by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
Despite the labels hung on him from all sides, Barack Obama has been, either determinedly reluctant, or notoriously slippery about defining himself. But early this month, according to a story in Politico, in a relaxed meeting with right wing congressional Democrats, the president let slip his mask, if only for an unscripted moment. “I am a New Democrat,” declared President Obama, firmly identifying himself with the brand and philosophy, though not necessarily with the organization of the Democratic Leadership Council.
President Obama Declares His DLC Allegiance: Says "I Am A New Democrat"
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
According to a well-sourced, but largely unnoticed story in story in Politico early this month, Barack Obama declared in a private meeting with a group of rightwing House Democrats that he was "a New Democrat," volunteraily assuming the discredited brand of the deeply corrupt Democratic Leadership Council.
Back in 1984 and 1988 the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns scared the living daylights out of the white Democratic Party establishment. What frightened the good old white boys in charge of the Democratic Party most wasn't Jackson's poetic oratory or the color of his face. It was the middle and end of the Reagan era, and tens of millions of Americans, including white ones, were ready and eager for a deep and thoroughgoing change in the nation's politics. Jackson might well have been the nation's first black president. But Rev. Jackson did something that the first black president did not do.
Unlike the man who became the nation's first black presidentf a quarter century later, Jackson brought more to the table with him than the symbolic presence of the nation's poor and disenfranchised. Jackson took the relentless media spotlight that follows presidential candidates to farms and factories and housing projects and directly articulated the concerns, the demands of millions of ordinary people people in the Democratic Party's base. A bigger threat to party bosses than a Democratic base mobilized behind its own will, a base that believed it had the right to craft and pursue its own policy objectives and that holds the candidates they voted for responsible for, is hard to imagine. The mostly white bosses of the Democratic party a quarter century ago and today, prefer a Democratic base that votes, and then goes away after the elections, one that allows them to do the talking instead of speaking and moving for itself, a Democratic base that will not and cannot hold its elected representatives to any standard of articulating and carrying out the people's will for peace abroad and economic justice at home.
The threat to Democratic party leaders faded after the '84 and '88 elections, when Jackson demobilized his people into the existing structures of the Democratic party. But the lesson was not lost on Democratic Party leaders. In the wake of the small-d democratic upsurge of the 1980s they cemented their hold on the Democratic Pary by founding the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC assured them access to the same sources of corporate funding as Republicans, and on the same basis. As long as Democrats carried the water of big insurance, big pharma, the airlines, the energy companies and Wall Street, as long as DLC-funded candidates could speak for the party's base rather than allowing that base to speak for itself, and as along as the Democratic base was sent home between elections, Democrats would be assured a steady stream of corporate funding.
In a generation, the nation's elite educational institutions along with think tanks from the Manhattan Institute to the Rand Institute, and funding from corporate foundations, would incubate a new generation of “black leaders,” the Cory Bookers, the Artur Davises, and finally Barack Obama. While paying expert lip service to the tradition of African American struggle for human rights and economic justice, the new-style leaders declare themselves “pragmatic, not dogmatic,” and actively oppose the interests of the constituents that make their careers possible.
The so-called New Democrats with whom Barack Obama identifies are, next to the House Blue Dogs, the most rightwing of Democratic reps in Congress, with considerable overlap between the two groups. In fact, several House New Democrats are also Blue Dogs. New Democrats supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and continual increases in the military budget. They all supported the bailout, and uphold No Child Left Behind and favor the gradual dismantling and privatization of public education in the US which NCLB set in motion. New Democrats are tepid at best on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers across the country the legal standing workers have in many other advanced industrial countries to fight for wage and benefit increases and respect and dignity on the job.
And despite the fact that single payer health care would create 2.6 million new jobs and cover all the uninsured while costing no more than the present and profoundly broken health care system, New Democrats prefer a healthy private insurance sector to a healthy population. They know that families who do not fear losing their precious medical benefits will be less afraid to organize and strike and fight for better wages and conditions. New Democrats favor throwing trillions at banks to “revive” the economy, but are willing to cut or gut Social Security. All these policy positions, and the New Democrat label itself are the heritage of the Democratic Leadership Council, with which Obama was briefly affiliated early in his career, but forced to disavow. Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a leading New Democrat in the Congress, has always been a stalwart of the Democratic Leadership Council. Emmanuel used corporate campaign cash to run pro-war Democrats against antiwar Democrats in 2006 and 2008.
As potent as the DLC-New Democrat brand is, it is also poisonous. As a candidate for the Democratic nomination to the US Senate in 2003, Obama urgently needed to lock down the progressive, black and antiwar vote in his home state of Illinois, and was compelled to renounce the Democratic Leadership Council. That was then. This is now. Perhaps the president feels himself untouchable and unaccountable now that he is safely in the White Hose. Maybe he was just relaxed. Whatever the case, the truth of where his political allegiance lies is no longer a matter of conjecture.
The Democratic Leadership Council has always been “Republicans-lite,” a pack of corporate funded Trojan Horses inside the Democratic Party responsible to their funders, and not to the Democratic Party's base. Now President Obama has assumed his place, as the leader of that pack.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Atlanta. Email him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com
Comments
DEMOCRATS LEASED BY CORPORATIONS
DLC could also stand for democrats leashed by corporations.
