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Title: As Obama's star rises, fears for his safety Memories of 1968 assassinations evoked
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International Herald Tribune
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Published: Feb 26, 2008
Author: International Herald Tribune
Post Date: 2008-05-09 15:09:50 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 2674
Comments: 208
Poster Comment: Twinkle, twinkle, little star.....
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."
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#80. To: FOH (#72)
And now what are you going to do about your maturity issues? Stamp your foot and call people names? LOL!!
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FOHillbilly getting posting ideas from his family at breakfast.
He's slunk off again. He doesn't do well when people stand up and call him on his shit. And most would be bullies are like that.
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*********** ari, ari, ari.......here's a Nobel Prize winner who has the same thought as I do!!!!!!! Byline: David Gardner NOBEL Prize winner Doris Lessing caused uproar last night by predictingthe assassination of Barack Obama if he becomes the first black U.S. president. The 88- year-old novelists remarks came as the Democratic candidate toasted themost successful day in his White House campaign. Mr Obama, the 46- year-old son of a black Kenyan man and a white American,dismissed Mrs Lessings comments. Mrs Lessing said: He would probably not last long, a black man in the positionof president. They would kill him. She said it would be better if Mrs Clinton, 60, became Americas first womanpresident with Obama as her running mate. Hillary is a very sharp lady. Itmight be calmer if she wins, she told a Swedish newspaper. But one Democratic analyst said: Suggesting Obama is in danger if he wins theelection in November is not only divisive, it is insulting to the Americanpeople. Princeton University political science professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell raisedassassination fears last month, saying: For many black supporters, there is alot of anxiety that he will be killed. It is on peoples minds. You cant make a prediction like thislike he has a 50 per cent chance of getting shot. But the greater hisvisibility and the greater his access to people, there is a danger. It is not the first time Mrs Lessing has caused controversy in the U.S. Lastyear she claimed the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre wasnot as significant as the IRAs terror campaign. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terriblenor as extraordinary as they think, she said. Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against ourgovernment. It killed several people while a Conservative congress was beingheld and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was [attending].People forget. Last month, TV host Harry Smith caused an outcry, asking Ted Kennedy, brotherof assassinated President John F. Kennedy: Sometimes agents of change end upbeing targets. Doesnt it make you at all fearful? Black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson received death threats during hiscampaigns in the Eighties and former Secretary of State Colin Powell ruled outa White House run after his wife feared he would be killed. Illinois senator Mr Obama chalked up a clean sweep in voting on Saturday to winfresh momentum in his deadlocked race with Hillary Clinton for the Democraticparty presidential nomination. He easily won the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washingtonstate, as well as a victory in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The gains cut into the former first ladys slim lead, leaving Mr Obama ahead ina Newsweek poll by 42 per cent to 41 per cent
True. He can always find an open hamster wheel of a thread to exercise on at Free Republic for a change of pace. Bullies hate competition, which is why they are a protected species at FR by virtue of the most restrictive moderation policy of any political forum on the Internet. Bullies thrive at FR, and they get tips on how to act socially from the likes of the BillO bar of bluster on Fox. I wonder what his nick is there.
Mike, you couldn't climb and defend a tree house
so please stop living in some make believe world. Lets put it this way, If I
found you sitting in a tree I owned, I'd have both you, and the Great spotted
owl you were protecting, mounted over my mantel.
He wants to swell central government like a tick attached to the bottom of your belly. This isn't American and neither are his acolytes.
In doing non-violent civil disobedience one must always be mindful that this is part of the range of outcomes. Interesting hypothetical, but interestingly enough I have yet to do a sit on private land. And when I have protected a tree near someone's home, I have been careful to get feedback from them. At the sit at the Sheldon McMurphy House in Eugene, the city's only museum, a little fella from an apartment complex came over and sprayed me with the water hose on the front lawn. Sterling is his name and he giggled like a school girl the whole time he did this. But he didn't do it long, as though it was early spring and cold, I didn't react one iota to his childishness. What finally did happen was the Eugene Police Department who learned of his attempts to discomfort me -- and there were several -- was the entity that told him to cease and desist his harassment. I am amused that when I do run into Sterling, he always has one of his large, highly muscular pit bulls with him while he talks shit. I don't respond in a way that feeds any baiting he decides to do at the moment, and I also don't avoid him either. Him doing this without the dogs possibly would be a far more interesting spectacle, I wil say that. ;-D I would say that if I was in a tree of yours' do what you feel you have to do, but that it is easy to win a battle and lose a war. Making a tree sitter into a martyr and going to prison for the effort is hardly worth it. Remember that with tree sitters, they climb up, but sooner or later they have to climb down. Your continuum of use of force in regards to tree sitters is foolish and would in the end cost you more then a continuum of force that took more then your wounded male ego into consideration when formulated in mind to be used against non- violent dissidents.
