Coffee Talk Shop…

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — More than 4,300 children have lost a parent in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Many of these kids say it’s difficult in part because they live in an area where no one else they know has lost someone in the recent wars.

Several hundred of them have gathered for Memorial Day weekend in the Washington region to share stories and offer each other support. They are attending the “good grief” camp organized by the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. At the camp, they are encouraged to talk about their parent who died, but also to have fun.

Even though the experience has been difficult, many say they are now more compassionate.

© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Suicide has become a growing problem for members of the military, given their often harrowing work in Iraq and Afghanistan. So a group of 11 senators is asking President Barack Obama to send notes of condolence to families of military personnel who take their own life, Politico reports.

The group of 10 Democrats and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., sent a letter to Obama Wednesday making the request.

“It is long past time to overturn this hurtful policy,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, Calif., wrote in the letter.

It states that more than 1,100 military personnel committed suicide between 2005 and 2009 — for an average of one every 36 hours.

The Obama administration has been considering its policy on the issue since 2009, and the senators hope to force action.

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

From healthcare to closing Guantanamo to defending labor rights, US President Barack Obama promised many things, but has failed to deliver.

Brought into office on a cloud of hope, change and positive thinking, voters lifted Obama into the White House with high expectations.

Two years into his presidency and as he enters his reelection campaign many supporters have being forced to grapple with the reality that is the Obama presidency – broken promises.

Recent public opinion polls show less than half of Americas believe Obama deserves reelection, conservatives continue to despise him, liberals and moderates are increasingly becoming disillusioned.

Obama continues to lead among likely Republican contenders, but those match-ups are highly flawed given no leading Republicans have officially entered the race. Obama’s presidential office is quite vulnerable in 2012.

Looking back to 2008 candidate Obama and flash forwarding to today, there are some very clear broken promises, some of which were cornerstones to his campaign.

Hope, change and healthcare for all – the promise spread across America like a virus has not come to be a reality. Despite the passage of Obama’s health care reform plan many Americans still find it challenging to see a doctor or pay for necessary medical needs.

Obama wanted to ensure no American was without access to medical care. It was the goal behind his push for healthcare reform. His health bill however did not grant such coverage. Although Obama’s party once controlled the Congress, he was unable to push through healthcare for all. While the new law addresses some much needed issues with the US health system, such as eliminating pre-existing condition clauses, much of the measure will not take effect until 2014. At that point in time, the Congressional Budget Office estimates over 22 million Americans will still be without proper access to basic medical care.

After initiating a two year freeze on military trials of detained terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Obama has lifted the ban just in time to try self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. On the 2008 campaign trail Obama promised not only to cease the trials permanently, he said he would close the base too. He has gone in a completely different direction. While his Democratic Party controlled Congress Obama could have tackled the trials and military base, but dialed to do so. He caved to pressures from Republicans and military leaders.

“Understand this,” Obama said at a campaign rally in 2007. “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.”

States across the Union however recently passed laws cracking down on labor rights and union workers, eliminating benefits, abolishing collective bargaining rights and more. Obama was nearly silent. After pressure mounted he issued a statement, expressing his opposition to Republican bills across the county, but did little more to support organized labor.

Obama failed to show up at the picket line and march as promised.

Also along the campaign trail Obama praised his belief in civil liberties, transparency and judicial prudence. However, he has continued to stand by the Bush-era PATRIOT Act with restricts the above.

The US President called for changes to warrantless searches and wiretaps. He called for a greater respect for the people. But, at every chance to kill these rules instituted by former President George W. Bush, Obama opted to extend them instead of letting them expire.

In addition to his call for a restoration of American civil liberties, Obama called for an end to America’s wars abroad. Afghanistan and Iraq however remain conflict zones, and now Pakistan and Libya have been added to the list. The anti-war pro-peace American President extended US military operations overseas. 60 percent of American deaths in Afghanistan have occurred under the Obama presidency. Conflicts have expanded, locations increased and violence escalated.

Thus far, Obama has failed to deliver on his top promises and yet to even address other he committed too in the 2008 campaign season.

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-campaign-broken-promises/

Coffee Talk!

“Toppling Brutal Dictator a ‘Dumb War’ “

Obama in 2002: Toppling Brutal Dictator a ‘Dumb War’
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
By Matt Cover

(CNS) – President Barack Obama, as an Illinois state senator in 2002, said that using military force to topple a murderous dictator amounted to a “dumb war” and should be opposed.

The “dumb war” Obama was criticizing was the planned invasion of Iraq and the murderous dictator was its leader, Saddam Hussein. Obama, speaking at an anti-war rally in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002 said that while Saddam was a brutal tyrant, that was not enough to justify using military force to remove him from power.

“Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein,” said Obama in his speech. “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.”

“… After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again,” said Obama. “I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

Obama argued that deposing Saddam militarily was not necessary, because Iraq posed no “direct threat” to the United States. Obama also cited Iraq’s weakened economy and the fact that it was still possible to contain Saddam’s aggression, repudiating the Bush administration’s rationale that Saddam posed too great a threat to American interests and his own people to be left in power.

“But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history,” said Sen. Obama.

However, as president of the United States, Obama has discounted those same arguments he once made against using military force against brutal dictators.

In his March 28, 2011 speech justifying his decision to attack the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Obama cited Gadhafi’s record of brutality, saying that allowing Gadhafi to continue his brutality was not an option.

“Qaddafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people,” said President Obama. “He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.

“Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city,” Obama said. “We knew that if we waited, if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

Gadhafi, apparently unlike Saddam, needed to be stopped because he would kill his own people to maintain his own power, an act that this time posed a threat to America’s “interests and values,” Obama said.

“But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act,” said Obama. “That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.”

Obama, in his 2002 speech, said that instead of deposing Saddam through force, America should “fight” for democratic reforms in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, stronger international nuclear safeguards, and energy independence.

“Those are the battles that we need to fight,” Obama said in 2002. “Those are the battles that we willingly join – the battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.”

By 2011, however, Obama had come to endorse the use of military power to enforce America’s “responsibility as a [global] leader” arguing that the United States was “different” and therefore had no other choice but to attack Libya.

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are,” he said. “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”

Coffee Talk!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts297.html

What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28 speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a rebellion.

Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in Libya.

Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and deception.

Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.

Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”

The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America. Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. Instead, the money was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.

The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits of the offshoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode. Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent revolution.

Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy into a deeper depression.

Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsoured to foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is spent in behalf of the needy.

The moral authority of the West is rapidly collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe, Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net worth of $30 million.

In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not know:

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

This from the Great Moral Leader who every day murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.

The American president, whose drones and air force slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans is just a small thing.

The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984.

How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?

March 30, 2011

Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail], a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts297.html

Nearly 1 million flee Ivory Coast capital, U.N. says

Escalating violence and fears of war have forced nearly 1 million residents to flee Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday, with scores more uprooted across the country…

Coffee Talk!

Related articles

• Israel bombing, Libyan intervention: Signs of WWIII? (news.windowstorussia.com)
• “Gaddafi, get lost either way” (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Libya no longer recognizes UN resolution (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Revolution pandemic (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Libya and Iraq turning into “black holes” (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Gaddafi faces Western-led war (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Why Libyan uprising is not “people toppling dictator” (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Libyan Gaddafi, ‘my people would die for me’ (news.windowstorussia.com)
• Libyan rebels on counter-offensive (news.windowstorussia.com)