Stephen Lendman

It's time to call the NSA's mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.

Long before 9/11, unprecedented domestic & world-wide spying began. It did so extrajudicially. It continues under Obama. It's institutionalized. It's warrantless. It's unconstitutional. And it's lawless.

It's sweeping and all-embracing. It prioritizes everyone Washington wants monitored. Phone calls, emails, web sites visited, and other personal information is routinely collected.

Doing so reflects police state lawlessness writ large. It's official US policy. Constitutional protections don't matter. Government by diktats supersede them. Alleged national security priorities don't wash. They're fabricated to justify policy.

On June 27, London's Guardian headlined "NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama," saying NSA "collect(ed) vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian."

They reveal lawless Bush administration domestic spying. NSA codenamed it Stellar Wind. It continues under Obama. An unnamed senior administration official said it ended in 2011. He lied. It continues. It's secret. It's more sweeping now than ever. And it's done with technological ease.

Bill Van Auken

US President Barack Obama met with the president of Senegal, Macky Sall, and judges and lawyers of the country’s supreme court Thursday at the start of a three-nation, week-long African tour aimed at promoting US strategic and profit interests on the continent. A key goal is to counter China in what amounts to a new scramble for markets and the substantial energy, mineral and other resources of the continent.

The tour marks the first time that Obama has set foot in Africa since a 20-hour stopover in Ghana en route back to the US from a summit conference in Europe four years ago. Then, the new president declared, “I have the blood of Africa within me.”

This rhetorical flourish made explicit the central importance to US imperialism of Obama’s presidency: to present a new face to the world, while pursuing the same predatory and criminal policies that had provoked international anger and hatred under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Four years later, the novelty of the first African-American US president has substantially faded, and, according to media reports from Africa, there is widespread cynicism about Obama’s attempts to use his family history to claim some special affinity for the continent. In point of fact, US aid to Africa has declined under Obama, falling from $8.24 billion during the last year of the Bush presidency to less than $7 billion today.

His own presidency is even more deeply mired in international criminality than that of Bush, from drone assassinations to the massive NSA spying on the people of the US and the world and the manhunt being mounted against Edward Snowden for exposing this crime. These issues have followed Obama to Africa, rendering a key stated theme of his trip—the promotion of “democracy”—absurd and hypocritical.