by Chuck Baldwin
December 5, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
"Change you can believe in." This was Barack Obama's campaign slogan. There is no doubt that the American people were fed up with George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans. Who can blame them?
After campaigning for change back in 1999 (What political challenger doesn't campaign for change?), President Bush and his fellow neocons promptly set out to continue business as usual in Washington, D.C. Federal spending and meddling exploded under the leadership of the GOP. In fact, one has to go back to the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt to match the increases in Big Government and Big Brother by Bush and Company. Add to the out-of-control spending habits of the GOP an unnecessary war, a near-Depression economy, and a burgeoning police state. It is no surprise that the American people were ready for change. And Obama excelled in delivering the message of change. So, what kind of change will Obama actually deliver?
Will Obama remove U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? Probably not. Oh, he might reduce troops in Iraq, but if anyone believes that he will not leave a significant U.S. presence in Iraq, they are living in a dream world. Furthermore, many, if not most, of the troops from Iraq will most likely find themselves in Afghanistan. Mark my words; Barack Obama has no plans to remove U.S. troops from the Middle East. Net result: no change.
What about America's economic woes? What changes will Barack Obama bring to the table? Hardly any. America will continue it's trademark deficit spending; we will continue to send manufacturing jobs overseas; so-called "free trade" deals will continue to advance; Big Business will continue to receive government bailouts; the Federal Reserve will continue to call the shots for America's financial decisions (and reap gargantuan profits in the process); Congress will continue to be inept, irresponsible, and clueless; there will be no attempt to return the United States to sound money principles; and there will be no reduction in foreign aid. In a nutshell, it will be business as usual in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Don't get me wrong: Barack Obama will doubtless throw out some bones to his liberal supporters in much the same way that Republican presidents throw out a bone or two to their conservative constituents. Watch for Obama to overturn the ban on embryonic stem cell research. America's upper income earners can expect some sort of tax increase. No doubt oil companies will end up losing some tax exemptions. Watch for additional environmentalist policies to be enacted. And, yes, there will be some sort of "universal health care" proposal. But the Bush administration has already given America a socialized financial system, so how can Republicans complain about socialized medicine?
Obama might try to resurrect the "Fairness Doctrine." Some suggest that Obama might try to rid the prohibition of homosexuals serving in the armed forces, but I doubt that he will take on this one. The political net gain would not be worth the potential fallout.
Although he might want to, I doubt that Obama will actively promote additional gun control (Democrats always lose when this happens). He may push for a ban on "high capacity" magazines that hold over ten rounds, as Bill Clinton did. If Obama does not go after guns directly, we can expect some sort of attack on ammunition (which is already happening) that will drive up the cost of ammo even more. Of course, some sort of gun confiscation or martial law could materialize in the wake of another "terrorist" attack. But a McCain administration would act no differently, so, again, the net result is zero change. Remember, it was Republican George W. Bush who expunged Posse Comitatus and deployed 20,000 army troops on U.S. soil to be used for domestic law enforcement. If Obama really wanted to bring about change, he would reverse Bush's draconian decisions, would he not? Don't hold your breath.
We can also expect more harassment of gun owners and lawful gun dealers by the BATFE. But this is no change at all. The current leadership at BATFE is already about as hostile to gun owners and gun dealers as it can possibly be. An Obama BATFE will be no worse. But neither will it be any better. Net result: no change.
So, what will be the overall change to the direction of America? Answer: there will be no change to the overall direction of the country. There will be no change to the welfare state. There will be little change to the warfare state. No change to NATO, except to expand it. Very little change, if any, to foreign policy. No change to America's open sieves, otherwise called national borders. And there will be absolutely no change to the burgeoning New World Order that began in earnest under both Bushes and Bill Clinton.
The NAFTA superhighway will have the support of the Obama administration. The North American Community will proceed unimpeded by the Obama White House. In all likelihood, the Amero (a common currency with Canada and Mexico) will materialize during Obama's first term. But this would all have happened had John McCain been elected. No change here.
