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The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable.  On CNN they were promoting  “Black In America, ” an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad,  the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s, according to a useful book entitled “The Showman and the Slave, ” by Benjamin Reiss.  The early penny press sold a “whiteness” upgrade to newly arriving immigrants by depicting blacks in illicit situations. By doing so they were marketing an early version of a self esteem boosting product.  One of the initial sensational stories was about the autopsy of a black woman named Joice Heth,  who claimed to be George Washington’s nurse and over one hundred years old. It was the O. J.  story of the time.  Circus master, P. T. Barnum, charged admission to her autopsy,  which attracted the perverted in droves.  

And so, if the people broadcasting cable news appear to be inmates of a carnival,  there is a connection since the early days of the mass media to that form of show business.  According to Reiss, early newspapers were not only influenced by P. T. Barnum,  but actually cooperated with him on some hoaxes and stunts.

I would classify CNN’s “Black In America” as a stunt.  In preparing for a sequel to the first ‘Black In America,  ”which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!),  CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans.  Unmarried black mothers were exhibited,  without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group.  Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow a statistician for The New York Times recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently,  the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8,   the California proposition that banned gay marriage.  An academic study refuted this claim,  but that didn’t deter  The New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia.  Schwarz is the writer who wrote in The Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last “Black in America, ” Soledad O’Brien,  CNN’s designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters,  scolded a black man for not attending his daughter’s birthday party.  The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers.  Ms. O’Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75% of white children will live at one time or another in a single parent household and that the Gov.  of South Carolina’s not showing up for Father’s Day isn’t just a lone aberration in “White America.”

How would CNN promote a “White in America?” The thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth? The suburban Dallas white teenagers who are overdosing on “cheese” heroin? Why not? Can’t get State Farm,  Ford and MacDonald’s to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring “Black In America , ”the aim of which is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country’s social problems. For ratings.  

During CNN’s carnival act disguised as news, the scene of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minster being urinated upon by a monkey, while sitting in his garden drew snickers in the newsroom.  This is what passes for coverage of the African continent by CNN.

When the bulletin that Michael Jackson had died flashed across the screen, I was prepared for TV at it’s worst and I wasn’t disappointed.  The man wasn’t cold before the familiar adjectives were rolled out.  “ Weird, bizarre, eccentric, ” the traditional language used to disparage artists by the bourgeoisie.  Dan Abrams,  who made his reputation by convicting O. J.  Simpson,  before the opening arguments of his criminal trial,  made a snarky comment about Jackson’s weirdness.  Mr.  Abrams,  a higher up at MSNBC,  employs a Hitler admirer named Pat Buchanan.  Given Abram’s background,  why isn’t that considered weird?

Former Calfornia poet laureate Al Young called to inform me that CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, another O. J.  alumni,  and a man who said that blacks shouldn’t be “patted on the head” or “patronized” for believing in O. J.  Simpson’s innocence,  had made some ugly comments about Jackson. (A star who has had at least a dozen facelifts called into the “Larry King Show”to comment about MJ’s altering his appearance).

Also weird was MSBC’s Savanah Guthries’ air-headed depiction of the trial.  ( For a list of Ms. Guthries’ false reportings see Media Matters. com).  She said that the evidence against Jackson in the trial was  “devastating. ” So devastating that some legal experts said that  Jackson should never have been brought to trial and that the aim of the trial was to seek a pound of flesh from Jackson for being uppity and for putting the name of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr.,  a vindictive District Attorney,  into a song. In my opinion it was the prosecution of Jackson by this District Attorney,  who, among other things,  violated Jackson’s fourth amendment rights,  and made disparaging remarks about the star,  during a press conference,  and the side-show pro prosecution media coverage that killed Jackson.

In my lengthy examination of the trial printed in my book,  “Mixing It Up, Taking on The Media Bullies, ” I concluded that though millions of Jackson’s fans celebrated his acquittal,  the District Attorney,  who was allowed to squander the California taxpayers’ money so that he might humiliate a rich  black man, whom he felt had sassed him, was the victor.  At the beginning of the trial , Jackson was dancing on top of a van.  During the trial he had to be hospitalized.  At the end, he was a frail emaciated wreck.

