Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning
While I’ve always had the utmost respect for Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger, I must admit that the first time I watched his video, “Obama is a corporate marketing creation,” I thought that, in implying that the President was some type of CIA-connected Manchurian Candidate, Pilger was a bit over the top.
In 1983 Obama went to work for “Business International Corporation,” which, according to Pilger, had “a long history of providing cover for the CIA and infiltrating unions on the left.” Though Pilger conceded that there “might be nothing sinister” in that, he cited Obama’s failure to identify Business International by name or what he did there in Dreams of My Father. The President simply said he worked at “a consulting house to multinational corporations.†Coupling this with a litany of examples which place Obama on the wrong side of Empire and the corporate divide, Pilger implied the connection was not coincidental, then concluded his remarks by quoting Chris Hedges:
Perhaps it’s an accumulation of all that has transpired this past year; perhaps it’s the striking revelations that emerged during an extraordinary Feb. 2, 2010, broadcast of Democracy Now, especially as it pertains to torture (video below), but I now can’t help feeling like Claire Kubik, the sharp attorney played by Ashley Judd in High Crimes who starts out vigorously defending her husband Tom (Jim Cazviel) against charges he murdered innocent civilians in a covert military operation. She’s convinced the man she married has been wrongfully accused; convinced of his innocence until, almost when it’s too late, she learns the man she thought she knew so well was a murderous sociopath.
Who is this guy whose election so many so happily celebrated on a brisk November evening that now seems so long ago?…
A troubling litany
One could easily follow up Pilger’s analysis with a litany of even more troubling facts: The immediate alignment of President-Elect Obama with a bevy of former Wall Street/Goldman Sachs insiders (e.g., Tim Geithner, Larry Summers), the retention of the CIA-connected Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, the renomination of Ben Bernacke, the “too big to fail” excuse that essentially handed Wall Street the keys to the National Treasury, even as Goldman Sachs/AIG executives gorged on seven and even eight figure bonuses, the betrayal of the single-payer cause former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama once championed, not to mention the abandonment of the more modest “public option,” in favor of back-room deals with the rapacious health insurance cartel and the pharmaceutical industry, and the deceptive, and at times Orwellian justifications for not merely continuing but expanding an irrational “global war on terror,” complete with retention of murderous mercenaries, like those supplied by Blackwater/Xe at enormous taxpayer expense.
A failure to faithfully execute the laws against torture
But for me, as an attorney, who like all attorneys has taken a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and laws of these United States, and as the son of a man who was tortured — waterboarded — by the Japanese during World War II, it is the question of torture which has led me to join with Pilger in asking, again, who is this man?
Early in this new administration, even before I published a five part series on “The History of CIA Torture” (Part I, II, III, IV & V), in which I traced the current torture scandal to a more than 50-year history of CIA torture transcending multiple administrations, I wrote in “Prosecute or Perish,” warning that nothing less than the very survival of our Constitutional democracy and the rule of law hinged upon factually warranted criminal investigations and prosecutions of all who authorized or participated in torture inside the Bush/Cheney cabal.
In “Fixing the Facts and Legal Opinions Around the Torture Policy,” I expressed dismay when the President told CIA employees, who tortured under the quasi-legal sophistries authored by the likes of John Yoo and Jay S. Bibee, they would not be prosecuted. The President said this was “a time for reflection, not retribution…nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb explained that the President insisted on “looking forward.”
I pointed out that the remarks from a President, who was a Harvard Law School scholar and former Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, made no sense whatsoever; that it would be impossible to ever prosecute anyone without “looking back” at the crime already committed.
Law Professor Jonathan Turley blasted the effort to equate law enforcement with “retribution.”
Yet, the Obama administration has done nothing to bring those who authorized torture or authored the quasi-legal sophistries, aka “torture memos,” before the bar of justice. Where last May the Justice Department had prepared an initial draft of an ethics report that would recommend state bar proceedings against John Yoo and Jay Bibee, the latter a sitting judge on a federal appellate bench, on Jan. 30 of this year Newsweek reported that even this relatively minor semblance at accountability turned into a complete white-wash. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility struck the recommendations for state bar discipline — this at the same time that a Spanish court “has opened formal criminal investigations into the suspected torture of a Spanish national held at Guantánamo,” naming Yoo, Bibee, and Alberto Gonzales as the “intellectual authors” of that man’s torture.