Obamania is proof that many American blacks. as well as many people in other parts of the world are more than willing to settle for symbolic "leadership" and symbolic "change" while leaving the power and real benefits of the political system in the same hands as always, the white-run corporations and mult-nationals and their two interchangeable "political" parties. One would think that the Obama groupies would notice that their man of change has retained so many "advisors" and other holdovers from both the Bush and Clinton administrations that any serious change or rethinking of failed policeis is extremely unlikely, but I guess that it's much easier to wallow in mindless euphoria, than it is to attempt to force a President who was created by and for the DLC to do anything for his so-called base other than to collect their votes.
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He's Trying Real Hard
Everytime Obama tries to help people he has people criticizing him. He's trying really hard to get people insured because they have nowhere else to go. Of all the presidents I can remember, he's the only one that I have seen who tries to help the regular folks.
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Well, they may be both black but they are different in a way lets just not generalize things, leave it be the bad things, lets just count the good things and just believe in him.
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I'm Rooting For You Obama!
It seems strange to me when people act like he's been in office for 4 years already. It hasn't even been a year yet and people are expecting this entire mess to be cleaned up. I don't understand it. Regardless, Pres. Obama IS a "new type of democrat" and people should at least give him a chance before being so harsh.
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I couldn't agree more J....
I couldn't agree more J.... its like he's being held to a higher standard and people are expecting the impossible from him... __________________________
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New Democrate
President Obama declares his DLC Allegiance that he is a new Democrat. As far as my political mind and my political awarness is concerned, I think its gonna be a good sign as expected something new will come to our ways that may help us recover some of our past mistakes.
Regards,
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I should say that i really
I should say that i really like a young President only for his spirit and view. But Obama is not that assuring anymore. Not after the few hundreds of days of his work. free ads |employment |adjustable beds
What does it even mean?
Barack Obama declared in a private meeting with a group of rightwing House Democrats that he was "a New Democrat," What does a new democrat even mean. Is he doing the insanity workout to get buff? Is it about a new body or new "image". Come on president O... lets do this right.
I sure hope he is a new democrat
Quite frankly, it's about time we got a new kind of dem, since all the old ones are stuck in their old ways. We need a prez that is going to make good on his promises, so we shall see what we shall see.
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I disagree in the fact that I
I disagree in the fact that I don't think that a "new democrat" is very different from an "old democrat". The positions and ideologies are the same, and the only different is the way that they go about achieving their goals. Our culture is always changing (and occasionally progressing!), and although the end-goal is always the same, politicians have to change the way that they work towards the goal in order to go along with cultural and societal norms. I think that Republicans are just as guilty of this - trying to claim a revolutionary chance - while they're still up to their old tricks as well.
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If the red mud lake at mount Rosser should decide to take a stroll down the mountain we would lose the refinery itself, Ewarton and Linstead, everything in the Rio Cobre gorge and the Bog Walk area, thousands of acres of citrus and other farmland, thousands of human lives and hundreds of thousands of livestock, possibly large parts of Spanish Town and Portmore would become uninhabitable. The Kirkvine disaster would be at least as dreadful.
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Obama subscribes to the same
Obama subscribes to the same tired old tried and failed liberalism of the past. There’s nothing new about him. The scary thing is the fact there is a liberal congress that will do as he wishes, and a stupid/dumb citizenry that doesn’t care. We are doomed... case pariuri
Obama is the man
Even if Obama fails miserably as a president, he'll still be 10,000x the leader than Bush was. Sorry but you know it's the truth.
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Obama is refreshing!!
Obama is refreshingly a leader with different thoughts/backgrounds etc and hope he will deliver what he promised in his campaign. But whatever it is, his speach is inspiring one!!
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Good article Bruce. All the I
Good article Bruce. All the I ask is that they make health care affordable. Lets just see what he could do for all of us.
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Great article I do believe
Great article I do believe Obama is the new breed of Democrats today, I hope he is able to follow through on his campaign promises, We need health care reform the costs are bankrupting our country
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Great article Bruce,do you
Great article Bruce,do you still see him as the leader of the pack, or have your views changed?
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obama
Obama is a smooth talker he can get just about anyone to listen to him. Also people love his personality.
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"Better than Republicans" is the basis of the stupidity
Comparing these two shit-holes political Parties as "liberal" vs. "conservative" vs. "centrist" is the basis of the stupidity, the source of the inability to see that Dems and Repugs are 2 sides of the same coin. Micah, right now, at a breathtaking speed no one could imagine, Obama has morphed into a more incompetent, reckless but "smooth" version of GWB. Do you like "jazz" Micah or "Rockabilly"? The Dems are better to some because they have better "rhetoric", they just sound better despite their energetic efforts to move the country and their Party further and further to the Right. I see the "librul" Moveon.org is preparing to run an ad supporting Obama's budget. I'll support his f***king budget when the World Socialist Website endorses it. As I've said previously, the Propaganda Ploy is quite simple: "Take a centrist, Republican-Lite position and morph it into a "liberal position" while at the same time make ultra Right Wing positions "Centrist." The Politico.com persistently writes about Obama battling the "Centrists" in his own Party as well as the GOP. BULLSHIT! Obama is as Right Wing as you can fathom without actually being called a Rethug. But according to the corporate media he's "Liberal" thus the Party infighting with the "Centrists" who are doing "their level best" to make sure Obama isn't to "Liberal." Evan Bayh is a f***ken Right Winger, Obama is a neo-liberal, pablum-addled "Centrist" Dem but only the "dumbasses" buy into these false distinctions propagated masterfully by the corporate media.