Because of the malicious prosecution of Jackson by Sneddon and Sneddon’s  claque in the media, Jackson will always be regarded as a pedophile.  ( When the trial opened,  a USA Today CNN Gallup Poll found that 72% of whites and 51% of Blacks believed that the charges against Jackson were “Definitely” or “Probably” true.) Wherever “Mad Dog” Sneddon, this hateful man might be in his retirement,  he can gloat over  the death of the man against whom he waged a vendetta with all of the power of the state at his disposal. He even tried to introduce photos of Jackson’s genitals during the 2005 trial, which proved too much even for the pro prosecution judge.

Of course,  none of Sneddon’s abuse or the abuse of Jackson by his accusers was mentioned by an old corporate media,  out of touch and on life supports. For infotainers like Katie Couric,  Joe Jackson,  Jackson’s father was MJ’s  sole abuser. The eyes of yesterday’s media,  black fathers are the principal actors in domestic violence.

Guthrie also said that the prosecution “had conducted mini trials within the trial,” which brought up  “ a whole history of prior bad acts of molestation. ”She was referring to  1994 case in which Jackson was accused of pedophilia by a youngster who ,  according to writer Mary Fisher,  a serious journalist,  was used by his father to wrest some cash from Jackson.  In, ”Mixing It Up…, ”I summarized Mary Fisher’s serious and thorough investigation that was originally published in GQ, October, 1994,  under the title “Was Michael Jackson Framed?” Jackson,  settled out of court because Johnnie Cochran didn’t want him to face one of those all white suburban juries that O. J.  faced.  

Fisher wrote: “It’s a story of greed,  ambition,  misconceptions of part of police and prosecutors,  a lazy and sensation-seeking media and the use of a powerful,  hypnotic drug.  It may also be a story about how a case was simply invented. ”

Fisher claimed that the first case arose from the ambitions of the thirteen-year-old accuser’s stepfather,  Evan Chandler,  who exploited Jackson’s friendship with his son.  At one point,  he asked Jackson to build him a house.   Fisher said that the child denied being abused by Jackson until he was administered the drug sodium amytal,  which is known to induce false memory.  Chandler refused to be interviewed for the article and refused to appear on the Today Show,  where Fisher repeated her charges before a nationwide audience.  She said that the whole scheme was concocted by the child’s stepfather to destroy the superstar.  

None of the media descriptions of  Jackson’s career,  including a superficial pop driven survey of the star’s career by Anderson Cooper,  referred to the 2005 plaintiff’s lies and his mother’s shabby history of conning individuals and institutions including J. C. Penney’s, which she accused of sexual abuse.  She claimed that she had been “fondled inappropriately” by store personnel.  Documents also hinted that “…the mom rehearsed her children to corroborate her story. ” During the 2005 trial,

Jackson’s Attorney,  Tom Mesereau Jr.  got the teenage boy to admit that he lied under oath during the J. C. Penny case. USA Today reported on March 1,  2005,  that the mother used the boy as a prop to get money from Mike Tyson,  Adam Sandler,  Jim Carrey,  Jay Leno and others,  “even though insurance was paying his bills. ” Linda Deutsch,  one of the last of hard-nosed shoe leather journalists, reporting for the Associated Press on March of 2005.  said that Mesereau got the 15 year old to admit that he’d told Jeffrey Alpert,  a school official that “nothing happened “ between Jackson and him.

Connie Keenan,  editor of Mid Valley News,  wrote of a hoax that the boy’s mother perpetrated on that newspaper.  She made a pitch that her son needed medical care and that she had no financial means to provide it.  During the first week of the newspaper’s appeal,  the mother received $965 in donations. It turned out that the boy was being treated at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles with no cost to the family. Connie Keenan concluded that “ My gut level,  she’s a shark.  She was after money.  My readers were used.  My staff was used.  It’s sickening. ”

While referring to Jackson as “bizarre” none of the cable reporting about Jackson’s death cited the bizarre courtroom testimony of the plaintiff’s mother,  Janet Arvizo.  At one point during her testimony, she said that feared her children would disappear from Neverland,  Jackson’s ranch,  in a hot air balloon.

