Obama Supports Anti-Democracy Anti-Reform Monarchies Which Fund AlQaeda, Taliban etc.
Hillary Clinton in a leaked cable from 2009 revealed truth about Saudi Arabia's backing of al-Qaida
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.From:
"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists Hillary Clinton memo highlights Gulf states' failure to block funding for groups like al-Qaida, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba by Declan Walsh The Guardian , Dec. 5, 2010
Glenn Greenwald on the dangerous belief in American Exceptionalism:
...This eagerness to declare oneself exempt from the rules to which others are bound, on the grounds of one's own objective superiority, is always the animating sentiment behind nationalistic criminality. Here's what Orwell said about that in Notes on Nationalism:
"All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
Today's Topics
* Obama Defends Brutal Anti-Democracy Royal Families In the Gulf Region
* The On-going crack down on pr-reform pro-Parliamentary Democracy protests in Bahrain , Kuwait, Saudi Arabia ignored and blamed erroneously on Iran
* cablegate wikileaks 2009 : Hilary Clinton admits Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar,UAE : United Arab Emirates not Libya ,Iran, Syria, Iraq etc.
* Obama's hypocrisy over human rights and giving a free pass to criminals in government , military, security industry and Wall Street
* Responsibility and accountability of Western Nations and their Multinational Corporations
Obama like the Saudis fears the fall of the various Royal Families in the Gulf Region. Like other American presidents Obama is adamantly against any real substantive reforms in the Middle East let alone the emergence of stable and just democracies to replace the American and Israeli friendly Royal despots.
If these nations had strong stable democracies they might not be as compliant with American or Western demands such as unrestricted free trade , or the flow of cheap oil and other natural resources and allowing Multinational American and Western corporations to set up in these nations free of any substantive restrictions ie paying their fair share of taxes and tariffs and obeying environmental regulations, respecting the rights of all workers and paying them a decent wage rather than slave wages and given workers the right to collective bargaining and forming unions
. Americans at times are shocked by working conditions in countries around the globe and yet don't pressure the US and Western corporations to insist that these companies act in a legal and a moral fashion . The US government and other Western Governments must join the grown ups and play a bigger and more positive role when it comes to these American and Western international corporations. These Western Countries and their corporations must be accountable even outside the borders of their specific nation and must prove that they are law abiding, ethical, responsible players in Global Trade . This would mean that Western and American corporations or governments could no longer exploit other nations or peoples with impunity.
'Bahrainis demand most basic rights'
Published on 24 Feb 2013
A political analyst tells Press TV that killing one demonstrator here and running over another one by a vehicle is not going to affect the morale aspect of the Bahrainis and they are determined to continue the revolution. He also added that the Bahraini people were demanding their most fundamental human rights from the Al Khalifa regime.
Obama's shame over Bahrain continues as he supports the brutal corrupt and democratic Regime of Bahrain
Saudi regime acts as US proxy in Bahrain: Anti-war activist
War on journalist continues in the Middle east in this case Dubai and Bahrain . When Iran kicks foreign journalists especially if American out of the country the Obama Regime makes sure the media exploit the story when happens in US friendly nations Obama tells us media to tread softly.
Dubai officials block airport entry to Bahrain-based AP reporter, editor husband, AP,Via Washington Post , Feb. 25, 2013
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Two Bahrain-based journalists, including a reporter for The Associated Press, were blocked from entering the United Arab Emirates on Monday under apparent new restrictions by Gulf Arab states.
Reem Khalifa and her husband, Mansoor al-Jamri, chief editor for Bahrain’s independent Al Wasat newspaper, said they were told by authorities at Dubai International Airport that they were on a list to deny entry.
Like all Gulf partners, the UAE has expanded crackdowns on perceived political dissent since the Arab Spring, including charging 94 people last month with conspiring to overthrow the ruling system. But it still remains among the most open countries in the Gulf for journalists, researchers and scholars.
Bahrain’s 2-year-old uprising is a critical issue for Gulf leaders, who want to safeguard the ruling families across the region.
...Last week, the UAE also denied entry to a prominent academic from the London School of Economics who was scheduled to speak about Bahrain at a conference on the Arab Spring.
The UAE’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that Kristian Coates Ulrichsen was not allowed into the country because his work has been critical of Bahrain’s monarchy, which is closely backed by other Gulf leaders. The UAE said “non-constructive” views on Bahrain are unwelcome.
