Obama Signals Significant Shift in US Foreign Policy at West Point Commencement

/6 Comments/in , /by
Photo Credit: AP

President Obama, in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, signaled a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy — one that pulls back from what he described as “military adventures” while wielding American power in other ways.

The president described the new American foreign policy as one of “collective action” and restraint, deploying unilateral U.S. military force only when the American people are threatened. He outlined the approach a day after announcing his plan for gradually drawing down the U.S. force in Afghanistan once the war formally ends later this year.

“The landscape has changed,” Obama told the graduating class at West Point on Wednesday, citing the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The president took on what he described as “interventionists” from both parties, and said that while “isolationism” is not an option, “U.S. military action cannot be the only — or even primary — component of our leadership in every instance.”

The president advised that crises around the world that don’t directly threaten Americans be met first with non-military options: diplomacy, sanctions and “collective action.”

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA To Unilaterally Push Cap And Trade On Carbon Emissions

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: dantekgeekDespite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will get its U.S. encore but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems.

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil regulations for existing U.S. power plants early next month. For months, onlookers have speculating about what could be included in the EPA’s rule for existing power plants.

But over the past few days it has become clear that the Obama administration will use the EPA to push cap-and-trade systems and other anti-fossil fuel policies on U.S. states. Administration insiders have told news outlets that cap-and-trade will likely be one of the options the EPA gives states to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

The Wall Street Journal reported the EPA’s proposal will “include a cap-and-trade component where a limit is set on emissions and companies can trade allowances or credits for emissions” to meet new federal rules. The journal added that power plant “operators could trade emissions credits or use other offsets in the power sector, such as renewable energy or energy-efficiency programs, to meet the target.”

The plan is being sold as a “flexible” one. By allowing states a menu of policy options to meet federal mandates, the standards will ostensibly meet the unique needs of each individual state. But the stark reality behind the proposal is that it will be a boon for states that have already imposed cap-and-trade systems — which are overwhelmingly Democratic states.

Read more from this story HERE.

Family: V.A. Cops Stomped On Veteran’s Head, Killing Him

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstBy Chuck Ross.

The family of a 65 year-old veteran claims that VA police stomped on the veterans head and neck, causing him to suffer a stroke and die several weeks later, a new lawsuit alleges.

On May 25, 2011, Jonathan Montano was waiting several hours to undergo dialysis treatment at the Loma Linda VA facility when he grew frustrated, reports Courthouse News Service.

With an IV still in his arm, Montano made his way towards the hospital exit, saying that he would get treatment at the Long Beach VA facility instead.

Norma Montano, the veteran’s wife of 44 years, left the hospital to retrieve the couple’s car.

But VA police wouldn’t let Montano leave, the lawsuit alleges.

Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APTexas VA Run Like a ‘Crime Syndicate,’ Whistleblower Says

By Jacob Siegel.

Last week, President Obama pledged to address allegations of corruption and dangerous inefficiencies in the veterans’ health-care system. But before the president could deliver on his pledge, the scandal has spread even further. New whistleblower testimony and internal documents implicate an award-winning VA hospital in Texas in widespread wrongdoing—and what appears to be systemic fraud.

Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay.

What’s worse, the documents show the wrongdoing going unpunished for years, even after it was repeatedly reported to local and national VA authorities. That indicates a new troubling angle to the VA scandal: that the much touted investigations may be incapable of finding violations that are hiding in plain sight.

“For lack of a better term, you’ve got an organized crime syndicate,” a whistleblower who works in the Texas VA told The Daily Beast. “People up on top are suddenly afraid they may actually be prosecuted and they’re pressuring the little guys down below to cover it all up.”

“I see it in the executives’ eyes,” the whistleblower added. “They are worried.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Waves of Immigrant Minors Present Crisis for Obama, Congress

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS / JOSE LUIS GONZALEZTens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives are flooding across the southern U.S. border illegally, forcing the Obama administration and Congress to grapple with both a humanitarian crisis and a budget dilemma.

An estimated 60,000 such children will pour into the United States this year, according to the administration, up from about 6,000 in 2011. Now, Washington is trying to figure out how to pay for their food, housing and transportation once they are taken into custody.

