obamarama: once upon a time in the west

Barack Obama and the slogan for 2012: “Go Forward” well defined theme that captures the leftist messianism that seems so misguided, corrupted and dysfunctional. A messianic pursuit of secular divinity and backed by trashy rags like the New York Times, haughty and faux-swanky with dog dish lickers like Thomas Friedman or, in the same style, the erstwhile Michael Lewis in his pitch for Americana with “Obama’s Way”. The approach has to become a pie in the face eventually. This dumb film and even thicker and denser protestors looking stupider than the makers; Salafites are like ragged versions of Brown Shirts and in a twisted way, the Presidency is trying to spin these events as somehow positive, growing pains of the particular American medicine of democracy and that the patient will fall into line eventually.

—Oddball heroes Artemus Gordon and James West in The Wild Wild West. Episode: “The Night of the Casual Killer”. Airdate: 10/15/1965.—Read More:http://gunsandposes.tumblr.com/post/28635004270/wild-wild-west

The loop-back are media snippets implying the old Orientalism at work: “We” prize individual choice, We are part of the enlightenment, the inventors of liberal democracy, and essentially more moral and superior; especially since we grabbed your rsources and manipulated your leadership! – that’s unsaid, but what is implied is that this American way is not a natural habitat of the Arab etc. Condescending.

The Obama way, is on the belief in progress, the citizen’s capacity for self-improvement and ona certain rationality as part of an outline of a better future life. A utopian project, that rejects  political violence, the whole Middle Eastern dynamic, really world dynamic where forces of struggle between the divine and the mythical are the basis of political struggle and as Kafka pointed out, necessarily runs, fists flying, into the law; A law, rather than implementing justice, is a manifestation of the violence which created the law in the first place. Hannah Arendt’s revolution to reactionary ideas.  People like Walter Benjamin could see no point in a naive revolutionary demand for justice, one typically satisfied by supplanting the present laws with others conceived ideally as more just.  To Benjamin, these standard intrinsics to insurrection are all mythical, destructive contention, as opposed to a divine one. The big pop. Redemption. And not by small drops.

The Arabs, knee deep in this violence, may even conceive real  change as only conceivable,  possible,  by the overthrow of history uniquely.
In the framework of Benjamin, all revolutionary effort to attain this grail of utopia is exposed as a kind of vanity, ego driven, of mythical forces in an antagonistic confrontation with the messianic.

(see links at end)….The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:


“The attacks on US embassies and consulates in the Arab world can not be justified in any way. If it turns out that al-Qaida is behind the attacks, as some US officials suspect, then they are acts of terrorism committed under the guise of religion. If they turn out to be uncoordinated actions by angry believers, then they are an expression of a frightening ignorance. A crazy individual US citizen has uploaded a movie onto the Internet which denigrates the Prophet Muhammad. The US government can not be held responsible for that. But that clearly does not help US President Barack Obama very much. He has to bear the political consequences of the recent events by himself.”…

—”Because the last thing he needs or wants may be a re-elected Barack Obama,” Miller says. “But he certainly doesn’t want an angry, re-elected Barack Obama.”
Netanyahu told an Israeli newspaper that he’s not guided by the U.S. election but by the centrifuges in Iran. But his talk about red lines has some Israelis nervous, too, including a former Israeli defense forces chief who likes to quote Clint Eastwood.
“When you have to shoot, shoot,” Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said Wednesday at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., “don’t talk.”
He said that the U.S. and Israel should be able to coordinate their positions privately, and he’s frustrated by all this talk about red lines, which he says hasn’t worked for Israel in the past.—Read More:http://www.npr.org/2012/09/15/161153159/u-s-israel-divided-over-red-line-for-iran image:http://swotti.starmedia.com/movies/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west_15646.htm

“Four years ago, Obama pledged to seek reconciliation with the Muslim world. Now, it is doubtful whether he has succeeded. The US and its European allies now have to ask themselves how much support they still enjoy in the countries of the Arab Spring.” Read More:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-review-on-middle-east-violence-against-us-embassies-a-855835.html

The center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“Since the Arab Spring broke out, there have been many difficult moments in th


lationships between America and the Arab nations. But few have been as delicate as this one. America hardly has influence in the region any longer, and now sees itself confronted with anti-American sentiment in places where it no longer controls the dictators. Meanwhile, forces that simultaneously exploit and spurn America are gaining influence.”…

Pierre Renoir. The Mosque or Arab Holiday. A good example of Western Orientalism. The Arabs are a blob of paint, part of a larger color study…..And….hard to believe this piece of cow dung: FNC to mark International Day for Democracy
Abu Dhabi : The Federal National Council will take part in the global celebration of International Day for Democracy being held on Saturday.
It reflects the UAE leadership’s vision on the importance of parliament in boosting democracy and the political development process. Read More:http://news360.com/#article/153049225

