ACLU– We called for your attention and you responded. Members of Congress are starting to pay attention, and many media outlets quickly followed your lead. But that wasn’t enough. We needed more attention brought to an upcoming House vote on a sleeper provision tucked deep inside the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would be a new law for this president and all his successors to wage an endless worldwide war without any further consent of Congress.

The very problematic provision in the NDAA will be considered on House floor as early as Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and it is starting to receive the attention it deserves. Academics as well as lawmakers, who despite coming from different places on the political spectrum find themselves in agreement in opposing worldwide war.

Today, The Detroit News ran an op-ed from freshman Republican Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who was endorsed by the Tea Party, that addresses and opposes the House provision for worldwide authorization of use of military force:

Our Armed Forces are stretched thin across three theaters and constrained by a record deficit in Washington. And while we enter our 10th year of sacrificing blood and treasure to build democracies, a home-grown democratic revolution in the Arab world has overturned several dictatorships, largely without America’s help.

There has been no better time to regain our Constitutional balance and check the president’s war powers. Congress is a co-equal branch — and it should start acting like it.

In addition, this week Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies wrote in the The New Republic:

[T]he proposed AUMF authorizes a substantially greater role for the U.S. military than it had even at the height of the cold war: the use of force against an enemy the Obama administration considers it “neither possible nor advisable” to describe, anywhere in the world, without regard to whether the proposed targets had anything to do with September 11 or whether they threaten “future acts” against the United States. There is no end in sight. Whatever else may be true, this is not what the founders intended, and not what the nation has practiced.

[N]early ten years after September 11, days after the death of Osama bin Laden, and in the absence of any imminent threat, Congress is poised to give President Obama and his successors substantially more authority to use force than it granted to President Bush only 72 hours after the attacks. It is an odd and distinctly un-American state of affairs when the clamor for war outpaces the war itself

We often hear that the attacks of September 11 “changed everything.” It would be sad indeed if, among the things that collapsed and changed that day, was the salutary idea that we might be “a humble nation,” determined to “project the power for good that America can represent,” as Bush and Gore put it back in the 2000 debate. For these are not merely platitudes to be trotted out days before an election. They are the ideals that sustain us through adversity.

Your efforts to engage members of the media, academics and, most importantly our congressional lawmakers, are beginning to gain momentum—and we are all grateful for the leadership of House members of both parties in stepping up their opposition to this dangerous proposal. But we can’t stop now. We must continue to take action to oppose endless worldwide war.

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© 2011 ACLU

Photo by Flickr user kwerfeldein

CARE2– With bi-partisan opposition to key provisions of the Patriot Act, you would think that now would be the time to move to take back American civil liberties once and for all.

You would be wrong.

With a week until the provisions expire, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) made a deal to reauthorize the Act for four more years.  Doing so avoids a messy and extended debate over the extension and a potentially humiliating defeat for both the White House and members of Congress who have continued to give the measure support through two administrations.

The move takes back a promise made by Sen. Reid for a full week of debate and consideration before an extension and, by its backroom nature, shows that even a transparent debate on the matter is no longer a possibility in Washington.

If the Tea Party Republicans are serious about shrinking the size of the federal government and really are libertarians then we should find out soon.  Since its enactment the Patriot Act has resulted in the widespread abuse of the use of National Security Letters by the FBI to secretly spy on innocent Americans and has produced no discernible national security benefit.

Read more about Backroom Deal Set To Extend Patriot Act

© 2011 Care2

Photo by Flickr user dad_and_clint

RIA NOVOSTI– Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Saturday called for war with Italy, citing Italy’s ‘colonization’ attempts.

In a speech delivered at the Libyan state TV, Gaddafi said that he could not prevent war with Italy since Libyans wanted it.

“We are already in a war with Italy since Italians kill our children in 2011 as they did in 1911, that is why I cannot forbid Libyans to defend their lives and carry the military actions on the enemy’s territory,” Gaddafi said.

Libya was Italian colony from 1911 to 1941. In 2008 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a so-called Friendship Treaty with Gaddafi. Under this pact Italy paid 5 billion euro reparations to Libya for its colonial rule.

In late February Italy suspended the Friendship Treaty.

“Italy insists on repeating the crimes of 1911, in keeping with the same colonialist policy. This is the violent face of Italy. My friend Berlusconi and the Italian parliament are committing a crime,” Gaddafi said.