Only in in the confines of the Corporate Elite structure in Amerikkkan news circles does Right Wing Lite perpetrate as "Far Left" Liberal. Only in a country where Castro and Chavez can only envy the Government subsidies and de facto nationalization of the economy is there a phony debate about "nationalizing" the banks or failed corps. It sounds like a discussion amongst f***king 6th graders. You gotta hand it to Madison Ave. and the millionaire minions monopolozing the press and airwaves, and of course big ups to the dumbasses who don't understand the phony nuances. Somebody tell Chuck Todd to make some sacrifices. I've been sacrificing paying my children's student loans to the point where now they must seek deferments to ease the burden. Someone tell Chuck to kiss my ass and donate the substantial raise (he no doubt received) to become White House Correspondent and the mouthpiece for Wall St. and GE. I'm can't find a f***king decent P-T job, Chuck.
The World Socialist Website can always be counted on to strip away the bullshit:
Billions for Wall Street, budget cuts for working people
Obama press conference reveals right-wing consensus in Washington
By Patrick Martin
25 March 2009
"The presidential press conference held Tuesday night, nationally televised from the White House, was a demonstration of the vast social gulf that separates the financial and political establishment of the United States—including the highly-paid representatives of the corporate-controlled media—and the working people who constitute the vast majority of the population.
The opening statement from President Obama and nearly all the questions revolved around the administration's economic policies, with the discussion focused largely on the twin preoccupations of the US ruling elite: that every effort should be made to guarantee the wealth and profits of Wall Street, and that sufficient sacrifices should be imposed on the American people."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/obam-m25.shtml
Warning re student loan deferrment
Someone I know, had to do deferrments, several and the original debt
doubled. About a decade ago. I don't know the "rules" now. Good luck.
better than the Republicans?
Well, you can say Obama is "better than republicans" if you want. You can try to believe that. You can even try to make me believe it.
But I won't. Because he's no different. His black-ish skin and black father don't make him better than a Republican. What's he done differently than a Republican, besides call himself a Democrat? What's he done differently than Bush43?
Nothing. Nothing of substance anyway.
Here's the truth about Barack Hussein Obama, in comic form. URL - http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h173/cogitoIJ/Iknewit.jpg
Off topic: Death squad leader ‘was top CIA agent’
Death squad leader ‘was top CIA agent’
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I wish that I couldn't say "I told you so"...
...but, I guess that my basic instinsts about Obama being just a neoliberal with a deeper tan (or worse, the son George H. W. Bush could only wish to have) have been proven right.
I still believe that Obama is worlds beyond what America had with Bush (both 41 and 43) as well as Reagan (and even Clinton), and that even a moderate neoliberal Democrat is far better than the Far Right regimes we have suffered with for the past 10 years.
However, I do think that the Left can do so much better than to just blindly boost Obama and the Democrats and moan about the Republicans. They need to establish themselves as an independent force of resistance against BOTH Obama neoliberalism AND the extremism of the Right, and hold both Obama and the Democrats' feet to the fire in promoting genuinely progressive outcomes and legislation.
I do find it quite amiusing that some have pontificated about the "death" of the DLC (even that organization's founder, Al From, has hinted that he may dissolve that organization soon due to lack of support); even as they have a President (and they would have had the same if Hillary Clinton had won the Dem nomination and thusly the Presidency) which essentially follows their exact blueprint for public policy (if just slightly bending a fraction to the left). Certainly the appointment of prominent Clintonites and neolibs and Wall Street policy wonks to Obama's key policymaking positions tell a great deal about his true foundational leanings.
In any rate....my sole concern is that an independent and grass roots-oriented Left gets organized ASAP to offer genuine radical alternatives to the existing status quo, because if such does not happen, it will be the populist RIght who will be the chief beneficiary when the Obama bubble finally bursts. And then, we will ALL -- and not just Black folk, either -- be royally screwed.
Anthony
The Obama Mystique
This is what is truly disturbing. The evidence is clear, yet so many are unwilling to acknowledge it. Obama's supporters are content to embrace half-truths and outright misinformation about Barack Obama assuming to know the whole of the truth. What's more is their unwillingness to be critical of Obama, examine the facts before them, or to even grant said facts so much as a cursory glance. Worse is their eagerness to attack anyone who disagrees with their position, or who sees Barack Obama for what he truly is. A woman on a social network launched into an assault on my character, told me I knew nothing of Marcus Garvey, and branded me a race-traitor; all because I dared speak on her unfair and unsubstantiated tirade against Hip Hop artist KRS-1's perspective on Barack Obama. Not once did she offer an analysis of what I had posted, not once did she address any of my points (she insists that I and KRS-1 are jealous of Obama). This sort of behavior seems to be common to those who are entranced by the "phenomenon" that is President Barack Obama. Rhetorical outburts are also common to this crowd. Obama has become a cult unto himself, and his fans (which we all know is short for fanatic) behave as such. When I see the manner in which the Obama-philes react to any suggestion that Obama is anything other than what he appears to be, I am reminded of the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". But it is minds that have been snatched, and this is no movie.
Could it be that Afrikan Americans have suffered so much, waited so long for a savior/messiah/deliverer, that we have lost all reason?
