Secret Pakistani Deal with US on Bin Laden

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Did I miss this on network news? Or has the MSM just become a GOP propaganda machine?

It turns out that when President Obama ordered the Navy SEALs to get Usama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, he did not infringe against Pakistani sovereignty after all. Rather, he was acting in accordance with a longstanding secret agreement between Washington and Islamabad, according to The Guardian. The agreement even stipulated that the Pakistani government would be constrained by public opinion to condemn the US action in the aftermath, however insincere the rebuke might be.
Those who are unnecessarily worrying that Obama’s raid was lawless or set a precedent can rest easy; the only precedent is not military, but rather for back-room deals among governments who then put on public Kabuki plays.  More.

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Wael Ghonim vs. Barack Obama: Change we Can Believe in, Yes we Can

Juan Cole eviscerates Obama comparing him dis-favorably to the hero of the Egyptian revolution. Follow the link and read. Open your eyes to the fact that the US is no longer the beacon of freedom. I'm beginning to think that nothing short of bringing it to the streets in the US will make a difference.

It is no secret that President Barack Obama has been in some regards a profound disappointment to the American Left, and his erratic and often disgraceful performance on the Egypt crisis exemplifies his faults in this regard. (Tom Engelhardt puts it best regarding the administration: “It has shown itself to be weak, visibly fearful, at a loss for what to do, and always several steps behind developing events.”) Obama just seems to lack empathy with the little people and is unwilling to buck the rich and powerful, even though they all opposed his run for the presidency.

More

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Netanyahu Humiliates Obama with another E. Jerusalem Housing Expansion

Netanyahu clearly intends to embarrass Obama for taking a confrontation strategy with Israeli policy. Yet clearly, it is LONG over due that the big bully in the Middle East needs to be slapped down hard.

Informed Comment

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sets the tone for Israeli policy-- one that is earning him few friends in the West. Three embarrassments broke for him on Tuesday. First, yet another housing expansion in East Jerusalem was announced while he was meeting President Obama. Then, the cover story of Israeli troops accused of firing live ammunition at Palestinian protesters began to unravel. Then British Foreign Minister David Miliband unceremoniously tossed the Mossad London station chief out of the country for counterfeiting British passports, to be used in an Israeli assassination of a Palestinian in Dubai recently. Netanyahu personally ordered that hit, and is responsible for the forging of real peoples' passports and their use to commit a murder. Netanyahu is the one behind these acts of arrogance, and they are emblematic of his mean brand of politics.

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu humiliates American officials every time it meets with them. Netanyahu met Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and like clockwork Israel embarrassed Obama by announcing that same day it was going ahead with a building project (funded by an American millionaire) in East Jerusalem that the Obama administration had strictly told the Israelis to halt. What I don't understand is why the Palestinians cannot sue over this issue in American courts. If the administration's stance is that East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel, and the US is signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, then why couldn't Palestinians with standing sue in the US when their property is usurped by an American millionaire?

Israel will investigate the shooting deaths of two Palestinian youth who were protesting (not rioting as AP puts it) against Israeli theft of water from the village well. Israeli troops claimed they were using rubber bullets, but Palestinians charge it was actually live ammunition.

Aljazeera English has the scoop, with live video of Israeli troops firing on the Palestinian youths, with what certainly sounds like live ammunition.

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Losing Faith in Leadership

Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

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"Ezra Klein finds Rahm Emanuel’s apparent willingness to let health reform slide into the indefinite future very depressing. So do I. And it’s not just health reform that will die under this approach — it’s the road to a caretaker presidency....
What’s now in question isn’t [Obama's] his ability to talk, it’s his ability to lead."

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Iran's green movement has not given up!

Iran's green movement has not given up! Interestingly, they've asked for support from Obama. Seems like a slippery slope to play the Obama card. I'm not sure he can act on their plea without killing nuclear talks.

Tri-City Herald

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The contrasts were vivid: Pro-government supporters chanted "Death to America" and stomped on U.S. flags Wednesday while not far away, hundreds of opposition protesters denounced Iran's leaders and appealed to America's president to choose sides.

"Obama, Obama, you are either with them, or with us," the anti-government protesters chanted in Farsi, in an amateur video clip widely circulated on the Internet.

