When It Comes to State Violence, Too Much Is Never Enough

http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/08/30/when-it-comes-to-state-violence-too-much-is-never-enough/
Obama does "hesitate to use force"–is that his problem? Since 2009, US drone strikes have killed more than 2000 people in Pakistan, including 240 civilians, 62 of them children. Since Obama took office, they've killed more than 400 in Yemen; drone deaths in Somalia are harder to quantify.
Obama roughly tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, from 33,000 to 98,000 (Think Progress, 6/22/11). In 2011, he sent naval and air forces into battle to overthrow the government of Libya's Moammar Gaddafi. In Iraq, Obama tried and failed to keep tens of thousands of troops in the country beyond the withdrawal deadline negotiated by the Bush administration (New York Times, 10/22/11).

What does Obama have planned next for Latin America?

clipped from: onlinejournal.com

Obama’s Latin American policy resembles Richard Nixon’s Operation Condor and its assassinations and covert operations.

He has deploy thousands of Marines and dozens of Coast Guard vessels to Costa Rica, more military bases in Colombia and Honduras, authorized a coup against Zelaya. He is more threatening than the benign George W. Bush.

Thee are increasing reports of political assassinations, illegal detention of opposition figures and journalists in Colombia, Panama, and Honduras.

Pinochet supporters of the Chilean Senate recently charged by Venezuela with interference in elections. Under President Sebastian Pinera, Chile has become
with Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica U.S. base to destabilize progressive-led governments.

The current doctrine is found in CIA manuals for “PBSuccess,”

Brazil’s leftist President Joao Goulart, overthrown in a 1964 coup, died.

Chile’s Eduardo Frei Montalva. PBSuccess’s “Study of Assassination” talks about the machine gun option, to kill Allende.

renewed low-key Operation Condor appears to have taken shape under Obama

And Obama’s decision not to rescind George W. Bush’s re-establishment of the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet as part of the US Southern Command means that the United States can always resort to its old “gunboat diplomacy” to enforce its military might and will in Latin America.

For Obama, whose Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was a top officer in the armed forces of General Suharto, who carried out the CIA’s 1965-66 coup against President Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party, which saw almost one million accused Communists, as well as ethnic Chinese, systematically genocided, such re-imposition of covert activities in Latin America presents no moral dilemma to Obama, who first witnessed the CIA’s repression as an impressionable young boy of 7 and 8 years old while living in Jakarta. Soetoro was still a senior officer in Suharto’s army when Soetoro enrolled Barack Obama in 1967 as Barry Soetoro in Jakarta’s Fransiskus Assisi Catholic school. In 1967, the Indonesian army and its CIA handlers were still mopping up Indonesia’s left-wing opposition forces. Obama has studiously refrained from mentioning Indonesia’s CIA coup and has twice canceled presidential visits to the country.

...SAID CANDIDATE OBAMA

"America's first multi-racial president has turned out to be nothing more than a paid corporate puppet. His failure to take on the corporate menace that has hijacked our government, will end up propelling the SS of the corporate world (Teabaggers, militia types, racist homophobes) into the White House in 2012. The end result will be some terrifying hybrid of ignorance and corporate sycophancy like Sarah Palin"

the great abomination to Earth and Man in the Gulf

We are witnessing cataclysm on a geological scale, an event with the potential to alter planetary destiny, precipitated not by the three hundred million year arc of wayward comets or the incremental slide of continent-molding tectonic plates, but by the routine exercise of corporate power in the United States.

the oceanic version of Chernobyl

a political system in which huge corporations are empowered to seek profits with absolutely no regard for the consequences to Earth or Man



BP is the surgeon in charge of mending the Earth's wound - the equivalent of Jack The Ripper tending to his own victims

BP is the operative government in the Gulf - the Coast Guard as its muscle

said candidate Obama. "If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well-thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage -- I don't want to be so rigid that we can't get something done."

