Thursday May 29, 2008, 9:59 pm
A somewhat different view that may well put the left-wing cat among the Democrat pigeons.

Friday May 30, 2008, 12:11 am
Embarrassing truth
As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America's divine right to control all before it. "We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good," said Obama. "We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people [emphasis added]." McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing "terrorists" he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn't quarrel.

Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition. In opposing a UN Security Council resolution implying criticism of Israel's starvation of the people of Gaza, Obama was ahead of both McCain and Hillary Clinton. In January, pressured by the Israel lobby, he massaged a statement that "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" to now read: "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel [emphasis added]." Such is his concern for the victims of the longest, illegal military occupation of modern times. Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, "is a threat to all of us".

On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of "100 years", his earlier option). Obama has now "reserved the right" to change his pledge to get troops out next year. "I will listen to our commanders on the ground," he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. Like McCain, Obama has voted repeatedly in the Senate to support Bush's demands for funding of the occupation of Iraq; and he has called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. His senior advisers embrace McCain's proposal for an aggressive "league of democracies", led by the United States, to circumvent the United Nations.

Amusingly, both have denounced their "preachers" for speaking out. Whereas McCain's man of God praised Hitler, in the fashion of lunatic white holy-rollers, Obama's man, Jeremiah Wright, spoke an embarrassing truth. He said that the attacks of 11 September 2001 had taken place as a consequence of the violence of US power across the world. The media demanded that Obama disown Wright and swear an oath of loyalty to the Bush lie that "terrorists attacked America because they hate our freedoms". So he did. The conflict in the Middle East, said Obama, was rooted not "primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel", but in "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam". Journalists applauded. Islamophobia is a liberal speciality.

The American media love both Obama and McCain. Reminiscent of mating calls by Guardian writers to Blair more than a decade ago, Jann Wenner, founder of the liberal Rolling Stone, wrote: "There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline . . . Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon 'the better angels of our nature'." At the liberal New Republic, Charles Lane confessed: "I know it shouldn't be happening, but it is. I'm falling for John McCain." His colleague Michael Lewis had gone further. His feelings for McCain, he wrote, were like "the war that must occur inside a 14-year-old boy who discovers he is more sexually attracted to boys than to girls".

The objects of these uncontrollable passions are as one in their support for America's true deity, its corporate oligarchs. Despite claiming that his campaign wealth comes from small individual donors, Obama is backed by the biggest Wall Street firms: Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the huge hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. "Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors," wrote the investigator Pam Martens, "consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages." A report by United for a Fair Economy, a non-profit group, estimates the total loss to poor Americans of colour who took out sub-prime loans as being between $164bn and $213bn: the greatest loss of wealth ever recorded for people of colour in the United States. "Washington lobbyists haven't funded my campaign," said Obama in January, "they won't run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president." According to files held by the Centre for Responsive Politics, the top five contributors to the Obama campaign are registered corporate lobbyists.

What is Obama's attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy's. By offering a "new", young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party - with the bonus of being a member of the black elite - he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell's role as Bush's secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.

Friday May 30, 2008, 8:03 am
Noted, ST, thank you for this article. I have copied and posted in my sharebook, I hope you don't mind. This article is illuminating in a way I wish it wasn't..I believed what Bobby K.said, and had I known he really supported the Vietnam War, well..I am sick of lies and finding out that I've been lied to all along...but I was naive then, and unsuspicious. I am not surprised at any lie Obama has told, because now I don't believe anyone!But I am so disappointed that for all these years I couldn't WAIT for W. to be voted out of office, and now it seems he'll still be there no matter who wins. A very sad commentary on America and her vaulted "democracy".
And of course Blue, you are right on, as usual!

Friday May 30, 2008, 8:25 am
I don't mind at all, Mairead. In fact, I'm happy about it, as this article gets more of the exposure that I feel it deserves...

I must admit though that it was with some reluctance that I submitted it - despite what it says, based on my observations from afar, I do genuinely believe that Obama is still the best candidate. But I succumbed to my respect for John Pilger's investigative reporting, which never shies from telling the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may be and how unpopular it may make him.

Friday May 30, 2008, 9:02 am
Vote for CHANGE or you get the same old Democrap$:

Does Hillary Clinton support the neoconservative manifesto the Project for the New American Century?

Before you vote for Hillary Clinton, please consider the following:

Does Hillary Clinton support the neoconservative manifesto the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)?

Will electing her to be the President of the United States not only enable the destruction of the Democratic Party, but will it also damage the U.S. Government for generations, if not forever, thus transforming it into a permanent police state or empire?

Data:

1. Hillary Clinton is a team leader of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

2. Hillary Clinton praised the work of DLC and Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) founders, specifically with regard to their work in transforming the Democratic Party in the manner in which they proscribed (see below).

3-5. The founders of the DLC and PPI are members of or ideologically associated with PNAC; These DLC founders want to transform the Democratic Party, making it compatible with neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism.

h/t: Carla H.