Abe Lincoln, Racist Fascist?
By MICHAEL DICKINSON | CounterPunch | February 9, 2013
I’m going to the cinema tonight in Istanbul to see Steven Spielberg’s biopic, ‘Lincoln’. The other choices of films in English this week are ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. I’ll catch them later. I’m not expecting much from ‘Lincoln’ apart from some excellent performances and great camera-work. From what I’ve heard, we’re presented with the standard loveable father figure that Americans are indoctrinated from childhood to believe in – the sanctified image of the simple country lawyer from Illinois who heroically defended his country and freed the slaves – not the unscrupulous fascist that he really was.
The fact of the matter is that ‘Massa Lincoln’ was a die-hard racist. When he said “all men are created equal” he meant all WHITE men.
This quotation from a speech he made in Charleston in 1858 shows how he really felt:
“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.”
Over and over again he stated that he was opposed to equality of the races. He was not an abolitionist, he denigrated and distanced himself from them. In 1862 in a letter to the New York Tribune Editor he wrote:
“If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the union.”
And in the same year, addressing a meeting of freed black leaders at the White House, Lincoln said:
“But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”
Not only was Lincoln a racist who supported the noxious pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African-Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North, he was a white-supremacist whose projected plan for dealing with racial problems was ‘colonization’ – the deportation of all American blacks to Africa, Haiti, or Central America – anywhere but the United States, which would be for whites only. If Lincoln had had his way there would be no black people in America today.
The idea of deporting the blacks from the country was that of his fellow-fascist friend Henry Clay, upon whose plan, ‘The American System’, or ‘Everyone for Himself at the Expense of his Neighbour!, the Lincoln regime had been built – consolidating massive power in the hands of a small cabal of manufacturers, bankers, and politicians at the expense of the rest of society, and which called for a regimen of high tariffs, federal support for “internal improvements” such as road building and railroads, corporate welfare, and a national banking system based on fiat money. ‘Honest Abe’ eulogized Clay as “the beau ideal of a statesman,” noting that: “During my whole political life, I loved and revered [Clay] as a teacher and leader.”
In fact, despite President Obama’s reverence for Lincoln as the ‘Great Emancipator’, it doesn’t take much research to uncover him as he really was – a political opportunist, a corrupt corporate insider and a lifelong mercantilist.
Lincoln ruled over an oppressive police state under which a military draft was implemented; income tax was introduced for the first time to help finance a Civil War that killed 620,000 young men; dissenters were imprisoned without trial; ‘habeus corpus’ was suspended in some regions; and legal documents were authored which paved the way for corporations to becoming recognized as the equivalents of “legal persons.”
Before his career as a politician Abraham Lincoln had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including “Big Rail”- the prevailing corporate interests of his day, a governmental pie of railroad subsidies in which all the big Republican Party Cats had their fingers. As president he championed protectionism and corporate welfare schemes where the force of law was used to benefit a select group of politicians and their cronies, signing legislation that virtually gave away miles of public land to the railroads for free. His son, Robert Todd Lincoln, went on to a successful career as the president of the Pullman Car Company.
It’s no secret that President Obama is a big fan of ‘Honest Abe’. He made the announcement that he was running for president in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps of the Old Capitol, where Lincoln was a legislator; he traveled to Washington by retracing the final stages of the train trip Lincoln made to assume his presidency; the Bible last used for Lincoln’s oath of office was used for his swearing-in; the theme of his inauguration was taken from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “A New Birth of Freedom”.
Lerone Bennett Jr, executive editor of popular black-oriented Ebony magazine describes the whitewashing of Abraham Lincoln as “one of the most extraordinary efforts I know to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history.”
How can Obama support such a charlatan racist as his role model? Is it because he exists in a political environment largely inherited from the Lincoln era where enriching oneself and one’s friends while hiding behind a smokescreen of “humanitarian” propaganda is the norm – a government of the poor by the rich and for the rich?
Although he has never been really poor in his own life himself, in his autobiography an admiring Obama wrote: “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat – in all this, he reminds me of my own struggles. I find him a very wise man. There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.”