New Democrat, Same as the Old New Democrat
As a queer Latino, I feel compelled to point out two examples of how Obama is essentially Clinton 2.0, except perhaps more conservative.
First, the Daily Telegraph reported today that Obama is still promoting the "ex-gay myth". His current inner circle of spiritual advisors include pastors who are well-known virulent homophobes, some of whom support "ex-gay" ministries. Anti-choice zealots are among the ranks of the clergy to whom Obama turns for guidance as well. This is eerily remniscient of Clinton making all sorts of promises to the LGBTQ community and then giving us DOMA.
Secondly, his recent saber rattling about militarizing the US-Mexico border (supposedly as an expansion of the "war on drugs") strikes me as a cowardly capitulation to racist nationalism of the type espoused by Lou Dobbs. Or maybe Obama shares Dobbs' prejudices against undocumented immigrants. After all, the man targeted the LGBTQ community with a massive ad campaign containing platitudes about his belief in "equality for all", etc. He does so w/ a straight face despite his history of associating with so-called "ex-gay" ministries and his subsequent veneration of Rick Warren, a man with personal and financial ties to Christian Jihadists who terrorize and murder LGBT people (in addition to equating us to pedophiles and comparing our relationships to bestiality and incest). So he may very well hate spics like me for all I know. His policy towards Latin America certainly is not indicative of any "change" from the last 8 years whatsoever.
This behavior reminds me of how Clinton signed NAFTA into law (something the ruling class had wanted for quite some time), thereby opening the door to "free trade" policies that essentially raped the Mexican people and have spread to other parts of Latin America.
Obama is a New Democrat alright, assuming "New Democrat" is the equivalent of a moderate Republican. Or a sociopathic liar.
Thanks again for the amazing reporting you folks do here at the BAR!
What is a "queer Latino"? I
What is a "queer Latino"? I would hope that you would have enough respect for yourself
so that you do not call yourself disparaging names. And I'm quite Conservative, too. However,
I believe that we should respect other people and and recognize them for the ways they are different
from us as well as the ways they are the same.
Angela
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Good post Angela
Angela great sentences. I as a younger generation don´t understand how people used to hate so blindly. Maybe it is true that the world is progressing and people are getting better now. Skin color should be a stupid thing to argue anyway as even white people are not really white. A lot of color between the specter you know. :p
Some centuries forward we will be all so mixed noone can tell us apart.
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Whats the problem??!!
I agree with Angela, there must be respect, I do not know why is there a problem with different people, why does the color of the skin matter so much, I just cannot understand it. I have nothing against people that are different from me by the skin color, if I find the person interesting I will talk to him etc.
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Very True...
Angela I totally agree with you!
Every person should be treated with the same amount of respect. But you know what the problem is.... The moment any issue involves politics or religion the rules of the game change! People become too personal and forget that the person who they’re speaking about is not just a public figure but is also a human being.
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Follow him
We just need to believe him and we will have a good future.
Blind belief just doesn't cut
Blind belief just doesn't cut it, but what other option do we have? Its great though now that we have a black president, equalities are really being looked at - we are in a new age...
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Faith helps...
Most of us believe that Obama can change it, faith helps us forward, I think Obama is no miracle-man who can save any situation and cure every disease - but I know the man has the power and the skill to get crowds moving and thats important right now. He maybe cant get US out of the recession or the mega-depth in super fast time like some believe, but he can do much more, he can push people to change the situation for better themselves, because after all a country is lead by people not goverment.
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agree with Angela
Yes - let's try not to do any namecalling - even to ourselves.
I consider myself a consevative - I used to call myself a republican until it became a bad word.
"Outside, In": Sy Hersh and the "Insiders"
Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque, does a masterful job describing "outsiders", "agents of change" like Sy Hersh, who, like Obama are really insiders blunting change, insiders perpetuating the status quo as so-called "dissidents." Floyd breaks down the US "Death Squads" led by America's "Best and Brighest" as described by Hersh, who kill indiscriminatly in Iraq, Afghanistan, African and other parts of the world. The title of the essay says it all: Bright Shining Lies: "America's Death Squads and "Dissident Self-Delusion."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/
"And so, here we are, in never-never land. Even Seymour Hersh, famed investigative reporter, can't help slinging it, one shovel-full at a time.
They're not murderers, even though what they're doing is murder. But how do we define a "murderer"? Is it not someone who murders? Hersh can't even bring himself to call it that, but he will go so far as to say that they're "committing what we would normally call murder".
I'm not a writer. I'm just doing what we would normally call writing. And you're not a reader. You're just doing what we would normally call reading. Really. No exaggerations. It's all highly specialized.
Apparently it's "very complicated", at least in Hersh's imagination. And it might not be murder, even though it's what we would normally call murder, because the murderers are not actually murderers but instead "young men that went into the Special Forces".
Special Forces, of course, are those on the front lines of Special Operations. What we would normally call our own terrorists, if it weren't so very complicated.
So: They're not murderers because they're hired to kill people, or more properly they're not murderers because they've volunteered -- and qualified -- to be cogs in their country's elite force of hired killers."
I love his summation of the Dem Party:
The sad fact -- which Hersh won't touch -- is that party politics is nothing more than an intersquad scrimmage, an exhibition game intended to convey the impression that the two "competing teams" are adversaries.
