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A disturbing New York Times Op Ed piece from May 12th entitled "President Apostate?" by Edward N. Luttwak indicates that Barack Obama would be viewed in the Muslim world as an apostate, given he was born to a Muslim father but left the faith, a crime that under Muslim law, Luttwak states, is punishable by death. Luttwak keeps his commentary to what he perceives to be the diplomatic complications engendered by this situation were Obama to become president, however the implied threat of assassination is not without serious resonance.
Of course, at first glance the NY Times piece would seem to an effort to avert an Obama candidacy through scare tactics. However, Ralph Schoenman on his and Maya Shone's "Taking Aim" radio program, weekly aired on WBAI radio, NYC, stated last week with regard to the seriousness of this threat to Obama that there were T-shirts already being printed in Israel with the question emblazoned across them: Who killed Barack Obama? Schoenman further suggested that such an assassination would serve to hasten this country's descent into martial law, a long-term objective of those in power and one which is already well underway (Schoenman notes how the Washington Post especially has discussed this topic repeatedly, and he specifically cites an August 2005 article delineating a detailed plan by the Pentagon to impose martial law in cities and regions throughout the entire country in response to an inevitable terrorist attack).
As I will be quoting extensively from "Taking Aim," specifically from their two Call-in programs on Barack Obama, I want to further share with readers this excellent resource, which has all its news sources transparently cited. A free audio archive of this weekly broadcast, arranged by date and topic, is
available here.
Right off the bat Luttwak discusses something that must be stuck in the craw of most adversaries of Obama: his indisputable "charisma." Indeed, Obama is what Luttwak terms "the type of leader upon whom others project their hopes and desires." The Times seems intent on projecting its own desire to have Obama perceived in a nostalgic light, especially by baby boomers, given that on the front page of their May 11th Sunday edition (the day before Luttwak's Op Ed piece) the editors made the very nostalgic choice of using a black-and-white photograph of Obama taken from his '96 Senate campaign.
Now, just how often does the New York Times turn back the clock and use a black-and-white photograph on its front page - - above the fold, no less? I would venture to say almost never, and yet here we have the very rare exception. Add to this the fact that it's a picture of Obama shaking the hands of urban, black youths, and you'll start to get that civil rights era "feel" to this exceptional editorial decision. So just what might we be being set up for here? After all, here we have a candidate onto whom many Americans, rightly or wrongly, are earnestly projecting all their hopes, and already in the wings we have a potential scenario brewing that not only feels like a re-enactment of the JFK assassination (or Martin Luther King's, or Robert Kennedy's, or Malcolm X's), but also plays into the hands of the synthetic, anti-Muslim "war on terror". Just as the Times' front page photo is a highly considered and influential piece of visual real estate, the Times' Editorial and Op Ed pages are central to setting the tenor of political discourse world wide. The planting of such a heinous and violent "innuendo" that literally grabs the headlines needs to be analyzed in terms of the agenda of the powers that be, or those who Webster Griffin Tarpley terms "the invisible government" in his indispensable book 9/11 Synthetic Terror; Made in the USA.
Such hidden powers, according to Tarpley, have been incrementally infiltrating and subverting our political system (which of course includes our corporatized media) for the last one hundred years. According to Tarpley, these hidden power carried out the 9/11 attacks. It was, he believes, their crowning moment. If such an insidious power's intention is indeed to plant in the mind of public perception the possibility of the assassination of Barack Obama, then we can assume up front (given Tarpley's research, among others) that were such an event to occur it would involve the duping of an Islamist patsy/assassin being set up by the same insiders who brought us 9/11.
Getting Real About "Barack"
I know it's not news to readers of "SOTT.net" that it is now more important than ever that American citizens understand in advance how we are being manipulated. As concerns this upcoming presidential election, a vital aspect of the manipulation has to do with the paucity of media coverage pertaining to the corporate and political interests that are backing all of our mainstream presidential candidates, outside of individual donors. This includes those of Barack Obama, targeted by certain power elites though he is. After all, it's important to understand that Obama could not have succeeded to the degree he has based merely on charisma and good intentions. In so speaking, a short list of Obama's backers, both financial and policy-wise, are as follows (this according to "Taking Aim's" two "Call-in" shows on Obama):
ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), the major trans-agro company that is destroying localized, self-sustaining farming in Africa, Asia and South America by imposing cash crops, thereby leading to mass starvation world wide (meanwhile ADM is being government subsidized in the name of Ethanol); Law firms such as Kirkland Ellis, and Skadden Arps, with Christina Tchen, (Skadden Arps' corporate litigator) representing the major financial firms against consumers in consumer class action suits. (Skadden Arps' attorneys are fundraisers for Obama as well as donors. Given such backing, Schoenman notes Obama's voting against a bill for the imposition of a 30% limit on credit card companies, in response to their egregious practices imposing compounded interest.) Obama is also backed by the top Wall Street financial houses of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase, as well as Chicago's Henry Crown & Co., an investment firm with stakes in a wide range of companies from telecommunications to the arms industry. On that note, Obama also receives direct financial backing from the war machine's Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics.
Policy-wise, members of the former Clinton administration are now split between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with Obama's team of advisors including Anthony Lake, President Clinton's original National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State, and Eric Holder, former Attorney General. Obama's economic team is comprised of Friedman style (Chicago School) free market thinkers (opposing the New Deal safety net), including Citigroup executive, Michael Froman, Clinton's former Chief of Staff, and Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary -- the cabinet member most closely identified with the Clinton administration's free trade, business friendly policy.