But what would Lincoln have thought about the idea of a black man as the president of the United States of America? Most likely he would have been astounded – and appalled.
Michael Dickinson can be contacted at his website – http://yabanji.tripod.com/
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Obama and Co. Make Up the Law as They Kill
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford | February 6, 2013
Unlike the bombast that characterized the Bush administration’s assaults on U.S. and international law, the Obama regime tends to dribble out its rationales for gutting the Bill of Rights and every notion of global legality. This president prefers to create a fog – let’s call it the fog of his war against human rights – as he arrogates to himself the power to perpetually imprison or to summarily execute anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. Obama assures us such authority is constitutionally rooted – it’s in there, believe me, he tells us – but he never produces legal chapter and verse to prove that presidential dictatorship is lawful. Instead, we get dribs and drabs of the administration’s position from lawyers defending Obama’s preventive detention law in the courts, or from informal statements by the attorney general, or even little tidbits gleaned from an Obama conversation with comedian Jon Stewart.
The latest hors d’oeuvre to be dished out comes in the form of a leak. I say “dished out” because leaked documents are commonly placed in public view by the administration in power, to test the political waters. This leaked Justice Department “white paper” appears to have been drawn up after the execution-by-drone of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen. It justifies the killing of anyone occupying a position of status in al-Qaida, or with the ever-changing universe of groups said to be “associated” with al-Qaida. The document stretches the definition of “imminent threat” to cover anyone engaged in activities directed against the U.S., whether or not an actual operation is planned or in progress. Most interestingly, the white paper empowers Obama to delegate the kill-at-will authority to “an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.” Which has a certain logic, since dictators certainly have the power to delegate the carrying out of their unjust acts to whomever they choose.
Eleven U.S. senators are asking for further clarification of the administration’s legal position. But that is just more fog, since the Congress overwhelmingly passed Obama’s preventive detention law – twice!! – a law based on the same assumption that due process of law does not apply when the president says it’s wartime. Therefore, the commander-in-chief can lock up any American, without charge or trial, forever, or until he declares peace. The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, has made the administration’s position clear enough. Due process, he says, does not necessarily mean access to the judicial process – meaning, a trial. The process is whatever the president or the nearest “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government” says it is. Obama had redefined war, itself. The president told the Congress, after bombing Libya for eight months, that by his definition – which is the only one that counts – no state of war exists unless Americans become casualties, even if the U.S. kills tens of thousands, or millions. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of saying that the arc of history bends towards justice. In the long term, that may be true. But Martin’s arc is not bending towards justice under this administration. It bends towards fascism, with a Black presidential face.
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Related article
- White Paper Asserts Obama Administration May Kill Americans Without Due Process (news.firedoglake.com)
Justice Department White Paper Details Rationale for Targeted Killing of Americans
Document Outlines Government’s Claimed Authority to Kill American Citizens Outside Combat Zones
ACLU | February 4, 2013
NEW YORK – A Justice Department white paper argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of American citizens that the government believes are affiliated with a terrorist organization, according to the document posted tonight on NBCNews.com. The white paper summarizes a memo prepared in 2010 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to justify the targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki.
“This is a profoundly disturbing document, and it’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority – the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.
“But this briefing paper is not a substitute for the 50-page legal memo on which it’s based. When the executive branch seeks to give itself the unilateral authority to kill its own citizens, a summary of its argument is no substitute for the argument itself. Among other things, we need to know if the limits the executive purports to impose on its killing authority are as loosely defined as in this summary, because if they are, they ultimately mean little. President Obama rightly released the Bush-era OLC torture memos and he should now hold his own administration to the same standard by releasing its killing memo.”
Tomorrow, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights will file a court brief arguing against the government’s attempt to dismiss their lawsuit challenging the targeted killing of Al-Awlaki and two other Americans in Yemen in 2011, Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman and Samir Khan.
The OLC memo summarized by the white paper is one of the documents sought by the ACLU’s pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. That case was dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York, and last Friday the ACLU filed a notice of appeal. The government argued that the requested documents cannot be released, despite the fact that government officials have talked publicly on numerous occasions about Al-Awlaki’s killing and the targeted killing program in general.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is currently considering another FOIA lawsuit filed by the ACLU seeking other information on the U.S. targeted killing program, including its legal basis, scope, and number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. The court heard oral argument in September.
