A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

[mexika]

President Hussein Obama appoints Israeli Zionist as "Chief of Staff"

Rahm Emanuel, born in Israel and with deep Zionist roots, has been appointed White House Chief of Staff by President elect Barack Hussein Obama. Rahm Emanuel is said to hold dual US/Israel citizenship and his father Benjamin M. Emanuel was a member of the Zionist Irgun terrorist organization responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.

Irgun was also involved in the Deir Yassin Massacre along with the Stern Gang in 1948. The Deir Yassin Massacre resulted in the murder of 254 peaceful Palestinian villagers, over half of them women and children. See a Deir Yassin Massacre Documentary at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prLPvqttW9c

Rahm Emanuel spends a lot of time in Tel Aviv and was a special Israeli Defense Forces operative during the 1991 Gulf War. He had undisclosed assignments at an army base in northern Israel.

In an interview today with the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, Rahm's father, Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House." The Ma'ariv article also quoted Benjamin Emanuel as saying that his son spends most summers visiting in Tel Aviv, and that he speaks Hebrew.

Also today, the Jerusalem Post reports that the "Israeli Iron Lady" Tzipi Livni has already sent orders to President Obama to not to talk with Iran just yet. "We need to fight extremism," Livni said as she stood next to outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a joint press conference in the home of the American ambassador to Israel.. "We need to continue the pressure on Iran and I believe that the idea of continuing the pressure comes with more intense and effective sanctions on the Iranians."




http://www.counterpunch.org/frank11062008.html <http://www.counterpunch.org/frank11062008.html>



November 6, 2008


It Could be a Long, Hard Struggle


A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration


By JOSHUA FRANK

Tuesday's celebration hangovers have finally started to wear off, and the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Change will be coming to Washington in January, but it is difficult to decipher what form it will take. Early clues, however, suggest that Barack Obama's administration will prove unlikely to alter the fundamental political machinery that has led us into war and economic turmoil. Below is a brief summary of Obama's potential choices for a few key roles in his administration.

Chief of Staff

Obama's key White House position will go to Rep. Rahm Emanuel <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/27/obamas-chief-of-staff-rah_n_138240.html> of Illinois. While Emanuel knows his way around the corridors of Washington, qualifying him in the traditional sense, this alone doesn't mean he's the guy you want drawing up Obama's policy papers day after day.

For starters, Emanuel is a shameless neoliberal with close ties to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), even co-authoring a strategy book with DLC president Bruce Reed. Without Emanuel, Bill Clinton would not have been able to thrust NAFTA down the throats of environmentalists and labor in the mid-1990s. Over the course of his career, Emanuel's made it a point to cozy up to big business, making him one of the most effective corporate fundraisers in the Democratic Party. He's also a staunch advocate of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

Emanuel's shinning moment came in 2006 as he helped funnel money and poured ground support into the offices of dozens of conservative Democrats, expanding his party's control of the House of Representatives. Emanuel, who supports the War on Terror, and expanding our presence in Afghanistan, worked hard to ensure that a Democratic House majority would not alter the course of US military objectives in the Middle East.

In short, Rahm Emanuel is not only a poor choice for Obama's Chief of Staff; he's one of the least progressive picks he could have made. While he may have decent views on abortion, tax policy, and social security, Emanuel's broader vision is more of the same: war and corporate dominance.


Treasury Secretary


For arguably the most important position Obama will be appointing, the President-Elect may pick well-regarded economist Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Volker is one of Obama's closest economic advisors and is thought to be the top-choice for the position of Treasury Secretary.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Volker, in an attempt to cut inflation, dramatically raised interest rates, which helped the elite maintain value in their assets but strangled the working class as credit dried up.

In his book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey writes that Volker personified one of the key facets of the neoliberal era.

"[Volker] engineered a draconian shift in U.S. monetary policy. The long-standing commitment in the U.S. liberal democratic state to the principles of the New Deal, which meant broadly Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies with full employment as a key objective, was abandoned in favour of a policy designed to quell inflation no matter what the consequences might be for employment. The real rate of interest, which had often been negative during the double-digit inflationary surge of the 1970s, was rendered positive by fiat of the Federal Reserve. The nominal rate of interest was raised overnight … Thus began `a long deep recession that would empty factories and break unions in the U.S. and drive detour countries to the brink of insolvency, beginning a long-era of structural insolvency'. The Volker shock, as it has since come to be known, has to be interpreted as a necessary but not sufficient condition of neoliberalism."

