Obama poster artist says president is a disappointment

Damn, I should've started this blog in 2008, right before Obama got elected for the first time. At that time, I used to be amused at people around me, in office & in my friend circle, that how everyone blindly bought into whatever Obama was selling at the time. Bunch of ignorant morons !!!

At that time, back in 2008, I was saying that Obama will disappoint you. He is not who he made you think he is. I saw this "hope dashed" 8 years ago.

So how did I predict that Obama will dash hope? Simple. There are very, very few organizations in the world that like radical & different ideas, & thus, promote those people within them, which question the established culture of the organization. Most organizations don't want anyone "disturbing" their culture. US government, & any other government in this world, is like that.

Obama, regardless of his upbringing & his personal values, he was required to toe the line of the government, if he ever wanted to become the President of US. He was required to abandon his own views, ethics, & morals to become President of US. If you want to become the President, you need to jockey up to groups whose ideals & objectives may very well clash with your own.

It doesn't matter how great Barack Obama is on the personal level. That doesn't affect anyone but him & his family alone. What does affect the whole world are his decisions, which were, for the past 7 years, similar to, if not as bad as, his predecessor, Mr. George Bush. I am still amazed how the Nobel committee awarded Obama the Peace prize. He hadn't, & still hasn't, done much in the name of peace. Guantanamo prison is still open. Destruction of Libya & the rise of ISIS in Syria & Iraq are the testament of how much of a failure Obama has been on delivering the mandate of world peace.

The only good legacy he might be remembered for years to come, is American affordable healthcare act or "Obamacare". That made life easier for many poor Americans. Other than that, financial mess he inherited from previous American leadership is still a mess, without any substantive controls, whatsoever. Personal privacy for Americans, & essentially, for the people around the world, became a joke under him. Weapons & arms deals with the corrupt leaders & despots continue on unabated. Violence in America itself has escalated multiple folds due to the rise in gun ownership, which he didn't, or perhaps, couldn't, do anything about. Working conditions & middle class in the American socio-economic strata are set to become worse, due to his relentless push for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

You may point out the fact that I am not mentioning Iran nuclear deal or opening up the American embassy in Cuba. These deals are actually not in the name of peace. These deals are in the name of business elites. Consumer markets for American international businesses are running out. American businesses are everywhere around the world, except, only in those places where they are not allowed to operate by law. Other than North Korea, Cuba & Iran were the only countries left where American businesses couldn't sell their wares. American businesses right away pushed in Cuba, as soon as, the borders open, & they are already ready to enter Iran.

Now, I am not saying all this, because I prefer Republicans or I think Republicans would've done a better job of running the country. Heck no. Republicans might have been the same, if not worse. Reason being that US government, as an institution, has a set culture & only people who rise through it are the ones who follow that culture by the book. You think differently & your chances of ever becoming an influential person in that organization are slim to none. Both political parties in America will only promote those people within them, who think alike. Therefore, regardless of which political party comes to power in 2016 or in 2020 or in 2024, foreign policies coming out of the White House won't change a bit.
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/28/hope-dashed-artist-behind-obama-poster-disappointed

The man on the poster is still president. But the artist behind the poster has moved on.

Shepard Fairey, whose stencil portrait of Barack Obama with the caption “Hope” became the defining image of the 2008 presidential campaign, told Esquire magazine in an interview ... that the politician had not lived up to the propaganda.

“Not even close,” Fairey said.

“Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he’s compromised on that I never would have expected. I mean, drones & domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he’d support].”
...

Fairey is not a wholesale detractor of Obama, however.

“I’ve met Obama a few times, & I think Obama’s a quality human being, but I think that he finds himself in a position where your actions are largely dictated by things out of your control,” Fairey told Esquire. “I’m not giving him a pass for not being more courageous, but I do think the entire system needs an overhaul & taking money out of politics would be a really good first step.”

As for whom he is supporting in 2016, Fairey said: “I mean nothing against Hillary [Clinton]. I agree with Hillary on most issues, but campaign finance structure makes me very angry.”

