I AM A DIASPORAL JEW OF THE ASHKENAZ TRIBE AND I HEREBY DECLARE BUELAHMAN AND LYNDA OF BUELAHMAN'S REDSTATE REVOLT TO BE ABSOLUTELY FREE OF ANTI-SEMITISM OF ANY KIND. THEIR VIEWS ON AMERICA'S ISRAEL POLICY IS THE SAME AS MINE. IT IS THE SAME AS WELL OVER 30% OF THE ISRAELI PEOPLE AND OVER 70% OF THE DIASPORAL ASHKENAZ COMMUNITY IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE BOTH THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL.
Matt Frei presents an insider guide to the people and the stories shaping America today. Combining location reports with lively discussion and exclusive interviews, the show provides new and surprising insights into contemporary America.
Matt Frei talks to American storyteller, musician, humorist and radio personality Garrison Keillor for some tips on Thanksgiving reading, holiday stories and all things American.
Matt gets the inside track from David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager. They cover everything from Thanksgiving 2007 on the election trail to whether he’d consider running a Sarah Palin 2012 campaign.
From news anchor to cranberry relish-maker, Matt talks to one of the founding women of American public radio news, Susan Stamberg. She shares a few Thanksgiving tips, including her recipe for cranberry relish and some advice about how to outsource the bulk of the Thanksgiving feast preparations.
Matt talks to Master Edward Winslow, an American Pilgrim from the year 1626.http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p0053hlf
I don’t pretend to understand Afghanistan, but I do know it’s a big, poor, backward Islamic country in Central Asia with all sorts of warring factions that have been at it for decades, or even centuries. I know that American soldiers have been fighting there for eight years and that the situation is still a huge mess.
And now President Barack Obama, after sending 21,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in March, is set to announce next week that he’s going to send over another 30,000 or so, which will bring the total number of US troops in that big, poor, backward, bewildering, violent Islamic country to about 100,000.
I don’t know much about Afghanistan, but I’m pretty familiar with America, familiar enough to know that America is not up for this. I don’t know if it’s possible to pacify Afghanistan – or Pakistan, Iraq, Iran or anyplace else in the region. I don’t know if this can be done even with millions of American troops fighting for 100 years.
But I do know, as I think everyone knows or should know, that America is not ready to fight Islamism like it fought Nazism and Communism, which means that in its wars in the Middle East, America is destined to lose. The only question is how long these futile adventures will last.
Actually, America fought one war in the Middle East that was not seemingly futile, not at all – the one in 1991 against Iraq. That was a “necessary war,” to use Obama’s term for the mess in Afghanistan. Back then, Saddam Hussein invaded an American-allied country, he electrified the entire Middle East, he was bidding for control, direct or indirect, over two-thirds of the world’s oil – he had to be stopped and turned back.
So president George H.W. Bush set a very clear, reasonable goal – forcing Saddam out of Kuwait – then sent half a million soldiers to do the job, accomplished it in six weeks with minimal allied casualties, then brought the troops home, leaving Saddam and Saddamism in ruins. That was a so called “good war.” But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.
Instead, America decided to “transform” the region. The result is that another 5,000 Americans have been killed, soldiers this time, bombs are still going off every which way in Iraq, and now a new president, this one a liberal Democrat, not a Republican neocon, is driving deeper and deeper into Afghanistan.
And what about Pakistan? And Iran? Are they next? “All options are on the table,” says Obama.
AMERICA’S PROBLEM is that it still wants to be a military superpower but is no longer willing to pay the price in blood and money, so it tries to do it on the cheap and as painlessly as possible, and winds up fighting endless wars with impossible goals in distant, hellish places.
If the US were serious about taking on a military challenge of this scope, it would reinstate the draft. This isn’t Grenada they’re dealing with, this is an enemy with outposts across the Middle East, and parts of Africa too. And the US means to go to war against this enemy with a volunteer army that’s drawn from less than 1 percent of American families!
