Issues Obama Must Not Avoid, Again

A cross-post from Truthout Live Blog summarises my thoughts exactly.

History will remember the 2012 presidential election campaign as being among the wackiest, most expensive, least informative, whiplash-inducing events ever seen in real life on this planet. Remember the GOP primaries? The hilarious "anyone-but-Mitt" frenzy that gave the likes of Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann their own star turn? Magic. That wonderful carnival of nonsense has delivered Mitt Romney and Barack Obama to this, the finish line, at last. No more campaign commercials carpet-bombing the airwaves; after this, you get to be bombarded by Christmas advertising for the next two months. It's almost like a punishment, really. 

-William Rivers Pitt, 06 November 2012

Obama has once again won the votes of the American people but will he lead a congress that tackles real issues that are undeniably of grave importance. To begin with two, an environmental disaster and a nuclear war might be a good start. The UN has recently produced reports on global warming claiming that summer ice may be gone by 2020 and not 2050. I do not see how drilling more oil helps this issue at all. The Obama administration has to rethink its policies on climate change and do more than just promise limiting emissions in   cooperation with other nations of the world.

On the possibility of a nuclear war, the debate is around the US, Israel and Iran. Israel has always refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty which Iran is a signatory to yet it still continues to enjoy US unremitting support. Even though the NPT guarantees nations the right to enrich uranium, we all know that Israel doesn't want this and whatever Israel does not like is almost tantamount to what the US does not like. Would the US go on to bomb Iran if it insists on enriching uranium? Israel insists the only way it can even start talking about a  nuclear free Middle East is if the region is peaceful yet we know full well the misery it inflicts on Palestine.

As Noam Chomsky put it and as I shall plainly relay here, "We could be moving toward a devastating war, possibly even nuclear. Straightforward ways exist to overcome this threat, but they will not be taken unless there is large-scale public activism demanding that the opportunity be pursued. This in turn is highly unlikely as long as these matters remain off the agenda, not just in the electoral circus, but in the media and larger national debate.

Elections are run by the public relations industry. Its primary task is commercial advertising, which is designed to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices – the exact opposite of how markets are supposed to work, but certainly familiar to anyone who has watched television.

It’s only natural that when enlisted to run elections, the industry would adopt the same procedures in the interests of the paymasters, who certainly don’t want to see informed citizens making rational choices.

The victims, however, do not have to obey, in either case. Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one"

Attributed directly to Noam Chomsky on Issues That Obama and Romney Avoid.