We the people rose up in record numbers and expressed our HOPE and clear mandate against President Bush’s failed foreign policies of militarism and imperialism.

President Elect O chose a Chief of Staff and a VP who are both blatant Zionists with histories of supporting the empires violence.

The good fight for equal human rights, upholding of international law and COMMON SENSE falls once more onto we the people to lead our leaders in the way we should go: Justice and Peace NOT Military Occupation’s!

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet “Common Sense” [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion… The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”-Tom Paine

On with THAT Revolution!

A healthy democracy thrives on DISSENT and requires ACTION by its citizens.

Please Send President Elect Obama your message’s

http://change.gov/page/s/contact

By Inherit the Wind

“..How exciting it must be to live in this imaginary world full of paranoia.  I knew an AOG cultist who actually BELIEVED he had been in battles with demons, chasing them around his house..and it sounds the same to me!..”

~~~

I had to laugh out loud at this. Some of these folks really do sound like the folks in the mental facilities, (or hanging out on the internet).

But, I agree with Diamond on the 9/11 Conspiracy. It WAS a black ops conspiracy in my book. I don’t know exactly how they pulled it off, but actors from the PNAC were involved. All we have to do is compare the signatures to know that.

Now I’m not buying all of the Trilateral Commission connects, or any of that New World Order stuff, but I’m inclined to believe that the anthrax attacks were part of the 9/11 hoax, and I wouldn’t mind hauling Perle and Wolfowitz before a tribunal to find out how they did it, and when they first hatched this “War on Terror” shit. It was long before they planned 9/11, which was the kickoff, and provided the excuse to destroy the Constitution, the rule of law, civil liberties, the economy, and kill millions of people.

Still, I do know what you mean about the paranoid schitzo’s.

This thread’s a conspiracy paranoic’s paradise!  Every loony fantasy about 9/11, the Trilateral Commission, the PNAC and probably the Illuminati are to blame here!

The president of Iran sends an unprecedented letter of congratulations to President-Elect Obama—and the mad tin-foil-hatters see that as “proof” he’s gonna nuke ‘em!

The President is an impulsive, ignorant idiot who shoots from the hip and never analyzes an issue or an action.  The President-Elect is careful, thoughtful, weighs every fact and gets the best advice before he makes a decision and then words it with EXTREME care, yet somehow, to you loonies, they are nothing but twin sons of different mothers.

How exciting it must be to live in this imaginary world full of paranoia.  I knew an AOG cultist who actually BELIEVED he had been in battles with demons, chasing them around his house..and it sounds the same to me!

Yeah, I KNOW the neo-cons will try to co-opt Obama.  Yes they’ll try, because like the stinging scorpion in the fable, that’s what they do.  But they won’t get anywhere, not with Barack Obama.  He’s too smart and too tough to get pulled in.

I for one would have no problem with the immediate indictment/arrest/detention of Wolfowitz, Perle, et al. for deception and fraud against the American people, pending a full investigation of the runup to the Iraq invasion.

Diamond- Obama IS asserting himself on foreign policy.  Now.  RIGHT NOW!  The ‘poor guy’ as you characterize him, is making nuclear war more likely.  The time to attack him for it is NOW, not wait until the decisions are decisively institutionalzed.

It may already be too late.  The time to attack him was during the primary nominations and election, when progressives had some leverage.  Supporting him and hoping for the best is not practical policitics, Diamand.  You’re thinking of Tinkerbell.

Robert, all my reading and research has led me to conclude that 9/11 was a black op planned for years by far right groups, as set out in PNAC, and carried out by the CIA, the Pentagon, NORAD and the neo cons with the knowledge and or involvement of Mossad and MI6. I always wondered about the British role in all of this but then I found out some disturbing facts on the relationship between the CIA and the British government.Britain also armed Iran and Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war on behalf of the United States according to a statement made in March 1991 by Terence Charles Byrne Senior, an American arms dealer and former director of a British company, Allivane International Limited. This company was set up by Bryne’s son at the request of Wiliam Casey, Director of the CIA. Casey had promised the Iranians huge quantities of arms and ammunition, long range artillery and electronics in return for the delay of the release of the American Embassy hostages as part of a CIA plan to de-rail Jimmy Carter’s campaign for re-election.‘I can document that one consignment of three large flasks of radioactive caesium was sent to Denmark from where it was exported to Portugal and onwards via Cyprus and Israel to Iran’ he testified. This, of course,  makes the CIA and Israel’s claims about the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran completely farcical.Byrne’s analysis of the situation had led him to conclude that Britain has a culture of secrecy and dependency on the United States which allows such a weapons trade to flourish. ‘Although the United Kingdom operates in tandem with the United States, the relationship is not a partnership.’ Byrne points out that the Royal Navy is unable to target or launch its Polaris nuclear missiles without the permission of the United States, and U.S. intelligence agencies are outside of Britain’s control even when they operate on British soil:
