Nazis? Neither has non-violence deterred halfascist Bush Hog, Uncle 'Bomb. And no amount of lipstick disguises his Manifest Insanity!

I thought this was a great piece. It is especially important that the writer juxtaposed Obama's tortured speech with real quotations from King's, revealing just how deeply shameful and hypocritical that moment was in Obama's presidency. In its way, it is a more subtle version of the Bush's slapstick "Mission Accomplished" speech in that it definitively revealed the ethical emptiness of the Obama administration.

Maybe this will be the situation that will produce a viable progressive political party in this country. It wasn't possible under Bush because many still had the illusion that the Democrats would save us, would create a land of milk & honey. Now that the final disillusionment has arrived, the only thing to do is look for new alternatives.

Can King's philosophy compete with rapacious greed? I think not... And what about the totally irrational impact of religion on societal violence. I fear war is now an intractible trait of humanity.

genicon
Maybe bringing our troops and mercenaries home would convince al-Quaeda to lay down their arms.
That's too easy a solution. no money in it.

I like the article, and I like that the examination and discussion of BO's speeches is on-going. It's been difficult this first year to discern the President's true values, philosophy, and intentions from his words, but his actions are nothing less than alarming. How disappointing to get from this supposedly intelligent, well-educated, and well-spoken person a stream of Orwellian Bernaysian doublespeak. He does what he chooses, then becomes a human pretzel trying to justify it. Such efforts to explain the self-contradictory and inexplicable cannot be psychologically healthy.

The moral bankruptcy of Obama is evidenced in his every word. His is the shadow world of style, deceit, and power. History, if there continues to be one, will not recall him kindly.

Remember the words of Boxing Great Muhammad Ali who not only refused entry into the armed forces but paid a heavy price by losing his Champ Title for a greater cause of PEACE!!!! Ali said the following about war and was ostracized by the pro-militarist factions in America’s war culture. Yes, America is a war culture and NOT A LOVING SOCIETY. If America was a LOVING SOCIETY, Healthcare would not be based on profits but the needs of human beings who are POOR and DESTITUTE and OUT OF WORK!!!!! This Healthcare Debate EXPOSES THE SICKNESS OF AMERICAN SOCIETY AND THE POLITICIANS WORKING FOR THE OLIGARCHS BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!! Yes, America is a very SICK SOCIETY of hatred, violence and WAR!!!!

Here is what Boxing Great Muhammad Ali said years and years ago when asked why he did not want to fight in the Vietnam War:

"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here..... If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."

A new political party or movement will not stop the American MIC/Wall Street Juggernaut at this point. You are simply deluding yourself if you believe voting will stop them.

" As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. Kings life". Yeah Obomba, but you finished it by stating: but that doesn't matter to me now!

It seems that the realists must have stepped aside on this one, passing the baton to an emerging voice within the Obama Administration, namely that of the surrealists.

Imagine if a surrealist painter had done a portrait of FUBARack H. Obama. You would have an exceedingly small head ( a la George Wanker Bush) and an even smaller body. The mouth would be open and a gargantuan, bloody tongue would be spilling out of the tiny mouth. Like a queen bee, the monstrous tongue would be attended to and pampered by an army of sycophants.

"For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."

That's right, Charlie, and you're a major part of that evil. I don't think Obama is going to win a second Peace Prize.

"That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed . . ."

". . . and I just* hope* they'll follow my orders."

*please excuse the four letter words - vdb

I totally respect the Sydney Peace Prize for real human rights over that bogus Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize is a fraudulent award anyhow. It's also a disgusting award. That Nobel Committee is not only corrupt but criminal. I only respect and honor the Sydney Peace Prize at this time.

John Pilger wins 2009 Sydney Peace Prize.

The world renowned journalist, author and film-maker John Pilger has been awarded the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize. The jury's citation reads: “For work as an author, film-maker and journalist as well as for courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard. For commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form.’

Sydney Peace Foundation Director Professor Stuart Rees comments, “The jury was impressed by John’s courage as well as by his skills and creativity. His commitment to uncovering human rights abuses shines through his numerous books, films and articles. His work inspires all those who value peace with justice.”

In a speech on November 5, 2009, at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, John Pilger describes the "unique features" of a political silence in Australia: how it affects the national life of his homeland and the way Australians see the world and are manipulated by great power "which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war - against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else's country".

