AndreyAA’s account conforms to a timeline written by a prof at Global Exchange.  The looniest part of the timeline is that at after the Russian response, Geogia declared war on Russia!  They were offically at war for a half hour before President loonyashvili asked for a ceasefire.  This is a leader that the US is giving a billion dollars to rebuild his military.

By AndreyAA, September 6 at 12:40 pm

•  “I believe in a world community that will view Sukashvili’s inhuman orders as a war crime and an outrage on humanity. I believe in you, thinking person, able to confront with facts, person who will not follow barefaced propaganda of deeply corrupt media, person able to recognize truth!”

Well AndreyAA, if it matters, thanks for writing this truth. I know I recognize it, (because I know how deeply corrupt the media is) and because we’ve lived with these same ‘tactics’ so many times before. Lying to start wars is very much an American Imperial habit, and Georgia has been coopted to the same effect. I’d be willing to bet that Sukashvili wouldn’t have attempted this without assurances from the US gangster regime.

Still, WE know what’s going on. Sukashvili can just stand trial at the Hague with the rest of them.

cann4ing: ’... Nice tactic, there, Folktruther.  Without a scintilla of evidence, you made the outrageous statement that Barack Obama would engage in torture. ...’

It’s like the French general says in The Battle of Algiers.  (And actually said in real life.)  If you want to maintain control, if you want to maintain the state, then you must do the things which are required to maintain control.  To maintain control over a dissident population, you have to terrorize, imprison, torture and kill a certain number of the dissidents.  If you don’t do it yourself directly, you have to have someone else do it for you.  Obama, like other Western leaders, wants to control Afghanistan and do “nation-building.”  Therefore….

That’s just the way it is.  Power has a price.

If you haven’t seen The Battle of Algiers, rent it now and watch.  It’s only superficially about Algeria and France.

Nice tactic, there, Folktruther.  Without a scintilla of evidence, you made the outrageous statement that Barack Obama would engage in torture.  When you are called to the mat for your scurrilous attack, you attack those who would dare question the validity of your smear as engaging in “sleaze.”

The only difference between you and Karl Rove is that Rove chooses to reside on the extreme right of the political spectrum while you reside on the extreme left.

The kind of sleaze that Cyrena and cann4ing indulge in is the future of the Dem party. They have imported the sleaze from the Roach Limbargers of the right wing Gops and are using it against progressives, just as Gops use it against Dems.  They have to, because the Dem policies under Obama-Biden will continue the policies of the Bushites and are thus irrational and morally unjustiifiable.  Sleaze to silence dissent is all they have.

This was exempliefied by Huffington Post featureing on its main piece calling Nader a “total asshole.”  Nader is an honest liberal with a long record of reforms and thus an affront to current Dem leaders.

Obama-Biden will continue Bush’s policy of torture because they are going to continue his War on Terrorism.  Torture is essential to help terrorize and intimidate a population. That is why it doesn’t matter to the Bushites that perhaps half of the inmates at Gitmo have had nothing whatever to do with any kind of terrorism.  It doesn’t much matter WHO you torture so long as they are Muslims from rebellious populations.  A standard intelligence tactic is to torture them until they agree to spy for the US.

The pretense that they are being tortured to give information is absurd.  Rank and file military information is extremely time-dependant, and these people have been imprisoned, and tortured, for years.  Anything they knew, which couldn’t be much the way insurgent groups are organized, was long ago extracted.

But, it is argued,  Obamba, and probably Biden, say they are against torture, and they have given speeches, etc.  I’m sure they have. 

But what is said and what is done in politics are often two different things, especially at the present time in the US. 

Bush has stated often publically “we do not torture.”  The Dem house leaders are all publically against torture, while having met secretly with Bush and were briefed that the US tortures.  And agreed with it secretly, while opposing it publically.

Congress passed a bi-partisan bill that was overwhelming passed that eliminated torture.  And still torture is US state policy as it is Israel’s. 

If you are going to try to subjucate the Iraqi, Afganistan, Somolian people, you have to torture.  And that is what Obama-Biden are pledged to in the War on Terrorism.

So all the Dems have is sleaze to defend it, both in the US and Israel.  Do you think I’m a liar or a fool, as they characterized me?  They call names to intimidate, it’s all they have, it’s all they know. And this is increasing in the Dem party. 

Is this the kind of party you want to belong to?  Torture defended by sleaze?

Hedges just now has published a piece in Truthdig which exposes Obama’s approach on health care.  He calls for supporting McKinney or Nader.  I suggest McKinney because she is younger, blacker and a woman.  Voting will make an insignificant difference since both parties are firmly in control of the neocon ruling class. 

It is therefore necessary to think of the long term effect.  the near term effect of both parties is increased war abroad, class inequality at home, and an increasing police state.

The color black in a uniform is used as intimidation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Jux68F_AQ&eurl =http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message554515/pg1

This is what I am talking about. This has happened under Clinton, the saintly Democrat. GW, too. Obama or McCain will have the same crap going on, if not worse.

