During a week of reverberations over the sayings of Reverend Wright, the political calculus in Clintonland hopefully reckoned that white voters would swiftly abandon the good ship Obama in a flight of fear following a paroxysm of soul-searching racial uncertainty.

The highly paid strategists of the Clinton campaign sharpened their pencils and carefully calculated their arcane political equations. Following a series of deft tactical maneuvers designed to manufacture a withering crisis, the MSM would subject Obama to another week on the defensive against the phantasmagorical sayings of Rev. Wright following his madcap spree of ill-advised press conferences manufactured to stimulate the undercurrents of racial intolerance still roiling just beneath the surface tension of America.

KKK march on Pennsylvania Avenue, 1928.

The Clintonian rationale for this round of “strategy” was at once stark and simple. The Reverend Wright machinations would be especially effective in the Jim Crow-obsessed South and that great state of Indiana, once the home of the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan where 30% of the white male population donned the iconic white hoods and robes of the Rolls Royce of race baiting organizations to march 500,000 strong down Pennsylvania Avenue proudly brandishing banners proclaiming their brand of lily white masculine supremacy.

The Clinton campaign’s happy coincidence was simplicity itself for the North Carolina and Indiana primaries fell on the very same date. This miraculous synchronicity provided the sacred crucible for the latest media-driven experiment in race-baiting. In gambling terms – and that is precisely what the strategists were doing – they bet the house on the Reverend Wright gambit and then rolled the proverbial dice.

The results are now in hand. Today, a major CBS-New York Times poll indicates that Obama’s support has held relatively firm in spite of the provocative statements of Reverend Wright. The majority of Democrats are now satisfied with Obama’s handling of his former pastor.

Even more importantly, the early voting results in North Carolina suggest that Obama will carry that Southern state decisively. According to analyses from North Carolina’s political experts including Stephen Gheen and Vinod Thomas, Obama is trouncing Clinton via a new and unanticipated surge in black turnout that was almost certainly triggered by the massive MSM over-reaction to the stage-managed appearances of Reverend Wright.

In a nutshell, the Reverend Wright strategy backfired. Polls indicate that the early voting in Indiana is heaviest in counties where Obama has commanding leads. While Indiana is another “open primary” state, and Rush Limbaugh’s legions of followers could effect yet another Clinton upset via Operation Chaos, it will not matter.

With a population of nearly nine million, North Carolina is the very last large state to hold its primary this year. If Hillary Clinton had upset Obama in North Carolina, the nomination calculus could have been rewritten. The Clintons mustered the governor, Mike Easley, to endorse her campaign last week in hopes of creating a surge of “white flight.” The Clintons said that Easley’s endorsement was politically significant especially with white, working class voters, but the final tally is not even going to be close.

That sagacious North Carolina Congressman, G. K. Butterfield, warned the Clintons that they were in danger of permanently alienating the black vote. Between Governor Easley (now serving the final months of his last year in office) and the eloquent Congressman Butterfield, it is simply no contest. The trophy goes to Butterfield for intelligent candor.

The Southern state of North Carolina is going to be remembered as Barack Obama’s firewall against the latest gasp of the politics of racial intolerance. The state that gave us the now rather unfashionable James K. Polk of manifest destiny fame who presaged the neoconservative visions of Leo Stern and William Kristol and Andrew Johnson who preceded Bill Clinton in the annals of impeachment, is also the home of Terry Sanford who nominated JFK and Sam J. Ervin, Jr. who removed Richard Nixon from his high office.

The Clinton calculus now goes into overdrive and moves into parliamentary procedure and resorts to Roberts Rules of Order to seat the outlaw delegations from Michigan and Florida. Hillary Clinton is winding down her campaign with hopes for minor state wins in West Virginia and Kentucky while Obama will roll on to win the majority of delegates in the remaining states.

In North Carolina, the last large state to cast its votes this primary season, Obama’s firewall holds in the South, and none other than Dick Morris says that his nomination is now bankable.

Planetary is pleased to welcome Lech Biegalski, one of the founders of Solidarnosc - the Solidarity movement in Poland. Today, Lech Biegalski lives in Canada where he publishes the authoritative website: Canada Watch. A brief synopsis of Lech Biegalski’s outstanding career appears below his powerful essay exploring the timing and strategy for global political mobilization around democratic principles.

April 27, 2008 - Rev. Jeremiah Wright had his “historic” speech at the fund raising dinner for thousands of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) delegates in Detroit, extensively publicised and enthusiastically promoted by the flagship of the corporate media, CNN.

“I am not here for political reasons, I am not a politician,” said Rev. Wright. I heard this in 1980, when “Solidarity” was first born out of the protest of the Lenin Shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland. The protest quickly spread across the country and transformed into a massive political movement.

Sixteen months later, “Solidarity” had 10 million members out of 14 million employed adults, had issued, as a resolution of its First National Convention, the “Appeal to the Workers of Eastern Europe,” and had issued a call for a Workers` Self-Government in state-run companies and political grassroots self-government throughout the territory of the country. Consequently, “Solidarity” was suspended and outlawed, with the implementation of General Jaruzelski’s martial law in December of 1981.

Eight years later, “Solidarity” was reinstated. Shortly after that, it won the national election and formed the first non-communist government in Poland in 50 years.

