The Authoritarian State Of The Empire

As you folks well know, President Barack Obama is making his State of the Empire (sorry) Union speech tonight. I am sure he has lots of stuff to talk about to his American People.

But I doubt he will mention the following:

Secret detention may amount to crime against humanity: UN experts

UN human rights experts warned on Wednesday that "widespread and systematic" secret detention of terror suspects could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.

(Read on)

Or this:

Report: Bush order allowing murder of US citizens abroad still in effect

If a United States citizen was determined to have joined a foreign terrorist group, that person could be legally murdered under orders given by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks.

In spite of an administration change in Washington, D.C., that allowance is still in effect, according to a late-breaking report in The Washington Post on Tuesday.

(Read on)

Or that:

JAG Officer: Indefinite Detention ‘Defies Common Sense’

U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to detain 47 of the just-under 200 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo without trial indefinitely is drawing scorn from legal experts and human rights advocates, who charge that the government simply does not have enough evidence to convict the detainees it says cannot be tried but are "too dangerous to release."

David Frakt is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps Reserve, associate professor, and director of the Criminal Law Practice Center at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, Calif.

He is a former lead counsel for the Office of Military Commissions Defense, who successfully represented Mohammed Jawad before the military commissions and won his release in habeas corpus litigation in 2009.

Frakt told IPS, "The administration’s suggestion that they can’t try 47 detainees, not because they don’t have evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but because a criminal trial would necessarily involve disclosure of classified information, defies common sense."

(Read on)

Or this:

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens

The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

(Read on)

Or that (h/t):

Storm clouds ahead for America

Just two and a half weeks after he was elected and before he even set foot in the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama was presented with a 120-page report that was supposed to help him to peer into the future.

The top analysts at the U.S. National Intelligence Council had spent a year surveying other experts and studying global trends in a bid to give the president-elect an over-the-horizon view of the year 2025.

The international order is in the midst of profound change, the report, Global Trends 2025, concluded.

U.S. economic and political clout will decline over the next 15 years; the world will become a more dangerous place; food, water and energy shortages could spark regional conflicts and, while the appeal of terrorism might decline, terrorists themselves will become more deadly and dangerous thanks to new technology, the report says.

(Read on)

Or this:

A Growing Underclass

Slowly but surely, longer-term unemployment seems to be becoming the norm.

While layoffs are slowing, the number of job openings relative to the unemployed population were still at a record low in November.

That means that those who have already been laid off must spend longer and longer periods looking for work.

(Read on)

Or that:

Banks Set for Record Pay

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street's pay culture.

An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18% more than they did in 2008—and slightly more than in the record year of 2007. The conclusions are based on an examination of securities filings for the first nine months of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end.

(Read on)

Or this:

After hottest decade in history, senators attempt to outlaw science of global warming

As scientists announce that the 2000s were the hottest decade in recorded history, U.S. senators are working to outlaw the reality of global warming. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported yesterday that 2009 is “tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began,” after 2005, the hottest year in history. Meanwhile, thirty-nine senators introduced a resolution to reverse the finding that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and welfare:

Ms. [Lisa] Murkowski (R-AK), joined by 35 Republicans and three conservative Democrats, proposed to use the Congressional Review Act to strip the agency of the power to limit emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling.

After years of suppression and interference by the George W. Bush White House, the Environmental Protection Agency finally found last month that “greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.” The Democrats co-sponsoring Senate Joint Resolution 26 to overturn the endangerment finding are Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR).

(Read on)

Or that:

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Torture worked, at least that was the claim made in 2007 when a CIA operative claimed that Al Quaida operatives were spilling the beans after ten seconds of water boarding. Forget the fact that there is a long demonstrated history of individuals holding out against water boarding and other forms of torture. Forget the fact that most of the techniques being used to torture prisoners were straight out of the False Confessions handbook. Forget those facts, torture worked and fuck the dirty fucking hippies who want to fellate the terrorist loving Constitution instead of keeping 'Merica safe!

