Head of Goldman Sachs claims "Social Purpose"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907681.ece
JOHN ARLIDGE, TIMES, UK - Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured
office block in lower Manhattan, doesn't look like a place to stop and
stare, and that's just the way the people who work there like it. The men
and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street
black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private.
They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past,
well, nothing, really. There's no name plate on the building, no sign on
the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn't saying who
works there. There's a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad
Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it. . .

Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs. . . . . Here,
politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more
robust terms - "robber barons", "economic vandals", "vulture capitalists".
. . . It's even worse in the US. There, Rolling Stone magazine ran a story
that described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face
of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that
smells like money. . .

Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman
first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly,
decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That's
how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems
possible - even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the
universe - I find myself walking past the security guard who held up
Michael Moore and into the building with no name.

"Aha! You catch us plotting in real time," says Lloyd Blankfein, breaking
away from a cabal of senior executives discussing his trip to Washington
the previous day. Blankfein, 55, Goldman's chairman and chief executive,
is wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermes tie with little red bicycles
on it. In his hand, he's carrying one of those cups of coffee that look
bigger than the human stomach. . .

He starts with a little humility. He understands that "people are pissed
off, mad, and bent out of shape" at bankers' actions. Goldman played its
part in the meltdown that almost destroyed the global financial system.
It, like most other banks, lent too much money, made its first quarterly
loss for more than a decade last year and ended up taking bail-out cash
from Washington. "I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,"
he says. But then, he slowly begins to argue the case for modern banking.
"We're very important," he says, abandoning self-flagellation. "We help
companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow
create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more
growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle." To drive home his point,
he makes a remarkably bold claim. "We have a social purpose.". . .

THE O BOMB: WHY IS OBAMA DOING SO BADLY?

Sam Smith
- His supporters didn't read the small type above the box marked "I
accept." If they had they would have learned during the campaign that
Obama was pro-military, anti-civil liberties and conservative on
economics. They got what they paid for, just not what they thought they
had paid for.
- Obama got where he is by repeatedly pleasing the establishment. He still
is.
- Everyone from his mother to his law professors to the Democratic
Leadership Council kept telling him how great he was. He came to believe
them. Wisdom and judgment in life requires losses as well as victories.
- He understands how to create transparent data but not how to create
visible programs. No one knows why we're in Afghanistan, what's really in
the healthcare bill, or what's being stimulated in their communities. It's
hard to argue for things people can't see and it makes it easy for your
opponents to claim that they're something awful. The best politics is the
sort you can see and feel.
- Obama's a lawyer surrounded by too many lawyers. The legalocracy has
been taking over Washington for years, but with Obama it's reached a new
peak. Lawyers do somethings well, like write contracts, sue people and
draft your will. In other matters - like actually doing whatever it is
they're providing legal support for - they are not particularly qualified.
Harry Markopolos, the Bernie Madoff whistleblower, recently described how
it works at the SEC:"The five commissioners of the SEC are securities
lawyers. Securities lawyers never understand finance. They don't have the
math background. If you can't do math and if you can't take apart the
investment products of the 21st century backward and forward and put them
together in your sleep you'll never find the frauds on Wall Street."
- Further, lawyers think truth lies in documents and not out on the
street. Which is one reason FDR did better with his stimulus package: he
put a social worker, and not a lawyer, in charge.
- Rahm Emmanuel. Hope and change don't go over so well when they are
accompanied by threats.
- As soon as Obama got elected he dumped his liberal supporters, thereby
ignoring the advice of a wiser Chicago politician, Richard Daley the
elder: "Dance with the one that brung you."
- He has too many economists. Multi-factor crises are not handled well by
one-factor thinkers.
- Obama thinks bipartisanship is great. A better politician, Harry Truman,
said that when anyone told him they were bipartisan, he knew they were
going to vote against him. My Coast Guard navigation instructor told us
that if you take a navigational fix and it puts you on one side of a rock
and then you take another fix and it puts you on the other side of the
rock, "Don't split the difference." Obama doesn't seem to grasp this
principle.
- There's nothing intrinsically wrong with compromise, but wise
compromises are made by those who know where they want to go. Using a
compromise as the starting point is a premeditated act of random, like you
know, whatever.
- Looking deeply pensive when someone else is speaking or doing a little
jog up to the podium is cute the first few times; after that it becomes
corny.
- Obama's problem is not that he uses a teleprompter but that he seems
totally dependent on it, such as using one when speaking to a group of
school children. Joe Biden should give him lessons in human conversation.
- Academic intelligence takes you only so far. At some point, you have to
apply it and that requires other skills such as social wisdom, empathy and
judgment.
- Obama, who has a hard time running those governmental functions covered
by the Constitution, can't keep his hands off things that are none of his
business like local education or how health records are maintained. The
wisest leaders know how to share power with others and to respect the 10th
Amendment.
- People don't want more laws and regulations; they want more money, help
and happiness. Obama doesn't seem to understand this.
- Everyone talks about Obama and race, but it's really class that's
causing the problem. People feel they're being talked down to, scolded,
and told what to do by people who come across as intellectual snobs. This
didn't used to be a problem, because liberals were the ones who helped the
workers and the less fortunate in society. Now they don't seem to care all
that much. If liberals, beginning with Obama, had a people-friendly
economic policy, the right wouldn't be able to get away with their
hypocritical blarney and the Democrats would have some weapons to combat
it.
- With Obama as with the rest of his party, there is no interest, concern
or respect for the local - where people really live. Getting through life
doesn't happen at a White House summit but in the 'hood.
- After you've had all your summits and your speeches and special meetings
with special people, it helps to make a decision or two that everyone can
understand and a lot of people can get excited about.

