Barack Obama: Old Package in New Wrapping

Barack to Hillary: I look forward to you advising me

He's young. He's black. And he's a great stump speaker. But if Barack Obama has you convinced that he represents change, he's pulled the wool over your eyes.

He's a change only on the shallow level of identity politics, just as Hillary is.

As the video above illustrates, Barack Obama has many advisers from previous administrations, including the Clinton Administrations. Are these advisers going to advise any material change from the past? I don't think so.

If Obama truly represents change, he would not be recycling advisers from previous administrations.

One of his foreign policy advisers is Zbigniew Brzezinski. He is the author of a book called "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (Basic Books, 1997). Here are a few choice excerpts:

...it is correct to assert that America has become, as President Clinton put it, the world “indispensible nation.”...Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long, the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally. p. 195

The last thing Zbig wants is what Peak Oil and climate change are now demanding: more political localism and local control of resources by the people of whose land they are a part. When this book was published in 1997, Big Oil thought it had discovered in the Caspian Sea basin, oilfields that would be greater even than those of Saudi Arabia. However, soon thereafter, the oil companies found out that there was not nearly the amount of oil there that they thought and they canceled projects.

In the short run, it is in America's interest to consolidate and perpetuate the prevailing geopolitical pluralism on the map of Eurasia. That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy, not to mention the remote possibility of any one particular state doing so....The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role. p. 198.

A genuinely populist democracy has never before attained international supremacy. The pursuit of power and especially the economic costs and human sacrifice that the exercise of such power often requires are not generally congenial to democratic instincts. Democratization is inimical to imperial mobilization. p. 210 (emphasis mine).

Last but not least:

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a concensus on foreign policy issues, except in circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. (emphasis mine) p. 211.

People such as Zbig, at a minimum, would welcome an event such as 9-11 as an opportunity to extend American hegemony.

If it's true that you are known by the company you keep, what does it say about Barack Obama that Zbig is one of his foreign policy advisers? Believe him when he says he looks forward to Hillary advising him; he'll be talking to Bill, too. If you think Obama represents change, think again. And if you are excited about his candidacy because he's black, remember the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "...not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

There are some pretty sorry characters running for President these days. I recently saw a question online: "How come we get to choose from over 50 candidates for Miss America, but only 2 for President?" Indeed, how come?

Journalist Kéllia Ramares of Oakland, Calif., thinks it is high time we dropped out of the Electoral College in favor of direct election of the president, with ranked-choice voting on paper ballots counted publicly by hand. Her email is kellia@rise4news.net.

Super Tuesday: Why I voted for Kucinich

Kucinich, "Bush,Cheney Impeach them NOW", "Don't wait!" Impeach now!
01:47

On January 22nd, the registration deadline for the California Presidential Primary, I changed my party affiliation from Green to "decline to state" so that I could vote in the Democratic primary. I wanted to vote for Dennis Kucinich. Two days later, he quit the presidential race. But, on February 5th, his name was still on the ballot, so I voted for him anyway.

Some people would call this a wasted vote. But I don't think so. I voted for the person I thought was best fit to be president. That's what you are supposed to do in an election: vote for the person you think is best qualified. If all I wanted to do was to pick the winner, I would have done better to seek out a bookie and place a wager rather than cast a ballot. At least that way, if I picked the winner, I would have gotten some money.

Bill Moyers: What's Wrong with Big Media
05:01

My Kucinich vote was more than an act of idealism. It was a protest against the way elections are conducted in this country. Specifically, it was a protest against the way the corporate media, with the complicity of the leading candidates, can ignore some people who are running, and stop the momentum of their ideas and campaigns, by denying them news coverage or much time in debates, and then finally barring their participation in debates because they have not met criteria for gaining entrance, viz. poll numbers that the candidate might have gotten if he'd gotten any decent amount of coverage. In Kucinich's case, the situation was even worse. He met the criteria for participating in the January 15th debate but then two days later, the criteria were re-written specifically to exclude him. And I didn't hear Edwards, Obama, or Clinton yell "Foul! That's not the way elections in a democracy are supposed to work!"

Dennis Kucinich voted against the Iraq war at every opportunity. Polls show that 70% percent of the American people now see that the war was a mistake and want our troops home. Yet Kucinich is not only out of the Presidential race, he is fighting for his political life to retain his House seat in Cleveland.

On the Republican side, Ron Paul is the only candidate against the war from the start. Yet he is ignored by most of the major media and the Republicans are about to nominate war-monger McCain, who can see our military in Iraq for 100 years.


Ron Paul on Mad Money
07:47

Republicans, are you even aware that Ron Paul, who has some interesting ideas on money and banking, is still in the race?

Thus we are trained to vote against our own interests. The corporations and their bought politicians and their bought media have made sure that we perceive that what we want is not electable. So we focus on picking the winner of the horse race and then turn our attention to what Britney Spears is doing.

I voted for Kucinich because I refuse to let the corporations tell me who my candidates are. Think about it, how different really are our manipulated elections from the communist parties' electoral dictates in Cuba, China or the former Soviet Union? That we might have two or three candidates on the ballot to the communists' one is only a cosmetic difference. We are still steered to whom we are supposed to vote, and if enough of us still get it “wrong,” the power elites have ways to steal the elections. Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, and now, in 2008, there are reports of irregularities in the primary voting in New Hampshire and California.