However, as noted by attorney Scott Horton, while the Justice Department has not sought state bar discipline, its memos may contain damning information describing “meetings inside the White House with [V.P. Cheney’s] staff, in the course of which they are giving direct guidance to John Yoo and others exactly how this memo is to be written and what it is to provide, and everything they ask for and require John Yoo puts into the memo.” This level of structured control over what went into the torture memos would be consistent with much of what Jane Mayer has to say about the dictatorial reign of Richard B. Cheney and David Addington in The Dark Side.
Was the latest Justice Department white-wash intended to shield Obama White House complicity in torture?
Had it stopped there; had the Feb. 2, 2010, news coverage on Democracy Now been limited to the President’s decision to recklessly expand spending on the military-industrial complex, including the never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to $741 billion; which includes “a $7 billion increase in nuclear spending despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world,” even as the Labor Department is to experience a 32% cut in unemployment and stimulus spending; had the Democracy Now broadcast simply reported the deaths of 123 more civilians in predator drone strikes; had it done no more than recount that CIA operatives have been allowed to work for private firms, or that Maher Ahrar’s attorneys had to file a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking justice for the torture that innocent Canadian suffered as a direct result of Bush/Cheney’s abominable “extraordinary rendition” practice; justice denied because it is opposed by Eric Holder’s Department of Injustice, I probably would have refrained from writing this piece.
But the Democracy Now segment, “‘America’s Secret Afghan Prisons’: Investigation Unearths New U.S. Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan,” (video below) and The Nation magazine’s, “America’s Secret Afghan Prisons,” by Anand Gopal, are so truly disturbing that they have shaken me to the core.
In a nutshell, if accurate, they reveal, as claimed by Scott Horton, that President Obama’s Jan. 22, 2009, “executive order” to shut down the “secret prisons” was very carefully tailored so that it was only CIA black sites that were closed.” They left open the same type of black sites under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), according to Horton. “A major UN report on secret detention policies around the world concludes the practice could reach the threshold of a crime against humanity,” according to Amy Goodman.
The Gopal article, if accurate, reflects an ongoing campaign of vicious night raids by U.S. special forces that would do the Gestapo proud. One entailed a raid on the home of “Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s agriculture minister,” whose cousins, a baker and a man who simply sells carrots at a local bizarre, were gunned down without provocation, as U.S. forces barged into Qarar’s home, while “terrified children lay glued to their beds.” They ransacked the house, located a man, Rahman, a young Afghan government employee whom the U.S. military “suspected” of having al Qaeda connections; carted him off to a helicopter and then the first of a series of prisons. Part of a growing number of Afghans who have joined the ranks of the disappeared, Rahman has not been seen or heard from since, despite Qarar’s connections inside the Afghan government.
The stories, if accurate, suggest that the Obama administration is up to its eyeballs in the same brutal techniques for which the Bush/Cheney regime has been, at least outside the confines of the U.S., universally condemned — a conclusion that is further bolstered by a claim made by five U.S. citizens in custody in Pakistan, one of whom handed a note to a reporter which read, “Since our arrest, the US, FBI and Pakistani police have tortured us. They are trying to set us up… Help us.†Per Amy Goodman, one of their lawyers claimed they were subjected to electric shock.
If true, one has to ask whether Obama had backed off his Constitutional duty to see that the laws be faithfully executed in order to shield himself from the same charges for torture he intended to carry out. If it turns out to be true — and that is still a very big if — the immediate legal course would be a Congressional investigation with an eye towards possible impeachment, to determine if the President was aware of these policies and condoned them in anyway, in violation of his oath of office and duty to the American people to uphold our laws and Constitution.