Pilger said the following in his speech:

"...Journalists and politicians like to say the world changed as a result of the September 11th attacks. In fact, for those countries under attack by the arsenal of freedom, nothing has changed. What has changed is not news....According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup has taken place in the United States, with the Pentagon now ascendant in every aspect of foreign policy....It doesn’t matter who is president – George Bush or Barack Obama. Indeed, Obama has stepped up Bush’s wars and started his own war in Pakistan. Like Bush, he is threatening Iran, a country Hillary Clinton said she was prepared to “annihilate”. Iran’s crime is its independence. Having thrown out America’s favourite dictator, the Shah, Iran is the only resource-rich Muslim country beyond American control. It doesn’t occupy anyone else’s land and hasn’t attacked any country - unlike Israel, which is nuclear-armed and dominates and divides the Middle East on America’s behalf....In Australia, we are not told this. It’s taboo. Instead, we dutifully celebrate the illusion of Obama, the global celebrity, the marketing dream. Like Calvin Klein, brand Obama offers the riske thrill of a new image attractive to liberal sensibilities, if not to the Afghan children he bombs....This is modern propaganda in action, using a kind of reverse racism – the same way it deploys gender and class as seductive tools. In Barack Obama’s case, what matters is not his race or his fine words, but the class and power he serves....SBS has banned its journalists from using the phrase “Palestinian land” to describe illegally occupied Palestine. They must describe these territories as “the subject of negotiation”. That is the equivalent of somebody taking over your home at the point of a gun and the SBS newsreader describing it as “the subject of negotiation”....In no other democratic country is public discussion of the brutal occupation of Palestine as limited as in Australia. Are we aware of the sheer scale of the crime against humanity in Gaza? Twenty-nine members of one family - babies, grannies - are gunned down, blown up, buried alive, their home bulldozed. Read the United Nations report, written by an eminent Jewish judge, Richard Goldstone....Those who speak for the arsenal of freedom are working hard to bury the UN report. For only one nation, Israel, has a “right to exist” in the Middle East. Only one nation has a right to attack others. Only one nation has the impunity to run a racist apartheid regime with the approval of the western world, and with the prime minister and the deputy prime minister of Australia fawning over its leaders....In Australia, any diversion from this unspoken rule, this impunity, attracts a campaign of craven personal abuse and intimidation usually associated with dictatorships. But we are not a dictatorship. We are a democracy....Are we?...Or are we a murdochracy....Rupert Murdoch set the media war agenda shortly before the invasion of Iraq when he said, “There’s going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better get it done now.”...I once walked along Mutanabi Street in Baghdad. The atmosphere was wonderful. People sat in cafes, reading. Musicians played. Poets recited. Painters painted. This was the cultural heart of Mesopotania, the great civilisation to which we in the West owe a great deal, including the written word. The people I spoke to were both Sunni and Shia, but they called themselves Iraqis....They were cultured and proud....Today, they are fled or dead. Mutanabi Street has been blown to bits. In Baghdad, the great museums and libraries are looted. The universities are sacked. And people who once took coffee with each other, and married each other, have been turned into enemies. “Building democracy”, said Howard and Bush and Blair...."

Get the picture folks---John Pilger not Barack Obama knows the real deal! Pilger unlike Obama is a real man of peace. Mr. Onama like Bush and Cheney before him is a war criminal and so too are Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Joe Biden, Robert Gates, James Jones. General McChyrstal and all others in the Obama administration seeking more wars and threatening Iran weekly.

Obomber is probably right that non-violence couldn't have stopped the Nazis. The people of Palestine knew this decades ago, and that is why they have taken up arms against the Jewish terrorists who stole their land and murdered their children.

"King and Gandhi as impractical idealists."

I agree, it would have been much better if Gandhi had led a violent insurrection against the British. The Brits would have entrenched themselves more deeply, violence would have escalated, thousands, maybe millions, maimed and murdered. And who knows, it could still be a great place to sell arms and play war games.

And King, had he lead a violent revolt, would have placed himself in annals as a great and noble leader of freedom instead of a, of a...wait I'm confused.

