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From Guantanamo to limitless war, Obama's failure to live up to his own five commandments

Karen J. Greenberg
TomDispatch
Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:08 UTC
Image
© Unknown
In January 2009, Barack Obama entered the Oval Office projecting idealism and proud to be the constitutional law professor devoted to turning democratic principles into action. In his first weeks in office, in a series of executive orders and public statements, the new president broadcast for all to hear the five commandments by which life in his new world of national security would be lived.

Thou shalt not torture.

Thou shalt not keep Guantanamo open.

Thou shalt not keep secrets unnecessarily.

Thou shalt not wage war without limits.

Thou shalt not live above the law.

Five years later, the question is: How have he and his administration lived up to these self-proclaimed commandments? Let's consider them one by one:
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Cardboard Box

Ukraine security forces "regain" Crimea airports without firing a shot


Press TV
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:56 UTC
Simferopol airport
© Unknown
File photo shows Crimea international airport in Simferopol.

Ukrainian authorities say they have regained control of two airports in the country's semi-autonomous region Crimea after armed gunmen seized the buildings.

The country's National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy said Friday that there had been an attempt to occupy the airports in Crimea, security forces, however, has taken full control of them.

The developments come as Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov earlier in the day accused Russian troops of staging an "invasion" of Crimea's international airport in Simferopol and the Belbek airfield near the city of Sevastopol, which is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet.

A spokesman for Russia's Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet denied that Russian troops had any involvement in the airport occupations.

Earlier on Friday, a group of armed men in military uniforms briefly seized an airport in the regional capital of Crimea. Eyewitness said about 50 gunmen in military uniforms arrived at Simferopol International Airport in military trucks to search for Ukrainian airborne troops.

The group, however, left after finding out that Ukrainian military forces were not present on the tarmac.

Comment: So this staged take-over of the airports were most likely another false-flag event with the aim of accusing Russia of invasion and stir up anti-Russian feelings across the Western world. The Cold war headlines and editorials have already been made in the Western media.

It doesn't matter that Russia has denied it or that locals from around the airports have said that they were not Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian forces also retook them without firing a shot. Something does not add up.

A commenter (Deo Cassar) on Press TV wrote:
So the truth has finally emerged. It was all simply an excercise in mass deception. There was never any take over by Russian troops, nor self defence troops who took over vthe airports. They were simply NATO Russian speaking specail forces calling themselves Crimean Defence Force?! The great deceiver has exceeded its level of decit. The hype behind the story that Russian trops had taken over the airport was only a sham to deceive the Crimean people and deny them the right to react. It also served as an excuse to justify the cancellation of the 2010 deal to extend the lease of Sevastapol harbour to the Russian fleet and throw them out. Now it is time for the Crimean people, the true Russian speaking Crimean people to rise up and throw the Neo-Nazi trash out to their Northern dustbins.


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Dollar

The fraud of Obamacare: Only 51,000 uninsured Americans enrolled

Adam Radman
Americans for Tax Reform
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:06 UTC
Image
© Livetradingnews
"Paltry total amounts to less than 1 percent of uninsured; Cost of website now over $7,000 per enrollee"

A new report today in the Daily Mail finally answered a question the Obama Administration would not for the past 10 days - namely, how many people have successfully enrolled in Obamacare's federal "exchange" website healthcare.gov.

The answer is a paltry 51,000. To put that in context, it's a small fraction of one percent of the uninsured population. It falls far short of the 7 million enrollment figure that is widely believed to be the administration's goal.

The cost to taxpayers is staggering. According to reports, taxpayers have footed the bill for $363 million to get this "glitchy" exchange enrollment website off the ground. That comes out to $7118 per enrollee thus far. This gives a whole new meaning to "waste, fraud, and abuse."
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Quenelle - Golden

French football star Nicolas Anelka banned for five matches and fined £80,000 for making public gesture that signals you are fed up with the Western elites' lies

Stuart James
The Guardian
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:38 UTC
Image

QUENELLE!
West Bromwich Albion have suspended Nicolas Anelka after the Frenchman was banned for five matches by the Football Association and fined £80,000 for the quenelle gesture that he performed after scoring against West Ham United in December.

