Sunday Sermon: News From The Empire :USA

News from the American Empire
America's quisling ally admits to training Saudi soldiers for crowd control , intimidation & house to house searches- ( re: Brits in northern Island fighting IRA or in Northern England hunting down Striking coal miners and so on)
So did the Brits train these soldiers in the use of massive amounts of tear gas- the tear gas some observers note is much stronger and potentially lethal compared to what security forces use elsewhere-or is this just a new trend in the Elites fight against the people of their respective countries???
Noam Chomsky on the assassination of Osama bin Laden
Pakistan no longer a client state of America
Obama's attacks on dissidents and activists in America
Did Bush tell CIA or military to stop tracking bin Laden before 9/11

President Obama's assault against Whistleblowers and the Media - the free press is not so free anymore-
Obama's attack on Whisleblowers and the media is just a continuation of this policy as an ongoing trend in US politics since Ronald Reagan first took office .
Truck loads of money for the US military not so much for the needy in America

Billions of dollars for the military to suppress the restless natives but nothing for the fleeing refugees and the widows and orphans their interventionist pre-emptive policies help to create

Britain Admits to Training Saudi Forces for Suppressing Bahrain Protests FARS Newsagency, May 28, 2011 TEHRAN (FNA)- The British government admitted that the Saudi troops sent to Bahrain to crush the popular uprisings in the tiny Persian Gulf island have had British military training.

The British Ministry of Defense admitted that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard dispatched to Bahrain may have received military trainings from the British Armed Forces in Saudi Arabia. The revelation is likely to renew allegations that the Coalition is sending hypocritical messages on democracy in the Middle-East. Despite British criticism of the Bahrainis' actions, British Prime Minister David Cameron last week welcomed the Crown Prince of Bahrain to Downing Street, drawing criticism from human rights groups. Britain keeps a large and secretive military training team in Saudi Arabia. British military personnel advise and teach the kingdom's forces in areas, including crowd control and suppression. In a written parliamentary answer, British Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said the Government could not rule out the possibility that British-trained Saudis took part in the Bahraini operation. "The Ministry of Defense has extensive and wide-ranging bilateral engagement with Saudi Arabia in support of the Government's wider foreign policy goals. The Ministry of Defense's engagement with Saudi Arabia includes training provided to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, delivered through the British mission," he said. "It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission." Anti-government protesters have been holding peaceful demonstrations across Bahrain since mid-February, calling for an end to the Al Khalifa dynasty's over-40-year rule. Violence against the defenseless people escalated after a Saudi-led conglomerate of police, security and military forces from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member states were dispatched to the tiny kingdom on March 13 to help Manama crack down on peaceful protestors. Observers also believe that the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan are the result of the United States' double-standards in the Middle-East and its biased policies against the different nations. After the United States and certain other western countries adopted a double-standard approach towards the popular protests against the dictatorial regimes in the region, people in the Middle-East say that the western approach to the ongoing revolutions in these countries has unveiled the true nature of the West's stance on democracy.

Obama's statement that Bradley Manning broke the law is prejudicial to his case-how can he ever get a fair and just hearing or trial
If Obama were the guy he said he was during the election campaign he would pardon Manning and give him a commendation for doing his duty as an American citizen.
So we can assume if some American soldier for instance were to disobey a direct order claiming the orderwas irrational or would result in immoral or illegal activity such as those who might refuse to take part in the killing of an innocent person or even a POW or efused to torture Obama would not be there to defend such a soldier
We have seen this over and over again.
For example the person releasing video which clearly shows American troops committing war crimes would be in more trouble than those who committed the alleged crime for instance killing an Iraqi might mean a suspension or a few months in jail and a fine

US Embassy Cables: Obama May Have 'Prejudiced' Bradley Manning Trial
Remarks that 'Manning broke law' could prejudice army private's trial over leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks
by Robert Booth The Guardian UK via CommonDreams.org , May 24, 2011

