Imagine how great the "progressive" furor would
be if the Bush Administration had suddenly denied a visa to an
award-winning Colombian journalist because of his reportage on human
rights abuses by his American-backed government.
Would we not have heard, rightly, how this draconian action
exemplified the administration's tyrannical nature, its use of raw,
arbitrary power to throttle any voices trying to shed light on the very
murky corners of the Drug War and Terror War operations in Colombia that
are armed and funded with billions of dollars from American taxpayers?
Would this not have been added to a long train of similar abuses of
power arbitrary confinement and indefinite detention;
concentration camps; shielding torturers; escalating pointless wars
and killing countless civilians; running secret armies, assassins and
covert operations throughout the world, etc. and served up as a
damning indictment of a lawless regime?
So now let us see what our leading progressive lights have to say
about the case of Hollman Morris, "a prominent Colombian journalist who
specializes in conflict and human rights reporting," who has just been
denied a visa by the Obama Administration, preventing him from taking up
a fellowship at Harvard University, as AP reports.
Morris who "produces an independent TV news program called
"Contravia," [that] has been highly critical of ties between illegal
far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe,
Washington's closest ally in Latin America" has been to the United
States many times before. In fact, he was free to enter the country
under the loathed Bush Administration. But now, in our bright and
glorious progressive era, he has suddenly dare we say arbitrarily
been declared "permanently ineligible for a visa under the "Terrorist
activities' section of the USA Patriot Act," AP reports.
What are Morris' crimes? Well, the American-trained Colombian
security organs declared that the reporter had exhibited "opposition
tendencies to government policies." God knows that kind of thing can't
be allowed in any colony sorry, client state sorry, sovereign ally
of the United States. And so they put him under surveillance years
ago. He also horrors acted as a go-between Colombian rebels and
French diplomats trying to free Ingrid Betancourt, who had been held
hostage for years. All of this pre-dates the current administration.
Of course, as we all know, the Supreme Court has now accepted the
Obama Administration's earnest argument that anyone who tries to do
anything that might lead to the peaceful resolution of any situation
that might possibly involve a group that has been arbitrarily declared a
"terrorist organization" by His Potomac Majesty is, perforce, also a
terrorist, and thus unfit to pass the gates of God's shining city on the
hill.
We realize, of course, that Morris' case and the whole bill of
indictment cited above, wherein Obama has continued and often expanded
the crimeful policies of his predecessor is not nearly as important
as, say, a progressive blogger temporarily being denied access to witless
talking heads shows on a corporate TV network. That, as they say, is
some serious sh*t. Still, we wait with trembly anticipation the
coming firestorm of righteous progressive anger that will, no doubt,
soon engulf the Obama Administration for its repressive, Bush-like
handling of Morris. You know it's coming. Any minute now. Just you wait
and see.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many (more...)