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Ukraine and Georgia: Different Approaches

By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | April 30, 2014

In October, 2009, less than one year after becoming President, the affable Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people” and for citing a “new climate in international politics.”

At the time, it was problematic exactly what the new President had achieved to deserve the esteemed Prize and most commentators overlooked the premature nature of the award suggesting, that the President offered hope for the future as the Nobel declaration stated “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.”

Since it is now embarrassingly obvious that the Nobel Committee misjudged the new President, the Committee, in the future, might consider basing the Peace Prize on actual accomplishments regarding the pursuit of peace rather than specious possibilities.

Two months later, the President offered a hint of what was to come when he accepted the award in Oslo delivering one of his customary rhetorical speeches entitled “A Just and Lasting Peace.” In retrospect, that speech is even more alarming today than it was five years ago as we now know what the President meant when he referred to ‘future interventions’ and went on to defend the notion of a ‘just war’ characterized when “certain conditions were met”: if it is “waged as a last resort or in self-defense”; if the “force used is proportional”; and if, whenever possible, “civilians are spared from violence.”

One inescapable irony is that Peace Prize winner Obama has instigated, continued and encouraged more war and militarism around the planet (including a Tuesday morning ‘kill list’ review,  combat troops in Africa, a “pivot to Asia,’ “absolute’ support for Japan in its conflict with China over an insignificant, uninhabited pile of rocks, Marines in northern Australia, combat troops in Poland, Estonia and Lithuania, drone attacks on civilians, extra-judicial assassinations, proxy wars in Libya and Syria, increased constitutional violations and surveillance while continuing Bush’s war on terrorism in the Middle East and  in Guantanamo) than the notoriously pro-war George W. Bush accomplished even in his most hawkish moments.

During his recent trip to Asia, the President warned North Korea, China and Russia, all in one 48 hour period to follow US dictates or else –  not bad for a day’s work, if you want to be to known as the world’s greatest purveyor-of-war and violence.

Despite striking similarities, the 2008 five day war between Russia, South Ossetia and Georgia offers an insight into how the belligerent Bush Administration pursued a different approach in Georgia as compared to Obama’s US-generated conflict in Ukraine causing the ultimate secession of Crimea. One obvious parallel is that Bush, already weakened by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, was an unpopular lame duck at home during the Georgia conflict while Obama, with a steady disapproval rating, is no longer viewed as a skilled leader to be trusted with keeping the peace.

One distinct dissimilarity is that Russia did not attempt a coup to oust Georgia’s democratically elected Mikheil Saakashvili in 2008 as the US did in Ukraine – nor did the Bush Administration overreact with a military response or economic sanctions against Moscow.

While Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, all considered ‘autonomous’ regions with historic and cultural connections to Russia, yet located within the borders of Ukraine and Georgia, respectively; the Bush and Obama Administrations, both dominated by a neo-con foreign policy, chose substantially different responses for the urge to secede.  Despite their rationale, one might almost be tempted to applaud the Bushies, no heroes in my book, for having better recognized the political realities of another grand war.

From the time of the 1917 Russian revolution, the Ossetians were on the side of the Bolsheviks and later South Ossetia, a thumb-print of a country surrounded mostly by Georgia with North Ossetia on its western border, became an autonomous region within the Soviet Republic of Georgia. By the early 1990’s, as the USSR was unraveling, South Ossetia’s demand to formally secede as an autonomous, independent state was declared illegal by Georgia. By 1992, tensions with Abkhazia, Georgia’s neighbor along the Black Sea and already an autonomous region with Russian roots, escalated as both regions went to war with Georgia.  Both regions, like Crimea, so small, so insignificant yet so strategically vital to Russia as NATO buffers.

By 1992, a Russian-brokered ceasefire was in effect in South Ossetia with a peacekeeping force in place as a Constitution was adopted forming the Republic of South Ossetia.  Abkhazia declared its formal independence from Georgia and adopted its Constitution in 1994.

At the April, 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, NATO enlargement was a significant agenda item including US-proposed admission of Georgia and Ukraine with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister warning that membership would be a ‘huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived to oppose the US deployment of missile defense shields in Poland and Czechoslovakia and the entry of Georgia and Ukraine and while Russia observed the process, the depth of its long-term apprehensions and also its legitimate right to equal security fell on deaf ears. While the US had sponsored Georgia and Ukraine for membership, France and Germany, with continued energy supply issues from Gazprom, resisted US pressure and opposed affiliation for the time being. Both Georgia and Ukraine were short-listed to receive a NATO Membership Action Plan in preparation for eventual membership.

The appeal of a better life under the IMF and NATO did little to convince South Ossetia and Abkhazia which still objected to Georgia’s push for reunification. By August 7, 2008, after a July visit by US State Department Secretary Condoleeza Rice and a series of clashes with south Ossetia forces, there is little dispute in the historical record that Georgian President Saakashvili, well-known as a combustible personality and hot-head, initiated an invasion into South Ossetia. Russian troops responded by advancing into South Ossetia to defend its peacekeepers.

In “A Little War that Shook the World,” (not to be confused with “Ten Days that Shook the World” by John Reed) former State Department NATO Enlargement official Ron Asmus confirmed that on multiple occasions, Saaskashvili was warned by US officials to not precipitate a crisis or initiate any confrontation with Russia. Asmus relates that on a 2005 visit to Georgia, President Bush personally told Saaskashvili ‘don’t do it.”

Whether Saaskashvili misread the signals or there was a green light from the US in support of military action, the fact is that the Bush Administration did not respond militarily; presumably with an awareness that the region was not significant enough to be worth a potential war with Russia and that the NATO pledge of ‘all for one, and one for all’ did not apply to  non-NATO nations.

On September 4, Vice President Dick Cheney visited Georgia announcing a one billion dollar aid package to assist in “work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory” as Russia signed a pact with both countries to maintain a 3,800 military force in each country. On August 26, 2008, Russian President Medvedev signed a decree recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states after which Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Russia.

