The Night Obama Won at UC Berkeley

The fantasies of the young, especially the upper middle class who attend the rich folks' finishing school known as UC Berkeley, are many. It is a shame you did not bother to listen to his speeches and do the research on his supporters. Perhaps you were too busy believing in the non-existent US democracy, which has never existed in capitalist USA and can never exist so long as there is capitalism.

THE HISTORY YOU DID NOT LEARN IS HERE:
It is not an advance to have someone who happens to be of African descent in office if that person is reactionary. It was not an advance for women to have Democrat Madeline Albright as the first female Secretary of State, the one who declared that it was worth the price of oil to murder the Iraqi children. It was not an advance for women and blacks to have Republican Condolezza Rice as the first black female Secretary of State, being a proud promoter of Nazi Bush's entire fascist, anti-workingclass, racist agenda. It was no an advance for women to have Janet Reno as the first female Attorney General, as she was utterly reactionary from her irresponsible actions in the attacks on the people in Waco, Texas to just about everything else. It was not advance to have Justice Clarence Thomas as the second African-American on the Supreme Court; if you are unaware; he routinely votes the fascist position every single time. It was not an advance to have war criminal Colin Powell be the first African American male Secretary of State, the same war criminal who is now an adviser to Barack Obama!

Now that you are done singing the war anthem, the unsingable Star Spangled Banner, and waving the flag of death, disease and destruction that is US imperialism, HERE IS YOUR HOMEWORK:

The millionaire, warmongering, pro-death penalty Democrat Barack Obama is just as reactionary as the millionaire, warmongering, pro-death penalty Republican John McCain. The capitalist class stopped the election fraud on election day (rampant during early voting) just enough to let this front man for the capitalist class receive 52% of the vote. His entire campaign was filled with saber-rattling, promoting the death penalty, promoting JROTC, supporting insurance companies which means no national healthcare, and catering to the captialist class which pays for the existence of the Democratic and Republican Parties. SENATOR BARACK OBAMA LED THE CHARGE, ALONG WITH DEMOCRAT NANCY PELOSI IN THE HOUSE, TO GIVE OUR TAX DOLLARS TO THE BANKS. The only reason the Democratic Party exists is to make sure the workingclass never votes Red or Green so that they can, once elected, carry out the same capitalist program the Republicans do, and that is exactly what happened.

THE LITMUS TEST MUST ALWAYS BE: Whose interests does this person serve, those of the capitalist class or those of the workingclass?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING GOOD WILL COME FROM BARACK OBAMA. His support for Israel and Zionists in the US should be no surprise, the Democrat-Republicans are 100% pro-Israel parties, which means the destruction of Palestine, and supporting the US military base to protect US oil profits in the Middle East called Israel.

Here is more on the horrors of Barack Obama:
The sordid details on war escalation against Iran are on the World Socialist Website, 11/6/08 at
"Obama advisers discuss preparations for war on Iran" by Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/iran-n06.shtml

And Chief of Obama's Staff, Rahm Emanuel's reactionary history is described on the World Socialist Website of 11/6/08 at:
"Class divisions begin to emerge in Obama coalition"
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n06.shtml

OBAMA REPUDIATES THE PEACE MOVEMENT. The latest horror, after PROMISING TO KEEP TROOPS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, is his OPEN EMBRANCE OF THE FASCIST US WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM. As the article from the 7/1/08 World Socialist Website, he REPUDIATES THE ENTIRE PEACE MOVEMENT of the 1960s and today.
See: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/obam-j02.shtml

Twelve Issues that Matter for 2008:
http://www.votenader.org/issues/
Here they are, all opposed by Obama/Clinton and McCain but supported by Ralph Nader, Greens and socialists:
1. Adopt single payer national health insurance
2.Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget
3.No to nuclear power, solar energy first
4.Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime and corporate welfare
5.Open the presidential debates
6.Adopt a carbon pollution tax
7.Reverse US policy on the Middle East
8.Impeach Bush/Cheney
9.Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law
10.Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax
11.Put an end to ballot access obstructionism
12.Work to end corporate personhood

1. “The Obama Craze: Count Me Out” of 2/27/08 by Matt Gonzalez
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5413

""US Political Establishment Lines Up Behind Barack Obama" by Patrick Martin, 2/4/08, World Socialist Website,
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/obam-f04.shtml
"Among those backing the Obama campaign are such pillars of the US political establishment as Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and an arch-Cold Warrior; retired Air Force General Merrill McPeak and a host of other retired military brass; billionaire Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in America; and an array of Wall Street and corporate executives, none of whom could be suspected of any sympathy for radical social change."

