A year ago today, millions of people around the world prayed the long, 30-year-period of American reaction had finally ended. Some 2,000,000 of them gathered in Washington DC to celebrate the dawning of a New Age. What the world and America received instead were an endless (continuing) series of actions, appointments, and policy pronouncements turning the hopes into rage, despair, confusion, and the considerable strengthening of the belief that Establishment politics never really matter, that the corporate capitalist house always wins.
The turn began within minutes of Obama taking his oath. The world and the times waited for an Inaugural Address to rival Kennedy's or FDR's. Yet before making any reference to the social and economic crisis gripping America and the world, Obama began instead with a re-declaration of the United States War on Terror. He then went on to assert that the worldwide financial collapse was the fault of the American people, when in fact it was a catastrophe entirely the making of the vampire ruling class. And off we go . . .
Obama maintained, even strengthened, the US occupation of Iraq.
He massively increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and expanded that war into Pakistan.
In several major speeches, Obama explicitly endorsed and expanded the Bush-Cheney doctrine of preventive war. (Formerly known as "aggressive war" at Nuremberg.)
He began a war against Yemen.
He increased threats against Iran, including the recent American "wink" leading to the Israeli assassination of a top Iranian scientist, murdered in Tehran.
The earthquake in Haiti has been used to carry out a military occupation of the country, a Katrina-ization of Haiti.
Guantanamo remains open.
Torture and renditions continue, often at an acclerated pace.
Obama insisted that no one from the Bush-Cheney Administration or CIA will be held accountable for past war crimes and violations of international law.
He staffed his administration -- beginning with the election week selection of Israel-Firster Rahm Emanuel -- with criminals from Wall Street, turning over his entire economic policy to Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Tiny Tim Geithner, the major perps in the economic collapse.
Replaced a progressive and brilliant Supreme Court justice with a center-right mediocrity.
Refused to sign an international treaty banning land mines -- unexploded ordinance that kills thousands of children every year.
As of today, $25,000,000,000,000 of American taxpayer money has gone to Wall Street: no strings attached. No firings, no takeovers (remember those dreams of bank nationalization?), no congressional investigations, no Justice Department investigations, no new rules or regulations, no enforced give-backs, no trials, no sentences, no executions.
Meanwhile, no relief offered to the millions of American workers who lost their homes, jobs, and medical coverage.
The UAW, the last great industrial union, destroyed by Obama's team in the forced bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler.
"Card Check" -- candidate Obama's major promise to union-workers -- died the day Rahm Emanuel was appointed White House chief-of-staff. (Three days after election.)
"Cap-and-Trade" -- originally a proposal to reduce corporate greenhouse gas emissions in order to help save the planet -- has been hijacked by the Goldman Sachs crime family, and reduced to just another dirty commodity scheme.
"Cap-and-Trade" -- originally a proposal to reduce corporate greenhouse gas emissions in order to help save the planet -- has been hijacked by the Goldman Sachs crime family, and reduced to just another dirty commodity scheme.
The Obama White House has refused to provide relief to the states, most of which are bankrupt, causing unprecented destruction of public education, parks, libraries, police and fire departments, bridges, roads, tunnels.
Health Care Reform -- candidate Obama's primary domestic issue -- became a give-away to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, forcing all uncovered Americans to purchase plans many cannot afford, rationing health care in many cases, and drastically cutting Medicare spending. (Thanks to the good people of the Bay State, this piece of reaction may be dead anyway. And thanks to Obama, genuine health care reform will now be impossible for yet another generation.)
Many Bush-appointed officials were kept on by Mr. Change, most repulsively in the reappointment of bloodsucker Robert Gates as SecDef. And now the latest piece of "bipartisanship": Obama's nauseating appointment of unrepentant war criminal George W. Bush to co-head the Haitian "relief" effort.
Just today, Obama withdrew the nomination of potential Transportation Security Administration head Erroll Southers because opponents of Southers claimed he would allow TSA employees to have collective bargaining rights.
Just today, Obama withdrew the nomination of potential Transportation Security Administration head Erroll Southers because opponents of Southers claimed he would allow TSA employees to have collective bargaining rights.
And now Obama will begin his second year by announcing in the upcoming State-of-the-Union message an agenda of budget-cutting and austerity. In order to finance the ongoing bankster bailout, and the expanding US war on the world, Obama will propose a slashing of entitlement programs and an increase of regressive taxes on working Americans.
On to the future!
On to the future!