1 of 2
Sen Barack Obama Reacts to US Bill Approving Torture
Human Rights Should Be Bigger than Politics
By Deborah White, About.com

Senator Barack Obama delivered this speech on the floor of the US Senate, in reaction to Senate passage of S. 3930, Military Commissions Act of 2006, which approved US torture of detainees and strips Constitutional rights away from detainees.
Senator Obama decries the placement of politics over human rights, and condemns S. 3930. He states, “This is not how a serious Administration would approach the problem of terrorism.”
STATEMENT ON THE MILITARY COMMISSION LEGISLATION
September 28, 2008
Remarks by Senator Barack Obama

“I may have only been in this body for a short while, but I am not naive to the political considerations that go along with many of the decisions we make here.

I realize that soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.

Human Rights Should Be Bigger Than Politics
And yet, while I know all of this, I’m still disappointed. Because what we’re doing here today - a debate over the fundamental human rights of the accused - should be bigger than politics. This is serious.

If this was a debate with obvious ideological differences - heartfelt convictions that couldn’t be settled by compromise - I would understand. But it’s not.

All of us - Democrats and Republicans - want to do whatever it takes to track down terrorists and bring them to justice as swiftly as possible. All of us want to give our President every tool necessary to do this. And all of us were willing to do that in this bill. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to the American people.

Unconstitutional

In the five years that the President’s system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we’re here today.

2 of 2
We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay. Easily. This was not an either-or question.

•  Instead of allowing this President - or any President - to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered.

•  Instead of detainees arriving at Guantanamo and facing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that allows them no real chance to prove their innocence with evidence or a lawyer, we could have developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.

•  And instead of not just suspending, but eliminating, the right of habeas corpus - the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention, we could have given the accused one chance - one single chance - to ask the government why they are being held and what they are being charged with.

Politics Won Today
But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

•  And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

•  And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government’s intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, “...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay…”

•  And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government’s intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda’s best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspeeche s/a/ObamaTorture.htm

Dressed in black, Parcelsus?  Why black?

Cyrena:  Folktruther’s baseless statement that Obama would continue a policy of state torture simply underscores that he is an opinionated, irrational fool.  I do not wish to respond further to irrationality whether it comes from fools on the Right or fools on the left.

You can watch the two Obama’s right here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9uAw1MnEi8

@Folktruther

“While shotguns and canned goods are not necessarily a bad idea in the coming period, Paracelsus, keeping the door closed isn’t.”

I don’t know what I would do if a bunch of heavily armed men in black were to bang on my door.

Yep cann4ing…

And this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes us know how it’s all nothing but rhetoric to incite:

•  “So Obama-Biden will continue the American state policy of torture, as Isreal does, since it is not possible to attack a population without intimindating them through torture.” 

Folktruther, you’re BEYOND offensive. Not only has Obama been the ONLY candidate to consistently speak out against this torture, but he’s weighed in consistently on each and every one of these beyond believable violations of the most basic of international prohibitions.

He’s the ONLY one talking about non-proliferation and the elimination of ALL nuclear weapons. And he didn’t just START talking about these atrocities being perpetrated by the criminal cabal, he’s BEEN talking about it.

So, it’s like you go out of your way to make up these incredible lies. Why do you do it?

Tell us how you KNOW this Folkliar:

•  “Not only are they going to pursue the War on Terrorism against Muslims, they are already committed to the New Cold War against Russia, continuing to put a first strike missile defense in Poland and Checho.

They are already ‘committed’ to the New Cold War against Russia? Tell me how you know this. Tell us where you see Senator Obama’s name on any of the plans for this missile defense in Eastern Europe, It’s been in the works for years now, so tell us how you know this has been signed, sealed and delivered by Obama, knowing god damned full well that the thug regime of Cheney et al is now, and has been the most secretive in the history of this so-called republic.

Tell us how you KNOW that Obama will continue something that is now, and has always been recognized as the biggest farce in the history of the world, the so-called ‘war on terror”. It’s not a ‘war on terror’ it’s a war OF terror, planned and perpetrated by the same criminals that planned and perpetrated 9/11, in order to kick it off.

You don’t know anything folkliar. You’re like the so called ‘revolutionaries’ of the Boston Tea Party, (first act of terrorism) who disguised themselves as Native Americans to do their deed. (Oh how brave). Or like the KKK, who always had to hide under their sheets to do theirs. (very brave).

So you hide behind the internet to spew a lot of lies, and just keep recycling the same shit over and over, even though there’s never any substantiation for any of it. You don’t even attempt to offer an argument for any of this stuff, which would allow us to at least extend the benefit of the doubt. In other words, you could offer some quote, or some statement from Obama, and use your own ‘interpretation’ of it to make your claims like, “he’s going to continue the war on terrorism against Muslims.” But you know that it is SUCH a lie, that you aren’t even creative enough to come up with a bullshit interpretation.

How long do you think you can keep throwing shit out there, hoping that some of it will stick?

Maybe we can get Cheney and Palin to go duck hunting together; see which one comes back.

While shotguns and canned goods are not necessarily a bad idea in the coming period, Paracelsus, keeping the door closed isn’t.  I am not concerned about making it, I am concerned about my children and grandchildren, and yours, making it.

This can only be done if we keep our doors open and unite with others in the same boat.  Shotguns are not much use against missiles, and eventually can openers break.  The only defense against oppressive power is other people, and a belief system to unite us.  This unity is not easily achieved, but it can be done.