The author of the EU’s Tagliavini Report (Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini) on the origins of the war determined that Georgia did not to have the right of self-defence in regard to attacks by Ossetian secessionist forces and that Georgia’s ‘excessive use of force” violated the UN Charter. And further, although Russian forces did not penetrate into what it considers to be sovereign Georgian territory and since South Ossetia and Abkhazia are considered regions within Georgia, Tagliavini concluded that Russia did not have the right to invade Georgia to protect its members of the international peacekeeping force.

Today, Abkhazia remains a ‘disputed’ territory and neither Abkhazia or South Ossetia are recognized as independent states but as sovereign territory belonging to Georgia.  Currently, NATO and Georgian officials have met to discuss membership as early as September, 2014 – sure to trigger additional international turmoil. Delegations of South Ossetia and Georgia are meeting currently for another round of Russia-EU-OSCE mediated talks with the South Ossetians due to raise ‘demonstrative and provocative border violations on the part of Georgia.”

Renee Parsons was a staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives and a lobbyist on nuclear energy issues with Friends of the Earth.  in 2005, she was elected to the Durango City Council and served as Councilor and Mayor. Currently, she is a member of the Treasure Coast ACLU Board.

May 1, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The B61 Family of Nuclear Bombs

By Hans M. Kristensen* | April 27, 2014

… The Obama administration is about to give birth to the newest member of the B61 family: the B61-12. And this is a real golden baby estimated at about $10 billion. …

Although based on the same basic warhead design first developed in the 1960s, the capabilities of the remaining version vary considerably with explosive yields ranging from 0.1 kilotons to a whopping 400 kilotons – more than 30 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Now the Obama administration has proposed that four of the remaining versions (B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, and B61-11) can be retired if the last version – the B61-4 – is converted into a guided standoff nuclear bomb. An even larger bomb, the B83-1, can also be retired, they say (even though its retirement was planned anyway).

The sales pitch is as arcane as the family name: building a new bomb is good for disarmament.

But most of the B61 bombs and the B83 could probably be retired anyway for the simple reason that deterrence no longer requires six different ways of dropping a nuclear bomb from an aircraft. A much simpler and cheaper life-extended version of the B61-7 could probably do the job.

Implications

The new B61-12 will be capable of holding at risk the same targets as current gravity bombs in the US stockpile (apparently even those currently covered by the B61-11 nuclear earth-penetrator that the Air Force no longer needs), but it will be able to do so more effectively and with less yield (thus less collateral damage and radioactive fallout) than the existing bombs.

Congress rejected Air Force requests for new, low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons in the 1990s because of concern that such weapons would be seen as more usable than larger strategic warheads. With the B61-12, which will have several low-yield options, the military appears to obtain a guided low-yield nuclear strike capability after all.

In Europe, the effect of the B61-12 will be even more profound because its increased accuracy essentially will add high-yield targeting capability to NATO’s non-strategic arsenal. When mated with the stealthy F-35A fighter-bomber planned for Europe in the mid-2020s, the B61-12 will represent a considerable enhancement of NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe.

How they’re going to spin that development at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York next year will be interesting so see. But the B61-12 program is part of a global technological nuclear arms race with nuclear weapon modernization programs underway in all the nuclear-armed states that is in stark contrast to the wishes of the overwhelming number of countries on this planet to see the “cessation of the nuclear arms race at early date and to nuclear disarmament,” as enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (more about that in the May issue of Arms Control Today).

*This excerpted content has been made available at the USS Bennington blog where a link to the entire article can be found.

May 1, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Obama Ends Asian Tour With Little to Show for it

Prensa Latina | April 29, 2014

340097_President ObamaManila – U.S. President Barack Obama ended a tour today that included four Asian countries, accomplishing only the signing of a military agreement with the Philippines.

Of all the issues in Obama’s agenda, that was the only agreement to be brought to fruition, while Japan delayed its joining to a free trade agreement and Malaysia did not sign on either.

Obama’s South Korean stopover included a confirmation of Washington’s military reinforcement to Seoul, but the president met with no success in his attempt to improve relations with Tokyo, a regional ally.

The defense and security agreement with the Philippines will facilitate a greater U.S. naval presence in the archipelago, but thousands of people took the streets to protest the visit and the agreement.

Although the White House backs the Philippines in a territorial dispute with China, Obama clarified that the bilateral agreement does not aim at Beijing, with whom the United States maintains a constructive relationship.

Obama’s Asian tour cost taxpayers almost one billion USD, taking into account that a single day abroad for Obama costs more than $100 million USD.

April 29, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Internet for the Wealthy on the Way Unless We Stop It

By Kevin Zeese | Dissident Voice | April 24, 2014

In what the New York Times describes as “a net neutrality turnaround” the Obama administration’s new FCC chairman is proposing rules that will create an Internet for the wealthy. The new plan to create a pay to play Internet came to light Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

Under the plan wealthy corporations will be able to purchase faster service, while those that cannot do so will have slower service. Rather than an open Internet for all the US will be moving to a class-based Internet. Of course, this will mean that when Netflix and other corporations purchase faster Internet, the consumers who use their service will be paying more to watch movies and download information. As a result, more money will be funneled from working Americans to wealthy telecom giants.

We recently wrote that the United States has lost its democratic legitimacy and now was a plutocratic oligarchy. This is what plutocracy looks like – policies designed for the wealthy, so they can make more money from the rest of us.

According to the Times:

The new rules, according to the people briefed on them, will allow a company like Comcast or Verizon to negotiate separately with each content company – like Netflix, Amazon, Disney or Google – and charge different companies different amounts for priority service.

That, of course, could increase costs for content companies, which would then have an incentive to pass on those costs to consumers as part of their subscription prices.