Eleven years later, the Soviet Union was no more. The European Union could expand and include former Soviet satellites. Polish national economy was gradually dismantled as international investors moved in.

Yet, when the “Solidarity” movement was just starting, a great majority of its leaders, including Lech Walesa, were publicly declaring that we had nothing to do with politics, that we were just a “trade union.” We did not want to change the system, we wanted to fix it, to eliminate the corruption, the mistakes, and the abuse of power in order to rescue “pure communism,” a “communism with a human face.” Today, not too many former or current “Solidarity” leaders remember these declarations, as their privileges and benefits now depend on the loyalty to the new system – capitalism. It would not be politically correct to do so. Continue reading ‘beware, change is coming! by lech biegalski’…

While the title might sound odd, Limbaugh’s insatiable ego will not allow him to resist tarnishing Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions with a strong dose of reality – as well as his confession to his personal involvement in corrupting the presidential election.

The back-story is riveting. In March, Limbaugh launched his infamous, “Operation Chaos,” a devious anti-democratic plan devised to undermine the Democratic presidential nominee whom he believes will be: Senator Barack Obama. In several of his broadcasts, Limbaugh implored his legions of devout right-wing followers to cast aside their Republican inhibitions and vote in the Democratic primaries for Obama’s rival: Senator Hillary Clinton.

Limbaugh’s rationale? Obama’s momentum had morphed into a genuine grassroots movement, and it had to be stopped at all costs – even unto the gross hypocrisy of asking diehard Republicans to change their party registrations and cast their malicious votes for Hillary Clinton to poison Obama’s candidacy.

Is Limbaugh’s plot to defeat the first African-American candidate for the presidency: (A) insidious or (B) nefarious? Probably, both.

Come to think of it, is Operation Chaos really Limbaugh’s plan at all – or was it designed by somebody else? Who knows – other than Limbaugh and his co-conspirators?

Limbaugh schmoozes with Matalin at a right-wing cocktail party.

That said, James Carville and Mary Matalin are worthy suspects. Carville is a close and long-serving factotum for the Clinton family. Carville’s wife, Matalin, is a top-ranking Republican operative who works in the Bush White House. It is well documented that Matalin is a longstanding ally and admirer of Rush Limbaugh. Matalin has appeared on his show to tout her appalling books. The two are frequently photographed at right-wing cocktail parties. They appear to be on warm and friendly terms.

The night after the Pennsylvania primary, Limbaugh crowed,

What Obama has to do is go out and say this [Hillary] win is artificial and this win is phony because of Operation Chaos. He needs to go out there and say, ‘Why in the world is everybody taking this seriously? Rush Limbaugh had his listeners register as Democrats for one day to go vote for Hillary to prolong this. We’re letting Limbaugh get away with making our party look like it’s in a total sewer and a mess. This victory in Pennsylvania is illegitimate, is undeserved because Democrats did not vote for her. Republicans did.

QED. Republican operatives working with Hillary Clinton’s campaign have introduced a new mechanism into the presidential nomination process: flooding the polls with Republican crossovers.

Of the final primaries, Indiana and Montana are both “open” elections – where members of any party can vote for any candidate. In Indiana and Montana, Limbaugh’s Republican crossovers will be out in force to sabotage Obama by voting for Clinton.

Since Limbaugh is claiming that thousands of Republicans are capable of changing their party affiliation to corrupt the presidential election process, none of the other closed primaries are above suspicion.

The entire ‘democratic’ system in the United States of America is broken. From Republican crossovers to Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Katherine Harris who dealt the death blow to democracy in Florida and J. Kenneth Blackwell who sabotaged the election of 2004, America is staggering toward its new status as a Mugabesque nightmare ruled by invisible Leviathans, audible Limbaughs and deserate, presidential campaigns embroiled in vendettas that would make Michael Corleone cringe.

Less than one week ago, a scandal hit the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Clinton campaign’s Chief Strategist, Mark Penn, was exposed in a searing conflict of interest between his position in the presidential campaign and his other job: CEO of the massive multinational PR giant, Burson Marsteller. While his most prominent client, Senator Clinton, was firmly on record opposing the proposed trade agreement with Colombia, Burson Marsteller were negotiating a healthy contract to represent the South American government in future trade negotiations.

When the scandal hit the front pages, Penn duly resigned from his post as Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign. This was actually a very odd maneuver. Only two months before in a media interview shortly after the Clinton campaign’s disaster on Super Tuesday, Penn had denied that he was serving as Chief Strategist. In a swift response from the campaign’s Communications Director, Howard Wolfson, Penn’s denial of his responsibility for the damage he had caused the campaign was immediately refuted with Wolfson’s assertion that Mark Penn was, indeed, the official Chief Strategist for the faltering campaign. The sacrifice of Penn’s title is, therefore, virtually moot since he has been denying it for the past two months.

Penn has a very poor record with Senator Clinton. According to a massive number of reports now boiling out of the mainstream media as well as the blogs, Penn was personally responsible for the major flaw in the Clinton candidacy: her vote for the Iraq War in October 2002. Following on from that, Penn has faithfully followed a textbook Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) right-leaning course to navigate what has become the political equivalent of the Titanic, the Clinton presidential campaign, into the proverbial iceberg.

