OMNI OBAMA NEWSLETTER #8, January 28, 2013, COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE . (#4 July 30, 2011; #5 October 3, 2011; #6
March 7, 2012; #7 May 20, 2012)
My blog: The War
Department and Peace Heroes
Newsletters:
Index:
Contents of #5
Prosecute Obama and Bush
The Bush/Obama Presidency
Wang: Renditions and Secrecy Continue
Turley: Obama and Civil Liberties
Obama and Drones
Cornel West: 
Obama and MLKJr
Obama and MLKJr
Obam vs.EPA:
Ozone Pollution
Obama and Ron
Paul
Contents of #6
Rabbi Lerner ,
Iran
Nader: Obama’s Cave-in
Cockburn: Obama vs. Habeas Corpus
Wendell Griffin Badly
Disappointed
Hedges: Suing Obama
Over Habeas Corpus
Petition to the President
Navy Seals
Pollitt: Ron Paul and Obama
Corn: Obama’s New Vigor
Contents #7 Obama Empire
Obama and Bush
Engelhardt, Imperial Obama
Abdulelah Shaye
Ron Paul on Obama: US Unconstrained
Obama’s Drones, Secrecy, Prosecuting Leakers
Impeach Obama, Prosecute Bush and Cheney for War Crimes
Contents #8
Sign Letter on Climate Change
Hayden, War or Peace, Obama’s Peace Constituency
Frank, Obama Democrat?
Samuels, Obama’s Character
Pres. Assassinations vs. Constitution
War or Murder?
Ted Rall’s Cartoon Book
Tariq Ali, Surrender
at Home, War Abroad
Obama vs. Dissent
Obama and Romney
Obama War Criminal
McGovern, What Is a Democrat
Here is the link to all OMNI topical newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
|
Friends,
I immediately added my name to this open letter to President Obama
calling for bold climate action, and I hope you will too.
President Obama is one piece of the
puzzle when it comes to tackling climate change, but he's a very important
piece. This letter lays out exactly the kind of leadership we need from
him in the coming 4 years. It calls for a
rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline (the first and maybe simplest test of his
seriousness on climate), a strong carbon rule that would address pollution from
existing coal plants, and a number of other things which will need his
attention right away.
The letter was written by our friends at
CREDO, and the full text is below. In these early moments of Obama's
second term, it's important that we are vocal about our high expectations. The
more people who sign on, the louder our message will be.
We'll deliver this letter in bulk a few days
before our big action in DC on February 17th, and I hope to have your name
alongside mine when we do.
Thanks again, Bill
Dear President Obama,
It was with great relief and gratitude that
we welcomed, at long last, a clarion call in your inaugural address to
"respond to the threat of climate change" -- the greatest threat,
challenge, and opportunity of our time.
We thank you for these words, because
your words are powerful, and necessary for change. But words are not enough. We
need action.
Mr. President, you are the first leader in
our history who will be judged by what you do -- or do not do -- to protect
your people from the already-begun ravages and disruptions brought about by
fossil fuels.
So far, Mr. President, you are failing in
the face of our earth heating up, and the damage accelerating.
Just a few months ago, we witnessed New York and New
Jersey
The simple truth is that you will continue
failing in the fight against climate change, as long as you continue an energy
policy which treats equally the fuels that are hurting us and those that will
save us. To meet your call on
climate change, your "all of the above" energy policy must end.
Your support for fracking and drilling, coal
mines and pipelines, continues to obliterate the progress you could be making
with your administration's gas mileage rule, or your investments in renewable
energy. Even if you finally issue a carbon pollution rule that addresses
existing sources of pollution, it
will mean nothing if you are simultaneously lighting the fuses on carbon bombs
by approving the Keystone XL pipeline, Arctic drilling, or fossil fuel export
projects.
You must use the power of your office and
our federal lands to stop promoting fossil fuel development, and reject these
projects outright.
While we recognize that a majority in the
House of Representatives are clearly not on the side of science or sanity, you
can and must find a way - within Congress or the power of your office - to end
fossil fuel subsidies and giveaways, and put a price on all greenhouse gas
pollution, so that fossil fuel executives can no longer get rich from the
destabilization of our climate, and so fossil-free energy can thrive. If Congress remains in the way, you must fight to
change Congress.
