The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2009)

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Barack H. Obama the Image-Maker

 

 

JOHN SARGIS

 

 

 

For hire

 

Obama was granted presidential nominee status as a reward, by the political and economic elite, because he accepted their conditions, as every President or member of the elite must do before taking their place, for assuming the right to be commander-in-chief, because he can best deliver a “change” in perception, as a refreshing face, by someone who is not a Washington insider and who is going to change the way Washington does business ― no business as usual with Obama. George W. Bush was presented to the American people in the exact same way ― as one who was not a Washington insider and was going to change the way Washington operates. Obama’s claim of legitimate authority to rule came from a foggy brained electorate absorbed by the hokum surrounding Obama’s “change” campaign. Accordingly, the people are socialized into accepting the claims of the legitimacy of power and hierarchy by internalizing the values, beliefs and norms associated with a hierarchical social paradigm. The people genuinely accept and obey these assertions of authority from the higher ups, because it is easier to believe them rather than revolt against heteronomy and make the attempt at self-determination by breaking with that dogma given at birth and replacing it with a new democratic form of social organization, since there is not yet a dominant alternative social paradigm to the market economy and representative “democracy”, the people are blamed as getting what they deserve while forgetting the System and its institutions are the conditions for inequality.[1]

 

In Obama’s administration America’s image will no longer pose as the bullying militaristic barbarian of the Bush Doctrine. He will renovate the government façade into a friendly militaristic barbarian and refurbish the economy reflecting the neoliberal policies of his Wall Street backers in order to put the economy back on the path of lasting growth and prosperity. The economic crisis, which is a world recession, we are told, is easing which will regain the trust of ordinary people in the System, i.e. the market economy and representative “democracy” which is the cause of the multidimensional crisis our societies face[2]. The required shift (that neither Clinton nor McCain could pull off) to share more power with other members of the transnational elite will suit an American foreign and domestic policy that is meant to re-erect America’s image in the world as a moral light (yet keep its military superiority), which had fallen into ill repute by the criminal Bush gang and lent itself as an organizing tool for America’s “enemies”. On the domestic front Obama’s task is to restore domestic legitimacy (read: tranquility) in the criminal workings of the US government. The requirement to carry on this tradition with the appearance of change emphasizes a perceived modification in tactics, while the national interests and strategies of the US remain the same, by crafting a re-made America. For this to take root Obama will spread good will with the new face of American authority around the world. The elites hope with their freshly sanitized spokesman to elicit from the American people a regained confidence in representative “democracy” and the market economy, in terms of “what it can do” (re-tooled, re-surfaced) with his stimulus package of $735 billion which will restore market confidence. Obama is also tasked to return accountable government and fairness to its rightful place by regulating Wall Street, a task easier to mouth than implement because of the vast interconnections between the elites of the market economy and representative “democracy”. This change in demeanor is to dissociate the US from the neocon cruelties administered through Bush’s state sponsored terror policies (of course with resounding congressional resolution). Thus, Obama was selected, his campaign being hatched in corporate board rooms, to carry on a tradition of concentrating power in the hands of various elites whose economic and political decisions form the basis of the multidimensional crisis. The symbolic victory that Obama's election represents as the first African-American President has all but floundered as he first used the Pentagon's bestial power to slaughter three poor teenage Somalis, who have seen  the pillage of their fishing grounds and the pollution of their coastline by Europeans and others and became coastguardsmen to survive. The African-American President of course sided with the interests of the elites who selected him (the ship-owners and others) rather than with the black people of Somalia, the granddads of who, like his own forbearers, might have been stolen as slaves to the US!. The neoliberal pillage of Africa continues, only this time in the name of an African-American President.

 

Obama is tasked to fashion a global pitch for which “America again” will carry the “torch of freedom” for all those who seek liberty. A freedom smashed by Bush’s temerarious crudities.  To put a presumed end to the Bush dictatorship Obama immediately signed presidential orders closing the Guantánamo gulag, ending torture, suspending the kangaroo military commission courts[3], ending the Iraq occupation and dropping “enemy combatant” and “war on terror” terminology, however, he left open in no uncertain terms that America will continue torturing those seeking to destroy the American way of life, rendering terrorists to new black sights, i.e. Bagram air base, and widening the “good war”; and speaking directly to the Muslim world, in the guise of a fresh openness he lectures them that they are the cause of their country’s poverty or social ills, not Western values, not the fact that the US interferes in the internal affairs of  nations.