In the future, if a new start-up – the future Twitter or Facebook – begins it will have a very hard time competing with those who are established Internet companies because the slower service of the start-ups will make them less consumer friendly. As a result we can expect less creativity on the Internet. As Stacy Higginbotham wrote: “The plans took the hallmark of network neutrality — the notion that ISP shouldn’t discriminate between the traffic flowing over their networks — and turned it on its head.”

The proposal is being shared with other members of the Commission today. There will then be amendments suggested to garner majority support and the plan is to vote on the proposal on May 15,

Take action now. To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail

Chairman Tom Wheeler: vog.ccf@releehW.moT
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: vog.ccf@nrubylC.nongiM
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: vog.ccf@lecrownesoR.acisseJ
Commissioner Ajit Pai: vog.ccf@iaP.tijA
Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: Mike.O’vog.ccf@ylleiR

To call and contact commissioner’s offices, call 1-888-225-5322.

In addition, call your elected representatives. Tell them if net neutrality is ended, you will hold them accountable by withholding your vote. Both parties hope to control the senate after the mid-term elections, so you have more power than usual to let them know they are losing your vote if they fail to take action to stop the FCC proposal. The number for Congress is 202-224-3121.

Finally sign this petition:

Dear Commissioners:

I am writing to oppose rules that will allow for discrimination on the Internet — where the wealthy can purchase faster Internet service and everyone else continues to have slower service.

We do not want telecom giants and wealthy Internet companies to determine the future of the Internet. We want new ideas to flourish on the Internet and not be blocked because they do not have sufficient funds to purchase fast service and compete.

We do not want the Internet turned into another vehicle that allows money to flow from working Americans to the wealthiest — where they purchase fast service then charge consumers more money for rapid Internet service.

The proposal being considered would kill rather than protect Net Neutrality and allow rampant discrimination online. The Internet should be viewed as a public good and should be operated consistent with our rights to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. Turning the Internet into a pay to play scheme is unacceptable.

We demand an open Internet and real net neutrality.

Chairman Wheeler knows this proposal is going to be unpopular and in response to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times is denying there has been a “turnaround.” But, his statement is carefully worded and would allow exactly was has been reported.

How Did We Get To Class-Based Internet?

This move to end net neutrality should be placed at the door of President Obama and the US Senate. Obama appointed a former industry head to become chair of the FCC and the Senate unanimously confirmed him.

In April 2008 during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama took the side of the people saying: “The most important thing we can probably do is to preserve the diversity that’s emerging through the Internet…something called net neutrality. I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality.” While he campaigned as a populist he has governed as a plutocrat – on this issue and so many others.

When Tom Wheeler was nominated by President Obama to become the Chairman of the FCC many in the internet freedom community expressed deep concerns. For decades Wheeler had represented the telecom industry in Washington, DC. From 1979 to 1984, Wheeler headed the National Cable Television Association, now named the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. He then worked in the telecom industry for 8 years followed by taking over as head of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Assn. in 1992, leaving in 2005. Wheeler went on to become a major Obama fundraiser and adviser. In fact on his bio page at the FCC this is expressed as “He is the only person to be selected to both the Cable Television Hall of Fame and The Wireless Hall of Fame, a fact President Obama joked made him ‘The Bo Jackson of Telecom.’” Appointing Wheeler was akin to putting the industry in charge of the future of the Internet.

Now Wheeler is set to propose what the industry has wanted, an end to net neutrality, that will allow them to charge us more for service and created financial barriers that will prevent new services from challenging their domination of the Internet.

If you want an open Internet, take action today. We can stop this – but we must act now.

Please contact the people above and forward this to everyone you know.

April 25, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

6 Reasons Why Obama’s Clemency Program For Drug Offenders Doesn’t Change Mass Incarceration One Bit

By Bruce A. Dixon | Black Agenda Report | April 23, 2014

It’s all over the internet. The Obama administration is talking up the possibility of using presidential clemency powers to release some undetermined number, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of federal prisoners without wealth or political connections from their unjustly long drug sentences. But hold your hosannas, don’t get your hopes up. Though the precise numbers are unclear at this time, what’s unmistakably evident is that this is in no sense whatsoever the beginning of a rollback of America’s prison state. The releases, as the attorney general and government officials are describing them, will not represent any significant or permanent change to the nation’s universal policy of mass incarceration, mainly of poor black and brown youth. Here, in plain English are 6 reasons why.

  1. The Obama administration’s expected releases will use the president’s clemency powers. Presidential clemency amounts to forgiveness after the fact. Clemency does not change a single word or phrase in any of the galaxy of state and federal laws which have already sent literally millions to prison for absurdly long sentences for what authorities call “non-violent drug offenses,” and under which hundreds of thousands are currently serving those same sentences and hundreds of thousands more are awaiting trial and sentencing. Clemency leaves those laws in place, so that the places of those released will soon be filled again.
  2. Presidential clemency will set no legal precedents that current or future defendants in federal or state drug cases, their attorneys or sentencing judges can use to avoid the application of unjust existing laws, including harsh mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines. Like the unjust statutes, the unjust legal precedents which have helped filled state and federal prisons to bursting will also remain intact.
  3. Presidential clemency will have no effect on the predatory conduct of police and prosecutors on the state or federal level. Police departments will remain free to conduct their “war on drugs” almost exclusively in poor and minority communities. Prosecutors will still be able to coerce defendants into accepting plea bargains, and threaten them with longer sentences if they go to trial. If only one in twenty defendants across the board and even fewer in federal court currently go to trial, what does that say about the ability or the willingness of our courts to even try determining guilt or innocence? Federal prosecutors have publicly thumbed their noses at Eric Holder’s feeble questioning of the war on drugs, stated their intention to continue filling the prisons and jails, and local prosecutors in the US are elected officials accustomed to running for office based on how many people they can lock up for how long.
  4. Presidential clemency can only be applied to federal prisoners, who are a mere 190,000, or 11% of the roughly 1.7 million currently serving time. (Another 600,000 are awaiting trial on all levels or serving misdemeanor time.)  If we’re talking about federal prisoners serving drug related sentences, the universe shrinks to only 100,000, or 5% of the nation’s 2.3 million prisoners.
  5. There are more former prisoners than current ones. For the rest of their lives, former prisoners and their families are viciously discriminated against in a host of ways, in the job and housing market, in education and public services and in access to health care, all legally. That won’t change. Even the few that get this clemency won’t be protected from that.
  6. The federal government will NOT even be screening all federal drug prisoners to determine who is eligible for clemency. Attorney General Holder has instead announced that criminal defense lawyers and organizations like the ACLU are being asked to bring to the government’s attention to cases they imagine are most deserving of clemency. Don’t they have, you know, a Department of Justice for that? Depending on private organizations and attorneys to come up with the cases for possible clemency turns the whole thing into an exercise in philanthropy, not the fundamental change in governmental policy that people need, want and demand. It means that prisoners serving unduly long sentences who don’t have vigilant private attorneys and advocacy organizations on their case will remain unjustly imprisoned, while those with outside friends have a chance at early release.