‘Our Defence Intelligence Agency and the CIA now operate in the United Kingdom with the knowledge and the consent of that country’s government. No country outside of the United States is now so effectively under the control of these agencies.’ If this is true and I think it is, then Britain’s defence establishment is now simply a part of the CIA and the American defence establishment. Which explains why Britain was in Iraq and is still in Afghanistan and has run with the 9/11/CIA agenda.
For those complaining about Obama continuing to install the missiles in Poland I can only say I’m not surprised. Obama gets an intelligence briefing from the very people whose livelihood depends on war and ever more war. The missiles are clearly aimed at Russia and the Russians are not stupid enough to think they’re aimed at Iran. But, on the other hand, the poor guy isn’t even President yet!It will take a while to see how prepared he is to assert himself on foreign policy. My guess is he couldn’t possibly do a worse job than Bush and Cheney have done and will probably do considerably better. He is extremely intelligent and will be a problem for the CIA in a way that Bush was not capable of, McCain was not inclined to be and Palin would simply have been another Bush. American voters need to continue to support Obama and to tune the media out. The media will turn on him soon enough once the puppy stories end and Obama has to tackle the enormous mess and the enormous debt the Republicans have left. I can recommend a book called ‘McMafia’ that came out quite recently. It details the unholy alliance between the intelligence services and organized crime which operates globally.

The NYTimes has ‘Corrected’ its report, due no doubt to the horrified response.

Mr. Pfaff underestimates the President-elect.  Unlike Mr. Bush, who leaned toward the neo-con view and was run over by them, Mr. Obama is smarter, better informed, and not a neo-con.  He won’t look into a Putin’s eyes and think he understands anything at all about the former KGB official

That Pfaff thinks Obama could be maneuvered or manipulated as the present oval office occupant has been badly misjudges the President-elect imho

The NYTimes has just reported that Obama has called the president of Poland to assure him that he hopes American-Polish defense cooperation continues. The Polish chief of state reported publically that Obaama is for continuing to install the missile defense system in Poland.  This is in reality a first strike nuclear weapon absurdly stated to be aimed at Iran.  Obama stated publucally that he would only install it if it ‘works.’

Obama is following Bush’s military imperialism that increases the likelihood of a thermanuclear war.  In retaliation and deterence for the US first strike, Russia is erecting a first strike nuclear response.  This leads to a new Cold War with Russia.

But imperialist Dems and progressives who support Obama don’t want to see this.  Or want others to see it.  Their approach is to stall; wait and see.  Until a first strike response is installed and its too late to do anything about it.  Just as they want to deflect criticism from Obama during the election to after he is elected, when progressives have no leverage.

By calling Poland,instead of, say, Russia, Obama indicates where his geo-strategic sympathies lie.  And the military is already making public noises that withdrawing combat troops in 16 months is just ‘not possible.’  They can put them in there in a less than a few weeks but as for taking them out…

It is necessary to oppose Obama’s military imperialism NOW and that of imperialist Dems as well.  Once it has hardened it will be much more difficult.  It is obviious that Obama is breaking the few progressive promises that he made.

Robert, I think too much can be read into the selection of Rahm Emanuel as the WH chief of staff, just as too much can be read into Obama’s AIPAC appearance, which was designed to get votes.  Obama and Emanuel have known one another for many years.  During that time they took very different positions both with respect to Iraq and Israel/Palestine.

(If Obama’s pre-U.S. Senate positions are indicative of his true desires, he could potentially serve as an honest broker—we will have to wait and see.)

But one is not selected as the WH Chief of Staff because of their views on the Middle East.  It is a position where managerial skills are a must, irrespective of ideology, and within that narrow niche, Emanuel is an excellent choice.

“But Obama’s not going to be able to make the break. He wants to draw down in Iraq in order to concentrate more firepower in Afghanistan. He’s not going to take on the lobby in Washington and he’s not going to stop further Jewish colonization of the occupied territories or talk to Israel’s enemies. With AIPAC supporter Rahm Emanuel as his new chief of staff—“our man in the White House”, as the Israeli daily Maariv called him this week—Obama will toe the line.”
Robert Fisk

Let’s wait and see if Mr. Robert is right.

Change and Hope, may be, but one must wait and see.

Hope the cynics are wrong, but if they are not I will join them.

As some stated we can try and hold Obama’s feet to the fire?

November 7 / 9, 2008

The Promised Land?

Obama, Emanuel and Israel

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

