With the president-elect just a few weeks from taking the throne in Washington DC, Barack Obama has been largely absent from the diplomatic maneuverings attempting to put a halt to Israel’s military excursion into the Gaza Strip. His absence, some argue, only makes the situation worse.

At least Jewish American blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes at Tikun Olam, thinks so:

Where is Barack Obama? I know he’s in Hawaii soaking up those rays of glorious sunshine. But that’s not what I mean? Where IS he? Gaza is in flames. Bush is doing worse than nothing. He’s actually making the situation worse with his nonsense about calling Hamas thugs and claiming the Palestinian movement caused the Israeli violence and can end it.

Obama’s response is becoming less and less satisfactory as the killing mounts.

…I can understand that the Gaza massacre is not nearly as important to the American people as the Wall Street collapse. But when the economy imploded you didn’t hear Obama’s people deferring to Bush. He consulted with Bush. They worked out a common strategy. They each tried to look energetic, diligent and thoughtful.

In a post called “Stupid Logic Mr. Obama” Ampal — American Palestinian had this to say on the future president’s policy towards Palestine:

Obama said : “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

RESPONSE: If someone was starving my family, bombing my sewage and electric power plants, traumatizing my children by daily sonic booms, preventing my sick children from seeing a physician, keeping my college aged students from receiving the scholarships they deserve, causing half of the child population to have anemia, then I would launch every thing including the toilet and sink at them. Come on, Mr. Obama lets show a little more understanding than the current administration.

The “anti-zionist blog” Jews Sans Frontieres thinks maybe Obama wants to project a different image of US power.

…Obama's refusal to comment on this latest batch of war crimes may be significant if only to suggest that Obama wants to project a more reasonable image than offering open vocal support to a regime for whom violence appears to be and end itself.

Now Israel has targeted a Palestinian university you might expect Engage to at least say something but no, not a word.

After linking to a comment from Obama spokesman David Axelrod who argued that Israel is merely responding to the shelling of its cities, VivirLatino came away less than impressed:

I am ashamed and disgusted, especially if this is the change that the United States electorate was and is supposed to believe in. I am haunted by the words and images of people, men, women, and children and how my tax dollars are being used to oppress and make invisible people who aren't even deemed worthy of by some to be people, to have land, a home.

Some commenters have acknowledged that Obama needs to be careful not to step on the shoes of outgoing President George Bush.

Alex Stein, who has resided in Israel and writes the blog False Dichotomies, defended the president-elect's actions:

The criticism of Obama’s silence over the hostilities is unfair. He is right to state that there is only one president at a time, and he is right to take a holiday before embarking on what is arguably the toughest job in the world. Getting over-involved would have little point; he can have little impact until he is President, and there is no sense in compromising his stature with either party by taking sides.

Many sites are obviously looking at this situation through the lens of how the Obama administration will change U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Fayyad writing in the (mostly) Arab-American blog KABOBfest argues this is a test for the look and feel of the Obama administration towards the Middle East.

Gauging [Obama’s] response to the action from outside the Whitehouse will set the tone for what Israel gets out of him. With his chief of staff being a former IDF volunteer, it’s hard to see how he will see things any different than the IDF perspective. And the American stance of asking the rape victim to quit scratching the rapist will continue to the Washington Modus Operandi.

Window into Palestine contends that Obama is basically nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to the rights of Palestinians.

Obama no longer has to placate pro-Israel voters, including no shortage of Christian Zionists, so his lack of comment on the premeditated slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza should send us a message — an Obama administration will continue the long-standing U.S. policy of allowing Israel to wantonly kill Palestinians and pay the Israeli government handsomely to do so.

…Democrats who thought an Obama administration would bring some balance to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably saddened by Obama’s apparent lack of concern for the mass murder now taking place. But then what did they expect? Obama is nothing if not window dressing for the New World Order and obviously the NWO wants the carnage to continue in Palestine. Of course, the global elite have no special love for Israel, either, and its people will be sacrificed when the time is right.