The unbroken chain of "corruption" at federal Minerals Management Service,
is one small expression of actual rule of the country by Big Oil and Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex -- the permanent government. Obama is "engaged" as their servant

It's either them or Earth itself. When history passes its verdict she will not assign much import to the advent of the First Black President. Rather, 2010 as the year a servile political operative in the White House exposed the seabed to deep defilement by the oil colossus, from which the world never fully recovered.

COMMENTS

America's first multi-racial president has turned out to be nothing more than a paid corporate puppet. His failure to take on the corporate menace that has hijacked our government, will end up propelling the SS of the corporate world (Teabaggers, militia types, racist homophobes) into the White House in 2012. The end result will be some terrifying hybrid of ignorance and corporate sycophancy like Sarah Palin.

Glen Ford's essay epitomizes the beginnings of a new language of framing that I find impressive. The shift to living metaphors away from sterile ones is engaging, accurate and empowering.

Here are some examples:

"subduing and caging the corporate animals that are defecating in humanity's only nest"

"BP is also the surgeon in charge of mending the Earth's wound and preventing the spread of septicemia in its life-sustaining fluids"

"Obama has been engaged in killing the planet"

"a servile political operative in the White House exposed the seabed to deep defilement by the oil colossus"

"with no protections for the public or Mother Earth"

We need to think beyond a non-living, categorical "environment," and a non-living "geo-political world" to what Glen Ford describes—a living planet, the only one in the known universe, Mother Earth.

All of us who write and speak in advocating for true, radical, democratic, life-enhancing, loving, law-abiding change can learn from how Glen Ford conceives of our world, and the crimes certain humans and institutions are committing.

When ecocide is the trajectory, we cannot afford a "C" or a "B" grade for our efforts. This is strictly a pass/fail situation in this century. Either we will prove that intelligent life has never existed on Earth and go all Easter Island on this planet in an orgy of war, cannibalism, and ecocide, or we will usher forth a new era with human thought and human civilization in a cooperative, symbiotic relationship with the living community of life that gave birth to us, and within which future generations will live.

This event is showing us where power really lies, and it's not with elected officials. Those who wield real power are the corporations, and governments are just a department that performs certain tasks. This is not a conspiracy, it is just what is staring us in the face. Our democratic institutions are still there to be revived, but the real issue is to see that real power lies outside the White House.

WASHINGTON AND THE KYRGYZ FUTURE - SECURING THE PIVOT

Washington and the Kyrgyz future—Securing the Pivot
by F. William Engdahl*

Long-term Pentagon Plan for Central Asia
Spreading a cancer across Central Asia
Spreading War via NDN
Low Intensity Warfare and PKO
Training the police…
A dubious Community Defense Initiative
NDN is the Key
NDN and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken ‘Anti-Terror’ center
Opium in the Central Asian War
US Military as Opium Exporter?
Conclusion

To this end, the U.S. is employing the time-tested tactics of Low Intensity Warfare to generate the pretext for NATO’s permanent expansion under guise of the ‘war on terror’, with opium gainfully fueling the operations. If successful in Central Asia, Washington will have achieved a ‘checkmate’ by effectively blocking any combination of nations on earth from opposing its agenda of Full Spectrum Dominance.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a prime strategic objective of the Pentagon and of US intelligence has been to deeply penetrate the former Soviet states of Central Asia.

CARVILLE'S BRAND

James Carville has backed political candidates in Latin America identifying with Bill Clinton’s militaristic and free market approach to the region.

Carville is also a virtual kingmaker in Latin America, Mexico’s Ernesto Zedillo, Brazil’s Fernando Enrique Cardoso

Colombia, Carville has offered his consulting services to Juan Manuel Santos, a former Minister of Defense and member of the governing Social Party of National Unity or Party of the U. Santos is sullied as Minister of Defense, armed forces killed
civilians and passed off as rebels

Santos, a militarist, favored U.S. free trade agenda. Bill Clinton supported the Colombian elite to the hilt, Plan Colombia, $1.3 billion aid package which waived human rights conditions. out of office Bill met with Uribe personally.

