4um: As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked

Title: As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked
Source: International Herald Tribune
URL Source: [None]
Published: Feb 26, 2008
Author: International Herald Tribune
Post Date: 2008-05-09 15:09:50 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 2540
Comments: 208

As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked

International Herald Tribune

02-26-2008

As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked
Byline: Jeff Zeleny The New York Times Media Group
Edition: 1
Section: NEWS

DALLAS --

There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.
"I've got the best protection in the world," Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. "So stop worrying."

Yet worry they do, with the spring of 1968 seared into their memories, when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated in a span of two months.

Obama was 6 at the time, and like many of his admirers, he has only read about the violence that traumatized and polarized the nation. But those recollections and images are often invoked by older voters, who watch his candidacy with fascination, as well as an uneasy air of apprehension, as Democrats inch closer to selecting their nominee.

Obama has had Secret Service agents surrounding him since May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection. (He reluctantly gave in to the insistent urging of Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and others in Congress.) As his rallies have swelled in size, his security has increased, close to rivaling that given to a sitting president.

His wife, Michelle Obama, voiced concerns about his safety before he was elected to the Senate. Three years ago, she said she dreaded the day her husband received Secret Service protection, because it would mean serious threats had been made against him.

Among friends and advisers, danger is something Obama rarely mentions.

"It's not something that I'm spending time thinking about day to day," said Obama, who has been given the Secret Service nickname Renegade, a way for agents to quickly identify him. "I made a decision to get into this race. I think anybody who decides to run for president recognizes that there are some risks involved, just like there are risks in anything."

Not long ago, his advisers worried that some black voters might not support his candidacy out of a fierce desire to protect him. It was a particular concern in South Carolina, but Obama said he believed the worry was also rooted in "a fear of failure."

Now that he has won a string of primaries and caucuses in all corners of the country and built a coalition of black and white voters, failure would seem to be less of an issue. The fears, however, remain.

Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, raised concerns in a letter in January to officials who oversee the Secret Service. Obama was already receiving protection, but Thompson said the intense interest in the election had prompted him to make sure that Obama and the other candidates were offered adequate security.

"The national and international profile of Sen. Barack Obama gives rise to unique challenges that merit special concern," Thompson wrote. "As an African-American who was witness to some of this nation's most shameful days during the civil rights movement, I know personally that the hatred of some of our fellow citizens can lead to heinous acts of violence. We need only to look to the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy as examples."

In an interview, Thompson declined to elaborate on any specific threats that had come to the attention of his committee or the authorities. He said he wrote the letter to the Homeland Security Department without discussing it with Obama, whom he has endorsed.

"His candidacy is so unique to this country and so important that the last thing you would want is for him not to have the opportunity to fulfill the role of a potential presidential nominee," Thompson said. "It's out of an abundance of caution that I wrote the letter, rather than keep our fingers crossed and pray."

Before Obama decided to run for president, he discussed his safety with his family. His campaign employed a team of private security guards before he was placed under Secret Service protection. Since then, he has grown fond of the agents who surround him, inviting them to watch the Super Bowl at his home in Chicago and playing basketball with them on the days he awaits the results of an election.

Obama was reluctant to speak about his security or the period in American history that is often raised, without prompting, by voters who are interviewed at his campaign events. Mentions of the fate that befell President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy only increased after Obama was joined on the campaign trail by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

"I'm pretty familiar with the history," Obama said. "Obviously, it was an incredible national trauma, but neither Bobby Kennedy nor Martin Luther King had Secret Service protection."

Indeed, the assassination of Kennedy in 1968 prompted Congress to pass a law authorizing protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates. In this campaign, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has had Secret Service protection from the beginning because she is a former first lady. None of the other candidates accepted it during their primary campaigns.

Gerald Posner, author of books on the assassinations of John Kennedy and King, said he did not believe that Obama was under a significantly higher risk than President George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton. The fears are more openly discussed, he said, because he is the first black candidate to come this close to winning a major party's presidential nomination.

"Barack scares those of us who think of the possibility of an assassination in a different way," Posner said. "He represents so much hope and change. That is exactly what was taken away from us in the 1960s."

You need to spend less time shaking snakes with Ted Haggard and a little more time reading. Then you could: (1) Respond to people intelligently, (2) spell correctly, and (3) Post more than a one sentence thought.

By the way, are you going to speak in tongues for us or not? Lots of bored people here tonight and your childish insults are old hat.

Let's talk about that, trip dots, but first...you avoided this part, do you have any of your spectacularly brilliant observations to share wrt ?

Only goobers like yourself buy into Fox Propaganda. They're probably the ones who convinced you to buy the eight mile per gallon car.

You're naturally dull witted, and posting nothing accents this even more than your silly one line insults.

Why don't you post something while you are speaking in tongues? Now that would be entertaining.

A friend of mine that works day and night against the NAU brought up an interesting point...that "weird" (to say the least) breakup/timing of the Soviet Union's 'fall' was also just before a)Clinton/HW Bush went to Bilderberg simultaneously and before HW handed BJC the election and b)NAFTA/NAU was firmly ready to go, just waiting for Clinton to sign.

Did Fox convince you to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an eight mile per gallon car that even the auction lots won't touch these days?

What's he do? Call people silly names on the internet? It couldn't be much more than that if he considers you to be a peer.

Is Chuck Baldwin inarticulate and stupid like you are? And can he speak in tongues?

But it's worth considering the evidence that Wall Street financed the destruction of the Czar, and fostered the rise of Soviet communism as retribution for the anti-Jewish pogroms.

Q: Mr. Baldwin, what is your opinion of the current currency crises now faced by the U.S. and the U.K.