 

The plan

 

Barack, as CEO of the free world and the world’s largest economy, has to restore confidence in US economic growth, that his stimulus will “jumpstart the economy”, since the grow-or-die dynamic is one of the fundamentals of the market economy.[4] How will he restore confidence and create 3-4 million jobs? With grandiose plans of building roads, bridges, electrical grids, schools, and using science and technology to solve health care, energy, education, housing, etc. problems.[5] The release on March 5, 2009 of funds from the stimulus plan of $8.4 billion to the 50 states amounts to chicken feed compared to what it would take to repair, and build road, bridge, highway infrastructure.[6] He plans for better quality at lower costs that will push the economy to grow. The exact same system of appropriating monies and divvying up contracts remains intact from the federal to state to county and local levels, and those who traditionally need jobs will again be left out of the opportunity to access them. Obama is spearheading the sell that he will transform society to meet the demands of the new age, that is, to grow green commerce and greener banks, thus he is demanding from an already stressed workforce (598,000, 651,000, 663,000, and 530,000 approximate jobs lost in the US in January, February, March, and April ’09 respectively with an unemployment rate at 8.9%) more sacrifices so that new green industries will be under capitalist control  that will be harnessing solar, geo-thermal energies, introducing green autos and even greener  manufacturing and other industries using alternative fuel technologies, etc. The “green capitalism” promoted by Obama and the transnational elite does not, of course, help in any way to sort out the ecological crisis, since its main cause is capitalism itself and its grow-or-die dynamic. There is no guarantee that green commerce jobs will pay substantial living wages even though there will be pressure to keep the pay at or above minimum wage with little or no union organizing. Obama will retain the ownership in the hands of corporate entrepreneurs in the hope of enhancing global markets. Obama believes in the fundamentals of the market economy.  He seeks a re-newed public philosophy based on the same failed concepts blending natural law, faith in progress, market morality and faith-based initiatives. The neoliberal consensus cannot be reversed within the present system of the internationalized market economy which necessitates open and liberalized markets and representative “democracy”. Change can only proceed from outside the system. Reforms, even from “below”, give the illusion of change, but do not change anything. The system remains intact controlling political and economic decision taking. It is urgent that the present system be overthrown as a way of organizing society as it now does with market values ingrained in the dominant social paradigm and the multitude of fetishes it reproduces for the consuming/producing public, who are kept ignorant by their institutions controlling and reproducing the unequal distribution of power. At stake are lucrative government contracts for private companies, NGOs, and faith-based groups.  The authority of the people to take decisions in the economic sphere has been effectively removed by those economic and political elites who have accumulated power:[7]

“Economic democracy therefore relates to a social system which institutionalises the integration of society and the economy and may be defined as an economic structure and a process which, through direct citizen participation in the economic decision-taking and decision-implementing process, secures an equal distribution of economic power among citizens. This means that, ultimately, the demos controls the economic process, within an institutional framework of demotic ownership of the means of production.”

Furthermore, it is the international corporate terrorists who, having polluted the land and water, worsened everyone’s health and with its Congressional minions, like Senators Dodd and Lieberman from Connecticut, have fashioned a corporate state to oversee the global economy, fear democracy.[8] Why is it there are so many corporate lobbyists who finance (thereby making running for office cost prohibitive for the ordinary citizen) the elections of Congress? For them to protect power. For the market elites this crisis is an opportune time to further consolidate their capital. The recent acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry are another example, and soon the global unifying of the auto industry among others. It has nothing to do with just laws, but all to do about economic power. The economic control of the economy is not being undermined, but enhanced. The US government is enabling those Wall Street pirates who created the financial bubble to accumulate their power even more. That is why there will never be single payer healthcare in the US as the number of people without healthcare is approaching 50 million. The lobbyists and their companions in Congress are the enemies of democracy and they will not let any single payer healthcare bill ever be sponsored or anything that benefits the social realm, since the neoliberal consensus frees markets from any kind of social control. Yes, the real pirates are sitting in Congress, the White House and the transnational corporations and not in Somalia. The US under Obama's orders killed 3 teenage Somalis, who are trying to save their country, to save one US taxpayer. One would think that Obama the Rational (he's such a refreshing intellectual) who wants to mend ties with Muslims, would have been more sensitive to the suffering of his African brothers and would not have signed their death warrant. Now millions of US taxpayers are held hostage by Wall Street pirates who have decimated the world economy, destroyed lives, raided pensions, ruined savings, made people homeless, etc., and demand the US government pay them for their crimes, and what does Obama do? He pays, with his pirate friends in Congress the ransom of up to 2 trillion dollars and counting to these corporate pirates who are wrecking more havoc than a few Somalis trying to save their country from leeches. So, it is our right, and the time is now to dissolve the political bands which are a partnership with the market economy and replace them with an inclusive democracy.