“The problem in this country with this issue [of Afghanistan],” said Democratic Congressman David Obey, “is that the only people who have to sacrifice are military families, and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”
The American people won’t stand for a military draft; it’s a taboo subject . They won’t even stand for a war tax; that’s another taboo. But neither will they stand for the idea that America is not a military superpower anymore. And nobody in that country, not even the messiah of change, has the guts to tell them that they can’t have it both ways.
So the US pretends it can fight World War III like Grenada, its army is so far beyond overextended that there isn’t a word for it, the country spends more and more billions of dollars that it doesn’t have, and this has been going on now for almost a decade.
At this point, is anybody confident that if and when the US gets out of Iraq, after all these years of horror and devastation, it will leave behind a stable, decent, more or less pro-American country?
Is anybody confident of such a happy end to the war in Afghanistan?
I don’t think so. I think if America knew right after 9/11 what it knows now, there is no way on earth it would have started these wars.
But now Obama wants more – not because he believes he can salvage the situation in Afghanistan, but because he’s afraid of what will happen if he abandons it to the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Which is a very legitimate worry. I worry about that too.
But the only way the US can salvage Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, or any country in the Muslim world, is to fight like it fought every other major war in its history – with a draft, with war taxes, with a clear, reasonable goal and the readiness to pursue it to the end.
Is America up for that today? No, it’s not, I’m happy to say, because, like I said, even millions of American soldiers fighting for 100 years might not be enough to neutralize the threat of Islamism.
It’s fight or flight, which means the only choice left is flight. The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it’s just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.
The time has come for America to wrap up these endless, failed third world wars.
It’s not going to be easy. And the worst part is that after Obama deepens America’s commitment with 30,000 new soldiers, getting out is going to be even harder.
Facts
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.
By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.
The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.
The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.
The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.
The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.
They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.
They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.
The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.
The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.
The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.
The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.
President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.
The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.
Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.
Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and hus stimulate the economy of the state.
Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.
Over 30 years ago– I had read a small leather-bound book about the Shroud. I enjoyed the starting point that the researcher used . Art. It was amazing and thought provoking. Anyway– since then I have always found the research facinating. Of course I am lost when it comes to why no DNA research– but thats just me. lol
Sun, Nov. 22, 2009
Researcher says faint text proves shroud’s authenticity
By Ariel David
Associated Press
ROME – A Vatican researcher asserts that nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves that the artifact revered as Jesus’ burial cloth is authentic.
The assertion made by Barbara Frale in a book drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.
Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
She asserted that the words include the name “Jesus Nazarene” in Greek, proving that the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ’s image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a special protective chamber in Turin’s cathedral and is rarely shown.
Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.
While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them because of the test’s results, Frale said in an interview.
But when she cut out the words from photos of the shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century A.D. – Jesus’ time.
She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said.
“I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside,” Frale said. “What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place.”
Frale is noted in Italy for her research on the medieval order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican’s archives.
Earlier this year she published a study contending the Templars at one time had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history about 1360 in the hands of a French knight.
But her latest book, The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene, in Italian, raised doubts even among experts.
“People work on grainy photos and think they see things,” said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written books about the shroud. “It’s all the result of imagination and computer software.”
Lombatti also rejected the idea that authorities in the time of Jesus would officially return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of the most cruel punishment used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to the execution’s deterring effect.
People are people everywhere we go aren’t they. I had prior looked into a company called ‘PLUG’ and it actually has stock– it is wave energy. Now listening to this I kept answering outloud… ” Hell we can’t get people to stop killing people and you want to change people into tree planters. Well and good but in a world gone mad… well, really… what are we doing??? and for heavens sake… Carbon Credits exchanged globally– and Carbon swopping??? Geeeeeeeeece
Accidentally last night, I watched a PBS documentary titled “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin”. I cried so hard. I had no idea about this little known, to me, huge part of history. I Immediately flashed back to the time of my daughters and my reunion. It was filmed live-time in 1998 for The Learning Channel– and as a heart felt thank you, I will never ever forget or regret giving Boris [ the TLC Reunion cameraman-- from Moscow] my ‘Meet the Beatles’ album! I never fully understood his weeping when I gave it to him… not until now. I sincerely hope that you can watch this program . It is just Awesome, and above all just plain humbling. I never knew– I just never knew. Below are 6 links to the documentary that someone was awesome enough to post on youtube!!!
