Barack Obama has definitely been a disappointment. But does anyone think that he could have in any sense turned around the momentum of the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex in 2 or 3 years?
Can anyone turn it around?

Pilger then comments about Obama engaging in another "insufferable" Presidential campaign.

Perhaps then you prefer Sarah Palin or one of the other completely deranged psychotics that now infest the GOP. For an astute analysis of her influence on USA right-wing politics altogether why not Google the essay on The Daily Beast: Sarah Palin Queen of Right Wing Reaction.

By the war those on the right-side of the culture wars here in the land of Oz have frequently expressed, in their publications, their approval of Palin and what she represents. This includes some of the dreadfully sane people who will be attending the IPA gab-fest The Genius of western Civilisation.

Ho Hum
"Barack Obama has definitely been a disappointment. But does anyone think that he could have in any sense turned around the momentum of the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex in 2 or 3 years?"

Why not? He's the President. Congress never declared war as the Constitution requires, therefore these wars are being carried out under Obama's (unconstitutional) executive authority. We now know that all the reasons for going to war with Iraq were lies. Obama said he stood for change. Apart from changing the paperweights on his desk, what has he done that's substantially any different from George W? Obviously the military industrial complex won't be turned around while ever the Democrats, like all the Republicans except Ron Paul, support a military empire and perpetual aggressive war killing untold numbers of poor third world peasants, and enriching huge corporations sucking on the government teat?

So? Do you support the empire or not? If not, why defend Obama's disgraceful record of extending the empire abroad and police state at home? Wouldn't *stopping warring* be a good start on turning around the momentum of the welfare/warfare state?

Ho Hum,

I suspect Pilger was referring to the " insufferable" nature of American presidential campaigns in general.
Pilger is right that nothing has fundamentally altered except the quality of the rhetoric. The U.S. is still classifying the regimes in the middle-east as "good Arabs" and "bad Arabs" and acting accordingly.

Peter Hume,

This is another rare occasion where I agree with every point you made in your last post. The American government has siphoned off taxpayers dollars and funnelled them straight into the pockets of the giant corporations who have been active in the knocking down and the rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure.

Is Obama his own man, or is he a puppet of the military/industrial corporations?
I lean toward the latter. Eisenhower warned us of what was coming as he left office in 1959. Kennedy MAY have been thinking about addressing the issue, but he was assassinated. His successor, Johnson, rolled over, gave the generals Viet Nam, and the rest is history.
In the US the military corporations seem to rule the day. Israel is in it up to their eyeballs, as is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
It's oil of course, of course. And not just to have, but to be sure no one else (China) gets it instead.
The value added attraction in Libya is their juicy juicy sovereign fund.
Do they really not realise how obvious they are, or do they just no longer care.

My first thought was why hasn't John Pilger retired? Why must we see him on Online Opinion? And then I thought well its harmless entertainment. The posts are more interesting, and far more balanced, than the article.

Hi John, welcome back.

One of the great disappointments with expectations is disappointment. I get this feeling that Obama has disappointed you. Probably because as a Democrat there was an expectation he might behave as you wanted him to behave.

Not only has he disappointed you, he has now forced you to assign him to the depths of Dante’s Inferno along with George W. Bush.

It is clear there are many in this world that have likewise disappointed you. I was thinking of making a list of these miscreants but I couldn’t find room for the International Political Telephone list.

I also thought it might be prudent to try to understand why so many in public officers have disappointed you on such a wide range of critical international issues. This expectation list also has volumetric problems as you might imagine.

In the end it all comes down to those damnable expectations of yours. So what is it about your expectations that the very best of our democratically elected officers find so hard to meet?

I guess in pursuit of causality we have to be realistic and point to the fact that there is only one common factor, John Pilger.

Congratulations, the whole democratic world is wrong and John gets the banana.

This is the worst case of RDS I’ve seen recently. The prognosis is not good and the only medication I could possibly suggest would be massive doses of multi-immune vaccine containing context, relevance, reality and ego suppressants