 

The concentration of economic decision-taking that corporations control with their Congressional cronies obliterates the people from any type of democratic decision-taking in the economic sphere. So are Americans free when they are denied making economic or political decisions?  US soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for market freedom while here at home we are denied economic democracy, as well as any real political democracy where people themselves take decisions rather than the elite. The US is a corporate security state. The US invaded those two countries claiming they were dictatorships. But the US is a dictatorship too. Yes, the US harbors terrorists and abets terrorism. The release of the torture memos on April 16, ‘09 proves this beyond doubt, yet Obama says that he will not seek prosecution of those who wrote the memos or tortured prisoners as he wants to look forward in “reflection, not retribution”, yet he plans to go ahead with trials of those who were tortured.  All this has nothing to do with laying blame, but bringing to justice those who were tortured and not those who wrote the torture memos. On April 21, ‘09 Obama changed course so as not to interfere with the Justice Department. He said that he is open to prosecuting the authors of the memos, however standing by his previous statement that he does not favor prosecuting the torturers, and of this writing John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who wrote the torture memos, will not face criminal charges.[9] This is not for Obama to decide whether the Justice Department will prosecute home-grown torturers. However, since the Nuremberg Trials, it has been held that following an unlawful order does not protect one from criminal liability, and it is incumbent upon the Justice Department to follow through with prosecutions for those who ordered the memos, the writers of the memos, and the torturers ― something that it will not of course do!

 

The ID perspective on economic power refers to the economic decision-taking made by citizen assemblies assuring the equal distribution of economic power. However, the economic elites have a friend in Obama, who pledges a new society, but one, in spite of the disaster the market created, based on market values. He has no plan to create a new society based on freedom, equality, and justice which can only be achieved in an inclusive democracy.  By promoting and rewarding the same system that created the crisis, with some safe-guards to appease the people (after all it is their money that is being stolen) and advancing a global accounting model so that money and financial flows can be more closely monitored (against those who write the loopholes into the legislation) seeks to dispel the fact that political and economic elites will retain their decision-taking power over the public.  To accommodate their global plan the members of the transnational economic elite are pushing for governments to adopt a "binding code of conduct across nations to coordinate how and when they would intercede in troubled firms, and how to share losses from major financial institutions that operate across borders.”[10]

 

The operation

 

Obama and his base have craftily deflected blame for the crisis on the System to greedy individuals or reckless corporations, yet the Bush/Obama team transferred some 2 trillion dollars from the public treasury to save the System itself that creates the crisis. The propping up of this corporation and that company has everything to do with saving private businesses by saving the money people, i.e., stockholders and lenders. Banks and financial institutions could have been socialized so that only capitalists become bankrupt and are expropriated, while workers take over the control of the enterprises. But then the capitalist system would become redundant. So it is not a bailout but a heist and shifting of public funds to private coffers. The stockholders have had their investments guaranteed by the public. Corporate stocks are boosted at the expense of the public treasury. It is not that some businesses are too big to fail. Chrysler was left to go bankrupt. Why not the others? Because then the workers would be given incentive to take them over. With this theft the elites will remain in control. While over 2 million Americans lost jobs since the beginning of the year and retirement pensions dissipated, values of homes sinking further, children going hungry and 40-odd million without healthcare, Wall Street is rebounding to making obscene profits as “workers at the largest financial institutions are on track to earn as much money this year as they did before the financial crisis began, because of the stronger start of the year for bank profits”[11] The elites’ attempts, like the  G20 meeting in London, at global cooperation to strengthen the market economy proves that the System is irrational, and their efforts will not solve the inherent contradictions of the market economy, but is an attempt to blanket the market in rationalizations with the intention to not only hide from the people the real issues, but will also recommence the peoples’ dream in the market as the only road to the good life for which one-third of humans live in murderous poverty.  The market economy is based on the concentration of economic power by ever growing ownership of productive forces, whether they are material goods or hedge funds, into fewer and fewer hands. Its claims to rationality in its theory, doctrines and neoliberal ideology, as exemplified by Greenspan and Friedman, are philosophic wizardry in an attempt to hide the market economy’s irrationalism: cycles of economic crisis, wars, worker alienation, poverty, destruction of the environment, misery, etc. The grandest mystification is linking the market economy and representative “democracy”. Democratic capitalism is an oxymoron.

 

Obama expects to create from the deceptions, lies, and illusions of his save-all stimulus plan an uplifting of people’s confidence, but he,  like  any motivational speaker for strategic effects to convince others, adopts the smokescreen, has urged  Americans to spend their money to help stimulate the economy (and go back shopping like Bush exhorted Americans after 9/11) and make richer and re-store trust in the very same pirates and System that is the basis of the multi-dimensional crisis we are facing. Some financiers might be a bit more circumspect when constructing new elaborate shell game schemes, buy-outs, or creative finance, however while continuing to write innovative loopholes in the bills and legislation they write to exploit taxpayers, for example the credit card industry and banks are now charging exorbitant rates and fees.[12] Obama thinks by investing in what works (but society is crumbling, because nothing works), from healthcare (some 80% of the population on medication) to education (Paterson, New Jersey school district officials reported a 40 percent drop-out rate in the 2006-07 school year[13]), to living conditions, to adequate paying jobs, to making a living: things will become better and cheaper. However, putting more money into failing programs and institutions will not achieve the desired results; for example, the stimulus money for education will never make it to the classroom, but will continue lining the pockets of politicians, administrators and contractors.

