Brzezinski
Clan
Color Revolution
Vs Diebold Vote Fraud
In New Hampshire
By Webster G. Tarpley
1-19-8
| "The Bush operation in
Iowa had all the smell of a CIA covert operation." --William
Loeb, Manchester Union Leader, February 24, 1980.
The New Hampshire
Democratic primary was no exercise in grass roots retail
politics, but rather a clash between two cynical covert
operations run by contending factions of intelligence community
professionals. On the one side was an attempt to replicate here
in the United States on behalf of Obama the sort of "color
revolution" or "CIA people power coup" which the National
Endowment for Democracy and the Brzezinski intelligence faction
have carried out in such countries as Serbia, Georgia, and
Ukraine. On the other hand, an opposed intelligence faction was
able to win the day by a more traditional type of Diebold voting
machine pattern fraud in favor of Mrs. Clinton. The people power
coup in particular was designed to abort the entire Democratic
primary season, prevent further radicalization of the Democratic
base on economic issues, and submerge the issues raised by John
Edwards, the wild card in this race and the Democratic candidate
Wall Street organized money hates for his introduction of the
rhetoric of economic populism into the campaigns of both
parties.
Mrs. Clinton came into
New Hampshire as the candidate of the machine bosses of what
remains of the Democratic Party, the Shaheen machine of New
Hampshire, of much of the trade union bureaucracy, of Washington
lobbyists, and of large sectors of Wall Street. Barack Obama
came in as the candidate of the Brzezinski-Soros machine,
overwhelmingly focused on the need to assert Anglo-American
world domination over Russia and smash the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization during the next presidential term. Obama's appeal
was primarily to independents, many of them well-heeled elitists
and good government types of the chablis and brie set. Edwards
represented a new variable, with significant trade union backing
and a broad potential appeal to the traditional "Joe Sixpack"
blue collar Democratic base.
The outstanding lesson
of the Iowa caucuses had been the ascendancy of anti-Wall Street
economic populism, a theme pioneered by Edwards. This had been
shown by Obama's tendency to appropriate as his own the basic
themes of the Edwards campaign: poverty, the Two Americas of
rich and poor, the horrors faced by 50 million people who lack
medical insurance, and the criminal practices of insurance
companies and pharmaceutical firms. This approach had been
successfully copied on the Republican side by the clever
evangelical demagogue Mike Huckabee, who had used it to defeat
the most plutocratic Republican, the stockjobber and
asset-stripper Mitt Romney, a man who wanted to conquer Iowa
with his all-powerful checkbook. Many reactionary commentators,
including the Wall Street Journal and George Will, had savagely
attacked Huckabee and Edwards for their verbal attacks on the
finance oligarchs.
BEHIND
OBAMA, THE BRZEZINSKI CLAN OF RUSSIA HATERS
George Bush had no
foreign policy background, so it turned out to be his advisors
who called the shots: these were the neocon fascist madmen, who
have created a disaster. Obama has no knowledge and no
experience of foreign policy, so it is reasonable to examine who
his top advisers in this field are. We immediately find that
Obama's foreign policy is made by the Russia-hater Zbigniew
Brzezinski of the Washington Center for Strategic and
International Studies and the gray eminence of the Democratic
Party foreign policy establishment. Brzezinski's enthusiastic
endorsement of Obama and scornful rejection of Mrs. Clinton last
summer was a turning point in the rise of the Illinois senator.
But Zbigniew is not just an individual; he is the gruff
patriarch of an extended clan of intelligence operatives around
which an entire coterie of the intelligence community is
grouped. One is his son Mark Brzezinski, who served in the
National Security Council during the Clinton era. Zbigniew and
Mark jointly directed the infamous orange revolution in the
Ukraine in November and December 2004, which brought a pro-NATO
puppet regime of kleptocrats and oligarchs to power deep into
the former Soviet territory. At one point in this operation, it
looked like the pro-Russian eastern Ukraine might secede,
leading to possible civil war within that country. If Russian
troops had come into such a war on one side, and Polish NATO
troops had intervened in support of Brzezinski's puppets, the
result might have been a general European and world war. The
Brzezinskis are happy to take such risks, sure in the knowledge
that it is the Appalachian poor and black ghetto victims who
will pay the price, and not their own circles of the
cosmopolitan decadent émigré nobility.
It is plausible,
although not yet proven, that Obama was discovered by the
Brzezinskis and created from the ground up starting in the early
1980s. Zbig taught at Columbia University from 1960 to 1989, and
was the head of the Institute for Communist Affairs, a nest of
anti-Soviet ideologues. After two years at Occidental College in
California, Obama transferred to Columbia for his junior and
senior years, majoring in political science with a
specialization in international relations Brzezinski's own
bailiwick and receiving a B.A. degree in 1983.
Zbigniew Brzezinski's
brand of lunatic geopolitics would obviously dominate a future
Obama administration, but that is only the beginning. Zbigniew's
most recent book is Second Chance: Three Presidents and the
Crisis of American Superpower (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Here Brzezinski argues that there is a global political
awakening going on, and that the US is missing the boat. The
goal of this global awakening is, in Zbig's opinion, "dignity."
Not economic development, not the alleviation of poverty, not
national sovereignty against the IMF and World Bank, but just
dignity, with strong overtones of small-state particularism,
parochialism, and local control. Obama's alleged global approach
and trans-ethnic, trans-racial allure are right out of Zbig's
cosmopolitan prescription. Many have pointed to Second Chance as
the manual or printout for the entire Obama campaign, starting
with the cultural and ideological profile assumed by the
candidate. The entire Obama operation may be regarded as a cloak
for Brzezinski's resurgent ambition to go out in one great blaze
of revanchist glory. Obama did not choose these advisers; it is
a safe guess that the advisers chose Obama. The outlines of
Zbigniew's plan are also clear: he considers himself the man who
shattered the Warsaw Pact, and who then brought on the collpase
of the entire Soviet Union. Now he wants to dismember the
Russian Federation itself, with the option of carving up the
Russian heartland. Perhaps Zbig is dreaming of a Greater Poland
with the dimensions it had about 1600: from the Black Sea to the
Baltic, all controlled by petty szlachta aristocrats like the
Brzezinskis. Brzezinski's lunatic vendetta against Moscow cannot
be worth a single American life.
It is widely recognized
that Zbig has provided the playbook for Obama. David Ignatius
made this relationship clear enough in his review of Second
Chance in the Washington Post when he wrote: "The most
intriguing part of Brzezinski's book is what I would describe as
the Obama manifesto. (He doesn't call it that, but I don't think
he would quarrel with that characterization, either.) Brzezinski
argues that the world is undergoing a "global political
awakening," which is apparent in radically different forms from
Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet. Though America has
focused on its notion of what people want (democracy and the
wealth created by free trade and open markets), Brzezinski
points in a different direction: It's about dignity." (March 14,
2007) Zbig's brand of dignity is the kind attained through
secession, balkanization, and the creation of a weak petty state
for each ethnic minority starting with Kosovo and Chechenia.
This is the mine of neo-Wilsonian demagogy that an Obama
administration will exploit in the service not of peace but of
US world domination and encirclement of Russia.
Zbig said in endorsing
Obama: "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands
that we live in a very different world where we have to relate
to a variety of cultures and peoples." This may sound edifying,
but the real meaning is to put a trendy multi-cultural mantel
over a revanchism inherited from World War II and its aftermath.
(
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/09/12/358475.aspx
)
LONDON
ECONOMIST: ZBIG IS OBAMA'S BRAIN
The London Economist
recently revealed to its readers that Zbigniew is Obama's brain
in much the same way that Karl Rove or the neocons in general
have been considered as Bush's brain. The Economist blog
enthused: "A NEW brain for Barack Obama! It's 78 years old and
it still works perfectly. It belongs to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
peppery ex-national security adviser to Jimmy Carter." (March
14, 2007)
Working under this brain
are numerous subsidiary ganglions. As already noted, Zbigniew
Brzezinski's son Mark Brzezinski served in the National Security
Council as Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs under
President Clinton. Mark Brzezinski was in his own right one of
the prime movers of the November/December 2004 people power coup
or color revolution in Ukraine. He is also prominently listed as
an adviser to the Obama campaign. In a recent op-ed, Mark
Brzezinski gushed in praise of his family's standard bearer:
"Mr. Obama's early opposition to the war in Iraq is well known.
But his opposition to the war in Iraq is related to his more
general concern that America is bungling it in global
leadership. His candidacy gives America an opportunity to
redefine itself in relationship with the world precisely because
he takes a global approach to our challenges rather than a more
conventional approach. That global approach comes from a man who
at an early age lived abroad, learned a foreign language and was
raised by parents who themselves were foreign or desired to live
in a foreign country." (Mark Brzezinski, "Obama's Global
Approach," Washington Times, Oct 26, 2007) Reality is much
uglier: as the Voltaire Network wrote during the 2004 election,
on the eve of the Kiev coup: "Zbigniew Brzezinski recommends how
Russia should be militarily weakened and intimidated. He is
convinced that the best way to achieve it is by destabilizing
its border regions, a political strategy that aroused the
interest of former presidential candidate John Kerry's team who
recruited his son Mark Brzezinski as its foreign policy
adviser." (Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Empire's Adviser: The
Outrageous Strategy to Destroy Russia, Voltaire, October 22,
2004)
Another of Zbigniew's
sons is Ian Brzezinski, currently the US Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for European and NATO affairs and a backer of
NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia. This project means that
Americans will be committed to fight and die for a gangster
regime in the Caucasus, at the far end of the Black Sea. Ian is
also pushing the installation of US ABM missiles in Poland and
radars in the Czech Republic. He is also a protagonist of the
independence of Kosovo, to be accomplished under the
gun-running, drug-running KLA terrorist organization.
