Obama in China

Image of the Day: Is It True?

To America and China the rest of the world must look like poultry and game… what’s the main course?

President Barack Obama inspect honor guards during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, November 17, 2009. REUTERS/David Gray. Image may be subject to copyright.

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• 338,000 Afghan infants dying under Obama war
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Should 9/11 suspects be tried in New York?

Quotes of the Day:

The Question:

Should the 9/11 suspects go on trial in New York?

Quotes and Comments:

• “What the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality the war on terror from their point of view is over,” Mr. Giuliani said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This seems to be an overconcern with the rights of terrorists and a lack of concern for the rights of the public.”

Why is Mr Giuliani so worried?

Related Links:

• US Govt
• 8th Anniversary of 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

 

“Bullshit Barack”

submitted by a reader

What would the graduates at New Economic School in Moscow call the U-S President?

“Bullshit Barack!” That’s probably what the graduates at New Economic School in Moscow will call the president once the novelty of his visit has worn off, and they have read the Russian translation of his speech on US-Russia relations.

The speech was probably the worst example of total utter nonsense, contradictory thoughts and factually incorrect statements, ever strung together using meaningless words, that was delivered by a head of state, anywhere, anytime.  The speech uttered by the president must have sounded as hollow and disingenuous to a Russian audience, old and young, as it would have to any other audience.

Take the following examples:

Great wealth has been created …

But where is it? Who has it? Show them the wealth! Demonstrate to the people where the wealth is actually accumulated, and at what cost to the environment and the lives of ordinary people!

Economic growth has NOT eliminated ignorance, poverty, ill health and social conflicts. In fact, the exponential growth economy is fully responsible for creating and exacerbating all of the environmental, human and social ills.

To begin with, let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. This belief is rooted in our respect for the Russian people, and a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition.

The fact is America wants a “neutered” Russia, one that cannot object to America’s empire-building.

In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries.

Do you mean the US is not dominating or demonizing other countries like North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan… to name but a few?

The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.

So why does the United States still maintain 737 military bases around the globe, and militarily occupies two sovereign countries, namely Iraq and Afghanistan [and venturing into Pakistan,] ILLEGITIMATELY?  http://www.alternet.org/story/47998

The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game — progress must be shared.

How does the word “power” enter your thought system and comes out of your mouthpiece disguised as “progress?”

Please! Don’t insult the Russian students’ intelligence! The pursuit of power has never been more of a deadly and intense zero-sum game than now. As the world’s natural resources dwindle, energy and raw materials become scarcer, and the GDP in China, India, Brazil, Indonesia … surges upward, the “pursuit of power zero-sum game” becomes deadlier than ever before. Who are you kidding Mr. President?

We have to ask whether extremists who have killed innocent civilians in New York and in Moscow will show that same restraint. We have to ask whether 10 or 20 or 50 nuclear-armed nations will protect their arsenals and refrain from using them.

Clearly this “mindset” also negates the Russians. It goes against what General Leonid Ivashov, former Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, said about 9/11.

“The organizers of [the 9/11] attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order” because they “were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction.”  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1788

Yet another deadly important issue the president and top Russian thinkers strongly disagree on.

… progress must be shared.

So far the only part of the “progress” the US has shared with other nations is the “cost.” America is externalizing the cost of its failed empire-buildings to other nations, in what is the most egregious example of moral hazard.

I believe that the free market is the greatest force for creating and distributing wealth that the world has known.

Free to rip off the nations? If anyone disputes your words, tell them about the size of Wall Street blackmail, and smile at the same time so they might believe that nonsense, too.

Together, we can build a world where people are protected, prosperity is enlarged, and our power truly serves progress.

Together we have driven the world to the edge of eminent collapse, and you, Mr President, have the audacity of chutzpah to talk about “future,” “prosperity,” and the weapon of   “power,” disguised as a tool to make “progress.”

You’ll excuse the sinister readers, if they don’t believe a word of that nonsense, Mr President.

The text of President Obama speech in Moscow was from an Associated press report, dated 7 July 2009.

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• Porky Pies President
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The Republic of Wall Street Saga Goes On

Can Congress “walk and chew gum at the same time?”

by Ralph Nader                                                                               February 14, 2009

This phrase used by President Lyndon Johnson for one of his political opponents comes to mind at a time early in the first 100 days of the Obama Administration when supposedly many long-overdue changes and rollbacks are possible.