In 2014, Fairey released a poster that was evocative of the Obama image, but which featured a different, anonymous politician holding a fistful of cash.

The image was captioned: “Sold”.

Better the dictator you condemn than the insurgents you can't control

A good piece. Take an action after thinking it through. Otherwise, you create a mess for yourself & others. But, who will heed this warning? No one. For elections purposes, military actions will always be taken way before anyone will ever even think of starting a dialogue among opposing parties to resolve the situation.

On top of not thinking before acting (which is the lesson we adults teach to our children & then not follow them ourselves) & creating a mess for everyone else & ourselves in the Western countries, the military actions also killed & destroyed the lives of thousands of people in those lands & displaced millions. Who is going to be held accountable for that?

In corporate world, from CEO down to a lowly clerk, anyone who takes one wrong step with dire consequences (even though, that mistake might not of such a huge consequence as killing thousands or displacing millions) is severely reprimanded right away, either in the form of a demotion or being fired. But, in the politics of the West, nothing happens. Elections are won as usual & billions more are spent, as usual, on military hardware.

After all, who cares if a few Libyans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Afghanis, Syrians, Egyptians etc. are being killed or losing their families, homes, & livelihoods. It's not happening to me. Right?
(Just in case, if you didn't get it, it was sarcasm & a rhetoric question).
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/01/idUS50046168420150501

President Obama, already musing on failures during his second term, has said he regrets that the U.S. joined a coalition to intervene in Libya in 2011, ousting President Muammar Gaddafi, without an adequate plan for the post-Gaddafi society. “I think we [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this.”

It’s curious that Obama & his allies had not ordered a plan for the new Libya: They had the example of the Iraq invasion in 2003. The war was won quickly but the post-war haunts us still, in part because the war effort was not paralleled with a vigorous peace effort.
 
President George W. Bush’s speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 – “the United States & its allies have prevailed” – was echoed by then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s chuckle to a reporter when hearing of Gaddafi’s death, “We came, we saw, he died.” Both thought the loosening of Western military force on dictators had settled the matter: Both lived to know otherwise.
 
... The vacuum created by the fall of the tyrant yielded not democrats (or not enough), but old feuds, hatreds, divisions -- &, above all, the militants of jihadism resurgent, al Qaeda, Islamic State & others.
 
As in Iraq, Libya has known no stability since the toppling of its tyrant, Gaddafi. The first elected prime minister, Mustafa Abu Shagour, was out in a month: In 4 years, the country has had 7 prime ministers. Armed Islamist groups are allowed to flourish -- there is no reliable army to keep them down -- & now control slices of the state. A jihadist government chased the elected administration out of the capital, Tripoli, & rules there: The internationally recognized government huddles in the eastern port city of Tobruk -- which older Europeans remember as the site of one of the great battles of World War Two, the first sign that the fortunes of war might turn against the Nazis.
 
An estimated 10,000 are reckoned, conservatively, to have died in the chaos of Gaddafi’s fall. One of these was the US Ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, killed in an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi in September 2012.
 
The message has hit home: Better the dictator you can condemn than the insurgents you cannot control (& may hate you more).
 
Shorn of any military option, the only hope is to bring the opposing parties to some kind of talks. ... Yet so full of hate & bitterness against each other are the warring groups, so convinced of their own virtue & the others’ vices, that any agreement would seem elusive -- &, if reached, fragile.
 
An Arab capital is now under jihadist control; it is also in the country closest to the borders of the EU. For two decades, we have been warned that “failed states” are a large threat to Western security: It is vividly clear that the warning was right.

Bishop of Manchester says Britain has a moral duty to accept refugees from its wars

A great opinion by the bishop of Manchester, UK. Developed countries are feverishly trying to destabilize developing countries through arms & weapons smuggling / selling, & of course, actively encouraging wars among developing countries.