“In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after “a Lehi combatant who was killed”—i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled “Don’t pin much hope on Obama—Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message”. This editorial referred to the Irgun as a “terror organization” (a judgment call) and concluded: “Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing.”

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning”, and America’s electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president’s declaring his country’s independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world’s billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president’s eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts—not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America’s unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and “national security” problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming—the naming as “Special Envoy for Middle East Peace” of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off “think tank”, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck11072008.html

The neocon scourge is not yet over. They are a wounded animal now, capable of almost any attrocity. I feel that they may just be mean spirited enough to drag us down to hell with them. That is why, although it flys in the face of everything a good hippy believes, the neocons must be crushed. the liberals can show no mercy. They must march on a road of bones to a new era where we will be able to address the challenges of golbal warming, of diminishing resources, of over population, without the interference of those who would have america look back to an imperfect past for answers to future problems.

Barry and his new power base need to lead boldly, or get the hell out of the way. There will be no room in the future for people with a vision of only the past. The next four years could be our finest hour, or be our epitath.

By diamond, November 7 at 2:37 pm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Diamond…I just read your outstanding post/comment regarding the CIA & the neocons. I have also read your other post on the other thread “The flagrantly Dreadful ‘Joe Lieberman’. Your information & input are solid. It makes me wonder about your resume & background!

I wonder what your thoughts / resources are regarding 9/11…the CIA…Neocons…Mossad…etc…?

The neo cons and the CIA are in the habit of killing people who don’t agree with their twisted view of the world. Obama is clever, talented and knows what’s wrong and how it can be fixed but he has to walk the same dangerous path the Kennedys walked and Martin Luther King walked. I can understand why Rahm Emanuel was reluctant to be Obama’s chief of staff. Anyone with a family would want to avoid the struggle with these monsters, and believe me that’s exactly what they are. The CIA is supposed to defend American democracy but they are the most undemocratic organization in the world and the most amoral. They have decades of blood on their hands and believe democracy is for saps. Kennedy fired Dulles but he should have cleaned the whole place out root and branch. The CIA has the ethics of their friends in organized crime - namely, none- so anyone with ethics, who believes in the rule of law will always be perceived by them as a threat. The writer Chalmers Johnson said that all intelligence matters should be removed from the CIA and given to the state department. He claimed that the future of American democracy depended on it. The whole ‘Russian threat’ thing comes from the CIA, as does the ‘Iran is a terrorist state’ mantra. They have no investment in peace and do not ascribe to the idea of ‘blessed are the peacemakers’. Their role is a completely destructive one, even though they see themselves as heroes. Their only adaptation to the 21st century was to move from being murderously anti-communist to being murderously anti-Muslim but with their core values of corruption, cynicism and barbaric cruelty untouched. The neo cons and the CIA are two sides of a coin.

Good cop (Obama); Bad Cop (Bush)  what a world!

The US will stop trying to rule/ruin the world its own stupid way when the money and oil runs out.

Of course, the neo-con’s are always plotting - but in this instance they needn’t bother. Obama is their Likudnik soulmate, a bought-and-paid-for step-‘n-fetch-it for The Lobby. It’s interesting to note in fact, that Obama’s candidacy in the Democratic primaries experienced a sharp upward spike after his toadyish appearance at the AIPAC annual convention in June, where he paid obeisance to zionist king makers, a regular ritual any Democratic candidate for national office has to perform to be given a serious chance of election. This is the same Obama who in the most important - and ignored - statement of his craven political ascent once rightly observed, “no one has suffered more than the Palestinians.” Strange, that he left that glaring point out of his AIPAC script, what? It only goes to prove once again, what a two-faced, opportunistic, machine-party hack Obama Copacabana actually is under his gauzy, rhetorical front. The appointment of former AIPAC canvasser, Rahm Emanuel should dispel any lingering doubts about Obama’s commitment to the neo-con agenda; never mind the likes of sinister paid advisers - and likely administration appointees - like Anthony Lake, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, et.al. This is the price Obama had to pay to get The Lobby’s blessing and further his nomination prospects - his chief-of-staff and key