Whoops, that was a lie as Foreign Policy reports:

(Read on)

Or this:

Geithner, Paulson, Fed defend AIG payments

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, his predecessor Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke denied Wednesday any wrongdoing in secretive decisions surrounding the September 2008 bailout of failing insurance giant American International Group.

Geithner, right hand raised in a swearing-in ceremony, appeared before a hostile House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to answer questions about the decision to settle at face value $62 billion in exotic bets made by Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs and foreign banks without negotiating a discount for taxpayers.

(Read on)

Or that:

Pentagon Calls for ‘Office of Strategic Deception’

Remember the Pentagon Office of Special Plans that helped collect dubious intelligence that led to the war in Iraq? Or the program where the Pentagon secretly briefed military analysts to promote the Iraq war?

Meet the would-be Office of Strategic Deception.

In a little-noticed report earlier this month, the Defense Department's powerful Defense Science Board recommended creation of an entity designed solely for "strategic deception" against US adversaries.

"Specifically," the report reads (pdf), "we recommend that the Secretary [of Defense] task both the Under Secretaries of Defense for Policy and Intelligence, and the Joint Staff, working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to create a tiger team to lay out courses of action and a way ahead for establishing a standing strategic surprise/deception entity. Once the initial work has been completed, all parts of the interagency should be brought into this effort."

"Strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success," it continues. "Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries."

(Read on)

Or this:

Slavery in US Prisons

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." --13th Amendment, 1865.

(See video)

Or that:

Rule by the Rich

The election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate by Democratic voters in Massachusetts sends President Obama a message. Voters perceive that Obama’s administration has morphed into a Bush-Cheney government. Obama has reneged on every promise he made, from ending wars, to closing Gitmo, to providing health care for Americans, to curtailing the domestic police state, to putting the interests of dispossessed Americans ahead of the interests of the rich banksters who robbed Americans of their homes and pensions.

But what can Obama do other then spout more rhetoric?

The Democrats were destroyed as an independent party by jobs offshoring and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA. The effect of "globalism" has been to destroy the industrial and manufacturing unions, thus leaving the Democrats without a power base and source of funding.

Obama and the Democrats cannot be an opposition party, because Democrats are as dependent as Republicans on corporate interest groups for campaign funding.

The Democrats have to support war and the police state if they want funding from the military/security complex. They have to make the health care bill into a subsidy for private insurance if they want funding from the insurance companies. They have to abandon the American people for the rich banksters if they want funding from the financial lobby.

Now that the five Republicans on the Supreme Court have overturned decades of U.S. law and given corporations the ability to buy every American election, Democrats and Republicans can be nothing but pawns for a plutocracy.

Most Americans are hard pressed, but the corporations have only begun to milk them.

Wars are too profitable for the armaments industry to ever end. High unemployment is now a permanent state in the U.S., thus coercing job seekers into military service.

The security industry profits from the police state and regards civil liberties as a hindrance to profits. By announcing that he intends to continue the Bush policy of indefinite detention, a violation of the Constitution and U.S. legal procedures, Obama has granted the Democratic Party’s consent to the Republicans’ destruction of habeas corpus, the main bastion of individual liberty.

Jobs offshoring is too profitable for U.S. corporations for Obama to be able to save American jobs and restart the broken economy.

Americans are being squeezed out of health care not only by the loss of job benefits, but also by corporate takeover of medical practice from physicians. Today medical doctors are wage slaves of corporate health providers that leverage doctors by turning them into supervisors of physician assistants, lower paid people without medical degrees who perform the services that doctors once provided. As neither doctor nor physician assistant has any independence, there is no one to represent the patient’s care against the profits of the corporation.

Even environmental concerns are being used to create "cap and trade" rights to buy and sell the ability to pollute. Wall Street is licking its lips over a new source of leveraged derivative instruments.