 

Furthermore, the stimulus plan will maintain the degrading of society and the criminalizing of its residents. For example,  in Paterson, New Jersey a new “police initiative for one month targeted one particular Ward with detectives for a sustained period, using new technology that pinpoints serious crimes geographically”[14], and made more than 400 arrests of suspected drug dealers, alleged robbers and those with outstanding warrants, who are the victims of the crisis, whereas the real criminals who are the cause of the multidimensional crisis and should be arrested are to be found on Wall Street, in Congress, and state, county, and local city administrations. In other words it is the crooks who are in control. Many innocent residents were frisked and thrown to the ground. It seems SWAT teams are becoming a routine part of policing. We, Obama promises, indeed will experience more of these militarized police actions in the future[15]. It is no accident that the area of largest job growth is the law enforcement and criminal justice industry for a criminalized nation. We wonder how Obama is going address the prison industrial complex, the heavy criminalization and incarceration of African-American males, the change required to stop treating youth like a poorly managed crowd, and jobs without which African-Americans have 13% unemployment rate.  When young people see on every level of society corruption, incompetence, apathy, thievery, crumbling schools, hospital closings and their corrupt community leaders (politicians, pastors, police and judges) hauled off to jail, how do we expect disaffected youth to react? For them there is nowhere to go. They are victimized at a young age. They live violence everyday. The depression has hit African-American and Latino communities. These children are robbed not only of their youth, but also of their adulthood. Our inner cities are turned into militarized zones and youth are on virtual lockdown being constantly under surveillance, frisked, and arrested. The FBI has a plan, following Britain, to extract DNA samples from everyone who is arrested which will reach some 2 million people by 2012. A seventeen-fold increase from the 80,000 per year as it stands now.[16]

 

If Obama’s plan for public education does not address the conditions that are the cause of alleged “criminal behavior” of our youth in our inner cities, public education and the public will continue to mis-educate and de-moralize youth. Public education is a desirable, not because of the superficial assumption that in a democracy students must be educated, but, for self-determination, to question authority vested in society’s institutions by restoring authority in the demos. The point is to make intelligent decisions and choices based on points of shared common interest, not private vested interest that reproduce the status quo located in the values the system promotes. “Students who do not graduate are twice as likely to continue to live in poverty, three times as likely to be unemployed, and eight times as likely to end up in jail or prison.”[17] Degrade and humiliate is how the system operates to keep people pushed down, and bribes and favors are savored by keepers of the system to keep the minorities imprisoned.[18] With a record 2.3 million Americans behind bars (1 in 100 American adults) and the majority minorities, no wonder law enforcement is big business. On March 6, 2009 the US  Attorney General and the Department of Justice announced that $2 billion in stimulus funding allocated for state and local law enforcement and criminal justice activities is now available. In New Jersey the State Police will hire crime analysts for its “all-crimes all-hazards Fusion Center…This will allow the State Police to keep sworn officers on the street and to develop tactical approaches for fighting gun and drug trafficking, as well as gang violence and terrorism threats. The analysts are the backbone of the Fusion Center and their work supports the troopers, as well as 500 local chiefs and sheriffs.[19]”

 

There has been no accounting whatsoever for the $350 billion of the $700 billion TARP funds passed out by Bush to his base on Wall Street. It simply vanished. With the remaining $350 billion Obama promises to take back some of CEO bonuses and impose economic regulations in his re-building of Wall Street. However, we can be rest assured that there will be paybacks (AIG bonuses “slipped” in under the watch of the Senate banking committee chairman Dodd, who has received some $300,000 in campaign financing of his election wins during his decades of service to the corporations). Obama raised more Wall Street campaign donations than any previous candidate and whose inauguration celebrations were funded by thieving Wall Street bankers who reaped billions from Congressional charity. Obama has now backtracked on healthcare by siding with employers who want to have employees pay into their healthcare saying that he favors taxing employees’ health care benefits. Either way the worker loses, and unions are undergoing further erosion into non-existence. Change-candidate Obama said that when he is our President the American people will have the exact same health benefits as members of Congress. And who believes that?