advisers all pre-approved to insure a smooth ideological transition. Once again, as in domestic affairs, “even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate”,  the policies are those of the bipartisan elite that control both wings of the Duopoly Party. Take military (aka “defense”) spending, Obama has already asserted his intention to add close to 100,000 new groundtroops, increase R & D, and pursue new weapons systems. He doesn’t want to withdraw troops from Iraq, he simply wants to “re-deploy” them to neighboring countries - and of course, he wants to give $30 million in new aid to Israel over the next ten years. And incredibly enough, contrary to international law and official State Dept. policy, he believes Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel! Obama has also indicated his intention to continue with ABM installations in Poland and maybe elsewhere and has declared his willingness to use military force to defend American so-called “interests” around the world, including “unilaterally if necessary”.  By posing as a ‘progressive’ (and discrediting the whole notion in the process), Obama will make it easier for neo-con’s to pursue their objectives. Virtually everything he has said and done since being adopted by the party elites who have groomed him for this role, “reflect the long-term ambitions for economic and military hegemony that animated Bush administration foreign policy.”  Yes, “most Americans, by their votes in this week’s election, as in the 2006 congressional election, demonstrated that they want American forces to leave Iraq. They want those forces to leave “honorably,” and not leave chaos behind” - but as in 2006, what the American public “want” and what they get are two different matters entirely. (It’s also impossible to imagine American forces leaving Iraq “honorably” since the entire sordid invasion and occupation is inherently dishonorable in the extreme, but that’s a lengthier subject.) So if Obama has apparently made the Faustian bargain that all ambitious politicians fall into in their thirst for power - and the only thing other really different about him is his race - then that misuse of power should by right “destroy his presidency just as it destroyed George Bush’s.”

November 6, 2008

A Plea from Israel

Come, Obama, Change My Life

By EDNA CANETTI

“Obama my dear, they tell me that you are going to change the world. Do me a favor, come and change my life personally.

Come to Israel, grab its stupid leadership by the throat and take its foot off the neck of another people. Come and force us to do what is clear, and written, and fitting, and necessary, come and get us out of the Territories, if necessary do it with a smile that reveals million-dollar teeth. If necessary bare your teeth and force us to do it.

Make it so that I don’t have to get up in the morning – I who hate to get up early, to go to the checkpoints, to watch and to weep. Make it so I will not have to see 19-year-old children who have been duped into believing that they are defending the home front by pointing rifles at five-year-old children.

Make it so that when my daughters take a shower for half an hour I don’t have to think about Ayad’s family from Awarta that puts buckets under all the washbasins in order to reuse the water which is more precious than gold. Because the settlements need the West Bank’s water more than the Palestinians do.

Make it so that when I sit in a traffic jam I don’t have to think about the vast numbers of cars that are standing at the entrance to Tul Karem while each one is checked by soldiers and dogs because there has been a warning that they’re about to blow up Tul Karem.

Make it so that when my sister urgently rushes to the hospital to give birth and when I rush my husband to the hospital practically with red lights flashing, I don’t have to think about the women giving birth and the heart patients and the wounded people who are stopped at the entrance to Nablus because their vehicle has no permit to enter.

Make it so that when I see a soldier in uniform on the street I do not wonder what he did last night. What house he entered in a “Straw Widow procedure”,* what boy he beat up in the alleys of Hawara because he smiled the wrong way.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click on URL for the rest real story:

http://www.counterpunch.org/canetti11062008.html

There is not a chance that Obama will carry on with any of Bush’s insanity in the world.  He knew Bush was wrong from the start and has had years to think of what he will do to remedy the mess.
I have great faith that the Isreal-Palestinian conflict will be a resolved issue in his first term.  He is a reconciler and will not rest until the right thing is done.
I expect great changes in foreign policy and the neo-cons will be frustrated in every attempt to manipulate or control any of Obama’s administration.
The people are behind this change and we won’t rest or let the neocons stand in our way.

Please, please, please oh tell me, that President-elect Barack Obama, will not follow in the path of the neo-conservative, ideological, dunderheads of the shrub’s administration.
If there is anything we, the people, do not need it is the foreign policy failures and complete lack of knowledge that the neo-cons embraced.
Bringing democracy to the world, through interventionist means, whether for good or ill, at the end of the barrel of a weapon, is not the brightest idea in the world. The dim bulbs who brought you this idea, are the same dim bulbs who now should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against this nation.
