Black Agenda Report editor, Glen Ford says "...Dr. King declared in 1967, in the heat of the Vietnam War, that Black America's destiny was to "save the soul of America" from the "triple evils" of "racism, materialism and militarism" - a huge historical fact that Barack "Joshua" Obama conveniently fails to process. (http://blackagendareport.com)
The following are excerpted notes from (March 21, 2007) from "The Empire and Inequality Report", ia bi-weekly news and commentary letter produced by veteran radical historian, journalist, Paul Street: "..[H]e (Obama) prefaced his critique of "materialism" by saying that "it's a good thing" to "drive the biggest car and have the biggest house and wear a Rolex watch and get your own private jet" and "get some of that Oprah money". Obama, it is worth noting, is a freshly minted millionaire who recently purchased an opulent Georgian Revival Mansion below price at $1.65 million thanks to some help from the felony-indicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko." (Street) [...] "More importantly, Obama's power-worshipping campaign book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006) - the book to which Obama refers reporters asking him for policy specifics behind his often vague statements - refers to the United States' rapacious, savagely unequal and fundamentally "materialist" capitalist economy as the nation's "greatest asset." Audacity absurdly praises the "American system of social organization" and "business culture" on the grounds that U.S. capitalism "has encouraged constant innovation, individual initiative and efficient allocation of resources". It commends "the need to raise money from economic elites to finance elections" for "prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the center" and for marginalizing "those within the Democratic Party who tend toward zealotry" and "radical ideas" (like peace and justice). It praises fellow centrist Senator and presidential rival Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for embracing "the virtues of capitalism" and applauds her "recognizably progressive" husband Bill Clinton for showing that "markets and fiscal discipline" and "personal responsibility [are] needed to combat poverty" - an interesting reflection on the militantly corporate-neoliberal Clinton administration's efforts to increase poverty by eliminating poor families' entitlement to public cash assistance and privileging deficit reduction over social spending." (Street) "Obama's badly mis-titled book audaciously lectures poor people on their "duty" to feel "empathy" for wealthy oppressors - including Bush and Cheney, who are "pretty much like everyone else" - and on their need to understood how well off and "free" they are compared to their more truly miserable counterparts in Africa and Latin America. It deletes less favorable contrasts with Western Europe and Japan, the most relevant comparisons, where dominant norms and institutional arrangements produce significantly slighter levels of poverty and inequality than what is found in the hierarchical U.S." (Street) "It also advances a model of health care reform that mocks his claim to support "universal" insurance. "Like the [corporatist] Democratic Leadership Council [members] he flocks with," BAR's Glen Ford notes, "Obama advocates retaining the for-profit nature of American health care, and mandating that poor people pay for it, somehow. His plan is only `universal' in the sense that mandatory auto insurance is universal"." (Street) "Obama's Audacity is as audaciously bad on race as it is on class. It ignores mountains of research and experience on the persistence of racial discrimination and the powerful living legacy of past racism when it claims that "what ails working- and middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts". It justifies Obama's rejection of race-specific measures to overcome persistent white supremacist policies and the living legacy of centuries of open racism by claiming that "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America" as "even the most fair-minded of whites, those who would genuinely like to see racial inequality ended and poverty relieved, tend to push back against suggestions of racial victimization - or race-based claims based on the history of racial discrimination in this country"." (Street) Obama "embraces neoconservatives' incorrect notion that family public cash assistance created intergenerational black inner-city poverty." (Street) [...] The above were excerpts from Paul Street's (March 21, 2007) from "The Empire and Inequality Report" Obama advocates for invading Pakistan, which has a population of 165 million and nuclear bombs (the only Muslim nation that has nukes) The U.S. has propped up the military regime in Pakistan for years. Does Obama really think he can march to Waziristan in western Pakistan unopposed? Obama also wants to add another 100,000 new troops to the U.S. military. Where would he think he will get them? Blackwater, perhaps? The Senator from Illinois masquerades as a peace candidate while advocating for more war. He masquerades as a friend of the poor while calling upon the poor to have "hope" and glorifying false virtue for materialism and the rich. Glen Ford writes: "Senator Barack Obama believes himself to be the reincarnation of President John F. Kennedy. For those of us who are schooled in history - real history - that's not a good thing. Kennedy tried on many occasions to assassinate Fidel Castro, and set in motion events that led to military dictatorships assuming power throughout Latin America. Kennedy, early in the month of November, 1963, gave the order to murder South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy met his own fate a few weeks later, in Dallas, but he had already set in motion a war that would claim 58 thousand American and three million Vietnamese lives." (Ford) "Barack Obama is as stupid and dangerous as Kennedy. Obama wants to invade Pakistan, the most dangerous place in the world, where Osama bin Ladin is holed up. The Pakistani regime installed the Taliban in Afghanistan, which became the incubator of Al Quaeda. President Pervez Musharaff, a general who has never been freely elected, depends on the backing of rightwing Muslim fundamentalists and the military to stay in power. And, Oh yes, the United States, which provides many billions of dollars in "aid" per year to prop up the regime." (Ford) Hillary may not be much better, but she does seem to have more common sense and a whole lot more experience than this hot head from Illinois who is no progressive. Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report (BAR) (http://blackagendareport.com) correctly informs his readers that "Barack Obama will carry us into a suicidal conflict." If it is hope you want, it ought to be hope for better than Obama.... Hank Roth