@Folktruther

“So a new strategy has to be developed to mobilize the population against their leaders.”

Buy shotguns and canned food. As long you don’t open the door, when the wolf comes a bangin’, you’ll stand a good chance of making it.

cann4ing: ’... In Folktruther’s retort we see precisely what to be expected from ideologues of the Left.  All complaints; no solutions….’

Leftists have all sorts of solutions.  You just don’t happen to like them, which is different from not having them.

But that’s all right.  I don’t think all that much of your (plural) solutions either.  You mentioned “grass-roots pressure” but I don’t see why, if Mr. O is elected after moving strongly and explicitly to the Right, he’s going to be particularly susceptible to leftist or “progressive” grass-roots pressure.  I mean, why would he be?  It wouldn’t make any sense.

We (the leftists, that is) must be doing something right, though, or the cops wouldn’t have raided all those people in St. Paul, and the mainstream media wouldn’t be suppressing the news.  If only we knew what it was.

Oh no, camm4ing, I don’t think Obama or Biden are pseudo-progressives.  They are Dem neocons, continuing the neocon policies of the Bushites, possibly more intelligently.  It appears that they are going to partially withdraw from Iraq under cover of increasing the bombing war against Afganistan and Pakistan, just as Nixon withdrew from Vietnam by bombing Cambodia and Laos, killing hundreds of thousands of people.  Secretly, since the mass media didn’t report the war to the American people.

Not only are they going to pursue the War on Terrorism against Muslims, they are already committed to the New Cold War against Russia, continuing to put a first strike missile defense in Poland and Checho.  And military action is still on the table against Iran, while Obama-Biden support apartheid Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Even to the point of breaking precedent and eliminating an adress by Carter who, while a lousy president, has been an excellent ex-president, performing world services, including characterizing the Israeli apartheid regime.

So Obama-Biden will continue the American state policy of torture, as Isreal does, since it is not possible to attack a population without intimindating them through torture.  And of course Obama has already voted for lawless spying on the American population.  With the increase in class inequality, which he cannot do anything about while beholden to the finacial corporations, he must support the police state already largely installed by the Bushites.

No, Obama-Biden are not psuedo-Progressives, cann4ing.  You are.  Although you appear to genuinely want a change from the gangster Bushite regime, you are afraid to support the transformation necessary to acheive it.  The Bushites have been incompetent promoting general policy but they have been brilliant in gangsterizing the American bourgeois Democracy.  Rove has been a student of Orwell, on the other side, and has helped create a power system that can not be budged by elections.  If voting against it would do any good it would be made illegal.

So a new strategy has to be developed to mobilize the population against their leaders.  What this strategy will entail I don’t know, but an ideology is needed to unite the people to implement it.  You ae quite right that I am an ideologue, cann4ing. An ideologue of an ideology that has not yet been formulated.

Thank you, Cyrena.  In Folktruther’s retort we see precisely what to be expected from ideologues of the Left.  All complaints; no solutions; no strategies for getting from point A to point B, and a remarkable inability to count.  And, of course, anything that Obama says or does to favor the middle class aspirations of the working class is to be discounted because Folktruther regards him as a “pseudo-progressive”—translation:  ideologically impure.

@Cyrena

”...the midbrow politi[c]al junkies who dominate the progressive truth.”—Folktruther.

That means you Cyrena!

America is currently being ruled by a gangster police state disguised by liberal institutions and liberal rhetoric.  The most effective of these disguises are the Dem pseudo-progressive neocons who mobilize the population to fighing the Gops while sanitizing the policies they implement.  The Dem neocons are complicit enablers of the Gop neocons, leading to ever increasing corruption and brutality historically.

In St. Paul, where the Gop convention is being held, cops broke into and arrested groups of people who were going to protest the Gop convention and take pictures of police brutality.  They were arrested, threatened and hassled BEFORE the convention, on the grounds that the militarized cops were enforcing the fire code.  This happened yesterday and there is of course no mention of it in the mainstream media.  Articles by Rob Kall at OPED and Greenwald at Salon has reported it.

What has not been reported by Dem pseudo-progressives is the cops that patrolled the DEM convention, intimidating and hassling peaceful protest which Obama and others were making their beautiful speeches promoting Freedom and Democracy.  Since the psuedo-progressive Dems made no protest about the miltarization of the Dem convention, it was assumed, correctly, that they would make no effective complaint about the Gop convention.

The Dems are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.  While the population is sucked into the meaningless stuggle over political offices and spoils of the Dems and Gops, the political consensus of the neocons continues to go to the right.  What Obama-Biden will do if and when elected is INCREASE war abroad and INCREASE a police state at home.  McCain may do it more so. 

This is inevitable while class inequality is so pronounced, with 10% of the population owning 85% of the US economy.  And increasing.  This class inequality can only be defended by a police state.  The Dem leaders recognize this as well as the Gop leaders, and are neutralizing the opposition of the population in their role of Good Cops.

What is most significant about the pseudo-progressive Dem neocons is what they DO NOT say.  They do not tell the simple truth about American power relations nor suggest effective strategies for coping with it. There solution is to vote for the Dems. 