 On Apr 18,  2005,  Agence France-Presse reported “The mother of Michael Jackson’s young molestation accuser claimed that she feared her children would be spirited away from the star’s Neverland Ranch in a hot air balloon.  In some of the most bizarre testimony of Jackson’s frequently surreal trial,  the woman revealed that she told police she feared her three kids would vanish from Neverland into California’s blue skies.

“Did you tell the sheriff that you thought your children might disappear in a hot air balloon from Neverland?” Jackson’s lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau asked the woman under cross-examination.

“I made them aware,” she said.

Finally,  in November of 2006, according to TMZ,  Janet Arvizo pled no contest to a welfare fraud charge in Los Angeles.  She was ordered to 150 hours of community service and to pay $8, 600 in restitution.  During Jackson’s trial,  Arvizo invoked the Fifth regarding welfare fraud.  Seems that she applied for welfare even though she’d received a $150, 000 settlement from J. C. Penny’s.  Even with the mother’s behavior and the boys lies,  Nancy Grace,  commenting on the death of Jackson,  said that she was surprised by the not guilty verdict in the Jackson trial. No wonder Ms. Grace has been called” a cheerleader for the  prosecution.”

Yet,  these journalists insist that their news product is superior
to that of bloggers.  (Journalistic bottom feeder, Diane Dimond,  a Sneddon fan and Jackson stalker was invited by MSNBC to weigh in during which she was allowed to engage in doofus speculation much of it ugly about Jackson’s life and death)

G. Q. s Mary  Fisher accused her colleagues of lazy journalism of the sort that defamed Jackson in life and in death. Maureen Orth from Vanity Fair didn’t read Mary Fisher’s findings.  She was on the Chris Matthews Show accusing Jackson of “serious felonies” involving pedophilia.  Another reporter who seemed to nullify the 2005 Jackson jurie’s decision was “Morning Joe’s” adjunct bimbo,  Courtney Hazlett.  She said that there would be no pilgrimage to Neverland and as there was to Graceland,  because “bad things happened at Never Land. ” We are led to believe that Presley and his entourage spent their days at Graceland drinking milk and reading each other passages from the scriptures.

All of these opinions seem to indicate that Cable’s talking heads have taken it upon themselves to nullify the judgment of juries whenever they please.  This all white electronic jury has placed itself above the law.

But at least Jackson didn’t suffer from the kind of hi tech lynching accorded the tragic Patsy Ramsey.  For years cable,  which now not only calls elections but acts as judge and jury,  accused her of murdering her child.  Only after her death was it found that she was innocent.  

If the reporting on Jackson’s death by the media wasn’t salacious and ignorant enough,   it didn’t get any better the next day,  June 26.

Ignoring Jackson’s philanthropic pursuits and contributions to forty charities,  on the “Today Show,  “it was all about what happened to all of the nigger’s money and whether he died from too many drugs and what’s to become of his children,  questions meant to attract the prurient.  Again, Diane Dimod was invited on to spread scurrilous unconfirmed rumors about the dead star. Some of the modern day carnival barkers like Chris Matthews expressed surprise that Jackson’s death resulted in such an outpouring of worldwide mourning.  This is what happens to people like Matthews who dwell in an insulated white supremacist bubble (that includes the Anglo wannabe and Churchill admiring Irish among them) which holds that a narrow cultural strip between New York and Washington represents the world.  

I would like to have seen more independent African-American journalists comment on the passing of Michael Jackson,  but,  according to Richard Prince,  who runs a media blog for the Maynard journalism Institute, hundreds have lost their jobs over the last two years,  including Pulitzer Prize winners like Les Payne.

With the absence of black and Latinos from journalism, the media have become a spare all white jury always ready to take down a black celebrity for the entertainment of the types who used to attend those acts created by P. T. Barnum.

Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His new book, “Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies” was published by De Capo.

 

Lyrics: by Michael Jackson

They wanna get my a**,  dead or alive.
You know he really tried to take me down by surprise.  
I bet he missioned with the CIA.
He don’t do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

He out shock in every single way.
He stop at nothing just to get his political say.
He think he hot cause he’s BSDA.

I bet he never had a social life anyway.
You think he bother with the KKK?
I bet his mother never taught him right anyway.
He want your vote just to remain TA.
He don’t do half what he say.

Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man

Dom S.  Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man
Dom Sheldon is a cold man 

 

ISHMAEL REED

Have Your Say: The Persecution of Michael Jackson
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The astonishing amount of data gathered on every one of us

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Ever wondered how much personal information is held about you? Well, it looks something like this… Stacked over two feet high and weighing 12kg (nearly two stone), this pile of more than 3,000 sheets of paper contains every private detail of my life in my 35 years on the planet.

In it you’ll discover what I buy at the supermarket, what type of movies I like to watch and what music I’ve downloaded.

You’ll find out what route I take to work, which restaurants I eat in, how often I go to the gym and everything I’ve ever bought or sold on Amazon.

You’ll know how much I earn, how much my house is worth and how much I owe on my mortgage, loans and credit cards.

You’ll even discover that I once complained about the postman, that I was once caught out for plagiarising a university essay and that, aged 11 months, I came down with conjunctivitis.

Yet astonishingly none of this highly sensitive information belongs to me - it is all stored on dozens of databases around the country which can be accessed by thousands of people.

As controversy rages over introduction of ID cards, I decided to find out how much personal data is held about me by sending out requests under the Data Protection Act to 46 organisations asking for copies of all my information. They included Government agencies, schools and universities, hospitals, dentists and GP surgeries and firms I have used.

By law any organisation which holds people’s data must respond to a “subject access request” within 40 days of receiving it. Most charge £10 for providing copies of records held on computers or manual filing systems.

The sheer volume of information I got back - and what it contains - will stun anyone already worried about how private your personal data really is.

The 43 pages I received from Sainsbury’s, for example, shows every purchase I have ever made at the supermarket using my Nectar loyalty card.

Babies The computer printouts also classify my wife Dani and I, based on us buying a bit of rocket and some grape juice, as “young educated workers” in the category “urban affluent”.

There are also spaces for entries such as “number of cats” and even “baby due date” and “number of babies expected”.

Data from Sky shows every phone call I have made and every Box Office movie I have rented. Reebok gym provided the time and date of all my visits.

Information from Transport for London shows every time and place I purchased a Tube ticket on my top-up Oyster card. It also showed I was prosecuted for travelling without a valid ticket last year after I picked up my wife’s Oyster card by mistake.

Banks provided records of every transaction I had made since opening my first student account in 1992.

And reports from credit references agencies Experian and Equifax show every address I have lived at and every time I have applied for credit, including loans, store cards and mobile phone contracts. Experian also shows how much I sold my last house for and how much my current one is worth.

Of the 46 organisations holding data, 12 have on record my signature, 36 my date of birth, 38 my home address and 10 my bank account details.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti yesterday praised our investigation.

They know She said: “Big Brother is supposed to be evening entertainment, not a whole way of life. The Mirror’s exposé of the scale of intrusion into our personal lives should shock even those all my old schools and exam grades

Matt, AGED 11 who used to think “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”.

And while we often believe information we provide to businesses is kept private, the small print reveals this is not always the case.

Information that Hilton Hotels takes, for example, can include your name, address, credit card details and code on the back of the card. And data can be shared with Hiltons, franchises or service providers in other countries with more lax data laws.

Video store Blockbuster keeps a record of every member’s home address and credit or debit card details.

And their policy states personal information may be sent to other Blockbuster firms, suppliers, subcontractors and business partners outside the European Economic Area.

Data from my Apple account shows what I listen to, while Amazon shows items I bought, and my risk score as a seller of 60.7. Whatever that means.

