We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security: Dwight David Eisenhower : 34th president of the United States, 1890-1969
Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is planning another war to add to his impressive record. In Afghanistan, his agents routinely extinguish wedding parties, farmers and construction workers with weapons such as the innovative Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of your lungs. According to the UN, 338,000 Afghan infants are dying under the Obama-led alliance, which permits only $29 per head annually to be spent on medical care.
Within weeks of his inauguration, Obama started a new war in Pakistan, causing more than a million people to flee their homes. In threatening Iran – which his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said she was prepared to “obliterate” – Obama lied that the Iranians were covering up a “secret nuclear facility”, knowing that it had already been reported to the International Atomic Energy Authority. In colluding with the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, he bribed the Palestinian Authority to suppress a UN judgment that Israel had committed crimes against humanity in its assault on Gaza – crimes made possible with US weapons whose shipment Obama secretly approved before his inauguration.
At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding that of any year since the end of the Second World War while presiding over a new kind of domestic repression. During the recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, hosted by Obama, militarised police attacked peaceful protesters with something called the Long-Range Acoustic Device, not seen before on US streets. Mounted in the turret of a small tank, it blasted a piercing noise as tear gas and pepper gas were fired indiscriminately. It is part of a new arsenal of “crowd-control munitions” supplied by military contractors such as Raytheon. In Obama’s Pentagon-controlled “national security state”, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, which he promised to close, remains open, and “rendition”, secret assassinations and torture continue.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner’s latest war is largely secret. On 15 July, Washington finalised a deal with Colombia that gives the US seven giant military bases. “The idea,” reported the Associated Press, “is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations . . . nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military transport] without refuelling”, which “helps achieve the regional engagement strategy”.
Translated, this means Obama is planning a “rollback” of the independence and democracy that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay have achieved against the odds, along with a historic regional co-operation that rejects the notion of a US “sphere of influence”. The Colombian regime, which backs death squads and has the continent’s worst human rights record, has received US military support second in scale only to Israel. Britain provides military training. Guided by US military satellites, Colombian paramilitaries now infiltrate Venezuela with the goal of overthrowing the democratic government of Hugo Chávez, which George W Bush failed to do in 2002.
Obama’s war on peace and democracy in Latin America follows a style he has demonstrated since the coup against the democratic president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in June. Zelaya had increased the minimum wage, granted subsidies to small farmers, cut back interest rates and reduced poverty. He planned to break a US pharmaceutical monopoly and manufacture cheap generic drugs. Although Obama has called for Zelaya’s reinstatement, he refuses to condemn the coup-makers and to recall the US ambassador or the US troops who train the Honduran forces determined to crush a popular resistance. Zelaya has been repeatedly refused a meeting with Obama, who has approved an IMF loan of $164m to the illegal regime. The message is clear and familiar: thugs can act with impunity on behalf of the US.
Obama, the smooth operator from Chicago via Harvard, was enlisted to restore what he calls “leadership” throughout the world. The Nobel Prize committee’s decision is the kind of cloying reverse racism that has beatified the man for no reason other than he is a member of a minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities, if not to the Afghan children he kills. This is the Call of Obama. It is not unlike a dog whistle: inaudible to most, irresistible to the besotted and boneheaded. “When Obama walks into a room,” gushed George Clooney, “you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere.”
The great voice of black liberation Frantz Fanon understood this. In The Wretched of the Earth, he described the “intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged”. Because political debate has become so debased in our media monoculture – Blair or Brown; Brown or Cameron – race, gender and class can be used as seductive tools of propaganda and diversion. In Obama’s case, what matters, as Fanon pointed out in an earlier era, is not the intermediary’s “historic” elevation, but the class he serves. After all, Bush’s inner circle was probably the most multiracial in presidential history. There was Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, all dutifully serving an extreme and dangerous power.
Britain has seen its own Obama-like mysticism. The day after Blair was elected in 1997, the Observer predicted that he would create “new worldwide rules on human rights” while the Guardian rejoiced at the “breathless pace [as] the floodgates of change burst open”. When Obama was elected last November, Denis MacShane MP, a devotee of Blair’s bloodbaths, unwittingly warned us: “I shut my eyes when I listen to this guy and it could be Tony. He is doing the same thing that we did in 1997.”
John Pilger
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Comments: 89
Colin Powell warned us about the "terror-industrial complex"
But anyway, with 6 times more people in China and India in this world than the USA there is no reason at all for the US to be the world’s cops.
I feel that the US should withdraw its troops out of all foreign countries at this time except Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and all the support that we are giving Pakistan. As those three countries are where the attack from al Qaeda against the US came from. Everything in the world is really ok and ok is just fine.