One reason why it is so easy to predict a business-as-usual Obama Presidency is the people that Obama has surrounded himself with. Former New York Federal Reserve chairman Timothy Geithner* for Secretary of the Treasury; former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers* for National Economic Council director; Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates* will keep his job; Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel for Obama's Chief of Staff; Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State; Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano* for Secretary of Homeland Security; former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle* to head the Health and Human Services Department; former Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder to be Attorney General; New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson* as Secretary of Commerce; Susan Rice* for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Paul Volcker* for the Economic Recovery Advisory Board; James Steinberg* as Deputy Secretary of State; Mona Sutphen* for Deputy White House Chief of Staff, and Louis Caldera* for Director of the White House Military Office.
Does anyone see "change" with the above names? Every one of them is a longtime political insider. And at least eleven of them (those with an asterisk [*] behind their names, above) are members of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In fact, six out of the eleven cabinet-level positions in the Obama administration are CFR members.
The CFR has dominated both Democrat and Republican Presidential administrations for decades. Presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton have all been members of the CFR. Vice Presidents such as Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, and Dick Cheney have been CFR members. And over the last several decades, practically every secretary of defense, secretary of the treasury, and most CIA directors have been CFR members. And let's not forget that this year's Republican Presidential nominee, John McCain, is a CFR member.
Do you now see why--no matter who is elected President of the United States--nothing changes? Republican or Democrat, it does not matter: the CFR and their collaborators remain in power. And as Sonny and Cher used to sing, "The Beat Goes On."
There will be no real change in Washington, D.C., until the CFR and their elitist cronies are thoroughly and universally removed from power. And the only way this will happen is if we elect an Independent President of the United States (someone who truly understands the New World Order and is dedicated to defeating it), because the two major parties will never allow someone opposed to the CFR to become their nominee. The only Republican candidate for President in 2008 who demonstrated those credentials was Dr. Ron Paul. And to a lesser degree, the only Democrat who even seemed to vaguely understand this was Dennis Kucinich. Notice that both men were thoroughly repudiated by their respective parties' leadership and all but totally ignored by the national news media. (The CFR and their surrogates also control the national news media. What a coincidence!)
--MORE--""The Election Of The Greatest Con-Man In Recent History
by James Petras
12-8-8
"I have a vision of Americans in their 80's being wheeled to their offices and factories having lost their legs in imperial wars and their pensions to Wall Street speculators and with bitter memories of voting for a President who promised change, prosperity and peace and then appointed financial swindlers and war mongers." -- An itinerant Minister, 2008
Introduction
The entire political spectrum ranging from the 'libertarian' left, through the progressive editors of the Nation to the entire far right neo-con/Zionist war party and free market Berkeley/Chicago/Harvard academics, with a single voice, hailed the election of Barack Obama as a 'historic moment', a 'turning point in American history and other such histrionics. For reasons completely foreign to the emotional ejaculations of his boosters, it is a historic moment: witness the abysmal gap between his 'populist' campaign demagoguery and his long-standing and deepening carnal relations with the most retrograde political figures, power brokers and billionaire real estate and financial backers.
What was evident from even a cursory analysis of his key campaign advisers and public commitments to Wall Street speculators, civilian militarists, zealous Zionists and corporate lawyers was hidden from the electorate, by Obama's people friendly imagery and smooth, eloquent deliverance of a message of 'hope'. He effectively gained the confidence, dollars and votes of tens of millions of voters by promising 'change' (implying higher taxes for the rich, ending the Iraq war and national health care reform) when in fact his campaign advisers (and subsequent strategic appointments) pointed to a continuation of the economic and military policies of the Bush Administration.
Within 3 weeks of his election he appointed all the political dregs who brought on the unending wars of the past two decades, the economic policy makers responsible for the financial crash and the deepening recession castigating tens of millions of Americans today and for the foreseeable future. We can affirm that the election of Obama does indeed mark a historic moment in American history: The victory of the greatest con man and his accomplices and backers in recent history.