Barack Obama's Crown Dynasty Connection, 2/24/07 at http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/76429/index.php
The Crown Dynasty, which is among the financial supporters of Barack Obama, is described as follows (to be short, a war profiteer):
"In its 1980 edition, Everybody’s Business: An Almanac (by Milton Moskowitz, Michael Katz and Robert Levering) made the following reference to the Crown family of Chicago ’s history of making money from General Dynamics’ weapons manufacturing activity:"

“General Dynamics, more than any other aerospace company, is dependent on the Pentagon; government defense contracts account for two-thirds of their sales…The power behind the scenes is Henry Crown, a Chicago financier and one of the richest, but least known, men in the country. A group headed by Crown, who was 83 in 1980, owns about 20% of the company. His associates, who sit on the General Dynamics board with him, are his son, Lester Crown, and Chicago industrialist Nathan Cummings, founder of Consolidated Foods…”

"After Henry Crown's death, General Dynamics sold its F-16 fighter jet production unit and the Crown family reduced its ownership stake in General Dynamics from 20% to 8%. But, according to the General Dynamics web site at http://www.generaldynamics.com/, in 2005 "General Dynamics Combat Systems” was “becoming the world's preferred supplier of land and amphibious combat systems development, production and support;" and "its product line” included “a full spectrum of armored vehicles, light wheeled reconnaissance vehicles, suspensions, engine transmissions, guns and ammunition handling systems, turret drive systems, and reactive armor and ordnance."

"The General Dynamics web site also indicated in 2005 that members of the Crown family like Henry Crown & Company President James Crown and Henry Crown & Company Chairman Lester Crown still sat on the General Dynamics corporate board in 2005—between retired Pentagon officials (like former U.S. Under-Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Paul Kaminski, former U.S. Naval Chief of Naval Operations Jay Johnson, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff John Keane, Retired U.S. General George Joulwan and former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Lester Lyles) and a former Royal Navy Vice-Admiral for the UK Ministry of Defense named Robert Walmsley."

"A 2003 press release of the General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems business unit in St. Petersburg, Florida also noted that it had formed "a strategic alliance with Aeronautics Defense Systems, Ltd.," an Israeli firm based in Yavne. Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd. is the firm that developed the Unmanned Multi-Application System (UMASa) aerial surveillance tool which the Israeli military uses to "provide a real-time 'bird's eye view' of the surveillance area to combatant commanders and airborne command posts." According to then-Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the agreement between General Dynamics and Aeronautics Defense Systems to bring together "both companies' state-of-the art technologies in defense and homeland security" was "additional proof of the technological and commercial benefits that alliances between industries from the U.S. and Israel can produce."

"From its investments in Pentagon war contractors like General Dynamics and U.S. real estate, the Crown family has accumulated a family fortune of $3.6 billion, according to a 2004 Forbes magazine estimate. The Jerusalem Post also noted in its February 27, 2005 issue that “the Crown family of Chicago ” is also “well-known for its support of sectarian Jewish causes.” In addition, long-time General Dynamics board member Lester Crown was also a member of the Advisory board of Medis Technologies, a joint venture business partner of Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. in recent years. "

"Barack Obama and the Euphoria of Madness by Larry Pinkney, a former Black Panther Party member and Editorial Board member of BlackCommentator.com, at
http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/81347/index.php
"Never mind that Barack Obama has indicated both verbally and in writing that he favors “unilateral” US military actions against other nations, which is both dangerously absurd and in direct contravention and flagrant violation of international law. Notwithstanding the constant double-speak of Barack Obama, his admiration for Ronald Reagan (who despised US working men and women and who unilaterally militarily invaded the tiny Black nation of Grenada), and his warm relationship with William Daley of the infamous and racist Daley political machine in Chicago, should, at bare minimum, give people of good will (of all colors) serious pause for thought."