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens

Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens
It was controversial when Bush imprisoned foreign nationals without charges; what about killing U.S. citizens?

Glenn Greenwald

Jan. 27, 2010

The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:



After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.

Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That's just the essence of war. That's why it's permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they're captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we're talking about here. The people on this "hit list" are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration -- like the Bush administration before it -- defines the "battlefield" as the entire world. So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks. That's quite a power for an American President to claim for himself.

As we well know from the last eight years, the authoritarians among us in both parties will, by definition, reflexively justify this conduct by insisting that the assassination targets are Terrorists and therefore deserve death. What they actually mean, however, is that the U.S. Government has accused them of being Terrorists, which (except in the mind of an authoritarian) is not the same thing as being a Terrorist. Numerous Guantanamo detainees accused by the U.S. Government of being Terrorists have turned out to be completely innocent, and the vast majority of federal judges who provided habeas review to detainees have found an almost complete lack of evidence to justify the accusations against them, and thus ordered them released. That includes scores of detainees held while the U.S. Government insisted that only the "Worst of the Worst" remained at the camp.

No evidence should be required for rational people to avoid assuming that Government accusations are inherently true, but for those do need it, there is a mountain of evidence proving that. And in this case, Anwar Aulaqi -- who, despite his name and religion, is every bit as much of an American citizen as Scott Brown and his daughters are -- has a family who vigorously denies that he is a Terrorist and is "pleading" with the U.S. Government not to murder their American son:

His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen.

"I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. . . .

"I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said.

"If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.

Who knows what the truth is here? That's why we have what are called "trials" -- or at least some process -- before we assume that government accusations are true and then mete out punishment accordingly. As Marcy Wheeler notes, the U.S. Government has not only repeatedly made false accusations of Terrorism against foreign nationals in the past, but against U.S. citizens as well. She observes: "I guess the tenuousness of those ties don’t really matter, when the President can dial up the assassination of an American citizen."

A 1981 Executive Order signed by Ronald Reagan provides: "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." Before the Geneva Conventions were first enacted, Abraham Lincoln -- in the middle of the Civil War -- directed Francis Lieber to articulate rules of conduct for war, and those were then incorporated into General Order 100, signed by Lincoln in April, 1863. Here is part of what it provided, in Section IX, entitled "Assassinations":

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

Can anyone remotely reconcile that righteous proclamation with what the Obama administration is doing? And more generally, what legal basis exists for the President to unilaterally compile hit lists of American citizens he wants to be killed?

What's most striking of all is that it was recently revealed that, in Afghanistan, the U.S. had compiled a "hit list" of Afghan citizens it suspects of being drug traffickers or somehow associated with the Taliban, in order to target them for assassination. When that hit list was revealed, Afghan officials "fiercely" objected on the ground that it violates due process and undermines the rule of law to murder people without trials:

Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised U.S. and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.

"They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes," Daud said. "We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own" . . . .

Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, said that he had long urged the Pentagon and its NATO allies to crack down on drug smugglers and suppliers, and that he was glad that the military alliance had finally agreed to provide operational support for Afghan counternarcotics agents. But he said foreign troops needed to avoid the temptation to hunt down and kill traffickers on their own.

"There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty," he said. "If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?" . . .