 

Since there is no way to determine or predict the length, severity, and final cost of the recession, there is no way to figure out what works and what does not. Remember Bush’s counterfeit $159 billion stimulus plan in the Spring of ‘08 was going to solve the credit crisis by boosting spending and it did not, the $350 billion TARP funds dictators Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke handed out to their Wall Street companions in order to liquefy assets and did not work, and since August 2007 until he left office, Bush and his criminal regime has thrown perhaps another trillion dollars worldwide along with  the trillions offered by other countries to the crisis to free up markets and it didn’t work? Likewise the Obama plan, betraying his liberal political philosophy, is meant to keep confused already a befuddled miseducated  public. The “buy American” blurb in the plan had a protectionist agenda that not only would have surely spurred trade wars, but also would have opened the US to law suits by violating global trade agreements, thus it had to have the teeth taken out of it. Protectionism is against the essence of neoliberal globalization and it may be tolerable only for a temporary period, until the crisis is over. Funds for public transportation and infrastructure as shown above will flow into the same pockets of greed and corruption as they do now. Yet there is no mention of money for artists, writers, fine arts, etc. At the end of the two year time limit on the stimulus plan, more money will be needed. Structurally everything is in place that was in place that caused the financial crisis. In addition, the recent display of flagrant greed by the financial sector indicates that the task of rebuilding the nation’s economy cannot be done effectively by private contractors.

 

In many states contracts are being readied for the tidy pigs lining at the trough ― just like they used to. Avoiding public scrutiny as much as possible the politicians and contractors will accept their usual payola. The Obama administration’s plan for job creation and long term growth involves:[20]

 

• Doubling the production of alternative energy in the next three years.

• Modernizing more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills.

• Making the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized.

• Equipping tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries.

• Expanding broadband across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world.

• Investing in the science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries, and entire new industries.

 

Pumping some $715 billion into the economy in two years will not be enough to remake America. The spending, according to many economists does not seem to be nearly enough. The economic plan to create some 3-4 million jobs in two years is yet to be seen, and in fact Obama said recently that the stimulus plan may or may not create those jobs, but “over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.”[21]  By June ’09 the US economy will have to absorb a million or so 12^th graders and a million or so college graduates, who will have little prospect for jobs or schooling above the 4.5 million already jobless. This is where Obama’s service plan is devised to encourage our youth to join the military or AmeriCorps (a slave-wage “jobs” program that at-risk youth are now flocking) ― both a true economic draft ― with the lure of free affordable education.[22] The $715 billion stimulus plan has plenty in it for everyone from first home buyers, new car owners, and mortgage relief for those caught in the crisis and an infrastructure outlay to States that already have their infrastructure plans on paper. It is a great windfall for the political parties to keep their constituents. The recovery and restoration act is about equal to the $800+ billion Bush has ripped off from the American taxpayer for his grubby illegal neocon wars. Yes, history will see this combat as Bush’s Follies. The $12 billion per month to fund the foolish wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to be spent by Obama (he has recently asked for $85 billion) in spite of the drawdown of soldiers from Iraq and an escalation in Af-Pak (the new anachronism that should be reversed to Pak-Af since there is more focus on Pakistan as the source of terrorism) where he claims terrorists are plotting to attack the US. President Zardari of Pakistan (and his counterpart in Afghanistan President Karzai)  met with Obama from May 5-8 in which Obama will promised Zardari $1.5bn a year for 5 years hoping that this will bring Pakistan back from the brink Islamic terror. Obama will emphasize that the money be used for “economic growth and development” (read: gas pipelines) before the military gets their share, but the money as we know will be siphoned with Zardari, as usual taking his 10% cut, the military/ISI getting their share of which some will probably filter to their Taliban connections, the economic elite getting their share to build gas pipelines, and the people will get nothing.[23] Obama is tending towards the same thoughtless expansion of military power regardless of nation to fight the “good war” against terrorists and spread free markets and democracy around the world. In Af-Pak Obama’s “good war” is waged for a natural gas pipeline that is projected to be built through Afghanistan and crisscross Pakistan.[24] Recall that in the Spring of 2001 Bush wined and dined the Taliban in Texas seeking to seal the deal, but the Taliban said no. The US had no problems with the repressive archaic ideology of the Taliban regime controlling Afghanistan as long as it was convenient for and did not reject neoliberal globalization. Already having blood on his hands Obama has initiated the bombing of Pakistan. This illegal act is no different from the peace candidate Nixon from bombing Cambodia and Laos. Using US taxpayer dollars Obama has pledged to expand the military budget so that the military industrial complex can keep on making prolific profits while making some procurement changes and dropping some weapons systems. The American public will continue to be held hostage by political and economic elites and the decision-taking apparatus it has confiscated by consolidating its economic and political power. These home grown terrorists and their political and economic collaborators have infiltrated and embedded themselves throughout Congress and government with former militarists and corporatists revolving between professional politicians, law enforcement (judges, jailers, clergy, detectives, FBI, military careerists, CIA, lobbyists) and corporations to strengthen their control of all levels of government. The neoliberal free marketeers and transnational elite treat the US government like any other resource, natural or otherwise, to aggressively exploit and control and thereby entrench  political and economic insiders taking orders from the elite, who have abundant and myriad tools necessary to  gather zealous recruits to reconstruct (read: takeover) Congress. The economic and political elite, all of them, need to be driven out—que se vayan todos!—as the Argentinians proclaim.[25] Do not forget a psyops was perpetrated on the American public by the Bush dictatorship[26]. The “political bands” that have held us together have been seized by the political and financial elite. Over 80% of the American people said the government is headed down the wrong path (which means the people have been effectively removed from political and economic decision taking), i.e. that the government is destructive of those interests, then the time is now to abolish it and build a new society based on an inclusive democracy.

