Does Obama have what it takes to confront the real terror of poverty and destitution, as craved and caused by the Military Industrial Complex......?

This version with the intro is being published on AADHIKAROnline at 1050 Hrs GMT London Saturday 17 January 2009. The earlier version was published between 0900 and 1000 Hrs shortly after being written at 0845 GMT today.



In the LINKED item on the Timesonline, there is a small comment I made about poverty, hideden in over 100 comemnts to the Tioems' main piece about Obama. The follwong comemnt is a follw2-up to that comemnt.



Does Obama have what it takes to confront the real terror of poverty and destitution, as craved and caused by the Military Industrial Complex? Will Obama challenge Big Business or will he be their stooge?

Does Obama has what it takes to end the war of terror? Does he have the guts and the morality to start the real war? The war on hunger, famine and poverty? Obama will stand or fall on what he actually does about ending poverty, hunger and injustice...

By © Muhammad Haque
0930 GMT
London Saturday 17 January 2009

In July 2008, before it was certain who would get the USA Democratic Party’s final OK to run for office as the candidate to enter the White House, I commented, on the London Times web site, that at that time, Obama had not shown that poverty was his priority. I said that the prospects were not looking good.

What prospects was I talking about?

I was talking about BOTH.

That is, the prospects of Obama’s getting the ticket and of his targeting poverty as the prime objective.

As no doubt the entire western media machine will be telling the rest of the world now, Obama has got other, ‘more important’ priorities

Not the least of which would be the greed, the caprice and the arrogance of the status quo power holders and power wielders

Then there will be the gradual but the definite emergence of the residual armies of time-servers with attachments to all manner of ‘special’ grounds.

What they will all do will be to sink the case of universal human rights against poverty. And against destitution.

The images, the words, the texts and the lyrics of the past 3 months, especially of the period since the three holders of the USA’s main money-related offices literally confessed to having in one way or another been complicit in a culture of mega looting, robbery deception and fraud, will show without any doubt whatever, that ‘the system’, of which Obama will now be the chief current symbol, has been corrupt beyond condemnation.

It will be that same corrupt system that will persistently, daily and hourly claim the ownership of Obama as the holder of the Oval Office for now.

The people pushed into poverty, left in poverty and made poverty-stricken across the USA will not have anything like the power or the pull of any of the machine and the mechanical 'movers and shakers’ that have dominated the Obama circuit of the past two months.

And while in office – and as long as in office - Obama will have no reason to address poverty, hunger, famine in any way at all.

Except that if he personally possesses any deep seated commitment to target poverty and all that that entails then perhaps he will show the difference and make the difference.

The ANALYSIS and the attendant correct diagnosis of the USA agenda setters as made by J K Galbraith when he produced the three word phrase Military Industrial Complex was valid when Galbraith published it. It is even more valid today.

Will Obama follow Galbraith’s analysis and stop the MIC?

CAN Obama afford to even question the MIC let alone to push it off the perch ?

How will Obama, who as the candidate had berated his rival John McCain for not showing in his stated view enough resolve to go and find Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, scrap that dedication as the front line courier of the Military Industrial Complex message and go instead after poverty, hunger, famine and the injustice?


Will the Billary even let Obama think outside of the MIC?

People in poverty are perennially neglected because unlike the Billaries and the MICs of the word – and their equivalents through the ages- people in poverty have lacked the autonomy and the freedom of movement. Sheer physical movement.

People who are in poverty are also people who are physically weak. And physical poverty brings with it the physical distance from the centre of things.

Things that happen in capital cities and centres of capitals.

This is one of the main reasons why people in poverty can be forgotten.

They are not able to link up with any of the networks. Social. Virtual. Physical.

So why would Obama care to end poverty?

For one thing, it is in poverty that people enslaved were first discovered. And it is into poverty that generations of them, millions of them were condemned in the USA for so long.. And it is with the weapon of poverty that the humanity of so many people enslaved and denied were kept in those dehumanised conditions. And states.

For people in poverty beyond the USA, the same dehumanised degraded experiences apply.

And it is those denial of human rights that people ordinary people have been concerned about when they have either actually donated their money to Obama’s campaign or have given their equally valuable moral support to his candidature….

The men and women in suits and in fancy gear who will now decorate the ‘Presidency’ were not the people who made Obama the legitimate claimant to the office that he is about to enter for real.

The named and the moistly unnamed people who have voted for him in all sorts of ways, will be the people who will expect him to deliver freedom from poverty, hunger and injustice to so many people. That is something that the ‘power’ of the office Obama is about to enter actually does have.

As compared to some of the other material things. Like the sinking and the shrinking value of the USA’s phenomenally corrupt and corrupting capitalist neo-militaristic apparatus.

But will Obama be free to move away from the grip of the MIC and the machine personnel controlling the various levers in the office that he is about to symbolise and front at least for the next four years, other things being equal?

What things might not remain equal?

What un-anticipated thing could intervene and set asunder all the plans and expectations?

[To be continued]