A war was being waged in Pakistan long before Obama was even elected. The fact that the Pakistani government seemed to think that ignoring it or would make it go away does not mean it did not exist and it didn't. The millions of Pakistani who have fled their home were not fleeing U.S. bombs so much as they were fleeing the oppression that the Taliban instituted in the areas that it has been allowed to control and the fact that you cannot see that suggests that that you are looking at the world through blinders as does much of your article.
You state "After all, Bush’s inner circle was probably the most multiracial in presidential history." as if it represented to total change in direction when in reality it was a continuation of a pattern that has developing since the Eisenhower administration, if not before. as non-whites and females have been allowed to occupy positions of power that were that were previously open only to white males. We now have more females and non-white males occupying positions of power at all levels of government and even corporate and business leadership than ever before and hopefully, It is a pattern that will continue to develop until those who occupy positions of power are more representative of all the many people that make up our great nation.
If you looked at the past you wouldn't be supporting the same treason that goes on today.
"At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding that of any year since the end of the Second World War while presiding over a new kind of domestic repression."
The budget includes expenditures for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. bush never put these expenses in the budget proper. he put them in supplemental budget expenses. In other words, Obama is being more honest about the monetary cost of war than bush was.
for no reason other than he is a member of a minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities
Funny. I didn't see that in the Nobel Committee statement. Maybe it's not liberals that are besotted.
Obama has called for Zelaya’s reinstatement
So you disagree with his methods not his goal. Obama is a consensus builder. You've just gotten used to bush "you're either for us or against us" mentality to foreign affairs.
I agree we are ruled more by oligarchy than by democracy at this point. I'm sure every president has had to answer to wealth to one degree or another. I wish you had more convincing evidence. What you've presented here is infused with too much conjecture.
These are facts you politically correct deny because you look at the world and what America does with your eyes shut.
The proof is all around you and Obama's lies are right out in the open.
Gitmo remains open as well as the CIA torture prisons, Obama has increased the wars in Afghanistan and keeps murdering innocent people, Obama has started a corporate war in Pakistan murdering innocent people, Obama lies about Iran on a daily basis, Obama lies about a nuclear free world he just wants America to be the only nuclear state, America continues to break more nuclear weapons agreements than any other country, Obama is bankrupting America with his unfounded military budget, Obama wants to weaponize space, the Iraq war and occupation continues another Obama lie. None of this is the action of a man of peace, Obama swept war crimes under the rug so he could continue the Bush policy of corporate war profiteering.
You fools need to wake up while you still have something to wake up to.
Please show me where I said you were a bush supporter. You can't. I didn't. Read my comment again. You'll see if you aren't blinded by your expectations. Why is this important? Because it is evidence that you have problems separating fact from conjecture. That doesn't make you bad or even wrong. It just indicates you may be an unreliable witness to the truth. Passion about one's beliefs can do that and we need passion.
The fact of the matter is that you have offered no direct evidence to counter my allegations. You just threw another pile of related but irrelevant fact mixed with opinion.
Do I agree with everything that Obama has done? No. But I sure as heck believe in the majority of steps he has taken and see it as a major improvement over the prior administration. No President is perfect or will make everyone happy. But I trust Obama to do the right thing. I believe that he is a moral man. And he has been in office less such a short time that it is unfair to make the judgments that I see people making on his Presidency. No other President has faced a major recession bordering on a depression along with two major wars all at the same time.
You said Obama murders. Is that a fact?
Was Obama given the Nobel Peace Prize for no reason other than he is a member of a minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities? You offer no proof of that. Should I accept that because you say it? Is it a fact?
All I'm saying is be careful with your facts and don't use innuendo unless you have your tongue placed firmly in your cheek. Otherwise it cheapens the legitimate parts of your argument.
I don't want to have to agree with your argument here because it would be terrible if you're right. I bet many people feel the same way. So, don't give us any reason to be critical of your argument. Hey, I probably make all the mistakes I'm being critical of you for. So, I'm not trying to come off like I do better. It's just that I observed these things and I also observed that without the innuendo and with a little more attention to employing more relevant evidence instead of related facts, your already good arguments would be much better.
"I don't want to have to agree with your argument here because it would be terrible if you're right."
This is standard American, never look at anything that shatters your perfect illusion of what America is.
The only hype is trying to make this post look like lies when you don't have anything to back what your saying.
I don't know what "standard American" means. What I mean is that if what you are proposing is happening it is a terrible thing so I don't want it to be true. I don't know why anyone in there right mind would want it to be true. I'm not saying I want to, would, or do deny the truth. It's easy to say someone is just going along with the party line or say this is just standard American. Prove your case with relevant facts, not by discounting the thoughts of people that haven't been convinced yet.