While the Titanic was proclaimed “unsinkable” in its press releases prior to its maiden voyage, Penn proudly proclaimed Clinton’s nomination “inevitable” in his now notorious memo of last summer. Penn created unrealistic expectations for the campaign, based on his deeply flawed polling that he thought indicated Clinton’s inherent supremacy over the field challenging her for the nomination. In a very public memo of his own John Zogby lamented Penn’s exaggerations of Clinton’s popularity, and the community of political consultants shuddered at the very mention of Penn’s lengthening list of blunders.

Penn has consistently misread his own polls – if, indeed, they were polls at all. In defining the core message of the Clinton candidacy, Penn opted for “experience” as a firewall against Obama’s plea for “change.” This singular judgment alone is sufficient evidence to indict Penn for professional incompetence. With the American nation yearning for relief, release and re-launch after the nightmarish journey through the darkening Bush-Cheney Era, Penn preferred the mythology of a pair of steady hands on the wheel of the ship of state as opposed to bringing aboard a new pilot to steer away from the banks and shoals still submerged beneath the surface.

At this point, it is probably time to revisit Penn’s role and relationship with the Clinton dynasty. The picture that emerges is at once lucid, revealing and troubling. In 1996 Clinton’s Chief Strategist, Dick Morris, sensed problems emerging between himself and their official pollster, Stanley Greenberg. In conversations between the two men, it had become clear that Greenberg would not accept Morris’ every dictum. The two men have gigantic egos as well as long and checkered histories with their most prominent client, the Clinton family. In 1990, Morris had been the victim of Bill Clinton when a midnight conference had devolved into an impromptu bout of fisticuffs, a story preserved by the sage senior consultant, Ray Strother, in his little known book, Falling Up.

After healing his wounds and repairing his relationship with the Clintons – procedures that required several years – Morris returned to favor for the 1996 campaign. By that time, Greenberg had been ensconced in his comfortable seat as the court’s pollster for the previous five years. However, cracks and fissures had emerged in their professional relationships. Greenberg had failed to prevent the seizure of Congress by the Republicans during the Gingrich revolution. He had other issues, a burgeoning international practice that was making him the richest political pollster in world history.

From Morris’ perspective, the most unattractive feature of his business relationship with Greenberg was that he feared a challenge to his supremacy at the Clintons’ court. In other words, Morris needed a pollster who would play by Morris’ set of rules and deliver a consistent stream of numbers that would support his strategic profile. In Greenberg, Morris saw a pollster who certainly could not be trusted to play the game by house rules.

Fearing an internal challenge to his authority, Morris sabotaged Greenberg and swiftly introduced Mark Penn, a malleable apparatchik who was making a name for himself by providing his clients with numbers that re-enforced their own ideas of strategy – ie. telling clients what they wanted to hear as opposed to delving deeply into the psyche of the nation to extract the kernels of wisdom that could drive a winning strategy. Convinced of his own wisdom and the strategy he derived from it, Morris did produce a decisive victory in the 1996 campaign re-enforced by Mark Penn’s compliant and predictable numbers.

Since 1996, Penn has acquired many new clients as well as ascending to the majestic heights of what is known as the “PR industry” as CEO of Burson Marsteller. However, it would seem that what he has gained in contacts and influence has not allowed him to keep pace with his core mission: polling. Polling is far from what it is claimed to be. It is not by any stretch of the imagination, an exact science. In fact, it does not hold any claim to scientific status whatsoever. Polling is actually a liberal art that merely deploys numbers at a very low level – ie. statistics – to produce what is deceptively labeled a ‘scientific’ method. ‘Scientisitic’ would be more accurate, because public opinion polling merely pretends to its scientific majesty.

Returning to the disintegration of the strategic matrix devised by Mark Penn for Senator Hillary Clinton, in retrospect it is now possible to pinpoint other miscalculations. First and foremost we observe Penn’s total failure to understand the public perception of their primary opponent, Senator Barack Obama. While Penn, the Clintons, their top staff including Patti Solis Doyle, Howard Wolfson and even Maggie Williams all saw Obama as a black candidate, they presumed that the public saw the same image. They were wrong. Dead wrong. Obama is an unusual candidate to be sure but not solely because of his rich racial and cultural heritage. Like other presidential candidates who have launched massive popular movements, Obama has a thick and impenetrable coating of Teflon.

Guided by Penn, the Clinton campaign briefed the press in December that Obama was “unelectable.” In so doing, they were actually strengthening him. By calling attention to Obama’s race, the Clintonistas clad him in the proverbial Teflon armor. Crude attempts devised by Republicans wishing to strengthen Senator Clinton’s presidential aspirations by launching racial and religious hatemail hit Obama in the chest and bounced off – even when it was directed at targets in the Deep South. The mainstream media recognized the hands at work behind the scenes as well as those at work in front the cameras and microphones, and Senator Obama’s suit of Teflon was tailored to a nicety coating him in a hardly invisible shield of invincibility. The Rezko rumors did nothing to stop Obama’s momentum. Neither did the anomalous result in New Hampshire that was almost certainly hacked by Republican covert operatives according to Bill Maher and David Griscom, author of Binomial analysis: Was the New Hampshire Primary Stolen on Behalf of Hillary? Guided by Axelrod and Plouffe, Obama went with the flow, got the breaks largely through the backlash against Penn’s blundering, and the tide turned in favor of his now compelling message, “change.”

