The grossly illegal Guantanamo Bay is not being closed down like Obama
promised, but moved. The equally illegal Bagram air base in
Afghanistan is getting an upgrade, this according to the Independent:
"The air base is about to undergo a $60 [million] (42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo. (February 22, 2009).
Not only will Bagram continue to be an institution of terror, but also some analysts estimate that there remain 18,000 people held worldwide in foreign U.S. facilities " so-called black sites " with no legal rights. The absence of even Red Cross observation at these prisons insures that "harsh interrogations (torture) will remain a regular habit.
The above abuses of the Patriot Act have trickled down from high-profile terrorism cases (some who have made confessions under torture), to regular usage against alleged gang members, drug dealers and immigrants.
For example, one section of the Patriot Act gives police the power to search people's home secretly without notifying the homeowner " called "sneak and peeks, a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment. The logic again was that "special powers were needed to track down "terrorists. The Huffington Post reported, "Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases" Sixty-five percent were drug cases. (September 23, 2009).
The illegal entry and searching of immigrant's homes " or anyone suspected of being an immigrant -- is widely known by the Latino community and continues to include the terror-inducing tactics of pre-dawn raids with guns drawn.
Once anti-constitutional behavior is applied to alleged terrorists, and extended to immigrants and people suspected of being gang members or drug dealers, such police behavior becomes normalized, and can then be easily expanded to all people accused of being "criminals. Police are widely known to consider political activists, protesters, and striking workers as criminal types, beliefs encouraged by the mainstream media.
Which brings us to why? Why does the destruction of democratic rights that accelerated under Bush continue with Obama? With every political "why" question one must first answer: who benefits?
In this case the benefiting parties are the giant corporations that dominate politics in the U.S. The people steering these companies had good foresight: they saw that the global capitalist economy necessitated a race to the bottom for workers' living standards. As U.S. corporations faced stiffer competition abroad for international markets, wages and benefits for U.S. workers would have to shrink, especially when U.S. corporations were investing heavily in emerging economies " China, India, etc., " for their slave wages.
U.S. corporate executives also understood that China became a police state out of necessity, so that its dollar-a-day workers could be brought into line (U.S. corporate investment rose sharply after the Tiananmen Square massacre). The trend of U.S. workers' wages leads logically to similar conclusions.
The creation of NAFTA to extend the dominance of U.S. corporations to Mexico and Canada would also have predictably negative effects on workers' living standards. Now, with two unpopular wars taking place and a third on the way (Pakistan) to further extend the profit margins of U.S. corporations, a breaking point is nearing.
Public money is being used to bail out banks and wage foreign wars while the recession continues to destroy jobs and drive down wages. This unpopular policy is viewed as a necessity for U.S. corporations, and Obama has no intention of reversing course. The police-state foundation created by Bush and continued under Obama is a stern warning to the U.S. working class to accept our fate or face dire consequences. It is already a fact that many people are too afraid of police repression to attend a protest, just as some workers are too afraid to be on a picket line during a strike.
Ultimately, a real democracy cannot function where there exists tremendous inequalities in wealth, where large sections of the population are in poverty. This is why democracies are not viable in poor countries: the super-rich use their power over the state " including dictatorships and mass repression " to crush social movements that challenge the status quo, as we are witnessing today in Honduras. The same dynamic is being created in the United States, where the vast majority of people are clamoring for real change, while those in the two-party system are using all means available to keep their rotten system in place.
"The air base is about to undergo a $60 [million] (42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo. (February 22, 2009).
Not only will Bagram continue to be an institution of terror, but also some analysts estimate that there remain 18,000 people held worldwide in foreign U.S. facilities " so-called black sites " with no legal rights. The absence of even Red Cross observation at these prisons insures that "harsh interrogations (torture) will remain a regular habit.
The above abuses of the Patriot Act have trickled down from high-profile terrorism cases (some who have made confessions under torture), to regular usage against alleged gang members, drug dealers and immigrants.
For example, one section of the Patriot Act gives police the power to search people's home secretly without notifying the homeowner " called "sneak and peeks, a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment. The logic again was that "special powers were needed to track down "terrorists. The Huffington Post reported, "Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases" Sixty-five percent were drug cases. (September 23, 2009).
The illegal entry and searching of immigrant's homes " or anyone suspected of being an immigrant -- is widely known by the Latino community and continues to include the terror-inducing tactics of pre-dawn raids with guns drawn.
Once anti-constitutional behavior is applied to alleged terrorists, and extended to immigrants and people suspected of being gang members or drug dealers, such police behavior becomes normalized, and can then be easily expanded to all people accused of being "criminals. Police are widely known to consider political activists, protesters, and striking workers as criminal types, beliefs encouraged by the mainstream media.
Which brings us to why? Why does the destruction of democratic rights that accelerated under Bush continue with Obama? With every political "why" question one must first answer: who benefits?
In this case the benefiting parties are the giant corporations that dominate politics in the U.S. The people steering these companies had good foresight: they saw that the global capitalist economy necessitated a race to the bottom for workers' living standards. As U.S. corporations faced stiffer competition abroad for international markets, wages and benefits for U.S. workers would have to shrink, especially when U.S. corporations were investing heavily in emerging economies " China, India, etc., " for their slave wages.
U.S. corporate executives also understood that China became a police state out of necessity, so that its dollar-a-day workers could be brought into line (U.S. corporate investment rose sharply after the Tiananmen Square massacre). The trend of U.S. workers' wages leads logically to similar conclusions.
The creation of NAFTA to extend the dominance of U.S. corporations to Mexico and Canada would also have predictably negative effects on workers' living standards. Now, with two unpopular wars taking place and a third on the way (Pakistan) to further extend the profit margins of U.S. corporations, a breaking point is nearing.
Public money is being used to bail out banks and wage foreign wars while the recession continues to destroy jobs and drive down wages. This unpopular policy is viewed as a necessity for U.S. corporations, and Obama has no intention of reversing course. The police-state foundation created by Bush and continued under Obama is a stern warning to the U.S. working class to accept our fate or face dire consequences. It is already a fact that many people are too afraid of police repression to attend a protest, just as some workers are too afraid to be on a picket line during a strike.
Ultimately, a real democracy cannot function where there exists tremendous inequalities in wealth, where large sections of the population are in poverty. This is why democracies are not viable in poor countries: the super-rich use their power over the state " including dictatorships and mass repression " to crush social movements that challenge the status quo, as we are witnessing today in Honduras. The same dynamic is being created in the United States, where the vast majority of people are clamoring for real change, while those in the two-party system are using all means available to keep their rotten system in place.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com
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