White House Spokesperson Insists Obama Is The Most Transparent President In History, Because… Visitor Logs!
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | Jul 15, 2014
The rather astoundingly named Josh Earnest is the recently appointed press secretary of President Obama, and he’s kicked off his tenure with quite a whopper: insisting that, despite complaints from basically every corner, President Obama really is “the most transparent President in history.” As you may recall, President Obama promised upon election that he would be “the most open and transparent” President, and one of his first orders of business in the White House was to promise the same.
Of course, as many folks have been documenting for years, the reality has been anything but. The Obama administration has been ridiculously secretive for years, when it comes to FOIA requests, literally setting records in denying them. The NYT’s former executive editor, who has covered many administrations, has directly noted that the Obama administration was the most secretive she could recall. Even federal judges have regularly dinged the administration for refusing to hand over documents required by law. As Stephen Colbert has noted, the administration is really only good at the most transparent bullshit legally allowed.
In fact, just as Mr. Earnest was insisting that the Obama administration was so damn transparent, Mother Jones had a good article about how often the Obama administration was making use of the “state secrets privilege” to get lawsuits tossed out, such as in various no fly list challenges. In 2008, then candidate Obama insisted that the use of the state secrets privilege by the government was dangerous. But, now that he’s in charge, he’s quick to use it himself:
In 2008, Obama griped that the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege “more than any other previous administration” and used it to get entire lawsuits thrown out of court. Critics noted that deploying the state secrets privilege allowed the Bush administration to shut down cases that might have revealed government misconduct or caused embarrassment, including those regarding constitutionally dubious warrantless wiretapping and the CIA’s kidnapping and torture of Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman the government had mistaken for an alleged Al Qaeda leader with the same name. After Obama took office, his attorney general, Eric Holder, promised to significantly limit the use of this controversial legal doctrine. Holder vowed never to use it to “conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government.”
Despite this promise, Obama continued to assert the privilege to squelch cases about Bush-era abuses. In one instance, the Justice Department scuttled a lawsuit brought by a man who claimed he had been kidnapped by the CIA and had his penis and testicles cut with a scalpel in a Moroccan prison. And now Obama is broadening the use of this legal maneuver: In the past 18 months, the Obama administration has twice cited state secrets to prevent federal courts from considering lawsuits challenging its use of the no-fly list.
So, given all this evidence that the Obama administration is incredibly secretive, what could Earnest’s reasoning possibly be? Well, you see, President Obama has released his visitor logs at the White House. Because, you know, that’s what everyone really means when they talk about White House transparency.
Earnest noted that previous administrations had “gone to the Supreme Court” to prevent the release of White House visitor information, but that the Obama administration “releases it voluntarily on the Internet on a quarterly basis.”
“Reporters for years clamored to get access to fundraisers the president hosted or attended that were hosted in private homes,” Earnest continued. “Reporters now have access to those when this president goes to a private home.”
So, the President has made a few tiny concessions to transparency on issues that really don’t matter at all, but has doubled down on secrecy on the things that do actually matter.
Sure, I know that the Press Secretary’s job is to basically cover for the President and do whatever possible to defend the White House’s claims, no matter how bogus, but wouldn’t the world be better off if there were actually a tiny bit of honesty from such folks? They could admit that they’ve tried and failed. They could say that transparency promises seemed easier from the outside, but turned out to be more difficult in reality. They could admit that it’s still a work in progress. Any of those would at least acknowledge reality. Pretending reality isn’t reality doesn’t convince anyone. In fact, it just appears to be yet another example of the very non-transparency that everyone’s complaining about in the first place.
E. Ukraine open to ‘any dialogue’, wants to stop war ASAP – opposition leader
RT | July 16, 2014
A local resident near a house destroyed in the Ukrainian army’s artillery attack on Lugansk.(RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy)
Eastern Ukraine leaders want to stop war as soon as possible and are open to any dialogue, Donetsk People’s Republic PM Aleksandr Boroday said. He denied that they “ignored” a video conference with the Kiev side and mediators as reported by the OSCE.
Earlier on Wednesday one of Donetsk People’s Republic’s Vice Premiers reached an agreement with the OSCE mission about consultations via video link to be held on July 17, he added.
“I hope that they [consultations] will really take place. The format of these consultations we will discuss tonight [Wednesday night],” Aleksandr Boroday told Rossiya-1 TV channel.
“Literally an hour ago one of the representatives of our government, vice-PM Andrey Purgin, visited the OSCE mission and reached an agreement to hold this kind of consultation, not negotiations, I stress, tomorrow, possibly, in a videoconference format,” Boroday said.
Purgin has confirmed to Rossiya-24 TV that the talks will take place on Thursday. He said that he is going to represent Donestk region and Aleksey Koryakin, Chairman of the Supreme Council, will be taking part on behalf of Lugansk region.
Earlier, on July 15, the OSCE said that a video conference, involving opposition and the contact group, scheduled for that day “did not materialize”. The organization voiced concerns “about the fact that since June 27 [second round of trilateral consultations], no such consultations have taken place.”
Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic Alexander Boroday.(RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy)
The Trilateral Contact Group involves senior representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and OSCE members.
However, leaders of Lugansk and Donetsk say that they were not informed about the consultations and only learned about it from the OSCE’s statement that post factum accused them of ignoring the conference.
“We are really open to any kind of dialogue. Yes, we have significant military success, but with all that we really want to stop the war as soon as possible,” Boroday said.
But Boroday claims that Kiev has made no attempt to organize talks or consultations with the opposition in the east.