An in-depth analysis of the DOJ white paper in a blog post written by ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer is at:
www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/justice-department-white-paper-details-rationale-targeted-killing-americans
Information on the ACLU’s targeted killing lawsuits is at:
www.aclu.org/national-security/targeted-killings
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Legal Review of Presidential Power to Engage in Preemptive Cyber Strikes to Remain Secret
By Kevin Gosztola | FDL | February 4, 2013
A recently published story from the New York Times reports a “secret legal review” has been conducted on the use of cyber warfare by the United States. It concluded President Barack Obama has “the broad power to order a preemptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad.”
Unnamed officials involved in the review inform that the administration is moving in the coming weeks to “approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyber attack.” These rules, according to David Sanger and Thom Shanker, will “govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States.” If the president approves a strike, the government will be able to “attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code — even if there is no declared war.”
It further adds, “The Pentagon would not be involved in defending against ordinary cyberattacks on American companies or individuals, even though it has the largest array of cybertools. Domestically, that responsibility falls to the Department of Homeland Security, and investigations of cyberattacks or theft are carried out by the FBI.”
The Times story points out the rules—like the rules “governing drone strikes”—are highly classified and will be kept secret. The officials from the administration providing details spoke “on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the record.” They selectively leaked a scant amount of details on evolving cyber warfare policy to allay concerns about this power the administration is claiming.
One official claimed the US had been “restrained in its use of cyberweapons” and said, “There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done.” A “senior American official” said cyberweapons were as powerful as nuclear weapons and “should be unleashed only on the direct orders of the commander in chief.” The official added the decision to launch cyber operations will rarely be made by someone at a level “below the president,” which means “‘automatic’ retaliation if a cyber attack on America’s infrastructure is detected” has reportedly been “ruled out.”
The story suggests the Obama administration had their best and brightest minds think about preemptive attack and the ramifications of launching such strikes on a country. “One senior official” said a country could “claim it was innocent” and undermine the “justification for the attack” because it would be “very hard to provide evidence to the world that you hit some deadly dangerous computer code.” They also thought through “‘what constitutes reasonable and proportionate force’ in halting or retaliating against a cyber attack,” according to another official.
The leaking of details on the “secret legal review” comes just over a week after the Washington Post reported the FBI was engaging in a fishing expedition for journalistic communications as part of an investigation into the sources of leaks on Stuxnet or Olympic Games, the cyber warfare against Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities that was launched by Obama (which Sanger published details on in a major story in June of last year and also described in detail in his book, Confront & Conceal).
It is a bit appalling that officials are speaking without authorization when it is known the FBI has spent the past six or seven months prying into the communications of government employees, who were sources for the Times story.
Back in November, the Post reported the White House was engaged in “the most extensive” effort “to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” This “secret legal review” may or may not be a result of this effort that was authorized by Presidential Policy Directive 20 to make it possible for the United States military to respond more aggressively to “thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks.” But, given what Ellen Nakashima reported, the secret directive was to “establish” a “broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies.” It was also to, for the first time, make “a distinction between network defense and cyber operations to guide officials charged with making often rapid decisions when confronted with threats.”
As I wrote, the “secret policy” was to map out a process for vetting “operations outside government and defense networks” and ensuring “US citizens’ and foreign allies’ data and privacy are protected and international laws of war are followed.” As one senior administration official told the Post, “What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations…Network defense is what you’re doing inside your own networks. . . .Cyber operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes.”
On May 30, 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported the Pentagon had “concluded that computer sabotage from another country” could “constitute an act of war.” WSJ suggested this would open the door to responding to sabotage with “traditional military force.” These details came from a formal cyber strategy the Pentagon had put together for responding to cyber threats to critical infrastructure. One imperious military official was quoted, “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”
About a week ago, the Pentagon announced it would be expanding its “cyber security unit.” Glenn Greenwald detailed how the force that was expected to go from 900 to over 4000 individuals would continue a trend of “disguising aggression as ‘defense.’”