Penn’s attempt to get tough with Obama backfired. Then Penn’s attempt to invoke fear through the 3:00 am television commercial backfired. Every appeal to Clinton’s “experience” against Obama’s so-called inexperience backfired in Penn’s face.

At the beginning of April and swiftly drawing down to the final relevant primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, much more than the presidential nomination is on the line. The Clinton dynasty itself is now on the ropes.

As a result of his following Penn’s advice – and a healthy dollop of his own miscalculation - Bill Clinton’s personal popularity has plummeted to levels less than half of where he stood in late 2007. Hillary Clinton is now badly trailing Barack Obama in national polls. Worse news is yet to come for the Clintons for it is abundantly clear that Obama has become the phenomenon of this presidential cycle. With over one million contributors, Obama is the undisputed head of a genuine political movement that is demanding change. Every time Penn, Clinton or Wolfson invoke the e-word, it hurts the Clinton brand that is now seen as passé.

There is little need to point out that the Clintons’ once massive popularity among the black community has vanished. In a series of searing critiques of Bill Clinton’s policies vis a vis draconian penalties for crack cocaine, tough law and order legislation as well as the disasters for the working class: NAFTA, CAFTA and the deletion of AFDC, the man who was once hailed as the first black president is now persona non grata in the hood where collective hopes of a new president who will bring meaningful reform are soaring free and easy on the winds of change.

Mark Penn should never have accepted Senator Hillary Clinton as a client. As CEO of Burson Marsteller, he had a full plate of professional responsibility. Penn over-reached, and his trademark schtick – telling clients what they want to hear before hitting them with the massive invoice – unraveled his career.

Penn’s tragedy is much broader. The Clinton brand is now discredited. Hillary Clinton is now facing the prospect of deep and permanent damage to not only her personal credibility, but the Democratic Party has lost what was once its premiere brand. There is more. What is now lacking is any exit strategy for Hillary Clinton. The longer she twists slowly in the wind, the deeper and more irreparable the damage to the Clinton Brand. At this point, the best hope available for the Clinton brand is a graceful exit strategy. It should probably go something like this:

• A gracious concession speech as soon as possible after the North Carolina primary;

• Prior to the convention in August, a series of joint appearances featuring: Bill and Hillary happy, smiling, hugging and kissing Barack and Michelle with Chelsea lovingly holding hands with Malia and Sasha;

• Positive beaming references to the Obamas in every public statement from now until the election;

• A genuine commitment to progressive change in Congress;

• A total repudiation of the Bush-Cheney Era in every malevolent dimension of its malignant being;

• A stalwart commitment to a new era for democracy in America and its chief agency, the Democratic Party.

The Clinton family and their massive retinue of courtiers, attendants, hand-maidens, bards, court-jesters and fools has begun to take notice of the hand-writing on the wall. While it is impossible to blame her erstwhile Chief Strategist for every gaffe, mis-step and blunder in their now plague-ridden campaign – she has only herself to blame for her ‘mis-statements’ about her experience dodging bullets in Bosnia – Penn must bear the brunt of the professional criticism. Unlike his historical predecessor, Captain Edward John Smith of the flagship of the White Star Line, RMS Titanic, Penn leapt into a lifeboat and abandoned his role in the Clinton campaign leaving it to others to rearrange the deck chairs for the umpteenth time while he returns phone calls from uneasy clients of Burson Marsteller and even more disturbed members of the board.

With calls for Senator Clinton to abandon what is now seen as little more than a schismatic adventure that risks a fracture along a racial fault-line dividing the Democratic Party just as the Whig Party was fractured by race, some have deduced that the probable motive driving the sinking campaign deeper into the mire is a misplaced belief some attribute to James Carville that they can torpedo Obama’s presidential ambitions; survive the disaster of his loss to McCain and prevail as owners of the Democratic Party through the agency of the now discredited Democratic Leadership Council. With DLC operatives: James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Terry McAuliffe safely back in charge of the DNC - and with that upstart Howard Dean back in Vermont - the Clintons can scheme their way to the presidential nomination in 2012 or so the theory goes.

One prognostication is perfectly clear: If she persists long after the final set of primaries, the damage to the Clinton brand will be irreversible.

SOURCES

Mark Penn Finally Fired

Hillary’s St. Patrick’s Day Massacre

“WHY DOES HILLARY KEEP RUNNING?”

Binomial analysis: Was the New Hampshire Primary Stolen on Behalf of Hillary?

With Tina Turner’s vocals blasting out of the loudspeakers, six thousand North Carolinians filled the atmosphere inside Reynolds Auditorium with sizzling jolts of political electricity. The electric current was transformed into lightning bolts when Michelle Obama stepped onto the platform. She transfixed the audience and delivered a spellbinding speech that kept every eye and ear rapt for the next 68 minutes.

Michelle described her childhood and the sacrifices of her parents that shaped her life with a delivery that was immediate, empassioned and absolutely believable.

Recalling her modest beginnings, Michelle described her early life in Chicago. Her father was a city employee, and her mother was a secretary. Her parents struggled and sacrificed to send both of their gifted children to Princeton.

In Chicago, she went to public schools, where her advisors cautioned her not to apply to Princeton. She graduated cum laude. At Princeton, some of her academic advisors said she should not apply to Harvard Law. She was admitted and graduated Juris Doctor.