 

Thus, Obama’s stimulus plan is based on  money that has been borrowed and will be borrowed again and again (as long as the Chinese elites and others buy out government bonds!). Obama’s stimulus plan will not provide changes in the fundamentals of the market economy. Obama will not attempt to discard the neoliberal consensus of growth, dynamism and opportunities that flow from the free movement of money, ideas and workers across borders. His plan oozes with it. All that can be expected is a tightening of and, centralization of control of worldwide financial regulations agreed upon, as the new social-liberal consensus[27] with its private-public partnership, at the G20 meeting by the transnational economic and political elite. No real structural change can take place if those elites making decisions retain their hold on economic power. Democracy is the only way to remake society. As Takis Fotopoulos points out in his article on the capitalist crisis, economic decision taking has been stolen from the people, who as, “Citizens in a market economy system are not free to choose either as consumers or as producers: as consumers, because their choice is constrained by their income/wealth; as producers, because the ‘decisions’ about what and how to produce are taken for them by the market.”[28]

 

Nothing will change. The Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, the chief operating officer of the Pentagon, was until his nomination a lobbyist for Raytheon. Lynn, is due $1.5 million in payouts for his work lobbying for the defense industry. In February Senator Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer[29]  withdrew their nominations for Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief performance officer of the federal government respectively because of their tax delinquency problems. These are the people who write and oversee the tax code and they can not figure it out.  They are dishonest because they will not admit that they cannot understand the tax laws. So Daschle returned to his law firm lobbying for the health-care industry where he will continue providing advice to health insurers and hospitals on how to work-over Congress and be a go-between Congress and health-care providers/insurers. His prior conflicts of interests with respect to speaking fees he accepted from health care lobbyists and about the guidance he provided health insurers and hospitals had nothing to do with his removal of consideration.

 

Then, it was Tim Geithner, who did not pay his taxes until he was found out, who as Treasury Secretary would oversee the IRS. Is it that no one ― tax lawyers, accountants, Congress (which writes the tax law) understands tax law or comprehends tax law which is full of loopholes and contradictions? The mafia clone IRS should be abolished along with the rest of the US government and its “trustees”. Bill Richardson, who withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary when it was revealed that he is under investigation by a grand jury is another example of those politicians with deep hands into public coffers doling out state contracts to political donors. The people Obama nominated for these positions are people who can get things moved along for the insurance, health care, etc. industries because of their outstanding connections with Congress and the economic elites, but it also shows us the depth at which the system is broken. For example, on March 9, ’09 the Obama administration’s choice to chair the National Intelligence Council, Charles Freeman, withdrew his nomination with no public debate after an intense barrage of anti-Semitic charges against him from the Zionist lobby and their neocon partisans, like Jane Harmon in Congress. As soon as his nomination was made, the Zionist lobby let it be known that Freeman was a rogue (read: honest) and could not be tolerated in his new position, because he had been critical of Israeli policies. The Zionist organization of America and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and their Zionazi allies in Congress, particularly Charles Schumer, quickly derailed the appointment. Speaking the truth about Zionist repression of Palestinian rights, occupation, illegal settlements, war crimes, theft of land, etc. does not sit well with the Zionists because it unmasks their intentions, undermines their credibility, and provides evidence of the power they have in directing American policy in the Middle East. We have previously written about Obama’s obeisance to AIPAC which helped him secure his presidential nomination.[30] The power of AIPAC has over the Obama administration is further evidence of his allegiance to the Zionist cause as federal prosecutors requested that spying charges be dropped against two AIPAC lobbyists, “because of a court ruling that would have allowed the defense to use more classified information at trial than the government had wanted.” Again, enough of open and transparent government![31]  In a detailed and insightful article, James Petras asks us to think about how “Zionists and their embedded clones rule the White House, they also have the political apparatus to silence, insult, witch hunt and isolate any critic of their agenda, their organizations and the State of Israel. When confronted by a critic the entire apparatus brays in unison about ‘anti-Semitism’.”[32]