How is it that pre-election polling showed Obama in the lead in critical New Hampshire and California yet he lost, but the pre-election polling was accurate for other races and other states?

I'm troubled by the fact that I don't know that my vote was counted for Kucinich and not for someone else. The ballot was slipped into an optical scanning machine; we have proof that electronic voting machines can be easily compromised. How do I know that votes for Kucinch, Edwards, Gravel, etc., were not turned into votes for Obama and (especially) Clinton?

Lou Dobbs Diebold Voting Machine hacking Fraud Treason
03:09

We need paper ballots counted publicly by hand.

We need a national primary and caucus day--I propose the last Tuesday in June--that will end this war of attrition that eliminates the least-financed candidates regardless of the quality of their ideas, and also ends the practice of states jockeying for position. Budget-strapped California really didn't need the expense of a presidential primary in February AND a legislative primary in June. But it was done that way because by June the nomination may have been decided, without the most populous state in Union weighing in. A national primary day will also halt the silly spectacle of the Democrats stripping states of delegates because of when they held their primary. (Note: Florida was stripped of delegates this year for holding its primary too soon. The primary date was set by the Republican-controlled state legislature. Is that fair?)

Super Tuesday is growing bigger with each election cycle, so eventually we may see a national primary day. Until then, we should have ranked-choice voting, to accompany the early voting and absentee voting that is growing in popularity. (In California, any voter can register to become a permanent absentee. They send me the form every year). This way, you don't have people who voted absentee for a candidate no longer in the running trying to vote again on primary day for a candidate still in the race.

No state should have winner-take-all primaries or caucuses. Winner-take-all and the Electoral College are vestiges of the anti-democratic visions of our artistocratic Founders. They invented this fiction that the States rather than the people voted, because they did not want political power in the hands of the people, even their limited definition of people: propertied white males.

We need debates that are inclusive. Say there are 8 candidates seeking a party's nomination. Two debates can be held each month from January to June with four candidates each. Who would be in each debate would be determined by publicly drawn lots for each debate. We have public drawings for lotteries, post-positions in the Kentucky Derby, and the NBA "lottery" draft; we should be able to draw lots for appearances in debates. The debates would then be held at similar times so as to get similar coverage and audience. If the first one is held on a Wednesday at 7 EST, the second for that month is held the next Wednesday at 7 EST. If in the following month the first one is held on Saturday at 2 EST, the second one is held the next Saturday at 2 EST, etc.

Most of all, we need voters willing to stop voting as if they're betting on a horse-race and vote for the candidates they truly like. In fact, that is the first step to the electorate gaining control of the elections. Vote for the candidate YOU want, not the candidate the corporations and their media lackeys want for you.

Voting for Dummies
07:33

Journalist Kéllia Ramares lives, works, and votes in Alameda County, California, the county with the dubious distinction of being the first county west of the Mississppi to use electronic voting. She can be reached at kellia@rise4news.net

Welcome to RadioKellia in Print - The sitemap to me on the Internet

Hello! This is the place where you get to read the thoughts I have that were inspired by videos I've seen. And there are links to the videos so you can watch them, too. I can be more comprehensive in print than in a reply video. I've been writing for over 45 years. I've been making videos for just about 6 mos. And whereas any keyboard, or paper and pen/cil, will do to express the written word, audio and especially video, require a mastery of technical skills on often expensive hardware and software, that goes well beyond spelling, grammar, penmanship or typing.

Audio, video and print each have their advantages and disadvantages, which is why I choose to work in all three. This blog is part of my effort to put my work in all media in one easy to find location. One of the problems with the Internet is its size. It's just too easy for works to get lost in the volume, and for people to get lost on the Internet trying to find someone/thing. So, although video is the area in which I am least experienced, I've decided to stake out some territory on LiveVideo as my Internet home and connect from there to some other places where I have a presence. So, consider the following as a kind of site map to me in the Internet.

I have two channels on Live Video: radiokellia and the recently created freedomnews. The latter aggregates videos about important but under-reported news that will be of particular interest to people learning about, or interested in resisting, the New World Order. It also contains a Stickcam player that plays audio stories. Right now, they are mostly my headlines for Free Speech Radio News, but I am just about ready to begin including certain longer stories by my colleagues at FSRN and KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley, with their permission, of course. I will also occasionally add longer stories I produce independently.

The radiokellia channel will have political content, but mainly because I like the way it is presented, either because of the technical artistry of the video or because I was moved or made to laugh by the presenters. There will also be more non-political subjects. Ch. RadioKellia is the place where I enjoy and learn from the works of the other videographers, and where I hone my own skills. This channel also has a banner linking you to my "summer" home on the Internet, my baseball blog, Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes. I've been writing that blog, summer and winter, since August of 2005. It's my pride and joy. It's got links back to the radiokellia channel, to Eric Byrnes' LiveVideo channel, and my NewsVine channel, where I aggregate print stories. Life, Baseball and Eric Byrnes is hosted on a bigger site called AZSportshub. If you have any interest in a college or professional sport in Arizona, that's the place on the 'Net to go.

RadioKellia in Print will focus on ideas anchored in videos I have seen, and you will get to see them too, because I will link the commentaries to the videos. I will also post links in this blog to other writings not affiliated with videos, but I will not copy those writings here.

You are encouraged to comment on the essays. Once I have gotten a greater feel for what I can do technically with this blog and it has more or less taken shape, you will be invited to comment on its general user-friendliness. Welcome.