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Sunday November 16, 2008 20:34 by José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
The following is a translation of an article originally written in Spanish for the issue 35 of Pueblos magazine. The original version of the article -in Spanish- will be published in the next weeks in their website http://www.revistapueblos.org.This article deals with Obama and the hard task of restoration of the lost US hegemony and the false hopes his election has raised in many people, even from the left. Obamania, the factory of illusions...The victory of Obama in the US presidential elections has echoed all over the world through the mass media, which is trying to convince us that the most relevant single event in 2 million years of human existence had just taken place. In the meantime, delirious public opinion all over the world, has celebrated Obama’s victory in a way they would not have celebrated even for a new government in their own countries –something barely surprising if we take into account that decisions taken by the rulers in Washington DC bring a heavy load of consequences to the shoulders of millions throughout the five continents. In the eyes of the hallucinated mass, Obama represents a “dream” come true – what type of a dream exactly is something no one has been able to describe yet. The nightmare of Bush seems to have reached an end. Rise and Decline of the New World Order
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the firm imposition of the so-called New World Order, the American Dream has taken the entire face of earth by assault. That dream, indeed, was soon to become a nightmare well before Bush Jr. made his way into the White House. Neoliberal orthodoxy spread like a plague in successive privatising waves all over the Third World, bringing with it hunger, unemployment and uncertainty for the lives of millions. Unrest grew until it exploded in the very heart of the empire during the WTO demonstrations in Seattle, 1999. But with the arrival of George W. Bush in power, and thanks to his anti-terrorist crusade in 2001, the nightmare adopted almost apocalyptic dimensions. The US displayed an unprecedented autism in the face of a world saying a clear and unequivocal “NO” to his War on Iraq, something said from the UN to the people on the streets all over the planet, including, of course, US streets. What followed is well known and there’s no need to go into details: a genocide that left hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of maimed and countless lives utterly shattered, only to satisfy the lust for “US dollars” of the arms and oil industry. The Obama Mirage
As a testimony of this worldwide illusion, it is enough to quote a headline on the US elections from the Sunday Times, on November 9th: “Welcome Back America” – a headline bordering on delirium and which, by the way, confuses a single country (US) with a continent (America), as is frequently the case in the English-speaking press (paradoxically, the very same press poked fun at the Republican vice-presidential candidate for exactly the opposite mistake, that is, confusing the African continent with a country). The subtitle is even more revealing: “The Bush years tainted America’s reputation in the eyes of the world. But Sarah Baxter, our Washington correspondent, who grew up in the US, says the victory of Barack Obama has revealed the nation as it really is”. There’s no stomach which can resist the test of checking all of the press on the matter without getting physically sick, but this is the tone set up for almost every single article written on the subject. Restoring the declining US hegemony
But we who have got tired of waiting and waiting, and decided to put our hands to work in the making of a new world through the autonomous struggle of the people, we know that neither imperialism will end thanks to the unselfish actions of the imperialists themselves, nor exploitation will end thanks to those who get rich from it. We hold no false illusions – even if Obama were a convinced “progressive”, we know that, at the end of the day, US imperialism is a well-established State policy, springing from the entrails of the powerful elite’s interests [2]. It is no coincidence that in the US, “governments” are called merely “administrations” in accordance with their typically pragmatic spirit. It is impossible to be any clearer about their precise role... José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton |
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