"The Obama Illusion" by Paul Street, February 2007, Z Magazine at: http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2007/streetpr0207.html (This has lots of references to comments by The Black Commentator)
Turn to the "Never Mind" section, to read:
"Never mind, for example, that Obama was recently hailed as a “Hamiltonian” believer in “limited government” and “free trade” by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having “a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS.” Or that he had to be shamed off the “New Democrat Directory” of the corporate-right Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) by the popular left black Internet magazine Black Commentator (Bruce Dixon, “Obama to Have Name Removed From DLC List,” Black Commentator, June 26, 2003). "

"Never mind that Obama (consistent with Brooks’s description of him) has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and “other Wall Street Democrats” to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party (David Sirota, “Mr. Obama Goes to Washington,” the Nation, June 26). Or that he lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman’s (“D”-CT) struggle against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has supported other “mainstream Democrats” fighting antiwar progressives in primary races (see Alexander Cockburn, “Obama’s Game,” the Nation, April 24, 2006). Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito."

"Never mind that Obama “dismissively” referred—in a “tone laced with contempt”—to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as “something of a gadfly.” Or that he chose the neoconservative Lieberman to be his “assigned” mentor in the U.S. Senate. Or that “he posted a long article on the liberal blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.” Or that he opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Or that he told Time magazine’s Joe Klein last year that he’d never given any thought to Al Gore’s widely discussed proposal to link a “carbon tax” on fossil fuels to targeted tax relief for the nation’s millions of working poor (Joe Klein, “The Fresh Face,” Time, October 17, 2006). "

"Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly “tort reform” bill that rolls back working peoples’ ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation from misbehaving corporations (Cockburn; Sirota). Or that Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer national health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for workers in the private insurance industry—at places like Kaiser and Blue Cross Blue Shield (Sirota)."

"Never mind that Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive PATRIOT Act. Or that he voted for the appointment of the war criminal Condaleeza Rice to (of all things) Secretary of State. Or that he opposed Senator Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) move to censure the Bush administration after the president was found to have illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens. Or that he shamefully distanced himself from fellow Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin’s forthright criticism of U.S. torture practices at Guantanamo. Or that he refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike nuclear weapons against Iran."

"Never mind that Obama makes a big point of respectfully listening to key parts of the right wing agenda even though that agenda is well outside majority sentiment (Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: the Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy). Or that he joins victim-blaming Republicans in pointing to poor blacks’ “cultural” issues as the cause of concentrated black poverty (Obama, The Audacity of Hope)—not the multiple, well-documented, and interrelated structures, practices and consequences of externally imposed white supremacy and corporate-state capitalism. Or that he claims that blacks have joined the American “socioeconomic mainstream” even as median black household net worth falls to less than eight cents on the median white household dollar. Or that he had this to say on the night after the Congressional mid-term elections, when the criminal and reactionary Cheney-Bush administration’s unpopularity with the American people cost the Republicans their majority in Congress: “If the Democrats don’t show a willingness to work with the president, I think they could be punished in ‘08” (Jeff Zeleni, “Democrats Fight to Say, ‘You’re Welcome,’” New York Times, November 5, 2006). "

Continuing in the section entitled "Hitting the Right (Wing) Keynotes:"
"Never mind that Obama’s famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address—widely credited for catapulting him to national prominence—expressed numerous reactionary and incorrect notions that make the praise it received from the far right National Review (who called Obama’s oration “simple and powerful”) less than mysterious on close examination. This speech claimed that the U.S. is the ultimate “beacon for freedom and opportunity,” the “only country on earth” where his supposedly “rags to riches” is “even possible.” This despite the fact that the U.S. is actually the most rigidly hierarchical nation in the industrialized world, home to a stultifying corporate plutocracy, persistent and highly racialized poverty, astonishing incarceration rates (also quite racially disparate), and low mobility from lower to upper segments in its steep socioeconomic pyramid. "

