An Interview With `The World Is Turning' Author Don Paul--Part 2

On April 14, 2007, New Orleans-based writer-poet-musician-Marathon runner-activist Don Paul was the Chief Prosecutor for the "San Diego Citizen's Grand Jury on the Crimes of September 11, 2001 in New York City" event that was held at San Diego State University. He co-founded the organization Rebuild Green three days after Hurricane Katrina and moved from San Francisco to New Orleans in January 2006 to help with effort for recovery there. The author of more than 20 books and the producer of more than 20 albums, Paul was recently interviewed by email about the Democratic Obama Administration's first 100 days and about his most recent book: The World Is Turning: `9/11,' The Movement for Justice & Reclaiming America for the World. (The text of this interview was originally posted on the http://blog.puppetgov.com site. See below for part 1).

When Barack Obama was campaigning for U.S. President last year he claimed that he would bring "change," "peace" and "prosperity" to the United States and the world--if U.S. voters elected him. With regard to responding to the 9/11 Truth Movement's demands for a full investigation of what actually happened on September 11, 2001, do you think the Democratic Obama Administration has brought sufficient "change" during its first 100 days in office?

Don Paul [DP]: I don’t know of any change between the current U.S. Administration’s lack of response to such demands and the prior U.S. Administration’s lack of response to such demands.

Let me add that I think it would be useful to take Presidents and skin-tones out of the picture if we’re trying for accurate analysis. To me, Barack Obama is clearly the most gifted U.S. President since JFK. To me, Barack Obama can be a very appealing person. In my view the personal attributes of U.S. Presidents never affect the agendas they’ve been installed to fulfill—unless they rebel, as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and John F. Kennedy rebelled at control of our Government by financiers.

Jeffrey Davidow is Obama’s chief advisor for Latin America—and Jeffrey Davidow at the U.S. Embassy in Chile, 1971 to 1974, approved the fascist Pinochet regime and its mass murders after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Paul Volcker heads Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board—and Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System in the Carter and Reagan Administration brought interests rates up to 21.5% in the early 1980s, thereby bringing ruin to millions of farmers and other manual workers around the world. Timothy Geithner as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2008 oversaw exactly the excesses and criminality that have brought misery and crises to working-class and middle-class Americans. And we’ll simply note the old-school Trilateralists who endorse this Administration—Zbignew Brzezinski, who advised Obama at Columbia University in 1983, and Henry Kissinger, who employed Geithner at his consulting firm from 1985 to 1988.

These operatives have nothing to do with idealistic beliefs in Barack Obama—beliefs in “Hope” for “Change”—beliefs that helped to make Obama the first African-American U.S. President. A wish for belief in ideals is still the true hope of millions—or billions—of people around the world. Such a wish, or love, or belief in potentialities, has kind of animated and tortured me for decades. I have to say now that while the shell of the ship the United States wears a new face, it’s secret compartments hold the same old goods, weapons, and elitists’ bills of ownership. (end of part 2)