- "I have a vision of Americans in their 80's being
wheeled to their offices and factories having lost their legs in imperial
wars and their pensions to Wall Street speculators and with bitter memories
of voting for a President who promised change, prosperity and peace and
then appointed financial swindlers and war mongers." -- An itinerant
Minister, 2008
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- Introduction
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- The entire political spectrum ranging from the 'libertarian'
left, through the progressive editors of the Nation to the entire far right
neo-con/Zionist war party and free market Berkeley/Chicago/Harvard
academics, with a single voice, hailed the election of Barack Obama as
a 'historic moment', a 'turning point in American history and other such
histrionics. For reasons completely foreign to the emotional ejaculations
of his boosters, it is a historic moment: witness the abysmal gap between
his 'populist' campaign demagoguery and his long-standing and deepening
carnal relations with the most retrograde political figures, power brokers
and billionaire real estate and financial backers.
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- What was evident from even a cursory analysis of his
key campaign advisers and public commitments to Wall Street speculators,
civilian militarists, zealous Zionists and corporate lawyers was hidden
from the electorate, by Obama's people friendly imagery and smooth, eloquent
deliverance of a message of 'hope'. He effectively gained the confidence,
dollars and votes of tens of millions of voters by promising 'change' (implying
higher taxes for the rich, ending the Iraq war and national health care
reform) when in fact his campaign advisers (and subsequent strategic appointments)
pointed to a continuation of the economic and military policies of the
Bush Administration.
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- Within 3 weeks of his election he appointed all the political
dregs who brought on the unending wars of the past two decades, the economic
policy makers responsible for the financial crash and the deepening recession
castigating tens of millions of Americans today and for the foreseeable
future. We can affirm that the election of Obama does indeed mark a historic
moment in American history: The victory of the greatest con man and his
accomplices and backers in recent history.
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- He spoke to the workers and worked for their financial
overlords.
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- He flashed his color to minorities while obliterating
any mention of their socio-economic grievances.
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- He promised peace in the Middle East to the majority
of young Americans and slavishly swears undying allegiance to the War Party
of American Zionists serving a foreign colonial power (Israel).
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- Obama, on a bigger stage, is the perfect incarnation
of Melville's Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket.
He gives thanks as he packs you off to fight wars in the Middle East on
behalf of a foreign country. He solemnly mouths vacuous pieties while he
empties your Social Security funds to bail out the arch financiers who
swindled your pension investments. He appoints and praises the architects
of collapsed pyramid schemes to high office while promising you that better
days are ahead.
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- Yes, indeed, "our greatest intellectual critics",
our 'libertarian' leftists and academic anarchists, used their 5-figure
speaking engagements as platforms to promote the con man's candidacy: They
described the con man's political pitch as "meeting the deeply felt
needs of our people". They praised the con man when he spoke of 'change'
and 'turning the country around' 180 degrees. Indeed, Obama went one step
further: he turned 360 degrees, bringing us back to the policies and policy
makers who were the architects of our current political-economic disaster.
- The Con Man's Self-Opiated Progressive Camp Followers
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- The contrast between Obama's campaign rhetoric and his
political activities was clear, public and evident to any but the mesmerized
masses and the self-opiated 'progressives' who concocted arguments in his
favor. Indeed even after Obama's election and after he appointed every
Clintonite-Wall Street shill into all the top economic policy positions,
and Clinton's and Bush's architects of prolonged imperial wars (Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates), the 'progressive
true believers' found reasons to dog along with the charade. Many progressives
argued that Obama's appointments of war mongers and swindlers was a 'ploy'
to gain time now in order to move 'left' later.
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- Never ones to publicly admit their 'historic' errors,
the same progressives turned to writing 'open letters to the President'
pleading the 'cause of the people'. Their epistles, of course, may succeed
in passing through the shredder in the Office of the White House Chief
of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
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- The conjurer who spoke of 'change' now speaks of 'experience'
in appointing to every key and minor position the same political hacks
who rotate seamlessly between Wall Street and Washington, the Fed and Academia.
Instead of 'change' there is the utmost continuity of policy makers, policies
and above all ever deepening ties between militarists, Wall Street and
the Obama appointments. True believer-progressives, facing their total
debacle, grab for any straw. Forced to admit that all of Obama's appointments
represent the dregs of the bloody and corrupt past, they hope and pray
that 'current dire circumstances' may force these unrepentant warmongers
and life long supporters of finance capital to become supporters and advocates
of a revived Keynesian welfare state.
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- On the contrary, Obama and each and everyone of his foreign
policy appointments to the Pentagon, State and Justice Departments, Intelligence
and Security agencies are calling for vast increases in military spending,
troop commitments and domestic militarization to recover the lost fortunes
of a declining empire. Obama and his appointees plan to vigorously pursue
Clinton-Bush's global war against national resistance movements in the
Middle East. His most intimate and trusted 'Israel-First' advisers have
targeted Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine
and Iraq.
