source: Raw Story

by Allen McDuffee

For those who thought the end of the Bush Administration spelled doomsday for the neoconservative movement, think again.

According to a May report (pdf) from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC think tank, neoconservatives associated with prominent figures like former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and pundit Richard Perle are still broadly active, despite policy failures associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Brookings Institution senior fellow Justin Vaisse, author of Neoconservatism: A Biography of a Movement, argues that because neocons never had the degree of influence that opponents credited them with, and also because of a general unawareness of their history, observers don’t fully understand the trajectory of the neoconservative movement that began long before the Iraq invasion and one continues today.

“Neoconservatism remains, to this day, a distinct and very significant voice of the Washington establishment,” Vaisse insists. In May he published the report Why Neoconservativism Still Matters.

Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, says that the most obvious place the neocons are still influential is in U.S. policy toward Iran, where the Obama administration is “continuing the Bush administration’s basic approach, albeit with a ‘kinder, gentler’ face.”

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source: Raw Story

Obama issues a stunning display of disregard for campaign promises regarding government transparency

by John Byrne

One day after being sworn into office, President Barack Obama instructed federal agencies to ensure government transparency by complying with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act law.

“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government,” Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies Jan. 21, 2009. “The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public,” the newly-installed president continued. “They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”

One year later, Obama’s requests for transparency have apparently gone unheeded. In fact a provision in the Freedom of Information Act law that allows the government to hide records that detail its internal decision-making has been invoked by Obama agencies more often in the past year than during the final year of President George W. Bush.

Major agencies cited that exemption to refuse records at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, compared with 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

The AP review comes on the heels of another bit of government transparency news: that the Obama Administration has threatened to veto a congressional intelligence bill because it objects to efforts to increase intelligence oversight.

Among other things, the proposed legislation would subject intelligence agencies to General Accountability Office review. US intelligence agencies are currently immune from review by the Congressional auditing office.

Departments used the government decision making exemption more even though Obama’s Justice Department told agencies to that disclosing such records was “fully consistent with the purpose of the FOIA,” a law intended to keep government accountable to the public.

For example, the Federal Aviation Administration cited the exemption in refusing the AP’s FOIA request for internal memos on its decisions about a database showing incidents in which airplanes and birds collided. The FAA initially tried to withhold the bird-strike database from the public, but later released it under pressure.

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source: Project Censored

by Peter Phillips

The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world— albeit with perhaps a kinder-gentler face.  While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.

The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military spending. Clinton’s model of supporting the US military industrial complex held steady defense spending and increased foreign weapons sales from 16% of global orders to over 63% by the end of his administration.

The neo-conservatives, who dominated the most recent Bush administration, amplified this trend of increased military spending. The neo-cons laid out their agenda for military global dominance in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) report Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The report called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, to perform global constabulary roles, and to control space and cyberspace. The report claimed that in order to maintain a Pax Americana, potential rivals — such as China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — needed to be held in check. This military global dominance agenda required forward deployment of US forces worldwide and increasing defense/war spending well into the 21st century. The result was a doubling of the US military budget to over $700 billion in the last eight years. The US now spends as much on war/defense as the rest of the world combined, making Americans the highest war-tax payers in the world.

Barack Obama’s election brought a moment of hope for many. However, the Obama administration is not calling for decreased military spending, or a reversal of US military global dominance. Instead, Obama retained Robert Gates, thus making Obama the first president from an opposing party, in US history, to keep in place the outgoing administrations’ Secretary of Defense/War. Additionally, Obama is calling for an expanded war in Afghanistan and only minimal long-range reductions in Iraq.

The US military industrial complex is deeply embedded inside the Washington beltway. According to the most recent reports from OpenSecrets.org, 151 members of Congress in 2006 had up to $195.5 million of their personal assets invested in defense companies.

Major defense contractors were seriously involved in the 2008 elections. Lockheed Martin gave $2,612,219 in total political campaign donations, with 49% to Democrats ($1,285,493) and 51% to Republicans ($1,325,159). Boeing gave $2,225,947 in 2008 with 58% going to Democrats, and General Dynamics provided $1,682,595 to both parties.  Northrop Grumman spent over $20 million in 2008, hiring lobbyists to influence Congress, and Raytheon spent $6 million on lobbyists in the same period. In a revolving door appointment, Obama nominated Raytheon’s senior vice president for government operations and strategy, William Lynn, for the number two position in the Pentagon. Lynn was formally the Defense Department’s comptroller during the Clinton administration.