Denms distract the population by politely arguing with the political drivel of the right which is more or less explicitly for imposing a police state. 

Just as the military and CIA and other right wing groups hire journalists, infiltrators and informers in the mainstream media nad mainstream progressive organs, so they may plant right wingers in the Internet media precisely for distraction purposes.  Or rightwing truthers may simply be wantobe’s hoping for a better gig in the American truth system.

Just as the 9/11-anthrax homicides through up new truthers that circumvented established Progressives who supported the offical Bushite story, under the guise of questioning it, so the population must give rise to a new generation of truths to circumvent the midbrow politial junkies who dominate the progressive truth.  This is an historical undertaking and must be done in the face of an increasing police state that pseudo-progressives will support under the guise of attacking it.

By cann4ing, August 30 at 3:49 pm

Ah Ernest, I adore you. I wanna be able to write like this when I grow up.

Among several comments of this excellent post, I noticed this one because I’ve only recently become aware of it myself.

•  “It was a faulty argument when made by Nader in 2000 to minimize the distinctions between Bush and Gore, and it completely falls flat after an eight year global nightmare aka the Bush/Cheney regime.”
I honestly didn’t pay any attention to Nader back in 2000, in part because I was already in the grip of the victimization by the Bush/Cheney regime. (I was still in Texas at the time, where their routine was already implemented). So, I hardly had time or the presence of mind to pay much heed to Nader, who didn’t have a presence at all in that political scene anyway. I only paid slightly more attention to him in 2004, but the same thing about any ‘awareness’ of the guy was just as relevant. He’s never even attempted to connect with the people – ALL of the people.

But I said that to say that he’s doing this same thing this time around, in trying to minimize the distinctions between Obama and McCain, in order to make them both ‘different’ from him. This is an incredibly stupid strategic blunder, because it insults any member of the population who has come to know a whole lot more about both Obama and McCain, then they do about Nader, (despite how long he’s been around, or the success of his past contributions). He was annoying even in that debate with Scheer, because of his determination to stand by the claim that there was no difference between the democrats and republicans, and one need not be a political junkie or genius to know better than that, and therefore be highly offended by it.
And this says it again, which is the reality of what we’ve been saying all along..

•  “We progressives may not see eye-to-eye with Obama on every issue, but one thing is damned certain—there is a far greater prospect for grass root pressure to bare fruit in an Obama administration than in an insane McCain administration! “

Nope, we don’t see eye-to-eye with him on every issue, but the thing is, (as you’ve already said) he doesn’t expect us to, because he’s not planning a dictatorship, or even promising to have all of the answers. He even went as far as saying that part of his reason for selecting Biden was because he wanted somebody to challenge his thinking. Now I don’t know that Biden was the best person to do that. He shoulda picked me if he wanted that;) (just kidding). But still..you get my point.

•  “Ideology blinds its adherents from a reality that change will not be instantaneous and that the shape of that change will be the product of democratic pressures over an extended period. …The time has come for the American Left to gain a little political maturity along with the ability to count.”
Amen to this!! Political maturity on top of overall maturity. The whining I keep hearing makes me wonder about the memory thing. They’ve been watching their house burn down around them for 8 years, and haven’t done a whole lot to put the fire out themselves. Now the fire crew finally gets close enough to maybe help them put the thing out, and all they can do is throw rocks at him.

I once observed this same thing about a former in-law. She constantly whined about people allegedly ‘abandoning’ her. I told her it wasn’t that folks were ‘abandoning her’ it was that *she* was RUNNING THEM OFF!

Barack O’Bilderberg

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=view Article&code=20080609&articleId=9270

A Background to Bilderberg

Sunday, June 8, 2008, marked the last day of this year’s annual Bilderberg meeting, which took place in Chantilly, Virginia. The American Friends of Bilderberg, an American Bilderberg front group, which organizes the American participant list for the annual Bilderberg conference, issued a rare press release this year. It stated that, “The Conference will deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran. Approximately 140 participants will attend.“1

Bilderberg, which has been meeting annually since 1954, is a highly secretive international think tank and some say, policy-forming group made up of representatives from North America and Western Europe and was founded by Joseph Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland. The Bilderberg Steering Committee, made up of around 30 people, (with no official list available), “decided that it would invite 100 of the most powerful people in Europe and North America every year to meet behind closed doors at a different five-star resort. The group stresses secrecy: What’s said at a Bilderberg conference stays at a Bilderberg conference.“2

Usually, the Bilderberg Conference is held in Europe for three years in a row, with the fourth year holding a meeting in North America. However, the previous North American conference was held in 2006 in Ottawa. So why did they break tradition to hold the conference in North America this year? Speculation abounds around a discussion of a possible attack on Iran, the American-centered global financial crisis, as well as the current US Presidential elections.

First Meeting of the Bilderberg in 1954

Bilderberg has long been an important forum for up-and-coming politicians of Western nations to be introduced to the global financial elite; the heads of the major multinational corporations, international banks, world financial institutions, global governing bodies, think tanks, and powerful individuals of the likes of David Rockefeller and various European monarchs, including Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, daughter of founding member, Prince Bernhard, as well as Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain.