Throughout her speech, Michelle related her life to the lives of average Americans. The audience was riveted. She said that times were better for average Americans when she was growing up than they are today when people are under the heavy lash of the depressing Bush-Cheney economic catastrophe. Describing the overburdening bureaucracy that is relentlessly invading the lives of ordinary citizens – from taxation, to insurance, to finance - Michelle used the metaphor of a bar that was constantly shifting position and making the lives of Americans more difficult.

Turning to her husband, Michelle spoke of the parallel sacrifices of his grandparents in Kansas, whom she described as, “carbon copies of my family with one exception: they were white.”

Locked together with the same sets of values, the two high-flying Harvard Law graduates decided to return to the neighborhood on the south side of Chicago to become Community Organizers. They struggled to repay massive college loans that dwarfed their mortgage – a burden that was only lifted when Barack published his two best-selling books.

Never mentioning Hillary Clinton or her husband by name, Michelle reviewed the history of their political campaign in terms that resonated with the audience - a series of shifting bars that the Obamas have not merely crossed or jumped over, but have flown over. Recounting the campaign, she never once referred to the racist attacks launched against her husband.

The audience hung on her every word as she reminded them of the tests they have already conquered:

• the largest mass of financial supporters in world history;

• the largest amount of money ever raised by a presidential primary candidate;

• victory in the Iowa caucuses;

• more victories across the face of America in all sorts of states – red, blue, large, small, urban, rural – than any other campaign;

• a towering lead in the polls;

• a substantial lead in the total number of votes cast and

• a large and growing lead in the number of delegates.

Bursting with enthusiasm for her message, the audience interrupted her with applause over fifty times.

Michelle described her husband as a unique presidential candidate; one who had lived abroad and who enjoyed the benefit of having a multiplicity of traditions and heritages in his immediate ancestry – a rich genealogy and a gifted life that spanned three continents. Elevating and activating the imaginations of the crowd, she implored them to adopt the plea of John Lennon to ‘imagine’ an Obama presidency.

“Imagine what it would be like for America to have a president who understands other cultures.”

“Imagine what it would be like for America to have a president who knows what it is like for the average American family to sacrifice for their children.”

“Imagine what it would be like for America to have a president who understands constitutional law and the workings of the federal, state and local government.”

Thrilling to her message to ‘imagine’ a better future for America, the audience responded to her plea to register voters by the deadline – this Friday the 11th of April.

The audience, the message, the messenger all coalesced in my mind, and I recalled the words of Martin Luther King’s dream. The audience was a mixture of races and ages and walks of life. This was the vision I had shared with classmates in college, activists in every presidential campaign since 1968 – a diverse body of people demanding, dreaming and imagining positive change for America.

This tumultuous throng became a living, vibrant and vital political movement – a pro-democracy movement within America. This is the moment I had been waiting for since the shots rang out in the Ambassador ballroom in June of 1968. We are being lifted on a rising tide of human energy to a new destination that we can only now imagine.

Planetary predicts that Senator Barack Obama will sweep the Democratic presidential primary in North Carolina on the 6th of May.

From 1964 until 1968, General William Westmoreland presented a constant stream of shining, buoyant and uplifting assessments of the potential for American victory in Vietnam. When Westmoreland became Commander of US forces in Vietnam, there were a mere 15,000 troops with boots on the ground. After four years of Westmoreland’s misguided optimism, 535,000 troops had their boots ankle deep in the quagmire of the Vietnamese jungles. In an age long before the internet, Westmoreland’s positive messaging for increasing America’s commitment to military intervention in Vietnam received massive media attention and bolstered public support for what would become an abysmally depressing war.

Tomorrow, General David Petraeus will borrow a page from the playbook of Westmoreland. In his testimony to Congress, Petraeus will present his case that the surge has worked, is working and will continue to work long into what the General will portray as a blissful future. Predictably, the General will demonize the nation and government of Iran as inimical to American policy in Iraq. Citing reports of Iranian battlefield commanders fighting alongside Shia insurgents in Basra, Petraeus’ testimony is being designed to create public demand in the United States for expanding the war in order to resuscitate the presidential prospects of Senator John McCain, the neocons’ best hope for realizing their vision of the future – another century of American imperialism, economic decline and cultural disintegration.

According to the designers of this messaging strategy, ie the usual suspects: Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, the neocons and W - the American public will produce their typical Pavlovian reaction and demand a massive attack in the form of a violent shock and awe bombing raid targeting Iranian strategic, nuclear and military centers. Fortuitously, this plan has been on the drawing boards at the Pentagon for the past four years.

A US flotilla is in position in the Persian Gulf. Armed with nuclear warheads on their Tomahawk missiles, US submarines slide soundlessly past the straits of Hormuz to take up their positions near the coast of Iran to participate in the planetary equivalent of electroshock therapy. The objective of this series of shocks is not the populace of Iran, nor even the greater Middle East, but the American body politic that appears to have grown bored and troubled over the deepening abyss of war in Iraq. In the minds of the neocons, the American people have grown complacent, cowardly and even craven in their attitude to the glorious war in Iraq. A sharp lesson in shock and awe ferocity aimed at a nefarious enemy, a spoke on the Axis of Evil, should awaken America from its dangerous slumber.

In his recent top-secret conversations with King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia, Vice President Cheney informed the king of the forthcoming attack on Iran that could produce nuclear fallout across a broad arc of the region. Shortly after Cheney’s departure, the king informed the public of the threat to their national security and ordered immediate preparations against nuclear fallout. The nuclear material can emanate from either the US attack or the explosion of Iranian nuclear sites – or both.

