HUFFINGTON POST– The House is expected to vote soon on a bill that hands over to the president Congress’ constitutional authority to declare and authorize war, substantially altering the delicate balance of powers that the Founding Fathers envisioned.

Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy

This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the “graveyard of social movements”, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.

Original interview footage derives from Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Albert, John Stauber (PR Watch), Sharon Smith (Historian), William I. Robinson (Editor, Critical Globalization Studies), Morris Berman (Author, Dark Ages America), and famed black panther Larry Pinkney.

Non-original interviews/lectures include Michael Hudson, Paul Craig Roberts, Ted Rall, Richard Wolff, Glen Ford, Lewis Black, Glenn Greenwald, George Carlin, Gerald Cliente, Chris Hedges, John Pilger, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Wollin and Martin Luther King.

“Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet. See this film!” – Larry Pinkney – Editorial Board Member & Columnist – The Black Commentator

Viewer discretion advised – Video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war.

Visit http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php for more info.

Photo by flickr user MCS

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

TRUTHDIG– The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.”

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.”

“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”

Read full article about The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic.

Written by Chris Hedges

© 2011 TruthDig

Photo by Flickr user Reggestraat