“Middle Eastern policy is a thankless task for America. But for precisely this reason — and despite the election campaign — it would be unwise to pour oil into the fire. The fact that President Obama has deployed destroyers and marines to Libya, and may soon send out drones, isn’t a good sign, though. … Should Washington fall into defense mode, as it has in Yemen against al-Qaida, where the anti-terrorism fight is the top priority and there have been civilian victims, then the tables could turn quickly. People in the Arab world want to be more than just a security risk.”…Read More:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-review-on-middle-east-violence-against-us-embassies-a-855835.html

…The conservative Die Welt writes:

“US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy is in ruins. Like no president before him, he tried to win over the Arab world. After some initial hesitation, he came out clearly on the side of the democratic revolutions. … In this context, he must accept the fact that he has snubbed old close allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian military. And now parts of the freed societies are turning against the country which helped bring them into being. Anti-Americanism in the Arab world has even increased to levels greater than in the Bush era. It’s a bitter outcome for Obama.”…

— The pope also spoke for the first time about the wave of uprisings that have transformed the region since his last visit. “I would say it’s a positive thing: it’s the desire for more democracy, more liberty, more cooperation and a renewed Arab identity,” Benedict said.
But he also added that amid such revolutions, “there is always a danger of forgetting a fundamental aspect of liberty: tolerance for others and the fact that human liberty is always a shared liberty.” He added, “We must do everything possible” to encourage tolerance and “reconciliation.”
In a dark moment in his papacy in 2006, Benedict angered Muslims when on a visit to Germany he quoted a Byzantine emperor who called Islam “evil and inhuman.” In response, Muslims demonstrated around the world, and an Italian nun was killed in Somalia. The pope later apologized. —Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/world/middleeast/pope-benedict-arrives-in-lebanon-as-turmoil-grips-region.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

“Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world. In practice, the policies of the Obama administration in the region were not as naive as they may have seemed at times, and the Americans have always been much more involved in the Middle East than the passive Europeans. But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida, who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali.”

“One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America’s deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.”…Read More:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-review-on-middle-east-violence-against-us-embassies-a-855835.html

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)… The Foreign Ministry official presented the example of Tunisia, which was expected to be moderate despite the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood. Several weeks ago Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Zvi Rav-Ner, reported that the Tunisian ambassador to Poland had been called back to Tunisia unexpectedly, ending her posting there. Rav-Ner added that all five women serving as ambassadors of Tunisia in various countries had been recalled at around the same time.

—But there is also something opaque in its sprawling and often baffling tale of unscrupulous gunslinger Frank (Henry Fonda), escaped felon Cheyenne (Jason Robards), an impassive tough guy nicknamed Harmonica (Charles Bronson) and their bloody battle for a farmstead owned by a beautiful widow and former New Orleans prostitute (Claudia Cardinale). The plot is not fully explained until the 90-minute mark and Harmonica’s motivation isn’t disclosed until almost the very end. —Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jul/24/once-upon-time-west-review

The Israel embassy in Washington was instructed to report the matter to the State Department and determine whether it was aware of the development. Several days late U.S. officials reported that the measure was technical only, involving the replacement of all ambassadors from the previous regime, and had nothing to do with gender discrimination.

The Foreign Ministry conducted its own examination and determined that many male ambassadors from the previous regime had not been recalled. “We knew what was happening, but the Americans preferred to find excuses,” said the senior official.

A similar pattern emerged as to Israeli efforts to prevent a clause being added to the new Tunisian constitution outlawing normalization or contacts with Israel. The Foreign Ministry asked the United States to intervene, but was not satisfied by the response. “They told us, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right, the clause will be left out,’ but the clause is still in there,” the official said.

Israel has also called American attention to the fact that for the past year Egypt has been dragging its feet over talks on reopening the Israeli embassy in Cairo. U.S. appeals have failed to speed things up.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials said the latest riots at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, and the weak condemnation of President Mohammad Morsi, demonstrated that despite its massive military and economic aid to Egypt the United States had failed to achieve any real influence over the Muslim Brotherhood. “Only now, after what happened to their embassies, the Americans are beginning to understand the situation,” the senior official concluded, “to hear the president of the United States declared that Egypt isn’t an ally, but also isn’t the enemy – that’s a real earthquake,” he said. Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-foreign-ministry-officials-say-u-s-ignored-arab-radicalization-1.465210

What is Thomas Friedman and Anderson Cooper doing on a game show, Celebrity “Power” Jeopardy. Like Obama on David Letterman, the concept of politics as mass entertainment, in a post-secular form, there is now no separation between church and state….

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