 

This revolving door from lobbyist, to Congress, to Cabinet, to law enforcement, to Pentagon, to capitalist procures the means whereby the political and economic elite entirely consolidate their power over the government and economic and political decision taking[33]. Even Obama’s Presidential Order on Ethics is being reversed. We need to break the military-industrial complex and stop having defense contractors and their corporate lobbyists working in the Pentagon and Congress.[34] Obama has not addressed the more pressing repressive measures passed by Congress as a gift to the dictator Bush, such as, habeas corpus and spying on Americans. Congress has to be dismantled.[35]

 

Obama’s January interview on Arab television network Al Arabiya and his recent Nowruz video inviting the Iranian people to join the community of nations, which the leadership brushed off since America has no plans to change its Mideast policies, is an attempt to undercut radical Muslim authority based not only on his heritage (Hussein is his middle name) but also on his promise to “start by listening” rather than dictating. However, Obama’s personal envoy George Mitchell left out of his Mideast plan to meet the Gazans who were the target of Zionist bestiality. He did not schedule on his first Mideast visit, to meet, speak or stay with any Gazans. So do not expect Obama to challenge the entangling alliance the US has with Israel where it allows the Zionists to buy US weapon systems to use in advancing terrorism. IDF soldiers are now talking about the indiscriminate use of murder against civilians and racism inherent in Zionist ideology. To use American weapons against a civilian population is against US law and is a war crime. Under the false assumption of self-defense the Zionists have this ugly habit of ethnic cleansing. Obama himself (and of course Hillary) never disguised their willingness to strike Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear plans (which may or may not end up with the making of nuclear weapons), but do not have a word to say about the actual Zionist nuclear weapons which threaten the entire Middle East with annihilation if anybody even thinks about reforming Palestine on the basis of a non-racist multicultural state to include both Jews and Arabs!

 

The godhead

 

It is equally absurd to look for any positive similarities or comparisons between Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. On what front lines against poverty, injustice, or other social causes have Obama stood or have been arrested for? The equality, fairness and justice Dr. King sought from his mythical Dream speech (where James Baldwin was not allowed to speak) was not realized and led Dr. King four years later to the conclusion that his silence about the Vietnam war is betrayal, since war is also the enemy of the poor, “desperate, rejected, angry” young African-American males who were fighting for democracy in a far off country and did not have any rights in the US. Dr. King finally conceded that the US is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today…I cannot be silent”.[36] The dream fell through.[37] Do not take for granted Obama’s flowery rhetoric, modeled after Dr. King, proclaiming a re-dream. The US government is still the world’s dominant death machine. Obama has picked up the Bush banner of spreading “democracy” with the barrel of a gun, sending death squads into countries who do not want to cooperate with the US interests. Obama has imitated Dr. King, but do not be taken in for his calls for a return to hard work, honesty, courage and fair play. The US can never operate on a fair field of play by patriotic patrolling of “far off deserts and distant mountains.” The US creates the change it wants by state sponsored terror, invasion, occupation and other underhanded interference in sovereign nations. To this end Obama’s hands are dripping in blood as he signed the orders for a 17,000 troop escalation inside Afghanistan to fight the “good war” with perhaps another 20,000 troops in waiting along with his “secret” criminal expansion of the war into the increasingly limited sovereignty called Pakistan.

 

Only a revolution can overturn how Washington does business. Obama’s mantras for “change we can believe in” and “yes we can” are pacifiers for the people to accept business as usual. To the reformist Left which has given up on any revolutionary change in society and even proclaiming the revolution is dead is missing the point, because they leave in place the System that has produced the multidimensional crisis we face. The Left need to be re-educated by Malcolm X (although Malcolm X’s strategy does not coincide with the inclusive democracy project) as to what revolution is:[38]

Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee. Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek. Revolutions are never based upon loving your enemy and pray for those who spitefully use you. And revolutions are never waged singing ‘We Shall Overcome’…Revolutions are never compromising. Revolutions are never based upon negotiations. Revolutions are never based upon any kind of tokenism whatsoever. Revolutions are never even based upon that which is begging a corrupt society or a corrupt system to accept us into it. Revolutions overturn systems…and there is no system more corrupt than a system that represents itself as the example of freedom, the example of democracy, and can go all over this earth telling other people how to straighten out their house, when you have citizens in this country who have to use bullets if they want to cast a ballot.