The bottom line is that an act of presidential clemency, while good news for the lucky hundreds or thousands of families involved, will leave no legal footprint and make no institutional impact upon the universal policy of mass incarceration. For this reason, it’s exactly NOT a first step that can lead to something more. It’s a dead end. At the rate the pipelines are pumping them in, their cells will be refilled in a month or two, no problem. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this clemency initiative is nothing more than a lazy, cynical and nearly empty gesture it hopes will buy some black votes and good will in 2014 and beyond.

Is it better than nothing? Yes, of course. It’s just not that much better, and we definitely DO have a right to expect much, much better. There are millions locked up. A couple thousand may be released. But a million is a thousand thousands.  The dead end of presidential clemency for a handful on the federal level simply does not scale even to the beginning of changing the institutional policies of mass incarceration.  On that level it’s bogus.  It will free not one state prisoner a day earlier and initiates no processes or lasting precedents that ever will. It will help none of the hundreds of thousands of families of former prisoners and won’t affect any cases in the pipeline, which will refill the slots of those who receive clemency in weeks, and it doesn’t change what police or prosecutors and courts do either.  

This is not the result of some soaring vision of justice, and cannot lead to any lasting institutional change. It leaves the prison state completely intact, just giving the most hopeful and the most cynical something to talk about in the months leading up to another mid-term election, when the administration, and Democrats need the black vote.

It didn’t have to be this way. During the first two years of the Obama presidency, when his party had a lock on both houses of Congress, the president and congressional Democrats had a chance to write retroactive revocation of tens of thousands of sentences into its so-called Fair Sentencing Act. Despite this being a matter of desperate concern to the constituency that elected them, it was not a priority for the first black president or for the black political class at the time. Every year since, the Obama Department of Justice has had the chance to rewrite the way it distributes federal funding to state and local law enforcement agencies to discourage mass incarceration. Every year the president had the ability to close some of its notorious federal supermax prisons, or find ways to deny funding for such things on the state level. None of this happened. In fact, while a broad citizen movement in Illinois, the president’s home state finally closed a state supermax prison, Obama’s latest Bureau of Prisons budget has the feds buying another unused Illinois prison for conversion into a federal supermax, ADX Thomson, or Gitmo North. The federal prison budget has grown every year president Obama has held office.

Sophisticated apologists for the president will of course chide folks who find “better than nothing” insufficient for being naive and foolish. Are they?  Were the tens of millions who elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 foolish for imagining that they have even the right to demand better?  What about the many, many thousands of activists who gave freely of their time and efforts year in and year out to make the careers of the black political class possible, the people who called house meetings, union and church meetings?  Were the folks who went door to door, who rallied and registered voters and more to elect black aldermen, sheriffs, county commissioners, mayors, legislators and finally a black president — the people who DID imagine and DID tell their children and their neighbors that this would make things better — were they all just unrealistic chumps?

I used to be one of them.  They didn’t say – we didn’t say — it was “better than nothing.”  We told each other, and often we actually believed electing black faces to high places was a necessary step toward making things better.  Were we naïve and foolish to imagine a better world is even possible?  Or is our black political class too cynical, too corrupt, too prosperous and too lazy to share the dreams of the ordinary people they supposedly represent?

April 24, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

US to resume military aid to Egypt

Press TV – April 23, 2014

The Obama administration plans to resume some military assistance to Egypt and deliver 10 Apache helicopters after the military-backed government in Cairo upheld its peace treaty with Israel.

The decision to lift the hold on the US aid was made because the Egyptian government is sustaining its strategic relationship with the United States and fulfilling its obligations to Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry told Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in a telephone call, according to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also informed his Egyptian counterpart, Colonel General Sedki Sobhi, of the decision in a telephone call, saying the Apache helicopters “will help the Egyptian government counter extremists who threaten US, Egyptian and Israeli security,” according to Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby.

The decision comes despite concerns about failure of Egypt’s government to embrace democratic reforms following the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi back in July. Since then, Egypt has been the scene of the government’s deadly crackdown on Morsi’s supporters, who have been holding street protests.

According to US law, when a military coup occurs in a country, economic and military aid should be cut off. But the administration’s decision means the controversial aid will be flowing to the Egyptian military again.

Before last year’s coup in Egypt, the US provided Cairo with $1.5 billion a year in aid, $1.3 billion of which was military assistance.

April 23, 2014 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama Whistleblower Program Requires Whistleblowers to Register to be Protected

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | April 16, 2014

Are whistleblowers—whose anonymity is often their best protection against retribution—made safer by being forced to register as whistleblowers with the U.S. government? Or are they being placed in greater danger?