It is not just that Congress is completely absorbed with the tax-cut-stimulus package. It is stasis that seems to be enveloping, even within its numerous well-funded and staffed committees in the House and Senate, from even the signaling of serious movement toward rolling back Bush-pushed legislation and starting widely supported forays that take hope to change.

The continuation of this state of stasis is made more likely because the Republican minority is feeling its oats. It put the White House on the defensive during the struggle to enact economic recovery legislation even though previous Republican policies and coddling of Wall Street for eight years build a steep cliff for financial collapse. Add the de-regulatory moves of 1999 and 2000 by the Clinton-Rubin crowd and the financial meltdown accelerates.

There is something else operating. One gets the feel on Capitol Hill among some fairly sharp people of a lack of horizon, a paucity of progressive determination, a sense of being overwhelmed by the corporate forces still bearing down on Congress—easily the most powerful branch of government under our Constitution.

But Congress does not act as if it is the most powerful branch. It routinely abdicates its constitutional responsibilities—the declaration of war authority and the plenary authority to investigate and require access to information in the executive branch.

Even after the Democrats took control of the Congress in January 2007, George W. Bush again and again got his way including a rubber stamp for the huge Iraq and Afghanistan war budgets outside of the normal appropriations processes.

Efforts by Senator Russ Feingold and Cong. John Conyers to move a modest censure resolution of Bush and Cheney for their many constitutional and statutory violations were aggressively rejected by their leaders—Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid. In January 2007, Pelosi and Reid two took impeachment off the table allowing the most chronically impeachable presidency in our history to continue undisturbed.

Some staffers in Congress privately assert that the Democrats are not acting like a majority party. It is worse than that. They are not acting—period.

From their majority status in 2007 to 2009 and a Democratic President in the White House, the Congressional Democrats are not moving swiftly to repeal the ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug prices from volume discounts under the drug benefit law. They are not moving to amend the Patriot Act, regain control of warrantless surveillance, strengthen the corporate criminal laws and enforcement budgets. Congress is not even pushing to require taxing Hedge Fund manager’s income as ordinary income not as capital gains.

I cite these policies because they are policies much favored by many Democratic lawmakers. But in practice lawmakers duck and duck and duck from translating their beliefs into contentious action vis-à-vis the lobbyists and their captive legislators.

Senator Chris Dodd and the vast majority of the American people want to do something about credit card company abuses and gouges. But he is surrounded not just by the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committees but high-ranking Democrats beholden to the financial goliaths who, are demanding and receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

There is word from the politicians that consideration of health care insurance—apart from a quickly enacted expansion of some coverage for more poor children—will be put off for a year.  The trade unions’ top priority to enact labor law reforms, supported by Obama during his presidential campaign, are being held back by the Democrats.

There is even doubt whether the District of Columbia will get a voting Representative in the House when push comes to shove in the Senate.

The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House. “Obama doesn’t want it now” is a common phrase used by legislators to excuse themselves from exercising the separate but equal Congressional powers. This pretext applies to taking away some of the hugely expensive and unnecessary weapons systems like the F-22 aircraft decried by many military and retired military analysts. The vast, bloated military budget is sacrosanct on Capitol Hill as it is in the White House.

At a time of widely perceived needs for Congressional action, with large corporations busy applying for corporate welfare and on the defensive, the Democrats are not generating any momentum for standing for and with the people. Even in the midst of food contamination, illnesses and fatalities, they cannot turn around forty years of delay on giving the Food and Drug Administration adequate authority and inspectors to protect our food supply.

It is going to take a very focused civic jolt from you all to your Senators and Representatives. A couple of million jolters from our large country can get the train moving on the tracks. It doesn’t take much time to holler, yell or bellow with the facts.

END.

Related Links:

• Wall Street: The Biggest Threat to the U.S. Economy
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Nader’s Open Letter to Obama

In the Public Interest
January 9, 2009

Dear President-Elect Obama:

You have been receiving a great deal of advice since November 4, 2008 from people and groups who either want you to advance policies not covered in your campaign or who want you to be more specific about initiatives you emphasized.