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- Obama's Economic Con Game
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- Then there is the contrast between the trillions Obama
will shower on the financial swindlers (and any other 'too big to fail'
private capitalist enterprise) and his zero compensation for the 100 million
heads of families swindled of $5 trillion dollars in savings and pensions
by his cohort appointees and bailout beneficiaries. Not a cent is allocated
for the long term unemployed. Not a single household threatened with eviction
will be bailed out.
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- Obama is the trademark name of a network of confidence
people. They are a well-organized gang of prominent political operative,
money raisers, mass media hustlers, real estate moguls and academic pimps.
They are joined and abetted by the elected officials and hacks of the Democratic
Party. Like the virtuoso performer, Obama projected the image and followed
the script. But the funding and the entire 'populist' show was constructed
by the hard-nosed, hard-line free marketeers, Jewish and Gentile 'Israel
Firsters', Washington war mongers and a host of multi-millionaire 'trade
union' bureaucrats.
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- The electoral scam served several purposes above and
beyond merely propelling a dozen strategic con artists into high office
and the White House. First and foremost, the Obama con-gang deflected the
rage and anger of tens of millions of economically skewered and war drained
Americans from turning their hostility against a discredited presidency,
congress and the grotesque one-party two factions political system and
into direct action or at least toward a new political movement.
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- Secondly the Obama image provided a temporary cover for
the return and continuity of all that was so detested by the American people
the arrogant untouchable swindlers, growing unemployment and economic
uncertainty, the loss of life savings and homes and the endless, ever-expanding
imperial wars.
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- Featuring Paul Volker, 'Larry' Summers, Robert Gates,
the Clintons, Geithner, Holder and General ('You drink your kool-aid while
I sit on Boeings' Board of Directors') Jim Jones USMC, Obama treats us
to a re-run of military surges and war crimes, Wall Street banditry, Abu
Ghraib, AIPAC hustlers and all the sundry old crap. Our Harvard-minted
Gunga Din purports to speak for all the colonial subjects but acts in the
interest of the empire, its financial vampires, its war criminals and its
Middle East leaches from the Land of the Chosen.
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- The Two Faces of Obama
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- Like the Janus face found on the coins of the early Roman
Republic, Obama and his intimate cronies cynically joked about 'which is
the real face of Barack', conscious of the con-job they were perpetrating
during the campaign. In reality, there is only one face - a very committed,
very consequential and very up front Obama, who demonstrated in every single
one of his appointments the face of an empire builder.
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- Obama is an open militarist, intent by every means possible
to re-construct a tattered US empire. The President-Elect is an unabashed
Wall Street Firster one who has placed the recuperation of the biggest
banks and investment houses as his highest priority. Obama's nominees for
all the top economic positions (Treasury, Chief White House economic advisers)
are eminently qualified, (with long-term service to the financial oligarchy),
to pursue Obama's pro-Wall Street agenda. There is not a single member
of his economic team, down to the lowest level of appointees, who represents
or has defended the interests of the wage or salaried classes (or for that
matter the large and small manufacturers from the devastated 'productive'
industrial economy).
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- The Obama propagandists claim his appointments reflect
his preference for 'experience' which is true: his team members have
plenty of 'experience' through their long and lucrative careers maximizing
profits, buyouts and speculation favoring the financial sector. Obama does
not want to have any young, untested appointees who have no long established
records of serving Big Finance, whose interests are too central to Obama's
deepest and most strongly held core beliefs. He wanted reliable economic
functionaries who recognize that re-financing billionaire financiers is
the central task of his regime. The appointments of the Summers, Rubins,
Geithners and Volkers fit perfectly with his ideology: They are the best
choices to pursue his economic goals.
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- Critics of these nominations write of the 'failures'
of these economists and their role in 'bringing about the collapse of the
financial system'. These critics fail to recognize that it is not their
'failures', which are the relevant criteria, but their unwavering commitment
to the interests of Wall Street and their willingness to demand trillions
of dollars more from US taxpayers to bolster their colleagues on Wall Street.
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- Under Clinton and Bush, in the run up to the financial
collapse, they facilitated ('deregulated') the practice of swindling one
hundred million Americans of trillions in private savings and pension funds.
In the current crisis period with Obama they are just the right people
to swindle the US Treasury of trillions of dollars in bailout funds to
refinance their fellow oligarchs. The White President (Bush) leaves steaming
financial turds all over the White House rugs and Wall Street summons the
'historic' Negro President Obama to organize the cleanup crew to scoop
them out of public view.