He spoke to the workers and worked for their financial overlords.
He flashed his color to minorities while obliterating any mention of their socio-economic grievances.
He promised peace in the Middle East to the majority of young Americans and slavishly swears undying allegiance to the War Party of American Zionists serving a foreign colonial power (Israel).
Obama, on a bigger stage, is the perfect incarnation of Melville's Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives thanks as he packs you off to fight wars in the Middle East on behalf of a foreign country. He solemnly mouths vacuous pieties while he empties your Social Security funds to bail out the arch financiers who swindled your pension investments. He appoints and praises the architects of collapsed pyramid schemes to high office while promising you that better days are ahead.
Yes, indeed, "our greatest intellectual critics", our 'libertarian' leftists and academic anarchists, used their 5-figure speaking engagements as platforms to promote the con man's candidacy: They described the con man's political pitch as "meeting the deeply felt needs of our people". They praised the con man when he spoke of 'change' and 'turning the country around' 180 degrees. Indeed, Obama went one step further: he turned 360 degrees, bringing us back to the policies and policy makers who were the architects of our current political-economic disaster.
The Con Man's Self-Opiated Progressive Camp Followers
The contrast between Obama's campaign rhetoric and his political activities was clear, public and evident to any but the mesmerized masses and the self-opiated 'progressives' who concocted arguments in his favor. Indeed even after Obama's election and after he appointed every Clintonite-Wall Street shill into all the top economic policy positions, and Clinton's and Bush's architects of prolonged imperial wars (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates), the 'progressive true believers' found reasons to dog along with the charade. Many progressives argued that Obama's appointments of war mongers and swindlers was a 'ploy' to gain time now in order to move 'left' later.
Never ones to publicly admit their 'historic' errors, the same progressives turned to writing 'open letters to the President' pleading the 'cause of the people'. Their epistles, of course, may succeed in passing through the shredder in the Office of the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
The conjurer who spoke of 'change' now speaks of 'experience' in appointing to every key and minor position the same political hacks who rotate seamlessly between Wall Street and Washington, the Fed and Academia. Instead of 'change' there is the utmost continuity of policy makers, policies and above all ever deepening ties between militarists, Wall Street and the Obama appointments. True believer-progressives, facing their total debacle, grab for any straw. Forced to admit that all of Obama's appointments represent the dregs of the bloody and corrupt past, they hope and pray that 'current dire circumstances' may force these unrepentant warmongers and life long supporters of finance capital to become supporters and advocates of a revived Keynesian welfare state.
On the contrary, Obama and each and everyone of his foreign policy appointments to the Pentagon, State and Justice Departments, Intelligence and Security agencies are calling for vast increases in military spending, troop commitments and domestic militarization to recover the lost fortunes of a declining empire. Obama and his appointees plan to vigorously pursue Clinton-Bush's global war against national resistance movements in the Middle East. His most intimate and trusted 'Israel-First' advisers have targeted Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and Iraq.
Obama's Economic Con Game
Then there is the contrast between the trillions Obama will shower on the financial swindlers (and any other 'too big to fail' private capitalist enterprise) and his zero compensation for the 100 million heads of families swindled of $5 trillion dollars in savings and pensions by his cohort appointees and bailout beneficiaries. Not a cent is allocated for the long term unemployed. Not a single household threatened with eviction will be bailed out.
Obama is the trademark name of a network of confidence people. They are a well-organized gang of prominent political operative, money raisers, mass media hustlers, real estate moguls and academic pimps. They are joined and abetted by the elected officials and hacks of the Democratic Party. Like the virtuoso performer, Obama projected the image and followed the script. But the funding and the entire 'populist' show was constructed by the hard-nosed, hard-line free marketeers, Jewish and Gentile 'Israel Firsters', Washington war mongers and a host of multi-millionaire 'trade union' bureaucrats.