The Obama administration is demanding they step forward and sign up.

Indeed, exposing government corruption or other wrongdoing often means being discreet, if not anonymous, on the part of the individuals blowing the whistle, unless they want to face retribution from higher-ups involved in the misdeeds. Keeping one’s identity hidden is almost always essential for whistleblowers because of managers’ or executives’ impulse to protect themselves and punish those exposing their mistakes. Thus, any government program that requires whistleblowers to reveal themselves—ostensibly for their own good—might seem disingenuous, if not counterproductive to encouraging workers to expose law breakers.

But the Obama administration is taking this approach by mandating that government employees register as official whistleblowers under the Insider Threat program it established three years ago. This program was adopted, the president said, to protect against internal dangers lurking within federal agencies.

One of the biggest supporters on Capitol Hill of government whistleblowing says the Obama program’s registration requirement is a terrible idea and antithetical to the importance of whistleblowers coming forward.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who coauthored the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (pdf), addressed the U.S. Senate recently to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the landmark bill. During his speech, Grassley criticized Insider Threat’s effort to expose whistleblowers, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a prime concern.

The Republican senator said he’s been trying for months to get the FBI to share its Insider Threat training materials. But the bureau has steadfastly refused.

At one point, the FBI’s top Insider Threat official agreed to meet with Grassley and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) to discuss how the bureau was training its people to

“distinguish between true insider threats and legitimate whistleblowers.”

The official, according to Grassley’s speech, told them not to worry about the training materials, which they had failed to bring along to the meeting.

“He said whistleblowers had to register in order to be protected, and the Insider Threat Program would know to just avoid those people,” Grassley said in his speech.

The official then “abruptly walked out” of the meeting after being there only 10 minutes.

“These are clearly not the actions of an agency that is genuinely open to whistleblowers or whistleblower protection,” Grassley stated.

The senator, who has served in Congress since 1975, added that Obama’s registration requirement was an idea that “should be pretty alarming to all Americans.  Sometimes confidentiality is the best protection a whistleblower has.”

To Learn More:

Chuck Grassley: Insider Threat Program Poses Threat to Whistleblowers (Emptywheel)

Grassley Talks About the Anniversary of the Whistleblower Protection Act (Senator Charles Grassley)

Terrorists, Spies, Whistleblowers Treated the Same by Obama Administration (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Obama Anti-Whistleblower Program Requires Federal Employees to Report Suspicions of other Employees or Risk Punishment (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

April 16, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

The Iranian Nuclear Weapons Programme That Wasn’t

By Gareth Porter | IPS | April 12, 2014

When U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz unsealed the indictment of a Chinese citizen in the UK for violating the embargo against Iran, she made what appeared to be a new U.S. accusation of an Iran nuclear weapons programme.

The press release on the indictment announced that between in November 2005 and 2012, Sihai Cheng had supplied parts that have nuclear applications, including U.S.-made goods, to an Iranian company, Eyvaz Technic Manufacturing, which it described as “involved in the development and procurement of parts for Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The text of the indictment reveals that the reference to a “nuclear weapons program” was yet another iteration of a rhetorical device used often in the past to portray Iran’s gas centrifuge enrichment programme as equivalent to the development of nuclear weapons.

Reuters, Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and The Independent all reported that claim as fact. But the U.S. intelligence community, since its well-known November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, has continued to be very clear on the pubic record about its conclusion that Iran has not had a nuclear weapons programme since 2003.

Something was clearly amiss with the Justice Department’s claim.

The indictment doesn’t actually refer to an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, as the Ortiz press release suggested. But it does say that the Iranian company in question, Eyvaz Tehnic Manufacturing, “has supplied parts for Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.”

The indictment claims that Eyvaz provided “vacuum equipment” to Iran’s two uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow and “pressure transducers” to Kalaye Electric Company, which has worked on centrifuge research and development.

But even those claims are not supported by anything except a reference to a December 2, 2011 decision by the Council of the European Union that did not offer any information supporting that claim.

The credibility of the EU claim was weakened, moreover, by the fact that the document describes Eyvaz as a “producer of vacuum equipment.” The company’s website shows that it produces equipment for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, including level controls and switches, control valves and steam traps.

Further revealing its political nature of indictment’s nuclear weapons claim, it cites two documents “designating” entities for their ties to the nuclear programme: the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1737 and a U.S. Treasury Department decision two months later.

Neither of those documents suggested any connection between Eyvaz and nuclear weapons. The UNSC Resolution, passed December 23, 2006, referred to Iran’s enrichment as “proliferation sensitive nuclear activities” in 11 different places in the brief text and listed Eyvaz as one of the Iranian entities to be sanctioned for its involvement in those activities.

And in February 2007 the Treasury Department designated Kalaye Electric Company as a “proliferator of Weapons of Mass Destruction” merely because of its “research and development efforts in support of Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program.”

The designation by Treasury was carried out under an Executive Order 13382, issued by President George W. Bush, which is called “Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters.” That title conveyed the impression to the casual observer that the people on the list had been caught in actual WMD proliferation activities.

But the order allowed the U.S. government to sanction any foreign person merely because that person was determined to have engaged in activities that it argued “pose a risk of materially contributing” to “the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their means of delivery”.

The Obama administration’s brazen suggestion that it was indicting an individual for exporting U.S. products to a company that has been involved in Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” is simply a new version of the same linguistic trick used by the Bush administration.

The linguistic acrobatics began with the political position that Iran’s centrifuge programme posed a “risk” of WMD proliferation; that “risk” of proliferation was then conflated with nuclear proliferation activities, when than was transmuted into “development of nuclear weapons”.

The final linguistic shift was to convert “development of nuclear weapons” into a “nuclear weapons program”.

That kind of the deceptive rhetoric about the Iranian nuclear programme began with the Bill Clinton administration, which argued, in effect, that nuclear weapons development could be inferred from Iran’s enrichment programme.