They're not. They're partners. They're working together to put on the big show every four years. And we know this is true because of what happens to prospective players who are not interested in furthering the big show, but would try to change the game. Most of them don't even get onto the field. And those who do never last very long.
We've seen what the Democrats and the media did to Mike Gravel, which was exactly what the Republicans and the media did to Ron Paul. We've seen the cold silence -- or jeering derision -- which has greeted every serious attempt to uphold the rule of law, to stop the war in Iraq, to stop the war in Afghanistan, to investigate the crimes of 9/11, to reform a clearly broken electoral system, to rein in a clearly complicit national media, or even to bring just a little bit of accountability to our government. These were all efforts to change the game in one way or another, and no such efforts will be tolerated.
This is the system. This is what it does. The time for amazement is past."
The "time for amazement is past." Sounds redundant, but even the "esteemed" mainstrain rag, the "Politico," headlines an article where the "Libruls" are starting to aim their pitchfork at Obama,-- Dowd, Krugman, and Tom Friedman (who they laughinly describe as a "Librul"). It's actually insightful reading and speaks to the heart of Obama's bland, inarticulate, sophomoric, timid efforts, his lack of substance. Krugman sounds a lot like "Lou" in the last several months in saying the Bankster Welfare/Bailout plan WON'T WORK and when it fails what's next? As the "Librul" Elites turn on Obama for his centrist, pablum, bullshit, his inconsitency and incoherence, his kowtowing to the Zionists, it's gonna get real interesting.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20325.html
Heard Hersh say that.
I heard Sy Hersh say that about the murder squad being "the best of
the best" on DemocracyNow, I think. I read the article that was about the
talk he gave, which he let "slip" the murder squads of the CIA. It was a
weird idea, that the guys were "not murderers" when they are. I think
Hersh can defend himself. His other points about the death squads are
good. As Chalmers Johnson has put it, the Pres. has a secret army,
unaccountable to anyone, the CIA. He's said it in his "Sorrows of
Empire" and also in "Nemesis". Hersh may be on the "inside" in that
he has pals, he often says, or sources, in the military. I do think his
reporting is good and accurate. Do you fault his writing on torture?
Hersh is still an "Insider." Go read John Pilger
That was the accurate thrust of what Chris Floyd wrote. The people feeding Hersh information are key cogs in the Cong./Military/Industrial/Security Complex. Hersh is a more "hip" version of Thomas Ricks. My "Librul" friend thinks Ricks's "Fiasco" is the shit, how he got it all right. Ricks has moved on to continue to write "part-time" for NY Times but is now a "fellow" at one of our beloved Think Tanks. If you want to read a good dissection of Thomas Ricks, check out Jeff Huber at antiwar.com. I love Huber's bone, dry wit and his dismissal of the bright and shining lights at the Pentagon, and how one day Ricks wrote Odierno was a putz and the next year a genius. Ricks will "critique" the Iraq War with a style that makes him a NY Times best seller. But you will never hear the words "War Crime" or worst strategic disaster in US History roll of his lips. Just like Hersh will never call the CIA hotshots, the "best and brightest" killers in the employ of the "complex" MURDERERS.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/huber.php?articleid=14446
Now, as journalism (HA) in the US of A goes, they both deserve some applause. But don't believe for more than a couple minutes they will truly bite the hand that feds them. Hersh is feed info. as part of either disinformation or internecine bureaucratic struggles, ya think? Yes, I applaud him for My Lai, especially when, there were several hundred journalists in Nam when it went down, most had witnessed atrocities daily, but only 1 or 2 reported it.
Check out this quote from Australian journalist and film maker John Pilger and read the entire piece. Pilger famously talked about the dichtomy of journalism in the "East" vs. the "West." He explained that the people living in the "East" behind the "Iron Curtain" never had a problem with propaganda, they distrusted everything they read, not so, and a huge failing with those living in the "West."
Pilger:
Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called “professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely bogus”.
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories—domestic and foreign—you’ll find they’re dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception.
Harold Pinter’s subversive truth, I believe, was that he made the connection between imperialism and fascism, and described a battle for history that’s almost never reported. This is the great silence of the media age. And this is the secret heart of propaganda today. A propaganda so vast in scope that I’m always astonished that so many Americans know and understand as much as they do. We are talking about a system, of course, not personalities. And yet, a great many people today think that the problem is George W. Bush and his gang. And yes, the Bush gang are extreme. But my experience is that they are no more than an extreme version of what has gone on before. In my lifetime, more wars have been started by liberal Democrats than by Republicans. Ignoring this truth is a guarantee that the propaganda system and the war-making system will continue.
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/7/freedom_next_time_filmmaker_journal...
will go read more John Pilger;heard him on Dem.Now
I've heard Pilger on Dem.Now. Heard every show except during WBAI's
"Christmas coup" period, since show started.
You usually don't divide Dems and Repubs but you are in "In my lifetime,
more wars have been started by liberal Democrats than by Republicans.".
Reminds me of something Chomsky said, in a long article a couple of
years ago on empire. When do you "start the clock"? (smiling)
Dem and Rep
There is a clear line drawn between the two parties as of this election. This will continue to negative effect the american poltical landscape and its people for the foreseeable future.
