If you've seen it, in November I mentioned 'a few moments of hope' wrt Obama, because I wasn't sure if he would change anything, being the old fart that I am. Well, I was being too careful. We're back to an even-deeper circle of hell than Bush43-Cheney.As you'll see from the article below, John Pilger has figured out that Obama is little more than a marketing ploy to keep the same old imperialist, murderous, big-business, pro-Israel policies rolling, without Bush and Cheney's bad PR [that was their only 'flaw', as per Kissinger].
Watch out for that Obama smile AND what it's selling you.
Kissinger is advising him and has extoled the virtues of the Obama smile in the International Herald Tribune [January. Find it yourself. I feel sick. WRETCH!!!KAK!!].
-Costick67
[my comments- Costick67]
quoted direct from JohnPilger.com
Obama's 100 days - the mad men did well
30 Apr 2009
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the power of advertising - from the effects of smoking to politics - as he reaches behind the facade of of the first 100 days President Barack Obama.The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics.
Obama's 100 days - the mad men did well
30 Apr 2009
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the power of advertising - from the effects of smoking to politics - as he reaches behind the facade of of the first 100 days President Barack Obama.The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics.
Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force” [How cynical is that? It's not democracy in action, or the emancipation of the US African folk; it's a GIMMICK!]. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser Cιsar Chαvez – “Si, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush. [who needs vote rigging and faulty voting machines now?]
No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared.
Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights [I would say 'jesus figure', because they act like this guy will absolve them of their complicity with the Bush43 regime. "Voulez-vous embedd-er avec moi?"]. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion...” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.”
In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.
All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office.In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. [the military-industrial complex has taken over the army. It was well on its way to destroying the US economy, single-handedly, before the Crisis. Our only hope is that the M-IC goes broke before they attack China, the country that holds most of the US's debt. MICkey Mouse! The mouse that roared. LOL]
Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran [bets being taken now on WHEN Iran will be formally attacked.], which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war.
Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”.[Grease my palm with some of that crude, dude.] On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this.
It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it [I've written about that, but then who hasn't?]. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in. [All of a sudden, gasp, governments around the world will have no money for hospitals and education, while the wars rage on. I'll buy THAT for a rubber dollar.]
Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design” [in other words, it was supposed to be secret- Hail, hail democracy], as Henry Kissinger [first and foremost, a democrat!], war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it
[Game's over. We're screwed.] .
[This sketch of Kissi was cancelled from the Washington Post in the 70s. How pissed off do you have to be at someone to draw him and for the Washington Post to consider publishing his "nakedness" with his sins tattooed on his hide? That'll tell you young ones something about the man's history, but he's not done yet.]
In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous cliches, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, [some still think that he'll do what's right] and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall [Tony Blair should bow before Obama. He's not worthy.]. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well.
---the end
Honeymoon's over! Back to hell for us.
---the end
Honeymoon's over! Back to hell for us.
UPDATE: for the umpteenth time, I've read that, while Obama's rhetoric is nice, his actions are pure Bush43. Here's another one:
This is an article mostly about Blackwater-type contractors working (rather expensively) for the US army
from alternet.org:
Paul Rosenberg of open left [includes a review of the interview of Jeremy Scahil, formerly of democracy now by Bill Moyers (rather interesting talkshow guy)
But before we turn to what that better way is, I just want to take note of former Democracy Now producer Jeremy Scahill on Bill Moyers Journal last night, sketching out some of what's going wrong right now. I'll be looking at what he talked about more closely in a followup diary, which will serve to underscore just how much is at stake if we don't get serious about crafting a progressive alternative. Scahill discusses the continuation of military privatization under Obama, and the dangerous direction it threatens to lead us
It's now time to take a closer look at what's at stake, at what we risk if we do not adopt a more progressive military policy. The future is never certain, of course. But closing our eyes to foreseeable risks only makes it more uncertain, more threatening, more potentially dangerous.
In the discussion with Bill Moyers, Jeremy Scahill gives credit to Obama for recognizing the existence of a problem, if not really grasping its essential nature:
BILL MOYERS: How do explain this spike in private contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world, but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era. Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama....[and it continues]
---the end
-Costick67 ( 8^P
pic from fotosearch.com