You must invest significantly in sustainable
sources of energy as part of a plan to rapidly transition our nation from
fossil fuels. And these efforts should be coupled with resources to help our
cities, states and industries prepare for the damage that climate change is
already bringing. (The $50 billion Sandy
relief package and the drought's impacts on food prices are just two painful
reminders that the cost of inaction is enormous, and untenable.)
Confronting climate change also happens to
be our best opportunity to create the broad-based economic revitalization that
your policies have largely failed to achieve. This is not simply an empty trope
of idealistic environmentalists, it is the truth.
Mr. President, we are urging you to
do as our other Illinois president did when confronted with the great moral
issue of his time: to take bold, decisive action to end one great societal ill,
changing the economy in the process, and usher in a new era of American
freedom, security and prosperity.
This is the moment. We will support you. But
you must lead and take action, starting first and foremost with your rejection
of the presidential permit required by the Keystone XL pipeline, which is your
decision and yours alone.
Sincerely,
Becky Bond, Political
Director, CREDO
Michael Kieschnick, President and CEO, CREDO
Elijah Zarlin, Senior Campaign Manager, CREDO
Bill McKibben, Co-Founder, 350.org
Michael Kieschnick, President and CEO, CREDO
Elijah Zarlin, Senior Campaign Manager, CREDO
Bill McKibben, Co-Founder, 350.org
350.org is building a global
movement to solve the climate crisis. Connect with us on Facebook andTwitter, and sign
up for email alerts. You can help power our work by getting
involved locally, sharingyour
story, and donating
here.
Tom Hayden
The Peace and Justice
Resource Center
“Winning the
Peace Vote in November”
Thursday,
August 2, 2012 at 2:04PM | Print Article |
Email Article |
This op-ed
appeared at The
Huffington Post on August 3, 2012.
President Obama and the Democrats need a new peace initiative to
increase turnout and voting by pro-peace voters who will make a critical
difference in this November's election.
The president
has already recognized the importance of this constituency. In every speech he
points to winding down the Iraq War and the Afghanistan America
Why is a further initiative needed, when
everyone agrees that the economy and character issues are the most important in
voters' minds?
Because many
pro-peace voters have been disillusioned by the president's unilateral
escalation of drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere; the
lack of transparency around those drone attacks; secret military interventions
in many countries under the banner of counterterrorism; the assertion of
executive control over interventions like Libya; the approval of assassinations
and cyber-war measures under the sole approval of the president; and the
shrinking of civil liberties and Congressional checks and balances in this new
era of warfare. A decision on the US
and/or Israel attacking Iran
In doing what
they believe is necessary to protect US interests, the president and many
Democrats have deflated their base among pro-peace and progressive voters. To
expect that those voters will return to 2008-levels of enthusiasm, or turn out
at 2008 levels of participation, is mistaken.
These voters
are not undecided between Obama and Romney. They are undecided about whether to
vote at all, or to cast a protest vote for the Greens. . . .
If it is not
enough to campaign on claims of winding down two wars, what more is needed?
One
possibility is for the president to recognize, without having to backtrack,
that his policies have opened a new era of warfare that renders the 1973 War
Powers Act all but obsolete. He can be an effective Commander-In-Chief while
disavowing a return to an Imperial Presidency.
The proposal
need not be a detailed blueprint, partly because the subject is complex. But
the president can pledge to start a conversation about how to enhance the
democratic rule of law, the constitutional role of Congressional oversight and
consent, and a broader, re-invigorated place for the media and civil society in
the process of deciding whether, when, and for how long America goes to war.
However much
Obama extols his Libyan policy, he should remember how close he came to
rejection by a bipartisan coalition in the House, and how he was forced to
conceal internal administration memos questioning the legality of that policy.
He and his team should remember how difficult it was to maintain that the War
Powers Act did not apply to Libya Libyas
A
future-oriented promise of reconsidering and updating the War Powers Act would make pro-peace voters see a new
hope and new agenda for an Obama second term, thus spurring their turnout.
There is no downside to such a pledge. If he needs a rationale, Obama can
simply say that his policies have opened a new chapter of warfare that requires
an expansion of the law. Romney, the media, and the Pentagon are not likely to
advocate for the expansion of executive power, a new McCarthyism or a return to
the Nixon era.
Some next
steps might include:
- A plank in the Democratic platform, although time is
short to include one;
- Consensus support from the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, who would hold forums to develop the proposal, and emphasize it in
their fall campaigns;
- Convening of a task force of civil libertarians and
lawyers working on detention and torture issues, to solicit their
recommendations;
- Convening a conversation with mainstream media
advocates concerned with the erosion of First Amendment protections;
- Convening clergy to increase input on the moral
dimensions of the new warfare.