So we're in Afghanistan to teach them about democracy, the rule of law, and basic precepts of Western justice. Meanwhile, Afghan officials vehemently object to the lawless, due-process-free assassination "hit list" of their citizens based on the unchecked say-so of the U.S. Government, and have to lecture us on the rule of law and Constitutional constraints. By stark contrast, our own Government, our media and our citizenry appear to find nothing wrong whatsoever with lawless assassinations aimed at our own citizens. And the most glaring question for those who critized Bush/Cheney detention policies but want to defend this: how could anyone possibly object to imprisoning foreign nationals without charges or due process at Guantanamo while approving of the assassination of U.S. citizens without any charges or due process?

UPDATE: In comments, sysprog documents the numerous countries condemned in 2009 by the U.S. State Department for "extra-judicial killings." I trust that it goes without saying that it's different (and better) when we do it than when They do it, because we're different (and better), but it still seems worth noting.

UPDATE II: James Joyner argues that this "hit list" policy is not much different than our drone attacks in Pakistan, which Obama has substantially escalated, and that "no one seems to be complaining about the President's authority" to kill suspected Terrorists there. Actually, there are substantial questions about the legality of those drone attacks, though the complete secrecy behind which the program operates makes those questions very difficult to address. Beyond that, though, there's a substantial difference between a government which (a) targets foreign nationals whom it claims are part of a enemy organization and (b) targets its own citizens for assassination without any due process. They both have substantial legal and moral problems, and killing innocent foreigners is obviously no better than killing one's own innocent citizens, but (a) is at least a fairly common act of war, whereas (b) -- as the U.S. Government itself has long argued -- is a hallmark of tyranny. There's a much greater danger from allowing a government to target its own citizens for extra-judicial killings.-- Glenn Greenwald


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Iran War Dance

From MediaLens:

...A rare voice of sanity in the Guardian, Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, put the latest revelations in context, noting that: “when Obama announced that ‘Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow’, he is technically and legally wrong”. Ritter explained:

“The Qom plant, if current descriptions are accurate, cannot manufacture the basic feed-stock (uranium hexaflouride, or UF6) used in the centrifuge-based enrichment process. It is simply another plant in which the UF6 can be enriched.

"Why is this distinction important? Because the IAEA has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran's nuclear material stockpile. There has been no diversion of nuclear material to the Qom plant (since it is under construction). The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.

“Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama's announcement concerning the Qom facility.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/25/iran-secret-nuclear-plant-inspections)

Even if the claims of Iranian military intent are true, Ritter added, “this interpretation would still require the diversion of significant nuclear material away from the oversight of IAEA inspectors, something that would be almost immediately evident. Any meaningful diversion of nuclear material would be an immediate cause for alarm, and would trigger robust international reaction, most probably inclusive of military action against the totality of Iran's known nuclear infrastructure".

Instead, it is “more likely, an attempt on the part of Iran to provide for strategic depth and survivability of its nuclear programme in the face of repeated threats on the part of the US and Israel to bomb its nuclear infrastructure".

Read Full Alert

NO STORY HERE

Sam Smith

Like any good lawyer, Sonia Sotomayor can take either side of a case - even when it's about something she said. Thus she excused her remark that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a white male as a play on words that fell flat. She added: "It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge."

To a writer who is not a lawyer this is pure crap. On the other hand, it means she will get along quite well in Washington because as a wise lawyer with the richness of her experiences she knows how to speak in tongues.

After all, any potential justice who can get headlines around the country because she claims to believe in "fidelity to the law" doesn't have much to worry about. There was a happier time when that was taken for granted.

The truth is that Sotomayer - except for her ethnicity - is an absolutely mundane, even boring, centrist judge from whom no surprises should be expected. Like her appointer, she has been elevated to sanctified status simply because the elite - many decades late - decided it was okay to have someone of her background in such a high position. And she seemed safe.

She has thus benefited from a form of atomized affirmative action that fools a lot of people into thinking there's been a real change.

But as the cops say, that's it, folks. You can leave now. Clear the area. There's no story here.

Meet The New Boss...

Holy shit! I can't believe what I'm reading here in the NYT! VP Joe Biden explaining that we can't "stand in the way" of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program! It's damn near advocacy! This is the same nuclear program that has been declared legal and transparent by the September 08 IAEA report. --Pete

July 6, 2009

Biden Suggests U.S. Not Standing in Israel’s Way on Iran

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program.

The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.”

"Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there.

The remarks went beyond at least the spirit of any public utterances by President Barack Obama, who has said that diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program should be given to the end of the year. But the president has also said that he is “not reconciled” to the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon — a goal Tehran denies.

Mr. Biden’s comments came at a particularly sensitive time, amid the continuing tumult over the disputed Iranian elections, and seemed to risk handing a besieged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a new tool with which to fan nationalist sentiments in Iran.