Although Cheng and Jamili clearly violated U.S. statutes in purchasing and importing the pressure transducers from the United States and sending them to Eyvaz in Iran, a close reading of the indictment indicates that the evidence that Eyvaz provided the transducers to the Iranian nuclear programme is weak at best.

The indictment says Cheng began doing business with Jamili and his company Nicaro in November 2005, and that he sold thousands of Chinese parts “with nuclear applications” which had been requested by Eyvaz. But all the parts listed in the indictment are dual use items that Eyvaz could have ordered for production equipment for oil and gas industry customers.

The indictment insinuates that Eyvaz was ordering the parts to pass them on to Iran’s enrichment facility at Natanz, but provides no real evidence of that intent. It quotes Jamili as informing Cheng in 2007 that his unnamed customer needed the parts for “a very big project and a secret one”. In 2008, he told Cheng that the customer was “making a very dangerous system and gas leakage acts as a bomb!”

The authors do not connect either of those statements to Eyvaz, but they suggest that it was a reference to gas centrifuges and thus imply that it must have been Eyvaz. “During the enrichment of uranium using gas centrifuges,” the indictment explains, “extremely corrosive chemicals are produced that could cause fire and explosions.”

That statement is highly misleading, however. There is no real risk of gas leaks from centrifuges causing fires or explosions, as MIT nuclear expert Scott R. Kemp told IPS in an interview. “The only risk of a gas leak [in centrifuge enrichment] is to the centrifuge itself,” said Kemp, “because the gas could leak into the centrifuge and cause it to crash.”

On the other hand, substantial risk of explosion and fire from gas leaks exists in the natural gas industry. So even if the customer referred to in the quotes had been Eyvaz, they would have been consistent with that company’s sales to gas industry customers.

Pressure transducers are used to control risk in that industry, as Todd McPadden of Ashcroft Instruments in Stratford, Connecticut told IPS. The pressure transducer measures the gas pressure and responds to any indication of either loss of pressure from leaks or build up of excessive pressure, McPadden explained.

The indictment shows in detail that in 2009 Eyvaz ordered hundreds of pressure transducers, which came from the U.S. company MKS. But again the indictment cites no real evidence that Eyvaz was ordering them to supply Iran’s enrichment facilities.

It refers only to photographs showing that MKS parts ended up in the centrifuge cascades at Natanz, which does not constitute evidence that they came from Eyvaz.

April 12, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Killer Drones in a Downward Spiral?

By Medea Benjamin and Kate Chandley | Dissident Voice | April 7, 2014

Illegal US drone strikes continue (the Long War Journal says there have been 8 drones strikes in Yemen so far in 2014), but efforts to curb the use of killer drones have made remarkable headway this year.

While the faith-based community has taken far too long to address the moral issues posed by remote-controlled killing, on February 13, the World Council of Churches — the largest coalition of Christian churches — came out in opposition to the use of armed drones. The Council said that the use of armed drones poses a “serious threat to humanity” and condemned, in particular, US drone strikes in Pakistan. This is a breakthrough in the religious community, and should make it easier for individual denominations to make similar pronouncements, as the Church of the Brethren has.

There have also been major developments in the secular world. In February, the European Union, with an overwhelming vote of 534-49, passed a resolution calling on EU Member States to “oppose and ban the practice of extrajudicial targeted killings” and demanding that EU member states “do not perpetrate unlawful targeted killings or facilitate such killings by other states.” This resolution will pressure individual European nations to stop their own production and/or use of killer drones (especially the UK, Germany, Italy and France), and to stop their collaboration with the US drone program.

People on the receiving end of US drone strikes have also stepped up their opposition. On April 1, a group of friends and family of drone strike victims in Yemen came together to form the National Organization for Drone Victims. This is the first time anywhere that drone strike victims have created their own entity to support one another and seek redress. The organization plans to conduct its own investigations, focusing on the civilian impact of drone attacks. At the official launch, which was packed with press, the group said any government official supporting the US drones should be tried in a criminal court. “Today, we launch this new organization which will be the starting point for us to get justice and to take legal measures on a national and international scale against anyone who is aiding these crimes,” said the organization’s president Mohammad Ali al-Qawli, whose brother was killed in a drone strike.

The Pakistani government has taken its opposition to drone strikes directly to the UN Human Rights Council. Pakistan, with the co-sponsorship of Yemen, introduced a resolution calling for transparency in drone strikes and for setting up a committee of experts to address the legal issues. Despite the opposition of the United States, which boycotted the talks and lobbied to kill the resolution, it passed on March 24 by a vote of 27-6, with 14 abstentions. The panel of experts that will be convened is scheduled to present its findings at the UN Human Rights Council session in September 2014.

UN Special Rapporteur on Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, also used this session of the UN Human Rights Council to release a detailed report on the issue of drones. Emmerson examined 37 instances of drone strikes in which civilians were reportedly killed or injured and concluded that nations using drones must provide a “public explanation of the circumstances and a justification for the use of deadly force.” Emmerson said it was critical for the international community to reach a consensus on many issues presented by drones strikes, including state sovereignty and whether it is legal to target a hostile person in a non-belligerent state.

These new developments have come about due to increasing public scrutiny and protests against drone attacks, such as the ongoing protests at the Hancock, Beale, and Creech Air Force Bases, the headquarters of drone manufacturer General Atomics, the White House, CIA, Congress and the Pentagon. The entire month of April has been designated for Days of Action, with film showings, talks, die-ins, re-enactments of drone strikes and other creative actions happening throughout the country.

Activists opposing weaponized drones are pleased to finally see more movement at the international level, and hope this will result in heightened pressure on the Obama administration, both internationally and domestically, to stop its policy of targeted assassinations and instead adhere to the rule of law.

April 9, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘US funded social network to incite unrest in Cuba’

Press TV – April 3, 2014

A new investigation reveals that the US government has secretly funded a social media network program to instigate political unrest in Cuba.