The flow is expected to grow. The number of unaccompanied, undocumented immigrants who are under 18 will likely double in 2015 to nearly 130,000 and cost U.S. taxpayers $2 billion, up from $868 million this year, according to administration estimates.

The shortage of housing for these children, some as young as 3, has already become so acute that an emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has been opened and can accommodate 1,000 of them, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an interview with Reuters.

The issue is an added source of tension between Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on how to rewrite immigration laws. With comprehensive legislation stalled, President Barack Obama is looking at small, administrative steps he could take, which might be announced this summer. No details have been outlined but immigration groups are pressing him to take steps to keep families with children together.

Read more from this story HERE.

Letter Campaign Urges Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin to Repeal Common Core

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: APIn the wake of the Oklahoma state legislature’s overwhelming approval of a bill to repeal and replace the Common Core standards, Restore Oklahoma Public Education (R.O.P.E.) has begun a letter-writing campaign to urge Fallin to sign the bill.

Gov. Mary Fallin (R) of Oklahoma could become the first governor in the nation to fully repeal the Common Core standards. Fallin has until June 2 to sign HB3399; if she chooses not to, the bill will die by pocket veto.

“We must begin IMMEDIATELY to ask our Governor to sign this bill into law,” R.O.P.E. president Jenni White writes on the group’s website. “Toward that end, we have written two separate letters. One is for Oklahomans to use and the other may be used by anyone outside the state who would like to participate.”

R.O.P.E. urges:

* Copy and paste the letter of your choice (you can modify them or write your own as well) into an email. Sample letters for both Oklahomans and Americans from other states are available on the R.O.P.E. website.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Military Is Building Brain Chips to Treat PTSD

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: DefenseOneHow well can you predict your next mood swing? How well can anyone? It’s an existential dilemma for many of us but for the military, the ability to treat anxiety, depression, memory loss and the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder has become one of the most important battles of the post-war period.

Now the Pentagon is developing a new, innovative brain chip to treat PTSD in soldiers and veterans that could bring sweeping new changes to the way depression and anxiety is treated for millions of Americans.

With $12 million (and the potential for $26 million more if benchmarks are met), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, wants to reach deep into your brain’s soft tissue to record, predict and possibly treat anxiety, depression and other maladies of mood and mind. Teams from the University of California at San Francisco, Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Medtronic will use the money to create a cybernetic implant with electrodes extending into the brain. The military hopes to have a prototype within 5 years and then plans to seek FDA approval.

DARPA’s Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies, or SUBNETs, program draws from almost a decade of research in treating disorders such as Parkinson’s disease via a technique called deep brain stimulation. Low doses of electricity are sent deep into the brain in somewhat the same way that a defibrillator sends electricity to jumpstart a heart after cardiac arrest.

While it sounds high-tech, it’s a crude example of what’s possible with future brain-machine interaction and cybernetic implants in the decades ahead.

Read more from this story HERE.

Maya Angelou: ‘God Loves Me’ – ‘That’s Why I Am Who I Am’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APBy Michael W. Chapman.

Celebrated author and poet Maya Angelou, who died on Wednesday at age 86, said in an interview last year that after studying at the Unity church, she came to fully realize that “God loves me,” that God made the physical world and human beings, and that this is why she, Angelou, exists and she is “amazed at it and grateful for it.”

Angelou (1928-2014), who experienced a very difficult childhood, which included sexual abuse and rape by her mother’s boyfriend, wrote seven autobiographical works, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She also wrote numerous volumes of poetry, several children’s books and eight plays. She was a liberal Democrat who recited a poem at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, and she campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Angelou eventually supported Barack Obama.

In a May 12, 2013 interview on the Oprah Winfrey program, “SuperSoulSunday,” Angelou discussed her spiritual beliefs, explaining she had started an online course at Unity church and it helped her to better understand God’s love.

Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: AP / Mary AltafferMaya Angelou, Celebrated Poet and Author, Dies

By Hillel Italie.

Maya Angelou’s story awed millions. A childhood victim of rape, she broke through silence and shame to tell her tale in one of the most widely read memoirs of the 20th century. A black woman born into poverty and segregation, she recited the most popular presidential inaugural poem in history.

“I’m not modest,” she told The Associated Press in 2013. “I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned behavior. But I do pray for humility, because humility comes from the inside out.”