What was not immediately clear was whether Mr. Biden, who has a long-standing reputation for speaking volubly — and sometimes going too far in the heat of the moment — was sending an officially sanctioned message.

The Obama administration has said, and Mr. Biden reaffirmed this, that it remains open to negotiations with Tehran, even after the bitterly contested election that returned Mr. Ahmadinejad to the presidency.

“If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage,” Mr. Biden said. “The offer’s on the table.”

But separately, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of the costs of any military strike against Iran.

“It could be very destabilizing, and it is the unintended consequences of that which aren’t predictable,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Still, he added, “I think it’s very important, as we deal with Iran, that we don’t take any options, including military options, off the table.”

Earlier in his interview with ABC, Mr. Biden had seemed sensitive to the risk of handing Mr. Ahmadinejad and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, a propaganda edge by criticizing the elections too forcefully and allowing them to claim that “the reason why there was unrest is outside influence.”

He called Mr. Obama’s original condemnations, which some criticized as overly cautious, “absolutely pitch-perfect.”

If Mr. Biden’s comments on Israel and Iran were perhaps off the cuff, he did not back away from them when given a chance to do so.

George Stephanopoulos, the program’s host, asked: “But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?”

And Mr. Biden replied: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination — if they make a determination — that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

The Israeli government has said that it hopes to see the Iranian nuclear program halted through diplomacy, but it has not ruled out a military strike. Talk of such a strike flared episodically during the Bush presidency.

Such a strike is considered highly problematic, both for the unpredictable shock waves it would send coursing through the region and because of the technical difficulty of destroying nuclear facilities that are scattered around Iran, some of them deep underground.

Still, the disputed Iranian election result has raised concerns in Israel. Officials there say that the victory by Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel, underscored the Iranian threat and bolstered the argument for tough action.

In May, Mr. Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a meeting at the White House that “we’re not going to have talks forever” with Iran; in the absence of cooperation from Tehran, he said, the administration would not rule out “a range of steps.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/us/politics/06biden.html?_r=1&hp

Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry

America's Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia

By Andrew Hughes

Global Research, May 23, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13716

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.

Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.

The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.

The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.

Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.

Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution ! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.

"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.

There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.

This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.

Counterpunch--Brian Cloughley: Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Don Quixote, the main character in a novel by the Spanish writer Cervantes in 1605, spent a lot of time on horseback, armed with a lance, attacking windmills which he thought were menacing giants.

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills . . . And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs . . . Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich, for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.”

President Eisenhower inherited the Korean war from his predecessor and then negotiated a cease-fire. President Lyndon Johnson took over Vietnam from his predecessor and committed his country to eventual humiliating defeat. And almost fifty years later President Barack Obama has been gifted the Afghan debacle by a moron who spent most of his catastrophic eight years tilting at windmills in “righteous wars.”

The First, Second and Third Afghan Wars were waged by the British between 1839 and 1919 in three disastrous campaigns totaling nine years. The Fourth resulted in the degrading defeat of Russia in 1989 when its troops had to leave after a decade. And now the Fifth Afghan War is being conducted by America and some allies from 2001 to . . . Well, when? It’s seven years, and counting.

What happens now that Mr Obama is in command?

Last month the US General Petraeus said that a surge like the one he ordered in Iraq would not work in Afghanistan, and that it is essential that Afghans not view foreign forces as conquerors. “You do need to tenaciously pursue the enemy and the extremists . . . But you also need to be building, and to develop, and . . . help and to partner.”

Does anyone believe that President Karzai is an equal partner of the so-called “coalition” forces in his country? Does anyone imagine there is deference by foreign forces to the government of Afghanistan? (If President Karzai flies in an Mi-17 helicopter it is piloted by an Afghan. But if there is an American on board the pilot must be American and it must be a machine that is serviced by US technicians. Does nobody realize how much this sort of arrogant colonial condescension is resented?)

Karzai has protested about the bungled cowboy airstrikes that have killed hundreds of his people but the only effect his complaints have had is to make Afghans despise him for being feeble and to have Washington even more determined to have him replaced.

Petraeus is right, in that development is essential. But the foreigners running Afghanistan do not have enough troops to control the country and the Afghan army is nowhere near ready to do so. So there can’t be much development carried out (although billions of dollars have vanished), simply because there is a lack of stability.

There is no point in building something if the nasties can promptly destroy it.

