:: Saturday, June 14, 2008 ::
The Year of the Long Knives: Part IV
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Posted by Edward Cline at 11:09 AM
The knives came out and flashed to sink into the very fresh corpse of Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. The occasion was the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis on June 7. According to Cliff Kincaid, writing for Accuracy in Media on June 8, the conference was more a "Barack Obama for President rally" than a conference.
"Several speakers, including Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps, used the Obama campaign slogan, 'Yes, we can,' as they urged the thousands of 'progressives' in the audience to bring 'change' to Washington, D.C." Clinton's offense was having voted for the war in Iraq. Also, she is perceived by the far-lefties attending the conference as a part of the Washington establishment they believe Obama wants to "change." The fact that she conceded defeat and endorsed Obama in the name of party unity counted for nothing with many of the conference speakers.
"Meanwhile, a Canadian, Naomi Klein, who writes for the British Guardian and The Nation magazine, told the conference that Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Obama was 'a partial victory for the forum gathered here tonight.' She said that Clinton was the candidate of the establishment and that her 'coronation' had been derailed....Referring to Clinton's loss, Klein said, 'Somebody paid a price (for Iraq) at last.'" From all appearances, however, the criticisms of Clinton were mere rationalizations of resentment that she was not left-wing enough. The attendees preferred Obama because he is as far left as anyone could get without being the nominee from Communist Cuba.
Kincaid might have subtitled his report, "They Smell Blood." While Clinton earnestly wishes to enslave the medical profession and shackle all Americans to universal health care (as does Obama, else why would Ted Kennedy endorse him?), the "progressives" at the Media Reform conference wish to sink their shivs into the First Amendment and shackle American minds. Obama as president, they believe, will be completely amenable to such a policy, and there is no reason to doubt their confidence in him. (In a premonitory echo of how the would-be wardens of our minds will seek to scuttle freedom of speech, see The New York Times article of June 12 here.)
Kincaid errs when he claims that "media reform," such as disinterring the so-called Fairness Doctrine, would target conservatives and Republicans exclusively for statutory gagging. The gauleiters of the various tribes and warring factions and the judicial sensitivity police would gag everyone but the politically correct.
"'It's time to put a cop back on the beat,' demanded Democratic FCC commissioner Copps, in framing the 'media reform' debate. With Obama in the White House, Democrats would have a majority on the commission," and the new chairman of the commission would be an Obama appointee. Couple that with the predicted majorities of Democrats in both houses of Congress, and de facto censorship would be guaranteed (besides much other horrific socialist legislation; see FrontPageMagazine's "The Democrats' Platform for Revolution" of May 5).
"As they see it, of course, the 'cop' on the beat is going to be the FCC, regulating and dictating media ownership rules, enforcing broadcaster compliance with the 'public interest,' and control over the flow of news and information over the Internet. The latter is euphemistically and misleadingly called 'net neutrality' or 'Internet freedom.'" The fine-print catch is that federal regulation of the Internet (or of any venue of speech or expression) would be, in practice, neither "neutral" nor "free." Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and other "public" Internet carriers already cooperate with totalitarian governments in limiting or blocking access to the Internet. How much resistance do you think they would offer a "changed" Washington against performing the same policing service in the U.S.?
"Klein, a critic of what she calls 'disaster capitalism,' said that Obama's support from Wall Street financial interests was a problem and griped that Democrats, rather than Republicans, were now getting more campaign dollars from the 'arms industry.'" She and her appreciative audience also want Obama to get the U.S. out of Iraq now, and to create a "Green New Deal."
Which brings us to Wall Street and the support its denizens are giving Obama. The AIM article reveals:
"The 'media reform' movement has been funded by Democratic moneybags George Soros, a billionaire and convicted inside trader, and liberal foundations such as the Wallace Global Fund, named for FDR's pro-communist Vice President Henry Wallace." Unlike Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who have elected to perform penance for their financial success by pouring their fortunes into the bottomless pits of altruist humanitarianism with the conscious, stated goal of dissolving their wealth, Soros is actively funding by the millions of dollars the conversion of this country from a semi-free welfare state into a full-scale, totalitarian one. Given the rabid, virulently anti-freedom, anti-man, anti-capitalist nature of the organizations he subsidizes (and which would not exist but for his money), such as MoveOn and Media Matters, such behavior cannot stem from anything but a burning malice. He is their chief "angel" and Barack Obama's major financial enabler.