In a related article on Obama's speech, Glenn Greenwald put his finger on the purpose of the Obama administration, "Yesterday's speech and the odd, extremely bipartisan reaction to it underscored one of the real dangers of the Obama presidency: taking what had been ideas previously discredited as Republican or right-wing dogma and transforming them into bipartisan consensus." The "danger" here is actually stronger than he characterizes it. The crude destruction of constitutional rights under the previous administration has had the stamp of progressive approval added to it. Obama's bipartisanship means that the end of constitutional rights is no longer a partisan issue, but a matter of broad consensus among the ruling elite, who have less and less need to pretend to recognize the minimal standards of human dignity.

This is precisely the point of the Obama administration - "...Obama has actually done more to legitimize Bush/Cheney 'counter-terrorism' policies than Bush and Cheney themselves -- because he made them bipartisan." To legitimize and make permanent the militarism initiated by the Bush administration was the motivating factor behind the selection of Barack Obama by the ruling elite. And he has repaid his enablers many times over for their support. It is rare indeed to be an historical witness to such a perfect alignment of form and function, but Obama has achieved that rare success.

The bait and switch was intended from the beginning and it continues unabated. The only truly surprising aspect of this presidency is that he hasn't shoved a single peanut between the bars for still hopeful liberals. Every single progressive initiative has either been withdrawn or watered down to the point of uselessness. It is indeed rare for a liberal President not to make a single concession to progressive values, but this one has the advantage of an almost completely supine progressive base, willing to tolerate any magnitude of sell-out. Such advantages may not repeat themselves again soon.

the president is wrong. someone show me where king or gandhi ever said that self- defense to preserve one's life or family was immoral. again, obama presents us with a false choice, to wit, aggressive war or pacifism. because america attacked vietnam, king protested. because churchill oppressed india, gandhi protested. and, civil disobedience did work against hitler in denmark, where tens of thousands of danes took to wearing golden stars in support of the jews. that act has been downplayed, but more jews survived hitler's reign in denmark than anywhere else. bulgaria as well protected its jews. in france, by contrast, there was ready cooperation with germany on all matters, as the french right was happy that hitler, rather than the socialist leon blume, was in power. the vichy french happily deported jews to the east and were so loyal that hitler did not, until d-day, have to occupy but the northern half of france.

I found it so very interesting that after Colin Powells speech to the UN, the press and media was giving wall to wall coverage as to how "Compelling" it was and how devastating the evidence against Saddam Hussein.

Any that questioned the mans sincerity was drinking Obamas Kool Aid.

I have read Obamas speech and immediately found it as phony and as duplicitous as Powells, his citing Martin Luther King a sickening distortion of that mans legacy.

Yet the media the world over ensures us this speech remarkable and Visionary.

I guess I live in a different reality.

What's Obama growing in that WH veggie garden of his? I'd like some of that for myself.

Obama knows everything about framing and he knows Lakoff as well as the conservatives so it's not surprising to see him snatch some famous names, flaunt the Nobel Peace Prize, and justify the war. The neocons couldn't dream of a better puppet with those of us losers who voted for him.

MLK was assassinated exactly one year to the day that he gave his NYC Riverside Church speech in which he named the USA as " the greatest purveyor of violence in the world".

Assassins kill on aniverseries of events as a way to emphasize their deadly message.

As Obama said, evil does exist in the world. Unfortunately, Obama has decided to side with it.

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". . . citing King but rejecting his teachings . . ."

I haven't seen a better definition of canonization. King's and like words need be read, but also refreshed by action.

Inspiration moves to a sorry part of its cycle when folks can mouth it and ape it to disarm it, to use the recognized authority of its author and expect so little recognition of what granted authority.

"The 21st century will be as much the American century as the 20th century" _Barak Obama, Dec 13 2009

Sound ominously familiar?
"Project for a New American Century"?

Obama is a secret Neocon

Obama may be right that non-violence would not have stopped the Nazis, but if we're going to make an analogy here: it's the US that is the invading and civilian-killing side in this war.

I am wondering if the Nobel Prize committee has finally poisoned the 'honor' so much that it will be difficult to find an actual peace worker willing to accept in the future. Will they have to increase the amount of the award to find a taker or will they just continue to grant the prize to successful politicians?

If President Obama manages to change the regime in Teheran, might he get the award again? It is hard picture THAT contribution to peace being peaceful or bloodless.

In '73 Henry Kissinger was a recipient that was rather difficult to stomach, given his overall record of crimes against peace, but his award was for the specific act of making a treaty with the North Vietnamese to end the war in Vietnam.

Can anyone point to the text of HIS acceptance speech on the net?