Zbigniew Brzezinski's
daughter is Mika Brzezinski, who holds forth every morning as
the sidekick of former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough on
MSNBC. NBC and MSNBC were at the leading edge of the attempt to
stampede the New Hampshire vote in favor of Obama. The most
hysterical partisan for Obama in this context was of course the
mentally unbalanced Chris Matthews, who acted as an open
partisan and cheerleader for Obama, quite possibly violating
Federal Elections Commission rules in the process. Other pro-Obama
propagandists at NBC/MSNBC included Andrea Mitchell, the wife of
Alan Greenspan, Tim Russert, and Scarborough himself. Mika
Brzezinski was slightly more discreet, skewing the coverage in
favor of Obama without the same level of bombastic excess
exhibited by Russert. Mika Brzezinski's major interview with
Michele Obama of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the
wife of the candidate, was a significant contribution to the
general media swoon in favor of the newcomer. Mika's mother and
Zbigniew's wife is a Benes, a relative of the President of
Czechoslovakia at the time of the Chamberlain's Munich sellout
of September 1938, who was later the head of the
London-sponsored Czech government in exile. Such anti-Russian,
anti-Austro-Hungarian, and anti-German political figures in
eastern Europe are often descendants of the old 1848-1870
Mazzini pro-terrorist networks, and this tradition of British
subversion is alive and well with the Brzezinskis today.
Finally, there is
Matthew Brzezinski, who reported in the Washington Post Magazine
of March, 2005 about his amicable discussions with Ilyas
Akhmadov, "foreign minister" and US envoy of the Chechen
terrorist opposition, who is living high on the hog with a
comfortable apartment in the Woodley Park area of Washington, a
Reagan-Fascell stipend, an office at the National Endowment for
Democracy, a secretary, a travel budget, and a public relations
expense account all to rehabilitate the public image of the
Chechen terrorists, all paid for by the US taxpayers with checks
signed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and all courtesy
of the lobbying efforts of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Matthew
Brzezinski, quite possibly a Canadian citizen, went out to have
a few beers with Akhmadov. Hobnobbing with a spokesman for
terrorists, provided that he is anti-Russian, is typical of the
Brzezinskis. The group Akhmadov represents specializes in
killing defenseless women and children in the hospitals and
schools of southern Russia. Russia has repeatedly demanded the
extradition of Achmadov as a terrorist, but the Bush regime has
refused.
A
COLOR REVOLUTION ATTEMPTED IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
The model of the orange
revolution run by Zbig and Mark Brzezinski in Ukraine is the key
to understanding what was attempted in New Hampshire. Methods
that the Brzezinskis, the George Soros Open Society Foundation
and their helpers at the US National Endowment for Democracy
(NED, also known as Project Democracy) have perfected overseas
are now being brought home to promote the Brzezinski agenda and
continue the line of stolen elections from 2000, 2002, and 2004.
Mob rule, what the
Greeks called ochlocracy, is the essence of the color revolution
or people power coup. The modern theoretical basis of these mob
coups has been provided by the writings of a certain Gene Sharp.
In order to carry out a color revolution, large sums of money
are required to pay bribes and buy support. Beyond that, the
following ingredients are necessary:
1. Media.
It is essential to
control the key television channels, or at least one major
network. In less developed societies, a well-known radio station
might suffice, but here in the US it takes a broadcast network
and one or more cable networks, backed up by news magazines,
daily newspapers, and various internet sites. These organs must
attempt to create a collective hysteria or mania in the whole
society in favor of the people power coup. In Iowa and New
Hampshire, the media swoon was led by NBC/MSNBC, but included
most of the networks, plus Newsweek, the Boston and New York
tabloids, and many others. Obama was fawned over by George Will,
David Broder, Robert Novak, and many other columnists, including
those with markedly right wing profiles.
2. Rent-a-mobs.
This term became
widespread during Brzezinski's 1978 overthrow of the Shah of
Iran in favor of Ayatollah Khomeini. No self-respecting
anti-Shah politician in Teheran could venture outdoors without a
numerous rent-a-mob. In Kiev, large numbers of young people
camped out in the central square of the city to drive home their
demand that the pro-Moscow government be replaced with
Brzezinski's pro-NATO puppets, although many of them were too
naïve to realize that this was the issue. In more prosperous
countries, such as the US, the dupe-a-mob offers a more
economical equivalent. In any case, the mobs must be big enough
to be shown on television, thus creating the illusion that the
coup leader is riding a wave of overwhelming popular support and
truly represents the Collective Will in Rousseau's sense. The
large crowds of well-meaning but ignorant and poorly informed
young people who stood in long lines outside Obama's events on
the Sunday and Monday before the New Hampshire primary are
examples of such dupe-a-mobs. One modish technical term for
these procedures is swarming, but the idea is as old as the mob
itself. As Bill Engdahl has noted, "The Pentagon and US
intelligence have refined the art of such soft coups to a fine
level. RAND planners call it 'swarming,' referring to the swarms
of youth, typically linked by short message services and weblogs,
who can be mobilized on command to destabilize a target regime."
3. Symbols and
slogans.
Ukraine had the orange
revolution; Georgia had the rose revolution. The Prague velvet
revolution was an earlier pilot project for the same thing. The
cedars revolution in Lebanon did not fare so well; here the
groups of well-heeled and privileged young people could not
match the actual organized power of the Hezbollah mass base. A
similar attempt in Byelorussia also collapsed in failure. Jeans,
tulips, the colors blue and purple, and even bulldozers have
been mobilized as mindless symbols. In addition to the catchy
color or symbol, an effective slogan is also required. In
Belgrade, at the start of the current series, that was "Gotov je"
"he is finished," meaning that Milosevic had to go. Other
slogans have included "It's enough" and "It's time!" For Obama,
the solution in this regard was "Change We Can Believe in."
4. Fake polling.
Since the color
revolution usually takes place under the cover of an election,
faked polling for mass manipulation purposes is indispensable.
In Ukraine, the pro-Moscow candidate Yanukovich was declared the
winner by the official government vote count, but the
rent-a-mobs and dupe-a-mobs in the streets began yelling that
this was vote fraud. How could they prove it? Project Democracy
had thought of everything: the polling firm of Penn, Schoen and
Berland Associates was on the scene, and had carried out an exit
poll of voters leaving the polling places. The results of this
faked and doctored exit poll, a masterpiece of NATO
intelligence, were the basis of the accusation of vote fraud,
which was then endorsed by international observers from the
European Union, the NED, and the Helsinki CSCE watchdog groups.
Who was Brzezinski's pollster? It was none other than Mark Penn,
currently the much-hated boss of the entire Hillary Clinton
campaign, for which he is top strategist and top pollster at the
same time. There are many indications that Mark Penn, the former
partner of Clinton's Svengali Dick Morris, is not really
interested in Mrs. Clinton's victory, but is rather dancing to
the tune of the Brzezinski machine. Mark Penn's probable role
will be described shortly.
5. A suitable
demagogue.
In Serbia and Georgia,
these were young and attractive oligarchical politicians, often
western trained, and always on the make. In Ukraine, the coup
candidate was Yushchenko, something of a tired retread and
therefore not entirely plausible for the purpose at hand. To
drum up sympathy for Yushchenko, he was apparently submitted to
some form of disfiguring chemical or biological attack, and this
was blamed on the Russians. Demagogue in chief is the role
assigned to Obama, an ambitious and unprincipled politician who
had been thoroughly vetted by the Soros apparatus, in addition
to being groomed by the Brzezinskis.
The net effect of these
elements, orchestrated together in ruthlessly coordinated
fashion, is to create an atmosphere of mob hysteria which can
grip an entire nation, or at least the capital and certain other
selected areas, and when amplified by controlled media for long
enough can bring down a government and replace it with the
protagonists of the coup. In this case, the various components
of the coup were designed to converge on Monday, January 7, and
on Tuesday, January 8, primary election day in New Hampshire.
INSIDE
THE PEOPLE POWER COUP: MARK PENN'S DIVIDED LOYALTIES
The serious weakness of
the Hillary Clinton campaign was its adoption of a rhetorical
profile suitable at best to a presidential general election in
calm times. Instead, in 2007-2008 Hillary was attempting to win
over radicalized antiwar Democratic primary voters in the midst
of a Big Change or party re-alignment election along the lines
of 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968. On the surface it might
have been argued that this was because no member of the Clinton
inner circle had fought a contested primary since 1992, ages ago
in political terms. But it appears increasingly that this
confusion between general and primary voting was willful, the
result of a hidden agenda on the part of Brzezinski's man Mark
Penn.
On January 3, 2007
Robert Novak wrote in the Washington Post that Mark Penn had
been guilty of "premature triangulation," advising Mrs. Clinton
to pose (in the Dick Morris tradition) as a third force halfway
between the leftists and right-wingers long before it was the
suitable time to do so. Mrs. Clinton repeatedly exposed the
warmongering nature of her campaign, leaving little doubt that
she would keep at least 75,000 US troops in Iraq during her
entire presidency, as she told the New York Times last March,
and that she would act as an eager cheerleader for an attack on
Iran, which had almost occurred with the new staged Gulf of
Tonkin incident near Hormuz on the Saturday night before the
voting in New Hampshire. Before the caucuses, published Iowa
polls were showing that Obama and Edwards were pulling ahead of
Mrs. Clinton. Novak gloated that this was "white knuckle time"
for the New York senator, and threatened her with the specter of
Howard Dean's debacle in Iowa in 2004.