To underline the seriousness of the threat, Israel has warned Iran that they will take massive retaliatory action should they find themselves under attack. Coming as it does from the world’s third most powerful nuclear nation, the Iranians have not ignored Israel’s bellicose threat. For their part, Iran has proposed a regional missile shield to protect their citizens against a US or Israeli attack – a harbinger of another astronomically expensive arms race of global proportions.

When Petraeus walks into the Congressional hearings, he will face questioning from all three remaining presidential hopefuls. McCain will present no problem for the general. They are reading from the same script. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be on the global stage and under the heat of a huge spotlight. Their public support is predicated on their opposition to US policy in Iraq and the region.

Their performances will set the stage for the unfolding of the scenery for the next act. The Republican plan is to envelope either or both of the Democrats in their web of deceit to legitimize their military failure by expanding the quagmire of naked aggression that is now understood as the Iraq War.

The scene is set. Petraeus will lay out the pretext for war with Iran. McCain will parrot his agreement. Then the spotlight will shine on Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Most international pundits believe that both Democrats will acquiesce to Petraeus’ strident demands for the expansion of the war. The world will be watching, and so will the American electorate.

If either of the Democrats swallows Petraeus’ bait, it will be the end of their personal aspirations to the presidency. If both do, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party as we have known it - and the beginning of a fundamental political realignment in America.

SOURCES

Noam Chomsky, Both Parties well to the right of the population on major issues

Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack

John McCain’s chart-topping single “Bomb Iran”

As a core policy in our pro-democracy mission, Planetary monitors situations involving the denial of democracy. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is one of the world’s most despotic tyrants. In 2002, Mugabe rigged the presidential election and prosecuted Tsvangirai on false charges of treason that carried the death penalty. International outrage helped to protect Tsvangirai from the hangman’s noose, and he was awarded the coveted Democracy Medal by the International Association of Political Consultants. The presidential election held in Zimbabwe only one week ago resulted in Tsvangirai trouncing Mugabe again, but the tyrant is now organizing a new ‘election’ that will be rigged in order to retain his deeply unpopular grasp on power. In the midst of this political maelstrom, Morgan Tsvangirai has issued the statement below. Planetary has supported the MDC and its president from its inception. Planetary urges the IMF to heed Tsvangirai’s plea to withhold the $1 billion from Mugabe in its deliberations this week. Finally, Planetary urges the United Nations and the governments of South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, New Zealand, Australia, India, China and Japan to demand that Robert Mugabe stand accountable to the people of Zimbabwe and to relinquish his presidential office at once.

Morgan Tsvangirai

Once again, Robert Mugabe and his cronies are attempting to maintain their grip on power in Zimbabwe. While disheartening, this act of political thuggery does not diminish the victory of democracy over dictatorship in a country ravaged by misrule and ignorance. Ultimately, this is a victory for the strong hearts and sturdy backs that have carried us here: a victory for all Zimbabweans.

But democracy is an orphan in Zimbabwe. Since the infamous universal declaration of independence in 1965 made by the white government of Ian Smith in what was then Rhodesia - in an effort to block the extension of suffrage to the country’s black majority - the cry of democracy has been ignored. Mugabe’s 28-year rule has similarly undermined the development of institutional democracy.

Adept at stealing elections from the hands of voters, Mugabe is now amassing government troops; blocking court proceedings where we have attempted to seek an order simply for the electoral commission to release the final tally of the March 29 poll; raiding the offices of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC); and casting a pall of suppression and gloom over the country. The feared militias, made up of misguided activists and the same war veterans who pushed for and benefited from the disastrous land confiscations from the late 1990s, are being mobilised. This can only mean, despite some earlier evidence to the contrary, that sanity has been discarded along with truth in the offices of Zanu-PF.

The parliamentary majority the MDC has already attained has clearly been replicated in the presidential results. The MDC has tracked every polling station and recorded the results as they are released, and we can guarantee that Zanu-PF and Mugabe have met their demise in the face of Zimbabwean democracy. As official results will confirm when at last released, a mooted presidential run-off (initiated if no individual reaches a 50% threshold) is a sham. Our country is on a razor’s edge.

How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths? Why is it that a supposed “war on terror” ignores the very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?

This is a time for strong action. We urge the International Monetary Fund, at its meeting this week, to withhold the £1bn of aid to Zimbabwe unless the defeated ex-president accepts the election results in full and hands over the reins of power. This is also the time for firm diplomacy. Major powers here, such as South Africa, the US and Britain, must act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabe’s suicidal reign and oblige him and his minions to retire.

We have assured Mugabe that the new government will not pursue him legally through government offices. The work ahead is monumental and we need no further self-made distractions. Recrimination is not on the new government’s job list. Our agenda is to restore the rule of law and good governance; to face up to our dire health problems, including an HIV-Aids epidemic; to reconstruct our once cutting-edge education system; to bring our abundant farmlands back into health; to tackle rampant inflation and over 70% unemployment; to encourage foreign investment and public works spending; to depoliticise our security services; to stamp out corruption and graft. Every day the new government is denied, these problems each get worse.

The new leadership is committed to nurturing democracy in Zimbabwe and to begin rebuilding our shattered country. It is time to make a stand.