Brief::
Mon, November 9 | 9PM How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
This is the extraordinary and untold story of how the Beatles punctured the Iron Curtain. In August 1962, award-winning director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film, in Liverpool’s Cavern Club, with a raw and unrecorded group of unknown rockers — the Beatles. Twenty-five years later, while making a series of films in Russia, Woodhead learned just how powerful Beatlemania was in the Soviet Union. Even though the Beatles never performed there, their music and rebellious style had soaked into the lives of a generation of Russian kids. This film features personal stories from members of Russia’s Beatles generation, who talk about how the Fab Four changed their lives, gave them hope and helped to undermine the foundations of the Soviet system. The music was the number one enemy of the State, and teens learned English, revolution and gained strength to over throw the Communist system by listening to underground recordings made using old x-ray film negatives called ‘bones’. To this day, the Beatles remain engrained in the life changed hearts of a once hostage entire youth of a nation .
He’s going home. The man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing of a Pam Am flight over the Scottish town in Lockerbie, has been released from prison on compassionate grounds. Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi is already on his way home to Libya, where it is believed he will die of prostate cancer within three months.
In making his decision, the Scottish Justice Minister has brought earned the ire of plenty of people. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pleaded that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release him. Many American families of the victims agreed with her, and the White House has already issued a statement expressing ‘deep regret’.
But in Scotland, many of the victims’ families supported al-Megrahi’s release – generally because of widely held questions over the safety of his conviction.
Last week we talked about whether people convicted of serious crimes should ever be released on compassionate grounds. That’s still a very valid question to ask today, but his release also throws up other issues.
Libya sits on the largest oil reserves in Africa, oil reserves many companies are keen to have access too. Two years ago, then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair laid the foundations for Al-Megrahi’s release by agreeing a prisoner transfer deal with Libya. Just a few hours later British oil company BP announced a multi-million dollar deal to search for oil in the country.
Scotland says Al-Megrahi’s release was agreed only taking into account the law relating to compassion. But there are many who say it also has to do with improving ties with a potential major oil source.
Al-Megrahi’s freedom also throws back into the mix questions over the safety of his conviction, and whether he was indeed just a pawn in a bigger game designed to bring Libya back in from the cold.
Dammit. We missed having this guy for POTUS because you numbnuts are too stupid to realize that the rest of them are screwing you with a big nasty grin and you seem to enjoy it. What a miserable bunch of idiots I live among.
You squandered away the best chance we had.
Kucinich on Supplemental: “Cash for Clunkers and Bunkers”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich D-OH today made the following statement against the war supplemental on the House floor:
“It is good that our Administration is reaching out to the Muslim world. It is bad to spend another $100 billion to keep wars going which will kill innocent Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“It is good that we try to create an incentive for people to buy efficient cars. It is bad that the car vouchers will not be expressly for the purchase of cars made in America. It is even worse that we tie such an incentive to a war funding bill. Cash for clunkers and bunkers in the same bill!
“Cash for more war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Cash to help China sell its cars to Americans.
“Meanwhile, back in the U.S. of A., factories and auto dealers are closing, people are losing their businesses, their jobs, their homes, their health care, their investments, their retirement security.
“Who are these people who keep coming up with these innovative ideas to keep wars going and to move jobs out of America? Who are these people?”
I don’t know about you, but any time Gonzales opens his mealy mouth, my gut says, “Go 180 degrees opposite”. Contrarily, if Jonathon Turley utters an opinion, I take heed.
I need to review more about the woman that Obama announced. I am not happy that her original seating was done by GHW Bush, especially in the way it was accommodated (political maneuvering). I am happy that she is a woman and a Hispanic, but those are not criteria that are a “requirement”, imo.
The fact is that Alberto Gonzales is a failed thug who seems to know less about the law than I do (at least judging from his performance). If this is the mouthpiece that “the Right” needs to catipult its propaganda, then I can feel confident that it will fall flat (for even the stupid Americans know better than to fall for that failed asshole’s advice).