Mark Penn purported in
public not to believe the last-minute polls which showed Mrs.
Clinton losing. According to one blogger, "based on everything
I've heard and read, Penn genuinely didn't believe the Des
Moines Register poll showing Obama up big prior to the
caucuses." (Noam Scheiber, "Can Someone Explain Mark Penn To
Me?") According to other sources, Mark Penn was telling Mrs.
Clinton that his own private internal campaign polls were
showing her on the way to victory. The guess here is that Penn
knew better, but was stringing Hillary along, counting on the
notorious tin ear that helped her to bungle her 1993-94 health
care campaign. Penn's argument was reportedly that the upbeat
internal polls could not be wrong, and so the traingulation and
trimming strategy that was producing them could not be wrong
either. In reality, both polls and strategy were disastrous, and
Zbigniew's friend Mark Penn must have known it. Clinton lost to
Obama in Iowa by 9 points, and to Edwards by 1 point. Did Penn
give wretched political advice, and then cook his polls to hide
the damage done to Mrs. Clinton by her right-wing posturing?
A
CYNICALLY ORCHESTRATED MEDIA SWOON FOR OBAMA
The shock of this
thoroughly unexpected Iowa defeat explains the stunned
disorientation of the Clinton forces when they arrived in New
Hampshire on Friday, January 4. The feeding frenzy of the
corporate media, doubtless stirred up by intelligence operatives
favoring the Brzezinski-Obama project larded through the various
news and polling organizations, took an increasing toll. Penn
made matters worse by claiming that there would be no Iowa
bounce for Obama in New Hampshire, presumably on the basis of
his internal polling, but more likely to keep the Clinton
campaign totally disoriented and confused. "What I don't
understand is why Penn, having been proven completely,
disastrously wrong in his reading of the Iowa numbers, would
then go out on another limb yesterday, claiming Obama would get
no bounce from Iowa based on a very early set of polls," wrote
blogger Noam Scheiber.
A FOX News/Opinion
Dynamics poll conducted from January 4 to 6 had Obama at 32 and
Clinton at 28. A Marist College poll conducted January 5 to 6
showed Obama at 34% and Clinton at 28%. A USA Today/Gallup poll
conducted from January 4 to 6 showed Obama 13 points ahead of
Clinton. The thesis here is that these polling organizations,
especially in acutely sensitive points like Iowa and New
Hampshire, are regarded by the ruling circles as critical
components of political control, and are thoroughly compromised
and penetrated by the intelligence community. This has been the
case for many decades. We will have to wait for a new Church
Committee and a new Pike Committee to provide the details, but
the general outlines are clear: the Obama vote totals were
inflated in an effort ot produce a people power stampede in
favor of Obama as the Brzezinski candidate, while deflating both
Edwards and Hillary. This hypothesis presumes the plausible
presence of intelligence community representatives in most of
the leading polling organizations, something that no student of
the 9/11 events would venture to deny. The Republican primary
was left to vegetate away on its own, apart from stealing votes
from Ron Paul, as far as can be determined.
The critical time
arrived on Monday afternoon, when the merciless pounding of the
Chris Matthews storm troopers of the controlled corporate media
and the barbs of the Boston and New York tabloids converged on
the New Hampshire voters and the Clinton campaign. Through the
afternoon rumors swirled that Mrs. Clinton was going to drop out
even before the voting started, or, failing that, as soon as the
dimensions of her humiliation became evident on primary night.
The sooner she dropped out, the better, in any case. Edwards was
given even less attention, but was also informed that his
campaign was hopeless. The poetry of Obama had outclassed the
prose of Hillary, crowed the New York Times, flagship of the
Wall Street financier oligarchy. The Washington Post, which had
been supporting Hillary, began to signal a turn against her. The
watchword of the color revolution forces had become the slogan
that Obama was no longer just a candidate he had become "a
movement." This was the hype emanating from millions of
television sets. The goal was to stampede the voters onto the
Obama bandwagon, make Obama the Democratic nominee by the
acclamation of a virtual dupe-a-mob, force Hillary and Edwards
to go home, and shut down the entire undesirable primary
process. The media were offering Obama the crown.
On Tuesday, January 8,
primary day, the shameless and naked media hype for Obama
continued. Exit pollsters sent by the media consortium appeared
at the polling places, and one politics professor from St.
Anselm College remarked later on MSNBC that the exit pollsters
she had seen were feckless and callow youths, wildly flailing in
their task, not knowing whom they should interview, not
understanding voter profiles, and all in all thoroughly
unprofessional. But the exit polling did not have to be
accurate, and there was no point in hiring experienced
professionals: this time the field data would be supplanted and
overriden by cooked and massaged figures coming from the
computers controlled by the coup perhaps those of the National
Endowment for Democracy, which has carried out this routine so
many times abroad.
Chris Matthews stated on
MSNBC that he was provided polling data that afternoon showing
that Obama was winning big. Shawn Hannity of Fox News confirmed
that the data he was given showed the same thing Obama way
ahead. Novack's post-election column suggested the same thing.
Once again, the ochlocrats of the Brzezinski networks are the
prime suspects. The results of the exit polls kept most of the
television talking heads firmly committed to an Obama victory
until the polls closed.
THE
CLINTON MACHINE STRIKES BACK
But the Clinton machine,
the Democratic Party bureaucracy, their trade union allies, and
the relevant intelligence community factions were far from
defenseless. They relied on more traditional methods of
manipulating election outcomes. There are persistent reports
that the Clinton forces brought in large numbers of out-of-state
voters on buses in observance of Walter Mondale's famous 1976
dictum of "Vote early, vote often." Reports allege that voting
is possible in New Hampshire on the basis of a verbal
declaration of residence and intent to remain in the state. More
important were the Diebold machines, which were used in by 80%
of New Hampshire voters. Where the votes were counted by
Diebold, Mrs. Clinton had an advantage of about 3 %. In the 20%
of the state where there were paper ballots, Obama was ahead by
a similar amount. The result was not the will of the people but
rather a vector sum of two competing covert operations, each one
cynically created by factions of the US intelligence community.
Congressman Kucinich has
attempted to secure a recount of the paper trail left behind by
the Diebold system used in New Hampshire, and this enterprise
should be supported by others, such as Ron Paul. But Kucinich
should not thereby gain sympathy for his foolhardy instruction
to his supporters in Iowa to transfer their support to Obama on
the second round of the caucuses there. Obama is the most right
wing Democratic candidate, to the right of Hillary and far to
the right of Edwards on all the major economic issues. He wants
to expand the US military by almost 100,000 soldiers. Obama has
also called explicitly for the bombing of Pakistan, a nation of
160,000,000 people armed with nuclear bombs. Obama is doubtless
being instructed by his handlers, just as Jerry Ford was in
November 1976, that his work of healing and reconciliation is
not compatible with a challenge that is likely to uncover some
serious vote fraud. Given Obama's apolitical apathy and
rejection of any form of struggle, it is possible that the real
story of the 2008 New Hampshire primary may not be known for a
long time. But in order to understand the whole picture of what
did occur, it is necessary to take unto account both people
power coup/color revolution side of things, which leftists have
a very hard time understanding, as well as the Diebold voting
machine fraud aspect, which leftists are better equipped to
comprehend because of the experience of 2000 and 2004.
AN
ENCORE FOR THE BRZEZINSKI DOCTRINE OF REVANCHISM
The Obama campaign
deserves the closest sustained scrutiny; its Messianic qualities
have not been seen since the days of Jimmy Carter, the president
who promised that he would never lie. Obama, like the Carter of
1976, is a highly artificial product. Carter turned his foreign
policy over to Brzezinski and his clique of Russia-hating
eastern European émigrés and their children. Brzezinski's entire
adult life has been dedicated to what might be called revanchism
the obsessive desire to obtain revenge from the Russian people
for the events of the Second World War and the Cold War. It was
in the service of that anti-Russian monomania that Brzezinski
decided in 1976 to foment the rise of Islamic fundamentalism,
which he touted as the greatest single bulwark against Soviet
communism. As part of this insane project, Brzezinski was the
prime mover in the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and was then
instrumental in installing the Ayatollah Khomeini in power in
Tehran. Brzezinski cared less about the Middle East and its oil
than he did about the need for a center from which Islamic
fundamentalism of the most retrograde type could radiate out
into the soft southern underbelly of the USSR. For Brzezinski,
the space between the southern frontier of the Soviet and the
Indian Ocean littoral became an "arc of crisis," and his
handiwork is with us until this day. The 1980 Carter Doctrine,
which announced that the United States was determined to
dominate the Persian Gulf against all comers, is at the root of
the first Gulf War, of the present Iraq war, and of the clash
with Iran which could come at any moment, as the most recent
Gulf of Tonkin stunt near Hormuz has demonstrated.
Brzezinski, as he
himself boasted ten years ago in then pages of the Nouvel
Observateur, ordered US subversion teams into Afghanistan in the
summer of 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, with the
clear object of provoking Moscow to intervene. To this day,
Brzezinski takes diabolical pride in having unleashed the
decade-long Afghan War, which he touts as the Soviets' Vietnam
debacle, which restored the world balance during the 1980s.