Soros calls the U.S. "fascist," and has likened President Bush to Hitler, but it is fascism his so-called philanthropy is fueling in the U.S. If one reads his biography or any of his political books, it would appear that he does not know the difference the Nazism he survived in Hungary and the communism he escaped in 1947. Or rather, he disapproves of tyranny imposed by one country on another, but an indigenous democratic tyranny receives his blessing. If the "people" vote for it, then it must be okay.
The Investor's Business Daily (IBD) on September 20, 2007, ran an excellent exposé on Soros, "George Soros: The Man, the Mind and the Money Behind MoveOn." About the man who boasts of giving away $400 million a year, it stresses that:
"He calls himself a philanthropist and has given away $5 billion of his now $8.5 billion fortune through his principal vehicle, the Open Society Institute. The institute, in turn, has passed cash on to far more radical groups, such as MoveOn.org." "He has handed $3.1 million to the left-wing Tides Foundation, which funds organizations such as the Sea Shepherds, Earth First! and the Ruckus Society, that have condoned or engaged in eco-terrorism." "He also gave at least $150,000 to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the left-wing group best known for pushing minimum wage hikes, for illegal-immigrant amnesty and harassing Wal-Mart." "Soros additionally finances groups best described as helpful to terrorists. Since 1998, he has given the American Civil Liberties Union $5 million to empower criminals, including lawsuits on behalf of terrorists' 'civil rights.' Soros' Open Society Institute gave $20,000 for the legal defense of radical attorney Lynne Stewart. She was convicted in 2002 of abetting jailed terrorists after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing." In one of its closing remarks, the IBD editorial concludes:
"...[P]ick any cause that seeks to weaken the U.S. and it's not hard to find Soros' name on its list of financial backers. Most of these causes are financed by relatively small amounts, but that's all that's needed to make trouble. And without the cash, countless bad ideas would have no presence in American political debate at all." Nor would there be any Barack Obamas to tout such bad ideas with a "passion" and "sincerity" that disguises their fundamental evil. Obama would have no presence in that debate if it were not for the gifts that keep on hurting the U.S. from the likes of Soros.
Naomi Klein need not worry that support for Obama by Wall Street financial interests will corrupt her messiah. A man with no first-hand convictions, or who is a patchwork quilt of second-hand beliefs, can be influenced, but not corrupted. How can one corrupt a vacuum? And George Soros is not Obama's only enabler.
A New York Magazine article of April 16, 2007, "Money Chooses Sides," reveals the kinds of men and their money who have funded the Obama and Clinton campaigns. It drools over the pecking order of fund-raisers among the wealthy and the politically connected, in a sliding scale that begins with Soros and descends to the mere millionaires. Most of them are investment bankers, hedge fund managers, or executives of financial institutions. The article focuses on Obama's and Clinton's efforts to raise enough to fund their primary campaigns.
It is a disgusting exposé of the low caliber of men - every one of them a people-oriented, amoral pragmatist - who would loose a dictator on the country without a second thought. Most of the men who are willing to donate to Obama's campaign or work to raise millions for it do it because Obama makes them feel good. He's against the war in Iraq, he's for "change," he's for "elevating" the tone of politics. Not once in the entire article does any one of them express an idea.
The New York Magazine article offers several portraits. Here is one of Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS Americas:
"What Wolf, 45, was looking for was a candidate who could change the tenor of our politics. 'I'd like my children to soon see a president give a State of the Union address and have both parties applaud,' he tells me. But Wolf was looking, too, for a campaign where his presence would be 'impactful,' for a candidate who would take his calls, listen to his ideas. He wanted to feel the love. And while Wolf refuses to speak ill of Clinton, it's clear he doubted that, no matter how much dough he raised, he'd ever be feeling it from her." (Italics mine.) When Wolf had a private dinner with Obama, Wolf gushed: "I felt so honored to be sitting down with him for two hours on an occasion like that [when Bush announced the troop surge in Iraq.], knowing that he was going off to be interviewed on television later."
Translation: "The rock-star messiah touched me! He deigned to dine with me! He loves me! He won't hurt me when he's in office!"
Wolf might sing a different song if Obama and his "changed" Washington decide that the government should regulate all commercial investments and speculation. Hitler "loved" his industrialist and banking supporters, too, but, as Leonard Peikoff notes in The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, he proceeded to fit them with the fetters of National Socialism when he assumed power. (See p. 247, Stein & Day hardcover.) I say might, because Wolf and his fund-raising colleagues, including George Soros, may on the other hand feel very comfortable with the arrangement.
Comfortable, but keeping a wary eye out for the long knife that is always, and necessarily - given the nature of power politics - somewhere behind someone's back, one reserved especially for friends, supporters, and other useful and thoughtless idiots.
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