Chris Hedges nails it:

The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves.

Bush: “Unlawful enemy combatants.”

Obama: “Alien unprivileged enemy belligerents.”

Joanne Mariner, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, calls this a “cosmetic change” that has no serious impact. The new language is contained in the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. Mariner points out that

the Obama administration has adopted the Bush-era position of claiming that persons who provide support to hostilities can be treated just like persons who engaged in hostilities…

Her article has all the gory details if you’d like to read them.

I can’t decide if I like either of these…

John Caruso says it better than I possibly could. I urge you to read it as his blog, but for posterity (and convenience), I reproduce it here in its entirety:

What it takes to win a Nobel

President Obama 'orders Pakistan drone attacks'

January 23, 2009 – Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.

Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" – a term that usually means al-Qaeda – but locals also said that three children lost their lives.

————

US air-raid kills over 100 civilians in Farah

May 5, 2009 – Residents of the Bala Boluk district in western Farah province on Tuesday claimed more than one hundred 'innocent people' have been killed in the Monday's air offensive by the US forces. […]

Following the militant attack, locals say, the American forces bombarded Grani village, inflecting huge casualties to non-combatants.

Dr Atiqullah, a resident of the village, told Pajhwok Afghan News the bombardment destroyed the whole village and some of the mutilated bodies were beyond recognition.

He said they had so far retrieved 123 dead bodies from beneath the debris of the destroyed homes by using tractors.

————

Obama warns Iran: 'come clean' on nukes

September 25, 2009 – Backed by other world powers, U.S. President Barack Obama declared Friday that Iran is speeding down a path to confrontation and demanded that Tehran quickly "come clean" on all nuclear efforts and open a newly revealed secret site for close international inspection. He said he would not rule out military action if the Iranians refuse. […]

"Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on Oct 1 they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice" between international isolation and giving up any aspirations to becoming a nuclear power, he said. If they refuse to give ground, they will stay on "a path that is going to lead to confrontation."

————

Nobel prize win 'humbles' Obama

October 9, 2009 – US President Barack Obama has said he was "surprised and deeply humbled" to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, less than 10 months into his presidency. […]

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Norwegian committee said in a statement. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

————

Obama's acceptance speech:

I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

Now, these challenges can't be met by any one leader or any one nation. And that's why my administration's worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek. We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people.

No, really: Barack Obama just used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to reiterate his threats against Iran.

UPDATE: Best headline so far: "Some Analysts Warn Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Complicates War Efforts".

Well… I know it’s been “only” nine months since the inauguration of President Obama… and I know I’m supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt (because, after all, he only has a majority in Congress)… but really, this just takes the cake:

“Habeas rights under the United States Constitution do not extend to enemy aliens detained in the active war zone at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.”

That’s the Obama administration’s Department of Justice filing (PDF) in three court cases brought by “unlawful enemy combatants” who are challenging their detention by the United States at Bagram Airfield.

Note that these three detainees were kidnapped off the streets in places like Thailand and Tunisia, and were then flown to Bagram for detention. The OBAMA administration is arguing that the U.S. government has the right to kidnap people off the streets anywhere in the world, fly them to Afghanistan, and hold them incommunicado without charges or access to counsel for as long as they’d like, no questions asked.

As Glenn Greenwald so aptly noted, it was Obama himself who spoke these beautiful, stirring words last year:

By giving suspects a chance–even one chance–to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit. . . .

Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody’s right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.

But, you know, they’re being held in Afghanistan, not Cuba: truly, THAT is CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

You know things are bad when, eight years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the alleged mastermind – Osama bin Laden – remains at large, continuing to school Americans in the realities of our foreign policy apparatus:

Here is an important point that we should pay attention to with regard to war and stopping it. When Bush assumed power and appointed a defense secretary who had made the biggest contribution to killing more than two million persecuted villagers in Vietnam, sane people predicted that Bush was preparing for new massacres in his era. This was what took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Obama assumed power and kept the men of Cheney and Bush — namely, the senior officials in the Defense Department, like Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus — sane people knew that Obama is a weak person who will not be able to stop the war as he had promised and that he would procrastinate as much as possible. If he were to decide, then he would hand over command to the generals who oppose this aimless war, like the former commander of troops in Iraq, General Sanchez, and the commander of the Central Command who was forced by Bush to resign shortly before leaving the White House due to his opposition to the war. He appointed instead of him a person who would escalate the war. Under the cover of his readiness to cooperate with the Republicans, Obama made the biggest trick as he kept the most important and most dangerous secretary from Cheney’s men to continue the war. The days will show you that you have changed only faces in the White House. The bitter truth is that the neoconservatives are still a heavy burden on you.