Brzezinski was very much a part of the effort that led to the
creation of al Qaeda as a wholly owned subsidiary of US and UK
intelligence, with an initial tasking of bleeding the Russians
white north of the Khyber Pass. Brzezinski was eager to go to
the brink with the USSR over Poland, even though this meant
running a risk of general nuclear war with Moscow. "Brzezinski,
acting under a <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame_duck >lame duck Carter
presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had
vindicated his preference for engagement and evolution in
Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like
an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight
phone call to Pope John Paul II-whose visit to Poland in 1979
had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity-warning him in
advance. The U.S. stance was a significant change from previous
reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and
Czechoslovakia in 1968." (Wikipedia, "Zbigniew Brzezinski") In
other words, Brzezinski was more of a lunatic adventurer than
John Foster Dulles or Dean Rusk.
The current tensions in
US-Russian relations are the merest hint of what things would
look like under a Brzezinski-controlled Obama foreign policy:
the US might soon find itself locked in combat with the most
formidable foreign power in today's world, the resurgent Russian
Federation of Vladimir Putin. In this sense, the "post-partisan"
rhetoric of Obama could be the overture to World War III.
FOR
OPEN CONVENTIONS AND ROBUST PLATFORM DEBATES
The US financier elite
does not like the idea of a long primary election campaign
leading up to national political party conventions in late
summer -- August 25-28, 2008 in Denver for the Democrats, and
September 1-4, 2008 in Minneapolis-St. Paul for the GOP. Since
they come so late, these conventions are likely to be conducted
after a long spell of deepening economic and financial breakdown
crisis, increasingly bad news from the Iraq and Afghanistan war
fronts, and incessant political radicalization. Even more than
they wanted the acclamation of the apolitical and
"post-partisan" Obama, the financiers wanted to bring the
primary process to a rapid end, especially on the Democratic
side. It is already a good thing that the financiers have not
succeeded so far in doing this.
In every state in which
there is a primary election, the level of politicization is
raised, and local concerns, especially economic breakdown and
economic insecurity, are highlighted. If the clever populist
demagogue Huckabee, who talks to Wal-Mart Republicans and
attacks Wall Street Republicans, can gain against the lavishly
funded plutocrat takeover artist and asset stripper Romney, the
warmonger McCain, and the would-be il Duce Giuliani, that will
indicate which way the political wind is blowing. The same goes
for South Carolina, for all the states who will vote on February
5, Super Tuesday, and for states further down the road like
Maryland, which votes on February 12. Pennsylvania votes on
April 22. All these states have a right to a real primary with
real contending candidates. The primaries and caucuses should go
on through all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the
territories, no matter how much the Rumpelstiltskin Chris
Matthews may scream and bluster. We have all had enough of
pollsters, push polling, pundits, propagandists,
perception-mongers, consultants, and the K Street-Madison Avenue
axis of evil generally.
Many of the later
primaries, unlike the New Hampshire paradise of petty-bourgeois
independents, are strictly limited to the registered voters of
each party. Independents are not allowed to vote unless they
change their registration. Among such straight party line
voters, the bland platitudes of bi-partisanship have far less
appeal. Joe Sixpack may want to vote for a Democrat or for a
Republican, but he seldom wants to vote for the bipartisan
party. The results in these states may thus promote a more
pronounced radicalization.
At traditional party
conventions, the candidates were chosen by delegate votes, not
brainwashing media hype and attempts to stampede the voters by
idiotic hyperbole. The last truly open and contested party
convention was the 1952 Republican convention, marked by the
clash between the Eisenhower and Taft forces. Conventions were
also the scene of real political clashes, quite often in the
form of battles over issue planks for the party platforms. An
example of this was the protracted fight over the Vietnam war
plank at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August
of 1968. If the current campaigns can breathe new life into the
party conventions of the existing parties, that will be a sign
of the realignment of the 40-year old party system going back to
Nixon that is finally in progress this year.
Forget the pundits,
forget the commentators, forget the pollsters. Ignore the
hysterical demands of the controlled corporate media that
certain candidates whom Wall Street does not like should
immediately drop out of contention and go home. Instead of
paying attention to this babbling, watch the delegate count.
After the New Hampshire primary, the approximate delegate count
was Obama 26, Hillary 25, and Edwards 18. (There are of course
the 800 or so Democratic superdelegates, party hacks who will
try to go with the winner.) This still indicates a much closer
race than the raving pundits of TV land are willing to concede.
Above all, we must be on guard to prevent the Brzezinski clan
from manipulating and stampeding the electorate through the use
of new color revolutions or CIA people power coups here on the
home front.
BEWARE
OF MESSIANIC PLATITUDES
In 1976, the Carter
candidacy was plausible because of the Republican debacle of
Watergate, the prolonged war followed by defeat in Vietnam, and
economic downturn after August 15, 1971. Carter made utopian
promises "I'll never lie to you." He was mellifluous and
ambiguous. But he turned economic policy over to Volcker, and
foreign policy over to the Russophobe Brzezinski, who used the
lofty rhetoric of human rights to begin systematic meddling in
Soviet internal affairs, and created the Khomeini regime in
Iran. Brzezinski's grandiose schemes of world transformation
caused a renewal of the Cold War, and without Soviet restraint
the results could easily have been far more tragic than they in
fact turned out to be. By 1980, disillusionment was great,
Carter went down to defeat, and the nightmare of the Reagan
regime began.
In 2000, another obscure
southern governor, George W. Bush, came forward with an array of
utopian platitudes. He would be a uniter and not a divider, he
promised. He would practice a compassionate conservatism. He
would initiate a foreign policy of humility, and would restore
the honor of the presidency. Deluded independent voters chose to
believe these assurances. But since Bush knew nothing of the
world, he called in his neocon advisors, the Vulcans, carefully
chosen by George Shultz, just as Bush and Cheney themselves had
been. The Vulcans were Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas
Feith, Scooter Libby, and the rest of the neocon cabal, who had
their own utopian fantasy of re-ordering world affairs and
giving US world domination a new lease on life. But their
fantasy reflected an obsession with the security needs of Israel
in the Middle East and a pathological hatred of Arabs and
Moslems. The resulting disaster is all around us today in the
form of lost wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, all predicated on the
9/11 myth.
In 2008, we have an
obscure Illinois senator, a neophyte with no legislative
achievements to speak of and no track record of courage or
principle, who has evidently been groomed by the deans of the
Democratic Party establishment. A new raft of utopian promises
are floated: the race problem in America and its attendant
collective guilt will be expunged with a single vote. The clash
of contending interests in Washington DC will be replaced by a
magically harmonious bi-partisan and non-partisan cooperation.
The bitterness of the clash derives from real conditions, and
especially from the fact that the economic pie has shrunk to
such a point that the traditional demands of the various ruling
class factions can no longer be fulfilled, leading to life boat
ethics in the elite itself, as some groups must necessarily be
shut out completely. But no matter: a golden age and the earthly
paradise are proclaimed by the pundits to be at hand, thanks to
the magnetic personality of the new purveyor of platitudes. Even
on the surface, the new leader caters to the overclass and
exhibits a studied indifference to the concerns of black ghetto
victims and the oppressed poor of all races, but this
callousness is re-defined as post-partisan, trans-racial, and
global. But since he knows nothing of foreign policy, these
matters will be managed by the Brzezinski cabal, which brings
with it yet another set of fantasies of world renovation and
social engineering, but still directed at preserving US-UK world
domination. At the heart of the new fantasies is the desire to
eliminate Russia and Putin as a factor capable of contesting
Anglo-American hegemony. The potential for catastrophe here is
if anything even greater than the perils of neocon meddling
among the Arabs and Moslems.
If they are to survive
much longer, the American people need to become far more
skeptical and critical in their evaluation of political
candidates. They need to finally invalidate P.T. Barnum's famous
dictum about suckers and how there is one born every minute.
They need to radically reform their own set of political
criteria of judgment. Have they learned anything from their
disastrous choices of recent decades? Many of them voted for
Nixon, Carter, and the Bushes, to name just a few failed
presidents. Have they learned anything from their own colossal
folly? Are they ready to repeat their own tragic gullibility
with Obama, or with some other demagogue? The failure of the New
Hampshire people power coup gives them an opportunity to reflect
and hopefully learn something.
The Republicans have
their neocons, obsessed with war with Iran, a danger that is far
from being over. Any Republican can be relied on to continue the
bankrupt Bush-Cheney neocon line for four more years, including
a wider war with Iran. That is bad enough. But the entire
foreign policy establishment of the Democratic Party is infected
with raving hatred of Russia. If Mrs. Clinton wins out, her
secretary of state will most likely be Richard Holbrooke or
Wesley Clark, both mad bombers of Serbia in the spring of 1999,
a piece of vandalism whose real goal was to deliver a warning to
Moscow. Holbrooke and Clark come in at about 80% insanity due to
hallucinatory Russophobia. But Obama's Brzezinski clan handlers
come in at 125% insanity on the same scale, which is worse. As
for Edwards, he co-authored a "get tough with Russia" op-ed with
Jack Kemp, among other sallies, but the guess here is that his
Russophobic insanity index is on the whole lower.
This is a dismal
situation, although it is still possible to distinguish better
and worse outcomes. If the 9/11 truth movement had been able to
maintain its cohesion, and resisted the temptation to divide
between two candidates (Ron Paul and Kucinich) who have
absolutely no interest in 9/11 truth, things might be somewhat
better. If the networks of September criminals in the US
government had been exposed and eradicated, we might not have
the New Hampshire primary being decided as the vector sum of two
contending covert operations, as has just happened. The task now
falls to the people's candidates' movement, which is focusing on
candidacies for House and Senate in November 2008, and beyond.