Italy is one of the 14 NATO countries, taking part in the operation Unified Protector in Libya, which includes airstrikes, a no-fly zone and naval enforcement of an arms embargo.

Read more about Gaddafi Calls on War with Italy

© 2011 RIA Novosti

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RT– From the fans at Citi Field in Flushing to the mobs at the White House gates, “USA, USA,” was the chant heard across the nation. Jubilant Americans celebrated the breaking news that Public Enemy No.1, terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was dead.

Ten years have passed since the Twin Towers toppled and the Pentagon was whacked. After two failing wars and billions of dollars spent on the global manhunt to bring in Bin Laden “Dead or Alive,” America has now claimed victory. “This is bigger than the moon landing, this is huge,” exclaimed Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera.

“Justice has been done,” intoned President Barack Obama announcing Bin Laden’s death. He not only called it “a good day for America,” but also declared that “The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama Bin Laden.”

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the sentiment that “justice has been served,” she evidently took issue with the Presidential vision of a “safer” world, warning that terror “won’t stop with the death of Bin Laden, we must redouble our efforts.”

If it’s a “safer” world, why the need to “redouble our efforts”? These were but two of the contradictions coming from the White House in the early hours of the breaking story, and many discrepancies would follow. Some of them would be noted and debated, but totally absent from the 24/7 news coverage, political “high-fives” and patriotic triumphalism was the simple question: Why did Osama Bin Laden, former mujahedin ally of the United States, turn against it to become Public Enemy No.1?

Was it that he and his Al Qaeda fighters suddenly decided to hate America’s “freedom and liberties” as George W. Bush maintained? Or was it remotely possible that the attacks were motivated by US foreign policy – with its unconditional support of Israel and concomitant support of the same Middle East monarchs, autocrats and dictators now being toppled in the wave of revolution?

Also absent from America’s non-stop exultation and self-congratulation, absent from the acres of newsprint and the countless hours of air time, was any discussion of the practical consequences of the death of Bin Laden who, before making it back into the headlines, had been both a fading memory and a non-issue.

Osama Bin Who?

So irrelevant had Bin Laden and his jihad rhetoric become that, in the months preceding his assassination, every one of the uprisings occurring throughout the Middle East and North Africa was secular and in direct opposition to Bin Laden’s militant pan-Islamic vision.

In a sentence: There were no practical consequences whatsoever attending the death of Osama Bin Laden. It would do nothing to:
Help America win losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lower the unemployment rate. Stop the US or European nations from sinking deeper into recessions and depression. Revive failing real estate markets or solve the debt and deficit crises.Lower oil and food prices. Reverse the damage or stop the radioactive fallout from Fukushima.
What Osama’s death did do was boost the President’s sagging poll numbers and deflect public attention from the news that really mattered.

Read more about Bigger than Bin Laden – America’s new Public Enemy No.1

© 2011 RT

Photo by Flickr user klearchos

RT– Several countries, including France and Italy, have already recognized the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council as the legitimate power in Libya, so it is just a matter of time before Washington follows.

So far the US has not granted full diplomatic recognition to the newly-formed council of the Libyan opposition, but described it as “legitimate and credible” – and it is no wonder, because the leader of Libya’s Transitional National Council is Washington’s perfect man in the country.

Mahmoud Jibril lived and studied in the US for years, and on his latest visit to Washington he did not fail to show how devoted he is to American values.

“We really believe and we really aspire that our message to the American people, we’re here to join hands to build a democratic dream on the Libyan soil,” Mahmoud Jibril proclaimed.

And Washington “joined hands” with those seeking to replace Gaddafi and assume power in Libya. To help prop them up, the US pledged to funnel billions of dollars of Gaddafi’s frozen assets to the Transitional National Council.

“I am currently drafting legislation at the request of the State Department and the Administration that we authorize the transfer of valuable cash assets to the [Libya’s Transitional National] Council,” announced US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Chairman John Kerry.

But the support from Washington comes not only in the form of money and Tomahawk missiles, but also in military command. One of the commanders of the Libyan rebel army is General Khalifa Hifter. A long-ago Gadaffi-defector, he lived in a Washington suburb for the last 20 years before he took off to Libya in March this year to command the rebel forces. Khalifa Hifter lived just minutes away from CIA headquarters, although any intelligence connections have never been officially confirmed.

Read full article about Washington Sends Forth Stooges to Replace Gaddafi

© 2011 RT

Photo by Flickr user giorgiocardellini