A long time ago I served in the Australian Task Force in Vietnam. We were supposed to “win hearts and minds” but, alas, lost them completely. We went round the villages building little windmills. Splendid contraptions that pumped up water for fishponds and so forth. And on the vanes of the propellers we stenciled little yellow kangaroos, announcing that Australia supported windmill democracy (or something). And a couple of days after we erected one of them, imagining ingenuously that we were winning the hearts and minds of the local people, along would come the Viet Cong and blow it up.

Then after a while the Viet Cong became a bit more savvy. They left the windmills alone – and told the villagers that the first person to make use of one would be killed. This had the effect of leaving stark standing monuments to the total impotence of the foreign soldiers.

It was very effective psychological warfare. Even the half million foreign soldiers in South Vietnam, a country (66,000 square miles) a quarter the size of Afghanistan (250,000 square miles; 80,000 foreign troops; 17,000 more US troops to come this year), together with a Vietnamese army of 410,000 could not guarantee the existence of a few windmills.

We used to have a military principle that remains relevant : Take and Hold Ground. It comes down to this : If you can’t hold the ground you’ve taken, then what is the point in taking that ground? You can’t defend windmills if you leave the place in which you built them and then let the enemy come in to take control. In that case, your soldiers have died for nothing.

In Vietnam these windmills twirled and hummed, insensible and useless in the rustling wind, as memorials for souls.

The “coalition forces” propaganda machine in Afghanistan would have us believe that things are going fairly well. But this war is a disaster. Every other day we are told that dozens of ‘Taliban’ are killed. And for every one who is killed (and many are ordinary tribesmen who hate foreign invaders and resist them energetically, as they have done for centuries), another ten? – fifty? – hundred? – are motivated to join the resistance to the foreign intruders. Just as they did, with energetic support from Washington, when Russians occupied their territory.

It is all very well having lots of foreign troops roaming round Afghanistan killing people (of whom many are civilians – over 700 last year), but as in Vietnam it is hearts and minds that matter. President Obama has some hard decisions to make, because the US and its allies went in to Afghanistan without doing the basic arithmetic of the number of troops required to perform the tasks the foreign politicians gave them. Unless there are enough soldiers to take and hold ground to ensure that aid projects work, there is no point in staying there.

* * *

A proposal for “civil defense forces (CDF)” in Afghanistan has been endorsed by two clever academics, Messrs Matthew P Dearing and Matthew C DuPee of the US Naval Postgraduate School. Such forces, they write, “will provide a significant measure of needed security and authority in areas of Afghanistan previously unprotected by ANSF [Afghanistan’s National Security Forces]. They will allow community leaders from a variety of tribes and clans to work together in delivering sufficient levels of security . . . ” And so on.

The US Department of the Army Field Manual 31-22 of the Vietnam years “envisions all members of a village being organized for their own mutual support into a village complex. This mutual support not only includes defense but also will include other activities, such as . . . extensions of democratic principles and procedures through such things as the formation of village and hamlet committees.” Oh how starry-eyed we were.

It has all been tried before. It didn’t work in Vietnam and it won’t work in Afghanistan. The notion that tribal militias (or even “civil defense forces”) will allow “community leaders from a variety of tribes and clans to work together in delivering sufficient levels of security” is naive.

Tribes in Afghanistan can’t agree on the time of day. They hate each other. And the only thing that is drawing them together in temporary alliance is hatred of foreign soldiers and profits from corruption, heroin production and smuggling. The hearts and minds of the tribes are otherwise engaged.

Will Mr Obama construct a new strategy? Or will he tilt at windmills?

Brian Cloughley's book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, is to be published in the US by Skyhorse next month. His website is www.beecluff.com.

WORD

Instead of nationalizing our banks' financial principal, Tim Geithner seems to have nationalized Bernie Madoff's financial principle: just give me your money and don't ask too many questions. - Josiah Swampoodle

The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Of course, we can all get together and hope for change, or change for hope, or hope for change that we can really use, or change for use that we can really hope...let's just hope that the President has gone nuts temporarily and doesn't mean to increase troop levels in Afghanistan in the traditional manner of distraction politics.--Pete

By C. G. Estabrook

My fellow citizens:

We are in the midst of crisis. Our nation is at war [against an Axis...oops] against a Network of Violence and Hatred.

America's decline can be arrested, [just so long as we can scare hell out of the American people] because the challenges we face are real. [Really, they are.]

We need unity of purpose [to get rid of naysayers]. No more worn-out dogmas [like "no aggressive war"] that for far too long have strangled our politics. [Some are actually trying to stop the Mideast War.]

But we have a noble idea: [spread Freedom...oops] that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness [as we define it].

[One Nation, one People, and one President] are greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. We must begin again the work of remaking America [in the image and likeness of the Best People.]