Also remember that stupid ass “W” thought of Gonzales as a Supreme potential.
Honoring this fine man is nothing new around here. He is one of the very few true patriots we have left in Congress and to this day I proudly wear his campaign T-shirt and cap. I have his campaign poster up on a wall to remind me of what this country missed out on due to her idiotic mindfuck she seems totally ok with.
Truth is out there people, but you MUST turn off that idiot tube and educate yourself.
I hope that some poor redneck stops by and reads this, gives the video a quick look and then comment about how you disagree with what the man says. But please give some good reasons, for I am armed to the teeth with information and the real truth about this subject.
The fact is that we are getting screwed by a bunch of money grubbing Senators who will protect their coffers. Max Baucus is in the lead and he is obviously keeping the Single payer option out of the debate, even though over 60% of Americans want it (and I promise you that if more understood exactly what it meant, that number would sky rocket). The reason they don’t know is the fact that they watch the MSM, or worse, that fake news channel, Fox News.
Pelosi, herself, is against it, even though the vast majority of her constituents want it. Same with virtually every congress member out there, yet they ignore it.
POTUS Obama is a damned liar because he convinced many Americans to vote for him because he said he supported Single Payer, not-for-profit Universal healthcare, but now is sliding towards protecting his money coffers, as well. BTW: the man lies continuously and about virtually every subject. If you haven’t figured that out yet, there is little hope for you (much like those crazy fucking Bushies).
On another note, I am really beginning to like The Ed Show (even though I find it hard to believe that he will be able to keep his show with his “in-your-face” notions of Progressiveness). He had on Mike Farrell (MASH fame) regarding this subject and details that you need to know are illuminated. Worth the viewing, if you haven’t seen it (I just wish that Ed came on in the Tweety or Olbermann time-slot… Olbermann drank the Koolaid and Tweety is, well, Tweety).
Conservative09 keeps coming back for more and to argue that his “water boarding” that he received by his friends at his home was not torture. That all the people in SERE, the CIA and whatever reporters who have actually taken the water boarding technique have not been tortured. Basically, it is like a refreshing dip in the pool.
The dude is so wrong on so many levels , but has apparently convinced himself that what he “experienced” was no big deal and that the water boarding that has been done to the “terrorists” in our charge is not torture. Somehow there is this vast disconnect that he has with reality if he believes what happened to him is the same thing that happened to our prisoners.
My argument is that asking your friends and trusted companions to water board you is not the same thing as has been done to the prisoners in our and the secret jails we used for torture. That he didn’t experience weeks or months of fear and stress positions and bug boxes and threats to rape their wife and whatever horrible tactics are used on the REAL prisoners before he wet his head.
Sorry, but it takes a total sycophantic idiot to not get it. And Conservative09 certainly don’t get it. No more than Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Bybee, Pelosi or anyone who knew about the practice gets it.
But I asked him to allow me (or better yet, some people that I know) to grab his ass and do the water baording and I gauranteed him he would sing his heart out, begging to stop the real torture.
So, when I watched this at Dandelion Salad, I knew I had to post it for Con’s own education purposes.
This clip is from a guy who experienced the SERE water baording and his opinion is quite different than Con’s. I wonder if Con would argue with this man over the water boarding issue?
Follow the money, honey, to see why Sen Max Baucus (Dungheap: Montana) will not allow Universal Healthcare “on the table”. Do you think that this corrupt, bought and paid forInsurance water boy will fight against his MAIN financing that gets you local Montana dumbasses to vote for him?
The “Pay to Play” Senator is clear about his intentions on his own site:
Universal Coverage: The first principle is universal coverage, every Montanan and American has a right to affordable health coverage. Universal coverage is essential if we are to make meaningful progress on the other four principles. We cannot address the health care system, if we leave a growing portion of the country behind. The solution, however, must build on the current system and must involve a public and private sector mix.
It MUST? Really? Wonder why it MUST?
