Top Obama Officials, Secretive Process Create 'Assassination List'

US officials with firsthand knowledge of how the government determines who gets put on the CIA and Pentagon's lists for 'targeted killing' have confessed concern over the implications and nature of the process.  In conversations with the Associated Press, one official involved -- who spoke with assurances of anonymity -- said that some of those carrying out the policy have become leery of "how easy it has become to kill someone," under the rules established under the Obama administration and orchestrated by Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan.

Brennan, who last month offered the first public admission by a White House official of the existence of the clandestine drone assassination program in places like Pakistan and Yemen, has amassed unique powers by consolidating the decision-making process to a select and tightly-controlled group of people, according to AP's reporting.

"Under the new plan, Brennan's staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting," the report cites officials as describing. "Previously, targets were first discussed in meetings run by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen at the time, with Brennan being just one of the voices in the debate. Brennan ultimately would make the case to the president, but a larger number of officials would end up drawn into the discussion."

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/22-2

Danny Schechter - DEFAMATORY POLITICS IN AMERICA; Not Letting The Facts Get In The Way of A Vicious Attack Against Candidates and Whistle Blowers

Listen to Danny's weekly show "The News Dissector" every Friday at 1pm (Eastern Time)

Increasingly, politics is a game driven by often-invented beliefs and myths that are firmly detached from facts and their interpretation.

The parties and their factions live not only in parallel universes but worlds of information that are driven mostly but what they think will work in pandering to their bases and the public.

Even as progressives complain that Barack Obama has moved right even if he occasionally talks left, the hard-core right-wing see him a black revolutionary shaped by Reverend Wright’s black liberation theology with allusions to Malcolm X and Kenyan communists thrown into the mix to “prove” their case.

Never mind that Obama threw his one time mentor Wright under the bus in 2008, or that his policies rarely speak of the needs of a black community suffering under the burden of high joblessness, foreclosures and growing poverty.

In fact, real black revolutionaries like Cornell West and so many others find the President a sell-out and embarrassment even if their community embraces him more as an identity issue.

The recent plan by Wall Street trader Ed Ricketts to recycle the alleged Obama-Wright conspiracy into an defamatory political ad campaign spoke more to his ignorance and fears than any truth-based assessment. Had the New York Times not exposed it, this $10 million dollar race-based smear would have moved forward.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30997

Robert Naiman - Would It Make a Difference to Progressives if Norman Solomon Goes to Congress?

A key paradox for progressives of our national political life goes something like this: everybody complains about Congress, but nobody does anything about it.

Of course, it is far from true that nobody is doing anything about Congress. Lots of people are doing something about it. But if you hold the complaints of progressives about Congress in one hand, and the level of progressive activity to change who is in Congress and what they do when they get there in the other, there is a big mismatch. The level of complaint should provoke a much higher level of activity to do something about it.

Every four years it is revealed that at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of progressive-minded people in the U.S. are pragmatic idealists. They are people who have one eye on the horizon, and the other eye on the next practical step that can help get us closer to the horizon - or stop us from being pushed further away, which amounts to the same thing. The overwhelming majority of progressive-minded people will vote in the fall Presidential election, and they will vote for Obama; not because they think that doing so is the beginning and end of political engagement, but because they think - correctly - that it is the political choice in the context that best serves the interests of pragmatic idealists.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/22-7

Doctors Petition White House to Bar Obama, Biden from Eating Junk Food in Public

A physicians nonprofit wants President Barack Obama to stop chowing down on hot dogs in front of news cameras. In a petition being filed on May 10, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine asks the White House to issue an executive order banning staged photo opportunities that show the president, the first family, the vice president, and members of the president’s cabinet eating unhealthy foods—including processed meats—that can cause cancer and obesity.

“The White House would never set up a photo op showing the president buying cigarettes, so why is it okay to show him eating a hot dog?” says PCRM nutrition education director Susan Levin, M.S., R.D. “Processed meats like hot dogs kill more Americans each year than tobacco does, and they cost taxpayers billions of dollars in healthcare. As role model to millions of Americans the president has a responsibility to watch what he eats in public.”

Since taking office, President Obama has posed for the cameras eating a hot dog at a basketball game with British Prime Minister David Cameron, eating cheeseburgers with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and stopping at a D.C. burger restaurant to share a cheeseburger with a reporter, among other similar instances. His predecessors, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan have also been caught on camera eating unhealthy foods, from ice cream to a Big Mac.