In supporting Henry Paulson's bailout package, Volker would not re-regulate the banks nor provide more power to shareholders, he's simply carry on one facet of neoliberalism: tightening federal budgets which inevitably will put great budgetary pressure on federal agencies.

Another potential pick for the post is Robert Rubin, who served under Clinton in the same position and is currently Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup. Rubin played a key role in abetting another neoliberal objective: deregulation. Where Volker was hung up on economic austerity, Rubin pushed for more deregulatory policies that ended up shifting jobs, and entire industries, overseas.

Rubin even pushed for Clinton's dismantling of Glass-Steagall, testifying that deregulating the banking industry would be good for capital gains, as well as Main Street. "[The] banking industry is fundamentally different from what it was two decades ago, let alone in 1933," Rubin testified before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services in May of 1995.

"[Glass-Steagall could] conceivably impede safety and soundness by limiting revenue diversification," Rubin argued.

While the industry saw much deregulation over the years preceding these events, the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act of 1999, which eliminated Glass-Steagall, extended and ratified changes that had been enacted with previous legislation. Ultimately, the repeal of the New Deal era protection allowed commercial lenders like Rubin's Citigroup to underwrite and trade instruments like mortgage backed securities along with collateralized debt and established structured investment vehicles (SIVs), which purchased these securities. In short, as the lines were blurred among investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies, when one industry fell, others could too.

Robert Rubin is in part responsible for supporting the policies that pushed us to the brink of a great recession. When the subprime mortgage crisis hit, instability and collapse spread across numerous industries.


Defense Secretary


While Obama's choice for this important role is speculative, quite a few fingers are pointing to Richard Holbrooke.

After Gerald Ford's loss and Jimmy Carter's ascendance into the White House in 1976, Indonesia, which invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese years earlier, requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban on arms trades to Suharto's government. It was Carter's appointee to the Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.

During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Benedict Anderson of Cornell University cited a report that proved there never was a United States arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban; the US initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians at Holbrooke's request.

Over the years Holbrooke, who is philosophically aligned with Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives, has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent. Holbrooke described the motivations behind his support of Indonesia's genocidal actions:

"The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer -- which plays a moderate role within OPEC -- and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans ... We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia."

Other foreign policy advisors may also include the likes of Madeline Albright, the great supporter of Iraq sanctions, which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Madeline Albright, when asked by Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes about the deaths caused by U.N. sanctions, infamously condoned the deaths. "I think this is a very hard choice," she said. "But the price--we think the price is worth it."

Samantha Power, that great cheerleader for humanitarian intervention, also has Obama's ear and may even entice him to put U.S. forces in Darfur.

"With very few exceptions, the Save Darfur campaign has drawn a single lesson from Rwanda: the problem was the US failure to intervene to stop the genocide. Rwanda is the guilt that America must expiate, and to do so it must be ready to intervene, for good and against evil, even globally. That lesson is inscribed at the heart of Samantha of Power's book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. But it is the wrong lesson," writes author Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books.

As Mamdani continues: "What the humanitarian intervention lobby fails to see is that the US did intervene in Rwanda, through a proxy … Instead of using its resources and influence to bring about a political solution to the civil war, and then strengthen it, the US signalled to one of the parties that it could pursue victory with impunity. This unilateralism was part of what led to the disaster, and that is the real lesson of Rwanda … Applied to Darfur and Sudan, it is sobering. It means recognising that Darfur is not yet another Rwanda. Nurturing hopes of an external military intervention among those in the insurgency who aspire to victory and reinforcing the fears of those in the counter-insurgency who see it as a prelude to defeat are precisely the ways to ensure that it becomes a Rwanda."


The Next Step


While the election of Barack Obama is a blow to George W. Bush-Republicanism and a gain for racial equality in this country, it is in many ways only a symbolic victory. The future of the U.S.'s foreign and economic agenda will continue to be saturated with ideologies and individuals that are directly responsible for our current predicament, both in the Middle East and domestically.

