There is an ominous operation that will soon appear in south Chicago’s Jackson Park, one that will advance the cause of political disruption and international conflict around the world. The Barack Obama Center and Presidential Library will become a magnet for those malevolent forces wanting to advance Obama’s “existing international order” and a nightmare for nations and leaders hoping to stem the tide of globalization, free trade, open borders, and social and religious bedlam.
On September 20, Obama gave an inkling as to the priorities of his center in his final speech as U.S. president before the United Nations General Assembly. Obama’s presidential center may be the most malignant for the United States and the rest of the world in the history of non-profit and tax-exempt centers dedicated to preserving the memories of past American presidents.
Unlike the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, which has advanced the cause of democracy and free elections around the world, the Obama Center, run by the tax-exempt Obama Foundation, will advance the concept of American bullying of countries, leaders, and political parties that fail to fit in with Obama’s worldview of a globalized world full of compliant and complacent participants. Obama lectured the General Assembly that the “existing international order” is here to stay and broadly hinted that anyone or any nation that does not agree with it should suffer the consequences from a globalized world.
Although they have done their fair share of harm to international relations, the top priority of the William J. Clinton Foundation and Clinton Presidential Center has been to shake down countries around the world for donations in return for high-level U.S. government access. In Clinton’s view, it has been “pay-to-play,” regardless of the human rights records of the countries kicking in the cash to the Clinton Foundation and associated “charities.” In contrast, the Obama Center will be a major international status quo propaganda operation to challenge nationalist, secessionist, and popular right-wing and left-wing governments and political parties the world over.
In his speech, Obama laid out what he considers to be threats to his idea of a unitary world under supranational authorities like the United Nations and European Union. Obama said large nations, even his own, must be willing to give up some of their sovereignty and abide by overarching international laws and conventions. That would, of course, include the inability of nation-states to govern the flow of non-citizens across their national borders.
Ironically, while Obama and like-minded globalists like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, in co-sponsoring the migrant conference, urged the world’s civilized nations to accept possibly millions of refugees from such terrorist breeding grounds as Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, Chad, and Ukraine, little was said about Obama’s administration having done so much to create refugees and displaced persons in the first place. “Regime change” and constant U.S. drone attacks on civilian targets have their consequences and one of them has been millions of migrants and refugees.
Obama’s primary targets and, presumably, those of the embryonic Obama Center are: aggressive nationalism; crude populism, which Obama separated into the categories of “right-wing” and “far left”; unfettered migration across international borders and refugee “rights”; and climate change and trade barriers—not radical Sunni jihadism—which Obama sees as fostering international terrorism and sectarian violence. Unlike his past speeches before the General Assembly, Obama’s final General Assembly speech remained uninterrupted by applause from the assembled delegates.
It is clear that in addition to “right-wing” populists like Donald Trump; National Front leader and 2017 French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen; the leaders of the UK Independence Party and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party; and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Obama includes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and others in the category of “far left populists.” It is conceivable that flush with millions of dollars from billionaires like George Soros and Evelyn de Rothschild, the Obama Center will serve as a major disruptor of peace and cease fires around the world, while it masks its true intentions with Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate status.
The Obama Center will also be at the forefront of providing jobs to migrants at the expense of the citizens of nations that are forced to accept them. Obama’s UN initiative on migrants received pledges from such firms as Accenture, Airbnb, Citigroup, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, and IKEA to fund the relocation of migrants and provide them with jobs, many quality jobs that will give them preference over American, Canadian, British, French, German, and other workers.
Unlike his veiled criticism of Russia’s president and America’s Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Obama had no sharp words at the UN for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has imprisoned thousands of Turkish citizens in a virtual nationalistic and Islamist pogrom. Following Obama’s speech one day later, Erdogan complained to the General Assembly that all of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members are “Christian countries” representing only “Europe, America, and Asia.”
Erdogan’s comments came as a surprise to permanent member China, which is officially an atheist country but has an overwhelming majority of hundreds of millions of practicing Buddhists and only a small number of Christians within its borders. Obama has sought Erdogan’s counsel on a number of issues dealing with the Middle East and Islamist terrorism and it shows.
The Obama Center will also back gay rights, particularly in largely non-Muslim countries like Russia, Uganda, China, Poland, Guyana, Ethiopia, and Jamaica, where such practices violate religious and social customs and mores. The Obama Center has already received upward to $1 million from the Gill Foundation of Denver, which supports gay and lesbian rights. Regardless of its commitment to gay rights, the Obama Center will steer clear of criticizing Muslim nations for their policies toward gays. After all, it can be expected that, like the Clinton Foundation, the Obama Center will find itself awash in funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
As gleaned from his UN speech, the Obama Center will also champion the cause of international “free trade” agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and oppose further “Brexit” attempts within the EU. At the UN, Obama called for more trade agreements like the TPP and it is certain that given some of his center’s deep-pocketed corporate donors, lobbying for further free trade agreements will be a major focus of the Obama Center. One such agreement will be the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), which has run into severe opposition in Europe, particularly in Germany and France, and another move to create a Western Hemisphere free trade area extending from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic.
Anti-China activities will also be a priority for the Obama Center. Obama told the General Assembly that Russia and China were to blame for “militarizing some rocks and reefs,” primarily a reference to the South China Sea but also a glance at the growing number of Russian defensive military bases on uninhabited Russian islands in the Arctic region.