The club announced their decision following confirmation from the FA that an independent regulatory commission had found Anelka guilty of making a gesture that was "abusive and/or indecent and/or insulting and/or improper, and that included a reference to ethnic origin and/or race and/or religion or belief".

The punishment was the most lenient that the FA could have imposed under their new anti-discrimination rules. However, the governing body reported that the three-man panel "did not find that Nicolas Anelka is an antisemite or that he intended to express or promote antisemitism by his use of the quenelle".

It remains to be seen whether Anelka will appeal against the punishment, which includes attending a compulsory education programme. The 34-year-old said from the outset that the quenelle was a "special dedication to my comedian friend Dieudonné [M'Bala M'Bala]" and maintained that the gesture he made at Upton Park on 28 December was anti-establishment rather than antisemitic.

Comment: The gesture IS a gesture against racism, you numbskulls! Along with everything else the Powers That Be lie about all day every day!

Altogether now...



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Coffee

Pepe Escobar: NATO's wet dream in Crimea

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 08:55 UTC
Crimea
© Unknown

Time waits for no one, but apparently will wait for Crimea. The speaker of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, has confirmed there will be a referendum on greater autonomy from Ukraine on May 25.

Until then, Crimea will be as hot and steamy as carnival in Rio - because Crimea is all about Sevastopol, the port of call for the Russian Black Sea fleet.

If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a bull, this is the red flag to end all red flags. Even if you're deep in alcohol nirvana dancin' your troubles away at carnival in Rio - or New Orleans, or Venice, or Trinidad and Tobago - your brain will have registered that NATO's ultimate wet dream is to command a Western puppet Ukrainian government to kick the Russian navy out of its base in Sevastopol. The negotiated lease applies until 2042. Threats and rumors of reneging it have already emerged.

The absolute majority of the Crimean peninsula is populated by Russian speakers. Very few Ukrainians live there. In 1954, it took only 15 minutes for Ukrainian Nikita Krushchev - he of the banging shoe at the UN floor - to give Crimea as a free gift to Ukraine (then part of the USSR). In Russia, Crimea is perceived as Russian. Nothing will change that fact.
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War Whore

Sanctimonious scumbags: West demonizes Russia doing everything to avoid conflict in Ukraine

Eric Draitser
RT
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 05:25 UTC
Image
© AFP/Vasily Batanov
This picture taken on February 27, 2014 shows a placard reading "Crimea is Russia" on a barricade at the entrance of the Crimean parliament in Simferopol.
It is pure hypocrisy for the same Western powers fomenting the chaos in Ukraine to brandish the idea that Russia should be chided for some kind of military intervention that has not happened, political analyst Eric Draitser told RT.

RT: Russia has held snap military drills in the region bordering Ukraine. This does give the EU grounds to be reasonably concerned, doesn't it?

Eric Draitser: Well it should not necessarily give them concern considering that it was the EU, the United States and NATO powers were first at instigating the unrest in Kiev and in Ukraine more generally. We have seen that the unrest has been sponsored by the US. We know of course that Victoria Nuland and some of the figures in Germany who have been backing Klitschko and Yatsenyuk, they were exacerbating the situation, fomenting from the very beginning. So now in response to the unrest through the country, particularly in response from these probing attacks that we have seen since the takeover of Kiev, extending into the Eastern portion of the country.

You have seen regions in Ukraine, such as Crimea and elsewhere, calling on Russia to come and to protect the citizens. Now what Russia is doing in response is certainly not an intervention, not by any stretch of the imagination. What we have seen rather is putting military on high alert just like they did in 2008 in response to provocative attacks from Georgia.
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War Whore

Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?

