Ron Paul gets a chance to ask Hillary Clinton, Gates, and Mullen if they support the Bush doctrine of “preventive war”. He gets the answer you would expect.
This is from a joint hearing on Afghanistan following Obama’s speech/announcement last night (12/01/2009).
Violence erupted in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when a Palestinian man entered a petrol station at the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank and stabbed two settlers.
But that was not the end of the story. According to the Israeli army, the Palestinian was then shot by a soldier, after which a car, apparently driven by a settler, ran over the wounded Palestinian, twice, with Israeli soldiers all around.
Jacky Rowland reports.
Note: Viewers may find some of the images disturbing.
Inhofe: Let’s look at the big picture. We have the Copenhagen meeting coming up in the middle of December. We now have learned the president has changed his mind again and President Obama will be attending around the 9th of December. It’s my understanding that he will make the statement that he will commit ourselves to the emission standards that were in the Markey bill that passed the House of Representatives. I’m sure you’ve talked about that because that was several weeks ago. That’s a 17% reduction in CO2 by the year 2020.
Dobbs: From 2005 levels.
Inhofe: Yes, that’s correct. He can’t do that. I just had an interview with a station in Copenhagen, in Denmark –
Dobbs: [laughter]
Inhofe: — that they were all under the assumption the president could unilaterally do that. No, that’s not true. In fact, one of my good friends, a Democrat senator, Jim Webb from Virginia has sent a letter to the president and I’m quoting a sentence out of it now: “As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.”
So, we need to make sure — and that’s the main reason I was going to go to Copenhagen was to, if Barbara Boxer and John Kerry went there and made some kind of a commitment that we were going to do something, I wanted to make sure that countries were fully informed that we are not going to be passing legislation that will accomplish what President Obama I believe is going to tell on the 9th.
Dobbs: Senator, this begs the question if I may put it forward right now: Who the hell does this president think he is?
Inhofe: I dont know, because you can’t do that. And I think it’s certainly disingenuous to mislead countries into thinking that a president . . . You know, this is not a kingdom. He’s not able to do that.
Dobbs: Not yet!
Inhofe: And we want to be sure that people realize that he cannot do that.
The World’s Least Powerful Man – The Obama Puppet
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.
The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, “No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable for us to let you stop them.”
And the mere president has to say, “Yes, Sir!”
Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he can’t override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the country can’t afford both the “war on terror” and “socialized medicine.”
The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health insurance; otherwise, we can’t afford it.
The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control.”
Continue reading: COUNTER PUNCH
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published in January by AK Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts[a]yahoo[dot]com
JERUSALEM — Jewish nationalists and Palestinians clashed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday after the Israelis took over a house by court order in a predominantly Arab area. The confrontation further strained tensions in this contested city, where competing Israeli and Palestinian claims have become a sticking point in the Obama administration’s efforts to restart peace talks.
The house at the center of Tuesday’s flare-up is located in Sheik Jarrah, a leafy district just north of the Old City, where three Palestinian families have been evicted from other houses in the last year after losing a lengthy legal battle in the High Court and lower district and magistrates courts.
A Jewish association won its claim to historical ownership of the land in question, and has plans to build a large Jewish housing complex there. The Palestinians fear that the Jewish presence in Sheik Jarrah is part of a larger project to cement Israeli control of the eastern part of the city and to push Palestinian residents out.
The latest Jewish residents to move into the area were escorted by the police and private security guards and immediately removed furniture from the property, which was built by a Palestinian family headed by Refka al-Kurd, 87.
The small, one-story structure was built about 10 years ago as an extension of the Kurds’ original home, but it was unoccupied, having been sealed by the authorities after it was determined to have been constructed without the proper permits.
“The authorities took our keys to the property because we built it without permits,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, who lives in the original house. “But it seems the settlers can live here without permits because they are the sons of God,” he said bitterly, referring to the Jewish newcomers.
Shmulik Ben-Ruby, the spokesman for the Jerusalem police, said his force acted in line with the court decision that determined that the property “is owned by Jews.”
Huckabee apologizes for pardons after police killings
Then-Ark. governor commuted sentence of suspect in four deaths
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on Monday accepted responsibility for commuting the prison sentence years ago of the man who allegedly killed four police officers Sunday near Tacoma, Wash., saying “it’s not something I’m happy about at this particular moment.”
The shooting deaths have renewed scrutiny of Huckabee’s pardon record. Though one of the Republican Party’s most popular figures, Huckabee has been dogged by questions over the more than 1,000 commutations and pardons he issued — more than his three predecessors combined — during his 10-year tenure.
“If I could have known nine years ago this guy was capable of something of this magnitude, obviously I would never have granted a commutation,” he told Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly on Monday night. “It’s sickening.”
“In the case of this particular individual, he was sentenced to 108 years for two crimes when he was 16. The post-prison transfer board … recommended to me as governor for his commutation, which didn’t release him, it simply cut his sentence to 47 years. That would give him parole eligibility. That was the commutation. I’m responsible for that. And it’s not something I’m happy about at this particular moment, in light of that,” Huckabee said.