The 02/02/10 ‘Democracy Now! segment, “America’s Secret Afghan Prisonsâ€: Investigation Unearths New U.S. Torture Site, Abuse Allegations in Afghanistan,” follows below…
UPDATE 02/03/10:The U.S. military has now admitted that it is operating inside Pakistan as three U.S. soldiers were amongst ten people killed by a roadside bomb while the American soldiers were en route to a development project.
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Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Well, that’s disturbing.
But since it is coming from about the only news organization that I respect anymore (DemocracyNow) Then I have to take it seriously.
I couldn’t believe it when I watched Obama basically just give a get out prison free card to the Bush administration last year.
I mean really, exactly what does a ‘Rethuglican” president have to do in order to be prosecuted?
Obviously all a democrat has to do is lie about a BJ.
So I am sure the Rethugs are busy drawing up Impeachment papers as we speak.
Virtually the entirety of Congress is a rogue organization. Hell, even Bernie Sanders spent the weekend in Miami Beach at a fancy pants retreat for Democrats funded by oil and pharma.
Read David Swanson’s Daybreak – an awesome (and I mean that in a very real sense) compilation of the abuses of power in Bush and Obama admnistrations, with certainly no end in sight considering Obama’s requested military spending.
I don’t know how this mess is ever going to be cleaned up unless there is a massive revolution along the lines that ordinary joe’s like me simply stop playing the game completely. Stop using banks, stop buying from big agra and go completely local with food (which – aargh – probably means going veg), stop buying pharmaceuticals, stop paying taxes…simply stop playing the game.
It’s a messy way to go, but I don’t see any other real solution within the system. On all levels, it would seem that the Constitution is dead.
Oh ho ho … WELCOME to the new Constitutional Dictatorship of the United States of Wingnuttia!
Barack Hussein Obama is just an easier-speaking and more photogenic version of Michael Steele, who is a house-nigger extraordinaire if there ever was one (ref.: definition found in the Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley). And this is actually part of the plot. First you steal an election for a Texas-transplant simpleton whose native language is gibberish (spoken by the autocratic republic of Malicia) in and you coup-install him in the Whitehouse. Then you have him functionally destroy what is best about America while shitting on the Constitution. To make absolutely sure super-small volume of still insightfully cognizant voters that they don’t matter at all, you steal yet another election for the monkey-king while pissing down their backs.
After that double-cycle, you then take a Mullato colored (he sure ain’t “black”) man, brand him with a Marxist-sounding name out of the darkest corners of African Kenya (as a child, Barry was indeed a citizen of both the U.S. and Kenya), and then offer him up as an only, primary electoral alternative to that other master of Mena Arkansaw. Even the natives of Arkansas preferred the brown guy.
I mean, “they*” played the system to the absolute hilt, beginning with a candidate who — while he was being raised by his CAUCASIAN grandparents during his politically most formative years — was known as “Barry.”
Fact is, Barry never even lied to the American people about what he’s been planning to do, even while he’s been lying to us. No, instead, that was the overwhelming job of his political campaign shills. Fundamentally, Barry is producing a fantastically competent 3rd-term job of bamboozlement that neither 41 or 43 (or even 40 for that matter) could have ever pulled off.
I mean, “1984-ish Manchurian” candidates, who’da ever thunk that the global corporate oligarchy woulda’ ever resorted to “Hollywood” for its primary defining agenda of conquering America?
Between B. Hussein O. and five of the Supremes, we (as a nation) have done been sold into a most abject slavery.
*the Capitalist Political Party (CPPoA and its Rep/Dem divisions)” of America.
DanD
So when will Amy, the Nation, or even Brad blog give the 9/11 false flag event the attention it deserves..? Left v right political differences take a back seat once people are shaken into reality re the events of that day. Media ( including MSM and independent) censorship is complicit in the deaths and suffering of millions of people.
DanD #3:
I don’t want to sound unduly critical of your comment, much of which contains an interesting observation. But I must tell you that I cringe when I read or hear the “N” word or when someone stresses the President’s middle-name, “Hussein.”