· Morgan Tsvangirai is president of the Movement for Democratic Change

Mugabe rigs election results

Michael Carmichael’s Memorandum to the Foreign Office on the trial of Morgan Tsvangirai

Last year, I had lunch with Jimmy and Rosalind Carter who were in Oxford for Encaenia, the annual ceremony where the former president received his Honorary Doctorate.

As a Democrat, I am immensely proud of the Carter legacy - EPA, Affirmative Action, Human Rights, Camp David Accords, no US military interventions (the only US administration of the 20th century not to invade or attack a foreign nation); equal rights and many other progressive achievements. Carter’s presidency is certainly the high-point of social progress in America.

Carter is popular in North Carolina, where I have already heard conversations in public places praising him for his statements earlier today about Obama.

Carter’s endorsement of Obama - confirmed by his own testimony below - is a major political development. On the global scale, Carter is the most popular former US president by a very wide margin over the two other contenders for that honor: George Bush, Sr. (who is still reviled globally) and Bill Clinton, who is popular but whose presidency is currently undergoing a sharp revision in light of his negative contributions to the current presidential campaign.

Many of Clinton’s policies were not appreciated by the international community in their day: NAFTA; CAFTA; US influence at the WTO and World Bank; numerous military interventions including the bombing of Sudan and Iraq as well as other nations; the expansion of NATO; ‘wagging the dog’ during the Monica Lewinsky scandal by bombing Baghdad; draconian penalties for possession of crack cocaine (now seen as a sop to the racist right); the massive expansion of the burgeoning US prison population and the repeal of Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the backbone of what little there once was of US social security now interpreted as yet another racially inspired policy.

Although he is still personally popular, Clinton’s post presidency has not impressed many outside of America. While Clinton’s charity has apparently contributed to lowering the cost of US manufactured drugs for AIDS in Africa - there was little political risk in such a project. It is noticeable that Clinton has said relatively little about the excesses of the Bush-Cheney administration: the Patriot Act; the Iraq War and the torture and rendition of prisoners. He has been much more reticent than Carter to criticize Bush and Cheney.

It is no secret that support for Clinton amongst the US African-American community has taken a nosedive since his very unwise attacks on Obama that began in December. For quite some time, Party members have been astonished at his intimate relationship with George Bush, Sr. who many believe to be serving as a surrogate father figure for the underprivileged Southern boy who from Hope, Arkansas. These developments have not gone unnoticed in the rest of the world. On American websites, rumors are rife with reports of Clinton’s alleged use of his presidential library as a vacuum for foreign income that has been estimated at more than $100 million in the past 2 years alone.

Carter’s bold and perfectly timed comments now open the door for Gore and Edwards. When will they cross the threshold?

See: Former U.S. President Carter hints at supporting Obama

Copying a page from the Karl Rove playbook, Robert Mugabe ordered the Electoral Commission of Zimbabwe to rig the results of last weekend’s presidential election.

This is not the first time that Mugabe has copied Rove-Bush-Cheney-Baker, et al. After the rigging of the US presidential election in 2000, Mugabe stole Zimbabwe’s election in 2002. Then, he added a chapter to the book of brazen election stealing. Mugabe ordered the prosecution of the winning presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, on trumped-up charges of treason – a capital offense.

Tsvangirai after CIO beating. Mugabe inset.

Tsvangirai’s trial lasted more than two years. The notorious rogue Israeli intelligence agent, Ari Ben Menashe, fabricated evidence against Tsvangirai. The judge, Paddington Garwe, eventually threw the case out of court and acquitted Tsvangirai. Then Tsvangirai returned to his political career as president of the Movement for Democratic Change. In 2007, Mugabe ordered Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to beat Tsvangirai. The beating of Tsvangirai triggered international outrage. Continue reading ‘Mugabe rigs election results’…

Limbaugh’s motives, however, have been perfectly clear from the start. “I’m asking people to cross over, and if they can stomach it and I know it’s a difficult thing to do, vote for Clinton,” Limbaugh said before the Ohio primary. The goal, he explained, was to ensure Barack Obama was “bloodied up politically” and to extend the Democratic primary “soap opera.”

The Nation, March 25, 2008

The annual convention of the Young Democrats of North Carolina (YDNC) scheduled for this weekend, appears as if it will be a vortex of political intrigue. With appearances by John Edwards, Chelsea Clinton and James Carville - there is a thinly disguised agenda operating at some level to create the impression of a pending endorsement of Senator Clinton by former Senator Edwards. However, the scene behind the arras is much more convoluted.

In actual point of fact, Senator Hillary Clinton’s bold campaign to become the first woman to be nominated for the presidency by a major party has already failed. The arithmetic of the nomination procedure no longer supports her endgame strategy. The Clinton campaign could be charitably described as the “walking wounded,” but the prognosis is actually quite grave. The political wounds Senator Clinton has sustained render her campaign untenable. The bottom line is now crystal clear: Senator Clinton is no longer viable as a presidential candidate. Continue reading ‘is the clinton dynasty crumbling?’…

It has been a long Good Friday even though Easter arrives early this year. Today’s full moon coincides with yesterday’s vernal equinox to deliver a very early Passover and Easter.

This holiday weekend, elite political circles will be charged with talk of a Republican “Double Whammy,” the internal nomenclature for a top secret plan to deliver the White House to the hand-picked candidate of the Bush-Cheney junta.