Obama’s foray into politics, like all politicians seeking office, use organized religion to gain votes. All politicians have to make the trip to the “mountain top” to gain the favor of the clergy and their flock, who can transport the politician to the desired political seat. The churches provide plenty of social and political links that help get politicians elected. Obama is no different. He used the church and faith-based community groups to build his political base. It was a gateway for him to electoral politics. It was there that he heard god’s spirit summon him to do the lord’s work which was a higher purpose ― His purpose.[39] So Barack has no problem serving two masters ― know-how of Toni Preckwinkle, who suggested Obama join Jeremiah Wright’s church.[40]

 

Obama is not from Chicago, so he had to establish some sort of belonging. Where else better than churches? Michelle grew up in Chicago with the children of Jessie Jackson, and her parents were politically well connected. Barack claims he had found religion in his work as a community organizer, when he was working through church groups as a faith based organizer. How convenient, but yet no different from any other professional politician coveting a political seat. In a July 1, 2008 speech Obama outlined his road to faith recovery ― like some recovering faithless addict. He points out that faith-based groups:[41]

“(…) led me into public service. It was a Catholic group called The Campaign for Human Development that helped fund the work I did many years ago in Chicago…I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household. But my experience in Chicago showed me how faith and values could be the anchor in my life. And in time, I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work…I believe deeply in the separation of church and sate, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea” that faith-based partnerships and government can work together. He plans to enrich faith-based groups with taxpayers’ money while doing the Lord’s work. He says he had a “father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known.”

Obama did not learn what his family taught him that one can be loving, honest, etc. without god. Thus, he was converted to the faith to expand his political opportunism.

 

Faith-based groups will be clamoring for taxpayer money. If they receive public money, then they should pay taxes on their real-estate and income. If they take public money, they should pay their fare share of taxes if they love doing god’s work with public money for which there is no accountability. At the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to establish an office in the White House called Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. People do not trust these church programs, but they are forced go to them because government has failed and there is nothing left. Everyday he sounds more and more like a theocrat—“faith has always been a guiding force in our family’s life.”[42]

 

Inclusive democracy is incompatible with any religious, spiritual, New Age, and any other irrational claims, because those beliefs and faiths by definition exclude the questioning of core beliefs or ideas society holds from a higher spirit, and is therefore irreconcilable with people choosing their own laws and truths in the society they inhabit. Society is not a democracy unless people are prepared to question any kind of tradition, dogma, or institution, otherwise society is heteronomous, posing as  free and passing for democracy, yet being a liberal oligarchy enslaving people to marketization and pseudo-freedom. Inclusive democracy promotes a society that posits its own laws and is the source of its norms, values, etc.

 

Conclusion

 

Thus, we can see that the change for which the elites through Obama aspires, is not change at all for the people, but a retrenching of the status quo. How much more proof do the American people need that they have been prevented from any economic and political decision taking, that the elites put into office those who do their legislative bidding, that justice is obstructed, that they are paying for mercenaries (US military) to fight undeclared foreign wars for them to rise up against and throw off the yoke this despotic government, abolish it and replace it with an inclusive democracy?

 

It should have become evident that it is the marketization of the economic realm and its political complement representative “democracy” that leads to inequality, loss of community values, social crises bounded by a 17^th century view of human nature, and an insecure and economically crisis ridden society. In fact, a health crisis is brewing in the market economy’s factory farms since the animal slaves  “bred on the farm” are incubators for new generations of genetic mutations of salmonella, swine flu[43] and the like, but the people are satisfied with Obama’s inoculation. The decay of societies around the world is connected to the present institutions of capitalist market economy and representative “democracy” and the associated ethical deficiencies found in the dominant social paradigm based on market values. Cogging career politicians (Arland Spector joining the Democratic Party after 30 years in Congress to ensure his re-election tells us how depoliticized is the American public) have found a niche in the coddles of the public treasury and the military and have opened them for use by the transnational elite. Congress is home to the representatives chosen by the political and economic elite, political lackeys, relatives, hired politicians, various criminals[44] at the state, county and municipal levels, and verified by the electoral college. The people are thoroughly and efficiently  removed from the political realm.

 

From the ID perspective not only is democracy incompatible with market institutions and values because first, the principles of the market economy are irrational, creating cyclic crises, and cannot be questioned, and second, because market institutions by their own dynamic lead to concentration of  economic power in fewer and fewer hands thereby removing citizens from economic decision taking. Similarly, representative “democracy” by its own dynamic has led historically to concentration of political power in a few hands. Takis Fotopoulos has called attention to the priority of questioning as the underpinning of not only philosophy, but also democracy. In order for the revolutionary change that inclusive democracy calls for to materialize there must be the possibility of unlimited questioning not only of the individual, but also all the institutions of society. Otherwise there is no democracy, only what passes as such in the US and other representative governments. So the time is now to build a massive antisystemic movement which will begin overthrowing and replacing those constituted structures with institutions of inclusive democracy which will secure the equal distribution of economic, political and social power.

 

 

 

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