In his 2008 presidential campaign, Huckabee faced similar questions over the release from prison of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, who was convicted of another rape and a murder.
Huckabee tried then to distance himself from any role in the DuMond parole, and on Sunday he similarly pointed at “a series of failures in the criminal justice system” regarding Maurice Clemmons.
The leader of the Taliban in Kabul has told Al Jazeera that French troops are trying to pay his men to stop attacking them.
Saif-Allah Jalili says he is also receiving Nato weapons that were supplied to groups who were meant to be fighting him.
David Chater reports.
Rep. Peter DeFazio called for the firing of President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides on Wednesday for pursuing a recovery plan skewed too heavily towards Wall Street’s favor.
The Oregon Democrat told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz that he was dismayed with the administration’s lack of focus on job creation and insisted it was time to dismiss both White House economic adviser Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary “Timmy Geithner.”
“We think it is time, maybe, that we turn our focus to Main Street — we reclaim some of the unspent [TARP] funds, we reclaim some of the funds that are being paid back, which will not be paid back in full, and we use it to put people back to work. Rebuilding America’s infrastructure is a tried and true way to put people back to work,” said DeFazio.
“Unfortunately, the President has an adviser from Wall Street, Larry Summers, and a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street, Timmy Geithner, who don’t like that idea,” he added. “They want to keep the TARP money either to continue to bail out Wall Street…or to pay down the deficit. That’s absurd.”
Asked specifically whether Geithner should stay in his job, DeFazio replied: “No.
“Especially if you look back at the AIG scandal,” he added, “and Goldman and others who got their bets paid off in full…with taxpayer money through AIG. We channeled the money through them. Geithner would not answer my question when I said, ‘Were those naked credit default swaps by Goldman or were they a counter-party?’ He would not answer that question.”
DeFazio said that among he and others in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, there was a growing consensus that Geithner needed to be removed. He added that some lawmakers were “considering questions regarding him and other economic advisers” — though a petition calling for the Treasury Secretary’s removal had not been drafted, he said.
“[Obama] is being failed by his economic team,” DeFazio concluded. “We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans.”
Israel disregards specific U.S. objection, approves plan to expand Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood.
The White House responded angrily Tuesday to Israel’s plan to build 900 new housing units beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem, despite specific objections from the U.S., saying that “we are dismayed.”
In a statement, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs voiced the U.S.’s disappointment with “the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem.”
The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the construction plan Tuesday despite an expose in Israel’s Yedioth Aharonot newspaper earlier in the day revealing that the U.S. has specifically objected to the construction outlined in the plan.
Continue reading: HAARETZ
Israel dubs Palestinian farmers trying in vain to irrigate their lands “water pirates”.
Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, or “water pirates” as Israeli occupation forces prefer to call them, are siphoning off drinking water pipes in an effort to secure water to irrigate their farmland.
Water is an increasingly disputed resource between Israel and the Palestinians.
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A World Bank report has accused Israel of using four times more water than Palestinians from the so-called Mountain Aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory and runs along the West Bank.
Israel disputes that claim and says the Palestinians are jeopardising the resource through illegal use.
Palestinians argue they are being denied access in order to force them off their land.
This exclusive report from Al Jazeera shows Israeli occupation forces dismantling a farmer’s water pipes in the agricultural village of al-Baqa.
Badran Jaber, a Palestinian farmer, told Al Jazeera: “We were surprised by a large group of soldiers and settlers who surrounded the entire area. We asked them: ‘why are you doing this and what do you want?’ They refused to speak to us.
“Men who came with the soldiers stormed the field and pulled out all the irrigation pipes, destroying the crops.”
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports on how Israeli rules blight the lives of many Palestinians.
Nine people protesting in favor of universal health care were arrested for unlawful entry this morning after occupying the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), according to Capitol Police.
Protesters chanted “Everyone in and no one out, universal health care now!” and “Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!” as they were taken from the office, ABC News reports.
Lieberman, who votes with the Democratic caucus, has said he does not support the public option and may join Republican efforts to filibuster the Senate health care bill.
Some of the most influential Muslim scholars in India have passed a resolution condemning all forms of violence in the name of Islam.
The Deoband is an influential Islamic school inspiring tens of thousands of religious study centres across the world, which some say has even inspired the Taliban’s ideology in Afghanistan.
Prerna Suri reports on the weight of the school’s declaration.
The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have all called on Israel to stop the illegal eviction of Palestinians and the demolition of their homes.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, urged Israel to end its “provocative actions” in East Jerusalem, while calling for it to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
Despite that, the sight of Palestinians in East Jerusalem being forced out of their homes has become an all too familiar scene.
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports from occupied East Jerusalem.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann Interviews Democratic Rep Alan Grayson About The Health Care Public Option – 11/02/09