Actually I think I'm buying into this non-violent thing of yours. I think I'd just steal your toilet paper while you're up in your perch and watch the fun (from a safe distance, of course)
Why is it always a loony conspiracy with you wingnuts? Everyone who has facts or logic at their disposal is a "mole" or an "operative". Did it ever dawn on you that people simply read up on the issue and have opinions beyond the narrow, single sentence, hate filled view of the world that your pastor loads into your brain? Think about it. While you dance around shaking your snakes and babbling in tongues, other people are reading serious works on the political system. And this is the root cause of your frustration. And this is why you can't do more than call people silly names when they present facts you disagree with.
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I think I'd just steal your toilet paper while you're up in your perch and watch the fun (from a safe distance, of course) We use a five gallon bucket to do arboreal crapping business with when in a sit. We use moss for the TP and as an anti-oder measure that also make emptying and clearing the bucket easier. I don't think I've ever used TP while aloft. I mean, think of the irony, I'm just not that gauche a guy. But just for you I would let you photograph me breaking protocol by flipping you the bird at you if I am ever in a sit you come to visit. Hey, what are friends for, right? ;-)
Oh, plenty of people have thought of the possibility of Obama being assassinated. But only real jerks want it to happen. Make that real un-American jerks.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
But only real jerks want it to happen. Make that real un-American jerks. Like the ones who damn this country from the pulpit. Yeah, those kind of jerks would be out of business if America elected a half black man as President. Or maybe you are talking about the kind of jerks who won't pledge allegiance this country, won't wear a flag pin, won't put their hand over their heart during the national anthem. Maybe those kind of jerks want Obama to go away, since Obama is so patriotic and all.
God is always good!
What do you know about being an American? You support Obama. That's about as un-American as you can get, unless you supported Hillary too.
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
Who would that be?
Read the thread, jerk.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Aristeides is proud of his/her education. He/she can see things about Obama that we can't. You have to have a liberal arts education to see it. Any degree in science disqualifies you. According to most in the liberal arts world, people with science degrees are uneducated. Logic and Obama don't go together well, so he must chant "change, change, change", regardless of the fact most of his white supporters have no idea what kind of change he is talking about and he sure the heck isn't going to tell them the truth.
God is always good!
One would think that they would teach a more colorful style of insult at Oxford.
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
The education of anyone who thinks assassinations are okay has obviously been woefully deficient.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Byline: Suzanne Fields, THE WASHINGTON TIMES Assassination is something none us like to talk about, but it's nevertheless an unhappy part of the history of the presidency. Nearly 10 percent of our 43 presidents have died at the hand of assassins, and attempts were made on a half-dozen others. The prospect of assassination is a legitimate concern for the presidential candidates, their families and for the rest of us. The Secret Service, which guards presidents and presidential candidates, naturally declines to talk about assassination, or any of the details of how it protects anyone. The Internet further attracts weird characters, many of them blowhards armed only with a laptop and a neurotic grievance who would have difficulty plotting a successful trip to the bathroom. But threats have to be taken seriously. Reporters accompanying Barack Obama have lately noticed a growing number of agents in the Obama traveling party, conspicuous for their haircuts, neat dark suits and modest ties and tiny yellow badges worn on the lapels of their suits. Some people who ought to know better even speculate about the likelihood of the assassination of specific candidates. Doris Lessing, the 82-year-old winner of the Nobel Prize for literature last year, says Mr. Obama "would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president." She thinks "the best thing would be if [Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama] would run together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she were to win, and not Obama." This merely sounds like a clumsy endorsement better left unsaid. Newspapers here and abroad have taken note of the buzz about assassination, and Ben Olken, a professor of economics at Harvard, has even quantified the "Effects of Assassinations on Institutions and War," and finds, no small irony, that the assassins rarely accomplish what they set out to do. Together with his research associate, Ben Jones, an economist at Northwestern University, he studied the economic conditions surrounding dozens of assassination attempts on heads of state, some successful and some not, throughout the world over the past 125 years. They discovered, for one startling example, that assassination usually has no effect on starting wars, and "suggests that World War I might have begun regardless of whether the attempt on the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 had succeeded or failed." Assassination buzz spawns speculation, mostly partisan and some of it mean-spirited, about who the assassins would be. There's the inevitable attempt to invoke race and assume that because Barack Obama is a black man, his lethal tormentors will be Southern rednecks. But the history of the four presidential assassinations in our history were largely the work of deranged hangers-on at the margins of society, driven by personal jealousies and demons and pathetic delusions of fame and celebrity. The public revulsion by both black and white to the subtle invocation of race in the Democratic primary campaign suggests strongly that this is not your grandfather's America. The deranged among us come in the usual partisan guises, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat. Of our four presidential assassins, two were motivated by politics, loosely defined; one was an embittered actor and Confederate partisan, and one was an angry disappointed office-seeker. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald are the best known of the four assassins and decades after their deeds arguments still rage over what conspiracies, if any, led to Ford's Theater in Washington and the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. In the accepted accounts of what happened, Booth was shot and killed several days after he killed Abraham Lincoln, and Oswald was shot while in police custody by a low-life trying to impress Jackie Kennedy, two days after he killed John F. Kennedy. But some historians argue that Union soldiers killed a man that they only thought, or wanted to think, was Booth, that he actually escaped to live out a long life under an assumed identity. Most historians accept the accounts that Oswald was, in Jackie Kennedy's famous remark, "a silly little Communist," acting alone. Conspiracy fantasies die hard. There's no debate about the assassins of James Garfield and William McKinley. Garfield was shot down by Charles Guiteau, angry because McKinley wouldn't appoint him U.S. consul in Paris. He might not have died if his doctors had not been such blundering butchers; one of them, probing for the bullet with an unsterile finger, punctured his liver. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist trying to impress Emma Goldman, shot McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. We're still fascinated by the details of assassination, but it ought to impress the nuts among us that assassins never change the course of history, and they all wind up ignominiously dead. * Suzanne Fields, a columnist for The Washington Times, is nationally syndicated. Her column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. E-mail: sfields1000@aol.com.
I'll take the lobotomy for 200, Alex!
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
The only time you get your brains splattered in public in the USA is if you threaten to tell the truth, and threaten to really install change.
Mark If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers - normally good Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free - Americans who have been lulled into a false security (April 1968).---Ezra Taft Benson, US Secretary of Agriculture 1953-1961 under Eisenhower
Should Obama get it, the Mossad will pin it on a lone white supremecist. They probably have the next Oswald already picked out-- "Here's a C-Note, Billybob, deliver this package up to the sixth floor."
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
One More Time: There was a farmer had a dog...
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
I mean it isn't like I'm the one comparing O to JFK. Jeebers....
On the other hand, inner city rioting would certainly put what's left of the middle class ill at ease. Which disproportionate use of force by police will be the one that sets it off? Looks like it's going to be a long, hot summer.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
I didn't read the whole thread, I was really bad and yessir deserve to be punished alright, I just don't know what comes over me.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
Is Lloyd Bensen still around? We could get Barack and Dan Quayle up on stage at the same time, let someone who knew JFK tell me who I should vote for.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
Your only way out of the mess you're in is to petition your city council to rename the largest avenue in your area, Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Should the big O get elected, maybe Olmert will pardon Sirhan in time for the inauguration. But, of course, this all assumes Obama isn't a major league Israel ass kisser (which he is). As long as he obeys Israel, he'll be safe.
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
Although there would certainly be massive rioting, I think a large number of American blacks would immediately think at Israel.
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
Robert Johnson- Malted Milk And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. - T. S. Eliot
How Barack Obama learned to love Israel (EI Illustration) From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah) Michelle Obama and Barack Obama listen to Professor Edward Said give the keynote address at an Arab community event in Chicago, May 1998. (Photo: Ali Abunimah)
Hot steaming pile. This supporter has no such fears. The Bush administration has converted you to a FEAR haunted sheep, JT.
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. T. S. Eliot
Meet Os VP
You're doing a yeowman's job of keeping commie panties in a bunch lately. Nice.
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
I report, you decide.....ho.
T/y Critter. Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life :P
The 88- year-old novelists remarks came as the Democratic candidate toasted themost successful day in his White House campaign. Doris Lessing? For crysakes is there no limit to your reach for Obama nonsense? You're making a fool of yourself, JT.
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. T. S. Eliot
You're a better man than me when it comes to that. I can only stomach so much before I have to go puke and take a nap. :)
I shall not vote for evil, lesser or otherwise.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestThat's the first step to recovery...