In my UCAS form my school’s deputy head teacher described me as “A capable student. He shows enthusiasm and has impressed staff by his determination.”

And in the 50 pages on me filed away at Sussex University, where I studied music, are comments from professors.

One wrote: “I’m at a loss to explain Matt’s reticence in class as his occasional contributions and his excellent essays give evidence of a sharp mind.”

Destroyed And you’ll have to take my word for it… Another, however, was less impressed, saying one essay verged on plagiarism.

City University, where I studied journalism, also provided copies of my grades but said all physical information such as tutor comments had been destroyed.

Other companies such as BT, O2 and gas and electricity companies Scottish Power and British Gas sent records of every time I called customer services, with an account of what was said.

The Government also holds reams of information on every citizen. HM Revenue and Customs provided 23 pages including unemployment benefit claims, tax contributions and pension forecasts.

Big Brother supposed to entertainment, The DVLA sent information about my driving licence, the Identity and Passport Service details not a way of

Shami Chakrabarti of all passports issued to me and the UK Border Agency recorded that my wife is Brazilian. The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance had my exam grades.

is be life

And Greenwich council - the London borough where I live - sent 61 pages, including information on my library card, council tax, electoral registration, rubbish collection and parking fines. And medical records are the most revealing of all. Mine show that, aged just 20 days, I had an infection in my right index finger.

Aged 11 months, I was treated for conjunctivitis in both eyes.

As well as records of every GP visit, information was provided by hospitals, both public and private, and dentists. And insurer Legal and General have on record that my wife tested negative for HIV - the test was to qualify for life assurance cover.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti”It seems a combination of greedy contractors and complacent politicians have devalued personal privacy in Britain.

“The profiling of our supermarket habits is bad enough. Your shopping basket can reveal whether you have sex, kids, medical or dietary issues and what you read and watch. We need to be far more careful and demanding before signing up to loyalty schemes.

“But sometimes there’s no choice. When data is taken by compulsion, that’s even more serious. The ID madness is a loyalty card too far. Instead of offering discounts, it would cost us in privacy and race relations as well as billions in cash.

“Phone records, the DNA database and a whole host of other big computers may have their place but isn’t it time we gave more thought to whose information and how much is stockpiled, to be shared, lost or corrupted in the future? “Let’’s reclaim our privacy and keep Big Brother on the small screen.”

Top tips on how best to get info

You have a right to access information that organisations hold about you. Asking them for information is known as making a “subject access request”. To who can I make a subject access request?

You can make a subject access request to any organisation you believe holds information about you.

Examples include banks and credit card companies, hospitals and doctors, your present or past employer, government agencies, schools and universities and internet or mail-order companies.

How do I make a request?

Write or email the organisation you believe holds the details about you, asking for “all the information you hold about me”.

If you are not sure who to write to, address your letter or email to the data protection officer, or company secretary.

Your letter should include: Your full name and any names you used to be known by, such as a maiden name. Your full address, including postcode and, if relevant, previous addresses. Any other information you think the organisation will need to find your details and check that you are who you say you are. For example, your employer may need your payroll number and a hospital may need your NHS number.

It is also advisable to mention the Data Protection Act.

It is a good idea to send your request by recorded delivery. The organisation may ask for a fee, which is normally no more than £10.

However, they may charge you more for certain types of information, such as health records. How long does it take?

Once you have provided the relevant information and fee, the organisation must reply within 40 days. The reply should include a copy of all the information they hold about you, and details of why they hold your information and the organisations it may be passed to. What information can’t I see?

Some information on your record may be held back, for example if it could identify someone else or if you are the subject of a criminal investigation.

What if I have difficulty getting my information?

If you do not receive a reply to your request within 40 days, you should sent the organisation a reminder by recorded delivery.

If you still don’t receive a reply, you should call the Information Commissioner’s helpline on 08456 306060.