Just wanted to point out that the authorities in the UAE and Bahrain like President Obama and his "True Believers" do not appreciate negative views on his policies or America itself. These neo-liberals who support Obama are just as out of touch as many of former President Bush's "True Believers". And neither is above attacking and doing all they can to discredit all and any critics whether the critics are merely articulating the truth .
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American exceptionalism leads to the erroneous claim that whatever America does is the result of this exceptionalism and so whatever America does by definition is both legal and moral.
The premises and purposes of American exceptionalism That the US is objectively "the greatest country ever to exist" is as irrational as it is destructive, yet it maintains the status of orthodoxy by Glenn Greenwald, Guardian, Feb. 18, 2013
...In particular, given that human beings' perceptions are shaped by the assumptions of their culture and thus have a natural inclination to view their own culture as superior, isn't it infinitely more likely that people view their society as objectively superior because they're inculcated from birth in all sorts of overt and subtle ways to believe this rather than because it's objectively true? It's akin to those who believe in their own great luck that they just happened to be born into the single religion that is the One True One rather than suspecting that they believe this because they were taught to from birth.
...This eagerness to declare oneself exempt from the rules to which others are bound, on the grounds of one's own objective superiority, is always the animating sentiment behind nationalistic criminality. Here's what Orwell said about that in Notes on Nationalism:
"All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
...Last week, the Princeton professor Cornel West denounced Presidents Nixon, Bush and Obama as "war criminals", saying that "they have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they're suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals". West specifically cited Obama's covert drone wars and killing of innocent people, including children. What West was doing there was rather straightforward: applying the same legal and moral rules to US aggression that he has applied to other countries and which the US applies to non-friendly, disobedient regimes.
In other words, West did exactly that which is most scorned and taboo in DC policy circles. And thus he had to be attacked, belittled and dismissed as irrelevant...
...As Samantha Power put it in 2007:
"It was Washington's conventional wisdom that led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of US foreign policy. The rush to invade Iraq was a position advocated by not only the Bush Administration, but also by editorial pages, the foreign policy establishment of both parties, and majorities in both houses of Congress."...The key point is what constitutes West's transgression. His real crime is that he tacitly assumed that the US should be subjected to the same rules and constraints as all other nations in the world, that he rejected the notion that America has the right to do what others nations may not. And this is the premise - that there are any legal or moral constraints on the US's right to use force in the world - that is the prime taboo thought in the circles of DC Seriousness. That's why West, the Princeton professor, got mocked as someone too silly to pay attention to: because he rejected that most cherished American license that is grounded in the self-loving exceptionalism ...
...West made a moral and legal argument, and US "national security professionals" simply do not recognize morality or legality when it comes to US aggression. That's why our foreign policy discourse so rarely includes any discussion of those considerations. A US president can be a "war criminal" only if legal and moral rules apply to his actions on equal terms as all other world leaders, and that is precisely the idea that is completely anathema to everything "national security professionals" believe (it also happens to be the central principle the Nuremberg Tribunal sought to affirm: "while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment").
US foreign policy analysts are permitted to question the tactics of the US government and military (will bombing these places succeed in the goals?). They are permitted to argue that certain policies will not advance American interests (drones may be ineffective in stopping Terrorism). But what they are absolutely barred from doing - upon pain of being expelled from the circles of Seriousness - is to argue that there are any legal or moral rules that restrict US aggression, and especially to argue that the US is bound by the same set of rules which it seeks to impose on others (recall the intense attacks on Howard Dean, led by John Kerry, when Dean suggested in 2003 that the US should support a system of universally applied rules because "we won't always have the strongest military": the very idea that the US should think of itself as subject to the same rules as the rest of the world is pure heresy).
In 2009, Les Gelb - the former Pentagon and State Department official and Chairman Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations: the ultimate "national security professional" - wrote an extraordinary essay in the journal Democracy explaining why he and so many others in his circle supported the attack on Iraq. This is what he blamed it on:
"... unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility."
That someone like Les Gelb says that "national security professionals" have career incentives to support US wars "to retain political and professional credibility" is amazing, yet clearly true. When I interviewed Gelb in 2010 regarding that quote, he elaborated that DC foreign policy experts - "national security professionals" - know that they can retain relevance in and access to key government circles only if they affirm the unfettered right of the US to use force whenever and however it wants. They can question tactics, but never the supreme prerogative of the US, the unchallengeable truth of American exceptionalism.
...This belief in the unfettered legal and moral right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American exceptionalism. And the results are exactly what one would expect from an approach grounded in a belief system so patently irrational.