The Pentagon now has a policy, a “cyber security” policy authorized by a presidential directive has now pushed for the development of policy and a “secret legal review” has grappled with questions and determined preemptive strikes on countries’ infrastructure could be carried out if the president orders such attacks.
What we know about the legal questions Obama has grappled with is all secret. The development of “cybersecurity” policy or cyber warfare policies indicate a further expansion of the body of secret law under Obama.
The government has secret legal opinions on when it can and cannot kill US citizens with drones. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has made requests to view these opinions but the Obama administration has refused to let him see targeted killing memos, even though he is by law supposed to view them so he can conduct oversight. The ACLU has requested these memos be released but a judge ruled that the government was within its right under FOIA to not release the legal interpretations.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court makes rulings authorizing warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). Despite efforts by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon to amend the reauthorization of the FAA at the end of 2012, this was rejected by the Obama administration (even though the administration had previously indicated to Wyden it would be open to a process of making the court’s secret rulings public in some form).
The government also has secret interpretations of at least one section of the PATRIOT Act—Section 215. The ACLU’s Alexander Abdo said they make it possible for “the government to get secret orders from a special surveillance court (the FISA Court) requiring Internet service providers and other companies to turn over ‘any tangible things.’” (Not to mention the fact that there are national security directives issued by President George W. Bush that to this day remain secret and could have been released at least in summary form.)
The administration’s argument for keeping the “rules” or legal basis is that sources or methods would be revealed that would make it easier for adversaries to attack the United States. That is simply an argument to provide cover for the fact that the government wants wide latitude to be able to respond without being constrained by the law or politics. It is possible to inform the public of when the administration thinks the government has the power to launch attacks and go through several hypothetical scenarios. The reality is the government just does not want to do that because, if the scenario occurred and the administration responded differently, there could be controversy if it was found out they did not follow the “rules.”
Finally, like with the drone program, President Barack Obama is presiding over the creation and development of a power that previous presidents never imagined having. The national security state is effectively appointing him and all future presidents the proverbial judge, jury and executioner when it comes to cyber warfare.
There is no indication that any group of members in Congress or judicial body will have to approve of a preemptive strike before it is carried out. As has become typical, the president wants to be able to conduct war without needing authorization.
The policy will expand the imperial presidency and the public and civil society organizations, which have a distinct interest in knowing what the government is doing, will be kept in the dark on what is legal and illegal in cyber operations. The Congress will barely make any effort to defend its right to provide oversight of this new power. And any future details on this power will mostly come from selective leaks provided by officials, who do not think they will face repercussions for talking to the press. The policy itself, the rules for cyber war, will remain concealed.
‘US a police state, Obama consciously allows torture’ – CIA veteran John Kiriakou
RT | February 1, 2013
Ten years ago, the idea of the US government spying on its citizens, intercepting their emails or killing them with drones was unthinkable. But now it’s business as usual, says John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent and torture whistleblower.
Kiriakou is now awaiting a summons to start a prison sentence. One of the first to confirm the existence of Washington’s waterboarding program, he was sentenced last week to two-and-a-half years in jail for revealing the name of an undercover agent. But even if he had another chance, he would have done the same thing again, Kiriakou told RT.
RT: The judge, and your critics all seem to believe you got off lightly. Would you say you got off lightly?
JK: No, I would not say I got off lightly for a couple of very specific reasons. First of all, my case was not about leaking, my case was about torture. When I blew the whistle on torture in December 2007 the justice department here in the US began investigating me and never stopped investigating me until they were able to patch together a charge and force me into taking a plea agreement. And I’ll add another thing too, when I took the plea in October of last year, the judge said that she thought the plea was fair and appropriate. But once the courtroom was packed full of reporters last Friday she decided that it was not long enough and if she had had the ability to she would have given me ten years.
RT: And why did you, a decorated CIA officer, take such a strong stance against an agency policy? Did you not consider that there might be some come-back?
JK: I did. I took a strong stance and a very public one and that’s what got me into trouble. But honestly the only thing I would do differently is I would have hired an attorney before blowing the whistle. Otherwise I believe firmly even to this day I did the right thing.