Chuck Baldwin: Hurroooop snerk giberbiber whoork ptahhhhhhhh whortttt! Praise Jeebus!!

Apparently Mr. Baldiwn, as a Southern Baptist Minister, is perfectly capable of speaking in tongues. Whether he is as inarticulate and stupid as you are is still in question.

I think it all goes together...we've been effed since LONG, LONG before Reagan...but Reagan was just another player working 'our' side. Or so we thought he was on America's side. What a grand scheme !!!

Are you excited about getting your North American Zone Biometric ID card (and the Goverment Health Care, etc. that comes with it)?

Like you, Reagan just wasn't any good at handling money. So why are you calling the kettle black?

Just don't spend huge sums of money on a depreciating dinosaur the next time Fox News tells you to. You'll be fine then.

Do your badeye impersonation again. Tell us how you gave yourself three hummers without taking yoga lessons.

You're going to wake up soon to an INVOLUNTARY concept that I've described (tongue in cheek admittedly, but accurate nonetheless) and then what choice will you make?

Fight, flee or surrender (just as though you fell for it like the Ophiles have...)?

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. T. S. Eliot

"Hi, I'm Chuckie the Cheese Baldwhine, and FOH is especially gentle shaving the hair that grows on my palms because of the intensity of the circle jerks us Cuntstitutional Party studs have together. So I let him post my picture. Cheers, babies."

Reply "I believe the reason US americans are unable to find maps and as such as, is because osama of them don't have maps and as such as south africa and the iraq"..yikes, she was talking about the obama family.

He did clarify and include Alaska and Hawai'i at the end of that, he covered all 50 states.

I say him last night on the University of Oregon campus. He sounded tired and corrected another minor momentary mis-spoken comment about al Qaeda and Afghanistan. He apologized noting he was "on East Coast time."

I was impressed with him none the less and look forward to seeing him finally getting the nomination. It certainly was a huge and enthusiastic crowd, and he connected with it extremely well.

It's called the "Final Phase" theory. I was a proponent of the theory for many years. Those who still believe in the theory have a web site and forum called The Final Phase. You would not like the place or the people as it makes Freik Repugnant look like a free love hippy commune. They are extreme government supremists who worship at the foot of the military and Republican Party. You are not allowed to say anything negative about the government or the Republican Party UNLESS it's about their refusal to buy in to the Final Phase. Ron Paul is an anti-Christ to these people and most, if not all were Duncan Hunter fans.

While JR claims to be a Libertarian (I've never seen his Libertarian side), his followers are authoritarian neocons who literally think everything that happens in the world is a Soviet/Chinese plot to overthrow the United States. They are ate up with this fear to the point that just about anything that happens in the world somehow fits in to this plot. I finally woke up to the fact that these guys are a bunch of scared girlie-men who are using the Final Phase as an excuse to turn the US into an authoritarian mecca in order to reduce their fear of life. They literally long for the strong-armed dictator JR talks about in his book Origins of the Fourth World War. It got to the point that I could no longer abide by their insane conspiracy theories, nor did my vision of American match their own. In the end, I was no longer welcome at the site. I wasn't booted off but it was only a matter of time before the self-appointed head fascist, Belmont Mark, booted me off for not towing the "worship government" line.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976

G. Edward Griffin's 1984 interview with former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov reveals the same dichotomy: Bezmenov suggests that American dissidents are tools of foreign efforts at "demoralization."

But what happens when power corrupts America? Initially I had a positive reaction to Bezmenov. I still believe his intentions are good. However, during this 1984 interview it is clear that he did not appear to recognize the subtle but iron-fisted controls that dictate content to our news media, entertainment, and educational programs. By 1984, he could have had a conversation with Charlotte Iserbyt, who was already beginning to be disillusioned with Ronald Reagan's presidency. He could have met Eustace Mullins and discussed the Wall Street financing of the communist revolution in Russia as well as the Japanese naval buildup before the Russo-Japanese war, which helped to destroy the Czar's empire.

People who internalized the Cold War appear to find comfort in painting an communist/western battle to the death for liberty. This is a retreat from the stark indications that the international bankers, some working for their own profit, others working for Zionism, and others working for ideals to salve their painful consciences, have been fomenting global tyranny for more than 200 years.

That would be one of the best things that could happen to/for America. So it probably will never happen but I would give a pay per view price to see that one and I bet a lot of other folks would too.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

Absolutely FALSE. Political murder is actually a potential tool of our oppressors. I think the JFK killing was used as such a tool. Remember, these people are puppets. We can't liberate ourselves by removing a puppet; thousands are waiting to take their place. The death of a well-known personality is a painful shock that would immediately be used to manipulate Americans to accept much more oppression.

Only 6 more months of this charade, but I bet it'll be the best theater in a LONG time...

Yes, but see, in my fantasy it isn't just the willing puppets like Clinton, Obama and McCain who do the rope dance. If we are going to dream why not dream big and hoist up the puppeteers along with them?

As for accepting much more oppression I hope you are wrong because the founders of this country would have revolted (again) YEARS AGO. I hope the people in this country have about had a gut full but then maybe they haven't had enough yet.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

It already seems like it has been going on for four years. And after all that look at what the sheeple have been given to choose from. A socialist in a crusty pants suit who wants to give us the same wonderful health care system they have in England, a nut who is probably itching to start World War III, and a commie clown who would never have been given a second look if not for his color. America is soooooooooo screwed.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

Who are the puppeteers? It seems that through mass media and centralized education, many of us have become our own slavers, willingly oppressing ourselves, and others.

As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press - 1984