Anarchic Tendencies

Turkey is one of the OECD satrap manufacturing countries that comes to mind when I think of who stands to gain from oil stolen from Iran in the not-so-distant future by the Kurds, and piped to the Mediterranean across Iraq and a destroyed feudal Syria.

Also see: It’s Crunch Time For Syria… U.N. Votes SNC Legitimacy; Senate Panel Rebel Arming Vote Next Week

[Editorial note; I have a Turkish Marxist friend who had to ‘disappear’ from the internet due to persecution related issues when Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power. This is the kind of scum Obama invites with ‘pomp and ceremony’ to the White House.]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is looking for stepped-up action on Syria as he meets with President Barack Obama at the White House. But the U.S. and Turkey remain far apart on how to handle Syria’s bloody civil war.

Erdogan is visiting Washington just days after two car bombs in Turkey killed dozens in the deadliest terrorist attack there in years. Turkish authorities have blamed Syrian intelligence, and Erdogan has been calling for more aggressive steps to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

But the Obama administration remains reluctant to take the kind of action Turkey would like to see, including establishing a no-fly zone in Syria.

The disagreement was unlikely to spoil a day of pomp for Erdogan, who met with Obama Thursday morning before they were to appear in the Rose Garden at lunchtime for a joint news conference. Erdogan also was being treated to a formal lunch at the State Department lunch with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry before his return to the White House for a working dinner with the president.

An honor guard also lined the north driveway of the White House as Erdogan arrived by limousine. [Continue Reading].

If by “change” President Obama meant criminalizing journalism in the United States, then he’s succeeded.

Why should you care? The investigative journalism that Obama has silenced could have exposed more corruption in the U.S. government, military, banking industry; corruption that has caused anguish to numerous Americans. The reports that will never be heard, read, or seen on TV may have led to positive change.

The Obama administration is suffocating investigative journalism at an alarming rate through the abuse of the Espionage Act of 1917, an act more prone to be used to protect government secrecy than national security. Before Obama, the act had been used only three times total since 1917. The current administration has used it six times to go after whistleblowers and the journalists who protect and reveal their information.

President Obama was bold enough to use the Espionage Act to subpoena New York Times journalist James Risen in an attempt to force him to ‘give up’ information on a CIA whistleblower. Risen accused the administration of trying to silence journalists and refused to acquiesce stating,

“Can you have a democracy without aggressive investigative journalism? I don’t believe you can, and that’s why I’m fighting.”

Risen predicted Obama’s attack against him would have an unprecedented chilling effect on mainstream investigative journalism in the US. He was right.

I was on the brunt end of the Obama-generated censorship while employed at CNN as an investigative correspondent.

On at least a weekly basis, and to my constant frustration, my superiors and CNN’s lawyers were quick to remind me that we need to be extra careful because “President Obama has gone after more journalists and whistleblowers than any president in history”. The leash around my neck began to tighten.

Whether I was allowed to embark on future stories or even interview sensitive sources for potential investigations, eventually became an ‘Obama subpoena risk assessment’ and potential court cost calculation, rather than a pure evaluation of the report’s contribution to public good or our journalistic duty to cover the story.

Some of my most crucial investigations were killed before they started because they were too high a risk of an Obama subpoena.

One boss told me quote “we know how the FBI feels about your source, if we have information the FBI will want we become a target”…

(Source: theamericanbear)