Celebrating the end of the ugly Bush era is one thing. Celebrating the continuation of their policies with a different administration in the White House is quite another. With these prospective appointments, Obama seems to be moving backwards to Clintontime. This may be sufficient change for some, but it far from a progressive push toward social, economic, and environmental justice.

For significant change to happen, the kind that is needed in order to mend the wounds of the Bush years, we have to put down our Obama signs and force Congress and the new administration to end the wars in the Middle East, and push for regulating the financial industry while providing true universal health-care and economic safety-nets for all Americans.

Given the make up of his potential advisors, we're in for a long uphill battle. So let's drop our illusions and start organizing, beginning with a discussion of what "organizing" even means in today's political climate.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush <http://www.amazon.com/Left-Out-Liberals-Helped-Reelect/dp/1567513107/counterpunchmaga> (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland <http://www.redstaterebels.org/> , published by AK Press in July 2008. He can be reached at: brickburner@gmail.com <mailto:brickburner@gmail.com>

[mmiichael]

Yeah right, Obama the pro-Zionist.

Born and raised a Muslim, joined the Nation of Islam at 20, expediently became a member of that Whitey and Jew hating Chicago Church when political opportunism beckoned.

His constituency in Illinois is Farrakhan demesne and houses the big Kahuna's mansion. The LA Times sitting on that 2003 pro-Palestinian bash video
where Obama made some remarks they though would compromise him.

No President ever in the anti-Jewish camp more than O.


I'm sure if you dig deep enough one can find Zionist links to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Rev Wright's Man of the Year, every year, Louis Farrakhan.

All no doubt double agents for Mossad.


Mike F

[Bobert]

Half hour+ of Obama kissing AIPAC's ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cOJNC2EuJw

[mexika]

Quote:Half hour+ of Obama kissing AIPAC's ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cOJNC2EuJw

Oh ooh.... I'm speechless. WTF?

[mexika]

*Letter to the President Elect of the United States of America*

*November 4, 2008*

*Dear Mr. Obama,*

*As millions of people all over the world, I, a Mexican citizen, have been
following the debates and yesterday I witnessed in amazement and
satisfaction, your triumph over Senator McCain, in an unprecedented and
historic moment in the history of that country.*

* *

*The above, stated by numerous political experts, journalists, and people in
general, is not so because you are the first Afro-American to be about
opening the door of a path where you will either make history or just stay
still, standing before that path without ever daring walking it because to
do that, entails so many hindrances which are embodied in the huge
corporations which manufacture those same weapons that are now, in this very
moment, ending the lives of innocent children, men and women in Iraq, a
country that George W. Bush, dubbed by millions around the world, as the
worst terrorist world-wide, lying to his people, invaded not because that
nation was harboring terrorists or building atomic weaponry but because the
endless greed of oil and weaponry corporations. *

* *

*By changing these criminal foreign policies, President Elect Barack Obama,
you will indeed, write history with golden letters, modifying forever the
perception that the United States successive administrations only care for
power, control and exploitation of the resources and cheap labor of other
underdeveloped countries.*

* *

*And why are the challenges so incredibly hard and seemingly insurmountable
you will face? I believe there are several which become harder by various
reasons, among which the following are the most influential:*

* *

*a) **The very essence of the electoral system, based on the enormous
amounts of money candidates need to "commercialize", namely, to "sell" their
image to their constituency. This not only turns the practice of electing
public servants into a buy & sell exercise which has nothing to do with
democracy (demos=people; cratos= power: power of the people), making the
media the lords and winners of this whole marketing spectacle –and I say
this with all due respect for you and the North American people.*



*The fact that "money talks" in politics, is the big, big problem, because
you will have to face vested interests, the lobbyists, the big corporations
who only believe in money and power and don't care at all about the
environment or the well being of millions of voters who have placed their
hopes in the change they think you represent.*