According to The Globe and Mail, such Canadian Prime Ministers have, in the past, (often before becoming Prime Minister), attended a Bilderberg Conference as a guest, including Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper.3 Tony Blair attended Bilderberg before becoming Prime Minister,4 as did the current British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who also recently called for the establishment of a “new world order.“5

Interestingly, as the Washington Post reported, Vernon E. Jordon, a high-powered American executive, who sits on several corporate boards, including American Express, Xerox, J.C. Penney, Dow Jones, and Sara Lee, to name a few, also happens to be a very close friend of former President Bill Clinton. However, “it was Jordan who first introduced then-Gov. Clinton to world leaders at their annual Bilderberg gathering in Germany in 1991. Plenty of governors try to make that scene; only Clinton got taken seriously at that meeting, because Vernon Jordan said he was okay.“6 Clinton subsequently became President.

Barack and Bilderberg

Recently, there has been much discussion about Barack Obama having possibly attended the recent Bilderberg conference in Virginia. This speculation arose when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sneaked off for a secretive meeting while in Virginia. As the AP reported, “Reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane. Asked at the time about the Illinois senator’s whereabouts, [Obama spokesman Robert] Gibbs smiled and declined to comment.“7

The press that had been traveling with Obama were not made aware of the secretive meeting until the plane that they assumed Obama would be present on was moving down the runway, prompting many angry questions from the press towards Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs. One reported asked Gibbs, “Why were we not told about this meeting until we were on the plane, the doors were shut and the plane was about to taxi to take off?” to which he responded, “Senator Obama had a desire to do some meetings, others had a desire to meet with him tonight in a private way and that is what we are doing.” This preceded another question, “Is there more than one meeting, is there more than one person with whom he is meeting?” Gibbs simply replied, “I am not going to get into all the details of the meeting.” He again later repeated that, “There was a desire to do some meetings tonight, he was interested in doing them, others were interested in doing them, and to do them in a way that was private.“8

On Friday, June 6, it was reported that Bilderberg tracker, Jim Tucker, “called Obama’s office today to ask if he had attended Bilderberg. A campaign spokeswoman refused to discuss the matter but would not deny that Obama had attended Bilderberg.“9

Bilderberg to Pick Obama’s Vice President

As the Financial Times reported in May of this year, Barack Obama appointed James A. Johnson, the former CEO of Fannie Mae, “to head a secret committee to produce a shortlist for his vice-presidential running mate.” A short list was discussed by the article, which listed, other than Hillary Clinton, “Jim Webb, the former secretary of the navy, Vietnam veteran and senator for Virginia; Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia; John Edwards, the former vice-presidential candidate in 2004; Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio; and Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas.” Other potential nominees include “Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate armed services committee; and Wesley Clark, the former head of Nato in Europe.“10

James A. Johnson, the man Obama asked to pick his running mate, played the same role for John Kerry back in 2004, and he selected John Edwards. As the New York Times reported, “Several people pointed to the secretive and exclusive Bilderberg conference of some 120 people that this year drew the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, Melinda Gates and Richard A. Perle to Stresa, Italy, in early June, as helping [Edwards] win Mr. Kerry’s heart. Mr. Edwards spoke so well in a debate on American politics with the Republican Ralph Reed that participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap before the end of the session.” The Times further reported, “His performance at Bilderberg was important,’’ said a friend of Mr. Kerry who was there. ‘‘He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.“11

James A. Johnson, Vice Chairman of Perseus, a merchant banking firm, is also a director of Goldman Sachs, Forestar Real Estate Group, Inc., KB Home, Target Corporation and UnitedHealth Group Inc., is also a member of the American Friends of Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and is an honorary trustee of the Brookings Institution.12 It is likely that Obama’s running mate will be chosen by Johnson at this years Bilderberg Conference.

Notable among this year’s Bilderberg guests are Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, who the Financial Times reported was on Johnson’s short list of nominees. In fact, Sebelius is the only person mentioned as a possible running mate in the Financial Times article that was officially listed on the Bilderberg list of attendees.13 Could this be a sign that she may be the chosen one? Time will tell. However, another Democratic politician present at the meeting was Tom Daschle, so perhaps he is working his way back into politics.

Don’t Forget McCain

Just because Obama’s popularity dwarfs that of McCain’s, is not reason enough to ignore the other candidate. After all, the elite never ignore both candidates, and in fact, ensure they have them both neatly packed in their back pockets. Among the guests at the Bilderberg meeting this year, included Republican Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, as well as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,14 which would be a smart political pick for McCain, going up against the first black presidential candidate.

McCain has also received endorsements from former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger, General Alexander Haig, Lawrence Eagleburger and George P. Shultz.15 These are not men without influence, as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz were also present at this years meeting.16 Also interesting to note is that George P. Shultz “associated himself with the Bush presidency early on, introducing the Texas governor to Condoleezza Rice at the Hoover Institution in 1998.” Could Condi be in the process of being groomed for higher office, or is she simply at the meeting for foreign policy discussions?