It is sad that Waki did not think the three year campaign of hate from Raila and the ODM chiefs against the Gikuyu was at all significant, or that it served to whip up passions to such a level that friends saw no evil in hacking their neighbours.When you see people in prominent positions calling for a Lesotho, when you see Ngilu, Orengo and the thug himself frothing against the privilege of the Gikuyu, or telling the people that Kibaki will hand over to Uhuru and the Gikuyu will rule for ever, then you know a storm is coming.

The following three men assisted by a bunch of 207 rogue parliamentarians are destroying Kenya.

The three men are: President Mwai Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Agriculture Minister William Ruto.

“Demand for solar energy remains dependent on government subsidies, because it costs more than conventional forms of electric-power generation,” said James Hines, research director at Gartner and lead analyst for solar energy technologies. “However, the new US administration could help encourage
investment in solar energy projects if it succeeds in implementing some of its plans, which is more likely with majorities in both houses of Congress.

This increased emphasis on renewable energy and the extension of the 30 per cent investment tax credit for solar projects ‹ passed last month ‹ could finally help realise the US’s vast potential for solar energy. As a result, the US could overtake Germany as the largest photovoltaic market within a
few years.”

President-elect Obama’s New Energy for America plan could have a significant
impact on the US solar industry. The plan’s provisions include:

· A federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that requires 10 per
cent of electricity consumed in the US to come from renewable sources by
2012

As seen in the cartoon, Barack Obama had an African father, an American mother, and an Asian upbringing. He also has a Middle Eastern middle name, which is Hussein. This must have taught him about different people and their backgrounds. Having spent time with a myraid of people from various races and creeds, he must have learned extensively and as a result gained a certain amount of tolerance towards these different people.

As newly-elected President of probably one of the supepowers of the world, it is inspiring and casts some hope to the already distressed world filled with hatred for one another. I can only hope that Barack Obama unifies the citizens of the world into a beautiful egalitarian society that I have only witnessed in my dreams… or at least eradicates some of the hatred and intolerance.

You’d think that Sarah Palin would go home, tail between the legs, and do what she is paid to do: govern Alaska.

But I don’t think she’s had a nanosecond available for governing. Instead of retreating from the spotlight, she seems to be moving deeper into it, as CNN says.

She has invited reporters into her home in Alaska, and Maureen Dowd says she now ”thinks she is even bigger than her vast state, has certainly not missed an opportunity to throw open the door to the national press this week, letting them hang in her Wasilla kitchen as she makes moose chili and cake and baby formula and hefty servings of spin.”

She’s gave two interviews to CNN today. She’s spoken to Fox News, Anchorage Daily News, NBC…

CNN reports today that Palin ”sits down with Wolf Blitzer in an interview that will air on “The Situation Room,” starting at 4 p.m. ET. She also will appear on “Larry King Live” at 9 p.m. ET.”

“Right now, Gov. Palin’s future is up for grabs, and no one knows exactly what she wants. About the only thing we do know for sure is that lately, she has been preoccupied with clearing her name, which is an indication that she’s got big plans for the future,” said a senior political analyst for CNN.

And apparently, (according to Dowd’s column) Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, said that over the weekend “his daughter was “frantically” trying to sort out the clothes she got as Eliza Knowlittle so she could send them back.

“You know,” Heath said, “the kids lose underwear, and everything has to be accounted for.””

We’re ‘gonna’ miss this entertainment. Or maybe not. If Palin has her way (with a little help from God) we’ll have it all over again in 2012. Gotcha!

Tell me we haven’t been bamboozled. We need the change you promise, but something just doesn’t seem right. After eight years under a Bush administration that engendered misery at home and around the world, the United States had found itself distrusted, scorned and despised. And so it seems—correct me if I’m wrong here, please—the US did what the US does best: sell.

Public relations. Imagine with me, if you will, a room of men, probably old white men, with a problem. How do we, they ask themselves, hold onto our place as the world superpower, yet at the same time get rid of the all the bad PR, those annoying threats and censures? How do we, they ask themselves, appease the voices that dare to suggest we’ve gone too far? Without, of course, conceding anything. Epiphany! Change our image, not our style. Ah, the art of American business. Substance is irrelevant, just package it and sell it. They grabbed onto the marketing ploy that has sold many a dubious product: “New and improved.”