US president Barack Obama may have prejudiced the trial of US army private Bradley Manning who is charged with leaking classified US documents to WikiLeaks, by saying at a fundraiser that Manning "broke the law", a leading British MP has warned.
Ann Clywd, chairwoman of the all party parliamentary group on human rights chaired a meeting on Tuesday about the plight of the alleged WikiLeaks source to coincide with Obama's state visit to Britain. She said she found the presidents remarks at a fundraising event in San Francisco last month "an amazing thing for the president of the United States to comment on when the man hasn't stood trial yet".
The fundraising where Obama was challenged about the US government's treatment of Manning was recorded on video. "I can't conduct diplomacy on an open source," Obama told an unidentified questioner. "That's not how … the world works. If I was to release stuff, information that I'm not authorized to release, I'm breaking the law … We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate … He broke the law."
...Emily Butselaar, an editor at Index on Censorship, the free speech pressure group, said her organisation is also concerned that Obama may have prejudiced Manning's right to a fair trial by declaring he has broken the law.
"Despite making freedom of information and transparency key commitments of his presidential campaign, Obama's administration is cracking down on whistleblowers," she said.
"If there has to be a trial, it should be in public and not a closed military trial," Clwyd said.
A White House spokesman declined to comment citing the legal process that is underway.
Manning's detention for 23 hours a day in a tiny unfurnished cell at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, caused a storm of protest. He was held in a space measuring 6ft by 12ft with no window, furnished with a bed, toilet and sink. He was fed antidepressant pills, forbidden to exercise in his cell, and forcibly woken if he attempted to sleep in the daytime. A so-called "prevention of injury" order deprived him of his clothes at night and also of normal sheets and bedding.
Juan E Mendez, a UN special rapporteur on torture, investigated his case and accused the US government of prevarication in response to his request for an unmonitored meeting with Manning, saying he was deeply disappointed and frustrated. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" and resigned two days later.
Last month, the Pentagon transferred Manning to a medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he has more freedom of movement.
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After the killing of Bin Laden by American special forces many Pakistanis are urging their government to break ties with the USA.

The consequences or "blowback" of the American Special Forces' raid inside Pakistan's borders which lead to the assassination of Osama bin Laden is leading Pakistanis in defense of their country's sovereignty to pressure their government to distance itself from the United States and even to refuse financial aid from the USA.

Pakistan Fighting Off US Aid
Monday 23 May 2011
by: Zofeen Ebrahim, Inter Press Service via Truthout.org ,May 23, 2011

Karachi - The killing of Osama Bin Laden on May 2 in a covert operation by the United States has prompted strident calls by many in Pakistan to see it as a lesson for the country to stand on its feet, say no to foreign aid and shrug off the title "hired gun of the U.S."
One of those voices belongs to the chief minister of Punjab province, Shahbaz Sharif, who said his government would stop accepting U.S. aid, and proceeded to cancel six agreements with the U.S. in the fields of health, education and solid waste management.
Sharif has vowed to "break the begging bowl" which he said undermines Pakistan’s sovereignty.
While many say he is "playing to the gallery," the chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s biggest province and home to 60 percent of the 180 million population, has articulated a sentiment growing among different sectors - academics, economists, politicians, the media and the ordinary Pakistani - clamouring for a stop to the entry of foreign funds, and not just from the U.S.
Pakistan is one of the top recipients of U.S. aid along with Egypt and Israel. In the last decade, Pakistan has received 20.7 billion dollars in assistance from the U.S., two-thirds of which has gone to the military.

By taking Pakistan for granted the Pakistani government may
replace USA with China as its no. 1 ally and trading partner.

China: Pakistan's Other Partner. Has the Obama Administration Miscalculated in Pakistan?
by Dilip Hiro , via CommonDreams.org, May 24, 2011

Washington often acts as if Pakistan were its client state, with no other possible patron but the United States. It assumes that Pakistani leaders, having made all the usual declarations about upholding the “sacred sovereignty” of their country, will end up yielding to periodic American demands, including those for a free hand in staging drone attacks in its tribal lands bordering Afghanistan. This is a flawed assessment of Washington’s long, tortuous relationship with Islamabad.

A recurring feature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy has been its failure to properly measure the strengths (as well as weaknesses) of its challengers, major or minor, as well as its friends, steadfast or fickle. To earlier examples of this phenomenon, one may now add Pakistan.
That country has an active partnership with another major power, potentially a viable substitute for the U.S. should relations with the Obama administration continue to deteriorate. The Islamabad-Washington relationship has swung from close alliance in the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad years of the 1980s to unmistaken alienation in the early 1990s, when Pakistan was on the U.S. watch list as a state supporting international terrorism. Relations between Islamabad and Beijing, on the other hand, have been consistently cordial for almost three decades. Pakistan’s Chinese alliance, noted fitfully by the U.S., is one of its most potent weapons in any future showdown with the Obama administration.
Another factor, also poorly assessed, affects an ongoing war. While, in the 1980s, Pakistan acted as the crucial conduit for U.S. aid and weapons to jihadists in Afghanistan, today it could be an obstacle to the delivery of supplies to America’s military in Afghanistan. It potentially wields a powerful instrument when it comes to the efficiency with which the U.S. and its NATO allies fight the Taliban. It controls the supply lines to the combat forces in that landlocked country.
Taken together, these two factors make Pakistan a far more formidable and independent force than U.S. policymakers concede publicly or even privately.