Indie Music
Indie
Obama
Barack Obama: “America’s First Jewish President”
by James Petras / December 12th, 2008
Obama asks Shimon Peres: “What can I do for Israel?”– Haaretz, November 17, 2008
EXCERPTS:
"According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of Obama, Abner Mikvner, “Barack Obama is the first Jewish President”. Mikvner’s affirmation reflects both Obama’s one-sided and longstanding commitment to the State of Israel and loyalty to the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the United States, as well as the long-term and successful effort of a network of financially and politically powerful Jewish Zionists to ‘embed’ Obama to their ‘Israel First’ political apparatus. What is striking about the latter is the demeaning and arrogant claims made by some leading Jewish Zionist about their ‘central roles’ in the making of Obama’s professional and political careers – in effect denying the President-Elect any credit for his own academic or professional success. (Historically this has been mirrored in the continuous claims of some American Jews to have fought and won the battle of Civil Rights in the 60’s on behalf of African Americans – essentially denying black Americans any independent political role in their own struggle.) Even their personal flattery about his ‘wisdom’, ‘brilliance’ and ‘intellectual acuity’ is always linked with his unconditional support of the State of Israel. One can envision how quickly his Zionist colleagues would replace their plaudits with crude insults regarding his intelligence if he suggested Israel end its starvation blockade of Gaza… Needless to say the Zionists know their man, as they confidently proclaim, he is a cautious and prudent politician, who measures power before he speaks, especially as he has filled the White House, economic councils and security apparatus with Zionist zealots."
"The Chicago Jewish News, a nationally prominent Israel-First propaganda organ, published a lengthy article on ‘Obama and the Jews’ by Pauline Dubkin (October 24, 2008), which quotes approvingly a ‘long-time Jewish observer of the political scene’, who declared that, “Jews made him (Obama). Wherever you look there is a Jewish presence.”...This is not merely the usual arrogant self-aggrandizing boasts of a Zionist power broker, with which we are constantly bombarded on so many political topics, this reflects an important part of what Obama has become, especially in advancing his latter day political ambitions. The Zionist self-promoters (ZSP), ever ready to take credit for any success (no matter how notorious and immoral) – Wall Street speculators, Ivy League professors, Pentagon militarists, cultural gurus and even the key patrons of art forms like jazz and constantly rewrite history (or biography in the case of Obama) to maximize their self-importance in all aspects of American life. The ZSP conveniently fail to mention in their articles that Obama’s white Gentile grandmother gave him the intellectual nurturing and encouragement and diligently petitioned for scholarships for him to attend elite private schools, which formed the basis for his intellectual skills to write, speak and reason as an educated man. The ZSP exclude from their ‘revisionist and Judaized’ biography of Obama, the central importance of Reverend Jeremiah Wright who transformed Obama from an elite Ivy university graduate into an effective social activist. Obama was able to participate and get involved in community organizing in Chicago’s African-American neighborhoods because of Wright’s endorsement and broad credibility. If it were not for Rev. Wright, Obama would never have had a social base or organizational experience to engage in Chicago politics. It is only after Obama had gained these skills and popular appeal that the Zionist politicos noticed him and went to work on his ego and ambitions, recruiting him to their pro-Israel agenda and financing his political career....The Zionist re-write of his biography has gone curiously unchallenged by Obama. To suit his new mentors, the Israel-First ideologues and financial backers, he has willfully discarded and insulted his former mentors, as well as any current policy advisers and political colleagues who doesn’t adhere to the Zionist line of unconditional support for Israel. Two cases come immediately to mind. When leading Zionist ideologues objected to the presence of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley, among Obama’s foreign policy advisors, the Zionists in Obama’s inner circle immediately marginalized them with his approval. When the notorious torture-promoting Zionofascist Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz raised a howl about former US President Jimmy Carter (a principled critic of Israel’s apartheid policies) speaking at the Democratic Party Convention (following a century-long political tradition of honoring former presidents) the Zionist operatives blatantly humiliated the elderly Carter by denying him even a five-minute speech – with Obama’s approval. ‘Professor’ Dershowitz publicly crowed about his success and power over the Democratic nominee Obama in censoring the former President."
"Fully embedded in the Zionist Power Configuration of Chicago, Obama was advised by the Axelrods, Klutznicks and other key strategists to make the obligatory ritual pilgrimage to Israel and pay obeisance to its leaders in the course of his Senate campaign. During his trip to Israel, two years later in 2006, Obama was accompanied and guided by the executive vice-president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. Under Zionist guidance, Obama ‘connected’ with the Israeli state, totally ignoring the plight of the Palestinians who were being savagely repressed by the Israel Army and assaulted on a daily basis by Zion-Fascist settlers. Obama returned a thoroughly committed Zionist African-American politician....With the Israeli-ZPC certificate of approval, Obama’s financial base of support widened to include some of the wealthiest pro-Israel Jewish Americans in the Midwest including Lester Crown, whose son, James Crown headed Obama’s financial campaign in Illinois. According to Crown (pater), “From the time I met him, the times we talked about Israel and we talked about it several times, he has been an ardent backer of Israel’s defense position (sic), Israel’s security position.”...To those Zionfascists who demand that Israel annex all of Palestine and expel ‘the Arabs’ and were disturbed by Obama’s passing reference to a two-state solution, Crown assured them that Obama’s proposal was couched in such outrageously impossible demands for concessions from the Palestinians that it was a dead letter...."