As for my "illusion of America", that was shattered a long long time ago at a very early age. I think I have a pretty good idea of what America is. There is as much good and as much evil here as you'll find in most any other country. We have on the whole always been an agressive country in the world. To say we are any less aggressive now would be foolish.
The only hype is trying to make this post look like lies when you don't have anything to back what your saying
I've been asking you to back up what you're saying. Look back at my comments regarding the content of your original post. Let's look at this: "At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding that of any year since the end of the Second World War while presiding over a new kind of domestic repression." The clear implication of this is that Obama is spending more on war this year than in any year since WWII. You are clever in the way you put it. But the fact of the matter is we don't know if you are accounting for inflation. We don't know if you are accounting for the fact that bush ran his two wars without putting most of the expense in the regular military budget. You haven't backed up the implication you made.
I see you have deleted from your post your allegation that Obama was given the Peace Prize for no reason other than he is a member of a minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities. I'm glad you did. I think you knew you couldn't back it up. It is, just as you say, hype. Your argument is much better off without it. Your second thoughts about that statement being in your post are also evidence that what I'm telling you, at least about that statement, is not "hype" and therefor it is reasonable for me to draw the conclusion that even you do not truely believe that I haven't backed up anything I'm saying.
Then there is this: Obama has called for Zelaya’s reinstatement
to which I commented: 'So you disagree with his methods not his goal. Obama is a consensus builder. You've just gotten used to bush "you're either for us or against us" mentality to foreign affairs."
You took this to mean I thought you were supporting bush. Which was not the case at all. I can understand how someone could jump to that conclusion. But that's one of the points I'm trying to make. You jump to conclusions in your argument without all the connecting evidence. Your reply actually helps prove that point.
However, the main point I was trying to make with my statement was that Obama may be using an approach to this issue that is different than bush's approach to foreign affairs. Based on the facts you provided on this issue, it seems clear to me that it is possible that Obama is willing to try to deal with the "bad guys" first and see where that goes before committing American lives or wittingly or unwittingly unleashing more bloodshed than is currently underway.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it is you that is tied to an idealistic illusion of what America is supposed to be.
Robert, Who said he was a moral man?
Sorry Robert. I didn't see that.
Perhaps you have forgotten that the Afghanistan war was started in 2001 after a little incident we all refer to as 9/11. It was neglected under the GW Bush administration, which is why it was a mess when the Obama administration came into office. Pakistan is not "another war," it is the same war, honestly waged. The heart of al qaeda is in the mountainous border region between the two countries, where it has been sitting largely ignored and rebuilding influence since around 2003. To end a war you have to pull the plug on the source of the war. Af-Pak is it, and has been it. Much of the rest of Pilger's essay is hyperboly.
Specifically regarding Honduras, Pilger also hyperbolizes to the point of being breathless. He has mischaracterized Zelaya's "wage increases" as good governance when in fact they were targeted bribes to solidify power. Both the US and UN legal research reports recently issued confirm that Zelaya was violating the Constitution and was legally and constitutionally removed from office as dictated by the Honduran constitution.
Listen, none of us wants to put our military personnel at risk and their families in anxiety and fear of their safe return. Most assuredly not Barack Obama. But pulling the plug unceremoniously is hardly a solution. The man is working hard to ask all the right questions, something that usually isn't done, so he can extract us from two wars that others handed him as royal messes. We should all want that he do that intelligently, not just follow some ideological pressure that will put our soldiers, and our long-term national security, at greater risk than it is now.
If Obama had pulled out of the region he would have been criticized by the hawks and the right-wing conservatives who want to see him fail. He has been backed into a corner.
His campaign promises are nothing but lies and his support of Bush cronies heading the military prove as much.
This propaganda that this war on innocent people is necessary just proves Obama is no different than any other empire builder.
Obama should have been looked at much closer as soon as we found out about his campaign funding lies.
It doesn't matter who gets elected the program never changes.
An excellent reason for Obama's plan of building relationships.
That's quite an assumption. Isn't it really more like a guess than a fact?
I have no intention of saying that everything posted is a lie? In fact I have indicated some agreement with you. I think if you are as objective about the truth as you attempt to present yourself to be, you should be working from the ideas we agree on instead of casting me as one of "politically correct". Your approach is reminding me of bush's all or nothing approach again.
You obvious support for these criminals leaves you lacking any interest in the real world.
There you go again (to borrow a phrase). I don't support criminals. Well, maybe some. The founding fathers were criminals to the English government. I do have an interest in the outside world. Just because I don't submit to your poorly supported conclusions doesn't mean I don't have an any interest in the world. I've traveled quite a bit over most of the world. Probably more than most people. I assure you the fact that you haven't convinced me doesn't reflect a lack of any interest in the world.