The new and startling appeal to President Barack Obama came as Iran's opposition protesters returned to the streets in large numbers for the first time in nearly two months. Authorities were ready with the same sweeping measures they used to quell fierce election-fraud protests this summer and early fall: Sending paramilitary units to key locations to fire tear gas and beat people with batons.

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Is the End Near for the Right-Wing's Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy?

J-Street, vilified by the right and the Right Wing-Nut Christian dominionists who are trying to provoke Armageddon, the peace and reconciliation focused lobby for younger moderate to progressive American Jews goes center stage with Obama's National Security Advisor giving the keynote. Yes, things not the same in the relationship between Israel and the US today. No more Israeli and Iranian spies sneaking around the White House.

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This week, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Jones, Barack Obama's national security adviser, will keynote the inaugural J Street Conference, billed as a gathering of "progressive pro-Israel, pro-peace" activists.

The event marks the emergence of the moderate Jewish advocacy group that aspires to be a counterweight to the voices of the traditionally hawkish "pro-Israel" lobby in Washington.

The White House's decision last week to send Jones to address the event was a small move that might have a significant impact on the overheated politics of the Middle East.

In the months before, a full-throated "swift boat" campaign had been launched against J Street in an attempt to vilify and delegitimize the group as belonging to the fringe, despite its advocacy of a moderate, or at most slightly left-of center, approach to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The conservative media offered a steady drumbeat of dubious charges, and a campaign had been under way to warn members of Congress away from the event. And it appeared to be having some impact as several members of Congress pulled out of the conference in the weeks leading up to the event (a total of 10 reportedly dropped out, according to reports, but not all in response to outside pressure).

It was an attempt to nip J Street in the bud and preserve the hegemony established lobbying groups like American Israel Public Affairs Committee have long enjoyed in the halls of Congress.

At stake was not only the definition of what it means to be "pro-Israel" -- long synonymous with supporting the more hawkish end of Israel's political spectrum (despite American Jews' general tendency to lean left) -- but also, and more importantly, the ability of established lobbying groups to claim to speak for the American Jewish community as a whole.

More via Is the End Near for the Right-Wing's Vice Grip on U.S. Israeli Policy? | | AlterNet.

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Obama said Wavering on Troop Escalation in Afghanistan

Juan Cole weighs in on the disaster that is Afghanistan. Apparently, Obama is considering a major change in direction, perhaps withdrawing troops instead of adding more. And Biden is leading that charge. Lets hope that Obama figures out that Biden is his foreign policy expert and defers to his judgment. Hillary is just another neo-con.

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The NYT says that President Barack Obama is reconsidering his plan to greatly increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, and to be suffering "buyer's remorse" for sending 21,000 more troops there soon after his inauguration and before a proper policy review. The article suggests a stark difference of opinion between vice president Joe Biden who has the most foreign policy experience of anyone in the administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Biden is said to favor fewer US troops and a focus on al-Qaeda in the Pakistani badlands. Clinton is afraid the Taliban will take back over Afghanistan and invite al-Qaeda back in there.

[..]You can't do development aid very effectively in a country beset by guerrilla violence. Moreover, counter-insurgency requires a legitimate, effective Afghan partner that can compete with the Taliban and their allies for Afghan hearts and minds. And, if counter-terrorism is really the goal, then you don't need a 60,000-man army in a country notoriously inhospitable to foreign armies.

The Obama administration seems to be considering whether these four levels can be usefully unentangled.

In particular, incumbent president Hamid Karzai's clumsy attempt to steal the election and his continued seeming inability really to take charge in the country he de jure rules, appears to have provoked the Obama team to wonder whether they could in fact work with Karzai.

Personally, I think Biden is right and that if the administration will bet on him, they'd put us 2 or 3 years ahead of the curve.

via Informed Comment: Obama said Wavering on Troop Escalation in Afghanistan

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Goldstone Report Finds Israeli Military Guilty of War Crimes in Gaza

Juan Cole has a rather optimistic point of view regarding the documentation of war crimes by Israel and Hamas. He thinks the prospects of economic sanctions may reign in the Israelis who continue to steal land in the West Bank. Ultimately, what Obama decides will make the final case. EU's response to this report could be muted at best if Obama continues Bush's policy towards Israel. So far, he has done nothing different except signal that all is not well in American Israeli relations because of West Bank settlements. The call for a freeze has been a political stalling tactic for American presidents for decades. We'll see what that means soon.