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http://www.pcrm.org/media/news/white-house-bar-obama-biden-junk-food-photos

Brett LoGiurato - If History Is A Guide, Obama Is Heading For A Loss In November

Gallup is out with a look today at some key indicators that look troublesome for Barack Obama's re-election prospects this fall. 

There are three main indicators, which Gallup looks at from historical perspective to judge Obama's prospects this year. They are his approval rating, economic factors and Americans' view of the direction in which the country is headed.

So, first is Obama's job approval. At 47 percent in May, it compares with other presidents that have lost their bids for re-election in recent history. At this point in 2004, George W. Bush had a 49 percent approval rating. That's the lowest for a president to win re-election since 1964.

The key here is whether the number improves as we head closer to November. Bush was back up to 50 percent by October. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — three presidents that lost re-election — plummeted down to the 30s. 

Read More:

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-re-election-loss-signs-point-to-loss-2012-5

NDAA's 'Indefinite Detention' Provisions Unconstitutional, says Judge

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday ruled in favor of a group of civilian activists and journalists and struck down highly controversial 'indefinite detention' and 'material support' provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act, enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last December. In their suit, the plaintiffs stated they could be detained 'indefinitely' for their constitutionally protected activities. Citing the 'vagueness' of certain language in the bill, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest -- who was appointed to the court by Obama -- agreed, and said the law could have "chilling impact on First Amendment rights" for journalists, activists, and potentially all US citizens.

"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an 'associated force' without even being aware that he or she was doing so," the judge said.

The ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by seven plaintiffs — Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Alexa O’Brien, Kai Wargall, and Jennifer Bolen — alleging that the NDAA violates ”both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who has written critically and extensively of the NDAA, called the ruling "a sweeping victory for the plaintiffs."

"This is an extraordinary and encouraging decision," Greenwald continues, though he noted that many caveats still must be applied. "This is only a preliminary injunction (though the judge made it clear that she believes plaintiffs will ultimately prevail). It will certainly be appealed and can be reversed. There are still other authorities (including the AUMF) which the DOJ can use to assert the power of indefinite detention. Nonetheless, this is a rare and significant limit placed on the U.S. Government’s ability to seize ever-greater powers of detention-without-charges, and it is grounded in exactly the right constitutional principles: ones that federal courts and the Executive Branch have been willfully ignoring for the past decade."

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/17

Anuradha Mittal - Large-Scale Land Investments are Violating Human Rights and Undermine Food Security in Ethiopia

Ethiopia's Land Lease Project

May 17, 2012, Oakland, CA: On the eve of upcoming meeting at Camp 
David on May 19, 2012, with four African leaders to discuss food 
security, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,  the 
Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia 
(SMNE),  call upon  President Obama to address what may be the single 
largest man-made contributor to food insecurity on the continent 
today: large-scale land investments by foreign investors.

In an Open Letter to President Obama, the Oakland Institute and SMNE 
are delivering a petition signed by over 8,000 supporters of the 
indigenous and local communities of Gambella, Ethiopia - 70,000 
people in all - who are being forcibly relocated to make land 
available for investment in agriculture. There are plans to relocate 
an additional 150,000 people, most of whom are subsistence farmers 
who have been able, until now, to feed their families without 
receiving government or foreign aid over the last twenty years.

The letter points out that in addition to the many problems 
surrounding forced relocations and human rights abuses, the loss of 
ancestral lands where people farm equals the loss of their ability to 
feed themselves. Farmers and pastoralists are being turned into 
plantation workers with false promises that result in menial seasonal 
jobs that do not put food on the table or provide for their basic 
needs.

The Oakland Institute's field research in Ethiopia revealed a grim 
picture of violence, coercion, and unrealized benefits by relocated 
communities. These findings are confirmed by Human Rights Watch's 
independent study involving 100 interviews and sixteen site visits 
this year.

The burden of the Ethiopian government's objective of economic growth 
is being borne by the indigenous and local people of Gambella and the 
Lower Omo Valley, where a half million will lose their lands. This is 
too great a cost. As Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of US 
aid (more than $1 billion a year since 2007), the US bears 
responsibility on matters of such grave consequence. The letter 
cautions that something has to be done to ensure that the United 
States is not an unwitting partner in this current tragedy.