In its opposition to “aggressive nationalism,” the Obama Center will find a number of partners, particularly Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and the U.S. Institute of Peace, which have all targeted the governments of Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and more recently, the Philippines, with increasing ferocity and vigor.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
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Beware the coming Obama Center, a force for conflict and disruption
Posted on September 27, 2016 by Wayne Madsen
There is an ominous operation that will soon appear in south Chicago’s Jackson Park, one that will advance the cause of political disruption and international conflict around the world. The Barack Obama Center and Presidential Library will become a magnet for those malevolent forces wanting to advance Obama’s “existing international order” and a nightmare for nations and leaders hoping to stem the tide of globalization, free trade, open borders, and social and religious bedlam.
On September 20, Obama gave an inkling as to the priorities of his center in his final speech as U.S. president before the United Nations General Assembly. Obama’s presidential center may be the most malignant for the United States and the rest of the world in the history of non-profit and tax-exempt centers dedicated to preserving the memories of past American presidents.
Unlike the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, which has advanced the cause of democracy and free elections around the world, the Obama Center, run by the tax-exempt Obama Foundation, will advance the concept of American bullying of countries, leaders, and political parties that fail to fit in with Obama’s worldview of a globalized world full of compliant and complacent participants. Obama lectured the General Assembly that the “existing international order” is here to stay and broadly hinted that anyone or any nation that does not agree with it should suffer the consequences from a globalized world.
Although they have done their fair share of harm to international relations, the top priority of the William J. Clinton Foundation and Clinton Presidential Center has been to shake down countries around the world for donations in return for high-level U.S. government access. In Clinton’s view, it has been “pay-to-play,” regardless of the human rights records of the countries kicking in the cash to the Clinton Foundation and associated “charities.” In contrast, the Obama Center will be a major international status quo propaganda operation to challenge nationalist, secessionist, and popular right-wing and left-wing governments and political parties the world over.
In his speech, Obama laid out what he considers to be threats to his idea of a unitary world under supranational authorities like the United Nations and European Union. Obama said large nations, even his own, must be willing to give up some of their sovereignty and abide by overarching international laws and conventions. That would, of course, include the inability of nation-states to govern the flow of non-citizens across their national borders.
Ironically, while Obama and like-minded globalists like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, in co-sponsoring the migrant conference, urged the world’s civilized nations to accept possibly millions of refugees from such terrorist breeding grounds as Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, Chad, and Ukraine, little was said about Obama’s administration having done so much to create refugees and displaced persons in the first place. “Regime change” and constant U.S. drone attacks on civilian targets have their consequences and one of them has been millions of migrants and refugees.
Obama’s primary targets and, presumably, those of the embryonic Obama Center are: aggressive nationalism; crude populism, which Obama separated into the categories of “right-wing” and “far left”; unfettered migration across international borders and refugee “rights”; and climate change and trade barriers—not radical Sunni jihadism—which Obama sees as fostering international terrorism and sectarian violence. Unlike his past speeches before the General Assembly, Obama’s final General Assembly speech remained uninterrupted by applause from the assembled delegates.
It is clear that in addition to “right-wing” populists like Donald Trump; National Front leader and 2017 French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen; the leaders of the UK Independence Party and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party; and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Obama includes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and others in the category of “far left populists.” It is conceivable that flush with millions of dollars from billionaires like George Soros and Evelyn de Rothschild, the Obama Center will serve as a major disruptor of peace and cease fires around the world, while it masks its true intentions with Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate status.
The Obama Center will also be at the forefront of providing jobs to migrants at the expense of the citizens of nations that are forced to accept them. Obama’s UN initiative on migrants received pledges from such firms as Accenture, Airbnb, Citigroup, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, and IKEA to fund the relocation of migrants and provide them with jobs, many quality jobs that will give them preference over American, Canadian, British, French, German, and other workers.
Unlike his veiled criticism of Russia’s president and America’s Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Obama had no sharp words at the UN for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has imprisoned thousands of Turkish citizens in a virtual nationalistic and Islamist pogrom. Following Obama’s speech one day later, Erdogan complained to the General Assembly that all of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members are “Christian countries” representing only “Europe, America, and Asia.”
Erdogan’s comments came as a surprise to permanent member China, which is officially an atheist country but has an overwhelming majority of hundreds of millions of practicing Buddhists and only a small number of Christians within its borders. Obama has sought Erdogan’s counsel on a number of issues dealing with the Middle East and Islamist terrorism and it shows.
The Obama Center will also back gay rights, particularly in largely non-Muslim countries like Russia, Uganda, China, Poland, Guyana, Ethiopia, and Jamaica, where such practices violate religious and social customs and mores. The Obama Center has already received upward to $1 million from the Gill Foundation of Denver, which supports gay and lesbian rights. Regardless of its commitment to gay rights, the Obama Center will steer clear of criticizing Muslim nations for their policies toward gays. After all, it can be expected that, like the Clinton Foundation, the Obama Center will find itself awash in funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
As gleaned from his UN speech, the Obama Center will also champion the cause of international “free trade” agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and oppose further “Brexit” attempts within the EU. At the UN, Obama called for more trade agreements like the TPP and it is certain that given some of his center’s deep-pocketed corporate donors, lobbying for further free trade agreements will be a major focus of the Obama Center. One such agreement will be the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), which has run into severe opposition in Europe, particularly in Germany and France, and another move to create a Western Hemisphere free trade area extending from Tierra del Fuego to the Canadian Arctic.
Anti-China activities will also be a priority for the Obama Center. Obama told the General Assembly that Russia and China were to blame for “militarizing some rocks and reefs,” primarily a reference to the South China Sea but also a glance at the growing number of Russian defensive military bases on uninhabited Russian islands in the Arctic region.
In its opposition to “aggressive nationalism,” the Obama Center will find a number of partners, particularly Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and the U.S. Institute of Peace, which have all targeted the governments of Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and more recently, the Philippines, with increasing ferocity and vigor.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).