The American public cannot even get reliable information about their plight as the "mainstream media" has been concentrated into a few corporate hands that do not permit independent reporting. The media is as dependent on corporate money as are politicians.

(Read on)

Or this:

Welcome To The Corporate States Of America

That's right, my American friends - it is now official, thanks to your SCOTUS.

I hope you enjoy your authoritarian, corporatocracy-driven, security and surveillance state.

(Read on)

Or that:

Reloaded: The Cost Of Security (Meaning: Terror)

Well then - considering that the ever incremental costs in money and civil liberties is meant apparently to keep us safe from nefarious, evil terrorists like this s.o.b. ... I suppose it is safe to say that the results are now in - and it looks like it is indeed too late for us all.

Thus why I reiterate: we are the real problem with terrorism.

But congratulations nonetheless to the terrorists for such an unequivocal, complete and total victory.

(Read on)

Or this:

The Cost Of Security (Meaning: Terror)

The terrorists keep on winning - my point ... exactly.

In the meantime, what has been the monetary cost of "fighting terrorism and improving our security"?

(Read on)

Or that:

Welcome To Your Corporatocracy: Proof Is In Teh Money

What has happened throughout these past decades - and keeps happening - constitutes the first and foremost argument for the need to have companies and corporations to obey laws, just like every citizens. As I said above, call said laws "regulations" if you will - nevertheless, laws on due process of contract awarding through an appropriately regulated submission process, as well as rigorous boundaries imposed for the fulfillment of contracts, in addition to codified acceptable behavior by companies and corporations (as in our case) and corporate responsibility, are a matter of necessity for the continuity of our democratic societies founded upon the Rule of Law.

But corporations are quite aware of this. As much as they know themselves - that when kept unchecked, the need for maximization of profits will inevitably lead to fraud and corruption, as well as to a blatant disregard and abuse of human dignity, human civil liberties and human rights. I repeat here: no noble principles of patriotism, social obligations, moral imperatives or even basic human decency and compassion can twart this.

Hence why time and time again - any law that is passed (or watered down/rejected, depending on the interests involved) is heavily tainted with corporate influence and money.

Consequently, democracy is effectively on life support - if not dead already.

So - welcome to your corporatocracy.

(Read on)

Or this:

Obama And The First Big Lie Of The 21st Century

If by "big lie" you are thinking of the one concerning Saddam Hussein's WMDs and links with al'Qaeda, then you would be in error. That would be the second big lie of the 21st century. However, you would be correct in assuming that the first big lie of the 21st century involved Bush and Co. nevertheless.

(Read on)

Or that:

Fudging Science On Climate Change: Here We Go Again

More evidence that the "Obama Era" is changing absolutely nothing:

(Read on)

Or this:

1 in 6 Americans goes hungry

The number of Americans that have trouble putting food on the table shot up last year in an unprecedented spike to a record 17 million households, the government reported on Monday.

The Department of Agriculture report, which has been released annually since 1995, said the number of Americans that were hungry rose to 14.6%. In 2007, 13 million households or 11.1% of Americans had trouble getting enough food.

The one-year jump is all the more significant, given the number of hungry Americans had never been higher than 11.9% since these surveys began.

Of the near-15% of the nation that couldn't secure enough food last year, the USDA said one-third of them had "very low food security," meaning they reduced the amount that they ate or disrupted their eating patterns during the year. That group made up 5.7% of all U.S. households, which was also a record high.

(Read on)

Or that:

Carpetbagging At Its (Worse) Best

In the U.S., whatever shape and form health care reform will take shall not prevent Big Pharma from satisfying the bottomless pit that is their greed:

(Read on)

And definitely not this: Obama Administration, Torture And Incompetence.

But I think you folks have already got the picture, eh?

Yeah - I thought so.

WIBDI, you dare say?

Fucking indeed ...

So - enjoy your State of the Union address, my Americans friends. I'm sure it'll make you feel better and safe ... at the very least.

Better than dealing with reality, eh?