Carville advised Honduran Manuel Zelaya but was not aware and would not have agreed with Zelaya’s post-election turn to the left

Argentina, Carville advised Peronist Daniel Scioli who is linked to Kirchner. Kirchner was a critic of neo-liberal economic. Scioli doesn’t fit

Carville also advised Domingo Cavallo. Cavallo, a supply-side economist commitment to free-market and huge profits to foreign investors. His first stint in charge of Argenine economy was 1991 to 1996. He linked the Argentine peso to the American dollar, which in the beginning eliminated inflation, encouraged foreign investment, and spurred middle-class to splurge on overseas spending. eventually made for exporters harder to sell, unemployment and deficits rose.

In his second stint, he froze bank deposits which lead to a huge devaluation and increased his country’s indebtedness and inflate commissions to banks in exchange for agreement to renegotiate bonds.

Panama, advised Ernesto Pérez Balladares, former CEO at Citibank. Strategy to sell off state industries and reduce labor laws. unions demanded an end to the privatization protests erupted, rubber bullets.

Ecuadoran President Jamil Mahuad, dollarizing currency. prompted Indians civil disobedience. In January, 2000, he was forced out.

Bolivian Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada “Goni.” In 2002 against Evo Morales. In Goni's prior term, pursuing partial privatization of state enterprises. After Goni’s win, he decides to ship gas through Chile, sparking riots. Goni crumbled, fled.

Carville's latest stint is as environmental gadfly of BP. Carville’s associates have had ties to BP. Stanley Greenberg, during Goni, BP was at the center of the gas transmission deal involving Chile.

In Colombia, energy loom large

BP is a key player in Colombia. It is thinking about commencing exploratory drilling in offshore Colombian oil blocs. Colombia needs to give BP the boot. Antanas Mockus, is no radical either but he would be the first Green Party president in the world.

A PERIOD OF RESISTANCE

They absolutely don’t want you to know about the economic collapse of the Western World called the “Panic of 1873” that forced tens of millions of people in the United States and Europe to abandon their farms and crowd into cities providing the slave labor needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution that amassed the fortunes of corporate and banking interests still surviving to this day.

They absolutely don’t want you to know about the economic collapse of the Western World called the “Panic of 1907” that led to the destruction of the United States monetary system allowing the private European banking giant known as the Federal Reserve System to gain total control over the American economy by 1913 and leading to World War I starting in 1914.

They absolutely don’t want you to know about the economic collapse of the Western World known as the “Great Depression” that began in 1929 when the Federal Reserve crashed the US stock market allowing them to take American off of the gold standard and paving the way for an alliance between the United States and Nazi Germany, but that was thwarted at the very last moment in 1933 when Marine General Smedley Butler stopped the overthrow of President Roosevelt.

They absolutely don’t want you to know that the father of one American President and grandfather of another, Prescott Bush, was one of the chief financers for Americas corporate and banking elite of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

They absolutely don’t want you to know that two brothers from the German Warburg banking family, Paul and Max, headed both the US Federal Reserve and German Central Bank that financed both World War I and II.

They absolutely don’t want you to know that the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II remade American, once again, by forcing millions of its citizens into what are called suburbs and away from their city centers where modern electric transit systems were dismantled leaving these people dependent upon automobiles thus fueling massive profits for the car and oil industries while at the same time encircling these suburban enclaves with massive road systems called Interstates that were actually designed by Nazi German engineers to allow these areas to be militarily controlled in “times of war”.

Note: Not many Americans even know that their “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” is now, and always has been a military project.

And even though I could go on and on with so many critical and important to know historical truths that have been hidden from you, the most important one these “officials” don’t want you to know about is that each and every time these elites have come against the American people they met fierce resistance, and they’re afraid is about to happen again.

These periods of resistance are called by historians as the Great Awakenings and of which there were three: The first began in the 1730’s and led to the American Revolution, the second began in the early 1800’s and led to the American Civil War, and the third began in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s and led to the rise of social movements gaining women the right to vote, the abolition of child labor, and the unionization of workers.

