President Obama\u2019s well-publicized May 23 speech to the nation was aimed at moderating the present U.S. dictum that\u00a0the country is and should remain in a never-ending state of war\u2013that is, the undeclared, undefined \u201cwar on terror.\u201d<\/p>\n
This \u201cwar,\u201d codified since 9-11 in the Patriot Act and the associated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has been\u00a0routinely reaffirmed and expanded in scope by the Obama administration. It has been routinely employed to justify\u00a0endless National Security Agency, FBI, and a myriad of other public and private government-funded spy operations that\u00a0violate with impunity democratic rights and civil liberties at home and justify real wars abroad in which the Pentagon and\u00a0privatized mercenary Blackwater-type death squads murder oppressed people around the world. Indeed, close to half of\u00a0the U.S.-paid armed forces operating in Afghanistan today\u2013hundreds of thousands of trained killers and their back-up\u00a0operatives\u2013function as private mercenary armies.<\/p>\n
Judging that perhaps some embarrassing excesses have been committed in this \u201cperpetual\u201d state of war, President\u00a0Obama suggested that the \u201cAuthorization for Use of Military Force\u201d measures approved by Congress after the Sept. 11,\u00a02001, bombings committed by Egyptian terrorists, might be modified a bit to avoid \u201ckeeping America on a perpetual\u00a0wartime footing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cUnless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don\u2019t need to fight,\u00a0or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.\u201d The\u00a0latter, as we all are supposed to understand, are being \u201cphased out.\u201d We can only assume, therefore, that the trillion-dollar annual military budget will be largely restricted to America\u2019s \u201cnon-traditional,\u201d daily wars conducted around the\u00a0world largely in secret!<\/p>\n
The Obama speech was laden with tedious and moralizing platitudes devoid of a single specific measure to remedy\u00a0the avalanche of crude, brutal, illegal, unconstitutional, racist and even genocidal measures that today define the daily\u00a0ruling-class policies and practices of a declining social order. The president\u2019s speech was prompted by recent\u00a0revelations that one or more of his spy agencies had wiretapped the home, office, and cell phones of some 20\u00a0Associated Press reporters and previously their counterparts in\u00a0The\u00a0New York Times.<\/p>\n
The \u201chumble\u201d and posturing president also suggested that he and his successors might be restricted a tad in utilizing\u00a0the present \u201ckill list\u201d to murder suspected terrorists, and that ways might even be found to limit torture and indefinite\u00a0detention with regard to the hunger-strikers at the imperial U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. These prisoners\u00a0have been held for years without charges, access to attorneys, or any other form of due process\u2013and often have been\u00a0subjected to torture.<\/p>\n
Obama discussed only his short list of possible government transgressions, while promising to ask their very\u00a0perpetrators, as if he himself was guiltless, to investigate themselves! Virtually absent from the president\u2019s discourse\u00a0were references to the vast array of blatant violations of fundamental rights that any \u201cdemocratic\u201d society would take for\u00a0granted.<\/p>\n
There was no mention of ongoing FBI threats to fine internet companies who refuse to install devices in their equipment to facilitate\u00a0government surveillance of every person in the country. That such devices are operative is beyond doubt, but we are told that the\u00a0acquired information is funneled into some \u201cnon-government-associated\u201d holding apparatus accessible only when permission is\u00a0granted by some secret government oversight body\u2013to be sure, one \u201csworn\u201d to protect our constitutional rights from people or\u00a0institutions like the president, the NSA, the FBI, and all the others who might be tempted to abuse them.<\/p>\n
Snowden: The spy who came in from the cold<\/strong><\/p>\n To the great embarrassment of Obama and his posturing co-conspirators at every level of government, within days of his \u201cpledge of\u00a0openness\u201d speech, the lid was blown off any and all pretence of democratic functioning in the U.S. This took place when a 29-year-old former CIA intelligence technician, Edward Joseph Snowden, currently employed at Booz Allen Hamilton, a multi-billion-dollar\u00a0government-contracted spy agency, publicly announced what no one could deny\u2013that he was the source of the British\u00a0Guardian\u00a0and\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0revelations during the previous week.<\/p>\n Snowden disclosed secret and longstanding FISA court orders demanding that virtually all of the nation\u2019s internet providers\u2013including Yahoo, Microsoft, Paytalk, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Skype and YouTube\u2013allow for the unprecedented, secretly conducted,\u00a0and ongoing government sweep of phone calls, audio and video chats, e-mails, photographs, documents, connection logs, and other\u00a0communications used daily by American citizens.