Reply #8: Okay, I've calmed down now. I'm having a bit of deja vu. This speech reads much like JFK's [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

early speeches, which contain embarrassing paragraphs about the communist menace. You read them now and cringe. But young people like me (I was 16 when I volunteered for JFK's 1960 campaign) could sense something better in JFK than his anti-communist rhetoric--a creative mind, an open mind, who would--as it turned out--grow in the office, and develop a genuine commitment to world peace. He stopped the CIA invasion of Cuba, he prevented a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (with a bargain that the Soviets would withdraw their missiles from Cuba and we would withdraw ours from Turkey), he ultimately turned against the CIA's stealth war in Vietnam (for which he paid the price of his own life, in my opinion), he worked to turn our humongous military budget to positive purpose (the space program, putting men on the moon; negotiating the first nuclear disarmament treaty), and he wrote the basic planks of what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the badly named (by LBJ) but well-intended "War on Poverty." And he created the Peace Corps, which--for all its "Manifest Destiny" bullcrap, and CIA misuse--DID provide amazing experiences of the third world that radicalized the lives of many young Americans. The Peace Corps did, indeed, provide on-the-ground, practical help for people in need, and opened a lot of young American eyes.

More than this, he INSPIRED a whole generation to re-think U.S. foreign policy, and what American life is--or should be--all about. His youth, his newness, his creativity, his intelligence, and his call to public service were really the sparks that led to the most profound cultural revolution in history--with an entire generation revolting against unjust war, and a hurricane of social change, including the civil right movement, the anti-war movement, the women's liberation movement, the gay rights movement, the environmental movement, and much else.

I go back and read his speeches, and say, "Huh? That's what inspired me? Beating the Soviets?" The truth may be that most of what was coming was inside of US, the people, especially the young, and was not caused by any leader. The change of consciousness was our own creativity and intelligence emerging--our individual growth and our collective identity. He WAS inspirational, though, like Obama is. And some of his speeches were very moving (his speech to the UN on world peace, for instance). With Obama, too, it's really his SUPPORTERS who are exciting, to a long timer observer of American politics like me. The citizen activism around the Obama campaign is THE essential component of change and reform. It is the thing that has been lacking for so long. The long nightmare of a disempowered, demoralized--and, above all--disenfranchised American citizenry seems to be over.

We still have NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting, though--WHICH THEY DO NOT HAVE IN VENEZUELA. Jeez! Chavez was ELECTED! He can prove it. Can Bush? Can Cheney? Can Obama? Can ANY politician in this country show me the proof that they were, in fact, elected? Chavez can. And if you think that the Venezuelans would elect a "demagogue" and a "dictator," you don't know Venezuelans very well (who have the liveliest political culture in the western hemisphere, in a country where most people have read their Constitution and many carry it around in their pockets, in a tiny pocket version, to remind them of the RULE OF LAW).

Sorry, this Obama anti-communist...um, anti-Chavez...DEMAGOGUERY really burns me up.

There is a long list of very bad things in this speech, buying into virtually every Bushite "talking point" on South America, and nearly every Bushite policy, for that matter--and VERY FEW positive points. He's going to continue funding (billions of dollars) the slaughter of small peasant farmers, union leaders, political leftists, community organizers, human rights workers and journalists in Colombia. No relief there. He is crazy if he thinks the Colombian fascists are going to reform. That's what they think the "war on drugs" money is FOR--to prop up their fascist power with murder, torture and oppression, not to mention their drug cartels. He thinks he's going to bargain with them, over "free trade." That's what Bush says. That's what Clinton says. They're lying. Maybe Obama is a little more sincere than they are. It won't get him very far. And the upshot is that the planet-killing global corporate predators like Monsanto will have "free trade" with which to kill the planet some more in Colombia.

There are a FEW lights in this collosaly disappointing speech. One is that he seems to understand the difference between corporate biofuel production and alternative energy that doesn't destroy the food chain and kill the planet. But whether he has any cards to play in Colombia, in Brazil and with corps like Monsanto remains to be seen. The corporate biofuelers lust after the Amazon, and the Colombian jungles and farmlands. Is Obama just their shill? Bush with a nicer face?

I am not encouraged by this speech that Obama will bring change for the better in U.S. Latin American policy. He may, though, forestall the worst--the Bushites' planned WAR FOR THE OIL.

One other item that sets off my alarm bells: He has bought into this psyops that Uribe (Colombia) is perpetrating (but that I'm pretty convinced has been orchestrated by Donald Rumsfeld, as part of a war plan) that the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador are "terrorist-lovers." This is such a superficial reading of AP newscrap that I despair of Obama and his advisers. What it says to me is that Obama is going to CONTINUE this abusive, lying, disinformation war that the Bushites have started, even to the point of hostilities. He even mentions "sanctions"--as if we had the goddamned right to sanction Venezuela, which has harmed no one, while our "friend," Colombia, is killing anybody who dares to raise their head in opposition. He furthermore thinks that WE have the power in the OAS to do as we please (no longer true, at all), or...what is worse... that he is going to pursue Bushite "divide and conquer" tactics, to bribe and bully others to obey dictates from Washington.

Either way, it bodes ill. Either he has illusions of U.S. power in South America, or he intends to REASSERT U.S. power to DICTATE TO South America.

Yeah, I'm still mad. This speech makes me very mad.

To pull back a moment, Obama was walking into a minefield, as I said before. He was speaking to an audience of people who were so bitter about JFK's lack of support for invading Cuba, that some of their CIA-connected gangsters more than likely assisted in JFK's assassination. In any case, that is the background, the history. And the virulence of their hatred for the poor of Latin America--especially the poor BROWN people of Latin America--continues today, in some anti-Castro Miamian hearts. They are conquistadors. They want their PROPERTY back, including their slaves. This was a community founded by the heinous dictators of the Bautista regime in Cuba, supplemented today by people who supported kidnapping and assassinating Hugo Chavez, and suspending the Constitution, the National Assembly, the courts and all civil rights, in a coup against the elected government of Venezuela. They are plotting with the Bushites, even as I write this, to harass, humiliate, slander, topple and kill the president of Venezuela, and reinstall themselves in power--or, rather, they want US to do it FOR them. The group that Obama was speaking to is one of the milder groups--they are called "moderate." But they are nevertheless something of a front for the bad motives and activities that run through this community--and those bad motives and activities have been re-invigorated and FUNDED by the Bush Junta.

Obama had some nerve to walk in there at all. I give him that. But his pandering to this fascist, Bushite-connected crowd makes me want to puke. Or maybe he wasn't pandering. Maybe he believes this crap. Which is worse? I dunno.