Arun Shrivastava

This is the first time I watched the inauguration of any US President. My interest was fired more because of an increasing network of very concerned American friends who want a more humane society: for themselves and for the rest of the world.

Watching from half a world away, the entire drama was worth a stock shot. Many people waving flags, some in solemn contemplation, and others with a ray of hope that better days are here again and bad old days are gone.

Obama was consistent. He turned out to be the epitome of a political class that has perfected the art of saying much without meaning anything serious. Perhaps, instead of Aretha Franklin and Yo Yo Ma, Gilad Atzmon could have done a better job with his gut wrenching 'Pizza On The Park' and added some realism to the grand US$170-million political opera. Solemn occasions demand soul and a bit of classical to pacify the troubled souls of the glitterati and the chatteratti. The democracy was shivering, and clapping to keep warm, while the soulless sociopaths were jingling their diamonds and pearls, whispering inanities to each other, for jobs consistently well done. Here was another.

'The-price-is-worth-it' Madeleine Albright was absent. That would have added credence to a democratic president whose forebears did what he may just be asked to do several times during his tenure.

Democratic societies, those who vote their leaders to positions of eminence, deserving or otherwise, always see 'peaceful transition'. Even if 290 million had not voted, and even if just ten million had, with a one-vote majority for Obama, he would preside over the peaceful transition. And he would make his inaugural speech to the 290 million who did not vote him to power. We are faced with this sort of horse trading every election. The method was perfected into something like the edicts of Moses even before the people had a chance to install checks or balances. Now it is almost religion.

What does it mean to us? Does it mean anything to us? Does it mean anything to the millions in Kenya from where Hussain Obama, the 44th POTUS, comes from? In Kenya water is far more expensive than beer. Plain simple water, more expensive than beer. Obama did not promise to ensure cheap fresh water to Kenyans.

He did not promise a radical departure from brutalization of the American people and the global societies.

He did not say he would withdraw US troops from Iraq because 'Americans have no business to invade peaceful countries.' He did not offer an apology that millions of innocent people have been slain by US occupation forces. He did not apologize that over five million Iraqis are homeless because of what the Bush Administration did.

He did not say that he would withdraw his troops and leave Afghanistan alone because the previous administration made a ghastly mistake. Oops, sorry. He did not apologize that the previous POTUS's deputy [the one who was carried to the podium on a wheelchair] actually carried out the 9/11 events from his cushy chair paid for by the American taxpayers that killed over 3,000 innocent Americans when the towers collapsed and started that 'smoke 'em out" campaign. He did not offer an apology that the Global Terrorists actually were surrounding him, right there, while he was swearing to the US Constitution.

He did not say that he would seek nuclear-free world and desist from pushing nuclear reactor on client states like India. Nor did he say that he can and would stop cross border terrorism by stopping all unaccounted cash transfers to a pseudo-democratic regime in Pakistan.

He did not say that his administration would stop interfering in the internal affairs of over 200 countries that never raised a finger at the United States of America. He did not promise his people who voted him to power that he would not use their tax money to wage wars across every continent to steal others' resources that just a handful of US corporations need to make abnormal profits that fund the politics of the United States of America. And its profligacy. And its global criminality.

He did not promise his own people that he would tell the truth about the illegal US tax-laws and make amends. Make amends that he would ensure that no President ever spent 170 million dollars of people's money to watch an idiot take the oath of allegiance to a Constitution that was consigned to a White House dustbin by that baby Bush, all wrapped up in warm woolen, looking haggard, sick, and as usual mentally challenged. Barrack Hussain did not promise that the proud American citizens would never ever face an intellectually challenged administration.

He did not promise to win back America for the American people from the 13 criminal bankers who actually print the US dollar, the currency that the world must accept as its reserve currency, a piece of paper not even worth its size or weight as toilet paper. He did not promise the world that he would never fool the world.

He did not promise the American people that he would stop bailing out failed banks and corrupt managers who have already stolen over 8.5 trillion dollars from the US tax-payers with a heaps of help from the previous Bush administration.

He did not promise the world that he would clean up the morass of US based corrupt charities and foundations that finance a network of spurious non-governmental organizations across the world that attract the best minds and that have taken the anger out of the youth against corruption and oppression in their respective countries. They have virtually become the sub-contractors of US global agenda of full spectrum dominance. The neo-conservative's New World Order has its foot soldiers in place all over the world. Perhaps it slipped out of his mind. POTUS is above minor mindless criticism; the foot soldiers take care of the mundane…all over the world.

He did not promise that he would stop American corporations advancing their agenda of contaminating natural seeds the world over. He did not offer any apologies on behalf of a US corporation Monsanto that carried out the largest unapproved biological experiment on American citizens. He did not offer any apologies to the rest of the world for making amends for Monsanto contaminating the world's water, air and land and every living thing and every living human being.

He did not promise, nor gave indication, that he would ensure that American citizens would be assured of clean water, healthy food, good quality of healthcare and education. He did not promise that he would reverse dumbing down of America. Instead, I almost felt that he genuinely believed that the whole world is so dumbed down that they would actually watch this worse-than-Bollywood disaster called Hussain Saheb.

And I can vouch that I actually saw that Hussain saheb's right sideburn was longer than left. A POTUS who can't even identify a competent barber is now saddled with a pre-selected team of plumbers and janitors to spread more mayhem all over the world.

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Arun Shrivastava, MA, MBA, MBIM, CMC is an accredited management consultant, author of many books, reports, policy papers and articles and regular contributor to several news websites (www.globalresearch.ca, www.thepeoplesvoice.org, www.mynews.in/ etc). A former officer of Economic Development Unit Birmingham, UK] and former visiting professor of Strategic Management and Business Policy at International Management Institute, New Delhi (1990-94), he is a founder-member of Himalayan Policy Campaign Committee. He lives in Delhi and can be reached at arun1951@yahoo.com.