RT: You have called it ironic that the first person to be convicted with regards to the torture program is the man who shed light on it. Do you believe the others, who put the program together, will ever face justice?
JK: I don’t actually. I think that president Obama just like president Bush has made a conscious decision to allow the torturers, to allow the people who conceived of the tortures and implemented the policy, to allow the people who destroyed the evidence of the torture and the attorneys who used specious legal analysis to approve of the torture to walk free. And I think that once this decision has been made – that’s the end of it and nobody will be prosecuted, except me.
RT: When you initially came out against torture, you said it was impractical and inefficient. Did you consider it immoral initially?
JK: I said in 2002 that it was immoral. When I returned from Pakistan to CIA headquarters early in the summer 2002, I was asked by a senior officer in the CIA’s counter-terrorist center if I wanted to be trained in the use of torture techniques, and I told him that I had a moral problem with these techniques. I believed that they were wrong and I didn’t want to have anything to do with the torture program.
RT: It’s no secret that Obama’s administration has been especially harsh on whistleblowers. But can the US afford leniency, in these security-sensitive times?
JK: I think this is exactly what the problem is. In this post 9/11 atmosphere that we find ourselves in we have been losing our civil liberties incrementally over the last decade to the point where we don’t even realize how much of a police state the United States has become.
Ten years ago the thought of the National Security Agency spying on American citizens and intercepting their emails would have been anathema to Americans and now it’s just a part of normal business.
The idea that our government would be using drone aircraft to assassinate American citizens who have never seen the inside of a courtroom, who have never been charged with a crime and have not had due process which is their constitutional right would have been unthinkable. And it is something now that happens every year, every so often, every few weeks, every few months and there is no public outrage. I think this is a very dangerous development.
RT: Obama’s tough stance, and harsh punishments for whistleblowers, has sent a message. Is he winning his fight against those who speak out?
JK: I don’t think he is winning this fight against whistleblowers, at least not over the long term, and I’ll tell you why.
President Obama has now charged seven people with violations of the Espionage Act. All previous presidents in American history combined only charged three people with violating the Espionage Act. And the Espionage Act is a WWI-era act that was meant to deter German saboteurs during that First World War. And now it is being used to silence critics of the government.
But so far all seven of these cases that have made their way into a courtroom have either collapsed of have been dismissed, including mine. All of the three espionage charges against me were dropped.
So, I think frankly the Obama administration is cheapening the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act should be used to prosecute spies and traitors, not to prosecute whistleblowers or people who are exercising their first amendment right to free speech.
RT: Do we still need whistleblowers? Are we going to see more of them coming out?
JK: I think we will see more whistleblowers and I think we need whistleblowers now more than ever before. Whether it’s in national security or whether it is in the banking industry, the American people have a right to know when there is evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. If the Justice Department is not going to prosecute these cases, at the very least the American people need to know.
Obama’s Playbook: Still Killing Outside the Lines
By Matthew Harwood, ACLU | January 30, 2013
To hear the Obama administration tell it, through anonymous leaks to the press of course, the United States’ “targeted killing” program will soon be bound by clear and “more stringent” rules before a drone strike gets the green light. This counterterrorism “playbook,” so says the administration, will institutionalize the process for the remote-controlled killing program and keep it within the rule of law.
But that isn’t true for three reasons, Chris Anders, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU, explained to PBS’s NewsHour on Wednesday night. First, secret rules are inconsistent with the rule of law, which is predicated on everyone knowing the rules. Second, the Obama administration’s playbook rules will not apply to CIA drone strikes in Pakistan for at least a year if not more, according to the Post. Third, and most importantly, the rules undergirding the program, secret or not, violate the Constitution and international law.
Anders noted the Kafkaesque nature of the secrecy during the program. “To say we follow the rule of law, but we don’t even know what the rules are, and then the rules don’t apply to the biggest player is a little bit of a joke.”