Also important to note, is that McCain had a fundraiser in London held for him, which was hosted “by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE [Order of Merit and the Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire] and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild.” As the Washington Post reported, “Tickets to the invitation-only event cost $1,000 to $2,300.“18 The Post later reported, “Aides refused to talk about the fundraiser, or to say how much money was raised, and McCain dashed through the rain away from reporters after emerging. One guest said there were about 100 people at the luncheon. If they all gave the maximum, the event would have raised about $230,000 for the campaign.“19

cann4ing: ‘Ideological purists on the Left are as problematic as ideological purists on the Right.  Because Barack Obama does not share their every desire—e.g., an immediate dismantling of Empire and the military industrial complex, nationalized health care, etc., there is therefore no difference between Obama and a senile old man who etc. etc. etc. ...’

I don’t know a single person who thinks there is no difference between Obama and McCain.  No doubt there are some poor, confused souls out there who may not be able to tell the difference, but most of the lefties I hear from or read about can tell the difference.  That isn’t the issue, the problem.  If you want a more detailed critique, try this:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index2.php?option=com _content&do_pdf=1&id=697

I would not say it’s a settled matter, either, among lefties as to whether to vote for, give money to, or otherwise support Obama or someone else.  Most of us are a little bit taken aback by the Electric Kool-Aid phenomenon, regardless.

Does anybody care about Obama’s possible Bilderberg connections?

http://americanrelay.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/our-n ew-master-bilderberg-obama/

Reporters were duped into believing that they were getting on a plane back to the campaign headquarters in Chicago with the presumptive nominee, while in reality Obama’s motorcade instead sped off in secrecy to Northern Virginia.

http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=1210

(the video)

The traveling press pool spent at least five minutes grilling Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs about the meeting, and the campaign’s unwillingness to send at least a reporter or two along with Sen. Obama.

Now the presumptive Democratic nominee, custom dictates that Obama should be treated the same way as the president — never being without at least a few pool reporters traveling with him.

“If the president goes bike riding, we go with him. If he goes out to dinner or goes to visit a friend three blocks up the road, we go with him in the motorcade,” one reporter told Gibbs. “That’s the expectation in a general election, and that’s the way it’s been with previous candidates.”

————-

So the question is…… where did Obama and Hillary go? Did they go on a date?

According to news reports, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went out of their way to hold their long-awaited private meeting in a very specific location - not at Hillary’s mansion in Washington - but in Northern Virginia, which also just happens to be the scene of the 2008 Bilderberg meeting.

“Reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane,” reports the Associated Press.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g-qGLDs-gAnZiUXD2NU 51ry3j3dwD914B1O00

Dulles just happens to be walking distance from the Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly where Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and the rest of the Bilderberg globalists are convening.

The neo-liberal website Wonkette, which had previously ridiculed “conspiracy theorists” for ascribing power to Bilderberg, seemed to take a somewhat different tone when it made the connection between Obama and Hillary’s meeting and the Bilderberg Group.

Not one U.S. corporate media outlet has made the connection between the location of the Bilderberg Group conference this year and Obama and Hillary’s decision to venture out to Chantilly for their confidential “tet a tet”.

Not one U.S. corporate media outlet has yet uttered one word about 125 of the world’s most influential power brokers meeting behind closed doors to discuss the future of the planet on U.S. soil - while being met by the probable future President of the United States.

Hillary and Obama’s attendance of the 2008 Bilderberg meeting, and the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.

Anarcissie:  I think you have strayed substantially from my original post which you criticized.  I never said that the American polity is fascist.  I said that we have fascists inside our government—Bush/Cheney/the Federalist Society Jurists on the Supreme Court.

When Hitler first entered the German government, he did not have total control.  He was Reich Chancellor, but Hindenberg was President and the other ministries of government were filled with non-Nazi conservatives.  It took the Reichstag fire and ensuing decrees, culminating in the Enabling Act which ceded all legislative power to Hitler before total control was achieved and the democracy once known as the Weimar Republic came to an abrupt end.

Are you going to tell me that Hitler was never a Nazi until he achieved total control?  Are you going to suggest that until Franco defeated the Republican forces in Spain, Franco was not a fascist because he had not secured total control.

You have confused the substance of the individual with the system they seek to overturn.

Paul Krugman aptly described the hard right movement that installed Bush/Cheney as “revolutionary.”

“When one is dealing with ordinary political movements, it makes sense to presume that their policy proposals, right or wrong, are made in good faith.  But when one is dealing with a revolutionary movement that does not accept the legitimacy of the existing system, there’s no reason to make that assumption.  Revolutionary movements, which aren’t concerned about the rules of the game, have no compunction about misrepresenting their goals.”

That is the essence of the Bush/Cheney regime and their concept of a Unitary Executive.  They do not accept the legitimacy of the constitutional government they were selected to lead.  That is why they proclaim the right to pick and choose the laws they will or will not enforce; pick and choose what they will reveal to Congress; what they will hide.  Their vision is not that the President is “above” the law but that the President “is” the law.

Ideological purists on the Left are as problematic as ideological purists on the Right.  Because Barack Obama does not share their every desire—e.g., an immediate dismantling of Empire and the military industrial complex, nationalized health care, etc., there is therefore no difference between Obama and a senile old man who thinks that war is the answer to every national problem and whose election would provide the final push into an economic abyss and a totalitarian society from which we may never recover or escape.

