"… we also know that he does not govern democratically”
One of the perennial truths of US politics is the certainty that only those who share the views of the political elite on the big issues will get to be a serious contender, case in point Barack Obama.
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For all the straight medias hyperbole on policy differences, the areas of friction between the candidates and their agendas, when it come to the interests of the elite themselves you’d be hard pressed to slip a straw between McCain, Clinton and Obama.
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In Miami last week, to capitalise on Bush’s self-declared Cuba Solidarity Day Obama addressed the Cuban American National Foundation in the usual rhetoric of odium and derision. True, there are some semantic differences, but little else. Bush’s preoccupation with conquering the Middle East, Obama suggests, exacerbated the problem - but the problem (sic) remains the same.
“… demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum. His predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past”.
That Chavez Bolivarian Revolution has advantaged the vast majority of Venezuelans is well documented. Heath care, education, employment, participatory involvement, no matter the indices chosen, the results are clear – but not to Obama.
“I will maintain the embargo”
The proposed Alliance of the Americas, to which the “the World Bank, the Organization of American States, and the Inter-American Development Bank” will be enlisted is little more than a sad caricature of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress with all the dictatorships, torture, and misery that entailed, and of course the embargo remains and no doubt the active interference in the affairs of sovereign states.
Obama shares, along with his electoral opponents, a fondness for quoting Cuban liberation fighter and poet José Martí, and nothing could carry more truth than that used in his Miami speech
"It is not enough to come to the defense of freedom with epic and intermittent efforts when it is threatened at moments that appear critical. Every moment is critical for the defense of freedom".
The issue for Obama is whose freedom is to be defended?
That of the peoples of the continent to a life free of oppression, want and hunger or the freedom for US Corporations to conduct business as usual.
Change we can believe in?
Yeah Right!
Its business as usual
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