We'll create new jobs and lay a new foundation for growth [by paying rich people first]. The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. [This has been called elsewhere "Gleichschaltung."]

The Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine [but we'll draw some parallels], drafted a charter to assure the rule of law [and of course their undisturbed possession of their wealth].

The justness of our cause [is so obvious it can't even be discussed]...

We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people [as split as that infinitive]. and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan, [as mixed as that metaphor].

With old friends [Israel] and former foes [Russia], we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, [of course we don't admit Israel has any nukes] and roll back the specter of a warming planet [because you know how dangerous those rolling specters are.]

We will not apologize for our way of life [even though it's fucking nuts], nor will we waver in its defense. [You do remember the Bush Doctrine, Ms. Palin?]

And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you [i.e., no one induces terror or slaughters innocents like us.]

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. [Look how we respected those thousands of dead and wounded Gazans.]

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West [How could they do THAT?!]:

Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. [Pay no attention to Gaza, or a million dead in Iraq; but don't plan any Afghan wedding parties.]

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent [Hey, what happened to the shoe-thrower?], know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist [and cross your palm with a little something from Gen. Petraeus].

As we consider the road that unfolds before us [actually, I'm having trouble re-folding the Road Map], we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains [in spite of what the people who live there might think].

They have something to tell us today ["Bring us home!"], just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. ["That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase...."]

We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty [exactly whose liberty are they guarding in the Mideast? ExxonMobil's?], but because they embody the spirit of service; [of course, if they don't, we'll force them to enlist because there are no jobs...]

[Several paragraphs of absolute bilge and balderdash here, ending with a demand for] a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world [which will be enforced in reverse order].

This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. [And you're hearing it from The One.]

This is ... why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. ["Luo, I am your FAAATHER...."]

When the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it." ["I can feel your Paine."]

With eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of Freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. [Freedom Lives! or is that Frodo? or Fredo?...]

The Digested Read, Digested:

We're going to keep killing people, and that's OK.

C. G. Estabrook is a retired visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the host of "News from Neptune, the TV Edition," on Urbana Public Television and on the website newsfromneptune.com; he can be contacted at carl@newsfromneptune.com

Obama on the Gaza Massacre: "No Comment".

Excerpted and paraphrased from Wajahat Ali, Counterpunch

President-elect Obama remains inappropriately quiet on the hell that Israel rains down on Gaza with the implicit approval of BushCo, but earlier this summer he endorsed Israel's right to defend itself against Qassam rockets by stating,

"If someone were sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do anything to stop it.”

One wonders, however, if President elect Obama’s principles of safety, dignity and self defense apply to Palestinians as well? If Obama and President Bush’s daughters were forced to suspend their emergency hospital operations due to fuel shortages, beg for 300 essential medicines, drink contaminated water that causes malnutrition and anemia in children, eat bread made of animal feed, and renounce electricity because their main power plant was forced to shut down, what would they do?

Obama Chooses Wall Street Over Main Street

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081125_obama_chooses_wall_street_over_main_street/

AP photo / Charles Dharapak

They have his ear: Lawrence Summers, left, is just one veteran of Clinton-era deregulation who has found his way into Barack Obama’s inner circle.

By Robert Scheer

Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn’t that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.

But how else is one to respond to Barack Obama’s picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess to now lead us out of it? Watching the president-elect’s Monday introduction of his economic team, my brother-in-law Pete said, “You can see the feathers coming out of their mouths” as the foxes were once again put in charge of the henhouse. He didn’t have time to expound on his point, having to get ready to go sort mail in his job at the post office. But he showed me a statement from Citigroup showing that the interest rate on Pete the Postal Worker’s credit card was 28.9 percent, an amount that all major religions would justly condemn as usurious.

Moments earlier, Obama had put his seal of approval on the Citigroup bailout, which his new economic team, led by protégés of Citigroup Executive Committee Chairman Robert Rubin, enthusiastically endorsed. A bailout that brings to $45 billion the taxpayer money thrown at Citigroup and the guarantee of $306 billion for the bank’s “toxic securities” that would have been illegal if not for changes in the law that Citigroup secured with the decisive help of Rubin and Lawrence Summers, the man who replaced him as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

As Summers stayed on to ensure passage of deregulatory laws that enabled enormous banking greed, Rubin was rewarded with a $15 million-a-year executive position at Citigroup, a job that only got more lucrative as the bank went from one disaster, beginning with its involvement with Enron in which Rubin played an active role, to its huge role in the mortgage debacle. It is widely acknowledged that Citigroup fell victim to a merger mania, which Rubin and Summers made legal during their tenure at Treasury.