Change? Those old white men found the packaging solution. How about the biggest change in American history, colour in the white house? Appearance is all that matters. It would have pushed their luck to choose an African American whose ancestors had struggled to rise from having been degraded as slaves. Such a man may have been too empathetic to the oppressed of the world. No, your past and your appearance was enough; their front man need only carry the pretence of change.

Mr Obama, look in the mirror. You don’t look like them, those old white men. Marketing ploy extraordinaire: product aside, a different image is new and exciting. “Change,” you advised the world, to an America “where all things are possible.” And we the consumers dared to hope. Maybe he really is, we dreamed, new and improved.

The marketers knew the American voters were hungry for talk. Just look at the phenomenal success of YouTube, internet blogging, endless streams of reader-comments, editorial columns, talk shows of every variety. Voters were frustrated—fighting for oil, fighting to make a living—and frustration is vented in talk. With your charming smile you promised dialogue, diplomacy without preconditions; you said “we are nice, you see, we like to talk too.”

While the magicians distracted us with your youthful dark appearance, however, while we focused on our newfound open-mindedness, you selected Joe Biden as your vice-presidential candidate. Were you off your game? Or just hoping we wouldn’t dare burst our bubble of self-righteousness by pointing out that this old white man gleefully announced he was a Zionist?

US domestic welfare has been irrevocably intertwined with its foreign policy in the Middle East. And the Middle East is hurting. Now you are an intelligent man, Mr Obama. Did you not think that bringing an unabashed Zionist with you to the White House might tend to dump salt into the wound? Your statement on foreign policy is clearly dominated by Middle Eastern issues. You promise change. You promise dialogue and diplomacy without preconditions to resolve these issues. Yet a truly significant portion of your statement is spent on swearing in the most absolute terms your unmitigated, incontrovertible and permanent allegiance to Israeli interests. And then Biden. Talk about preconditions.

What happened is not an uncommon fallacy of great nations that marshal their resources for wars abroad while ignoring the wars that must be fought at home. American military might crushed a Hussein abroad with superior force only to discover that another Hussein had attacked America's far more vulnerable political structure resulting in a hostile takeover.

But the question must be asked why was our political structure so vulnerable to begin with? Democracy is only truly vulnerable when a sizable amount of its citizens have grown detached from its values.

The Democratic party, like most left wing movements, has thrived on creating and perpetuating disenfranchisement particularly among minorities to supplement its base offering of class warfare. But more devastatingly it has worked to displace America's traditional values with moral relativism as fed through popular culture on the low road and social justice on the high road.

Obama could never have become President had not two generations been taught through public education and popular culture to devalue military service, mock patriotism, accept drug use and paranoid rants against America as normative. Worse yet had they not been taught to look to government to fill the gap of their own inadequacies leading them to be dissatisfied with anything less than a messiah figure.

So while we were fighting against one Hussein in Iraq, another Hussein was being pushed through the ranks as part of an aggressive and well planned campaign to seize power in America. Socialism, that of the Baath Party and the Democratic party, is more than a casual bond. Saddam modeled himself on Stalin, a socialist tyrant who for a long stretch of time was a hero for American liberals no less so than FDR.

The American Republic has depended on certain understandings, not least of them the chain of continuity to Valley Forge and Independence Hall, a continuity that liberalism has undermined with cynical historical revisionism for the brighter students and with a shallow celebrity oriented culture of sensationalism on the other. In the process they have not only hijacked America, they have hijacked who Americans see themselves as.

What I’m getting at here is that the list… works. Someone is slowly and quietly plucking people out of it and annihilating them.

This is not the first list, nor the only one. The first was published in the year 1990 and they had prepared it in the bowels of Russian National Unity (RNE) – a nationalist organization which was headed by the nationalist Barkashov, who remains alive and well to this day.

And there are other lists too. The authors of such lists don’t hide themselves. One way or another, they’re connected with such organizations as the Union of Orthodox Gonfaloniers, the Slavic Script Foundation, the Black Hundred, Orthodox Rus’, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI)…

From history it is known that persons become enemies of the people for various reasons. Even in Roman law there existed the term hostis publacae – public enemy. With this term they would designate enemies of the Roman empire – as a rule, the soldiers of armies fighting against the Romans.

