Video of the following (5:28 min.) at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C62KAmMzu0E
The Last Empire: What is Left?
War correspondent, journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilgerhttp://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=20114--------
"The real tragedy is that Obama, the brand, appears to have crippled or absorbed much of the anti-war movement, the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress, just 30 are willing stand up against Obama's and Nancy Pelosi's war party," adding, "On June 16th, they voted for $106 billion for more war. The 'out-of-Iraq caucus' is out of action."
--------"The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
- Milan Kundera.
Legendary Australian-born investigative journalist John Pilger spoke at the 2009 Socialism Conference held at the Women's Building on July 4th. Kind of ironic that the organizers chose to host a left-wing event on the national independence day of the one country in the world most afraid of Socialism.
His subject was "Empire and Obama: Power, Illusion and America's Last Taboo," a wordy title whose length Pilger duly apologized for.
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America is an empire. There we go, I've said it. Shoot me, but it's true. It has followed in the footsteps of ancient European nations proclaiming the right to bring "liberty" to other nations in exchange for their natural resources.
"The difference", says Pilger, "is that America is trained to deny its imperialism."
"Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main feature is its denial that it is an ideology," he said. "It's both conservative and its liberal, and it's right and it's left - and Barack Obama is its embodiment."
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"Here is the 45th President of United States, having stacked his government with war mongers, corporate fraudsters, and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, promising not only more of the same, but a whole new war in Pakistan," said Pilger, arguing that America's wars have been "justified by the enduring myth of 'exceptional America,' a myth the late Harold Pinter described as 'a brilliant, witty, highly successful, act of hypnosis.'"
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In fact the rise of Obama has coincided with a silencing of the Left. This silence is largely a result of new hope that things will change. The fascinating thing about this new hope that Obama has instilled in us is totally baseless. This supposed swing to the Left, this Socialist revival, is nothing but a smokescreen. Even those who stood to ask questions challenged Pilger's assertion that we should not cling to hope. No, for this is false hope perpetuated by the current regime.
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http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=20114