Obama: the Big Sell and the Giant Denial - International Social/Political

The American propaganda machine is working overtime to background any compromising information and focus more on the puppy Obama promised his daughters if he won the presidency – are Americans really so easily distracted and duped? Think for a moment of the sons and daughters lost to countless loving parents as a direct result of the policies of the previous administration!

Regardless of the subterranean consciousness level of the average American the world is not easily duped -- the SOULS of a MILLION MURDERED INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN and CHILDREN (who will never see a puppy) DEMAND JUSTICE!

Obama would be well advised to take up the banner held aloft by Martin Luther King and other champions of social justice. Allowing Cheney and the rest to avoid accountability brands the future president as one of the fold, skin colour has nothing to do with it – have we so soon forgotten Colin 'Tom' Powell's deceptive performance at the UN or Condi Rice’s complicity in the deaths of hundreds of innocent children in South Lebanon – blacks are no less able than whites when it comes to duplicity, murder and crime? Infanticide remains the most heinous crime of all, regardless of the skin colour of the perpetrator!

The number (hundreds of thousands) of children that have died in Iraq as a direct result of the policies of Clinton and Bush is appalling and dwarfs the efforts of Bolton and Rice in Lebanon, notwithstanding that one child’s death is one too many.

If I am the last person on God’s earth to be offended by these ghastly crimes then so be it; I will never relent in my accusations and calls for justice. I would add that American commentators who know better are conveniently ignoring these issues at present, are you so exhausted, browbeaten, numbed and DEFEATED, or are you just plain star-spangled DENIERS?

A previous article (link below) portrayed Obama as the perfect replacement for the abrasive and criminal Bush regime. However, the author stated Obama is a FAKE, an intentionally chosen “palliative:”

The whole crazy world has forgotten the Iraq holocaust and the criminals responsible.

Bush has joined Powell, Biden and Albright warning of an attack. It's a certainty! But will this black flag op cut it with the people? The world is much wiser after the anthrax, 9/11 Pentagon absurdities.

Keep your media hyped eyes on Obama, dummies. The rest of us are watching Cheney, Israel, the UK and Germany.

In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir's terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day's Arab News (Jeddah) was titled, "Don't pin much hope on Obama -- Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message". This editorial referred to the Irgun as a "terror organization" (a judgment call) and concluded: "Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing."

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world's billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president's eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts -- not incidentally, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America's unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and "national security" problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquestioned brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the earliest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming -- the naming as "Special Envoy for Middle East Peace" of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off "think tank", the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Nevertheless, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been "waiting for Godot" -- waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new "only game in town".

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Bibi Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian "state" (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a "two-state solution" somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, non-racist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually cleansing it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, non-racist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president -- least of all Barack Obama -- could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual "peace process" as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more "facts on the ground") forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.) Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and non-racist "rainbow nation".

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as "senior citizens" will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a "Mandela Moment" or an "Obama Moment", restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

Author retains copyright.

the Big Sell of Obama is already failing -- a recent BBC interviewer abruptly interrupted a commentator when it was obvious he was about to criticise Obama's acceptance speech! We expect that from Murdoch's Fox 'News' but not the BBC -- the Big sell is also clearly apparent in Australia and other nations across the globe.

These media tactics reek of uniform central control, who would have thought? Wake up world! However, logic dictates that Obama must fail, there is absolutely no way he is able to meet the high expectations his campaign created. His own people have doomed him to failure -- a HUGE wave of public disappointment is inevitable!

Obama didn't select 'his' chief of staff, Israeli citizen Rahm Emanuel, the powers did -- Obama, just another 'house slave.'

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