The electoral scam served several purposes above and beyond merely propelling a dozen strategic con artists into high office and the White House. First and foremost, the Obama con-gang deflected the rage and anger of tens of millions of economically skewered and war drained Americans from turning their hostility against a discredited presidency, congress and the grotesque one-party two factions political system and into direct action or at least toward a new political movement.
Secondly the Obama image provided a temporary cover for the return and continuity of all that was so detested by the American people the arrogant untouchable swindlers, growing unemployment and economic uncertainty, the loss of life savings and homes and the endless, ever-expanding imperial wars.
Featuring Paul Volker, 'Larry' Summers, Robert Gates, the Clintons, Geithner, Holder and General ('You drink your kool-aid while I sit on Boeings' Board of Directors') Jim Jones USMC, Obama treats us to a re-run of military surges and war crimes, Wall Street banditry, Abu Ghraib, AIPAC hustlers and all the sundry old crap. Our Harvard-minted Gunga Din purports to speak for all the colonial subjects but acts in the interest of the empire, its financial vampires, its war criminals and its Middle East leaches from the Land of the Chosen.
The Two Faces of Obama
Like the Janus face found on the coins of the early Roman Republic, Obama and his intimate cronies cynically joked about 'which is the real face of Barack', conscious of the con-job they were perpetrating during the campaign. In reality, there is only one face - a very committed, very consequential and very up front Obama, who demonstrated in every single one of his appointments the face of an empire builder.
Obama is an open militarist, intent by every means possible to re-construct a tattered US empire. The President-Elect is an unabashed Wall Street Firster one who has placed the recuperation of the biggest banks and investment houses as his highest priority. Obama's nominees for all the top economic positions (Treasury, Chief White House economic advisers) are eminently qualified, (with long-term service to the financial oligarchy), to pursue Obama's pro-Wall Street agenda. There is not a single member of his economic team, down to the lowest level of appointees, who represents or has defended the interests of the wage or salaried classes (or for that matter the large and small manufacturers from the devastated 'productive' industrial economy).
The Obama propagandists claim his appointments reflect his preference for 'experience' which is true: his team members have plenty of 'experience' through their long and lucrative careers maximizing profits, buyouts and speculation favoring the financial sector. Obama does not want to have any young, untested appointees who have no long established records of serving Big Finance, whose interests are too central to Obama's deepest and most strongly held core beliefs. He wanted reliable economic functionaries who recognize that re-financing billionaire financiers is the central task of his regime. The appointments of the Summers, Rubins, Geithners and Volkers fit perfectly with his ideology: They are the best choices to pursue his economic goals.
Critics of these nominations write of the 'failures' of these economists and their role in 'bringing about the collapse of the financial system'. These critics fail to recognize that it is not their 'failures', which are the relevant criteria, but their unwavering commitment to the interests of Wall Street and their willingness to demand trillions of dollars more from US taxpayers to bolster their colleagues on Wall Street.
Under Clinton and Bush, in the run up to the financial collapse, they facilitated ('deregulated') the practice of swindling one hundred million Americans of trillions in private savings and pension funds. In the current crisis period with Obama they are just the right people to swindle the US Treasury of trillions of dollars in bailout funds to refinance their fellow oligarchs. The White President (Bush) leaves steaming financial turds all over the White House rugs and Wall Street summons the 'historic' Negro President Obama to organize the cleanup crew to scoop them out of public view.
Obama, the Militarist, Outdoes His Predecessor
What makes Obama a much more audacious militarist and Wall Streeter than Bush is that he intends to pursue military policies, which have already greatly harmed the US people with appointed officials who have already been discredited in the context of failed imperial wars and with a domestic economy in collapse. While Bush launched his wars after the US public had their accustomed peace shattered by an orchestrated fear-mongering after 9/11, Obama intends to launch his escalation of military spending in the context of a generalized public disenchantment with the ongoing wars, with monumental fiscal deficits, bloated military budgets and after 100,000 US soldiers have been killed, wounded or psychologically destroyed.
