The Two Faces of Barack Obama by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com »
Posted By dissent 7 months, 4 weeks ago in News
The news from Europe, if you listen to our infatuated media, is that the Euros love President Obama: according to the American reportage, his recent trip there was a cavalcade of photo-ops, cheering crowds, and hugs from the queen of England. Even the French were in awe of him! However, if you look beneath the surface, not that far beneath the gloss and the glam there runs a current of irritation, and, dare I say it, resentment.
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dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
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dissent7 months, 4 weeks ago
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fta
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"The ruling elites of this country, confronted by the specter of a rising populist anger, have found in President Obama a subtle and skillful anger-management expert. For years they’ve been frustrated in Washington, as their efforts to fight a spreading war met increasing resistance from the American people. Divine Providence smiled down on them, however, as Obama suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Here was an "antiwar" candidate who said we’ve been fighting the wrong war all along – and, upon taking office, immediately rectified that by sending 21,000 more troops to the wilds of Central Asia."
this kind of "anger-management" is strictly short term -
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vor7 months, 4 weeks ago
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I used to be completely non violent, aside from sparring and kickboxing which relaxed me (for some primal reason). One of my favorite books was Helen Caldicott's "Missile Envy" growing up.
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Yet Obama has been handed these issues and anyone who thinks withdrawal is a legitimate option is not thinking logically. What is going on with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is pertinent to our national interests. These are fervent believers in a cause that calls for the destruction of Western idealism. They proved crafty enough to hit us once. We simply cannot afford to ignore them and to leave them to their own devices. These are brainwashed religious fanatics. Would we ignore an army of zombies if they stated an intent to attack us? Obviously a hypothetical but that IS essentially what we are dealing with here. He has made it clear this is not a War against Islam rather a small segment of the religion. Even Bush said this (h-ll it's the truth), although his remaining foolish supporters still don't get the message. The Europeans should be ashamed of failing to assist adequately in this venture. Their major cities are even more vulnerable than US cities.
Just because others have failed does not mean we should not be determined and persistent.
In addition it is our choice in Iraq to withdraw and allow a bloodbath (perhaps inevitable), or to babysit and keep some semblance of order at a high cost in American manpower and money. A conundrum for even a pacifist. But again something Obama must deal with. No one should envy the man, rather admire him for even wanting to take on the job of Commander in Chief.-
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hyperbola7 months, 4 weeks ago
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I disagree completely. What you propose is letting the military imperialism that America has been stuck in for at least 60 years simply continue. This is bankrupting the country and destroying our constitution. We would not be hated all over the world if we had not involved ourselves in decades of racist imperialism. We will only generate further and stronger resistance by continuing those failures.
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Considering his actions in the military sphere, in the economic sphere and in the constitutional sphere, it is becoming increasingly clear that Obama does NOT represent change, but rather an attempt to continue our previous failures under the cover of "better rhetoric". Hopefully americans will see through that idiocy.
The secrets of Obama's surge in Afghanistan
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. ...
... So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama’s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/05/the-secr... -
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hyperbola7 months, 4 weeks ago
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In the economic sphere, Obama is clearing trying to prop up a totally corrupt financial system that sees average Americans as its natural victims.
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Resist or Become Serfs
America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite's rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.
We have been in a steady economic decline for decades. The Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul detailed this decline in his 1992 book "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West." David Cay Johnston exposed the mirage and rot of American capitalism in "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)," and David C. Korten, in "When Corporations Rule the World" and "Agenda for a New Economy," laid out corporate malfeasance and abuse. But our universities and mass media, entranced by power and naively believing that global capitalism was an unstoppable force of nature, rarely asked the right questions or gave a prominent voice to those who did. Our elites hid their incompetence and loss of control behind an arrogant facade of specialized jargon and obscure economic theories. -
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hyperbola7 months, 4 weeks ago
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In the constitutional sphere, e.g. state torture or spying, Obama has also already shown us that he is not serving average Americans and our democracy.
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Cowardice in the Time of Torture
I used to take a certain pride by association with prominent Bronxites who have "made it." Cancel that for Attorney General Eric Holder and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. You might think that as African-Americans, they would be especially outraged by torture, given what blacks have suffered at the hands of white torturers in this country and abroad.
Why is it that they seem to value more their admittance into a privileged white-dominated ruling class than doing the right thing? How else to explain their stunning reluctance to hold torturers accountable and thus remove the stain of torture from our nation's soul and reputation?
One might say that Attorney General Holder is proving himself to be part of that "nation of cowards" that he called the United States in a different context, i.e. our unwillingness to address the issue of race. What about when the victims of torture are Muslims? Where's Holder's courage then?
Never mind that Holder, like President Barack Obama, took a solemn oath to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Why are they still afraid of Dick Cheney, whom even the neo-con editors of the Washington Post in 2005 branded "Vice President for Torture?"
Holder seems to be taking his cue from the pitiable Colin Powell, now traversing the country giving lucrative speeches on leadership. Powell knew he was welcome into the club, or in this case the White House, only as long as he toed the line and was willing to offer up what was left of his reputation to the Bush/Cheney war effort.... More to the point, Colin Powell betrayed the U.S. Army and the nation on the issue of torture.
On April 3, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the fabulous fabricator of the fabled Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, upped the ante in the "so-wattaya gonna-do-‘bout-it" challenge, and held up to ridicule the timidity of Holder and the President....
Clearly, the Cheneys and Feiths of this world are betting on Obama being cut of the same cloth. The President will prove them right if it turns out that his oft-repeated "No one is above the law" proves to be just rhetoric.
And it will remain just rhetoric, if Obama delays much longer in ordering the reluctant Holder to appoint a nonpartisan, independent special prosecutor to bring the torturers to justice and end this shameful chapter in American history once and for all.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/06/cowardic...
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micanopy13 months, 4 weeks ago
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THANK GOD YOU AREN'T IN CHARGE OF AMERICA. HOWEVER PEOPLE WHO THINK LIKE YOU BELIEVE THAT IF AMERICA WOULD JUST SIT BACK AND NOT RUFFLE ANY BODYS FEATHERS THEN WE WOULD BE OK IN THE WORLD . THAT IS FAR FROM THE TRUTH. IT WOULD BE NICE IF IT WAS TRUE.
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