It was a faulty argument when made by Nader in 2000 to minimize the distinctions between Bush and Gore, and it completely falls flat after an eight year global nightmare aka the Bush/Cheney regime.

Is Obama the answer to all our problems?  He would tell you himself that he is not.  Indeed, that was the point about change coming from the bottom up and his not all that new observation that only democratic pressure from each of us can bring meaningful change. 

Senator Obama was not my first choice.  I would have preferred Dennis Kucinich.  But at this stage in our nation’s history, for progressives, Senator Obama is the “only” rational choice—so long as we don’t stop there; don’t expect an Obama election to be the ultimate remedy; keep working to replace corporate Dems in Congress with true progressives; continue to push for single-payer in lieu of the scam of “universal coverage.” 

We progressives may not see eye-to-eye with Obama on every issue, but one thing is damned certain—there is a far greater prospect for grass root pressure to bare fruit in an Obama administration than in an insane McCain administration!

Ideology blinds its adherents from a reality that change will not be instantaneous and that the shape of that change will be the product of democratic pressures over an extended period.

The time has come for the American Left to gain a little political maturity along with the ability to count.

I mean of course, Cyrena, the mobilization of the population for POLICIES, not for Dem efforts to get elected to the spoils of office.  The Dems are a fake opposition, like those pseudo-progressive punching bags used by radio and TV neocons to illustrte how much stronger they are then their feeble opposition.

But Anaarcissie is right, the midbrow political junkies who promote Dem policies have been oriented to the Dem-Gop dimension of political discourse, rather than the people-power dimension, that probably they will be the last to switch over, since they identify with professional class interests.

That is why the Roach Limbarger school of political discourse is becoming institutionalized in Dem neocon debate.  If you don’t have the facts or reason on your side, you can only pound on the table.

King was mobilizing the people AGAINST the Dem war, Cyrena, just as he mobilize civil rights
AGAINST the Southern Dems who were the racists fighting them.  Although rank and file Dems joined him after a bit, he was assassinated during a Dem administration because of fears he would unite the two movements.

It is quite true that Obama began with Alinsky type mobilizing but quickly joined the Dem establishment who espouse war abroad and a police state at home.  While the Dems were giving the usual pap inside the Convention, police in full riot gear were beating and intimindating progressives outside of it.  With Dem leader silence and concent, including Obama’s.

Obama clear: He’s pro-union
May 15, 2007

BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Columnist
TRENTON, N.J.—He won’t shop at Wal-Mart. He is for a law making it easier for people to join unions. If president, his appointees would be “sympathetic” to labor. He said he walked picket lines while a state senator.

It’s “been a long time since we had a president who said unions are a good thing,” said White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at an AFL-CIO presidential forum, a stop in a day with three New Jersey fund-raisers and endorsements from two New Jersey mayors.

After previous lackluster appearances before union groups, on Monday, Obama made a clear and specific appeal to labor. Giving a nod to workers trying to organize at Atlantic City casinos, Obama said, “We need to stand with them and help them organize.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/385406,CST-NWS-s weet15.article

Obama applauds unions at convention
‘I see those yellow T-shirts’
April 25, 2008

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com
It was supposed to be his day off, but with a union convention in town and the close Indiana primary less than two weeks away, White House hopeful Barack Obama thanked 200 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers for their help on his campaign Thursday.
“No matter where [the campaign] has taken me, you’ve been right by my side,” Obama told the members in their yellow “UFCW for Obama” T-Shirts. “I know that because I see those yellow T-shirts at every town hall meeting.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/915251, CST-NWS-union25.article

A: Hillary Clinton fights Obama, unions, labor & US jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sigkAd3SxxI

Obama to Wear Union-Made Suit for Speech Tonight

Last update: 4:41 p.m. EDT Aug. 28, 2008
DENVER, Aug 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/—Tonight, when he delivers his speech at INVESCO Field in Denver, Barack Obama will be wearing a suit made by UNITE HERE members from the Hart Schaffner Marx plant in Des Plaines, Illinois. Five hundred workers, including cutters, sewers, and distribution workers, work at the plant in suburban Chicago. Since 1910, workers at the plant have been members of UNITE HERE and its predecessor unions.

By Folktruther, August 30 at 9:09 am

•  “Has Obama ever championed the right of progressives to organize and peacefully assemble?  No.  No, cann4ing, the answer is no. The Dem party is AGAISNT the mobilization of the people, just as they coopted and destroyed the peace movement.”

Folktruther, this is one of many blatant falsehoods that you been known to posit here, via the standard innuendo of proving a negative. You say has he ever ‘championed the right’. Has he ever DENIED it would be more appropriate, and you would know that to be false. This is the same as saying that because one cannot site a specific action or event, or speech, or writing, where he (or anybody for that matter) states that they are in fact in favor of all of these things, (all of which happen to be constitutional rights by the way) then they must be against them.

This is a very deceptive practice, (inflammatory rhetoric with no foundation in reality or precedent) and when you engage in it routinely, people figure it out easily enough. You cannot say that the Dem party, is against the mobilization of the people, when history and the reality of the day tells us the exact opposite.

Are you even trying to suggest that Dr. King was AGAINST the mobilization of the people? Are you even trying to suggest that Obama’s community organization on the South Side of Chicago was anything BUT the mobilization of the people?