Also backing Obama is Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Carter, author of The Grand Chessboard (1997), a Geostrategic blueprint for U.S. imperialist policy in the Middle East and Eurasia. On the Israeli-Palestinian front, which is heating up with Gaza now on the brink of total destruction, Schoenman, states that Obama has actually distanced himself from Brzezinski's position of at least affording the Palestinian's their own police and political structure (albeit under the control of Israel). Obama, just like Clinton and McCain, is instead aligning himself with Israel's hardliners, who are presently seeking a "Shoah" or holocaust for the Palestinians. Schoenman reminds us as well how the Illinois Senator voted for a three hundred billion dollar increase in spending for the war in Iraq, how he also voted for the Patriot Act, and how, very early on, in 2004, Obama called for an attack on Iran, and has repeated this position on a number of subsequent occasions.
All of which is to say that Barack Obama, like the other major political candidates in this election, is, according to Schoenman, of political necessity a front man, a public relations type that carries out the orders of those that truly run corporate capitalism. As regards such power at the top, Schoenman once quoted a major business insider's claim that 5,000 individuals, each sitting on the boards of 14 corporations, comprise the select few that run the entire global, corporate landscape. This would seem to confirm the much-quoted figures stating that the top 1% of the country's population owns 95% of the wealth (these numbers varying sometimes, but not substantively). Add to this Schoenman's contention that the lively political debate currently taking place in this country as we approach this election (from the standpoint of those in power) has more to do with creating an outlet for the utter dissatisfaction if not disaffection of the American public, and as such, Obama is offering false hope. I would add that, given the desperate mood among the American people at present, Obama might even be called a false prophet.
In so speaking, Barack Obama, based on those interests he and all mainstream candidates are beholden to, is not in the position to be the "Barack" we would wish him to be. However, with such information barely noted, and his vague if well worded agenda of change, unity and hope pulling at our beleaguered heartstrings, the charismatic Barack Obama obviously remains a symbol of hope for much of the country. Should he be assassinated, as Luttwak has insidiously implied may happen, it would merely be a continuation of the invisible government's "decapitation of the left" as occurred with JFK, et. al.; and would serve to re-traumatize the American people and accelerate the racist war on terror.
In Search of a Real "Barack"
Not to end on such a dismal note, at the end of their show on the Barack Obama phenomenon, Schoenman and Shone offer what could be a truly viable alternative in the upcoming election, and that's former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, IF she runs on the Black Reconstruction Party ticket (not the Green ticket), since the former is seeking to address the needs and rights of the disenfranchised, starting with the victims of New Orleans, with the party using that as a directive nationwide. Although unlikely, should this come to pass it would form the basis of a true "Barack" candidate. In the meantime, McKinney is running on a Green ticket against Ralph Nader to be voted on in July. The Greens, Schoenman and Shone point out, have as their mission merely to pressure the Democratic Party more to the left, and in that sense do not comprise a true, third party alternative. For this reason, we should watch and see where McKinney lands. Georgia Congresswoman McKinney, you might remember, organized a serious panel on 9/11 in 2005, which was aired on C-Span (this opposed to the Kean-Hamilton 9/11 Commission Report whitewash of 2004), and not surprisingly she was scandalized in the press not long after when she got into a well-publicized "altercation" with a security guard (a member of the Capitol Police) that contributed to her losing her congressional seat in the 2006 election.
In the end, and considering the nature of the last two elections, there is little chance that 2008 will see a true public servant elected to the office of president. Instead, will likely be forced to accept yet another hand-picked corporate lackey beholden to "the lobby" and the "creative destructionists". The only hope that remains then, and it is where hope has always resided, is in the masses of ordinary people to finally wake up to their predicament, shake of the years of mind-numbing propaganda, and realise that their fate lies in their own hands.
Addendum:
A May 22 edition of a regional French newspaper carried the following story:
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The title reads: "The Secret Service closely guards Obama", and the article references the deaths of Martin Luther King and RFK and adds that "the spectre of US political murders haunts" Obama and his supporters. Just to make the point, immediately below the Obama article the following appeared:
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The title reads: "40 years ago, Bobby Kennedy and Luther King"
All of which suggests that the American population are in no way the only ones being targeted with the idea that Obama may be assassinated. It is hardly logical that the average person would automatically assume that Obama is a likely target. After all, at least 70% are seriously dissatisfied with 8 years of the Bush cabal and eager for change. The very last thing they would like to see is Bush and Cheney given a reason to claim yet another "terror attack" and martial law. The reference to RFK and MLK is ominous given the evidence that both murders were state-sponsored. So the question that needs to be asked is: who really has the means and motive to murder Obama, and why do they want us to think that it is a distinct possibility?
Update:
Hilary Clinton weighed in on May 23rd on the bizarre "Obama must die" meme, and used his possible assassination, ala RFK, as justification for her continued Presidential campaign.
Hilary said:
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?" Clinton said. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."
Apparently they have given up all attempts at pretense and subtlety.
And I agree that Cynthia McKinney would be a good alternative to the Republican/Democrat presidential candidates. Unfortunately the chances of her ever making it within a stones throw of the oval office are virtually nil, unless the American people get really educated, really quickly.