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Gareth Porter: There is no leader yet in site who can lead a movement for basic changeIn the second part of his interview to Pepe Escobar, investigative historian and military policy analyst Gareth Porter expands on what awaits Senator Barack Obama when he deals with the power of the national security state. Porter also examines what kind of movement and leader would it take to really try to change a very rigid system, and the proposition of Obama as a new Bobby Kennedy.
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This is Part II.
Part I was The Real News: “Obama and the Cold War Mentality”.
Porter articulates so well what has been my growing sense of the situation for the last few months. And the idea that there is a growing minority that is seeing the dangers of these foreign policy assumptions is indeed at least a bit hopeful.
While the answers about how this is changed are still a bit elusive, we need to at least understand what we’re dealing with.
This is some amazing stuff — really gives a clear perspective of what we are up against.
I keep seeing the word “coalition” these days, and this video simply confirms to me this is an important clue as to how we can change things. Of course that also is a huge challenge as well.
No easy answers.
for both Part I and Part II of the Porter interview.
Having been trained as an engineer and a lawyer, I believe the first step in solving a problem is to define it.
Porter, I believe, is telling us that the problem is the control the military and military-related bureaucracy have over the U.S. political system.
I’m afraid unless some truly awful disaster occurs, which shakes the country to its foundation, the American people will continue to ignore this problem.
Which means Obama cannot be an agent of anything but superficial change — lest he meet the same fate that befell JFK.
Thanks again. Great interviews.
… and he’s right in a sense. Anybody that takes part in the political system must take into account the powers that be or he/she risks political or actual assassination. Whether you are in Congress or work for the Washington Post there are political lines you cannot cross. One of those is “National Security”–and thus the bidding war to who is “toughest” on National Security issues. That is why the Dems love the John Kennedy version of being “tougher” on national security issues than the Republicans. Of course Kennedy turned around and was threatening to undermine the whole structure when he was assassinated–but that is another story.
Obama is trying to be both harder and softer at the same time–I think that is a good tactic. People are ready for a change yet so fearful in general that they require a “strong” leader.
It is up to us to provide the basic political ambience that would allow the military-industrial complex to shift focus into something productive or at least not so destructive.
why we get the adherence by both parties to the national interest myth. Pursuing dominance means there has to be a constant threat to the populous at large in order to keep the people behind it. When the cold war ended they found a replacement which is even better as it’s always going to be there, the nebulous concept of terrorism.
Globalism does have two sides especially as far as information goes. In order to have a broad coalition, people need to be able to have access to the real story line. Strangely my ‘hope’ is increasing the more things fall apart. The internal mechanisms of economics and world order are crumbling under the dominance of the military and attendant corporations.
Some one once told me that the Soviet Union fell because communism didn’t pay. I think the more conditions deteriorate, the harder time the powers that be have selling their reality, they have hopefully, taken their greed to the level in which it bottoms out. Coalitions have already started to form.
Obama while a product of this system and a insider was able to get the nomination because he offered empowerment to a broad coalition as he calls it the bottoms up part. My concern is how to get the real story to people who believe in the myths of America, the ones like Manifest Destiny and might is right. I feel it’s going to be easier as the middle class the traditional gatekeepers, those that seek to protect there entitled life styles, are in the cross hairs of the Shock doctrine.
mostly point towards an Apocalyptic theme. I would hope it does not ring true here as growing numbers of internet connected people are calling bullshit bullshit whatever it’s prescribed marketing/political ideology comes from.
Disclaimer
I am currently involved in life changing cataclysmic events, that and currently on my fifth beer.
Mainstream media reported the testing of a man on Cape Cod for Mad Cow disease though.