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(video) Project Censored Director Peter Phillips Talks to We Are Change LA

source: Associated Press (AP)
picked up: MSNBC

Justice Department seeks to hold back lawsuits as FOIA rules rewritten.

WASHINGTON – Despite President Barack Obama’s vow to open government more than ever, the Justice Department is defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

In half a dozen lawsuits, Justice lawyers have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to delay court action until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act guidelines and decides whether the new rules might allow the public to see more.

In only one case has the Justice Department agreed to suspend a FOIA lawsuit until the disputed documents can be re-evaluated under the yet-to-be-written guidelines. That case involves negotiations on an anti-counterfeiting treaty, not the more controversial, secret anti-terrorism tactics that spawned the other lawsuits as well as Obama’s promises of greater openness.

“The signs in the last few days are not entirely encouraging,” said Jameel Jaffer, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed several lawsuits seeking the Bush administration’s legal rationales for warrantless domestic wiretapping and for its treatment of terrorism detainees.

The documents sought in these lawsuits “are in many cases the documents that the public most needs to see,” Jaffer said. “It makes no sense to say that these documents are somehow exempt from President Obama’s directives.”

Groups that advocate open government, civil liberties and privacy were overjoyed that Obama on his first day in office reversed the FOIA policy imposed by Bush’s first attorney general, John Ashcroft. The Bush Justice Department said it would use any legitimate legal basis to defend withholding records from the public. Obama pledged “an unprecedented level of openness in government” and ordered new FOIA guidelines written with a “presumption in favor of disclosure.”

But Justice’s actions in courts since then have cast doubt on how far the new administration will go.

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source: Raw Story

by Jeremy Gantz

Two days after taking the helm of a country ready for change after eight years of George W. Bush, President Obama has allowed one controversial “War on Terror” tactic to remain in place: rendition.

Despite frequent condemnation of the practice around the world, rendition — the secret capture, transportation and detention of suspected terrorists to foreign prisons in countries that cooperate with the U.S. — remains in the CIA’s playbook, thanks to a Jan. 22 executive order issued by President Obama.

Other executive orders shuttered the CIA’s secret prisons and banned the harsh interrogation techniques that have been termed torture. And in his most widely noticed break with his predecessor, Obama signed an order to close Guantanamo Bay’s prison within one year.

But rendition will remain. Obama and his administration appear to believe that the rendition program was one piece of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard, the Los Angeles Times reported.

An administration official told the newspaper anonymously: “Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys. The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

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source: The Daily Cardinal

U.S. Congressional candidate Kevin Barrett, a former one-semester instructor at UW-Madison, was arrested in Madison Tuesday for violating a restraining order filed by his wife, Fatna Bellouchi.

According to Madison Police Officer Lori Chalecki, Barrett turned himself in to police after violating the no-contact provision of his restraining order.

On Sept. 10, Barrett was charged with domestic abuse following a criminal complaint filed by Bellouchi.

According to the complaint, Barrett struck his 14-year-old son several times in the back and threatened Bellouchi with clenched fists.

Barrett, tired from a long day of traveling, allegedy struck their son because their two children failed to lower the TV volume, the complaint said.

Barrett drew national attention in 2006 when he shared his conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a class. He claimed the U.S. government played a role in the attacks.

Rolf Lindgren, Barrett’s spokesperson, said Bellouchi’s allegations appear to be a publicity stunt.

Lindgren said he believes Bellouchi filed the report in an effort to draw media attention to her husband.

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Related Stories:

• Libertarian Party candidate Barrett arrested; police say he violated restraining order (Wisconsin State Journal)
• Libertarian candidate for Congress arrested (Examiner.com)
• Kevin Barrett Supports Debunked 9/11 Theories (Arabesque)
  
• Kevin Barrett and his PR Manager Slander 911blogger, Truthaction, and 9/11 activists (Arabesque)

source: Raw Story

Swing-State newspapers distribute ‘terror’ videos

by Diane Sweet

A 60-minute DVD, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” is being distributed in millions of newspapers across the country this week primarily in swing states through an advertising purchase by a shadowy group called the Clarion Fund.

Editor & Publisher reports:

“Despite some protests from Muslim and liberal activists, the newspapers — all hard hit by drops in ad revenue in recent months — have explained that the DVD does not violate their usual standards; see our exchange with The New York Times below. A spokesperson there said the Times last Sunday inserted 145,000 DVDs in its papers delivered in the following markets: Denver, Miami/Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando, Detroit, Kansas City, St Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee/Madison. Note: These are all in swing states.

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