Over Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in US Protests by Bill Quigley via CommonDreams.org May 24, 2011

Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the US. Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the US already in 2011, over 1290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009. These figures are certainly underestimate the number actually arrested as arrests in US protests are rarely covered by the mainstream media outlets which focus so intently on arrests of protestors in other countries.

Arrests at protest have been increasing each year since 2009. Those arrested include people protesting US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, nuclear weapons, immigration policies, police brutality, mistreatment of hotel workers, budget cutbacks, Blackwater, the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, and right wing efforts to cut back collective bargaining.
These arrests illustrate that resistance to the injustices in and committed by the US is alive and well. Certainly there could and should be more, but it is important to recognize that people are fighting back against injustice.

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There is Much More to Say
By Noam Chomsky at Znet May 20, 2011

On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy Seals, who entered Pakistan by helicopter. After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself.
There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no opposition - except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, who they shot in self-defense when she “lunged” at them (according to the White House).
A plausible reconstruction of the events is provided by veteran Middle East correspondent Yochi Dreazen and colleagues in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/goal-was-never-to-capture-bin-laden/238330/). Dreazen, formerly the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is senior correspondent for the National Journal Group covering military affairs and national security. According to their investigation, White House planning appears not to have considered the option of capturing OBL alive: “The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.”
The authors add: “For many at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency who had spent nearly a decade hunting bin Laden, killing the militant was a necessary and justified act of vengeance.” Furthermore, “Capturing bin Laden alive would have also presented the administration with an array of nettlesome legal and political challenges.” Better, then, to assassinate him, dumping his body into the sea without the autopsy considered essential after a killing, whether considered justified or not – an act that predictably provoked both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.
As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration's counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama. The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who “told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial,” contrasting Schmidt with US Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn't pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel on Tuesday that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way’.”

And more questions raised about US intelligence failure to prevent the 9/11 tragedy. There are allegations made that US intelligence was told not to keep tabs on Bin Laden pror to 9/11.

This failure by the intelligence community or the Bush Regime was brought to light by a whistleblower.
So we can imagine that Obama's main response will not be to investigate the people in charge at that time but rather to find and incarcerate and abuse whoever leaked this information.


Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden by: Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout May 23, 2011

...a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. JFIC is tasked with an intelligence mission in support of United States Joint Force Command (USJFCOM).

The report, titled "Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11 Commission," was declassified last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists.

The whistleblower, who the IG report identified as a former JFIC employee represented only by his codename "IRON MAN," claimed in letters written to both the DoD inspector general in May 2006 and, lacking any apparent action by the IG, to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) in October 2007, that JFIC had withheld operational information about al-Qaeda when queried in March 2002 about its activities by the DIA and higher command officials on behalf of the 9/11 Commission. The ODNI passed the complaint back to the IG, who then opened an investigation under the auspices of the deputy inspector general for intelligence.

In a November 27, 2007, letter from Edward Maguire at the ODNI to Gen. Claude Kicklighter at the DoD's IG office, Maquire identifies the whistleblower as "a DIA employee in the Defense HUMINT Management Office, Policy and Plans Division," who was "personally involved in JFIC intelligence activities related to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks and had first hand knowledge of circumstances surrounding that alleged false reporting to the Secretary of Defense and Congress."

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GOP to Hungry Americans: You Can Starve By Steven D. Booman Tribune via Alternet.org ,May 24, 2011
Hunger and starvation is no excuse to welch off the Federal Government.

That's the Republican response, in any event, to how to deal with the budget deficit. While Republicans defend billions of dollars in subsidies for Big Oil and propose further tax cuts for the wealthy, they see food aid for hungry people here and around the world as a bad idea. Bug Guvmint should get out of the business of keeping people from starving. Now isn't that special:

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are targeting domestic nutrition programs and international food assistance as they try to control spending in next year's budget.
In a bill released Monday, Republicans proposed cutting $832 million - 11 percent from this year's budget for the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides food for low-income mothers and children. The 2012 budget proposal for food and farm programs also includes a decrease of almost $457 million, or 23 percent, from international food assistance.

The legislation would cut $2 billion from food stamps, or about 2 percent of the feeding program's giant $67 billion budget.

Of course, Republicans claim that this is all wasted money and that cutting it would have "no effect" on the actual delivery of services for poor, underfed, malnourished people.

...Here's the GOP agenda in a nutshell: Anything Government does that helps people and saves lives should be eliminated. That is, Public Schools, Social Security, Medicare, Disaster Relief, etc., etc. etc., need to be eradicated and their ashes spread tossed into the sea, but anything that helps private business and rich people rip off the American taxpayers (fraud and abuse in government contracts, wasteful defense spending, tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans, et alia) should be promoted and increased until the Middle Class has a waist size roughly equivalent to that of a person in end stage anorexia.