As I have blogged previously that one of the primary reasons of creating wars overseas for developed countries is to create such dire conditions in the developing countries that their bright minds (& hopefully, with money) are forced to emigrate to developed countries, where they become compliant, law-abiding, tax-paying second-class citizens.

Problem with these "illegal" migrants from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, & Northern African countries is that these are poor &, in most cases, are uneducated, too. Not exactly the kinds of immigrants developed countries of North America & Europe are looking for. So they just want to push them back to their own countries.

But, the justice would be "if you break it, you buy it." (meaning: if you are going to actively intervene in another country's political, economic, social, & cultural facets, then you may as well be prepared for picking up the pieces if your strategy backfires).
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/25/uk-moral-duty-accept-refugees-from-wars-david-walker-bishop-manchester

One of the country’s most senior bishops has said that Britain has a moral imperative to accept refugees from conflicts in which it has participated.
 
After a week in which the death toll of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe grew to 1,700 so far this year, the bishop of Manchester, David Walker, said there was a duty to treat the survivors with compassion.
 
In a piece for the Observer published online, he writes: “They are pushed, not pulled, towards the EU, forced out of their homelands by war, terrorism & the persecution of minorities. A political rhetoric that characterises them as wilful criminals rather than helpless victims is as unworthy as it is untrue.”

The UK’s pivotal role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq prompted a sectarian war that the UN said had forced two million Iraqis to flee the country, an involvement that ran alongside the 13-year Afghanistan war & was followed by the 2011 attacks on Libya, both of which precipitated significant regional instability & migration.
 
According to the UN Refugee Agency in 2013, one in four refugees was Afghan, although most were in neighbouring countries, while the ongoing instability in Libya was credited with making the north African state a haven for people smugglers.
 
Walker writes: “The moral cost of our continual overseas interventions has to include accepting a fair share of the victims of the wars to which we have contributed as legitimate refugees in our own land.

“I want my country to be governed by those who are prepared to look at the faces of the desperate, be it the desperation of the asylum seeker or of the food bank client, & to look at them with compassion.”

Despite the huge numbers of migrants heading north, only 5,000 resettlement places across Europe have been offered to refugees under an emergency summit crisis package agreed by EU leaders, with the rest sent back as irregular migrants under a new rapid-return programme coordinated by the EU’s border agency, Frontex.

“Welcome though it was that European leaders sat down to talk about the situation this week, their conclusions seem more directed at making the symptoms less visible than at tackling the disease,” said Walker.
 
A 2014 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime estimated that there might be 600,000 migrants on the north Africa coast who could try to get to Europe by sea.

Obama traces origin of ISIS to Bush-era Iraq invasion

I highly respect Obama for, at least, admitting American contribution in the creation of ISIS. However, the buck shouldn't stop there. First mistake Obama made was saying that "we should look to the future instead of the past" back in 2009. He never brought Bush administration to justice for their war atrocities. Well, we can see what those actions did to the current world.
 
On top of that, Obama repeated Bush era's mistake by bombing Libya with American allies, & we can see how wonderfully democratic the country has become, & now helping Saudi coalition, with its British & French allies, in creating another humanitarian crisis &, perhaps, radicalization of Yemeni youths. Obama is clearly not learning from past Presidents' mistakes in bombing other countries to smithereens & then not investing in the development of those countries. Cases in point: Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya.
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http://rt.com/usa/241325-obama-isis-iraq-bush/

President Barack Obama traced the origins of Islamic State militants back to the presidency of George W. Bush & the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, arguing that its growth was an “unintended consequence” of the war.
 
In an interview with Vice News, President Obama said the rise of Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL) can be directly linked to America’s excursion into Iraq under Bush.

“Two things: One is, ISIL is a direct outgrowth of Al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion,” Obama said in an interview with VICE News. “Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

Obama stated that he is “confident” a coalition consisting of 60 nations “will slowly push back ISIL out of Iraq,” but added that the challenge of stopping extremism won’t stop unless there is a political solution to the internal strife affecting so many countries in the Middle East.