Read the entire article @:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/12/barack-obama-%E2%80%9Camerica%E2%80%99s-first-jewish-president%E2%80%9D/
President Obama--New World Order Patsy!!!
Obama's refusal to allow Carter to speak at the 2008 Democratic National Convention is one of the reasons I am in the Green Party now.
The other reason was Obama's decision to welcome back with open arms, that traitor--Joe Lieberman.
Another reason was Cynthia McKinney's being sold out by the Democratic Party and her being defeated by Zionist Patsy Hank Johnson down in Georgia. AIPAC is now able to intimidate and effectively so, the Congressional Black Caucus. Congressman John Lewis is one of the biggest AIPAC patsies as well. He was courageous in the civil rights era, but, Lewis has since become a patsy for the Jewish lobby. Other black politicians also follow this path. Hank Johnson was put up to defeat Cynthia McKinney in Georgia.
Obama is now faced with that 14 member Conservative Democratic Caucus in the Senate of which Lieberman is a member, in which they will seek power to derail Obama's policies. Too bad for the naive Obama, who welcomed back Lieberman.
Well, Obama, when your presidency is finished your popularity rating will be lower than Bush's.
Obama is clear on one thing and should be evident to the morons out there. He has no problem throwing people like Carter and Rev Wright under the bus because they both dare stand up for the rights of the Palestinian Arabs.
It is too bad and tragic that the black community was so silent when Obama disowned Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Obama is a self-centered narcissist just like George W. Bush was. Obama may be the "smarter" ot the two, but Obama will throw anyone under the bus like any other politician for the sake of POWER!
Obama is a new world order patsy too.
I wish I was surprised by Obama's announcement
...but I'm not. As soon as I heard his 2004 speech at the Donkey Convention, I knew he was just another Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas. Another man who would trade on his "black" status to gull African-American voters into thinking he was really going to make Federal politics bi-racial now. I'm sorry for those who put their faith, trust, hope, and vote into Barack Obama's career. Sorry because he'll never deliver anything but obedience to corporate power, and because he won't ever work to help people still struggling to retain some decent sense of civil rights in America.
Barack Obama is a fraud who happens to have come from a biracial marriage between a black and a white. That he can claim some black blood is no indicator of his politics. He's not interested in helping anyone but himself and the rich & powerful people who fund BOTH the Donkeys and the Elephants equally, to ensure that the outcome always works to their advantage.
Look at his wife -- she's a corporate lackey too. They're a "Buppie" couple who are interested in power, prestige and possession of expensive trinkets. They don't care about anyone -- white OR black -- who doesn't share their grasping yuppie perspective.
That's the truth of Barack Obama. Let us now sit back and watch as he helps advance the Bush/Cheney agenda. Let us now watch him order the slaughter of more Islamic people, to protect America's access to oil and to protect Israel's thuggish presence in the Middle East.
Let us now watch him dance like Stepin Fetchit.
The Obama Deception HQ Full length version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Flivinginblack%2Ening%2Ecom%2Fvideo%2Fthe%2Dobama%2Ddeception%2Dhq%2Dfull%3Fpage%3D1%23comment%2D2019163%5FComment%5F375290&feature=player_embedded
You Ain’t No American
Greetings to all Afurakanu, Afurakaitnit, meaning Afrikan, Black people, your brother Shangowande here for O.U.R. meaning Original people United & Restored, with another installment of O.U.R. series to aid you on your journey back to the greatness of who you are by eliminating what you ain’t and brothers and sisters
You Ain’t No American
Not African American, black American, afro Negro American or any other nonsense they invent to make you think you have ties to this country. Being born here doesn’t make you an American any more then sitting at the table with no food would make you a diner. Not when hundreds of years of preparation for your assassination are awaiting you at birth. Not when the wealth amassed from the labor of your bloodline is devoted to your death instead of your benefit could those words have any meaning to any but those collaborating house nigger few.
You weren’t brought here as no American and you weren’t brought here to become no American so you tell me at what point did you become one? Not your so called emancipation that launched waves of lynching, murder and unbridled terrorism against thousands of black men women and children at a time and still only considers you 3 fifths of a human being and not your so called civil rights movement where you got beat stupid enough to claim victory when they let you sit next to white folks and spend all your money with their businesses as yours closed. If there was any such thing as an African American you wouldn’t need any 14th or civil rights amendment supposing to grant you human status here or be begging to keep a voting rights act so you can pretend like you count. You would have the same rights as everybody else. You wouldn’t have to settle for affirmative action to get a few of your children into institutions of higher learning while the rest are railroaded into institutions of mass incarceration. Face it. You will never be an American and you shouldn’t want to be, because America has done nothing but try to kill you and everything that looks like you?
From the moment those diseased, deranged, puss filled white vampires landed here, up to this very second they have waged a steady deliberate, genocidal war of oppression, and exploitation against the indigenous and kidnapped populations here in the so called Americas. We have been raped, massacred, mutilated, butchered, brutalized and subjugated. We’ve been lynched, tortured, traumatized, hypnotized, ostracized and stigmatized as the racism ingrained into the fabric of American society perfected over centuries, it’s institutions for our legalized annihilation but now because they only call us niggers behind closed doors we are supposed to believe they consider us free and equal and let bygones be bygones.