Good times.

An oldie but a goodie from my archives, recently resurrected. (Full-size version).

Keep your eye on South America, folks, particularly Venezuela and Colombia. Colombia is ruled by the rightist government of Álvaro Uribe, and is engaged in a long-standing battle against leftist rebels known as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In addition to being a center of cocaine production and trafficking, Colombia has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere. Not coincidentally, Colombia is also by far the largest recipient of US military aid in the Western Hemisphere.

This week, the New York Times ran an article by Andrean bureau chief Simon Romero that opened with this lede:

Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.

Once again, we see America’s leading “newspaper of record” simply recycling the anonymous propaganda being disseminated by “Western intelligence agencies.” All of the information in the article is based upon materials which the Times’s anonymous intelligence source claims were found on computers seized by Colombian troops during a raid on a FARC compound in Ecuador in 2008. The article states, “The New York Times obtained a copy of the computer material from an intelligence agency that is analyzing it.”

Simon Romero has a well-documented history of running anti-Chávez/anti-Leftist stories that range from the merely misleading to the outright false. As a mouthpiece for the oligarchies of Latin America, Romero is indispensable.

Romero’s employer, by the way, is the same New York Times which published an editorial on April 18, 2002 supporting the previous day’s coup d’etat against the Venezuelan president:

With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.

[…]

Washington has a strong stake in Venezuela’s recovery. Caracas now provides 15 percent of American oil imports, and with sounder policies could provide more. A stable, democratic Venezuela could help anchor a troubled region where Colombia faces expanded guerrilla warfare, Peru is seeing a rebirth of terrorism and Argentina struggles with a devastating economic crisis.

Yes, the military ousted the elected leader of Venezuela, and the Times’s editorial board welcomed the “resignation” of President Chávez. Nice. I’m sure they’ve improved since then, though!

Just yesterday, AFP reported on concerns being raised by officials in Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, and Venezuela about Colombian plans to allow US access to seven of its nation’s military facilities:

US President Barack Obama’s national security advisor said Tuesday Washington will give a “good explanation” for plans to deploy US military units to bases in Colombia, after unease expressed in Latin America.

When you see the US government pouring billions of dollars in military aid into a country, you can be sure nothing good will come of it.

Keep an eye on the Venezuela-Colombia border – that’s where Obama will get a war he can truly call his own.

Allowing for the identical Apollo guidance computer (AGC) in the Command Module (CM), containing a program called COLOSSUS, it is correct to say that we landed on the moon with 152 Kbytes of computer memory.

That quote, and the link included in it, are from a paper by Don Eyles, introduced by the BBC as “a 23-year-old self-described ‘beatnik’ who had just graduated from Boston University and was set the task of programming the software for the Moon landing.”

These days it’s rare to find an icon that fits in 152 Kbytes of computer memory!!! Those guys wrote all the software that got a spacecraft to the moon and back.

I walk by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory every day… but today I have special respect for the kind of work those people did, and do.

What a world, what a world! Dear Leader’s on Twitter!

My favorite linked story so far is titled “Leader’s Forced March Full of Patriotic Devotion,” and includes such inscrutable gems as this:

The visit to Rakwon was followed by the 800km-long journey of field guidance to the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex, the Ranam Coal Mining Machine Complex and the Musan Ore Mining Complex on the east coast where he set a timetable for creation of innovations.

In those days he found himself on the way of field guidance without dropping in his home even a day.

His unprecedented forced march was followed by visits to Manpho, a border town in Jagang Province, the area at the foot of Mt. Paektu, Songrim, Tokchon, Jaeryong, Huichon, Anju, Kusong and other parts of the country.

He went on his march day and night by train and field jeep, covering high passes, steep mountain ridges and earth and icy roads.

His forced march full of patriotic devotion is bringing about signal successes and creation of new norms and new records in all sectors of the national economy in the DPRK.

Wow. Just… wow.