Glenn Greenwald chastises American officials for hypocritically attacking other nations for their lack of resolve in punishing those in authority who have committed various crimes while the Obama administration ignores the crimes of the Bush administration and crimes committed by his own administration and crimes committed by the US military, the CIA etc. and crimes committed by Wall Street's elite or to investigate the systemic racism in the judiciary , in police forces and in the prison industry and so forth.
America Has A Lot Of Nerve To Criticize Egypt's 'Climate Of Impunity', Glenn Greenwald ,The Guardian, Feb. 2013
A US State Department official on Monday "expressed concern" about what he called "a 'climate of impunity' over abuses by police and security forces" - in Egypt.
The official, Michael Posner, warned that failure to investigate Egyptian state agents responsible for "cruel treatment of those in their custody" - including torture - creates "a lack of meaningful accountability for these actions".
Last week, I wrote that "I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of US government statements that are so drowning in obvious, glaring irony that the officials uttering them simply must have been mischievously cackling to themselves when they created them," and this American denunciation of Egypt's "climate of impunity" almost certainly goes to the top of the list.
After all, Michael Posner works for the very same administration that not only refused to prosecute or even investigate US officials who tortured, kidnapped and illegally eavesdropped, but actively shielded them all from all forms of accountability: criminal, civil or investigative.
Indeed, Posner works for the very same State Department that actively impeded efforts by countries whose citizens were subjected to those abuses - such as Spain and Germany - to investigate them.
Being lectured by the US State Department about a "culture of impunity" is like being lectured by David Cameron about supporting Arab dictators.
According to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton the chief sources of funding of al-Qaida ,Taliban and other terrorists organizations comes from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates(UAE) and not Iran , Libya, Syria But it is Iran, Syria and Libya which are blamed for funding and supporting terrorists organizations
Saddam was also erroneously alleged to be helping various terrorists organizations and allegedly helped with the 9/11 Al-Qaida attacks and of course had a massive stock pile of WMDs and was developing a nuclear arsenal. All of this was no longer true about Saddam ten years before America's 2003 ill-advised and criminal War of Aggression against Iraq. .
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And this American diplomatic shell game replaces the real funders and supporters with regimes which the USA is determined one way or the other to crush having already achieved this in Libya with the support of its lackey NATO . At present they are are slowly destroying Syria by means a proxy rebel army of heavily armed ruthless Jihadists and thugs who have committed numerous War crimes and crimes against humanity .
And mean while the Obama administration and Western Powers wait for the right time to attack Iran. So all of this has become it appears acceptable and as the party line to America's Democrats and so-called liberal or progressive media.
If Bush did it it was wrong if Obama does it it is right.which has become the party line in the USA.
WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists Hillary Clinton memo highlights Gulf states' failure to block funding for groups like al-Qaida, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba by Declan Walsh The Guardian , Dec. 5, 2010
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.
"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said.
Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them.
The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.
...In common with its neighbours Kuwait is described as a "source of funds and a key transit point" for al-Qaida and other militant groups. While the government has acted against attacks on its own soil, it is "less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait".
Kuwait has refused to ban the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, a charity the US designated a terrorist entity in June 2008 for providing aid to al-Qaida and affiliated groups, including LeT.
There is little information about militant fundraising in the fourth Gulf country singled out, Qatar, other than to say its "overall level of CT co-operation with the US is considered the worst in the region".
The funding quagmire extends to Pakistan itself, where the US cables detail sharp criticism of the government's ambivalence towards funding of militant groups that enjoy covert military support.
The cables show how before the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Pakistani and Chinese diplomats maneuvered hard to block UN sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Wikileaks Goes After The Saudi Royal Family
Gus Lubin ,Business Insider,Feb. 29,2011
The 1996 cable -- entitled "Saudi Royal Wealth: Where do they get all that money?" -- describes legal and illegal ways that royals grab money, according to Reuters.
For legal ways, there's the monthly allowance given to thousands of princes and princesses. This ranged from $800 a month for "the lowliest member of the most remote branch of the family" to $270,000 a month for sons of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud.
For illegal ways, schemes include skimming $10 billion yearly from off-budget projects related to defense and infrastructure. One Saudi prince complained: "One million barrels per day" go entirely to "five or six princes."
It's nothing to start a revolution over, but the sheer scale of payments might anger the Saudi people. The big concessionary social-welfare package offered last week was worth only $37 billion. Big anti-government protests are scheduled for later in March.
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