They tell you; that was all in the past, get over it, you’re free now so stop whining and go make something of yourself like that nice Colin Powell fellow, or just be like Mike, Stop drinking the malt liquor our ads push on you from the day you are born and stop shooting each other with the cheap guns we make just for you over the drugs we flood your communities with. Work hard for us in our slave wage retail chains, like Wal-marts that don’t pay enough to take you off the public assistance that’s already been eliminated for everybody but big business and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, so what if they happen to be around your neck and maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones that doesn’t have to work two jobs to be broke like your parents did.
I don’t know about you but I don’t see any improvement in our relationship with America. Malcolm told us over thirty years ago and its’ just as true today. You are not an American; you are a victim of America.
If the wholesale massacres, brutal slavery and deliberate extermination of our ancestors were a holocaust and you better believe they were, then the devastation caused by the inhuman conditions the majority of us live under today must be considered a continuation of that holocaust. A holocaust that has never ended, it continues on, maturing, improving its methods and efficiency, masking its attacks in societal structures and legislative weapons of mass destruction so that profit is made as they bleed income from every aspect of our life’s suffering and expedited deaths.
Slavery is now achieved through a business serving economy that forces people to accept employment that won’t sustain basic human necessities, mass incarceration fueled by the intentional mis-education of our children, the orchestrated unemployment of our fathers, after criminalizing their inability to support their families and the resulting chaos generated in the unnatural ghetto environments produced by their carefully cultivated destruction of the family unit in our communities.
That’s right their carefully cultivated destruction of the family unit in our communities, or did you think the exact same suffering duplicated in all of our communities across the country was a coincidence? Or maybe you believed them when they told you that the people that built the pyramids and built America did this to themselves because they could do no better? The conditions we live under are unnatural but they are not unintentional. Those statistics on crime, broken homes and single female head of household are no accident. The permanent destruction of the black family was designed into the blueprint for America and all of her laws, policies, programs and budgets are written to enforce and maintain it because the continuation of our exploitation as a resource depends on it.
No matter how hard they try to convince us that our condition is our fault. That we should stop blaming the man for our suffering, that we are the cause of the crime, drug addiction, poverty and despair plaguing our communities. We must never forget that the full weight of this society’s resources built on our exploitation have always been devoted to keeping our families dysfunctional and our communities weak. That’s right they’ve got us paying for the war being waged against us. People don’t choose to be poor, they are kept poor. Criminals aren’t born they are manufactured, manufactured through policies written by a corporate government collage of millionaire mercenaries with interests at odds with humanity. We allow ourselves to get caught up in the fraud of citizenship thinking we have the same options as white people just because they tell us we do. We buy into the publicity that we are the ones committing all the crimes when the real crimes are still being committed against us by the children of the same white people who kidnapped and enslaved us thru the government and business instruments they built with the blood soaked wealth they inherited, and you go for it because they’ve convinced you that their war against you is over and we are all on the same American team. Wake up fool
Since it is clear that we are victims and not citizens of America it should be equally clear that it is time to drop this delusional illusion of inclusion that keeps us dreaming that because we built this country, we are a part of it, dreaming that because we have struggled and suffered so much for it we must love and protect it like a child we hope will one day grow up and take care of us. We must stop dreaming that if we somehow prove ourselves good as white folks to white folks they gonna accept us with open arms and we all live happily ever after. For us to expect this country to one day turn over a new leaf and start treating us fairly is like expecting the gunman who shot you to work on your wounds. No wonder you still believe in Santa Christ and Jesus Clause.
We are not them and they are not us. Our suffering sustains their luxury and they will never share with anyone. You must realize that the privileges you seek to enjoy with them are paid for in our blood and if you want to survive you better get it through your head right now that you are an enemy to America, always have been and always will be. America is at war with you as you try to save America and integrate yourself into it. We have the capacity to do for ourselves and uplift our own communities not with government assistance but without government interference. Imagine what we can accomplish for ourselves by ourselves once we devote our resources to our own benefit building our own nation better then the ones we built for them. The only choice we have is to unify as one Afrikan people engaged in the business of race first group economics and independent political organization supported by independent military organization guided by our own African traditional values and spiritual systems because the bottom line is this; if you are not building Black Power Systems, you’re building white power systems.
Wake up Black Man and Woman of Africa your only chance for survival is the rejection of white foods, white culture, white religions and white people, and the return to the culture and religions of your ancestors who built great civilizations before and after the white cancer infected mother earth. The remains of these great civilizations that the whites to this day have been unable to duplicate, serve to remind us that when we rejected the whites their culture and religions we held onto our land and freedom and when we allowed the whites in accepting their perverse culture and fake religions we lost our land and freedom.
Naw you ain’t no American, You Afurakanu, Afurakaitnit, meaning Afrikan, black people now take the OATH , set up an ancestral shrine and go set your land and people free.
Thanks kkrizs for one powerful exegesis
Your words lifted my spirits today.
Food for thought below:
http://www.powernomics.com/books.htm
http://www.amazon.com/PowerNomics-National-Empower-Black-America/product...
Thanks Lou!
Actually, I am a messenger. That work is from your brother Shangowande who is on http://livinginblack.ning.com/ . I must give credits to were it isn due. Link to the original work in video http://livinginblack.ning.com/video/you-aint-no-american .
Thank you also for the great work you are doing.
I will look up the links your provided.
Ancestral blessings.
Anyone seen the DVD "The
Anyone seen the DVD "The Obama Deception?" It was supposed to debut 3/15.