The most popular discussion around the water cooler, lunch rooms, talk shows and in the blogosphere is the Barack Obama run for President of the United States of America. Many Barbadians are in awe that a Black man in the year 2008 could be challenging for the presidency. Last week, we heard talk show host David Ellis admonished callers who dared to doubt that the Black Obama has a legitimate shot at going all the way. We understand the generalization offered by David Ellis to support his argument at the time that Barbadians are a doubting people. However, the surreal experience which has overwhelmed Barbadians, and dare we say, Black people around the world is a phenomenon to behold. Unlike David Ellis, we can understand why Barbadians could be lulled into thinking that a Black man who is running for the presidency of the USA in 2008 on a anti-Washington and anti-insider platform would doubt a positive outcome.
Our friends over at Barbados Free Press (BFP) wrote a blog last week with the headline, President Barack Obama Would Destroy Barbados Offshore Banking Industry – He Said So!. We understand the thrust of their argument but we don’t agree. To understand why Obama co-sponsored legislation in the US Senate:
Obama and Levin identified us here in Barbados as an “Offshore Secrecy Jurisdiction.” And they were adamant that their law will shut down our international business program. Obama wants all that business done in the United States where he can collect taxes. Mr. Obama’s called us an oasis for abusive tax havens and tax shelters and the emphasis of his bill was to shut down the services, banking and businesses that we provide to offshore investors. He wants to declare these activities illegal and put a stop to them.
We should accept that Obama is an American first who is working to rollout legislation which protect the interest of Americans. The recognition that the United States of America has now become a debtor nation in the world has heightened concern in their legislature about the need to curb the outflow of capital to places they have termed ‘tax havens’. The excess capital which the USA government would have ignored in the old days when they were sitting on a thriving economy is long gone. Of course the mind-set of Obama and other legislators in the USA is also being influenced by the strategy of the 30 richest countries dubbed the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of which the USA is a member. It is no secret that the OECD has embraced a strategy of ‘combating international tax evasion by promoting transparency and exchange of information both within and outside the OECD’. The fact that the Barbados authority feels that its offshore legislation does not encourage tax avoidance by US companies is of little comfort to US legislators, who are reacting to stem the flow of capital outflows rather than the plight of politically insignificant states like Barbados.
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Getting back to the doubting Barbadians. Obama is currently being compared to a former President of the United States, John F Kennedy. He was assassinated. He is also being compared to the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King. He was assassinated also. The fear by many is that Obama is currently walking a path which extremists in the USA have shown that they are prepared to resist. The big question is whether the landscape of the USA has changed enough to stomach a Black man running for President. The reality is that Obama like Tiger Woods cannot hide from his Black heritage. However, the ability of Obama to capture the Presidency of the United States can only be accomplished by a broad based support from Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and others.
The quiet hope by countries like Barbados is that Obama will co-op the existing political machinery to go all the way. Then and only then will he respond to the expectations of the developed world by departing from the traditional foreign policy of the United States. The problem with this thinking maybe that the USA has developed visible and invisible institutions which exercise more influence on the governance system in the USA than one man ever can.
We watched a very interesting documentary on one of the channels recently which highlighted the intrigue and clandistine manuverings by the power brokers in the Bush administration leading up to the Iraq war and even in the post war situation. The sidelining of Rice and Power as the expense of Rumsfeld, Tenet and Cheney was a revelation. It begs the question how can rice continue to function given her dismal role as National Security Advisor during that period. In fact we can question why Powell is still a Republic after the huniiation which he had to endure when he delivered the now famous fabricated speech. This is recommended viewing for all those who are naive in the ways of world politics.
Colin Powell has a record going back to his days in Vietnam of not being a boat rocker and being willing to provide cover for his bosses.
Adrian:
Contrary to your understanding that there isn’t much of a possibility of him reentering politics, Gore went on record recently stating that there was only one job, the presiency, which would entice him back to politics.
As to no possibility, what would happen, in your opinion, if say a hundred super-delegates withheld their support from Clinton and Obama?
David, if the documentary on the Iraq war you are referring to in your post above is the one from “Frontline” on PBS, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote a review on it and was not impressed. He felt it did not go far enough.
I don’t know what the DNC rules call for, in such a case, but i would guess that from your scenario that the remainder 700 super-delegates votes would count, bu whatever the empasse that you may conjur up to possibly occur with in the Halls of the DNC will not stop the November national election, and if John McCain appears on the Ballot without a Democratic contender, and there isn’t a “write in” candidate gathering more votes than him, then the Electorial college will have no other choice than to rubber stamp the will of the people.