No matter what the presidential contests may bring, it is these
outsider candidates for federal office who will represent the
leading edge of political progress over the coming months. Those
who are rightly horrified by the likely presidential choices
have no alternative but to support these people's candidates.
Article
Reproduced From www.Rense.com
http://www.rense.com/general80/die.htm
Pictures
added by Gnostic Liberation Front |

A Barack-star
no more
Ian Williams
March 6, 2007 9:05 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/03/obama_in_knots.html
Last week Barack Obama performed an
inadvertent public service by taking two of my favorite hobbyhorses for a ride
round the electoral ring. One was the corrupting power of money in presidential
primaries, and the second was demonstrating that the Israel lobby was every bit
as powerful as it has traditionally claimed on its website, even as it denounces
anyone else who says so.
Hitherto Barack Obama has been a
superficially attractive Presidential candidate, compared with the rest of the
pack. The inane accusation that he was educated in a Wahabi madrasa led to a
reflexive sympathy, as did his unequivocal opposition to the war in Iraq.
But as
Ali Abunima, demonstrated
yesterday, he has fallen at the first hurdle.
Just like Hillary Clinton, who was
stalked for years by conservative pro-Israeli groups for expressing some mild
sympathy but is now probably on the hawkish end of Israeli politics, Obama has
been to burn incense on the altar of
AIPAC.
"No Israeli prime minister should ever
feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States," he
declared. Not Shamir, not Sharon, no matter who is invaded - the aid cheques and
cluster bombs must get through? Sorry, Barack, this gives pandering a bad name.
It is embarrassing to see the
contortions that Obama is reduced to.
His position for AIPAC on
the Iraq war is now within a cheque's thickness of Clinton's.
He advocates that a phased redeployment of US troops out of Iraq begin no later
than May 1, with the goal of removing all combat forces from Iraq by March 2008.
However, he says, "My plan also allows for a limited number of US troops to
remain and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism and
reduce the risk of all-out chaos. In addition, we will redeploy our troops to
other locations in the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged
in the Middle East".
That is not so far from the position of
the NeoCons. Redeployment and maintaining an imperial garrison in Iraq and in
the region is not what most people think of when they call for pulling out the
troops.
On Iran, his coded wording is from Mars
rather than Venus - but just as out-there. While calling for "diplomacy" and
"tough sanctions", he adds what is basically a commitment to a future war, even
as he hedges on his commitment to end the present one. "We should take no
option, including military action, off the table". That is precisely the
language that John Edwards used addressing a conference in Israel - for exactly
the same reason that Obama has been tying himself in knots. It is probably the
formulation that AIPAC is insisting on from all candidates.
So the only candidates getting any media
attention have to pledge, however they hedge, support for potential war on Iran.
Not bad work from a lobby for which it's a thoughtcrime to suggest has influence
over American foreign policy! And, of course, it's a testament to how much more
important donors' cheques are than voters' concerns at this stage of the
primaries.
Obama's big advantage over Hillary has
been his consistent opposition to the Iraq war, a position that is in line with
most voters, most Democrats - and indeed the overwhelming majority of American
Jews, who are maintaining their traditional liberal postures despite the
donor-driven politics of their "official" organizations.
A Gallup meta-poll found that 77% of
American Jews think the Iraq War was a mistake, compared with 52% of the general
American public. Gallup's poll found that 89% of Jewish Democrats think the war
was a mistake, and even among non-Democratic Jews, 65% thought so.
Indeed the official organizations
are
hedging over Iran: not
only does their own nominal Jewish constituency not support them, but they are
worried that the Jews as a whole may be seen as the cause of another unpopular
war.
Thus, in addition to thanking Barack for
revealing the plutocratic perils of primaries, perhaps we should also be
thanking him for inadvertently helping to show that AIPAC does not represent
American Jews.
Remarks of
Senator Barack Obama
As
Prepared for Delivery
AIPAC Policy Forum
Friday March 2, 4:35 pm ET
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thank you so much for your kind introduction and the
invitation to meet with you this morning.
Last week, this event was described to me as a small gathering of friends.
Looking at all of you here today; seeing so many of you who care about peace in
this world; who care about a strong and lasting friendship between Israel and
the United States, and who care about what's on the next page of our shared
futures, I think "a small gathering of friends" fits this crowd just right.
I want to begin today by telling you a story.
Back in January of 2006, I made my first trip to the Holy Land. It is a place
unlike any other on this earth - a place filled with so much promise of what we
truly can be as people; a place where we've learned how in a flash, violence and
hatred and intolerance can turn that promise to rubble and send too many lives
to their early graves.
Most will travel to the holy sites: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Dome
of the Rock or the Western Wall. They make a journey to be humbled before God. I
too am blessed to have seen Israel this way, up close and on the ground.
But I am also fortunate to have seen Israel from the air.
On my journey that January day, I flew on an IDF helicopter to the border zone.
The helicopter took us over the most troubled and dangerous areas and that
narrow strip between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea. At that height, I
could see the hills and the terrain that generations have walked across. I could
truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way
for Israel.
Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me
first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets
looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young
children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of
their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway.
The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives.
Then, I saw a house that had been hit with one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets.
The family who lived in the house was lucky to be alive. They had been asleep in
another part when the rocket hit. They described the explosion. They talked
about the fire and the shrapnel. They spoke about what might have been if the
rocket had come screaming into their home at another time when they weren't
asleep but sitting peacefully in the now destroyed part of the house.
It is an experience I keep close to my heart. Not because it is unique, but
because we know that too many others have seen the same kind of destruction,
have lost their loved ones to suicide bombers and live in fear of when the next
attack might hit. Just six months after I visited, Hezbollah launched four
thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat
Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members. And we pray for all of the
service members who have been kidnapped: Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev, and Ehud
Goldwasser, and I met with his family this week. I offered to help in any way I
can.
It is important to remember this history--that Israel had unilaterally withdrawn
from Lebanon only to have Iran supply Hezbollah with thousands of rockets.
Our job is to never forget that the threat of violence is real. Our job is to
renew the United States' efforts to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors
while remaining vigilant against those who do not share this vision. Our job is
to do more than lay out another road map; our job is to rebuild the road to real
peace and lasting security throughout the region.
That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel:
our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That will
always be my starting point. And when we see all of the growing threats in the
region: from Iran to Iraq to the resurgence of al-Qaeda to the reinvigoration of
Hamas and Hezbollah, that loyalty and that friendship will guide me as we begin
to lay the stones that will build the road that takes us from the current
instability to lasting peace and security.
It won't be easy. Some of those stones will be heavy and tough for the United
States to carry. Others with be heavy and tough for Israel to carry. And even
more will be difficult for the world. But together, we will begin again.
One of the heavy stones that currently rest at the United States' feet is Iraq.
Until we lift this burden from our foreign policy, we cannot rally the world to
our values and vision.
As many of you know, I opposed this war from the beginning - in part because I
believed that giving this President the open-ended authority to invade Iraq
would lead to the open-ended occupation we find ourselves in today.
Now our soldiers find themselves in the crossfire of someone else's civil war.
More than 3,100 have given the last full measure of devotion to their country.
This war has fueled terrorism and helped galvanize terrorist organizations. And
it has made the world less safe.
That is why I advocate a phased redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq to begin
no later than May first with the goal of removing all combat forces from Iraq by
March 2008. In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment
remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the
political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed
and promote stability.
My plan also allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain and prevent
Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism and reduce the risk of
all-out chaos. In addition, we will redeploy our troops to other locations in
the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged in the Middle East.
And my plan includes a robust regional diplomatic strategy that includes talking
to Syria and Iran - something this Administration has finally embraced.
The U.S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops
have done all that we have asked them to do and more. But a consequence of the
Administration's failed strategy in Iraq has been to strengthen Iran's strategic
position; reduce U.S. credibility and influence in the region; and place Israel
and other nations friendly to the United States in greater peril. These are not
the signs of a well-paved road. It is time for profound change.
As the U.S. redeploys from Iraq, we can recapture lost influence in the Middle
East. We can refocus our efforts to critical, yet neglected priorities, such as
combating international terrorism and winning the war in Afghanistan. And we
can, then, more effectively deal with one of the greatest threats to the United
States, Israel and world peace: Iran.
Iran's President Ahmadinejad's regime is a threat to all of us. His words
contain a chilling echo of some of the world's most tragic history.
Unfortunately, history has a terrible way of repeating itself. President
Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust. He held a conference in his country,
claiming it was a myth. But we know the Holocaust was as real as the 6 million
who died in mass graves at Buchenwald, or the cattle cars to Dachau or whose
ashes clouded the sky at Auschwitz. We have seen the pictures. We have walked
the halls of the Holocaust museum in Washington and Yad Vashem. We have touched
the tattoos on loved-ones arms. After 60 years, it is time to deny the deniers.
In the 21st century, it is unacceptable that a member state of the United
Nations would openly call for the elimination of another member state. But that
is exactly what he has done. Neither Israel nor the United States has the luxury
of dismissing these outrages as mere rhetoric.
The world must work to stop Iran's uranium enrichment program and prevent Iran
from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons
in the hands of a radical theocracy. And while we should take no option,
including military action, off the table, sustained and aggressive diplomacy
combined with tough sanctions should be our primary means to prevent Iran from
building nuclear weapons.