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The Independent reports that a United Nations fact-finding inquiry has found that Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza last winter, as did the Palestinian Hamas. The lion's share of blame in the report, however, falls on Israeli forces, which stand accused of planning out a disproportionate use of force, the punishing of a civilian population, and reckless disregard for civilian lives-- all of which are war crimes in international law. The report suggests that some Israeli actions may have gone beyond being mere war crimes to being crimes against humanity. The report will go to the UN Human Rights Commission, which will likely accept it. The findings could in theory drag Israeli officials before the World Court in the Hague, though in practice this outcome is highly unlikely.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas rejected the report as biased, which is a pretty good indication that it is even-handed.

Aljazeera English has video.

Both rightwing Israeli news sources and Aljazeera English are convinced that the report is so many words on paper and that it will have no effect.

I disagree. Amnesty International has endorsed and defended the conclusions of the report, and Human Rights Watch has also been a supporter of Justice Goldstone. Even the British House of Lords debate on this issue last May displayed a determination that there be no double standard and that Israel be held accountable for any crimes it committed-- likewise Hamas.

Israel's continued inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza and its drive to further colonize the Palestinian West Bank, as well as its tendency to launch wars at the drop of a hat, are increasingly making it an international pariah and impelling a boycott movement, especially in Europe but also Canada. The recent World Council of Churches resolution in favor of some boycotts is also a bellwether. (Nor can such boycotts be avoided by Jewish nationalists' attacks on the academic freedom of boycott proponents such as Neve Gordon; or by Stern Gang character assassination tactics deployed against US academics who protest the policies of the Israeli rightwing.)

Israel is deeply dependent on trade and technological sharing with Europe, and the Goldstone report will give a fillip to the boycott movement. It will also cast a long shadow on future Israeli wars on its neighbors and how they are perceived, as Aluf Benn argues in Haaretz.

The report will color how Israeli politicians' demands for a military attack on Iran are viewed internationally, and it weakens the position of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is defying President Barack Obama by committing to build more Israeli housing on Palestinian land in the West Bank at a time when the US has called for a settlement freeze in preparation for restarting peace talks.'

More at Informed Comment.

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Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

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Doctored intelligence reports continue to come out of CIA and other sources that appear to continue to support the agenda of the Bush Administration. Given this article, it would appear that this intelligence is disinformation designed to further the neo-con agenda. Fortunately, we have the Federation of American Scientists who are more interested in the truth.

Could this intelligence really be promoted by Obama Administration sources? I suppose it could, but it strikes me as much more likely that this flimsy evidence is from rogue intelligence sources given how easily it can be refuted.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Taliban claim was cited by the ODNI in written responses to

questions for the record from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence following testimony by Blair before the committee on February 12, 2009. The responses were released to the Federation of American Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act on July 30.

ODNI wrote that Iran was "covertly supplying arms to Afghan insurgents while publicly posing as supportive of the Afghan government". As evidence of such covert Iranian arms supply, the ODNI said, "Taliban commanders have publicly credited Iranian support for their successful operations against coalition forces."

That statement was taken almost word-for-word from the subtitle of an article published on the website of London's DailyTelegraph and Sunday Telegraph on September 14 last year. "A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan," read the sub-heading of the article "Taliban claim weapons supplied by Iran".

The single Taliban commander quoted became plural in the ODNI version.

via Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

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US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger

Pepe Escobar, the author of this article, writes his convictions. Truly his Chinese employers see their agenda served, but in this case, it would appear both Pepe and China have a point. The US has taken on the traditional role of Great Britain. The Brits maintained their dominance of the world by playing divide and conquer. The US is doing the same. Except, it would appear, the availability of information via the internet is undermining the US effectiveness.

Has Obama simply filled Bushes shoes as the world's bully? At this point I'm thinking this is an engine independent of government. Is it a "rogue" CIA operation blacked out to even Obama? Totally blacked out, probably not, but buried in piles and piles of similar operations with few directors and no accountability to maintain plausible denial ability and accessible to the new president only with time and focus. Do you thing Obama has enough on his plate?

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Asia Times Online

The New Great Game is not only focused on the face-off between the United States and strategic competitors Russia and China - with Pipelineistan as a defining element.

The full spectrum dominance doctrine requires the control of the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Horn of Africa to western China. The cover story is the former "global war on terror", now "overseas contingency operations" under the management of President Barack Obama's administration.