"Never mind that Obama’s famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address—widely credited for catapulting him to national prominence—expressed numerous reactionary and incorrect notions that make the praise it received from the far right National Review (who called Obama’s oration “simple and powerful”) less than mysterious on close examination. This speech claimed that the U.S. is the ultimate “beacon for freedom and opportunity,” the “only country on earth” where his supposedly “rags to riches” is “even possible.” This despite the fact that the U.S. is actually the most rigidly hierarchical nation in the industrialized world, home to a stultifying corporate plutocracy, persistent and highly racialized poverty, astonishing incarceration rates (also quite racially disparate), and low mobility from lower to upper segments in its steep socioeconomic pyramid. "

"Never mind that Obama’s speech scaled new heights of cringing, pseudo-patriotic nausea-inducement by making disturbing “hope” parallels between: “the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs,” “the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta,” and the “hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him.” The lieutenant referred to in his speech was Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose government’s imperial right to “patrol” great rivers on the other side of the world during the 1960s Obama took as axiomatic. The “skinny kid” referred to a young Obama, grooming himself for a Harvard education while attending an elite private school and living with his white grandparents in sunny Hawaii. The connection with singing slaves? A shared belief in what Obama called “God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation—a belief that there are better days ahead.” Yes, the brutalized black slaves of racist antebellum America were looking forward to the glorious white-imperialist rape of Southeast Asia when their faith in “better days” would find glorious realization in the napalming of Vietnamese children, the images of which shocked Martin Luther King, Jr. into denouncing the Vietnam war in strident and forceful terms."

And then we come to a litmus test, the OIL fixation in the Middle East where Obama proudly supports US imperialism:

"Never mind Obama’s “mush-mouthed” (Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, “Obama Mouths Mush on War,” Black Commentator, December 1, 2005) pronouncements on the illegal, racist, and imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq. Obama’s handlers and supporters place considerable emphasis on the claim that the junior senator from Illinois has voiced a “consistent position against the war” and (by extension) the Middle East. The assertion has some technical accuracy; Obama has publicly questioned the Bush administration’s case for war since the fall of 2002. But serious scrutiny of his “antiwar position” shows that the supposedly “pragmatic” and “non-ideological” Obama speaks in deferential accord with the doctrine of empire. In Obama’s carefully crafted rhetoric, Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) has been a “strategic blunder” on the part of an essentially benevolent nation state. Given his presidential ambitions, it is unthinkable for him to acknowledge the invasion’s status as a great international transgression that is consistent with the United States’ long record of imperial criminality. It is equally unimaginable for him to acknowledge that the war expressed Washington’s drive to deepen its control of strategic petroleum resources—an ambition in direct opposition to the alleged U.S. goals of encouraging Iraqi freedom and exporting democracy."

"In a recent address designed to display his foreign policy bona fides, Obama showed his continuing willingness to take seriously the claim that OIL was an effort to “impose democracy” on Iraq, even faulting the Bush administration for acting in Iraq on the basis of unrealistic “dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government” (Obama, “A Way Forward in Iraq,” speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs [CCGA], November 22, 2006). "

"Consistent with his denial and embrace of Washington’s imperial ambitions, Obama has refused to join genuinely antiwar forces in calling for a rapid and thorough withdrawal of troops and an end to the occupation of Iraq. In a critical November 2005 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Obama rejected Rep. John Murtha’s (D-PA) call for a rapid redeployment and any notion of a timetable for withdrawal. Obama’s call for “a pragmatic solution to the real war we’re facing in Iraq” included repeated references to the need to “defeat” the “insurgency”—a goal that means continuation of the war. As commentators Ford and Gamble noted in a critical analysis of Obama’s CFR address: “In essence all Obama wants from the Bush regime is that it fess up to having launched the war based on false information and to henceforth come clean with the Senate on how it plans to proceed in the future. Those Democrats who want to dwell on the past—the actual genesis and rationale for the war and the real reasons for its continuation—should be quiet. Obama and many of his colleagues are more interested in consulting the Bush men on the best way to ‘win’ the war than in effecting an American withdrawal at any foreseeable time.” "