Iranian nuclear weapons would destabilize the region and could set off a new
arms race. Some nations in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey,
could fall away from restraint and rush into a nuclear contest that could fuel
greater instability in the region--that's not just bad for the Middle East, but
bad for the world, making it a vastly more dangerous and unpredictable place.
Other nations would feel great pressure to accommodate Iranian demands.
Terrorist groups with Iran's backing would feel emboldened to act even more
brazenly under an Iranian nuclear umbrella. And as the A.Q. Kahn network in
Pakistan demonstrated, Iran could spread this technology around the world.
To prevent this worst-case scenario, we need the United States to lead
tough-minded diplomacy.
This includes direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted
with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our
principles and interests. Tough-minded diplomacy would include real leverage
through stronger sanctions. It would mean more determined U.S diplomacy at the
United Nations. It would mean harnessing the collective power of our friends in
Europe who are Iran's major trading partners. It would mean a cooperative
strategy with Gulf States who supply Iran with much of the energy resources it
needs. It would mean unifying those states to recognize the threat of Iran and
increase pressure on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. It would mean full
implementation of U.S. sanctions laws. And over the long term, it would mean a
focused approach from us to finally end the tyranny of oil, and develop our own
alternative sources of energy to drive the price of oil down.
We must also persuade other nations such as Saudi Arabia to recognize common
interests with Israel in dealing with Iran. We should stress to the Egyptians
that they help the Iranians and do themselves no favors by failing to adequately
prevent the smuggling of weapons and cash by Iran into Gaza.
The United States' leverage is strengthened when we have many nations with us.
It puts us in a place where sanctions could actually have a profound impact on
Iran's economy. Iran is highly dependent on imports and foreign investment,
credit and technology. And an environment where our allies see that these types
of investments in Iran are not in the world's best interests, could help bring
Iran to the table.
We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. They know that President
Ahamadinejad is reckless, irresponsible, and inattentive to their day-to-day
needs which is why they sent him a rebuke at the ballot box this fall. And we
hope more of them will speak out. There is great hope in their ability to see
his hatred for what it is: hatred and a threat to peace in the region.
At the same time, we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense
relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing
work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs. This would help Israel
maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and
as close as Gaza.
And when Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel's legitimate right to
defend itself. Last summer, Hezbollah attacked Israel. By using Lebanon as an
outpost for terrorism, and innocent people as shields, Hezbollah has also
engulfed that entire nation in violence and conflict, and threatened the
fledgling movement for democracy there. That's why we have to press for
enforcement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which demands the
cessation of arms shipments to Hezbollah, a resolution which Syria and Iran
continue to disregard. Their support and shipment of weapons to Hezbollah and
Hamas, which threatens the peace and security in the region, must end.
These are great challenges that we face. And in moments like these, true allies
do not walk away. For six years, the administration has missed opportunities to
increase the United States' influence in the region and help Israel achieve the
peace she wants and the security she needs. The time has come for us to seize
those opportunities.
The Israeli people, and Prime Minister Olmert, have made clear that they are
more than willing to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that
will result in two states living side by side in peace and security. But the
Israelis must trust that they have a true Palestinian partner for peace. That is
why we must strengthen the hands of Palestinian moderates who seek peace and
that is why we must maintain the isolation of Hamas and other extremists who are
committed to Israel's destruction.
The U.S. and our partners have put before Hamas three very simple conditions to
end this isolation: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce the use of
violence; and abide by past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority.
We should all be concerned about the agreement negotiated among Palestinians in
Mecca last month. The reports of this agreement suggest that Hamas, Fatah, and
independent ministers would sit in a government together, under a Hamas Prime
Minister, without any recognition of Israel, without a renunciation of violence,
and with only an ambiguous promise to "respect" previous agreements.
This should concern us all because it suggests that Mahmoud Abbas, who is a
Palestinian leader I believe is committed to peace, felt forced to compromise
with Hamas. However, if we are serious about the Quartet's conditions, we must
tell the Palestinians this is not good enough.
But as I said at the outset, Israel will have some heavy stones to carry as
well. Its history has been full of tough choices in search of peace and
security.
Yitzhak Rabin had the vision to reach out to longtime enemies. Ariel Sharon had
the determination to lead Israel out of Gaza. These were difficult, painful
decisions that went to the heart of Israel's identity as a nation.
Many Israelis I talked to during my visit last year told me that they were
prepared to make sacrifices to give their children a chance to know peace. These
were people of courage who wanted a better life. And I know these are difficult
times and it can be easy to lose hope. But we owe it to our sons and daughters,
our mothers and fathers, and to all those who have fallen, to keep searching for
peace and security -- even though it can seem distant. This search is in the
best interests of Israel. It is in the best interests of the United States. It
is in the best interests of all of us.
We can and we should help Israelis and Palestinians both fulfill their national
goals: two states living side by side in peace and security. Both the Israeli
and Palestinian people have suffered from the failure to achieve this goal. The
United States should leave no stone unturned in working to make that goal a
reality.
But in the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best
for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli Prime Minister should
ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.
We must be partners - we must be active partners. Diplomacy in the Middle East
cannot be done on the cheap. Diplomacy is measured by patience and effort. We
cannot continue to have trips consisting of little more than photo-ops with
little movement in between. Neither Israel nor the U.S. is served by this
approach.
Peace with security. That is the Israeli people's overriding wish.
It is what I saw in the town of Fassouta on the border with Lebanon.
There are 3,000 residents of different faiths and histories. There is a
community center supported by Chicago's own Roman Catholic Archdiocese and the
Jewish Federation of Metro Chicago. It is where the education of the next
generation has begun: in a small village, all faiths and nationalities, living
together with mutual respect.
I met with the people from the village and they gave me a tour of this wonderful
place. There was a moment when the young girls came in and they played music and
began to dance.
After a few moments, I thought about my own daughters, Sasha and Malia and how
they too could dream and dance in a place like this: a place of renewal and
restoration. Proof, that in the heart of so much peril, there were signs of life
and hope and promise--that the universal song for peace plays on.
Thank you.
Contact:
Obama for President
Who Is
This Wonder Boy?
He was born in Hawaii to an African father (Barack Obama), and a white mother
(Anne Dunham), who finally divorce. He is raised by Dunham's parents in Hawaii.
Somehow he winds up at Columbia University, works in Chicago, attends Harvard
Law. In 1991 he works for a Chicago Law firm, then becomes a professor at the
University of Chicago. In 2004 he is elected to the US Senate.
The Invisible Hand
If you went into a detailed look you would see the 'Invisible Hand' of Judaism
as the guiding factor in his career.
No one just appears, and runs for President!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Barack Obama.)
Jump to: navigation, search
"Obama" redirects here. For the city in Japan, see Obama, Fukui.
Barack Obama
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Junior U.S. Senator, Illinois
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 3, 2005–
Serving with Richard Durbin
Preceded by Peter Fitzgerald
Succeeded by Incumbent (2011)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born August 4, 1961 (age 45)
Honolulu, Hawaii
Political party Democratic
Spouse Michelle Obama
Religion United Church of Christ
Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator
from Illinois. According to the U.S. Senate Historical Office, he is the fifth
African American Senator in U.S. history and the only African American presently
serving in the U.S. Senate.[1]
After graduating from law school, Obama moved to Illinois, where he was elected
to the state senate in 1996 as a Democrat. Four years later, he made an
unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives. After rededicating his
efforts to the state senate and winning reelection in 2002, Obama ran for an
open seat in the U.S. Senate two years later. Midway through the campaign, Obama
delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention,
raising his national stature.
Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004. Though he has not
announced that he is running for any higher office, he has been identified in
recent opinion polls as the second most popular choice among Democratic voters
for their party's nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, behind New
York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.[2]
Early life and career
See also: Dreams from My Father
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. of Alego,
a village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas.[3] His
parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of
Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. When Obama
was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His
mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian foreign student, moving to Jakarta
with Obama when he was six years old. Four years later, Obama returned to Hawaii
to live with his maternal grandparents.[4] He was enrolled in the fifth grade at
Punahou School, where he continued studies through high school and graduated in
1979.[5]
In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his experiences
growing up in his mother's white American middle class family. His knowledge
about his absent black Kenyan father came mainly through family stories and
photographs. Of his early childhood, Obama wrote: "That my father looked nothing
like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as
milk—barely registered in my mind."[6] As a young adult, he struggled to
reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Obama writes about
smoking marijuana and trying cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions
of who I was out of my mind".[7]
After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College in
California and then transferred to Columbia College in New York City, where he
majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.
After receiving his Bachelors of Arts degree in 1983, Obama worked for one year
at Business International Corporation. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to direct a
non-profit project assisting local churches to organize job training programs
for residents of poor neighborhoods.[8][9]
Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he gained national
recognition for becoming the first African American to be elected president of
the Harvard Law Review.[10][11] He obtained his Juris Doctor degree magna cum
laude from Harvard in 1991.[9] On returning to Chicago, Obama directed a voter
registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill &
Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School
from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.[9]
State legislature
In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from Chicago's 13th
District in the south-side neighborhood of Hyde Park. In January 2003, when
Democrats regained control of the chamber, he was named chairman of the Senate
Health and Human Services Committee.[12] Among his legislative initiatives,
Obama helped to author an Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit that provided
benefits to lower income families, worked for legislation that would support
residents who could not afford health insurance, and helped pass bills to
increase funding for AIDS prevention and care programs.[13]
In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of
Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Rush, a
former Black Panther and community activist, charged that Obama had not "been
around the first congressional district long enough to really see what's going
on".[14] Rush received 61% of the vote to Obama's 30%.[15]
After the loss, Obama focused his efforts on the state Senate, authoring a law
requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death
penalty[4] and supporting legislation that required insurance companies to cover
routine mammograms.[16][17] He ran unopposed in 2002.