Max Blumenthal
Salon.com
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:15 UTC
Image
© AP/Chris Usher
John McCain
As the Euromaidan protests in the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev culminated this week, displays of open fascism and neo-Nazi extremism became too glaring to ignore. Since demonstrators filled the downtown square to battle Ukrainian riot police and demand the ouster of the corruption-stained, pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, it has been filled with far-right streetfighting men pledging to defend their country's ethnic purity.

White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev's occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin. After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established "autonomous zones" in and around Kiev.

An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square. "They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists," one of its members said. "There weren't even any Communists, that was just an insult."

"There are lots of Nationalists here, including Nazis," the anti-fascist continued. "They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters."

Comment: Seeking out, aligning with and empowering the scummiest elements in every country on Earth... ah, it's the American Way.

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Propaganda

U.S.Hypocrisy: Scoundrel media Putin bashing

Stephen Lendman
sjlendman.blogspot.fr
Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:35 UTC
Image
It's relentless. It never quits. It's for any reason or none at all. Cold War geopolitics never ended.

Since Soviet Russia's 1991 dissolution, Western policy remained hard-wired in place.

Putin defends Russian sovereignty. He opposes US imperial lawlessness. Washington considers him public enemy number one. At stake is world peace.

A previous article discussed Stephen Cohen. He's a Russian expert. He discussed scoundrel media practice. It's longstanding. It's "pervasive," said Cohen. It's reprehensible.

"(E)ssential facts and context" are suppressed. Managed news misinformation substitutes. It's no less ideologically driven than during the Cold War days, Cohen explained.

Putin is viciously demonized. Facts are conveniently twisted. Truth is nowhere in sight.

Cohen sees a "new Cold War divide between West and East" unfolding. Imagine a possible hot one following.

Imagine what could imperil humanity. Imagine the damn fool in the White House risking it.

Washington Post editors are neocon extremists. They endorse confrontation. They bash Putin relentlessly. They invent reasons to do so.
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Network

NSA robots are 'collecting' your data - Eavesdropping by algorithm is still eavesdropping‏

Bruce Schneier
The Guardian
Thu, 27 Feb 2014 08:39 UTC
nsa logo spy
© Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters
‘Worrying about a computer reading your email,’ a Google executive likes to say, ‘is like worrying about your dog seeing you naked’. So what happens when spy agency algorithms with naked photos of you become ‘useful to the analyst’?
Increasingly, we are watched not by people but by algorithms. Amazon and Netflix track the books we buy and the movies we stream, and suggest other books and movies based on our habits. Google and Facebook watch what we do and what we say, and show us advertisements based on our behavior. Google even modifies our web search results based on our previous behavior. Smartphone navigation apps watch us as we drive, and update suggested route information based on traffic congestion. And the National Security Agency, of course, monitors our phone calls, emails and locations, then uses that information to try to identify terrorists.

Documents provided by Edwards Snowden and revealed by the Guardian today show that the UK spy agency GHCQ, with help from the NSA, has been collecting millions of webcam images from innocent Yahoo users. And that speaks to a key distinction in the age of algorithmic surveillance: is it really okay for a computer to monitor you online, and for that data collection and analysis only to count as a potential privacy invasion when a person sees it? I say it's not, and the latest Snowden leaks only make more clear how important this distinction is.
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Treasure Chest

Geopolitical dimensions of the coup in Ukraine, and why fascist militias are necessary for Western powers

Peter Schwarz
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:02 UTC
Ukraine map
"When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world," wrote former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his recently published memoirs. Gates was referring to the then-Secretary of Defense, and later US Vice President, Dick Cheney.

The statement sheds light on the geopolitical dimensions of the recent putsch in Ukraine. What is at stake is not so much domestic issues - and not at all the fight against corruption and democracy - but rather an international struggle for power and influence that stretches back a quarter of a century.
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