The Oakland Institute and Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia are 
urging President Obama to look beyond the charade of so-called 
responsible investment that will supposedly benefit all in the long 
run, and instead, calls for the US to reassess the terms of its 
support to the Ethiopian regime.

Our hope is that President Obama will take leadership in responding 
to an international call asking him to put the brakes on this 
impending and present-day catastrophe.

William J. Astore - The National Security State Wins (Again)

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, the media is already handicapping the presidential election big time, and the neck-and-neck opinion polls are pouring in.  But whether President Obama gets his second term or Romney enters the Oval Office, there’s a third candidate no one’s paying much attention to, and that candidate is guaranteed to be the one clear winner of election 2012: the U.S. military and our ever-surging national security state.

The reasons are easy enough to explain.  Despite his record as a “warrior-president,” despite the breathless “Obama got Osama” campaign boosterism, common inside-the-Beltway wisdom has it that the president has backed himself into a national security corner.  He must continue to appear strong and uncompromising on defense or else he’ll get the usual Democrat-as-war-wimp label tattooed on his arm by the Republicans.

Similarly, to have a realistic chance of defeating him -- so goes American political thinking -- candidate Romney must be seen as even stronger and more uncompromising, a hawk among hawks.  Whatever military spending Obama calls for, however much he caters to neo-conservative agendas, however often he confesses his undying love for and extols the virtues of our troops, Romney will surpass him with promises of even more military spending, an even more muscular and interventionistforeign policy, and an even deeper love of our troops.

Indeed, with respect to the national security complex, candidate Romney already comes across like Edward G. Robinson’s Johnny Rocco in the classic film Key Largo: he knows he wants one thing, and that thing ismore.  More ships for the Navy.  More planes for the Air Force.  More troops in general -- perhaps 100,000 more.  And much more spending on national defense.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175542/

France's Hollande in diplomatic test with Obama

President Francois Hollande faces a diplomatic test three days into his term when he discusses an early exit for French troops in Afghanistan with U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO allies in his first outing on the world stage.

France's first Socialist leader in 17 years is little known outside France and will have a baptism of fire, flying first to Germany to challenge Berlin's focus on austerity then to the United States to meet Obama and attend G8 and NATO summits.

The talks in Camp David and Chicago will be the first encounter between world leaders and Hollande, a lifelong party official who has never held a ministerial post and whose affable and conciliatory manner will mark a change of style from the impulsive Nicolas Sarkozy.

"I don't see this robust internationalism or activism Sarkozy had manifested," said Stephen Flanagan at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "There is still a certain amount of French pride in this idea of still being a global actor. I doubt it will be as prominent under the Socialists."

The war in Afghanistan will top the talks agenda at the Group of Eight and NATO meetings in Camp David and Chicago.

"Without wanting to take risks, I believe it is time to withdraw our combat troops by the end of 2012," Hollande said on May 2, four days before he defeated conservative Nicolas Sarkozy. "I will announce this decision at the NATO summit."

Read More:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/15/us-france-hollande-nato-idUSBRE84E0ZR20120515

Brian Moench - Climate Crisis: The Silence is Deafening

Those of us who have been waiting impatiently for Obama to shed his apparent cocoon of compromise, caution and cowardice finally got a hint last week that a real leader may yet emerge and spread his wings at the White House.

But, there are public policy issues more important than gay marriage, issues where there is no margin for error and no time to waste, issues where the clock is not only ticking but nearing the end of its prelude to catastrophe.  The survival of mankind is just such an issue.  I'm talking of course about "the climate crisis"--what the coniving Republican strategist Frank Luntz convinced the media to start calling "climate change" in 2003 because polling showed that it sounded less ominous than "global warming."

With the President having shown some mettle on gay rights,  we must now convince him that he must bring that courage to bear on the greatest threat that mankind has ever faced.  Pragmatists, please don't respond with:  "The public doesn't want to hear it." "It's not in the top ten of voters' concerns."  "He can't win the election talking about it." Molding oneself for the sole purpose of electability is not leadership, it's pandering, something for which his opponent, Mr. Romney, is widely regarded as breaking the world record, whose only core political belief is that he deserves to be President.  There has never been a more noble opportunity for a President  to contrast himself from, and elevate himself above a soulless pandering opponent than President Obama has now.  

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-5