#81. To: ... (#79)
--
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy
#82. To: Ferret Mike (#81)
#83. To: aristeides (#66)
Whereas the people who are hinting broadly here about the idea of assassinating a leading candidate for the presidency are real true Americans.
They’ll kill President Obama; Obama: At risk of assassination.
#84. To: ... (#82)
"He's slunk off again. He doesn't do well when people stand up and call him on his shit. And most would be bullies are like that."
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy
#85. To: Ferret Mike (#60)
They have them in Tom McCall park in Portland, but I didn't
climb and defend any taken during the widening of Front Avenue when I lived up
there
#86. To: aristeides (#52)
He wants to do it constitutionally and legally.
#87. To: Jethro Tull (#85)
"Mike, you could climb and defend a tree house so please stop living in some make believe world. Lets put it this way, If I found you sitting in a tree I owned, I'd have both you, and the Great spotted owl you were protecting, mounted over my mantel."
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy
#88. To: Ferret Mike (#87)
Your continuum of use of force in regards to tree sitters is foolish and would in the end cost you more then a continuum of force that took more then your wounded male ego into consideration when formulated in mind to be used against non- violent dissidents.
#89. To: FOH (#70)
Yeah, you moles haven't for the most part been honest for a long time about your intentions...but it appears it's getting safer each day to 'come out'.
#90. To: Jethro Tull (#88)
(Edited)
Actually I think I'm buying into this non-violent thing of yours.
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy
#91. To: Jethro Tull (#83)
#92. To: aristeides (#91)
(Edited)
Oh, plenty of people have thought of the possibility of Obama being assassinated.
#93. To: aristeides (#91)
Make that real un-American jerks.
#94. To: aristeides (#91)
But only real jerks want it to happen.
#95. To: Jethro Tull (#94)
#96. To: Critter, aristeides (#93)
(Edited)
What do you know about being an American? You support Obama. That's about as un-American as you can get, unless you supported Hillary too.
#97. To: RickyJ, aristeides, Jethro Tull (#96)
Read the thread, jerk.
Aristeides is proud of his/her education.
#98. To: RickyJ (#96)
#99. To: aristeides (#95)
Pshaw...
Presidential assassinations; An unspoken fear stalks the 2008 hustings.(OPED)
#100. To: Jethro Tull (#99)
See more articles from The Washington Times
#101. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
#102. To: Kamala, Jethro Tull, Dakmar (#101)
#103. To: wbales (#102)
Should Obama get it, the Mossad will pin it on a lone white supremecist.
#104. To: Dakmar, Kamala, wbales, Jack Ruby, Sirhan Sirhan, Abraham, Martin and John (#100)
#105. To: wbales (#102)
Should Obama get it, the Mossad will pin it on a lone white supremecist.
#106. To: Jethro Tull (#104)
#107. To: Jethro Tull (#104)
I mean it isn't like I'm the one comparing O to JFK.
#108. To: Dakmar (#106)
#109. To: Jethro Tull (#104)
Sirhan?!?
#110. To: Dakmar (#105)
On the other hand, inner city rioting would certainly put what's left of the middle class ill at ease.
#111. To: Jethro Tull (#108)
My doorknob keeps on turning, there must be spooks around my bed.
#112. To: wbales (#109)
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007 
I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'
On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.
Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."
Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.
There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect.
While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year in road accidents).
But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."
Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.
Obama excoriated Hizbullah for using "innocent people as shields." Indeed, after dozens of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on Qana on July 30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area," according to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch.
The statement added: "Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis subsequently changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere else did Israel ever present, or international investigators ever find evidence to support the claim Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians as human shields.
In total, forty-three Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during the thirty-four day war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five Lebanese civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing -- over one thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians. But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its "legitimate right to defend itself."
There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas" until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah, which represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded, "threatened the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed it for "engulf[ing] that entire nation in violence and conflict."
Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.
As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.
Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)
If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian- Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.
Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.
Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
#113. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
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?
#114. To: iconoclast (#113)
#115. To: Jethro Tull (#114)
#116. To: iconoclast (#113)
The Bush administration has converted you to a FEAR haunted sheep, JT.
#117. To: Critter (#115)
#118. To: Jethro Tull (#83)
NOBEL Prize winner Doris Lessing caused uproar last night by predictingthe assassination of Barack Obama if he becomes the first black U.S. president.
#119. To: Jethro Tull (#117)
Choose a job you love...
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