Both words are associated with racist and anti-Muslim thinking that is counterproductive.
Also, from the clip I can recall watching, Malcolm X actually referred to the distinction between the “Field slave” and the “House slave,” noting that the House slave so identified with his oppressor that when the Master got sick, the House slave said, “Master, we be sick.” I don’t recall Malcolm using the N-word during the clip, though I suspect there may have been other occasions where he used it.
It may be presumptuous and naive to think that Obama is the one making all/any of these decisions. One thing is certain, IF he is a good guy who sincerely WANTS to change the system, there is no way he can JUST DO IT, and he can’t blow his cover with his bosses. He (or any of us in his situation) would be in a tough situation if the goal is to actually succeed in changing things.
Where Obama’s vacillations are concerned, don’t rule out his own miscalculations of what he would be able to do; and don’t rule out threats against his family. If you agree not to rule those out, I will agree not to rule out the possibility that he is a sleeper for corporate america, or other sinister intent.
But my true opinion is that he is a politician, a good one, but a politician nonetheless. There is only one reason why torture, war, corporate control, stolen elections, etc., can continue. That reason is that We the People are not sufficiently on the barricades to fight for the freedom that is ours. I say it IS ours, instead of WAS ours, because people can storm the bastions of power whenever we are ready. It could take the form of election monitoring and/or general strike, but the main thing is, whether we take responsibility or not, we will get the government we have earned. I for one believe this country can still deliver on its enormous promise. That is, WE can deliver.
Ernest (#5);
I do this on purpose because “race (and race-bating)” is and always has been a focal circumstance in American politics. By your references, you’ve only watched “Malcolm X” the movie. While — as far as movies go — it was okay, some of the most important observations made by the man as well as a deeper perspective of his life are yet left in the pages of his autobiography. Get the book and discover what Holywood chose not to reveal.
Before he joined the Black Muslim cult (which was centered around the functional “worship” of Elijah Muhammad, who was a quasi-young child-bride diddler equalling any conduct that America’s more established Mormon and Christianite cults could produce) used the word “Nigger” just as promiscuously as some of my African-heritage friends of today still verbalize.
Currently, Obama is displaying a “suck-up to the White-man conduct” (being all the worst because the White man agenda-istically being sucked up to is Dubya) that I’m absolutely sure Malcolm X would have despised. But while Mr. B. Hussein O. (it is his “Muslim” name, and he’s definitively layed claim to it) is advertised by his corporate sponsors as a “Black” man, the harsh identification of his functionally “house-nigger” conduct is formally forbidden by the default corporate media code of political correctness stringently enforced by the “White”-man’s cultural code of modern “liberalism.”
The way I see it, Obama is using a politically-motivated theater involving his African heritage as a cudgel in order to threaten or otherwise beat down the people who tastelessly relate a most obvious description of his own cultural conduct. And also, being theater, he is distracting the public from his own Constitutionally treasonous conduct.
So, you accuse me of using “racist” iconography? Yup, I plead guilty. But let me ask you this, HOW am I using it? You cannot simply “get rid” of the negative aspects of racism (yes, there are also positive aspects) by simply ignoring race.
DanD
If he is a candidate set up by CIA or other intelligence agencies…it would be interesting to examine the unusual series of events on how he rose to power.
In at least two of his elections prior to president, candidates who were in front of him were eliminated by scandal. An examination of those peculiar circumstances might yeild more information or a pattern.
He won election as a state senator when other contestants were forced off the ballot.
During the primary for senator:
“Hull was beating Obama in double digits when, just three weeks before the primary, the Chicago Tribune broke a story that Hull’s wife had filled a restraining order against him in the runup to their divorce. Meanwhile, Obama was holding a press conference on domestic violence. Those in the know charge that the story was brought to the Tribune by former political writer, David Axelrod, who was, and still is, the mastermind behind Obama’s campaigns. Word is that the Tribune’s decision to release this juicy tidbit came down from “on high†and that the timing of that release and Obama’s media event were no coincidence.”