In the year 1789, the leaders of the French Revolution remembered about this term and came up with one of their own – l’ennemi du peuple – the enemy of the people. The Jacobins nurtured the seeds of hate not towards external enemies, but towards internal ones. Louis Antoine Saint-Just called for «punishing not only enemies, but also the indifferent». «Friend of the people» (according to the name of the newspaper issued by him) Jean Paul Marat called for the beheading of 100 thousand enemies of the people. Georges Jacques Danton and Maximilian Robespierre too did not stand on ceremony with opponents of the revolution.

Those who sowed thunder reaped a storm: Saint-Just, Robespierre, and Danton were all beheaded on the guillotine (the last as an English spy). Marat was stabbed in the jacuzzi by Charlotte Corday. Revolutions hav

But it's even more interesting to me to see how hating on Latin@s becomes a strategy of recruitment of Latin@s:

Rahm Emanuel is a supporter of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Emanuel rose to prominence in the Democratic Party as a result of his fundraising connections to AIPAC. A strong supporter of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, he comes from a terrorist family. His father was a member of Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization that used violence to drive the British and Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create the Jewish state. During the 1991 Gulf War, Rahm Emanuel volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. He was a member of the Freddie Mac board of directors and received $231,655 in directors fees in 2001. According to Wikipedia, “during the time Emanuel spent on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities.”

In “Hail to the Chief of Staff,” Alexander Cockburn describes Emanuel as “a super-Likudnik hawk,” who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 “made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates.”

My despondent friends in the Israeli peace movement ask, “What is this man doing in Obama’s administration?”

Obama’s election was necessary as the only means Americans had to hold the Republicans accountable for their crimes against the Constitution and human rights, for their violations of US and international laws, for their lies and deceptions, and for their financial chicanery. As an editorial in Pravda put it, “Only Satan would have been worse than the Bush regime. Therefore it could be argued that the new administration in the USA could never be worse than the one which divorced the hearts and minds of Americans from their brothers in the international community, which appalled the rest of the world with shock and awe tactics that included concentration camps, torture, mass murder and utter disrespect for international law.”

But Obama’s advisers are drawn from the same gang of Washington thugs and Wall Street banksters as Bush’s. Richard Holbrooke, was an assistant secretary of state and ambassador in the Clinton administration. He implemented the policy to enlarge NATO and to place the military alliance on Russia’s border in contravention of Reagan’s promise to Gorbachev. Holbrooke is also associated with the Clinton administration’s illegal bombing of Serbia, a war crime that killed civilians and Chinese diplomats. If not a neocon himself, Holbrooke is closely allied with them.

Madeline Albright is the Clinton era secretary of state who told Leslie Stahl (60 Minutes) that the US policy of Iraq sanctions, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, had goals important enough to justify the children’s deaths. Albright’s infamous words: “we think the price is worth it.” Wikipedia reports that this immoralist served on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange at the time of Dick Grasso’s $187.5 million compensation scandal.

Dennis Ross has long associations with the Israeli-Palestinian “peace negotiations.” A member of his Clinton era team, Aaron David Miller, wrote that during 1999-2000 the US negotiating team led by Ross acted as Israel’s lawyer: “we had to run everything by Israel first.” This “stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking. If we couldn’t put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be?” According to Wikipedia, Ross is “chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank, the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency.”

Clearly, this is not a group of advisors that is going to halt America’s wars against Israel’s enemies or force the Israeli government to accept the necessary conditions for a real peace in the Middle East.

Ralph Nader predicted as much. In his “Open Letter to Barack Obama (November 3, 2008), Nader pointed out to Obama that his “transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights . . . to a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby” puts Obama at odds with “a majority of Jewish-Americans” and “64 per cent of Israelis.” Nader quotes the Israeli writer and peace advocate Uri Avnery’s description of Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as an appearance that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning.” Nader damns Obama for his “utter lack of political courage [for] surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention.” Carter, who achieved the only meaningful peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs, has been demonized by the powerful AIPAC lobby for criticizing Israel’s policy of apartheid toward the Palestinians whose territory Israel forcibly occupies.