There is nothing within the rules of the DNC that produce a Democratic Presidential contender name Al Gore at this very late stage. Without a Legal challenge, and with super delegates enforcing the will of caucuas, democratic primary voters, and elected delegates, Barack will emerge as the nominee. He will then go on to lose in the national election. He won the democratic primaries and caucuses in majority republican states.
Adrian,
Thanks for your take on it.
Che sera sera.
Who would Martin Luther King support for president today?
By Weldon Burger
I ask who among our current-day political leaders Martin Luther King might support; the more appropriate question is who among them would have the courage to embrace a living King as eagerly as they drape themselves in the dead one’s memory. I’m drawing a blank.
Much of the commentary on the anniversary of King’s assassination focuses upon the direction he took in the last years of his life, speaking out against the Vietnam war specifically and state-sponsored violence in general, and attempting to broaden the movement that coalesced around him to include economically oppressed people of every color, not just the racially oppressed ones for whom he advocated so powerfully. He wanted to recast the political and social values of the country to the benefit not just of the disenfranchised here, but for those abroad who suffered from our own and similar military and corporate depredations.
Among the leading presidential contenders, only John Edwards brought even a fraction of King’s outrage and conscience to bear on the economic inequalities that continue to plague and, in many ways, cripple the US. None of the candidates show any sign of feeling the grief and rage King would have felt at what we have done and continue doing to the people of Iraq: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, millions more robbed of fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, many millions more robbed of their livelihood, their security and any semblance of a normal life.
Can anyone imagine Martin Luther King failing to address the debt we’ve incurred to the Iraqis? or failing to note the uses to which the hundreds of billions of US dollars and tens of thousands of US lives thrown away on the occupation could have been put? or failing to speak out in the strongest possible terms against US policies of kidnapping, torture and perpetual detention beyond the rule of law?
And now, can you imagine Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama embracing what King would have to say? (Never mind John McCain …)
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/13883
Some will always walk in the shadows of great men, but in their foot steps “never” but perhaps we ask too much of others, there are only a few great men, that is why they are great.
Perhaps the great man Dr. Martin Luther King would embrace one who could honestly say he/she was about:
“…No we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down the waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”…
Dr. Martin Luther King
August 28, 1963
History will indelibly record the courage which MLK would have demonstrated for nearly eleven years in his civil rights struggle. No many mortals would commit their lifes to such a life of struggle using unconventional means to do so i.e.non-violence.
John McCain and other leading law makers in the US should be called to account for initially opposing the national posthumous recognition bestowed on MLK. Seems opportunistic that McCain would want to jump on the band wagon at this stage. This is a man who knew that he was doomed to die at any minute. The thought of it increases the respect we have for what the man has achieve in such a short time of life.
Martin Luther King? Who dah was?
In case anyone doesn’t get the reference in the title, “just deonounce the pacificst for lack of patriotism”. It refers to a post-war statement by Nazi Luftwaffe chief and Hitler henchman Herman Goering to a French author, Gustave Gilbert, as Goering explained how easy it was to get a country’s population onside for a war.
Goering: “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp
David // April 6, 2008 at 7:34 am
History will indelibly record the courage which MLK would have demonstrated for nearly eleven years in his civil rights struggle. No many mortals would commit their lifes to such a life of struggle using unconventional means to do so i.e.non-violence.
John McCain and other leading law makers in the US should be called to account for initially opposing the national posthumous recognition bestowed on MLK. Seems opportunistic that McCain would want to jump on the band wagon at this stage. This is a man who knew that he was doomed to die at any minute. The thought of it increases the respect we have for what the man has achieve in such a short time of life.
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A politician being opportunistic, wuh David you seem surprise. Are you still wondering why Hillary keeps telling lie after lie? Landing in Bosnia under fire, wanting to join the Marines at some point in her life, etc. These three candidates are extremly poor candidates, and as such i expect Ralph Nader to gain his highest number of votes ever, come November.
What MIXED race? Obama Is a black man. Most of us bajans who call ourselves black are tainted with european blood.
All Obama is trying to do is to see. If he can help the younth people of this country and the old people, becuse things over past years. Has go down hill for many of the poor people, and he sadden to what happing in the USA. With the jobs, Health care and social security. And the wealth people is rich. And as for Ted the senior of Mass my prays go out him we need people like him around for the people I hop he will get over his cancre problem , and be back on his feet because the people need a good man like him for the people in the senate.