Drone strikes occur frequently inside Pakistan, the only country in which the CIA is exempt from the secret rules. And contrary to the claims of CIA Director nominee John Brennan, arguably the most important cog in the remote-controlled killing machine, drone strikes do kill civilian bystanders, including children. In total, about 3,000 people, including 176 children, have been killed by over 300 drone strikes in Pakistan, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Although we’re not at war with Pakistan, Pakistanis feel under attack from the United States. “Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning,” a recent report, Living Under Drones, explained. “Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.” The impact as well as the legality of these kinds of drone attacks, and the larger “targeted killing” toolkit, is now the focus of a U.N. investigation.
Nevertheless, President Obama frequently makes reference to the importance of the rule of law in guiding our national security decisions.
“We will defend our people, and uphold our values through strength of arms, and the rule of law,” he said during his inaugural speech on Monday. “We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully. Not because we are naive about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.”
Obama’s remote-controlled killing program, however, continues to instill suspicion and fear rather than lift it. It’s a dangerous legacy for a program that has become an illegal hallmark of his administration.
Related article
- New U.S. Counterterrorism Playbook to Exclude Pakistan from Drone “Kill” Rules (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Top Executives at Bailed-Out Companies Keep Getting the Big Bucks, with a Wink from Treasury Dept.
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 30, 2013
Executives of corporations bailed out by the U.S. government received more than $6 million in raises last year, despite guidelines by the Department of the Treasury that are supposed to limit such salaries.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (SIGTAR) accused Treasury officials of ignoring the guidelines and approving raises sought by the companies.
An extra $6.2 million was awarded to just 18 employees at General Motors (GM), Ally Financial and American International Group (AIG), which received a total of more than $250 billion in bailout funds. This included a $1 million raise for the chief executive of an AIG division, Chartis, and $200,000 for an employee of Ally’s Residential Capital—which filed for bankruptcy only weeks later.
In 2012, the Office of the Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation approved pay packages of $3 million or more for 54% of the 69 top executives of AIG, GM and Ally.
Christy Romero, special inspector general for TARP, criticized the Treasury Department for not holding the line on executive compensation. “Treasury cannot look out for taxpayers’ interests if it continues to rely to a great extent on the pay proposed by companies that have historically pushed back on pay limits,” Romero said in her report (pdf).
She also accused Treasury of not making “meaningful reform to its processes.”
“Lacking criteria and an effective decision-making process, Treasury risks continuing to award executives of bailed-out companies excessive cash compensation without good cause,” she added.
Patricia Geoghegan, Treasury’s acting special master for compensation, rejected Romero’s conclusions, saying the audit was filled with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations of data provided to the inspector general.
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Audio feed cut during 9/11 trial hearing, prompting suspicions of external censorship
RT | January 29, 2013
The first day of a pretrial hearing for five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks was swirling with intrigue on Monday after the audio feed at a Guantanamo war crimes court was abruptly cut off.
The incident prompted the military judge to ask whether someone outside the courtroom was censoring the hearing.
Observers were listening to the trial behind a glass window when the feed was suddenly cut. The audio went silent when David Nevin, a lawyer for Khalid Sheik Mohammed – the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks – asked if the lawyers and judges needed to meet in closed session before considering a request by the defense.
In previous hearings for alleged Al-Qaeda operatives sentenced to CIA prisons, a court security officer controlled a button which muffled audio to spectators when secret information was disclosed. During the censoring process, a red light flashes and observers hear nothing but static.
But that wasn’t the case this time around, as the judge’s reaction made clear once the sound was restored moments later.
“If some external body is turning things off, if someone is turning the commissions off under their own views of what things ought to be, with no reason or explanation, then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off,” Army Colonel James Pohl told the courtroom.
Pohl seemed to be addressing the prosecution team, saying that Nevin had only referred to the caption of an unclassified document asking the judge to preserve as evidence the secret CIA prisons where the defendants say they were tortured, Reuters reported.
Nevin and the other defense attorneys said they wanted to know whether there was a third party monitoring the proceedings, and whether that entity could be listening to private communications between the lawyers and their clients, the Washington Post reported.
Justice Department lawyer Joanna Baltes said she could explain the reason behind the audio cut – but not in public. Pohl said he would meet in closed session with the lawyers and reopen the public part of the hearing on Tuesday. If the reason behind the cut could be explained to the public, he would do so then.