During the senate race:
“The Tribune sued to open the details of Ryan’s California divorce and child custody battle with his former wife Jeri. Both agreed to make their divorce papers public but wanted the child custody records sealed to protect their son. In late June, a Democrat judge in Los Angeles opted to release those records. Those five-year-old records revealed that Jeri had charged that Jack took her to sex clubs with the expectation they would have sex in public. The charge was unproven and the judge in the proceeding awarded additional custody rights to Jack, but the damage to his reputation forced him to resign late in the campaign.
Maryland resident Alan Keyes was brought in as a last-minute replacement for Ryan, but Keyes was viewed by the Illinois electorate as an interloper and self-destructed after a series of controversial remarks.”
I there some force at work here?
I have long known Obama to be who he is in actuality. I have predicted he will be the most war like president in U.S history.
http://bushplanet.blogspot.com/
http://bushplanet.blogspot.com/2007/01/november-8th-2006.html
http://bushplanet.blogspot.com/2006/11/barack-obama-just-another-crook.html
Brilliant piece, and Stu Piddy’s followup nails it. It’s so disheartening to hear otherwise intelligent folks on the radio like Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller STILL not getting it. After 8 years of Bush, how can anyone not fail to see through Obusha’s rhetoric at the Neocon plant he so obviously is?
I hope no one minds my dropping this in here, but the more coverage this gets, the more likely we are to bring some heat on the war profiteers/government, speak of with disgust, if more people realize that there are over one thousand architects and engineers, besides millions of others, who are calling FICTION on the government story of 9-11-01. Please, share with other news organizations if you can. Thank you all.I believe this is a pivotal moment in waking people up, here’s the scoop…
http://911blogger.com/node/22500
DanD
I agree with you. The only thing you left out is RAHMIE is the one driving the bus that his tool fool rides. Rahmie is a WARWHORE for the Zionist Empire, never missing a beat to shore up AIPACs influence.
Come now, Rose Hunter;
That thar is nothing more than CONSPIRACY rhetoric, and as all us FOXbots know, fascist (the marriage of corporate and government agendas) “conspiracy” is nothing more than an urban legend.
Rahm Emmanual is actually the life-support sustained body of an (otherwise) executed war criminal (or perhaps one of the “Boys from Brazil”) who then had the viral brain of Joe Lieberman transplanted into it. The “Joe Lieberman” you currently see on Capitol Hill’s government propaganda cameras nowadays is just a war-industries version of Disney animatronics that is frequently updated with the latest talking points by Rahm.
Emmanual’s primary mission is to always be within assassination range of Obama just in case he inadvertantly becomes too sympathetic with the genocidally slaughtered and ethnically cleansed true Semitic descendants of the family of Jesus in Palestine.
Furthermore, the Khazar-descended Jews of Tel Aviv certainly can’t let their White House-nigger get uppity at them now. I mean, for the alleged “Most Powerful Man on Earth,” Obama sure seems to enjoy it when Bibi bitch-slaps him now and again. But Obama seems to remain focused as he keeps OUR tax-paying, foriegn-aid-surrendering asses in the air.
DanD
blubonnet as more people “wake up ” to what 911 really was the chance of another more spectacular 911 increases .
rose hunter the “j” word is as toxic as the “n” word .But I agree with your comment and often wonder about the hidden steering committee behind the American “ship of state”.I think “Going rogue ” is not limited to Sarah Palin. And also wonder if retired intelligence personnel co-op with agents from other countries to enact hidden agenda’s .
Does McCain’s choice of Palin show dementia or “set up by CIA or other intelligence agencies.” ,Palin guaranteed Obamas win.
I think this is an interesting topic.Al Gore and John Kerry might not have been terrible candidates. But the way they came acoss was unbelievable.John Kerry riding a mororcycle out on Jay Leno’s show. Hoping to appeal to fifth graders?
They both gave up without a fight.Always seemed like something was not quite kosher there.
“kosher” LOL …so much influence for so few !
“Raise Growing Concerns” how about this story “From the people who got it wrong about 911,WMD’s,global finacal collapse,evolution etc “Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included””