I am of the firm belief, that if given the chance the World Courts of Justice should have the opportunity to show the world the complete idiocy of the neo-cons world view.
We, the American people are now faced with the challenge of repairing all of the alliances built up since WWII and fostered through careful and thoughtful diplomacy.
Should President-elect Barack Obama, choose to follow these same idiotic and dunderheaded ideological diplomatic errors, then we as a nation are truly doomed to lie on the scrap heap of humanity. For no one, will take the US seriously anymore, if this occurs.
I would rather think that though this plot may be real, that Barack Obama, has more than enough sense and acumen in the political arena to craft his own foreign policy and show the world we are not all the same as the shrub and the neo-conservative movement.

I agree with Inherit and Pfaff is stirring an empty pot. 

Bush’s arms policy swept away years of building global control of the worst of weapons and replaced it with bombast.  He either dropped out of or expressed disdain of the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  I look forward to Obama rejoining the world and I’m sure he will - he’s certainly no bombast.

If Russia weren’t such a basket case presently, she’d probably threaten to put missiles in Cuba in retaliation for our missiles in Poland. It’s quite likely that Obama understands and accepts that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and he will design foreign policy in keeping with that ancient law.

Republican neo-cons will not be the problem in an Obama administration so much as Bill Clinton’s military humanist crowd (imperialism in the name of human rights)—and, of course, there will be the problem of the omnipresent Zionist lobby.

Whoops—looks like the Comment Title field doesn’t get picked up. My full comment:

“My main problem with this article is the use of the word ‘co-opt.’”

Though the Kool-Aid drinkers have made Obama into their wish fulfillment, he wasn’t the protege of Joe Lieberman for nothing. He’s a hardline, cruise-missile liberal—and not too far from the neocons. Just smarter: he knows that you need to have a nice smile to keep the masses happy while you rule the empire.

Word on the street in NYC: “I’m already disappointed” t-shirts are popping up.

For about 50 yrs we have allowed ourselves to be run with only one Objective in mind..OIL.
Why is Russia a threat? Iran? Venezula? Why must we remain in a country in which we have captured and Killed the Tyrannt leader we supposedly went in to dethrone? Why have we allowed the Country that spawn the amjority of Terrorist who attacked US on 9/11 to continue relations with US? Shit Afghanistan was merely College, Not the Early education system for these SOB’s?SA bore and nurtured these Terrorist, who already knew what they wanted to be before heading off to ‘College’! Why Does our Presidents Hug, Kiss and Hold hands with these perpetuators of hate and terrorist attacks?
One answer….Oil. If We are able to return this element back to nothing more than Sludge, Shit will immediately Change.There will be nothing to fight over…Who cares who controls the ME, their resource is worthless.They have wanted US Out and WE have wanted OUT for Decades. I have confidence we can over come this challenge,and They’ll be on Their Own. Beware of What you Wish for M.E., There isn’t much Demand for Sand, or Camels on the World Market. Of course we must also finally admit, Gold, diamonds etc are only shiney Rocks too, thus toppling the ill gotten wealth of their Oil “Royals” Too!
Let’s be honest, If all hell breaks loose, who will be the wealthier man, the Chicken farmer, or the Jeweler? Food vs Rock.
Let’s be the ones producing the ‘Food’ and leave the assholes in the M.E. holding the Rocks and Sludge

...is the use of the word, “co-opt.”

Of couse the Neo Con’s want to keep their agenda going.

They are dangerous people, and they will do all they can to make sure that Obama fails, even as they congratulate him on his success.

The political struggle to return our government to sanity, will be dificult.

As Paul Krugman said, we have been ruled by monsters. Monsters not men. And monsters will do what monsters will do, they really have no choice.

Obama’s undergraduate major was international relations so it is not as if he knows nothing about the subject.  In addition, he lived in Muslim Indonesia and his mother was an anthropologist.

Pfaff thinks Obama is as mindless as Bush. He’s not. He thinks that without Pfaff’s guidance Obama will be a babe lost in a forest of wolves. He won’t.
Nobody is as smart as the ultra-left-wing pundits…certainly not Obama—to them.  He isn’t. He’s far smarter.
They think Obama is weak-willed and unable to take care of himself—a guy who made it in Chicago politics.  He is very able to take care of himself.
Obama’s not going to appoint a bunch of fantasy-filled super-lefties, so OF COURSE he’s already being attacked by those who still insist Nader is the best man for the job…and that he actually won.

Obiden has already chosen by his appointments.  He will follow the Bushite way of military imperialism, from a positiion of incrreasing weakness as the US world power declines.

Indeed, in many instances he is to the right of Bush-Cheney.

The election of Obama is significant; but one must understand that significance for what it is.  As far as the body politic, I think we haven’t learned a thing.  Fooled again.  I think we’ll never learn and have no idea of the real problem.  Possibly Tao Walker is the only one who sees.