“What I’m worried about” he said, “is even if ISIL is defeated, the underlying problem of disaffected Sunnis around the world – but particularly in some of these areas including Libya, including Yemen – where a young man who’s growing up has no education, has no prospects for the future, is looking around & the one way he can get validation, power, respect, is if he’s a fighter."

“That’s a problem we’re going to have, generally. And we can’t keep on thinking about counterterrorism & security as entirely separate from diplomacy, development, education.”

The president dismissed concerns that the US spends too much on foreign aid, noting that just over 1% of the federal budget goes to other nations. He argued that “we should be thinking about making investments” overseas that will prevent America from sending troops to engage in military operations.
 
Obama’s comments regarding ISIS mark the first time he has framed the extremist group’s existence as a consequence of American foreign policy decisions. The president’s opponents have often argued that his withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011 left space for groups like ISIS to grow. At the same time, the Shia-dominated central government of Iraq failed to effectively bring the country’s Sunni minority into the governing process, leaving ISIS with a disaffected ethnic group more willing to join its cause.

Gunned down ... New face of American fatalities

So, US have essentially become a warzone by its own actions. We immigrants bemoan that in several "developing" countries (i.e. Pakistan, Brazil, India, African countries etc) gun violence keeps increasing & these are labelled "war zones" & dangerous countries. Problem is that these kinds of stories & stats are not frequently reported in the media to the point that we all think that Western countries are safe & sound.

 

So I did my own quick calculations on death & killings (being a Pakistani myself, I'll compare Pakistan & US):

 
US Population (July 2014 est.) (per CIA World Fact Book): 319M
Per this article & CDC, about 33,563 were killed by gun violence in 2012: about 0.01% of 2014 pop.
 
Pakistan Population (July 2014 est.) (per CIA WFB): 196M
Using US death percentage of 0.01%, we get about 21,000 deaths in Pakistan ("should-be-deaths")
 
Per website, pakistanbodycount.org, there were 32 suicide attacks, killing 243 people & injuring 705 (total = 948) in 2012.
51 drone attacks killed another 349 & injured 98 people (total = 447), bringing the total lives affected by terrorism in 2012, in Pakistan, to 1,395.
 
Yes, 1,395 total lives affected. If we strictly compare apples to apples, meaning deaths vs deaths, then that number (killings in Pakistan) drops to 592. (0.0003% of population).

Even if we assume that these numbers from PakistanBodyCount.org are underreported & exaggerate the numbers to 20 Pakistanis dying, on average, on a daily basis in cities & civil unrest all over the country; even then, we only add an additional 7,300 deaths in the above total of 592 ... still far below the American deaths of 33,563.

Deaths by guns, in US, in 2012: 33,563.
Deaths by guns, in Pakistan, in 2012: 592
 
You can decide for yourself which country is more unsafe !!!
Power of media can show one country to be far more unsafe than it really is, & show another country far safer than it really is ...

 

On top of that, when 3,000 Americans died on 9/11, the whole America was after revenge & destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, & even Libya, & in the process, sow the seeds of hatred & discontent in the peoples of those countries to the point that now, we are reaping the "wonderful" fruits of those invasions. These 33,000 deaths are 11 times more than how many Americans died on 9/11, but is any American shouting for blood & revenge?

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The year 2015 may well be the first in recent US history that firearms fatalities exceed traffic fatalities. Gun deaths by homicide, suicide or accident have been steadily increasing, following a low point in the year 2000, & are expected to top 34,000 by 2015.

 

In contrast, deaths from motor vehicle accidents have dramatically declined in the same time period, & are expected to drop below 33,000 in 2015, based on the 10-year average trend.

 

Restricting gun ownership ... has been much more difficult due to the powerful lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association & other advocacy groups, & because of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees all individuals the right to bear arms (a right that has been upheld by the US Supreme Court).

 

... the overall trend is unlikely to change: guns kill people, cars not as much.

 

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/gunned-down-not-run-down-the-new-face-of-american-fatalities/