Do you think that Barack Obama was just able to secure the Democratic nomination for POTUS WITHOUT mobilizing the people?

And do you really think that THIS many of us are stupid enough to believe your rhetoric over what our own eyes and ears convey to us?

I think you get carried away by your own bullshit folktruther.

What is going on in the US since The 2000 Coup and the 911-antrax false flag homicides IS NEW, Anarcissie.  It is a new kind of police state, whatever it is called.  It’s function is to DESTROY the coordinating social function of the state, leaving only its violent repessive function.  And that violence outsourced as much as possible to Free Enterprise.

The notion that this proto-fascism will be accompanied by increased welfare payments is absurd, right wing drivel.  The neocons are eliminating welfare precisely to de-powerize the population, making the poor working longer and harder for less and less.

Even mainstream Dems recognize this.  Al Gore in THE ASSAULT ON REASON states, p. 64: 

“They [the Gop neocons]are deeply concerned, for example, that governement programs to provide health care, housing, social insurance, and other financial support will adversely affect work incentivies.  They also oppose the forty hour work week, job safety laws, consumer protection,  [etc,etc].

If people are given a decent income to live, and are not driven down by the drugery of typical work, it would undermine the class-based state.  They would have time, energy and interest to enter into the power process and become citizens for the first time in history.

The entire function of this neocon irrationality and oppression is to prevent this, as Orwell dramatized in 1984.

What people don’t realize, because liberal economists don’t tell them, is that growth in the economy can be taken as less hours of work as an alterntaive to increased consumption. It has been done to a greater extent in the welfare captialism of Europe.  But the neocons of both parties must prevent this if they are to maintain their power to rule over historical time. 

So the US is INCREASING the work time of the working population as part of its policy of incrreasing class inequality.  And Clinton, in combination with the Gop Congress, destroyed welfare while he helped gut the unions, and institute the increased prison slavery now being used to increase profits.

But this gangster fascism, cann4ing, could not be imposed without the Dem leaders’ complicit enabling of it.  If the Dem party, or even the “Dem wing” mobilized millions of people to oppose the police repression and infiltration of progressive movments, it would reduce them to the point of elimintion.

But the Dem leaders silently SUPPORT the brutalizing of the left, because real progressive truth interferes with the policies they must champion in order to be funded and media’d by the neocon ruling class. 

Has Obama ever championed the right of progressives to organize and peacefully assemble?  No.  No, cann4ing, the answer is no. The Dem party is AGAISNT the mobilization of the people, just as they coopted and destroyed the peace movement.

As Greenwald stated in his last piece, Obama did not even allude in his presidental address that during the last eight years a police state has been imposed on us.  He did not allude to the vast corruption and brutlity that has been imposed by the neocons.  Because he is going to continue it.  That is why he voted for lawless spying by the American power system on the American population.

The US and Israel are the only modern powers where murder and torture are state policies.  The police have been militarized with SWAT teams and now routinely prevent peaceful dissent, including cops in full riot gear outside the Dem convention.  In order to protect Freedom and Democracy it is necessary to destroy it.

What is most important about Obana’s, and Kucinich’s speeches, is what they DIDN’T SAY.  The didn’t say the law and mass media have been perverted by money power.  The historical function of Kucinich is to get left Dems to vote for Obama, and the historical function of Obama is to unite the American people to support increased war abroad and increased class inequality at home, requiring a disguised police state to repress protests to it.

Obaama-Biden are not part of the solution: they are part of the problem.

Folktruther: ‘I think you are wrong, Anarcissie, that we wouldn’t be having this public converse if the fascists were in power.  The US appears to have developed a new form of despotism where elements of the ruling class want to DESTROY the coordinating and welfare function of the state. ...

It’s not really fascist, then, is it?  Remember, fascism is a total system.  You can’t really do the quasi-military stuff without the concomitant welfarism; otherwise, there are too many people hanging loose; God knows what they may get up to.  Welfare is a way of quiescing and controlling people.  So here is where accuracy of analysis comes in: when the real fascists show up, we know they will talk a lot of Welfare.

At the same time they will shut down stuff like we are doing now, on this web site.  In a totalitarian state, as in a barracks, you can’t have people mouthing off.

Granted, things are moving that way.

What’s going on in the U.S. is not new; it is a descent into the politics of much of the Third World in years gone by.  That is one of the prices of empire: not only do you become like those you fight against, you also become like those you rule.

You’ve just now picked up on the storm trooper suppression of free speech, Anarcissie?  Where were you during the 2004 DNC in Boston when demonstrators were shunted off to a barbed wire enclosed “protest pit” that people on the left named after Guantanamo’s “Camp X-Ray?”  Where were you during the 2004 RNC when police using construction netting swept people from the streets like schools of fish?

By Folktruther, August 30 at 7:43 am #

“I think you are wrong, Anarcissie, that we wouldn’t be having this public converse if the fascists were in power.”

Agreed.  One does not wait until total control is achieved to recognize someone like Dick Cheney as a fascist.  Anarcissie confuses the character of the fascist mind with the results achieved.  Anarcissie also overlooks the fact that a total silencing of the opposition is not necessary where 95% of what Americans see, hear