Obama's appointments of Clinton, General Jim Jones, dual Israeli citizen Rahm Emanuel and super-Zionist Dennis Ross, among others, fit perfectly with his imperial-militarist agenda of escalating military aggression. His short list of intelligence candidates, likewise, fits perfectly with his all-out effort to "regain US world leadership" (reconstruct US imperial networks).
All the media blather about Obama's efforts at 'bipartisanship', 'experience' and 'competence' obscures the most fundamental questions: The specific nominees chosen from both parties are totally committed to military-driven empire-building. All are in favor of "a new effort to renew America's standing in the world" (read 'America's imperial dominance in the world'), as Obama's Secretary of State-to-be, Hillary Clinton, declared. General James Jones, Obama's choice for National Security Advisor, presided over US military operations during the entire Abu Ghraib/Guantanemo period. He was a fervent supporter of the 'troop surge' in Iraq and is a powerful advocate for a huge increase in military spending, the expansion of the military by over 100,000 troops and the expanded militarization of American domestic society (not to mention his personal financial ties to the military industrial complex). Robert Gates, continuing as Obama's Secretary of Defense, is a staunch supporter of unilateral, unlimited and universal imperial warfare. As the number of US-allied countries with troops in Iraq declines from 35 to only 5 by January 1, 2009 and even the Iraqi puppet regime calls for a withdrawal of all US troops by 2012, Gates, the intransigent, insists on a permanent military presence.
The issue of 'experience' revolves around two questions: (a) experience related to what past political practices? (b) experience relevant to pursue what future policies? All the nominees' past experiences are related to imperial wars, colonial conquests and the construction of client states. Hiliary Clinton's 'experience' was through her support for the bombing of Yugoslavia and the Nato invasion of Kosova, her promotion of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an internationally recognized terrorist-criminal organization as well as the unrelenting bombings of Iraq in the 1990s, Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel's murderous bombing of civilian centers in Lebanonand now full-throated calls for the 'total obliteration of Iran'. Clinton, Gates and Jones have never in their mature political careers proposed the peaceful settlement of disputes with any adversary of the US or Israel. In other words, their vaunted 'experience' is based solely on their one-dimensional militarist approach to foreign relations.
'Competence', as an attribute again depends on the issue of 'competence to do what'? In general terms, 'The Three' (Clinton, Gates and Jones), have demonstrated the greatest incompetence in extricating the US from prolonged, costly and lost colonial wars. They lack the minimum capacity to recognize that military-driven empire-building in the context of independent states is no longer feasible, that its costs can ruin an imperial economy and that prolonged wars erode their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens.
Even within the framework of imperial geo-political strategic thinking, their positions exhibit the most dense incompetence: They blindly back a small, highly militarized and ideologically fanatical colonial state (Israel) against 1.5 billion Muslims living in oil and mineral resource-rich nations with lucrative markets and investment potential and situated in the strategic center of the world. They promote total wars against whole populations, as is occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and, which, by all historical experience, cannot be won. They are truly 'Masters of Defeat'.
The point of the matter is that Obama appointed the 'Big Three' for their experience, competence and bipartisan support in the pursuit of imperial wars. He overlooked their glaring failures, their gross violations of the basic norms of civilization (of the human rights of tens of millions civilians in sovereign nations) because of their willingness to pursue the illusions of a US-dominated new world order.
Conclusion
Nothing speaks to Obama's deep and abiding commitment to become the savior of the US empire as clearly as his willingness to appoint to the highest position of policy making the most mediocre failed politicians and generals merely because of their demonstrated willingness to pursue the course of military-driven empire building even in the midst of a collapsing domestic economy and ever more impoverished and drained citizenry.
Just as Obama's electoral campaign and subsequent victory will go into the annals as the political con-job of the new millennium, his economic and political appointments will mark another 'historic' moment: The nomination of corrupt and failed speculators and warmongers. Let us join the inaugural celebration of our 'First Afro-American' Imperial President, who wins by con and rules by guns!
--MORE--"