“OSCE representatives, some journalists and public men called me – everyone wanted to know when those consultations would take place,” he says. “But, actually, there were no attempts from Kiev to [organize] talks or consultations. I personally called Mr. Medvedchuk [leader of “Ukrainian Choice” political organization] and asked if there were going to be any kind of consultations. He said he was himself reading about that in newspapers.”
On June 27, the second round of trilateral consultations on implementing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s plan to restore peace to Ukraine’s south eastern regions took place.
The second round of consultations, followed the similar meeting between Ukrainian, Russian and OSCE representatives in Donetsk on June 23, when peaceful settlement of the conflict was discussed. The meeting was also attended by the former president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma and aimed at defining stages of a peace plan.
‘Shells were chasing them’: Four Palestinian children killed on beach by Israeli rockets
RT | July 16, 2014
Four Palestinian children were killed by rockets while playing football on Gaza beach, with local officials saying the attack came from an Israeli gunboat. Dozens of international journalists witnessed the tragedy.
“This is a cowardly crime,” said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry.
The children have been named as Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakaria Ahed Bakr, both aged 10, Mohamed Ramez Bakr, 11, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr, 9, and another boy remains in critical condition. All the victims were relatives.
“The kids were playing football on the beach,” Ahmed Abu Hassera, who witnessed the explosions along with dozens of foreign journalists located nearby, told Reuters. “When the first shell hit the land, they ran away but another shell hit them all. It looked as if the shells were chasing them.”
“We live by the coast. There was a headline on the news that four children were injured … so we went looking for the kids and we could not find them, so we came here to the hospital to look for them and we found them all, including my son … oh my God,” a man who introduced himself as the father of Zakaria, told NBC.
The Israeli Defense Forces have denied targeting the children, who came from the family of a fisherman whose shack on the beach was decimated by the strike.
“We do not target civilians, we target Hamas terrorists,” IDF representative Peter Lerner told RT.
“I have seen the footage of the incident, and indeed it does look tragic, and we will have to look into the circumstances.”
The strike brought the total of Palestinians killed by the Israeli counter-offensive to 214.
Israel Failed to Provide Connection between Targets and Military Activity – Report
By Chris Carlson | International Middle East Media Center | July 16, 2014
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has issued an information sheet stating that the interpretation presented by the Israeli forces spokesperson — that it is enough for a person to be involved in a military activity to render his home and his neighbors’ homes legitimate military targets without having to prove any connection between his activity and the house in which he and his family live — is unfounded and illegal.
The organization added, according to WAFA Palestinian News & Info Agency’s recent report:
“It is not a coincidence that the number of uninvolved civilians killed or injured by these bombings is growing. The law is meant to protect civilians and, unsurprisingly, violating it has lethal consequences. Euphemisms such as ‘surgical strikes’ or ‘operational infrastructure’ cannot hide the facts: illegal attacks of homes, which constitute punitive home demolition from the air, come at a dreadful cost in human life.”
The fact sheet details a discussion which would cast considerable doubt over the legality of Israel’s targeting of what it claims were houses belonging to Hamas operatives.
International humanitarian law defines a military target as follows:
“[…] military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” (Article 52 (2), Protocol I Additional to the Fourth Geneva Convention)
WAFA further reports that, according to the official interpretation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, objectives which, by their nature, make an effective contribution to hostile military action – such as weapon storage, military bases and communication centers used by the military – are considered military targets.
However, although civilian sites may serve as military bunkers or headquarters, and accordingly become legitimate military targets, the law states that if any doubt arises as to the use of a civilian site and its effective contribution to hostile military actions, it must be considered civilian.
Attacking any such structure must provide a definite military advantage.
Although the actuality of Gaza civilian houses contributing effectively to hostile military action was in fact doubted, Israeli forces targeted them anyway.
B’Tselem defines the aim of international humanitarian law as being:
“…to minimize harm to civilians under warfare and to restrict the warring parties… it is not open to any and all interpretations. The word of the law must be interpreted in its original spirit, in keeping with its overreaching aim: to provide maximum protection to civilians.”
According to the organization, the Israeli army spokesperson, over the course of the current operation, has changed the wording of statements concerning the bombings on Gaza, in an apparent attempt to retroactively match his reports of reality to the requirements of the law.
First statement (July 8): “Among the targets attacked were four homes of activists in the Hamas terror organization who are involved in terrorist activity and direct and carry out high-trajectory fire towards Israel…”.
The next day, another statement was issued which reported that the military had attacked additional homes of Hamas activists “which functioned as command and control infrastructure for the organization’ or as ‘a control center for advancing terrorism”.
The same evening, the spokesperson stopped reporting that homes were destroyed, stating instead that “the operational infrastructure of a senior Hamas functionary was attacked”.
Gaza faces water crisis amid Israeli strikes: Red Cross
Press TV – July 16, 2014
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are without water as a result of Israel’s repeated airstrikes on the enclave.
The ICRC said on Wednesday that Gaza’s already vulnerable water system is being destroyed after days of deadly airstrikes by Israel.
“Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are now without water. Within days, the entire population of the Strip may be desperately short of water,” Jacques de Maio, the head of the ICRC delegation in the Palestinian occupied territories said.
“If they do not stop, the question is not if, but when an already beleaguered population will face an acute water crisis,” he added.
ICRC water and sanitation expert Guillaume Pierrehumbert also warned that the coastal enclave’s water system had been deteriorating for years, saying “the latest attacks are the last straw.”
The water crisis comes as temperatures are on the rise in Gaza.
Since July 8, Israeli warplanes have struck more than 1,300 targets across Gaza, which is home to around 1.8 million Palestinians.
At least 205 Palestinians have been killed and 1,500 others wounded since last week. Reports show that more than 30 percent of people killed in Gaza were women and children.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, denying the Palestinian people there of their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.
Gaza also often faces electricity and fuel shortages.