Why are you asking me, Robert? You made the statement. You back it up.
So let me get this straight, Jack....you think that unemployment is socialism? Do you think that Medicare is socialism? What businesses/companies has he nationalized?
What if those billions were used for small business loans to grow the economy, or to lessen the tax burden, or to help the downward slide of foreclosures? Nah... new planes, new submarines, and hundreds of military bases we haven't needed since the cold war are more important, right?
There are even submarine launched missles used to attack positions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I'm sure you understand that someone has to design and build the jets and subs. Those people are employed in part because of these contracts. Could the money be used more wisely at home? Perhaps some of it could. Certainly all of the money that was wasted by bush along with thousands of American and Iraqi lives could have been better spent.
Carla, While traveling earlier this year through Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, I saw the same thing.
The politically correct see Robert they just want to support the ruling regime that is guilty of mass murder and torture.
And the way most of the world, and a lot of potential future terrorists see this is -- the use of massively high-tech American hardware to do remote killing of people in one of the weakest countries on earth.
Please give us evidence that fighters are being used to terrorize innocent people who can't defend themselves. Don't give me evidence that they are terrified or terrorized. That won't cut it. Evdience that the INTENT is to terrorize them is what I'm asking for. Can you produce it?
No we don't. Nor did I say we do. But it is keeping a paycheck coming in to a lot of US families. Meanwhile we have Russia selling new MIG 29k fighters to countries like India. Maybe we should just hold on to the old fighters and let others pass us by.
And the way most of the world, and a lot of potential future terrorists see this is -- the use of massively high-tech American hardware to do remote killing of people in one of the weakest countries on earth.
I don't know how the rest of the world sees our use of high tech equipment. But I think the way many of them see it is that using high tech is one way we save American lives. They might even see it as a wise strategy given that the enemy has distinct and powerful advantages on the ground.
No, and if I said it to reflect support for mass murder, I would be despicable for doing so. But that's not why I said it. Since, as Robert says and I agree, we don't need a new fighter jet to do the job, your point is irrelevant. The fighter jets are deployed now and would be whether or not they are new.
We'll have to disagree on that, Jack. Because if you don't see the cleverness in your own statement it may further indicate a problem you may have distinguishing fact from fiction. Or it may show another kind of political correctness. Political correctness that fits in with those who share your beliefs.
What we really need is to bring back the draft so the amount of flag waving hypocrites can show some support to the troops that are put into these blood for oil wars by joining them.
I am not for war, believe me. I protested the Bush administration taking us into war to begin with, especially in Iraq. I hate the number of lives that have been lost--civilian and military. But we can't pull out quickly.
Was it about oil? Yes, I think it was to a certain extent. It was also about Bush taking care of what he thought his father didn't the first time we went to war in Iraq. He hated that his father didn't kill Sadam Hussein. He was determined to go over there and look like a hero. Instead, it has been a nightmare.
And the profiteering...yes, it is disgusting. Halliburton should be prosecuted. There are others too. The soldiers that were electrocuted in the showers because of shoddy work done by the electricians who were contracted.
Obama did not get the outdated war planes because Gates told him not to. The same Gates that murdered so many people for Bush and is also guilty of allowing torture by the military.
Its the drones they are using that are killing so many innocent people.
David did an excellent job straightening out all your twists and turns Jack, see his post above. It's you that keeps taking us around in a circle. You just keep attributing my challenge to you to provide us with convincing evidence as an act of political correctness, etc. That's just the kind of thinking bush used, "you're for us or you're against us don't ask questions, just follow along blindly because we know best." I'm sorry to find this out about you Jack. I was hoping you would turn out to be a reliable source for information on these issues. I thought you were what you said, free from political ideology in your analysis. However it appears you are just against whoever is in power. That's just adolescent cynicism not a ticket to the truth. Show us I'm wrong and make a comprehensive argument based on fact and your reasoned opinion not on simplistic cynicism.
David plays the same Obama party follower just like you do and that does not make truth or independent thinking.
Anyone that wants to post to my articles will post to the article only.
Maybe Obama's plan to bailout the newspaper industry will fix everything.
Their is no politician in government that works for the public good. Including a long list of presidents that grab more power not specified in the constitution that defines my government.
Do you mean that litterally? That there is no politician that -ever- works for the public good.
Do you believe there have ever been politicians that worked for the public good? If so, who?
R.F. I am asking you again to show some proof that this article is wrong besides your personal attitude.
How about a straight answer Jack. She's only asking for your opinion. You don't even have to back it up with facts.
I suppose its Iran's fault that Israel lies about its nuclear weapons and is backed by Obama?