There are two suggestions which may not be among your store of recommendations that need to be considered before you take office on January 20, 2009.

First, the public would benefit from a concise recounting of the state of the union and where the Bush Administration has left our country. As is your style, you can render such a bright line of serious problems inside and outside the government in a matter-of-fact manner. Otherwise, a blurring of who was responsible for what can taint your presidency.

Second, you need to make a clean break from the Bush regime’s law of rule to our declared commitment to the rule of law as in the firm adherence to constitutional requirements and statutory and treaty compliance. There is a Bush-Cheney stream of criminal and unconstitutional actions which are on auto-pilot day after day. You have pointed out some of these abominations such as a policy and practice of torture and violations of due process and probable cause. The task before you is to break these daily patterns just as soon as you ascend to the Presidency or be held increasingly responsible for them. This can be significantly accomplished by executive orders, agency or departmental directives, whistle-blower protections, enforcement actions and explicit legislative proposals.

With Americans wishing you well in this most portentous of times, the last thing they want to see is you tarnished by the preceding rogue regime and its ruthless monarchical forays. To avoid this contagion of power over law and its contiguous accountabilities at a time when you are striving for a “clean slate” administration, you must be decisive and eschew any excessive harmony ideology which has seemed to be your nature vis-à-vis those who are powerful but are opposed to your views.

One possible impediment to your making a comprehensive clean break for restoring the rule of law is that you have too easy an act to follow. There are a long list of violated civil liberties that need to be restored (the American Civil Liberties Union has compiled a list of immediate actions for you to take), and resolute commitments must be made so that it is clear the United States, for example, will not engage in, or countenance, torture. Only a few restorations, however, would produce a sense of relief and flurry of accolades — but they are hardly sufficient.

There are also regulations and interpretations of statutes that scholars believe to have been erroneous as a matter of law. As one guide for your new era of overdue regulation or reregulation—given the corporate wrongdoing these days—you may wish to refer to the Center for Progressive Reform’s report By the Stroke of the Pen.

The Bush lawlessness and state terrorism are like a contagious disease. If you do not remove their sprawling incidence, you will become their carrier. This means you must move fast to eject the mantle of war criminality and repeated unconstitutional outrages committed in the name of the American people here and abroad.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

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Restoring the Constitution

In The Public Interest
by Ralph Nader

Barack Obama is receiving lots of advice from many people these days about the collapse of Wall Street, the sinking economy and the quagmire wars he will inherit from the Bush regime. However, there is one important matter that he alone can address with his legal training and the sworn oath he will take on January 20 to uphold the Constitution. That phenomenon is the systemic, chronic lawlessness and criminality of the Bush/Cheney regime which he must unravel and stop.

To handle this immense responsibility as President, he needs to bring together a volunteer task force of very knowledgeable persons plus wise, retired civil servants to inventory the outlaw workings of this rogue regime.

Much is already known and documented officially and by academic studies and media reporting. In the category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, are

(1) the criminal war—occupation of Iraq,
(2) systemic torture as a White House policy,
(3) arrests of thousands of Americans without charges or habeas corpus rights,
(4) spying on large numbers of Americans without judicial warrants and
(5) hundreds of signing statements by George W. Bush declaring that, he of the unitary presidency, will decide whether to obey the enacted bills or not.

To its everlasting credit, the conservative American Bar Association sent to President Bush three reports in 2005-2006 concluding that he has been engaged in continuing serious violations of the Constitution. This is no one-time Watergate obstruction of justice episode ala Nixon that led to his resignation just before his impeachment in the House of Representatives.

Nearly two years ago Senator Obama, contrary to what he knows and believes, vigorously came out against the House commencing impeachment proceedings. It would be too divisive, he said. As one of one hundred Senators who might have had to try the President and Vice President in the Senate were the House to impeach. He should have kept impartial and remained silent on the subject.

As President, he cannot remain silent and do nothing, otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and become soon thereafter a war criminal himself. Inaction cannot be an option.

Violating the Constitution and federal laws is now routine. What is routine after awhile becomes institutionalized lawlessness by official outlaws.

Domestic Policy abuses are also rampant. Just what are the limits of the statutory authority of the U.S. Treasury Department or the government within a government funded by bank assessments known as the Federal Reserve?