While the media is filled with stories analyzing and dissecting the White House plans for war with Iran in the wake of the sacking of Admiral William Fallon, only a select few politicians and their minions will be privy to a plan that it is arresting in its boldness and predicated on the establishment of an ironclad pretext for the forthcoming US hard-power attack on the regime in Tehran.

Some Republican strategists have become apoplectic at the rise of Barack Obama. Sagacious Republicans now see Obama as the most dangerous threat their party has faced since the Great Depression, when FDR relieved them of power for the next twenty years.

Republicans have never been as motivated to maintain their weakening grasp on power as they are today. The new era of Republican ruthlessness launched in 2000, when James Baker and his cronies, John Roberts and John Bolton, engineered the legal coup d’etat to rescue their lost election and place the Bush-Cheney junta in power.

Karl Rove is deemed to be a mastermind of political strategy, but Rove’s presidential campaigns have both resulted in colossal failures. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote, a factor that tarnished the first Bush-Cheney administration with the taint of illegitimacy. In 2004, Rove’s plan led to what appeared to be a narrow margin for the re-election of a sitting president in time of war – in fact, it was the smallest proportional margin for a presidential re-election since 1828. It eventually became apparent that Rove and his Republican operatives had manipulated votes across the red and blue spectrum of states using a veritable cornucopia of tactics for rigging and fixing the outcome. Continue reading ‘republicans plan double-whammy’…

Two senior members of the Clinton campaign team, Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer, in a conference call with reporters today, signalled she intends to continue in the race. They said that the next two contests, in Wyoming on March 8, and Mississippi, on March 11, suited Obama, a senator from Illinois, better but they were confident about Pennsylvannia.

Ewan McCaskill, Texas showdown for Obama and Clinton, Guardian Unlimited, Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Senior advisors to Senator Hillary Clinton urging her to fight onward to win the Democratic nomination for president have won a heated internal argument.

Tensions within the Clinton campaign have hit the ceiling with finger-pointing episodes punctuated by press conferences to lay blame on senior members of staff for the depressing turn of events – a dozen straight losses and rapidly shriveling majorities that have shrunk to slender hair’s breadth margins in states where she enjoyed towering leads only ten days ago. Continue reading ’schism?’…

With comments in Newsweek urging her to “get out now,” events are rapidly converging that will precipitate a pivotal crisis in the political careers of both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States.

In their debate last week, Senator Barack Obama pivoted left to sever any lingering fascination for the former First Lady that might have been smoldering in the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Senator Obama’s tactical recalibration of his candidacy and its message was a masterstroke. In her final line of the debate, Senator Clinton acknowledged her predicament with an oracular pronouncement that many have interpreted as either a concession or a farewell to the presidential arena. Continue reading ‘clintons in crisis’…

Barack Obama last night established himself as the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, winning primary contests in the Washington DC area by overwhelming margins over Hillary Clinton.

Guardian-Unlimited, February 13, 2008

One week after Super Tuesday, seismic tremors in the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama signal a major telluric disturbance scheduled for the fourth of March.

While the results of Super Tuesday gave the largest palm to Senator Clinton for amassing victories in the major states of New York and quite unexpectedly in California combined with a surprising second ‘upset’ victory on the same day in Massachussetts, Senator Obama maintained his viability with a string of victories in less populous states from Idaho to Alabama.

While both candidates put brave faces on their Super Tuesday performances, internal rumblings ultimately revealed glaring fault-lines marring the momentum of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign while Mr. Obama’s momentum remained intact as he confidently rolled on to a cluster of increasingly impressive victories.

The first shockwave to strike the Clinton campaign was very bad news, indeed. Less than twenty-four hours after Super Tuesday, word of a massive personal loan to her campaign of $5 million alerted astute politicians to the fact that the Clintons had drastically miscalculated their finances. While Obama’s campaign was generating one million dollars per day via online donations from small donors, Clinton’s big donor fundraising prowess was suddenly fumbling to pay wages and make crucial media buys in important states because their bank accounts suddenly ran dry. Continue reading ‘momentum supremacy’…

Polls and pundits all agree that Barack Obama is poised to do well in Tuesday’s Potomac Primary in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC. None of these individual contests are major primaries for the delegate counts are relatively small, but the prize from tomorrow’s contest will be momentum. Amidst the high drama of the presidential campaign, a series of secret meetings are unfolding in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the seat of erstwhile presidential candidate, John Edwards.

After a breathtakingly successful career as a plaintiff’s attorney in North Carolina where Edwards sued corporations on behalf of injured employees, he embarked on a political career. Edwards’ decision to abandon his lucrative legal practice that had earned him over $100 million in fees came after the heartbreaking death of his sixteen year old son, Wade, who was killed when his Jeep crashed in 1996. In his first political campaign, Edwards was elected to the US Senate. Using his considerable rhetorical skills, Edwards cut a swathe through the Senate cloakroom and made some memorable statements from the floor.

Unfortunately, his most memorable work was in support of a bill he co-sponsored with Senator Joseph Lieberman that was labeled: Iraq War Resolution. The Lieberman-Edwards bill was eventually replaced by a house resolution, so it did not go for a vote. In support of the Lieberman-Edwards Iraq War Resolution, Edwards stated, Continue reading ‘potomac primary & the edwards factor’…