Yet despite that dismal record of dismantling sound regulation, Summers has been picked by Obama to be the top White House economic adviser and another Rubin disciple, Timothy Geithner, is the new Treasury secretary. Geithner, thanks in part to the strong recommendation of Rubin, had been appointed chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank after working for Rubin and Summers during the Clinton years. Once at the New York Fed, he was the main government official charged with regulating Citigroup, a task at which he obviously failed. Yet over the weekend, it was Geithner who hammered out the Citigroup bailout deal with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a very actively involved Rubin.

As The Washington Post reported, Paulson had indicated last week that no further bailouts were planned before the new administration took office until “Rubin, an old colleague from Goldman Sachs, told Paulson in phone calls that the government had to act.” Rubin conceded in an interview with the Post that he had played a key role in the politics of the bailout.

This outrageous conflict of interest in which Rubin gets to exploit his ties to both the outgoing and incoming administrations was best described by Washington Post writer Steven Pearlstein: “The ultimate irony, of course, is that just as Rubin and Co. at Citi were being bailed out by the Bush administration, President-elect Barack Obama was getting set to announce a new economic team drawn almost entirely from Rubin acolytes.”

As opposed to the far tougher deal negotiated on the bailout of AIG, the arrangement with Citigroup leaves the executives, including Rubin, who brought Citigroup to the brink of ruin, still in charge. Nor is there any guarantee of the value of the mortgage bundles that taxpayers will be guaranteeing. That is because, as candidate Obama clearly stated in his major economics address back in March, the deregulation pushed though during the Clinton years ended transparency in banking.

Why then has he appointed the very people responsible for this disaster to now make it all better? Why not ask him? Heck, yes, it is time for the many of us who responded to his e-mails during the campaign to now challenge our e-mail buddy as to why he suddenly acts as if the interests of Wall Street and Main Street are one and the same.

Robert Scheer is editor in chief of Truthdig and the author of a new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”

Obama and the Empire

By William Bum, Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08072008.html

The New Yorker magazine in its July 14 issue ran a cover cartoon that achieved instant fame. It showed Barack Obama wearing Muslim garb in the Oval Office with a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall. Obama is delivering a fist bump to his wife, Michelle, who has an Afro hairdo and an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. An American flag lies burning in the fireplace. The magazine says it's all satire, a parody of the crazy right-wing fears, rumors, and scare tactics about Obama's past and ideology.

The cartoon makes fun of the idea that Barack and Michelle Obama are some kind of mixture of Black Panther, Islamist jihadist, and Marxist revolutionary. But how much more educational for the American public and the world it would be to make fun of the idea that Obama is even some kind of progressive.

I'm more concerned here with foreign policy than domestic issues because it's in this area that the US government can do, and indeed does do, the most harm to the world, to put it mildly. And in this area what do we find? We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state; totally ignoring Hamas, an elected ruling party in the occupied territory; decrying the Berlin Wall in his recent talk in that city, about the safest thing a politician can do, but with no mention of the Israeli Wall while in Israel, nor the numerous American-built walls in Baghdad while in Iraq; referring to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez as "authoritarian", but never referring similarly to the government of George W. Bush, certainly more deserving of the label; talking with the usual disinformation and hostility about Cuba, albeit with a token reform re visits and remittances. But would he dare mention the outrageous case of the imprisoned Cuban Five[1] in his frequent references to fighting terrorism?

While an Illinois state senator in January 2004, Obama declared that it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." But speaking as a presidential candidate to a Cuban-American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for change."[2] He thus went from a good policy for the wrong reason to the wrong policy for the wrong reason. Does Mr. Obama care any more than Mr. Bush that the United Nations General Assembly has voted -- virtually unanimously -- 16 years in a row against the embargo?

In summary, it would be difficult to name a single ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) that Obama has not been critical of, or to name one that he has supported. Can this be mere coincidence?

The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" more than the Bush administration has done sounds good, but one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't he simply and clearly state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else?

As to Iraq, if you're sick to the core of your being about the horrors US policy brings down upon the heads of the people of that unhappy land, then you must support withdrawal –- immediate, total, all troops, combat and non-combat, all the Blackwater-type killer contractors, not moved to Kuwait or Qatar to be on call. All bases out. No permanent bases. No permanent war. No timetables. No approval by the US military necessary. No reductions in forces. Just OUT. ALL. Just like what the people of Iraq want. Nothing less will give them the opportunity to try to put an end to the civil war and violence instigated by the American invasion and occupation and to recreate their failed state.

