If you won't accept Obama and the Democrats genuflecting to a system of endless war -- and are disgusted by their retraction of promises to protect the environment and your civil liberties -- Stand up! Speak out! Fight back! 

Three years of drone attacks on sovereign nations – escalating threats on Iran – capitulation to religious fanatics against abortion – suppression of the Occupy movement and political protest –incarceration of whistleblowers – promotion of destructive energy policy – all this has proved to be a disaster for this country and the world.

Crimes are Crimes, no matter who does them!

by Cindy Sheehan

When I opposed the wars and oppression of civil rights here at home during the Bush scandal, there was a certain segment of the population I knew I could always count on to be in solidarity with me: Liberal Democrats.

While George Bush was president and Congress was primarily of a Republican nature, even organizations like MoveOn.org and blogs like the Daily Kos were on my side. I attended HUGE protests in 2005-2006 before the Democrats took control of Congress in the elections of 2006—but after that, the protests began to weaken or evaporate. Once when there was an event in DC on the 5^th Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2008, I was told by the lead organization that it didn’t want Cindy Sheehan “anywhere near Washington DC.” 

by Margaret Kimberley 

The facts cannot be in dispute. The powerful nations of the west are now the worst terrorists on earth. Iraq is a ruin thanks to the United States and the United Kingdom, and sadly, George W. Bush and Tony Blair were not the last of their blood thirsty kind.

The people of Afghanistan and Pakistan live in fear of death from drones and Iranians are being pushed further into economic despair by the machinations of the so-called leaders of the so-called democracies.Now it is Barack Obama, David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy who wage war on the rest of the world.

by Glenn Ford 

President Obama thinks killing people around the globe with drones is as cool as singing Al Green at the Apollo. In a live Web interview, Obama assured his audience that the U.S. unmanned drone force – now thought to number in the thousands and ranging from deadly Predators and Reapers to aircraft the size of small birds – was “kept on a very tight leash.”

So, here we have a secret weapons program that violates other countries’ airspace and kills their citizens at will – and even kills American citizens without charge or trial – and Obama thinks that all he is obligated to do is give assurances that the weapons are on a “tight leash.”

By David Swanson

In the news around the world and even in the United States on Tuesday was the anger among Iraqis at the failure of the United States to hold anyone seriously accountable for the 2005 massacre in Haditha.  The story was a useful reminder of how the operations of the U.S. military over the past decade have fueled hostility toward our nation.

President Obama began his State of the Union speech Tuesday night by absurdly claiming the exact opposite, asserting that the war on Iraq has made us safer and -- I kid you not -- "more respected around the world."  He later equated the war on Iraq to World War II, a surefire way to put anything beyond criticism in the United States, provided you can get people to fall for it.

Remember, this is the guy who won the Democratic Primary in 2008 by the simple fact of having not yet been in the Senate in 2003 and thus having avoided voting for the war that he funded to the hilt as a senator beginning in 2005.  He had called it a dumb war.  Now he says it made us safer.  If it was dumb, was he dumber?  What is he trying to say?

In the next breath, Obama says "some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home."  Never mind that there are three times as many U.S. troops in Afghanistan now as when Obama moved into the White House.  The myth is that he's ending wars. 

by Glenn Greenwald 

On Saturday in Somalia, the U.S. fired missiles from a drone and killed the 27-year-old Lebanon-born, ex-British citizen Bilal el-Berjawi. His wife had given birth 24 hours earlier and the speculation is that the U.S. located him when his wife called to give him the news.

Roughly one year ago, El-Berjawi was stripped of his British citizenship, obtained when his family moved to that country when he was an infant, through the use of a 2006 British anti-Terrorism law — passed after the London subway bombing — that the current government is using with increasing frequency to strip alleged Terrorists with dual nationality of their British citizenship (while providing no explanation for that act). 

by Chris Floyd  

Lately there has been a minor imbroglio in the blogosphere between progressive stalwart Roy Edroso and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald. The former took umbrage at the latter's comparison of the foreign policy positions of Barack Obama and Ron Paul. I won't bore you with the meat of the matter, but I would like to focus momentarily on Edroso's umbrage, which is so unfortunately emblematic of the progressosphere at large.

In sum, Edroso's "eyes filled with blood, he said -- from outrage and insult, presumably -- at Greenwald's description of what any supporter for Barack Obama is actually supporting. To wit:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) ...

This, it seems to me, is the most basic statement of unequivocal, undeniable fact imaginable. It is simply true that if you support the continuance of Barack Obama in power, this is what you support.

by Annie Bird 

Last week, the Honduran National Congress passed a law allowing the military to perform police functions, and Assistant Secretary of State Maria Otero visited Honduras with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Todd Robinson, to promote security initiatives.

The United States is advancing a regional security strategy which apparently is oriented toward the militarization of Central America and the participation of private security contractors in policing, a strategy also being promoted for the region by the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe.

by Joanne Mariner 

It might seem an odd moment for the War on Terror to expand.  The 9/11 terrorist attacks are now ten years in the past; Osama bin Laden is sleeping with the fishes; and all of the alleged 9/11 perpetrators who are not dead are in custody awaiting trial.

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