Like I said, follow the money. His invitation was to “Stake Holders”. No real consideration of American workers or the public, in general. Pay to Play.
Now then, I saw a video at Dandelion Salad which continues the gist of my post from yesterday regarding the heroic 8 people who demanded that Universal, Single-Payer Healthcare be “PUT BACK ON THE TABLE“. The Real News Network’s video illuminated the lies that these corrupt, deep pocketed pawns say (and the American Sheople take as truth and “Gospel”) and offered the truth in answer to those lies.
The video quotes from a Harvard School of Public Health Feb 2008 Press release and shows poll results of how Americans feel about “Socialized Medicine”, broken down by Party affiliation. From the poll (just to show you that a majority of those who believe they understand what “Socialized medicine” is, feel like it would IMPROVE our system). Sorry to take away the lying MSM meme of “Americans are against it” (no I’m not).
To begin…
Q1 Politicians sometimes talk about “socialized medicine”. How well do you understand what this phrase means? Would you say [READ LIST]? 67% VERY/SOMEWHAT WELL (NET)
34% Very well
33% Somewhat well 31% NOT VERY/NOT AT ALL WELL (NET)
15% Not very well
15% Not at all
2% Don’t know/Refused (Asked of those who understand what socialized medicine means “very well”, “somewhat well” or “not very well”; n=886)
Q2. So far as you understand the phrase, do you think that if we had socialized medicine in this country that the health care system would be better or worse than what we have now? 45% Better
39% Worse
4% About the same (volunteer)
12% Don’t know/Refused
When Sen Jim Bunning of Kentucky weighed in (heavy laden with his largest campaign contribution coinage in his pockets from Big Insurance), he told what is termed down here in Tennessee, “A Damned Lie” when he said that when he looks at “Government Single Payer” healthcare in other countries like the UK, Canada, Sweden, etc that he sees MUCH higher tax rates on workers (“60% and Higher”). In other words, government run, “socialized medicine” causes very high tax rates for the workers of those countries compared to us.
Sweden 50.1% (but they also get free college for everyone and many other “social services” that we pay for out of our pocket, or double the unemployment insurance protection than our own government provides).
NONE are the Big Money’s (or the “Owned” Sen from Kentucky’s) lie of “60% or higher”.
But just what IS the American tax rate (before our expensive health care, college and other “social services” we pay for are factored)?
30.4%
Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a tax burden of ALMOST as much as they do, but we STILL pay for our healthcare in premiums, out of pocket and the cattle train mentality of our extremely lucrative medical industry (and the health insurance companies that control it via their high dollar campaign contributions to the very ones who keep the only viable option OFF THE TABLE).
Now what does our 2-3% “savings” in tax rate get us? Besides the $.31 of every Healthcare Dollar going to the Big Insurance Company’s overhead and outrageous salaries and bonuses?
Well, it gets us more dead babies on arrival. Yes, that’s right… the American infant mortality rate is higher than all of these “socialized medicine” controlled countries. (On a side note, Cuba beats us, too) Along with France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Japan, S Korea, Israel, The Czech Republic, Portugal, Australia, (do I have to go on)…
US 6.26 out of 1,000 births
Canada 5.04
Sweden (that monsterous “Socialized Medicine/College/Worker Friendly” country?
2.75 infant deaths out of 1,000
(Do you understand what this means? That those bastards in Sweden have twice as good an infant mortality rate, get all their college paid for and are very well treated as workers and citizens, while we… well, you know what you are going through)
These scumbags are liars and well paid for it. Sen Baucus can giggle about “needing more police”, but if you ignorant sheep herders from Montana would just wake up to his bullshit, we could rid ourselves of another Big Money crony set to protect his coffers and fuck his fellow citizens. I’m working on my sorry assed Senator Alexander. Step up and do your part.
We need to rid our country of these slimy assholes enriched by ill-gotten gain that leaches off of you and your families’ health.
April 29, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — The BBC’s American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.
It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008″, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.
No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.
Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion…” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know… identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who… can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.
All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ’smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.
In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.
Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in.
Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.
BuelahMan
Lynda
kelsosnuts