"Obama’s November speech to the CCGA advocates a vaguely timed Iraq “scenario” in which “U.S. forces” might remain in the occupied state for an “extended period of time.” Obama advances a “reduced but active [U.S. military] presence” that “protect[s] logistical supply points” and “American enclaves like the Green Zone” (site of one of the largest and most heavily militarized imperial “embassies” in history) while “send[ing] a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria that we intend to remain a key player in the region.” U.S. troops “remaining in Iraq” will “act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and go after terrorists.” This is part of what Obama meant when he told a fawning David Brooks that (in Brooks’s approving language) “the U.S. may have no choice but to slog it out in Iraq” (David Brooks, “Run, Barack, Run,” New York Times, October 19, 2006). Never mind that the recent mid-term elections and a mountain of polling data show that the majority of Americans support rapid U.S. withdrawal, as do the vast majority of the Iraqi people—the purported beneficiaries of Cheney’s “dreams of democracy.” "

"The only polling data that Obama referenced in his CCGA speech and in the foreign policy chapter of his recent book is meant to illustrate what he considers to be the real danger in the wake of the OIL fiasco: that Americans are leaning dangerously towards “isolationism” and thus turning their backs on the noble superpower’s global “responsibilities.” "

"At one point in his CCGA oration, Obama had the audacity to say the following in support of his claim that U.S. citizens support “victory” in Iraq: “The American people have been extraordinarily resolved. They have seen their sons and daughters killed or wounded in the streets of Fallujah.” "

"This was a spine-chilling selection of locales. Fallujah was the site for a colossal U.S. war atrocity. Crimes included the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the targeting of ambulances and hospitals, and the practical leveling of an entire city—in April and November 2004. The town was designated for destruction as an example of the awesome state terror promised to those who dared to resist U.S. power. Not surprisingly, Fallujah is a leading symbol of U.S. imperialism in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is a deeply provocative and insulting place for Obama to choose to highlight American sacrifice and “resolve” in the occupation of Iraq."
"Likewise, Obama also praised U.S. occupation soldiers for “performing their duty with bravery, with brilliance, and without question” (CCGA speech). It’s hard to determine which is more disturbing in this comment: Obama’s blindness (intentional or not) to the important and welcome fact that many troops do in fact strongly question the war or his upholding of the unquestioning execution of frankly criminal military orders as a good thing."

The article concludes:
"Consistent with his secret identity as a corporate “player,” Silverstein notes, Obama assiduously supported the ethanol-promoting objectives of the Illinois-based firm Archer-Daniels Midland, which has provided him with private jets on at least two occasions. He has also defended the interests of Illinois’ gigantic electrical firm Exelon, America’s leading nuclear plant operator and a company that has given more than $74,000 to his campaigns. The slim chance that Obama might ever choose “starry eyed idealism”—Silverstein’s lobbyist-informant’s way of describing the elevation of peace and justice over the imperatives of Empire & Inequality, Inc.—has probably become thinner now that Obama has recently joined (thanks largely to his latest book contract) the millionaires’ club. "

the first commentator's opinions are valid and in all likelyhood, true to some extent.

i would take the opportunity with someone like obama to raise these subtle issues and raise the consciousness of those who are now at least feeling empowered enough to take to the streets. my first take of tear gas/pepper spray was for the right to party. what a wasted energy i thought after having moved on to tasting tear gas for political reasons.

i don't sense obama will do much better a job that clinton did in the ninties to be honest. i await to be surprised, but i also think with this energy, now the eyes and ear are open, don't throw out antagonistic words when criticizing, use ones that tell the truth in subtle ways and force obama to address his war policy, the failure of the democrats to impeach bush, to push for a three or four party system, to make real efforts in the planetary crisis we face. people have been locking to bull dozers for over 20 years and they're still logging old growth forests in the US on public lands. I ran a search on Obama's campaign site and found no mention regarding old growth forests or forest policy. i quickly unsubscribed and sent RAN, who endorsed Obama, and told them. Obama will have to prove he's going to take the issue of old growth logging out of the public lands and then I'll be appeased somewhat, in the meantime, obama criticism is valid, as a suggestion, watch the choice of words to criticize him.