As the United States and its Western Allies are once again mired in a deliberately engineered economic collapse, and as the stirrings of a Forth Great Awakening are beginning to be felt in the corridors of power, there is one thing each and everyone of you can be assured of….your life, your Nation, your hopes, your dreams…EVERYTHING…will in less time than you can believe be changed beyond all recognition….are you prepared for it?

Transcript of President Barack Obama's Commencement Address at Hampton University

“a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments” warning that because of this “information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. He further stated that because of all the information now available to Americans it “… is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

COMMENTARY

The main problem with the “official” version of things is that they are nearly all lies

Unfortunately for the “official” version of things, like is happening today, is when the lies become so big and preposterous that even the most common of people begin seeing how stacked this game against them is, especially when millions are being thrown out of their jobs and homes while their government, banking and corporate “overlords” continue amassing huge fortunes. And when the common people begin to see the truth the “officials” begin to get very afraid, especially when one of their own gets tossed out of power…

elitists are all afraid now about “too much information” contesting against the “official” stories that are not being listened to any longer. And people are starting to “get it”, and when they start to “get it” they stop listening to the “official” lies and start turning to those who have been telling the truth

The Inevitable Collapse of McChrystal's Afghan War Plan

McChrystal’s war plan is unravelling. It was entirely predictable. To create an ‘arc of security’ in the most densely populated regions, green shaded area. As the maps show, this area has seen many invasions over the last two thousand years.

The first move, invade Marjah variation of Marshall Lyautey’s ink spot theory: clear, secure, prevent the return of the Taliban. Then move from west to east and spread to Qandahar. The role of Afghan army and police forces is to hold.

Taliban re-infiltration means the Afghan security forces is insufficient or ineffective to protect and permanently cleanse the area.

US forces now needed to provide security in Marjah. The result: our forces being spread out, US pacification troops will form of an array of strong points, outposts, quick reaction reinforcements, kept on alert, with airpower, be unavailable for Qandahar offensive, vulnerable, attacked piecemeal, irregular, hit and run, on bases and supply routes. Rope-a-dope. under stress, ground down, increase jumpiness, trigger-happiness, more calls on artillery and air support, more civilian deaths, alienating the hearts and minds.

This is probably why Qandahar is being scaled back

Obama ignored Sun Tzu’s timeless wisdom

THE AWFUL TRUTH AGAIN

The liberal intelligentsia, once again with the

• least-worst mindset.

Some still believe that sometime, somewhere, Obama will

• show his liberal stripes.

They are no longer loyally silent in the face of,

• escalating war in Afghanistan

• near collapse of key provisions in the health insurance legislation

• likely anemic financial regulation bill

• obeisance to the bailed out Wall Street gamblers

Bob Herbert, columnist for The New York Times, treated

• “as if they have nowhere to go.”

Brainy Gary Wills, upset over Afghanistan in a stern essay of admonition, calling the escalation

• “a betrayal.”

• “If we had wanted Bush’s wars, and contractors, and corruption,

we could have voted for John McCain.
At least we would have seen our foe facing us, not felt him at our back, as now we do.”

Progressive Populist shows the velvet verbal gloves are coming off

Jim Hightower, “I had hoped Obama might be a more forceful leader

• who would reject the same old

interventionist mindset of those who profit from permanent war

Obama signed on to the Wall Street and military-industrial complex from the get-go

Norman Solomon, “President Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize while delivering—to the world as it is—

• a pro-war speech.

The context instantly turned the speech’s insights into flackery for more war.” Strong words indeed!

Arianna Huffington, her disillusionment is expanding. “Obama isn’t distancing himself from ‘the Left’ with his decision to escalate this deepening disaster [in Afghanistan].

• He’s distancing himself from the national interests of the country.”

John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s Magazine, never an Obama fan, upset with what he calls “the liberal adoration of Obama.” In the Providence Journal
cites

• Frank Rich of The New York Time,

• Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker

• Tom Hayden

all showing mild discomfort in the midst of

• retained hope over Obama’s coming months.