The administration of US President Barack Obama has been secretly financing the project, dubbed “Cuban Twitter,” for more than two years to undermine the Caribbean country’s government, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.

The program has reportedly been able to evade Cuba’s Internet restrictions by creating a text-messaging service that could be used to organize political rallies.

The service drew in tens of thousands of subscribers who were unaware of Washington’s scheme. The investigation showed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has gone to extensive lengths to conceal its involvement in the program.

It also added that USAID set up front-companies overseas and routed money through a Cayman Islands bank to hide the funding it supplied to support the Cuban Twitter project.

Havana and Washington have been at odds since the Cuban revolution, led by Fidel Castro, toppled Fulgencio Batista’s regime in 1959. The US started imposing measures on the same year and placed an official embargo against Cuba in 1962.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said that after the 2008 US presidential election, Obama had promised a new beginning with Cuba but “the reality of the last four years has been characterized by a persistent tightening of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade.”

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April 3, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s War On History

340939_US-Barack-Obama

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | March 29, 2014

President Obama’s speech in Brussels this week was a shocking mélange of ignorance and arrogance masquerading as foreign policy.

Attempting to justify placing the US on war footing with Russia over the recent referendum in Crimea, the president stated:

Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.

Of course anyone who followed the Kosovo fiasco knows that never happened. There was no such thing. Made up. The Kosovo parliament declared independence unilaterally backed up by US/NATO military power to ensure the change of borders.

The US press? Silent on this monumental display of ignorance by the US commander in chief.

Speaking of changing borders, Obama said:

…in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.

But that is just what the United States did 15 years ago this week via the 78 day bombing of Serbia to change the borders and extract Kosovo as an independent (though profoundly dysfunctional) state. The US bombing of Serbia was of course outside international law, as was US invasion and occupation of Iraq, attack and invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Libya, bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, etc.

The president celebrated…

…the belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose, the belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.

But in the modern world he champions — as opposed to his bad old system of using force to establish legitimacy — that consent of the governed is determined at the ballot box, rather than in burned-out buildings occupied by gangs of molotov cocktail throwing “activists.”

Indeed, as David Hendrickson recently wrote in the National Interest :

Americans have previously acknowledged a right of revolution in a circumstance where there has been no previous instance of an election and no possibility of one. But in a regime that has a constitution and that has prescribed rules for the transfer of power? Revolution in those circumstances has been generally seen as deeply illegitimate, and for the simple reason that once you depart from that rule you are in no man’s land.

So where Obama may see…

…the young people of Ukraine, who were determined to take back their future from a government rotted by corruption…

…the modern world he touts — free of the oppression where “order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign” — can only be brought about by his own terms through the rule of law and respect of the sovereignty of all the people through a free and fair vote. Otherwise, logic is clear, we are precisely back in those bad old days where might makes right.

How can two contradictory concepts both be true at the same time?

The president claims to…

…believe in democracy, with elections that are free and fair, and independent judiciaries and opposition parties, civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices.

All the while he champions a regime that came to power in Ukraine in the opposite manner from that which he recognizes as legitimate. Recognizing this fact depends not on whether one agrees with the political persuasion of the ancien or nouveau régime in Kiev.

The president displays another astonishing disconnect with historical reality when he claims that “even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.”

It is not apocryphal that the United States precisely violated international law in its attack on Iraq, as it ignored the United Nations Security Council and instead made its own ad hoc “coalition of the willing” which through sheer will of the US was supposedly granted some manner of legitimacy. As if from some magic fairy dust.

Or could it have been through the very notion condemned in Obama’s speech “that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way – that recycled maxim that might makes right.”

What is perhaps most troubling is the president (and his advisors) have demostrated that the policies that may well determine whether we all will perish in a World War III are being made by people without even a passing familiarity with recent history. Those who would rather Tweet “selfies” like self-obsessed adolescents rather than open a history book.

Or, sadly perhaps, it is cynicism in the extreme: perhaps they do know better but count on the ignorance of the rest of us. Is that a safe bet?

March 30, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 2 Comments

Why I Am a Conscientious Objector to the ACA

By Margaret Flowers | Dissident Voice | March 28, 2014

I have been an outspoken advocate for a Medicare for all health system. During the health reform process, I did all that I could to push for single payer, including being arrested three times for civil disobedience. I was one of fifty doctors who filed a brief in the Supreme Court which expressed opposition to forcing people to buy private health insurance, a defective product. It pains me to see that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) siphons billions of public dollars to create more bureaucracy and transfers hundreds of billions of public dollars directly to the private insurance industry when I know that those dollars should be paying for the health care that so many in our country desperately need.

I am currently uninsured, so I have to make a choice. I don’t qualify for Medicaid and I’m too young for Medicare. By law, I am required to buy private insurance or pay a penalty. But I find myself in the position of not being able to do either. I can’t in good conscience give money to the health insurance industry that I am fighting to eliminate. And I can’t in good conscience pay a tax penalty that will be given to that industry. So, I am going to be a Conscientious Objector to the ACA.

I suspect that there are others who feel as I do. If you are planning to object to purchasing insurance and you support Medicare for all, you might like to join me in sending a letter to President Obama. Click on this link to do so.

The Issue is Access to Care, Not the Number Who Buy Insurance

As the March 31 deadline to purchase health insurance or face a penalty approaches, the public debate is focused solely on enrollment numbers. Great efforts are being expended to compel people to buy insurance. The “Young Invincibles,” a term created to misrepresent uninsured young adults, are being marketed heavily. And Enroll America, a coalition of advocates and health industry executives, is working overtime to encourage volunteers to be creative in the ways they locate and convince people to purchase insurance.