Don’t read the $750 billion bailout law for any answers! The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid just sent a letter to Bush asking whether the White House believes the bailout law could be interpreted to save not just the reckless banks, but also the grossly mismanaged Big Three auto companies in Michigan.

Didn’t Congress know what they were or were not authorizing? Or did the stampede started by the demanding Bush result in blanket, or panicked ambiguity by a cowardly Congress?

This week, the Washington Post front paged an article that the Treasury Department unilaterally gave the banks a tax break that was estimated to be worth a staggering $140 billion. Just like that! Fiat! The Post reported that impartial legal experts flatly declared such a decision to be without statutory authority which means the Bush regime usurped the constitutional authority of Congress in matters of taxation and basically took out a 22 year old law enacted by Congress. Not to be outdone, on the same day, the lead article in the New York Times reported a four-year-old Bush doctrine allowing Special Forces and other armed force to pursue terrorists in any country in the world. The Times specified incursions at will into Syria, Iran, Somalia, Pakistan and other countries.

Such violations of national sovereignty without formal declarations of war or through formal interventions by the United Nations are violations of international law. The Bush government answers this assertion by its open-ended, totally self-defined, right of “self-defense” under the UN Charter. The same self-determining argument can be made by covert terrorists or covert actions by adversarial governments. This is an example of make-up-your-own international law to suit your own covert operations.

As a country that has the most to lose from the shredding of international law and order, the United States under Bush is giving many IOUs to revenge-minded suicidal adversaries. They can simply to their mass audiences say, if the U.S. can do anything it wants, why shouldn’t they?

It has been widely reported that the Justice Department under Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Gonzalez epitomized contempt for compliance with the laws regarding civil liberties, due process and politically interfering with U.S. Attorneys.

Less publicized was its refusal to enforce the laws routinely transgressed by the corporate patrons of the White House—such as environmental crimes, consumer fraud, and anti-trust violations.

Obama has tools to restore law and order by the government itself. The Bully Pulpit. Ordering departmental directives. Issuing Executive Orders. Requesting legislation. Highlighting the integrity of the subdued and buffeted federal civil service which, with its oath of office, deserves far more effective whistleblowing protection laws.

The ACLU has just released: “Actions For Restoring America: How to Begin Repairing the Damage to Freedom in America After Bush.” Mr. Obama would do well to use this important report as blueprint for restoring faith in the U.S. Government’s commitment to the Constitution (see http://www.aclu.org/transition/). A second report titled: “Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen by the Center for Progressive Reform suggests several Executive Orders that Mr. Obama could sign to advance important health, safety and the environment goals (see http://www.progressivereform.org/).

Barack Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Let’s have it operate out of the Obama White House. And the time to start laying the groundwork is now! [Emphasis added.]

END

Protect Economy from Climate??!

Shouldn’t the scientific message be

Protect World from Economy?

You know your problems are serious when eight scientific organizations urge the next U.S. president to “protect the country” not by way of changing the predatory economy but instead by means of “funding for research and forecasting” to dodge the climate change.

Instead of urging an immediate end to the exponential growth economy and demanding a zero-growth, low carbon, waste-free oikonomia for managing the environment, welfare of humans and other living species, and a system of ‘housekeeping’ for the planet’s natural resources to sustain life on Earth, the country’s top scientists are looking for ways of serving the economic Titanic.

The group includes the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

“We don’t think we have the right kind of tools to help decision makers plan for the future,” Jack Fellows, the vice president for corporate affairs of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 71 universities, told reporters on Wednesday.

Indeed not, Mr. Fellows!

BTW, is the Union of “Concerned” Scientists among your lot?

The Environmental Cost of US Economy (carbon footprint only!)

• US GDP (2007 PPP) : $13.8 trillion [World Bank]
• US CO2 Emissions (2007) : 6,825.733 MMT [based on CDIAC data updated by MSRB/CASF]
• Virtual CO2 content of US dollar (2007) : 494 g (The average amount of CO2 produced each time a dollar was paid or received in 2007. SEE: How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?)

Surprised? (source: bp1.blogger.com). Image may be subject to copyright.

Read the news report here: Scientists urge U.S. to protect economy from climate change

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• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
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• Future Scenarios
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• Giga Trends
• The Economy

• A 2009 Forecast
• World CO2 Emissions
• How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?

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