They have not yet cut their ties to the masterspeaker of “Hope and Change.”

The liberal-progressive commentariat has another two years to engage in challenge and chagrin

For in 2012, silence will mute their criticisms as the stark choices of the two-party tyranny come into view and incarcerate their minds into the least-worst voting syndrome. It is hard to accord them any moral breaking point under such self-imposed censorship. Not much leverage in that approach, is there?

The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade

by Robert Freeman

• The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election

This isn't even a historical controversy anymore

• Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened

Three years before Bush took office, the neo-cons' Project For a New American Century called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle East oil

• Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there.

• The Global War on Terror

Or more specifically, the ease with which the "GWOT" has replaced the Cold War as the justification for the ever-increasing militarization of society

• The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%.

But over the last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners. Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in wealth as a result of the housing collapse

• The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy

The top 1% of wealth holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives, indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives. This is the working definition of feudalism

• The surrender of civil liberties.

Obama has gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended during the Bush administration

• The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity.

Now we have the greatest global economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the government transferring $11 trillion to the banks to cover their sociopathically greedy bets that went bust

• The collapse of the media.

sixty independent media outlets have consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the truth tellers

• The meaninglessness of elections.

Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on, in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance, engendered more cynicism since Richard Nixon, a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it

Historians will look back on the Naughts as the time when Americans Lost Their Country. It was the decade when all the institutions that they believed would protect them — the media, the courts, Congress, the market, a messianic new president — in fact betrayed them. It will forever more be a different country.

But not just yet. Did I tell you about the big move to locally-grown produce?

CHOMSKY ON GAZA

Gaza Freedom March YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/GazaFreedomMarch#p/a/447EBA237BA53B1F/0/d_uHb92qGp4

NO SITTING PRESIDENT HAS VISITED HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI

Obama Rejects Visit to Hiroshima, Nagasaki. November 13, 2009

President Obama is in Japan today in the first stop of his inaugural visit to Asia since taking office earlier this year. Obama is set to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose party was elected in August on a platform that included revisiting Japanese-US military ties. Hatoyama has suggested he wants to move a US military base off the island of Okinawa, while the US says it wants to relocate to a different location. Before his arrival, Obama rejected an invitation to visit the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, site of the US atomic bombing sixty-four years ago that killed an estimated 220,000 Japanese. Obama’s call for ending nuclear weapons and his recent Nobel Peace Prize win had raised expectations in Japan that he would become the first sitting US president to visit the two cities. Asked about his refusal earlier today, Obama said he would visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki at a later date.

By Sam Husseini on November 13, 2009 3:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As Obama becomes yet another U.S. president not to visit Hiroshima, we come closer to committing ever more violence.

My friend Elisa Salasin (on my suggestion) plugged audio of Truman's claim that Hiroshima was a "military base" into OMD's Enola Gay (Sash remix). She overlaid it with video and stills resulting in the final video:'']

(About the Sash remix: Enola Gay was name of the U.S. plane that dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the plane's pilot, Paul Tibbets; Little Boy was the codename of the bomb itself, hence the line "Enola Gay, is mother proud of little boy today?" This song is from OMD (Orchestral Manuvers in the Dark) and remixed by Sash to include audio such as Robert Oppenheimer saying "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds," quoting the Bhagavad Gita.)

CUBA AND DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES, INC

The State Department said previously that he was working as a subcontractor for the Maryland-based economic development organization Development Alternatives Inc.

Jim Boomgard, the company's president and chief executive, said he was part of a new USAID program intended to "strengthen civil society in support of just and democratic governance in Cuba."

After two weeks of silence, Raul Castro first acknowledged the detention in an address to Parliament on Dec. 20, saying the American was arrested for distributing illegal satellite communications equipment.

Development Alternatives Inc.

From SourceWatch

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Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) is a development consulting company based in Bethesda, MD, USA.

