Obama has chosen not to stop any of this. Neither do his ballyhooed executive orders put an end to Bush’s assault on constitutional and international law. He has retained Bush’s ‘right’ to imprison anyone, without trial or charges. No ‘ghost prisoners’ are being released or are due to be tried before a civilian court. His nominee for attorney-general, Eric Holder, has endorsed an extension of Bush’s totalitarian USA Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to demand Americans’ library and bookshop records. The man of ‘change’, is changing little. That ought to be front page news from Washington. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘The Politics of Bollocks’; viz also website
Obama lied that America had gone to Iraq to bring freedom to that country. He announced that the troops were coming home. This was another deception. John Pilger, lecture Socialism Chicago 2009, ‘Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo’; viz website
The bombing has doubled since last year (2006) and this is not being reported. And who began this bombing? Bill Clinton began it. During the 1990s Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what was euphemistically called the no-fly zones. At the same time he imposed a medieval siege called economic sanctions, killing perhaps a million people. John Pilger, The Invisible Government, 2007
A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the ‘women’s candidate’ and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One.
This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of free speech.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the most dewy-eyed. Obama based his ‘hope’ campaign almost entirely on the fact of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also ‘anti-war’.
Obama was never anti-war. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he was pro-war. He had voted for George W Bush’s funding of the slaughter in Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help make the world ‘free from nuclear weapons’ and did the opposite.
As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency, with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is fawned on as ‘cool’ (Guardian). John Pilger, article March 2016, ‘Trump and Clinton: Censoring the Unpalatable’; viz website
During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places. John Pilger 2001
Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons – specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference. Stephen Kinzer
There is nothing puzzling ... about America’s gratuitously aggressive foreign policy or about the oligarchs’ successful efforts to drag the Republic into five wars. What an aggressive foreign policy accomplishes by slow degrees, a state of war accomplishes in a trice. Overnight [war] kills reform, overnight it transforms insurgents into traitors and the Republic into an imperiled realm. Overnight it strangles free politics, distracts and overawes the citizenry. Overnight it blasts public hope. Walter Karp
The United States does not target civilians. I think the number of civilians you’re talking about is questionable. I don’t accept your assertion that we’ve killed thousands of innocent people. Douglas Feith, under-secretary of defense, interview John Pilger
A third landing at Muroc, now Edwards Air Force Base, took place in 1954. The base was closed for three days and no-one was allowed to enter or leave during that time. The historical event had been planned in advance. Details of a treaty had been agreed upon. Eisenhower arranged to be in Palm Springs on vacation. On the appointed day the President was spirited to the base. The excuse was given to the press that he was visiting a dentist. Witnesses to the event have stated that three UFOs flew over the base and then landed. Anti-aircraft batteries were undergoing live-fire training and the startled personnel actually fired at the crafts as they passed overhead ... the shells missed and no-one was injured.
President Eisenhower met with the aliens on February 20, 1954, and a formal treaty between the alien nation and the United States of America was signed. We then received our first alien ambassador from outer space. He was the hostage that had been left at the first landing in the desert. His name was ‘His Omnipotent Highness Crilll or Krilll’, pronounced Crill or Krill. In the American tradition of disdain for royal titles he was secretly called ‘Original Hostage Crill or Krill’.
Shortly after this meeting President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. Bill Cooper, lecture MUFON Symposium 2nd October 1989, ‘The Origin Identity & Purpose of MJ12’
Senate Bill 28:34 authorises the following: gives the President power to initiate covert actions – this has never before been given to the President; prevents Congress from stopping the President’s initiation of covert actions; allows the President to use any federal departments, agencies or entities to operate or finance any covert action ... Bill Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination ... Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply ... Longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us. The Hoover Report 1954
We’ve never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President. ibid.
We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration ... A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Dwight D Eisenhower, address to nation 17th January 1961
And only the very courageous will be able to keep alive the spirit of individualism and dissent which gave birth to this nation, nourished it as an infant, and carried it through its severest tests upon the attainment of its maturity. John F Kennedy
Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – let us accept our own responsibility for the future. John F Kennedy
The Communists are determined to destroy us, and regardless of what hand of friendship we may hold out or what arguments we may put up, the only thing that will make that decisive difference is the strength of the United States. John F Kennedy, Democratic rally August 1960
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish – where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source – where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials – and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all ... I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end – where all men and all churches are treated as equal – where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice ... I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office ...