Have Your Say: The astonishing amount of data gathered on every one of us
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Minister demands Government stop ID cards

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Have Your Say: Minister demands Government stop ID cards
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US admits defeat on opium campaign

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Have Your Say: US admits defeat on opium campaign
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Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions

Monday, June 29th, 2009

The Obama administration is drafting an executive order that would give the US president the power to arrest without charge, and imprison indefinitely without trial, foreign nationals it accuses of being terrorists, according to several senior government officials who spoke with the Washington Post and a reporter for non-profit news source ProPublica on condition of anonymity.

The order, should it be released, would likely reuse arguments made by the previous administration of George W. Bush that the laws of war allow the executive branch to disregard the established judicial system and domestic laws and rights, such as those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

Behind Obama’s turn toward indefinite detention is the quandary he faces over the prison camp at the US military naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Shortly after entering office in late January, Obama issued an executive order—to great media fanfare—calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison by January 2010. But the debate that has ensued in Washington, while nominally focused on what to do with the remaining Guantánamo inmates, has developed into a discussion of the broader anti-democratic methods of the “war on terror.”

The Obama administration hopes an executive order will resolve the legal fate of the 229 remaining Guantánamo prisoners—as well as future prisoners in the “war on terror”—by allowing the president to incarcerate them indefinitely, likely at military installations in the US.

The establishment of a Guantánamo-style system of indefinite detention without trial, on US soil, run by the military, has the most far-reaching implications for democratic rights in the US. It would also mark an end-run around Congress, which the administration had previously hoped could craft legislation to establish new extra-judicial forms of trial and incarceration—potentially including a special “national security court.”

As the Post puts it, resorting to an executive order would be taken as a signal that Obama “is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did,” a strategy that sometimes failed when courts ruled Bush administration measures “lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.”

According to the Post, the administration believes that Congress will be unable to develop satisfactory legislation, and that the proposal for a national security court would open up rifts within the Democratic congressional caucus. One official told the Post that the administration fears that Congress will assert too much control over any new legal system by subjecting the president’s ability to move detainees to legislative review. Nonetheless, negotiations between administration lawyers and top Congressional leaders are ongoing.

Obama’s efforts to reduce the census at the Guantánamo prison have been blocked at every turn. There remain, officially, 229 prisoners at Guantánamo—only 13 fewer than when Obama took office. Of the 13, 11 have been transferred to other countries, one has been taken to New York City to face trial (Ahmed Ghailani), and one has committed suicide. (Over the years at least five Guantánamo prisoners have killed themselves—the actual number is likely higher—and hundreds more have attempted to do so.)

The Obama administration has concluded that trials in the US court system can be used for only a handful of the prisoners. This is because, in the first place, the great majority of the Guantánamo inmates are innocent of any relationship to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Second, what “evidence” there exists against them has been extracted through torture, or dubious forms of hearsay evidence gathered by secret agents or foreign spies who cannot appear in court. Third, civilian trials could bring into public focus and place before judicial scrutiny the criminal methods Washington has used in the war on terror—including torture and kidnapping—and perhaps place in legal jeopardy CIA agents and former Bush administration officials.

The only name so far broached for a possible civilian trial is Khaled Sheik Mohammed, who is accused of being an organizer of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The administration claims that, among Guantánamo detainees, three other inmates are also linked to the attacks. This is in itself a damning admission. Of the hundreds of inmates who have been held at Guantánamo, many of them tortured, only four are alleged to have any connection to the act of terrorism that has, for eight years, been the catch-all justification for the “war on terror,” and indeed for the Guantánamo prison camp itself.

Military tribunals are apparently an increasingly unattractive alternative to the Obama administration as well. On May 15, Obama announced his intention to restart military commission trials for some Guantánamo inmates that would allow the use of hearsay evidence against the accused, and which would make only cosmetic alterations to the tribunal system used under the Bush administration. Yet out of the nearly 800 inmates who have been held at Guantánamo since 2001, only two have so far been convicted by military tribunals—Australian David Hicks and Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur. Hicks’ conviction resulted from a plea deal and he was soon released to Australia. Hamdan—a hand-picked test case of the tribunal system—was given a light sentence by a vetted military jury, in what was widely considered a major rebuke to the Bush administration.