DAI acted as a conduit for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) (through the Office of Transition Initiatives) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED} funds to the Venezuelan opposition to president Hugo Chavez. Furthermore, it was instrumental along with NED affiliated organizations for financing black propaganda on Venezuelan private network TV during the general strike in 2002. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that DAI was required to keep certain personnel in Venezuela and had to consult with USAID about staff changes. Philip Agee, a former CIA officer, suggests that this is merely a cover for what passed for CIA operations in the past [Agee, op. cit. (transcript here)].

In 1990, Experience International Inc. was purchased by Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) and operated as that company's Agriculture and Agribusiness Division. [1]

SALVATION FANTASY

During a time of economic decline, persistent cultural strife, deepening American involvement in far-off military conflicts, and rapid environmental deterioration
salvation fantasies promising them both a transcendent, everlasting future and violent retribution against perceived evildoers?
2002 CNN poll found that 59% of Americans believed that the prophecies in the Book of Revelations would come true
mainstream American culture is permeated by apocalyptic beliefs and the yearning for messianic deliverance
The Obama phenomenon is impossible to analyze or understand without considering the deep levels of anxiety and desperation that progressives suffered during the radical presidency of George W. Bush
a secular version of the Christian right's salvation fantasy
The Audacity of Hope, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
Oprah Winfrey referred to Obama as "The One," a fusion of Jesus and Neo from The Matrix

when Obama defeated Clinton in Iowa, he quoted from a Hopi Indian End Times prophecy
"We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Ezra Klein declared the candidate, "not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of the word over flesh... Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our higher selves."
Louis Farrakhan, who had consistently ordered his followers to boycott elections and who attacked black politicians from Harold Washington to Jesse Jackson as tools of the white power structure, declared in a dramatic address to his followers that Obama was the Messiah
Many of Obama's harshest progressive critics embraced a secular salvation fantasy that Obama cleverly channeled and cultivated to excite them and distract from his lack of progressive accomplishments. In the end, Obama's messianization created false expectations while establishing political space for the right to undermine and delegitimize him.
the salvation fantasy Obama offered stood in stark contrast to the dualistic

malignant Rapture visions of the Christian right
he repudiated partisan rancor, declaring that there was no "conservative America" where people rejected science, demonized gays and assailed minority and women's rights.
words of Andrew Sullivan
Obama was destined to be "a liberal Reagan who can reunite America."
experiments by a group of political psychologists
profound fear of death inspired extreme conservative beliefs
cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker
"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity -- designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."
John Judis' excellent article, "Death Grip" on the studies for more).
Obama attempted to provide a blank screen
conservatives projected their most fearsome inner demons onto him instead.
Sarah Palin
Joe the Plumber began to attack Obama as a nebulous Other
a strange outsider who did not share

mainstream American values. Their intention was to make him as unfamiliar and frightening as possible
to scare off wavering independent
it was too late
so it extended into this year and peaked with the Fall Teabagger rallies and town hall disruptions
The Teabagger propaganda bore
resemblance
right-wing Jewish settlers during rallies against Yitzhak Rabin
Obama was a Muslim; Obama was a commie pinko; Obama was a cosmopolitan globalist; Obama was a black nationalist. It did not matter who Obama really was. The right simply wanted to portray him as culturally alien and insidious
he had offered himself up as "a blank screen
and therefore not establishing a very clear identity
the liberal left's messianization of Obama enabled and even encouraged his otherization by the radical right
complemented
with false rumors
most damaging rumor
from the cult of Lyndon LaRouche
refined by former New York State Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey
mainstreamed by Palin
"death panels
Obama never recovered
his plan to escalate

the war in Afghanistan
as the public option and Medicare buy-in proposals were scrapped to mollify Joseph Lieberman, the progressive left went into contortions
attack him as everything from a warmonger to a tool of Wall Streeters like Rahm Emanuel and Robert Rubin. "Kill the bill!" has become the battle cry
those former Obama fanatics experiencing a crisis in faith should look in the mirror
hey demanded a secular salvation fantasy and participated in the messianization of the candidate who delivered it to them
They now know that Obama is just a politician

US-Canadian Troops

To all of these events, it is not in our knowing if the American people will awaken from their self induced slumber to arise, as they have many times throughout their history, to reclaim for themselves what is now rapidly being stolen from them. But, and if their present actions are a predictor to what they may do in the future, one can only fear for them as they are marched in lockstep towards an abyss they only fail to see because they won’t open their eyes.

