It Is All About Obama
By Ghali Hassan
13 September,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Since his first day of campaigning in the primaries for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama has been the preferred boxing bag by the so-called “progressive” and “liberal” media. While rational criticism is necessary and legitimate, the well-orchestrated attack on Obama (as a person) is designed to deflect attention away from an imperialist system controlled by a small powerful ruling class.
For much of the U.S. media reporting and pundits opinions, it is an opportunity to pretend that they care about U.S. politics and that the next president must be scrutinised for the interest of the public. However, reality tells a different story. Obama was singled-out and made to look like a bad choice because he is, by and large, an easier scapegoat.
It is important to clarify an important point. Regardless of who will win the November elections, the U.S. is ruled by a racist white Judeo-Christian ruling class with a brutal imperialist agenda to control the entire world and surrounded by special interests groups. It is a collection of politically and financially powerful Zionist Jews, hardcore Neoconfascists, religious extremists and corporate conmen and lobbyists. “If one wants to move within these circles, and to climb the many ladders to power and privilege they offer, one must remain silent about its flattering fictions or watch these ladders pulled away”, write Edward Herman and David Peterson [1]. Democracy is simply a delusional diet feed to the masses through the ritual of empty election campaigns. Ordinary people (i.e. Americans) have no role to play; they are manipulated and completely brainwashed spectators.
The unprecedented vicious and racist attack directed at Obama is a diversion from the real culprits. However, as Obama is often crucified and denounced by the U.S. Zionist mainstream media because of his association with people such as the peerless intellectual Dr Jeremiah Wright, there were no comparable levels of crucifixion and denunciation by the “progressive” and “liberal” media of McCain association with religious extremists such as the Christian Right fascists. Obama is also accused of being a Muslim – Obama is Christian and has denied his Muslim heritage – and having no “American roots” because as a child Obama spent few years in Indonesia. No one in the “progressive and “liberal” media is questioning the “American roots” of McCain and all those Israelis in U.S. Congress with “dual loyalty”.
In a recent cover story, the New Yorker magazine depicted Obama and his wife as terrorists in the same way Westerners (Americans in particular) depict Muslims as terrorists. The aim is to distort the image of Muslims, manipulate the public and instil fear among the population. The so-called satire is a cover up. It is a racist propaganda that sells. The New Yorker story is just a case in point.
Furthermore, what is most astonishing and rarely discussed in the current elections is the violent record of the Republicans. What is also more disturbing is that Americans are prepared to elect John McCain as the next president. He has been labelled as an experienced “maverick”. The truth, McCain is anything but an experienced “maverick”. If the Bush regime is rightly considered the most fascist regime in America’s history, McCain will be far worst. McCain is the most uneducated and dangerous Republican. John ‘McNasty’, as he is accurately known, is pathologically violent and untrustworthy to be the president of a nation with the largest army in the world. According to Richard Cohen of the Neocons mouthpiece, the Washington Post; “McCain's true virtue is that he is a lousy politician. He is not a convincing liar, and when he adopts positions that are not his own, they infect him, sapping him of what might be called integrity energy”.
Furthermore, McCain claims that he is “taking on” the establishment in Washington is a fraud. McCain is inseparable part of the establishment in Washington and has supported every criminal act of the establishment in Washington, from the illegal aggression against the Iraqi people to the state-sanctioned sadistic torture and human rights abuses of innocent civilians and POWs in Iraq and Muslims imprisoned in the vast network of U.S.-run prisons around the world.
Just take a look at the Republican Convention in St Paul, Minnesota. It is a celebration fuelled by ugly nationalism, anti-Muslims fascism, militarism, religious extremism and promises for perpetual violence against defenceless nations. It is Fascism coming full circle. Anyone who is not supporting war and violence is labelled “un-American”. Forgotten is the fact that the “pro-life” Republican regime led by Bush and his accomplices are responsible for the deliberate killing of more than 1.5 million innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians, mostly women and children. Forgotten is also McCain highly questionable “loyalty” to his country while he was a POW in Vietnam. His record of killing Vietnamese civilians (from the air) has morphed to depict him as a “hero” not a coward war criminal.
Especially disturbing is the silence and lack of criticism by the “progressive” and “liberal” media of the Republicans violent agenda and their disastrous effect on world peace. Instead, McCain has been portrayed as an experienced political saint. Moreover, his running mate, the obscure right-wing governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is a warmonger religious fanatic and has been a disaster for Alaskans and Alaska’s environment. Palin’s record complements McCain’s (less talked about) abysmal environmental record.
While Obama’s flip-flops maybe designed to please the ruling establishment, he is not McCain. “Obama’s race, his background, his enthusiastic, youthful, and less predictable constituency, and the occasional slivers of populism that creep into his campaign, make the establishment nervous, whereas Hillary Clinton and John McCain clearly posed no such threats. And like George Bush, John McCain is portrayed as an earthy, chummy, straightforward kind of guy — indeed, as a ‘maverick’ whose associations with lobbyists, the military-industrial complex, and some of the genuinely reactionary forces of U.S. society do not elicit the kind of focused attention directed at Obama and most everything he touches or that touches him”[1].
However, it is a delusion to think that a Black American would make a different president. Black American elites are more right-wing extremists than white Americans. Both Condoleezza Rice and Collin Powell are Black Americans and have served America’s ruling class with distinctions.
Like many Black American elites, Obama is sponsored by the American ruling class, because by voting for Obama white Americans can shut off their critics and ease their conscience without having to work to end racism or war of aggression. White Americans can stand up and say to their critics: “look we are not at war against Muslims, our president is of a Muslim heritage, we are not racist, our president is Black”, and so on.
Furthermore, Obama’s “choice” of Joe Biden, a genetically pro-Israel Zionist and the author of a plan to divide Iraq according to Zionists agenda, to be his running mate is evidence of behind closed doors selection. And with pro-Israel Zionists such as Eliot Abraham, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, form Obama’s advisory council on the Middle East, American foreign policy in (the Middle East) will remain in the hand of few Zionist Jews. Hence, the Palestinian people will continue to suffer under an Obama’s administration.
On major issues, Obama has already change direction. His position on the murderous Occupation of Iraq has shifted to concur with that of Bush’s position. His recent racist comment that “Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility” of their country while they are under murderous fascist Occupation is racist and distort reality. The majority of Iraqis, including a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians are against the Occupation and want a complete U.S. troops' withdrawal to end the Occupation. On Palestine, Obama's reckless comment, claiming that Jerusalem is the “undivided Capital” of Israel proves his obsequious to extremist Jews and ignoring the city’s long history as the Palestinian Capital.
Sadly Obama is starts to show that he is just a vehicle to be used by the ruling class. He has already abandoned his earlier rhetoric and started the expected U-turn that the ruling class demanded and started breaking his empty promises at the detriment of ordinary people’s aspirations for real change. The fact that he is in favour of broadening George Bush war on Muslims is evident of his service to the ruling class. Sadly, Obama has shown that he is a fabricated opportunist and it is uncertain if an Obama’s administration can deliver anything substantial. Still, an Obama’s administration will be less toxic and less extreme than a McCain’s administration.
American “progressive” and “liberal” media, by and large, are attacking Obama to deflect attention away from an imperialist system that unless it is changed at its core, America will remain an unequal society and a threat to world peace and prosperity.
Endnote:
[1] Herman, E. & Peterson, D. Jeremiah Wright in the Propaganda System, Monthly Review, September 2008.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