A third option—releasing a small number of clearly innocent Guantánamo prisoners into the US—has been all but scrapped. Obama and leading Democrats have determined this is politically unviable, after Republicans raised a hysterical campaign over the supposed dangers of bringing “hardened terrorists” to the US.

Finally, Obama’s persistent appeals to foreign governments have, with few exceptions, been rejected. Foreign capitals argue that if the prisoners are too dangerous for release in the US, they will face political backlash for accepting them.

Thus through a process of elimination, the Obama administration now seems inclined toward the most reactionary solution—the establishment of indefinite detention without charge or trial within US borders. Administration officials say that about half of the current Guantánamo inmates “cannot be prosecuted either in federal court or military commissions,” according to the Post. “In many cases, the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services, or has been tainted by the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.”

The Post offers as an example Walid bin Attash, who is accused of participating in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. The evidence against Attash reportedly cannot stand scrutiny before either a domestic court or military tribunal. Crucial evidence in the government’s case against him was extracted through the torture of another prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and two other supposed witnesses cannot appear in court.

On June 22 US federal judge Richard Leon issued an emphatic ruling against the Obama administration in the case of Abdul Rahim al Janko, who has been held at Guantánamo for seven and a half years, highlighting the legal difficulties it faces in prosecuting “terror suspects” in civilian courts. Leon ordered the immediate release of al Janko, now 31, a Syrian national of Kurdish background. Leon ruled that the Obama administration had not proven, even on a lenient “preponderance of the evidence” basis, that al Janko could be lawfully held any longer. While the Obama Justice Department dropped the Bush administration’s use of the term “enemy combatant,” it offered the court the same argument—that the president can indefinitely hold terror suspects through the Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed three days after the September 11 attacks. In his ruling, Leon noted that whether or not the Obama administration cares to use the term “enemy combatant,” in practice its policy is the same.

Tragically, al Janko had been imprisoned and tortured for two years by the Taliban, who accused him of being a US spy, before the US seized him and subjected him to a much longer duration of imprisonment and torture—accusing him of being an Al-Qaeda terrorist.

The Post article is itself part of an attempt by the administration to gauge political support in Congress and the military-intelligence apparatus for such an executive order. “One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order,” the article notes. This is keeping with the modus operandi of the Obama administration. Prior to making several policy moves over the past few months related to Guantánamo, top “anonymous” officials “familiar with the matter” have planted stories either in the Post or the New York Times in an attempt to prepare a Congressional consensus.

Obama’s victory in last year’s election, it must be recalled, was owing in large measure to a shift behind his candidacy among powerful elements in the military and foreign policy elite who felt that the Bush administration’s handling of “the war on terror” had damaged the international standing of US imperialism. At the same time, Obama won millions of votes of those disgusted with the police-state policies of the Bush administration.

Now, only five months into his administration, Obama has cast aside all of his promises to curb the new anti-democratic powers of the state. Obama has promised there will be no investigation, let alone prosecution, of Bush administration officials or CIA agents who ordered or carried out torture, and has moved to block from public view further evidence of prisoner abuse. Invoking the “state secrets” doctrine, the Obama administration has maneuvered to shut down civil court cases of those who were abducted and tortured in the war on terror. And the National Security Agency, it has been revealed, continues to monitor the e-mail communications of millions of US citizens, even as the Obama administration moves to establish a military “Cyber Command” that would have new authority over the nation’s computer networks.

Obama’s increasingly open embrace of all the anti-democratic methods of the Bush administration—with even superficial differences vanishing—demonstrates the impossibility of defending democratic rights through one or another capitalist politician or party. The criminal methods of the “war on terror” arise not from the mistaken policies of individual politicians. Rather they arise inexorably from the deeper criminal act of launching wars of aggression, which in turn arises from the US political elite’s drive to offset the decline of US capitalism by seizing critical natural resources and strategic advantage over its main imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia.

Tom Eley

Have Your Say: Obama administration preparing order for indefinite detentions
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