PAUL STREET ON OBAMA

Barack Obama
a tool and agent of concentrated wealth, business class rule, and militarism,
campaign pledges translate into corrupt, corporate and imperial nothingness in the real world of power.
"war [is] war, whether the battle standard is being waved by a white moron from Midland, Texas or an eloquent black man from Chicago."[5]
criticism of the weak, corporate-captive climate "deal" (with no binding restrictions on carbon emissions from the industrialized states that have created the climate crisis)
leading climate activist and intellectual George Monbiot notes,
"The immediate reason for the failure of the [Copenhagen] talks can be summarized in two words: Barack Obama.
Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal which outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation;

either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown."[9]
Robert Kuttner, the leading left-liberal public intellectual and editor of the weekly liberal policy and politics journal The American Prospect. Kuttner's
Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. [13]
He boldly blew through a rich historical record indicating that the future president was a "deeply conservative" agent of empire and inequality, incorporated - a willing tool of corporate-managed fake democracy and military, state-capitalist re-branding whose main challenge was to capture, contain, and tamp down (certainly not encourage) progressive sentiments amongst the restive citizenry.[14]
As one totals up the president's cumulatively reactionary record of policies (and non-policies) on numerous specific issues - energy, health, war, labor rights, war, militarism -

it becomes rather difficult to sustain the image of Obama as anything but a business and war president, certainly not a people's reformer.
so easily hooked by the deceptive marketing that left author Chris Hedges has written about in connection with the president:
"Barack Obama is a brand. And the brand designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest."

"... President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising." [16]
Carl Davidson, a former Sixties Maoist turned "Marxist" Web-master of "Progressives for Obama,"
Badly misusing the terminology of the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, Davidson claimed that the Obama administration represented the rise of "an emerging historic counter-hegemonic bloc" containing elements of Marxian/proletarian "class struggle."
a decisive break with both neoliberalism and corporate liberalism
a major tension between forces representing the capitalist class's "old hydrocarbon sector" and forces representing a progressive new left-leaning "green sector."[
$1 trillion a year on the Pentagon but just a "few billion on green jobs, mainly as subsidies to big corporations like the big three [automakers]."

to Obama's critical support for the initial Bush-Paulsen bailout or the depth and degree of the Obama administration's continuation and indeed expansion of massive state-capitalist welfare for the privileged financial few
The first version of the Bush administration's proposed bailout of Goldman Sachs and other leading Wall Street firms in September of 2008 sparked a major populist rebellion throughout the country.
to frighten the populace into handing over $700 billion to cover the toxic assets created by financial perpetrators and at the remarkable attempt to place the bailout and Bush's Treasury Secretary literally above the rule of law, codified in Section 8 of the original bailout package, which read as follows:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

715/775 WERE FREED

Since October 7, 2001, when the current war in Afghanistan began, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge. In January 2009, approximately 245 detainees remained.[14] This number has further decreased to 215 by November 2009.[12]

Three have been convicted of various charges:

* David Hicks was found guilty under retrospective legislation introduced in 2006 of providing material support to terrorists in 2001.[15][16]
* Salim Hamdan accepted a position on bin Laden's personal staff only as a chauffeur.[17]
* Ali al-Bahlul made a video celebrating the attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67).

Of those still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest.
The cell in which David Hicks, an Australian Guantánamo Bay prisoner, was detained. Inset is the prisoners' reading room

On September 22, 2004, ten prisoners were brought from Afghanistan.