The mass media and politicians are constantly talking about the health care marketplace. We are being indoctrinated with market rhetoric. Patients are called consumers and health insurance plans are called products. The problem with this is that health care doesn’t belong in the marketplace whose logic dictates that care should be denied if a profit cannot be made. Health care is a public good and something that everyone needs throughout their lifetime.

Focusing solely on the number of people who are insured is what the private health insurance industry wants the public to believe is most important. The industry spent tremendous amounts of money and time to get a law that would force people to buy insurance in order to protect and enhance their assets. They want everyone to buy their products and to make people feel reckless or irresponsible if they don’t. This is a massive campaign to distract people from asking the questions that really matter, such as whether people with insurance will be able to afford health care, whether bankruptcies from medical debt will continue and whether overall health outcomes will improve.

In the United States, having health insurance does not guarantee access to necessary health care. In fact, rather than creating health security, the ACA is degrading health care coverage in the US. It is also creating the largest transfer of public dollars to a private industry ever, as UNITE HERE reports “most of the ACA’s $965 billion in subsidies will go directly to commercial insurance companies.”

The Insurance Scam

As Kevin Zeese and I wrote last fall, the ACA is one of the biggest insurance scams in history. It has made the already complex American health system, which spends over a third of health care dollars on insurance-created bureaucracy rather than care, much more complicated. It is based on principles that are the opposite of what are proven to be effective. Instead of being universal, everybody automatically enrolled as we did for seniors when Medicare started in 1965 and as most other industrialized nations do, we created a conservative, means-tested system that depends on individual income.

And instead of creating a single standard of care, so that everyone has access to the health care they need, the ACA locked into law a tiered system of coverage based on different metals: platinum, gold, silver and bronze. Though they may sound good, it turns out that the upper tier plans are not any better than the lower tier plans in terms of what services are covered or where patients can go for care. The major difference is whether a person chooses to pay more up front in higher premiums and pay less when they need health care (upper tier plans) or chooses to gamble on staying healthy and pay less up front, risking higher out-of-pocket costs if they need care (lower tier plans). This is essentially a pay-now-or-pay-later scheme.

And it is a scheme, because there are no guarantees that people who have insurance will be protected from financial ruin if they have a serious health problem. It is essential to remember that nothing about the basic business model of insurance companies has changed. They exist to make a profit and they are very good at it. While they complain about the ACA, because its regulations require more work on their end to find ways around them, it has been very lucrative for them. Health insurance stock values have doubled since the law passed in 2010.

One of their major work-arounds is the use of narrow and ultra-narrow provider networks to discourage patients with pre-existing conditions from buying their plans and leave patients footing more of the bill. Narrow networks exclude at least 30% of local hospitals and ultra-narrow networks exclude at least 70%. This means that if the local cancer center isn’t included in a plan, then people with cancer are unlikely to buy that plan. To make it worse, it’s difficult for patients to determine what providers are included in different plans because the information on the insurance exchange websites has been found to be wrong half the time.

The reason for the narrow networks is that when patients don’t go to an approved health provider, they bear most or all of the costs. The limit on how much money people can be required to spend in addition to premiums doesn’t apply when patients go out of network (and the limit was removed for 2014 anyway). In practice, if someone develops a serious health condition and the hospital or health professional that treats the condition is not in their network, they will have to go without care or find a way to pay for it. And if a person has a serious accident and is taken to a hospital that is out of network, the patient will again bear the total cost. Buying insurance is a health care crap shoot.

The Race to the Bottom in Health Care Benefits

Medical bankruptcy and self-rationing, foregoing necessary care due to cost, are two products of our market-based health system and we can expect them to continue under the ACA, even as more people become insured. Supporters of the ACA often quote the slowed rise of health care spending that has been happening since the financial crash in 2008. They claim it is a sign of the law’s positive effect; however, the slowing is actually due to fewer people using health services. In 2012, 80 million people went without necessary care because of cost.

Self-rationing will continue because there has not been an economic recovery for most of us. More than 80% of people are buying lower tier health plans that require high up-front payments for care at a time when most families are living paycheck to paycheck. The number of people who are considered poor or low income is rising. And, as Paul Bucheit writes, if we updated our standards for measuring poverty to reflect the current economic realities (the costs of food, housing, health care, education, etc), the poverty threshold would be over three times higher than it is now. He adds that half of the US population owns zero wealth because of debt. It is a sad irony that people are being forced to pay monthly premiums for health insurance that will leave them without money for actual care.

And now that lower coverage plans are legal, they are accelerating the race to the bottom in employer health benefits. Employers are shifting more of the cost of health care onto employees, reducing coverage for dependents, moving employees into private insurance exchanges (which do not qualify for subsidies) and penalizing employees for poor health habits, which places the blame for health problems on the individual without acknowledging that many drivers of poor health are out of the individual’s control. While tying health care to employment is not ideal, in the US at least the employer-based plans used to provide better benefits than those on the individual market.

The Practical Solution

The solution to the ongoing health care crisis is obvious. We need to reverse direction completely and move to a national publicly-funded health insurance for everyone. Some call this a single payer or ‘Medicare for all’ plan. We are already spending enough on health care in the US to provide high quality care to everyone. It is just wrong from a standpoint of what works to continue shifting more of our health care dollars to bureaucracy instead of to care and to the private insurance industry which is designed to keep as much for itself as it can get away with. It is immoral to protect insurance company profits instead of protecting the health and wellbeing of our people.

Putting our money into the insurance industry is a step in the wrong direction. The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR 676, in Congress, would eliminate the insurance industry and create lifelong comprehensive coverage for everyone. No matter what you choose to do about insurance, tell your Congress member to support HR 676. And if you are one of the millions who do not plan to buy insurance, join me in telling Obama why. Click here to write President Obama.

Margaret Flowers is co-director of It’s Our Economy, co-host of Clearing the FOG Radio and an organizer of the occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. She is also with the Health Care is a Human Right campaign in Maryland.

March 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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