Most of all, the underlying logic remains divide and rule. As for the divide, Beijing would call it, without a trace of irony, "splittist". Split up Iraq - blocking China's access to Iraqi oil. Split up Pakistan - with an independent Balochistan preventing China from

accessing the strategic port of Gwadar there. Split up Afghanistan - with an independent Pashtunistan allowing the building of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline bypassing Russia. Split up Iran - by financing subversion in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan. And why not split up Bolivia (as was attempted last year) to the benefit of US energy giants. Call it the (splitting) Kosovo model.

Kosovo, incidentally, is known as the Colombia of the Balkans. What Washington calls the "Western hemisphere" is a sub-section of the New Great Game. The linkage between the recent military coup in Honduras, the return of the living dead - that is, the resurrection of the US Navy's Fourth Fleet in July 2008 - and now the turbo-charging of seven US military bases in Colombia is not to be blamed merely on continuity from president George W Bush to Obama. Not really. This is all about the internal logic of Full Spectrum Dominance.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

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Where does the hatred come from?

It would appear that Homeland Security is promoting Islamo-phobia in it's recommended training for US Law Enforcement! Where is Obama? Is he just pretending to be Bush lite?

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This fall, U.S. law enforcement personnel will have their final chance to take advantage of a rare opportunity. Participants will travel to Israel to receive “homeland security training,” but the counterterrorism briefings and martial arts practice sessions are only one part of the package. The program also includes visits to Christian religious sites in the Holy Land — an aspect likely to be especially attractive to Christian Zionists — along with other sites such as the Knesset and the Israeli “security fence”.

The Israel program is run by Security Solutions International (SSI), a group that has attracted controversy due to its ties to Islamophobic propaganda groups — as well as its apparent view that indoctrinating first responders with alarmist information about Islam is an essential part of counterterrorism training.

Most striking of all, the SSI Israel trip is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS’s funding of this venture is a concrete illustration of the ways that Islamophobic fringe groups have exploited the “global war on terror” for their own purposes.[..]So what does this training involve? In addition to martial arts demonstrations including “how to take down an armed suicide bomber”, meetings with Israeli security personnel, and a three-hour presentation on “suicide terror,” the itinerary also includes more tourist-oriented activities. Tourist excursions are both political visits to the Knesset, the West Bank “security barrier,” and southern Israeli towns that have been the target of rocket attacks from Gaza, and religious trips to Jerusalem’s Old City and to “some of Christianity’s holiest sites”.While this DHS-funded trip might already seem a bit odd — especially the emphasis on Christian religious sites during what is ostensibly a counterterrorism training program — things take a turn towards the bizarre in the section of the website advertising SSI’s two day presentations on “The Islamic Jihadist Threat”.

via LobeLog.com

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Clinton: It Is a "Great Regret" the US Is Not in International Criminal Court

Hillary Clinton has signalled a significant shift by the US in favour of the international criminal court, the world body that pursues war criminals but was strenuously opposed by the Bush administration.

In the most public expression of support yet from Barack Obama's administration, the US secretary of state expressed regret that the US has not yet joined the ICC.

The court, set up in 2002, has pursued dictators, mainly from Africa, who are alleged to have been engaged in genocide and other war crimes.

The US is at present not only not a member but government officials are theoretically banned from any engagement with the ICC whatsoever. An administration official predicted there will be increased US cooperation with the ICC but cautioned against expecting early entry.

Clinton, speaking at a public meeting in Kenya, the first leg of an African tour, indicated she hoped this would come sooner rather than later: "This is a great regret that we are not a signatory. I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership. But that has not yet come to pass."

There is a divide in the Obama administration over entry. Clinton and some other senior figures at the White House and state department are passionately in favour, while others advocate caution, saying the president can afford not to rush membership and should wait to see how the ICC evolves.

Supporters of the ICC, including the UK, which is a member, have long advocated the US joining, saying this would immensely strengthen the body.

But President George Bush blocked American membership, expressing fears that US officials could be open to arrest for alleged war crimes. The Pentagon was concerned that US soldiers might end up in court in The Hague.

In December 2000, just before he left office, the former president Bill Clinton signed up to the ICC. But Bush two years later announced that the US would not be joining and a bill ratifying membership failed to get through Congress.

via t r u t h o u t.

He who is afraid of the justice of his peers is guilt of crimes.