Webster Tarpley’s Unauthorized Biography of Barack Obama

Webster Tarpley’s unauthorized biography of Barack Obama is the kind of book you stay up half the night to finish – and then can’t fall asleep because the content is so troubling. Barack H. Obama: the Unauthorized Biography reads more like a political rant or blog than 911 Synthetic Terror or Tarpley’s unauthorized autobiography of Bush senior. As Tarpley explains in his introduction, the book was written and rushed into publication immediately prior to the 2008 elections. Largely owing to his alarm about the lack of public knowledge about the mysterious powerbrokers responsible for grooming Obama for office – a man with even less of a public record than Jimmy Carter, who also came out of nowhere to win the presidency in 1976.

Follow the Money: Liberal and “Left” Leaning Foundations

Parts of the book – which pertain to our President’s psychological make-up and theoretical influences – are totally speculative. However the book’s value lies in the detail it provides regarding large gaps in Obama’s early life – and the “left” leaning foundations he worked for in Chicago. It was Tarpley’s revelations about some of these foundations that kept me awake. A pattern emerges as he traces their funding back to the CIA and reactionary corporate interests, as he identifies and quotes from the speeches and writings of the (mainly) men who have shaped their policies and as he analyzes specific “counterinsurgency” programs and projects they have funded – many deliberately designed to undermine genuine grassroots activists and groups.  The conclusion Tarpley draws – which I feel is inescapable – is that so-called “liberal” foundations, including the Rockefeller, Ford, Gamaliel, Annenber, MacArthur and Wood Foundations and the Carnegie and Manhattan Institute actually have the sinister political agenda of suppressing populist and grassroots activities that pose a threat to Wall Street interests.

A Virtual Political Unknown Breaks All His Campaign Promises

By now there is widespread disenchantment among progressives who busted their butt to get Obama elected only to see him break nearly all his campaign promises and continue the pro-war, pro-torture, pro-covert assassination and anti-civil liberties policies of George W. Bush. There has been all kinds of speculation why this might be – accusations that Obama has a naïve and misguided attachment to bipartisanship, that he’s too cowardly to stand up to his corporate donors, that he’s frightened of being assassinated, and that Bush senior is blackmailing him about being a secret CIA asset who was really born in Kenya. There is even conjecture that it’s really Biden who controls the White House, just as Cheney controlled the Bush White House.

The reality is the Obama presidency is fertile ground for speculation. One reason why we like to elect presidents with extensive government experience that they establish a clear record (through their voting record and public commentary) of both their political beliefs and their behavior under pressure. Obama, who tended to keep his head down during his seven years in the Illinois state legislature and four years in the Senate, has given us very little to go on.

The gaping holes in his resume have led to all kinds of right wing conspiracy theories about the authenticity of his birth certificate, his secret adherence to the Muslim religion, a possible stint with the CIA during the years nobody remembers seeing him at Columbia, and his allegiance to a secret international Marxist/socialist conspiracy.

The View that Democracy is Somewhat Cumbersonme

Tarpley stresses, repeatedly, that right wing Republicans are seriously underestimating Obama in labeling him a Marxist or socialist. If this so-called international Marxist/socialist conspiracy actually exists, they probably meet in someone’s garage in Fresno – because they have virtually no financial or political backing.

The truth is that a powerful wealthy elite has groomed Obama for public office and financed his campaigns. The best known of these influences is Obama’s longtime mentor, former National Security Advisor and Foreign Relations Council member Zbigniew Brzezinski. The elites behind the so-called liberal foundations (Rockefeller, Soros, the Carlisle Group) tend to be more heavily weighted towards banking and high finance than the oil and defense interests that put the Neoconservatives (Bush and Cheney) in office in 2000. However, given their greater control of Wall Street and both the formal and informal (non-profit) infrastructure – as well as their secrecy concerning their true objectives – I share Tarpley’s concerns they may be even more dangerous.

Especially when people like Brzezinski have openly stated that democracy is somewhat unwieldy grappling with the major problems that the US presently faces – and recommend we would be better off with a more totalitarian form of government.

To be continued.

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