Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Don't Give Obama a Second Chance!

In the aftermath of the election of Barak Obama as the next president of the U.S., the 44th (which, incidentally, in the Asian calendar, containing as it does two unlucky number 4s, making it double-unlucky), there is a general masturbatory atmosphere of, "Look at us, we elected a black!" among the white liberal intelligentsia and functionaries in the corporate mass media, large parts of the academia and the official, political establishment.

A slight bit to the left of the above, the apologentsia of the Democratic Party USA are advocating a 'wait-and-see', or, 'we should give him a chance' line of approach to be taken with the currently developing Obama administration. Such second chances are not to be given.

I say a 'second chance' is not to be given, since Obama has already had his first chance; the direction he has taken with his choice of cabinet so far is enough of a first chance any government needs to have. Those representing organized labor, anybody working with the veterans, anybody organizing for provision of food, housing and other necessities to the most needy in the U.S., anti-war activists, civil rights activists, activists for banning uranium-enriched munitions, activists for living wages, activists for fare taxation; in short anybody representing demands on behalf of justice must absolutely NOT, for a second, back down and wait for Obama to have a second chance. He will not take a single step in the direction of addressing the people's needs.

No second chances, and especially not now. People should be up in arms for the direction already set by president-elect Obama. It is especially critical that the rulers see that people have not gone home, and they are still pissed off and not willing to settle for more insults.

How insulting that the head of his transition team for 'intelligence' is Brennan, whose resume the Baltimore Sun, in an article by Melvin A. Goodman, has highlighted this way, "As chief of staff and deputy executive director under Mr. Tenet, [Brennan] was involved in decisions to conduct torture and abuse of suspected terrorists and to render suspected individuals to foreign intelligence services that conducted their own torture and abuse ... He was also an active defender of the illegal program of warrantless eavesdropping, implemented at the National Security Agency under the leadership of Mr. Hayden, then director of NSA."

Obama's secretary of 'defense' is to be the current secretary of war, Gates.

His economic team and treasury department is to be headed by the very people who brought us the current economic disasters.

His nominee for the Attorney General is Eric Holder, former deputy attorney general under Reno, co-chairman of Obama's campaign. As a lawyer for Covington and Burling's, Holder has represented the Chiquita Brands International Inc., and "helped Chiquita secure a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal to charges that it had paid off the terrorists," and in June of this year, was coaching "Fernando Aguirre, the CEO of Chiquita Brands International Inc., for an interview with "60 Minutes," which will be broadcasting a segment on the company's past involvement with Colombian right-wing paramilitary forces (Andrew Longstreth;
The American Lawyer,
June 5, 2008). So, can you imagine the kind of legal protection the American labor is going to enjoy under this highly 'changed' justice department headed by an attorney for a company that sleeps with right-wing paramilitary death squads that go around mowing down unionists?

And then, to top it all with the cream of the crop of supposed discontinuity, Rahm Emanuel, whose father openly disparages Arabs with racist bigotry. Rahm Emanuel himself is about as dangerous a political functionary as you can get in both ideological partisanship of a rightwing kind and the cunning shrewdness of a slithering snake, changing skins between his Israeli and American passports, one minute there in the Israeli Army, enforcing a barbaric and brutal occupation over the stolen lands of the Palestinians, dispossessing their resources daily and increasingly so, and the next day slipping into Clinton White House, and then swiftly out of it right as Monica Lewinsky started rendering the Oval Office pornographically comical.  
I am sure the remainder of his cabinet will likely be filled by other atrocious choices that represent nothing new and no changes-for-the-better whatsoever; except of course better for the rulers, the top 1%.

So, clearly Obama has had his first chance (this is for those who have illusions about him) to show which way he's going to be walking. So don't give him a second chance, if you can help it.

Related article:
The Obama Letdown (Counterpunch, November 26, 2008)

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