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- Obama, the Militarist, Outdoes His Predecessor
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- What makes Obama a much more audacious militarist and
Wall Streeter than Bush is that he intends to pursue military policies,
which have already greatly harmed the US people with appointed officials
who have already been discredited in the context of failed imperial wars
and with a domestic economy in collapse. While Bush launched his wars after
the US public had their accustomed peace shattered by an orchestrated fear-mongering
after 9/11, Obama intends to launch his escalation of military spending
in the context of a generalized public disenchantment with the ongoing
wars, with monumental fiscal deficits, bloated military budgets and after
100,000 US soldiers have been killed, wounded or psychologically destroyed.
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- Obama's appointments of Clinton, General Jim Jones, dual
Israeli citizen Rahm Emanuel and super-Zionist Dennis Ross, among others,
fit perfectly with his imperial-militarist agenda of escalating military
aggression. His short list of intelligence candidates, likewise, fits perfectly
with his all-out effort to "regain US world leadership" (reconstruct
US imperial networks).
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- All the media blather about Obama's efforts at 'bipartisanship',
'experience' and 'competence' obscures the most fundamental questions:
The specific nominees chosen from both parties are totally committed to
military-driven empire-building. All are in favor of "a new effort
to renew America's standing in the world" (read 'America's imperial
dominance in the world'), as Obama's Secretary of State-to-be, Hillary
Clinton, declared. General James Jones, Obama's choice for National Security
Advisor, presided over US military operations during the entire Abu Ghraib/Guantanemo
period. He was a fervent supporter of the 'troop surge' in Iraq and is
a powerful advocate for a huge increase in military spending, the expansion
of the military by over 100,000 troops and the expanded militarization
of American domestic society (not to mention his personal financial ties
to the military industrial complex). Robert Gates, continuing as Obama's
Secretary of Defense, is a staunch supporter of unilateral, unlimited and
universal imperial warfare. As the number of US-allied countries with troops
in Iraq declines from 35 to only 5 by January 1, 2009 and even the Iraqi
puppet regime calls for a withdrawal of all US troops by 2012, Gates, the
intransigent, insists on a permanent military presence.
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- The issue of 'experience' revolves around two questions:
(a) experience related to what past political practices? (b) experience
relevant to pursue what future policies? All the nominees' past experiences
are related to imperial wars, colonial conquests and the construction of
client states. Hiliary Clinton's 'experience' was through her support for
the bombing of Yugoslavia and the Nato invasion of Kosova, her promotion
of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an internationally recognized terrorist-criminal
organization as well as the unrelenting bombings of Iraq in the 1990s,
Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel's murderous bombing of
civilian centers in Lebanonand now full-throated calls for the 'total obliteration
of Iran'. Clinton, Gates and Jones have never in their mature political
careers proposed the peaceful settlement of disputes with any adversary
of the US or Israel. In other words, their vaunted 'experience' is based
solely on their one-dimensional militarist approach to foreign relations.
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- 'Competence', as an attribute again depends on the issue
of 'competence to do what'? In general terms, 'The Three' (Clinton, Gates
and Jones), have demonstrated the greatest incompetence in extricating
the US from prolonged, costly and lost colonial wars. They lack the minimum
capacity to recognize that military-driven empire-building in the context
of independent states is no longer feasible, that its costs can ruin an
imperial economy and that prolonged wars erode their legitimacy in the
eyes of their citizens.
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- Even within the framework of imperial geo-political strategic
thinking, their positions exhibit the most dense incompetence: They blindly
back a small, highly militarized and ideologically fanatical colonial state
(Israel) against 1.5 billion Muslims living in oil and mineral resource-rich
nations with lucrative markets and investment potential and situated in
the strategic center of the world. They promote total wars against whole
populations, as is occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and, which,
by all historical experience, cannot be won. They are truly 'Masters of
Defeat'.
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- The point of the matter is that Obama appointed the 'Big
Three' for their experience, competence and bipartisan support in the pursuit
of imperial wars. He overlooked their glaring failures, their gross violations
of the basic norms of civilization (of the human rights of tens of millions
civilians in sovereign nations) because of their willingness to pursue
the illusions of a US-dominated new world order.
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- Conclusion
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- Nothing speaks to Obama's deep and abiding commitment
to become the savior of the US empire as clearly as his willingness to
appoint to the highest position of policy making the most mediocre failed
politicians and generals merely because of their demonstrated willingness
to pursue the course of military-driven empire building even in the midst
of a collapsing domestic economy and ever more impoverished and drained
citizenry.
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- Just as Obama's electoral campaign and subsequent victory
will go into the annals as the political con-job of the new millennium,
his economic and political appointments will mark another 'historic' moment:
The nomination of corrupt and failed speculators and warmongers. Let us
join the inaugural celebration of our 'First Afro-American' Imperial President,
who wins by con and rules by guns!
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