* *

*B)**I would like to believe that, like many immigrants do, you will
change the shameless and cruel migratory policies carried out by past USA
administrations towards Mexico, just because your ancestors also migrated,
but, unfortunately, history has shown us that such factor has not influenced
other politicians with the same past, like the current governor of
California. Of course, we hope you will be more sensitive and, of course,
we know for a fact, that definitely, you are much more intelligent than
Schwarzeneger to understand that the high Mexican migratory rate is, to a
great extent, undeniably due to the NAFTA signed by Salinas de Gortari and
George Bush Senior, along with other terrible consequences of that treaty to
the Mexican economy.*

* *

*c) **I would also love to believe that you will be able to put a stop to
the murderous and immoral invasion of North American troops in Iraq, not
only because it has signified the assassination of hundreds of innocent
children and civilians in general, but because you are losing that war and
you know it, besides the fact that so many North American parents have lost
their sons and daughters senselessly. *

* *

*By now you must be aware, dear President Elect, that millions of people
around the globe despise not the North American people but their government
and soldiers to the point that every time Ms. Rice or any other high
official visits their country, they burn their images and the North American
flag, shouting insults I don't dear repeat here. So, when you promised to
bring back the troops from Iraq, you won many supporters, not only among
your constituents but also abroad, because it will be one of the most
sensitive and intelligent actions to do.*

* *

*When you said that you would renegotiate the NAFTA with Mexico, you placed
yourself even higher in the stature of a true statesman, because I want to
believe that such decision stems from the fact that you have come to realize
that precisely, the increasing impoverishment of our country –our peasants,
producers, small business, etc.,-- is the result of the uneven terms of such
treaty, which one of the corollaries has been none other than the
unstoppable increment in the rate of emigration of Mexicans to your country.
*

* *

*There are so many aspects of the USA foreign policy that must be modified,
like the cruel and unjustified embargo placed against Cuba, against which so
many nations within the UNO have voted, along with the threats and uncalled
for intervention of the United States in the affairs of other countries
which, hopefully, over time, you will be able to put a halt. *

* *

*If you open that door and walk the path, President Elect, world history
will register the name of Barack Obama as the greatest President in the
annals of North America.*



*I vow, President Obama, that you find the strength, the support from all
those who form your team and all those who financed your campaign "no
strings attached", to fulfill all the promises you made during your
interesting and exciting campaign. I dare say that, like myself, there are
millions that are hoping you do it because as I said at the beginning of
this letter, you will not make history by being the first Afro-American to
reach the Presidency of the United States of America…you will make history
by changing history.*



*With my very best wishes for your complete success in walking the path,*

* *

*Patricia Barba Avila*

*Director General*

*National Council of Civic Communicators (CONACC)*

[mexika]

Obama Goons Call Police
Over Man’s Questions
By Greg Nixon
9-27-8
This past Sunday, a graduate student in electrical engineering learned that Fascists are not always goosestepping in uniforms behind tanks, sometimes they can appear to be innocent little old ladies or soccer moms. Our student, whom we will refer to as as just Brian, approached an Obama campaign table on Church Street here in Burlington and began to ask questions about Brzezinski’s role as advisor to Obama. He also asked if the Obama supporters knew about how Brzezinski was the architect for the Mujahideen, a.k.a. Al Qaeda.
The Obama table wanted no discussion what so ever. In order to set up a table on Church Street, a group must apply for a permit from the market place board. The function of tabling is to educated the public on issues and allow dialogue. Apparently an open exchange of ideas did not apply to Obama supporters. After Brian questioned the table and realized the conversation was closed, he walked away.
Refusing to speak was not enough for the Obama people, they called the police! Two police officers chased Brian down, ordered him onto the ground. Brian called out for help, thinking he had committed no crime. The police told him to shut up or he would be tasered. Brian was handcuffed and taken to jail where he was held for 35 hours. He had to appear before a judge in shackles and will face a trial by jury in one month for: resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
The ordeal in jail left Brian visibly shaken and upset. If the arrest wasn’t enough. The Obama campaigners filed a RESTRAINING ORDER which bans him from Church Street for ONE MONTH! Burlington is a small town, and Church St. is our main thoroughfare. This is a de facto ban from the town.
I spent a half hour with Brian retracing the steps of that fateful day. He told me how he didn’t realize what freedom was until it was taken away. For the moment, he is not personally speaking out about this injustice. He fears what other tactics the Obama supporters may hold. I immediately realized a gross injustice had been committed and seized a chance to tell Brian’s story by gaining his trust.
I hope a suit will be filed for a violation of Brian’s civil rights, First Amendment rights and the tabling permit for the Obama campaigners will go under review. Is this Obama’s America? Is this this the “Change” we can expect? Arbitrary arrests for questioning power? Be careful of what you wish for, As Truman Capote said, “more tears are shed over answered prayers than unaswered ones.”
Greg Nixon


http://truthlovefreedom.org/2008/09/28/oba...mans-questions/

[harmonius]

