarisation of income between world richest and world poorest, and also within these societies.