Mohammed and his four co-defendants are accused of training and aiding the hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.
They could be sentenced to death if convicted on charges including terrorism, attacking civilians and murdering 2,976 people.
The men were among the suspected Al-Qaeda captives who were moved across borders without judicial review, and held and interrogated in secret CIA prisons overseas during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The CIA has acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to the controversial interrogation practice known as waterboarding. The defendants also claimed they were subjected to threats, sleep deprivation and being chained in painful positions.
The defense lawyers have argued that the CIA’s treatment of the defendants constituted illegal pretrial punishment, and “outrageous government misconduct” that could justify dismissal of the charges, or at the very least spare the defendants from execution if convicted.
There are currently 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, including Mohammed. In 2009, US President Barack Obama ordered the prison to be shut within a year. However, it is still open and operational.
Guantanamo remaining open is yet another example of Congress overpowering the president – the prison was bundled together with the National Defense Authorization Act, which serves as the overall US defense budget. Obama has the power to veto the entire act, but not to individually challenge the administration of Guantanamo Bay.
Obama has threatened such a veto several times, but backed down on every occasion.
US says will quit joint rights working group with Russia
Press TV – January 26, 2013
The United States has announced it will withdraw from a joint rights working group with Russia.
“The working group was not working,” US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Friday.
The working group was part of the US-Russian Bilateral Presidential Commission established in 2009 by US President Barack Obama and his then-Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to “reset” US-Russian ties.
Nuland said the Russian government’s recent restrictions on civil society prompted Washington to take the measure.
In July, Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a bill, forcing non-governmental organizations (NGO) involved in political activity with foreign financing to be classed as “foreign agents.”
The new legislation would force the NGOs to publish a report of their activities twice a year and carry out an annual financial audit.
“These new restrictions the Russian government is placing on civil society were increasingly calling into question whether maintaining this government-to-government mechanism was useful or appropriate,” she added.
However, Nuland said Washington would continue to work with Russia on different issues, including defense, counterterrorism, and nuclear security.
On Friday, Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s point man on human rights issues, said that the US State Department had not informed its counterparts in Moscow of the US withdrawal from the working group.
Nuland also lashed out at Russia’s lower house of parliament for passing a Friday draft law banning “homosexual propaganda.”
The United States is “deeply concerned” about the legislation, Nuland said.
Relations between Russia and the United States have deteriorated over the past months.
Last year, Washington angered Moscow by implementing the Magnitsky Act that imposed visa restrictions on and froze the US bank accounts of Russian officials who were allegedly linked to the death of Russian lawyer Magnitsky at a Russian prison in 2009.
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Book Review
Jeffrey Epstein: A Jewish Individual?
The Occidental Observer | February 5, 2023
One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union between Intelligence and Organized Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein (Volume 1 & 2) by Whitney Webb
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e., “intelligence”) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance.”[1]
Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell is locked away in prison, and the thought-makers of our world seem keen to let the more explosive parts of the scandal dissipate from the public consciousness. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, Epstein and Maxwell were little more than well-connected socialites who ran a sex-trafficking ring for the rich and the powerful, and the focus has shifted instead to the criminal and civil cases seeking to achieve redress for the victims of sexual abuse.
On occasion some newspaper articles will mention the hidden cameras littered across Epstein’s properties, others the reams of CDs and hard drives found within them during the FBI raids. Altogether missing from the Netflix documentaries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich [2020] and Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich [2022]) or the articles that spend their time narrowly focusing on the links between Epstein and Bill Gates, is the acknowledgement of the true nature of Epstein himself and the ultimate purpose of this sex-trafficking of minors — a sexual blackmail operation.
Not everyone is cowardly enough to let these controversial aspects lie untouched, as the newly released two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail by independent reporter Whitney Webb seeks to blow wide open this media-enforced blackout. Utilizing primarily open-source information (that is, publicly accessible information such as books, newspapers articles and government reports),[2] Webb’s book delves into the life and times of Jeffrey Epstein and his deep ties to Jewish billionaires and Israeli intelligence. … continue
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