If enough
voices declare that a stronger vision of peace is needed, anything can happen
in the course of this election. John F. Kennedy's advisers did not want him to
announce the Peace Corp in October 1960, but he did so in response to a student
movement. JFK also called Coretta Scott
King when her husband Martin was in jail. Looking back, those gestures were
history-turning events.
A call by this
president to expand the War Powers Act
and avert any return to the Imperial Presidency might have the same ripple
EASY CHAIR —
From the September 2012 issue
Compromising Positions By Thomas Frank
HARPER’S MAGAZINE
MicroFiche
Let us
review. Barack Obama, who was lifted to the presidency four years ago on a
great wave of progressive fantasy, likes to say that the national budget is
like a family budget: that when times are tough, government has to tighten its
belt. This is a Republican simile of very long standing, and the president is a
Democrat. He is in fact the leader of the party that is supposed to believe in
deficit spending during hard times. Yet Obama has enthusiastically adopted the
belt-tightening trope, and all the terrible ideas that go with it. Another
thing the president … http://harpers.org/archive/2012/09/compromising-positions/
“The
Changeling: The content of Obama’s character”
Download Pdf ARTICLE — From the September 2012 issue of HARPER’S MAGAZINE
MicroFicheWho knows but that,
on the lower frequencies, he speaks for me, for you, for all of us? An
educated, intelligent man, he is the
very model of the roommate that every good liberal parent in Park Slope or Santa Monica America Iraq
Glenn Greenwald: Oppose assassination and secrecy for
unaccountable power
JustForeignPolicy, 7-12-12.
The notion that we should trust the President with secret and
unaccountable power to kill runs completely contrary to the spirit of the
Constitution.
The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama
Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine, RSN, July 14, 2012
Junod writes: "Sure, we as a nation have always killed
people. A lot of people. [Dick: See
books by William Blum and OMNI’s many related Newsletters.] But no president has ever waged war by
killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever
they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over
again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid
the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They're careful because when it comes
to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a
fine one."
READ MORE
Published by: Seven
Stories Press
See larger cover
Synopsis
How did a charismatic young
president elected in an atmosphere of optimism and expectation lead the 
The Obama
Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
by Tariq Ali
A prescient dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation
and domestic retreat, fully updated.
Written early in 2010 and initially published in
September 2010, The
Obama Syndrome predicted the Obama administration’s historic
midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned
responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the “reform” president’s
lack of firm resolve, Ali’s critique located the problem in Obama’s notion of
reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to
escalate the war in Afghanistan Iraq ,
appeasement in Israel , and
escalation in Pakistan America
Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below—US Pittsburgh
Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below—
Chris Hedges, Criminalizing Dissent
Truthdig, August 13, 2012, RSN
Hedges writes:
"Barack Obama's administration has appealed Judge Forrest's temporary
injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission
by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional
rights."
OBAMA AND ROMNEY: 15 SIMILARITIES
From: John Cutler
[mailto:jcutler@windstream.net]
Sent: Sunday,
September 02, 2012 6:13 PM
All -- Recently I
commented on the fact that I was voting Green this November. And that people keep telling me I'm
"wasting" my vote; that I should pick the 'least-awful' major party
and just VOTE! Voting for either major party is far WORSE than just
"wasting" my vote. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11289-closer-than-you-think-top-15-things-romney-and-obama-agree-on
OBAMA WAR CRIMINAL
Also from
Cutler. Obama, in addition to trashing
parts of the Constitution, is basically an un-indicted war criminal only
because the US Gov has
excused itself from being bound by international law (treaties that the US
What
It Means to Be a Democrat, by George McGovern
George McGovern has been a leading figure of the Democratic Party for more than fifty years. From this true liberal comes a thoughtful examination of what being a Democrat really means. McGovern admonishes current Democratic politicians for losing sight of their ideals as they subscribe to an increasingly centrist policy agenda. Applying his wide- ranging knowledge and expertise on issues ranging from military spending to same-sex marriage to educational reform, he stresses the importance of creating policies we can be proud of. Finally, with 2012 looming, McGovern's What It Means to Be a Democrat offers a vision of the Party's future in which ideological coherence
END OBAMA NEWSLETTER #8
No comments:
Post a Comment