Reviewing Obama's career in the Illinois Senate, commentators noted his ability
to work effectively with both Democrats and Republicans, and to build
coalitions.[18][19] In his subsequent campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama won
the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, whose officials cited
his "longtime support of gun control measures and his willingness to negotiate
compromises", despite his support for some bills that the police union had
opposed.[20]
Keynote address
See also: 2004 Democratic National Convention
Midway through his campaign for U.S. Senator, Obama wrote and delivered the
keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston,
Massachusetts.[21]
After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II
veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and GI Bill programs, Obama
said:
No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense,
deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make
sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors
of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want
that choice.
Questioning the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War, Obama spoke of
an enlisted Marine, Corporal Seamus Ahern from East Moline, Illinois, asking,
"Are we serving Seamus as well as he is serving us?" He continued:
When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn
obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going,
to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon
their return, and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war,
secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Finally he spoke for national unity:
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States;
Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for
them too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like
federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little
League in the Blue States and yes, we got some gay friends in the Red States.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the
war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and
stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Senate campaign
A campaign banner used by Obama supporters during his 2004 bid for the
Senate.Main article: Illinois United States Senate election, 2004
In 2004, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Peter Fitzgerald. In
early opinion polls leading up to the Democratic primary, Obama trailed
multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes.
However, Hull's popularity declined following allegations of domestic abuse.[22]
Obama's candidacy was boosted by an advertising campaign featuring images of the
late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon; the
support of Simon's daughter; and political endorsements by the Chicago Tribune
and Chicago Sun-Times.[23][24] From a crowded field of seven candidates, Obama
received over 52% of the vote in the March 16, 2004 primary, emerging well ahead
of his Democratic rivals.[25]
Obama was then matched in the general election against Republican primary winner
Jack Ryan. However, Ryan withdrew from the race on June 25, 2004 following
public disclosure of child custody divorce records containing embarrassing
sexual allegations by Ryan's ex-wife.[26] On August 8, 2004, with less than
three months to go before election day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois
Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan.[27] A long-time resident of
Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination.[28]
Through three televised debates, Obama and Keyes expressed opposing views on
stem cell research, abortion, gun control, school vouchers, and tax cuts.[29] In
the general election held November 2, 2004, Obama received 70% of the popular
vote to Keyes' 27%.[30]
Senate career
Obama was sworn in as a Senator on January 4, 2005. During his first year in
office Obama drew praise for his perceived attempts to avoid the limelight.[31]
Nonetheless, Obama's public profile continued to climb through 2005 and 2006.
TIME magazine named him one of "the world's most influential people," listing
him among twenty "Leaders and Revolutionaries" for his high-profile entrance to
federal politics and his popularity within the Democratic Party.[32] An October
2005 article in the British journal New Statesman listed Obama as one of "10
people who could change the world."[33] During his first two years in the
Senate, Obama received Honorary Doctorates of Law from Knox College,[34]
University of Massachusetts Boston,[35] Northwestern University,[36] and Xavier
University of Louisiana.[37] He is a member of the following Senate committees:
Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs; and Veterans' Affairs.[38]
Legislation
109th Congress
President Bush signing the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act
as bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama look on.[39]Obama sponsored 152
bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and
cosponsored another 427.[40][41] His first bill was the "Higher Education
Opportunity through Pell Grant Expansion Act".[42] Entered in fulfillment of a
campaign promise, the bill proposed increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grant
awards to help needy students pay their college tuitions.[43] The bill did not
progress beyond committee and was never voted on by the Senate.
Obama took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and
immigration reform. Beginning in 2005, he co-sponsored the "Secure America and
Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).[44] Obama later
added three amendments to S. 2611, the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act",
sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA).[45][46] S. 2611 passed the Senate in May
2006, but failed to gain majority support in the U.S. House of
Representatives.[47] In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the
Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of fencing and other security
improvements along the United States–Mexico border.[48] President Bush signed
the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step
toward immigration reform."[49]
Partnering first with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), and then with Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-OK), Obama successfully introduced two initiatives bearing his name. "Lugar-Obama"
expands the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional
weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and anti-personnel mines.[50][51][52]
The "Coburn-Obama Transparency Act" provides for a website, managed by the
Office of Management and Budget, listing all organizations receiving Federal
funds from 2007 onward, and providing breakdowns by the agency allocating the
funds, the dollar amount given, and the purpose of the grant or
contract.[53][54] On December 22, 2006, President Bush signed into law the
"Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion
Act", marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its
primary sponsor.[55]
110th Congress
This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
During the first two weeks of the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress, Obama
sponsored six bills and resolutions and cosponsored another 24.[56][57] His
legislative activities during the current session's first days focused primarily
on ethics and energy-related bills.[58][59][60][61][62]
Official travel
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Committee
member Barack Obama at a Russian base where mobile launch missiles are being
destroyed by the Nunn-Lugar program.During the August recess of 2005, Obama
traveled with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. The trip focused on
strategies to control the world's supply of conventional weapons, biological
weapons, and weapons of mass destruction as a strategic first defense against
the threat of future terrorist attacks.[63] Lugar and Obama inspected a
Nunn-Lugar program-supported nuclear warhead destruction facility at Saratov, in
southern European Russia.[64] In Ukraine, they toured a disease control and
prevention facility and witnessed the signing of a bilateral pact to secure
biological pathogens and combat risks of infectious disease outbreaks from
natural causes or bioterrorism.[65]
In January 2006 Obama joined a Congressional delegation for meetings with U.S.
military in Kuwait and Iraq. After the visits, Obama traveled to Jordan, Israel,
and the Palestinian territories. While in Israel, Obama met with Israeli Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom.[66] Obama also met with a group of Palestinian students
two weeks before Hamas won the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election.
ABC News 7 (Chicago) reported Obama telling the students that "the US will never
recognize winning Hamas candidates unless the group renounces its fundamental
mission to eliminate Israel", and that he had conveyed the same message in his
meeting with Palestinian authority President Mahmoud Abbas.[67]
Obama left for his third official trip in August 2006, traveling to South Africa
and Kenya, and making stops in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. Obama flew his wife
and two daughters from Chicago to join him in a visit to his father's
birthplace, a village near Kisumu in Kenya's rural west.[68] Newspapers reported
enthusiastic crowds at Obama's public appearances.[69] In a public gesture aimed
to capitalize on his celebrity and encourage more Kenyans to undergo voluntary
HIV testing, Obama and his wife took HIV tests at a Kenyan clinic.[70] In a
nationally televised speech at the University of Nairobi, Obama spoke forcefully
on the influence of ethnic rivalries in Kenyan politics.[71] The speech touched
off a public debate among rival leaders, some formally challenging Obama's
remarks as unfair and improper, others defending his positions.[72][73]
Political advocacy
On the role of government in economic affairs, Obama has written: "we should be
asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to a dynamic free market and
widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility
[...] we should be guided by what works."[74] Speaking before the National Press
Club in April 2005, Obama defended the New Deal social welfare policies of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, associating Republican proposals to establish private
accounts for Social Security with Social Darwinism.[75] In a May 2006 letter to
President Bush, he joined four other midwest farming state Senators in calling
for the preservation of a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.[76] Obama
spoke out in June 2006 against making recent, temporary estate tax cuts
permanent, calling the cuts a "Paris Hilton" tax break for "billionaire heirs
and heiresses".[77] Speaking in November 2006 to members of Wake Up Wal-Mart, a
union-backed campaign group, Obama said: "You gotta pay your workers enough that
they can actually not only shop at Wal-Mart, but ultimately send their kids to
college and save for retirement."[78][79]
Obama is among the first national politicians to engage the public through new
Internet communication tools. He began podcasting from his U.S. Senate web site
in late 2005. He has responded to and personally participated in online
discussions hosted on politically-oriented blogosphere sites.[80] Obama has
expressed support for telecommunications legislation to protect network
neutrality on the internet: "It is because the Internet is a neutral platform
that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having
to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without
censorship or without having to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and
cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it."[81]
He was an early opponent of Bush administration policies on Iraq. In the fall of
2002, Obama stated: "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
[...] You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden
and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down
of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security
program that involves more than color-coded warnings."[82] Speaking before the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, he said: "The days of using
the war on terror as a political football are over. [...] It is time to give
Iraqis their country back, and it is time to refocus America's efforts on the
wider struggle yet to be won." He is calling for a phased withdrawal of American
troops to begin in 2007.[83]
During his first year as a U.S. senator, in a move more typically taken after
several years of holding high political office, Obama established a leadership
political action committee, Hopefund, for channeling financial support to
Democratic candidates. Obama participated in 38 fundraising events in 2005,
helping to pull in $6.55 million for candidates he supports and his own 2010
re-election fund.[84] The New York Times described Obama as "the prize catch of
the midterm campaign" because of his campaigning for fellow Democratic Party
members running for election in the 2006 midterm elections.[85] Hopefund gave
$374,000 to federal candidates in the 2006 election cycle, making it one of the
top donors to federal candidates for the year.[85]
Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other
church-going people, saying, "if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re
at—to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own—we
cannot abandon the field of religious discourse."[86][87] In December 2006,
Obama joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the
Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.[88] Together with
Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than
four months earlier. Obama encouraged "others in public life to do the same" to
show "there is no shame in going for an HIV test".[89] Before the conference,
pro-life groups called on Warren to rescind the invitation, saying: "If Senator
Obama cannot defend the most helpless citizens in our country, he has nothing to
say to the AIDS crisis."[90]
2008 presidential election
This section documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
Newsweek magazine cover story, "Is America Ready?", December 25, 2006 - January
1, 2007[91]Obama's keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention
sparked expectations that he would eventually run for U.S. President.[92]
Speculation on a 2008 presidential run intensified after Obama's decisive U.S.