'Rahmbo'

From: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

Quote:NEW YORK - On Rosh Hashana, Rahm Emanuel called his rabbi with a question: Could he violate the holiday to sit in on a conference call about the $700 billion bank bailout package that congressional Democrats were fiercely trying to revive?
Obama, right, smiles as he...

It didn't take long for Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who heads Emanuel's modern Orthodox congregation in suburban Chicago, to give him an answer.

"I told him it was my halachic opinion that the financial system was on the point of failing and it could be a disaster, and this was a matter of life and death, to get this passed, as long as the violation was kept to a minimum," Lopatin told The Jerusalem Post.

"This is modern Orthodoxy at work - committed to Judaism, but committed to making it a better world," Lopatin said.


As Democratic officials confirmed Thursday that Emanuel, 49, had accepted the job of chief of staff in US President-elect Barack Obama's new administration, friends and colleagues from Chicago to Washington described him to the Post as a dauntless political warrior and peerless tactician who had cemented his reputation as a consummate Washington general with his leadership of the Democrats' congressional takeover in 2006.

"He tends to be more pragmatic than ideological - as a leader of the party, he's been more focused on the practical aspects of moving the agenda forward," said Richard Foltin, legislative director for the American Jewish Committee's Washington office, who first met Emanuel during his stint as an adviser in president Bill Clinton's administration.

Yet Emanuel was also described as a fiercely principled Jew and supporter of Israel, where his pediatrician father, Benjamin, was born and volunteered for the Irgun before moving to America.

Emanuel, whose family name comes from the first name of an uncle killed in a 1933 skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem, went to summer camp in Israel as a boy and grew up speaking Hebrew with his father.

"He is unabashed about his own connection to Israel," said Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of the Jewish United Fund-Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

"If he goes to the White House, he'll be going to serve the president - but Israel will have a friend in the White House," Kotzin told the Post.

Emanuel's selection was to be formally announced on Friday.

The man nicknamed "Rahmbo" - derived from his political style, not his record as a volunteer helping the IDF during the First Gulf War - got his start in politics after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981, where, a talented dancer, he studied ballet.

Emanuel worked for a consumer rights organization in Chicago and then for a Senate campaign in 1984, as well as for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, before becoming a fund-raiser for now Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1989.

In 1991, after returning from Israel, Emanuel joined Clinton's campaign as a fund-raiser and stayed on as a White House adviser - developing a power base in the capital, and also becoming a model for Josh Lyman of The West Wing, the popular television show written by Clinton alumni.

Emanuel returned to Chicago in 1998 after marrying his wife, Amy Rule, and went to work for investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein - a move that he acknowledged in a 2002 interview with The New York Times had netted him $7.3 million, enough to guarantee financial stability for his family, if not to compete with the millions his younger brother, Ari Emanuel, rakes in as a powerful Hollywood talent agent. (The younger Emanuel also serves as the model for a television character - the explosive Ari Gold of the HBO show Entourage.)

In 2002, Emanuel decided to make a run for an open congressional seat on Chicago's North Side.

He earned support among adults who had been his father's patients as children and from the legions of police officers and firefighters who took the endorsement of Emanuel's uncle, a police sergeant. However, he faced a bruising battle in the Democratic primary that included anti-Semitic broadsides raised by Polish supporters of one of his opponents.

In response, he gathered religious leaders to condemn the smears, which included allegations that his loyalty was to Israel, rather than to America.

"They tried to bring out the worst of ethnic divisions, and by being strong, he showed he wasn't going to tolerate anti-Semitism," recalled Lopatin, who was among the clergy Emanuel called on.

Emanuel - whose spokeswoman did not reply to a request from the Post for an interview - later said the moment was one of his proudest.