In July 2005, 242 detainees were moved out of Guantánamo, including 173 that were released without charge, and 69 transferred to the governments of other countries, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.[18]

By November 2005, 358 of the then-505 detainees held at Guantánamo Bay had Administrative Review Board hearings.[19] Of these, 3% were granted and were awaiting release, 20% were to be transferred, 37% were to be further detained at Guantánamo, and no decision had been made in 40% of the cases.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has prepared a biography of some of the prisoners currently being held in Guantánamo Prison.[20]

On February 11, 2008, the US Department of Defense charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and Walid Bin Attash for the September 11 attacks under the military commission system, as established under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.[21]

On February 5, 2009, charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were dropped without prejudice following an order signed by US President Barack Obama to suspend trials for 120 days.[22] Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was accused of renting a small boat connected with the USS Cole bombing. He is one of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp known to have been interrogated with water boarding[citation needed].

NADER ON 'BAMA

First, the President has been openly for single payer health insurance

So, instead of starting with "single payer," he descends to vague policy declarations, asks Congress to come up with a specific bill, while cutting private deals in meetings in the White House with drug industry and health insurance executives.

Second was also a supporter of Palestinian rights

Between election and inauguration, he proceeded to categorically back the illegal blockade and invasion of Gaza by Israel and did not object to the slaughter of 1400 Palestinians,

Third,talk about a reckless and greedy Wall Street is not paralleled with tough regulatory proposals.

He allowed, without working his will, the banks and Banking Committee Chairman, Barney Frank to produce a weakened regulatory bill that passed the House of Representatives.

Fourth, on labor and NAFTA
He has started nothing there and says nothing about this promise

Fifth, on climate change

Mr. Obama has bought into the cap and trade morass instead of a simpler, more enforceable carbon tax. His words on this subject are often well-spoken but his rhetoric is undermined by his inaction. His opponents in Congress and the corporate sector are strengthened as a consequence. leaves Copenhagen without a deal after outlining three steps-mitigation of greenhouse gases, openness of each country's progress or lack thereof, and a very modest financial commitment from the world's biggest polluter to help the more beleaguered countries with climate change. He hardly set an example for a government whose ownership and control of GM and Chrysler could transform automotive technology.

He must give visibility to their expectations of him, including access to many cabinet secretaries and regulatory agency heads who have been reluctant even to meet with civic leaders, unlike the open doors regularly available to the corporatists and their lobbyists.

MASSIVELY DELUDED

Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?!?!

Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what – they’re just so darned pushy?

“...I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”

“...I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”

“...I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”

“...I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”
He has lopped off twenty full points from his job approval rating in less than a year’s time

I can’t even begin to describe how insulting Obama conducting a “jobs summit” is to me, or what an unbelievably ham-fisted piece of public relations that was for the White House, which is increasingly showing itself not just to be sickeningly regressive, but also fully inept.
Especially now that it’s been stripped of nearly every real progressive reform imaginable, it has become an incredibly stupid bill, from the political perspective. It will force people who can’t afford it to spend a giant amount of money on lousy insurance, without any real choice to hold down costs, and it will fund this by hacking away at the Medicare budget. No wonder an insurance industry lobbyist broadcast an email last week declaring: “We WIN.

along with doing nothing about jobs, doing nothing about the Middle East, nothing about civil liberties, nothing about civil rights, and now doing nothing at Copenhagen. Regarding the latter, the world is literally on fire, and he jets in, gives a speech haranguing the delegates that “Now is not the time for talk, now is the time for action”, then splits even before the vote in order to beat the snowstorm headed to the east coast that might delay him getting home to his comfy bed. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this shit up, man.

Here’s what I get: This president is a corporate hack. Like Bush or Clinton, he has constituents, alright – but you and I are not on that particular list.

Here’s what I don’t get: Why does he bother to do these things in a way that pleases no one, and only dramatically undercuts his own political standing? Why does he refuse to make anyone his enemy, thus making everyone his enemy?
Is he just massively deluded?

Understanding Obamacare: Luke Mitchell Harpers

Harpers
Luke Mitchell

The private insurance industry, as currently constituted, would collapse if the government allowed real competition. The companies offer no real value and so instead must create a regulatory system that virtually mandates their existence and will soon actually do so.