Senate election win in November 2004, prompting him to tell reporters: "I can
unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years".[93]
But in an October 2006 interview on the television program Meet the Press, Obama
appeared to open the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid.[94] Following
Obama's statement, opinion polling organizations added his name to surveyed
lists of Democratic candidates. The first such poll ranked Obama in second place
with 17% support among Democrats after Hillary Clinton who placed first with 28%
of the responses.[95]
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes were
early advocates for a 2008 Obama presidential run.[96][97] Celebrity television
show host Oprah Winfrey and actors George Clooney, Kristin Chenoweth, and Matt
Damon have also expressed support for Obama entering the 2008 presidential
race.[98][99][100][101]
Commentators have suggested that Obama's chances to be elected president would
be better in 2008 than in 2012 or later. In an October 2006 editorial published
in the Chicago Tribune, Newton Minow compared prospects for a 2008 Obama
presidential bid to John F. Kennedy's successful 1960 presidential
campaign.[102] A December 2006 op-ed by conservative columnist George Will
detailed four reasons why he thinks now is a good time for Obama to run for
president.[103]
Recent speaking engagements and other actions by Obama suggest he is preparing
for a presidential run. In September 2006, Obama was the featured speaker at
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, a political event traditionally
attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus.[104] In
December 2006, Obama spoke at a New Hampshire event celebrating Democratic Party
midterm election victories in the first-in-the-nation U.S. presidential primary
state.[105][106] On January 14, 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported that Obama
has begun assembling his team for a 2008 presidential campaign to be
headquartered in Chicago [107] and will be announcing a Presidential Exploratory
Committee within a week. [108]
Controversy
On November 1, 2006 the Chicago Tribune reported that on the same day that
Obama's home in a South Side neighborhood of Chicago was purchased an adjoining
vacant lot was bought by the wife of Antoin Rezko, an Illinois businessman
charged with political influence peddling. Obama later bought a ten-foot-wide
strip of lawn from Rezko.[109] Two days after the report, the same newspaper ran
an editorial calling on Obama to explain why he would "allow himself any
connection" to a developer who "notoriously attaches himself to political
figures, often parlaying friendships into business dealings that have attracted
official suspicions for several years."[110] The following day the Chicago
Tribune reported Obama's statement that it was a mistake to have engaged "in
this or any other personal business dealing that would allow [Rezko], or anyone
else, to believe that he had done me a favor. For that reason, I consider this a
mistake on my part and I regret it."[111] On December 24, Obama's spokesman
confirmed that one of Obama's 2005 summer interns also had ties to Rezko,
although he denied any favoritism. The Obama office had nearly 100 interns that
summer.[112]
The Tribune's report does not accuse the Senator of any wrongdoing or unethical
conduct and no evidence to the contrary has been uncovered. A December 2006
article posted to The New Republic online site criticized follow-up reporting in
the Chicago Tribune, Slate, and Washington Post for failing to add value to the
story: "The role of the press in all this should be to put perceptions in line
with the facts as they stand, not inflate the perceptions and raise the distant
possibility that the facts might line up behind them."[113]
Personal life
While working at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP in the summer of 1989,
Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm. They
married in 1992, and have two daughters, Malia (born 1999) and Sasha (born
2001). The Obamas are members of Chicago's Trinity United Church of
Christ.[114][115] Of his religious affiliation, Obama has written:
I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur
social change. [...] In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith
as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it
was an active, palpable agent in the world. [...] It was because of these
newfound understandings–that religious commitment did not require me to suspend
critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or
otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved–that I was finally able
to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be
baptized. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did
not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of
Chicago, I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and
dedicated myself to discovering His truth.[116]
Works
Before entering politics, Obama wrote Dreams from My Father, a memoir of his
youth and early career. The book was published in 1995, then reprinted in 2004
with a new preface and an annex containing the text of his 2004 Democratic
Convention keynote speech. The audio book edition earned Obama the 2006 Grammy
Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[117]
In December 2004, Obama made a $1.9 million deal for three books.[118] The
first, The Audacity of Hope, was published in October 2006, and discusses
Obama's political convictions.[119] The book has remained at or near the top of
the New York Times Best Seller list since its publication.[120] The second book
covered under the publishing contract is a children's book to be co-written with
his wife Michelle and their two young daughters, with profits going to charity.
The content of the third book has yet to be announced.[118]
Popular culture
Supporters describe Obama's broad appeal as a cultural rorschach test, an ink
spot on which his fans can project their personal histories and
aspirations.[121][122] Obama's self-narrative helps encourage diverse
multiethnic affinities. In Dreams from My Father, he links his maternal family
history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson
Davis, president of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War.[123]
Speaking before an elderly Jewish audience during his 2004 campaign for U.S.
Senate, Obama likened the linguistic roots of his East African first name Barack
to the Hebrew word baruch, meaning blessed.[124]
Media sources have mirrored and amplified his everyman image. An October 2006
interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show highlighted the ethnic diversity of Obama's
extended family. Noting that his half-Indonesian half-sister is married to a
Chinese-Canadian, the program cited descriptions by Obama's African American
wife of family holiday gatherings as a "mini-United Nations."[125] A headline in
The Nation magazine invited comparisons between Obama's first year as U.S.
Senator and the popular 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where actor
James Stewart stars as an underdog small-town hero standing up to political
corruption in the U.S. Congress.[126] Another article in The Nation analyzed
Obama's ability to "transcend race" with predominantly white audiences.[127]
Conversely, New York Daily News syndicated columnist Stanley Crouch has
questioned perceptions from within the African American community of Obama as
"one of us".[128]
TIME magazine cover story, October 23, 2006[129]A New York Times op-ed by David
Brooks, published during Obama's promotion of his bestselling book The Audacity
of Hope and campaigns for Democratic candidates before the 2006 midterm
election, was noted by an article in the online magazine Slate as evidence of
Obama's potential popularity among moderate Republicans and independents.[130]
Both folk rock musician Neil Young and urban hip hop artist Common have
referenced Obama's presidential prospects in popular song lyrics.[131][132]
In his October 2006 Time magazine cover story, Primary Colors author Joe Klein
compared the cultural sources of Obama's rapid rise and crossover appeal to
those of U.S. celebrity icons Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan.
Asked to comment, Obama said: "Figures like Oprah, Tiger, Michael Jordan give
people a shortcut to express their better instincts [...] I think it's healthy,
a good instinct. I just don't want it to stop with Oprah. I'd rather say, If you
feel good about me, there's a whole lot of young men out there who could be me
if given the chance."[129]
In December 2006, Obama taped a television commercial for ESPN's Monday Night
Football game between his hometown Chicago Bears and the St. Louis Rams. The
commercial mocked the political frenzy surrounding him and his possible
presidential candidacy. "So tonight I'd like to put all the doubts to rest," he
said. "And tonight, after a lot of thought and a good deal of soul-searching, I
would like to announce to my hometown of Chicago and all of America that I'm
ready...for the Bears to go all the way, baby!"[133]
Reproduced from:
http://judicial-inc.biz/O_bama.htm
Baracknophobia
by Edgar J. Steele
June 27, 2008
Even the most ardent of Barack Obama's supporters
generally will confess to a small, nagging
(dare I say niggling?) doubt about the object of their ardor.
Similarly, even Obama's most vocal opposition stops
and stares just a bit overlong when they see him speaking.
What an odd situation.
The Old Guy
Perspective
DEALING WITH IT.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Obama says we should talk about race.
He thinks that will help him. It won't.
Most of us have spent a lifetime
absorbing the lesson that seeing
what we see automatically makes us racist.
Do you want to talk about it? Do you? Really?
"Washington Post" Columnist
Trashes Buchanan
But Reveals Only His Own Biblical Illiteracy
By John Lofton, Editor
THE GREAT
SLAVE REVOLT OF 2008
by H. Millard © 2008
Obama’s Former Pastor
Getting $1.6M Home in Retirement
by FOXNews.com
Thursday, March 27, 2008
A drunk and a bigot
- what the US Presidental hopeful
HASN'T said
about his father...
By SHARON CHURCHER
Daily Mail, UK.
Race, class and the politics
of the Obama campaign
WSWS
By Patrick Martin
20 March 2008
Elitist Obama Broken
By Blue Collar Vote
In TX, OH, RI
By Webster G. Tarpley
3-11-8
Obama's Plan To
Privatize Social Security
Jeffrey Liebman Of Harvard,
Top Economics Advisor To Obama,
Wants To Privatize Social Security
- Just Like The Sinister Bush Plan Americans
Resoundingly Rejected In 2005.
Benefits Cuts And Higher Payroll
Taxes Are Also On Obama's Agenda.
By Webster Tarpley
2-6-8
The Chicago boys
and the Chilean
'economic miracle'
By Steve Kangas
|