2002, Conversations with History, Berkeley, globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations, Harry Kreisler is executive producer and host of the series, which is produced at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California - Berkeley.
Power is asked what she might advise a president to do about the Israel-Palestine situation. At :52 she said necessary action "might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import..." As she mentions this fearsome "constituency," Power softly chuckles knowingly as if this is something everyone knows about. Continuing, she said it may mean investing billions not in servicing Israel's military but in the new state of Palestine, and billions to support "meaningful military presence," at 1:22, "a mammoth protection force." ...What could be the "domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import"?...The taxpayers of what country are to be enslaved in service of this "investment"?
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In 2005, 3 years later, Obama called her.
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Samantha Power is married to Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein. They met while working on Obama's campaign.
2/28/2008, "Samantha Power: Obama and Me," The Nation, Jon Wiener
"Samantha Power is Barack Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, but when his office first called her in 2005, she thought, "who is this guy?"
Her 2003 book on genocide, "A Problem from Hell," won a Pulitzer Prize, and she's a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. In a recent interview I asked her why Obama called her. "His office said he had just read my book, and he wanted to talk about, literally, 'a smart, tough, and humane foreign policy.' No one from the US government had every called me - no mayor, no school board head."
And why didn't she know who he was? "I had been out of the country, in Sudan, at the time of Barack Obama's national coming out, which was the Democratic National Convention of 2004." When she asked around, she heard he was a great speaker. "So I went onto iTunes and downloaded his speech and got on the shuttle down to Washington and listened to the speech on the plane. And I had a cry. I couldn't believe the speech, couldn't believe the country he was telling me I lived in.
"And then I went and met with him. We were supposed to meet for an hour. One hour gave way to two, then three. Entering the fourth hour, I heard myself saying, 'why don't I quit my job at Harvard and come and intern in your office and answer the phones or do whatever you want?' It was literally that spontaneous."...
What was it about that three-hour conversation that changed her mind? "It was the rigor of the interrogation that I was subjected to," she said. "He really pushed me. Barack is incredibly empirical and non-ideological. He's very aware of the tectonic plate shifts in the global order - the rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, the loss of influence by the US -- and how those affect your ability to get what you want, on anything from global warming to getting out of Iraq to stopping genocide. I thought, if you're interested in helping change the world in your small way, grandiose as that sounds, even if I was just answering his phones, I would have more impact than writing these big books that I put out ever half decade or so."...
But beyond that, she said, Obama has "a plan to get out of Iraq responsibly. He is willing to make the Iraqi people central to his plan: to think about moving people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods if that was required; creating a war crimes commission; giving two billion dollars in aid to Iraq's neighbors who are sheltering these refugees."...
Samantha Power's latest book is a biography of UN diplomat Sergio Vieiro de Mello called "Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.""
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Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein marry, met while working on Obama campaign
4/5/2008, "From campaigns to champagne as friends of Obama tie the knot," Irish Independent, Anne Lucey
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Samantha's husband Cass Sunstein is now Obama's Czar of Regulation. Sunstein believes in covert government control but only if the government has good intentions, such as his own.
1/15/2010, "Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal," Salon.com Glenn Greenwald
"Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). ...
How could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government "conspiracy theories," discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good -- i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:
But it's precisely because the Government is so often not "well-motivated" that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that "we will use them well" is every authoritarian's claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we're Good and are working for Good outcomes."...Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so.
via American Thinker, via Mark Levin show
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