Angelou, a renaissance woman and cultural pioneer, died Wednesday at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86.

“She lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace,” said her son, Guy B. Johnson.

Tall and regal, with a deep, majestic voice, she was unforgettable whether encountered in person, through sound or the printed word. She was an actress, singer and dancer in the 1950s and 1960s and made a brave and sensational debut as an author in 1969 with “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which became standard (and occasionally censored) reading and made Angelou one of the first black women to enjoy mainstream literary success.

Read more from this story HERE.

WH to Probe Outing of CIA Station Chief

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Standard CompliantThe White House has asked President Obama’s top lawyer to investigate the inadvertent disclosure of the CIA’s top spy in Afghanistan during the president’s trip to Kabul over the weekend.

“The chief of staff has asked the White House counsel, Neil Eggleston, to look into what happened and report back to him with recommendations on how the Administration can improve processes and make sure something like this does not happen again,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Tuesday.

The officer’s name was mistakenly included in a list of 15 individuals attending a briefing with Obama during his visit to Bagram Airfield on Sunday. It was provided to the press traveling with the president.

The name was then forwarded by Washington Post journalist Scott Wilson, who was serving as the print pool reporter, to an email distribution list for thousands of journalists maintained by the White House.

Read more from this story HERE.

WikiLeaks: Mass Recording of Afghan Telephone Calls By the NSA

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Patrick Semansky / APBy Julian Assange.

The National Security Agency has been recording and storing nearly all the domestic (and international) phone calls from two or more target countries as of 2013. Both the Washington Post and The Intercept (based in the US and published by eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar) have censored the name of one of the victim states, which the latter publication refers to as country “X”.

Both the Washington Post and The Intercept stated that they had censored the name of the victim country at the request of the US government. Such censorship strips a nation of its right to self-determination on a matter which affects its whole population. An ongoing crime of mass espionage is being committed against the victim state and its population. By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimisation, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere. Pre-notification to the perpetrating authorities also permits the erasure of evidence which could be used in a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other investigations.

We know from previous reporting that the National Security Agency’s mass interception system is a key component in the United States’ drone targeting program. The US drone targeting program has killed thousands of people and hundreds of women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in violation of international law. The censorship of a victim state’s identity directly assists the killing of innocent people.

Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how, WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan. This can also be independently verified through forensic scrutiny of imperfectly applied censorship on related documents released to date and correlations with other NSA programs (see https://freesnowden.is).

We do not believe it is the place of media to “aid and abet” a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population.

Read more from this story HERE.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: NBCEdward Snowden Gives Wide-Ranging Interview to Brian Williams

By Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole and Mark Schone.

Snowden, now 30, is a former systems administrator for the CIA who later went to work for the private intelligence contractor Dell inside a National Security Agency outpost in Japan. In early 2013, he went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton inside the NSA center in Hawaii.

While working for the contractors, Snowden downloaded secret documents related to U.S. intelligence activities and partnerships with foreign allies, including some that revealed the extent of data collection from U.S. telephone records and Internet activity.

On May 20, 2013, Snowden went to Hong Kong to meet with Greenwald and with filmmaker Laura Poitras. The first articles about his documents appeared in the Guardian and The Washington Post in early June, as did a taped interview with Snowden.

The U.S. government charged Snowden with espionage and revoked his passport. Snowden flew to Moscow on June 23, but was unable to continue en route to Latin America because he no longer had a passport.

After living in the airport transit area for more than a month, and applying for asylum in more than 21 countries, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he has been living ever since.

Read more from this story HERE.

How Low Can the President Stoop?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard Today in the Rose Garden, President Obama announced that he’s going to keep a little under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan through 2014, half that number by the end of 2015, and will have all those forces out by the end of 2016. Putting aside the fact that this is the lowest number military advisors estimated was necessary to maintain training and some counterterrorism capability in country over not just one year but several, the decision to halve and then zero out those forces by 2016 is a reminder not only of how seriously unserious this president on strategic matters can be but also how cynically partisan he is.

By pulling out all the troops in 2016, and perhaps before the consequences are fully felt in Afghanistan, he will be leaving for his successor the politically difficult decision of reversing course with all the attendant downsides of once again putting troops in harm’s way…

Read more from this story HERE.