George W. Bush, 2006: "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done as long as the government wants us there."[3]

George W. Bush, 2007: "It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave."[4]

Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, 2008: "said his government was 'impatiently waiting' for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops."[5]

Barack Obama, 2008: We can "redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months."[6]

Obama's terms of withdrawal equals no withdrawal. Literally. Has he ever said that the war is categorically illegal and immoral? A war crime? Or that anti-American terrorism in the world is the direct result of oppressive US policies? Instead he calls for a troop increase and "the first truly 21st century military ... We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world."[7] Why of course, that's what the people of the United States and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the people in this sad world desperately desire and need -- greater American killing power! Obama is not so much concerned with ending America's endless warfare as he is with "succeeding" in them, by whatever perverted definition of that word.

And has he ever dared to raise the obvious question: Why would Iran, even if nuclear armed, be a threat to attack the US or Israel? Any more than Iraq was such a threat. Which was zero. Instead, he has said things like "Iran continues to be a major threat" and repeats the tiresome lie that the Iranian president called for the destruction of Israel.[8]

Obama, one observer has noted, "opposes the present US policy in Iraq not on the basis of any principled opposition to neo-colonialism or aggressive war, but rather on the grounds that the Iraq war is a mistaken deployment of power that fails to advance the global strategic interests of American imperialism."[9]

He and his supporters have made much of the speech he delivered in the Illinois state legislature in 2002 against the upcoming US invasion of Iraq. But two years later, when he was running for the US Senate, he declared: "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage."[10] Since taking office in January 2005, he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's false justifications for going to war in Iraq. In doing so, he lacked the courage of 12 of his Democratic Party Senate colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

If you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present moderate foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he lied to us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran[11], and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik.

When, in 2005, the other Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, stuck his neck out and compared American torture at Guantanamo to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings", and was angrily denounced by the right wing, Obama stood up in the Senate and ... defended him? No, he joined the critics, thrice calling Durbin's remark a "mistake".[12]

One of Obama's chief foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a man instrumental in provoking Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, which was followed by massive US military supplies to the opposition and widespread war. This gave rise to a generation of Islamic jihadists, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and more than two decades of anti-American terrorism. Asked later if he had any regrets about this policy, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war."[13]

Another prominent Obama adviser -- from a list entirely and depressingly establishment-imperial -- is Madeleine Albright, who should always wear gloves because her hands are caked with blood from her roles in the bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

In a primary campaign talk in March, Obama said that "he would return the country to the more 'traditional' foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan."[14] Use your imagination. Bloody serial interventionists, all.

Why have well-known conservatives like George Will, David Brooks, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, and others spoken so favorably about Obama's candidacy?[15] Whatever else, they know he's not a threat to their most cherished views and values.

Given all this, can we expect a more enlightened, less bloody, more progressive and humane foreign policy from Mr. Barack Obama? Forget the alleged eloquence and charm; forget the warm feel-good stuff; forget the interminable clichés and platitudes about hope, change, unity, and America's indispensable role as world leader; forget all the religiobabble; forget John McCain and George W. Bush ... All that counts is putting an end to the horror -- the bombings, the invasions, the killings, the destruction, the overthrows, the occupations, the torture, the American Empire.

Al Gore and John Kerry both took the progressive vote for granted. Neither had ever been particularly progressive themself. Each harbored a measure of disdain for the left. Both paid a heavy price for the neglect. I and millions like me voted for Ralph Nader, or some other third-party candidate, or stayed home. Obama is doing the same as Gore and Kerry. Progressives should let him know that his positions are not acceptable, keeping up the anti-war pressure on him and the Democratic Party at every opportunity. For whatever good it just might do.

I'm afraid that if Barack Obama becomes president he's going to break a lot of young hearts. And some older ones as well.

Writer Norman Solomon has written: "These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like "disillusionment." But that's a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place. The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place."

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

NOTES

[1] William Blum, "Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United States"

[2] Washington Post, February 25, 2008; p.A4

[3] New York Times. December 1, 2006, p.1

[4] White House press conference, May 24, 2007

[5] Washington Post, July 9, 2008

[6] Obama's website: www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/

[7] Speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 23, 2007

[8] Haaretz.com (leading Israeli newspaper), May 16, 2007

[9] Bill Van Auken, Global Research, July 18, 2008 -- http://www.globalresearch.ca/

[10] Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2004

[11] Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2004

[12] Congressional Record, June 21, 2005, p.S6897

[13] For the full Brzezinski interview see http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm

[14] Associated Press, March 28, 2008

[15] See, for example, Peter Wehner, "Why Republicans Like Obama", Washington Post, February 3, 2008, p.B7