<\/p>\n The government spy program, code-named Prism, supposedly allowed corporations like Apple Computer to officially deny that they\u00a0were the \u201cdirect\u201d source that inspected the information or allowed immediate government access to it. They could point out instead\u00a0that they served as merely a conduit that\u00a0funneled all such information into Prism. In all, the whistleblowers reported that the NSA\u00a0collects phone records on 3 billion private communications per day!<\/p>\n The leader of the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, blithely dismissed the revelations entirely, insisting that\u00a0since they were FISA court-ordered\u2013that is, issued by a secret court with virtually no government oversight\u2013they were perfectly\u00a0legal. Feinstein did indicate that some unnamed government officials had been \u201cbriefed\u201d on the matter.<\/p>\n While government officials also retorted that all three branches of government had \u201csigned off\u201d on the telephone spying, a top ACLU\u00a0official, Anthony Romero, denounced the program as a fundamental violation of civil liberties, saying, \u201cA pox on all three houses of\u00a0government,\u201d regardless of what hidden approval devices were employed.<\/p>\n Another just-released 18-page presidential memo has Obama, according to Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, writing in\u00a0The\u00a0Guardian, ordering intelligence officials to \u201cdraw up a list for potential overseas targets for U.S. cyber attacks.\u201d This never-published\u00a0October 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 20 states that Offensive Cyber Effects Operations \u201ccan offer unique and unconventional\u00a0capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with\u00a0potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.\u201d The same objectives can be perpetrated within the U.S., says Obama\u2019s\u00a0directive, but only with prior orders from the president, except in cases of \u201cemergency.\u201d<\/p>\n This alone should cause some anxiety among activists who might suffer under the illusion that Facebook and other\u00a0such social media devices can function as a permanent democratic instrument to challenge capitalist abuse and power\u00a0and organize mass opposition. With a push of the government\u2019s \u201cemergency\u201d button, these new and undoubtedly\u00a0valuable but ultimately limited forms of communication can expected to be shut down in an instant.<\/p>\n And thus, in a matter of days, the Obama administration\u2019s effort to posture as defenders of civil liberties went up in\u00a0flames, and the police-state-type mechanisms that had been meticulously put into place and illegally used for more than\u00a0seven years, officially, were exposed around the world. What a small layer of political activists had justifiably taken for\u00a0granted for decades and longer is now the public knowledge of millions\u2013and exposed by a handful of leakers who will\u00a0inevitably face severe government persecution. How could it be otherwise?<\/p>\n Mushrooming spy apparatus<\/strong><\/p>\n Edward Snowden was one of some 1.4 million intelligence technicians, operatives, security specialists, or just plain\u00a0spies who have earned\u2013after the minimum of a one-year investigation\u2013top-level national security classification status.\u00a0Moreover, all of these individuals work for a mushrooming number of government and privatized spy agencies charged\u00a0with collecting data from every conceivable source. Indeed, the very rivalry between many of these agencies has fueled\u00a0internal debates as to whether or not their efforts should be coordinated and the results \u201cshared\u201d to increase their\u00a0efficiency and avoid duplication of effort.<\/p>\n It was these very \u201csharing\u201d concerns that allowed Snowden, a relatively low-level employee at Booz Allen who specialized in such\u00a0technical coordination, to gain access to the data of multiple agencies and their associated collections of government-classified\u00a0documents. As with Bradley Manning\u2019s leaks of millions of pages of classified \u201cdirty-op\u201d material to Julian Assange\u2019s WikiLeaks\u2013including the release of videotapes of deliberate murder\u2013this once again reveals that capitalism recognizes no limits when it comes\u00a0to advancing its interests.<\/p>\n Here it is critical to state that Snowden\u2019s revelations, the magnitude of which have yet to be determined, go far beyond the\u00a0unprecedented spy network daily used against American citizens in violations of their right to privacy, free speech, and association. It\u00a0is highly probable that Snowden\u2019s computers, four or five of which he is reported to keep in his possession at all times, contain\u00a0classified material that includes the illegal U.S. spy operations conducted against virtually all nations on earth. This material ranges\u00a0from military secrets to private-sector intellectual property and data on scientific breakthroughs that relate to key aspects of capitalist\u00a0production and trade, to documents of the very government and private banking institutions that collectively constitute the core\u00a0operations of all U.S. rivals.<\/p>\n Snowden has now been charged under the Espionage Act with at least three violations, which would total some 30 years in prison,\u00a0assuming he is extradited, indicted, and convicted. The government is looking for other avenues to persecute this bright and\u00a0conscience-driven youth, who has little or no previous political experience. Major pressure was exerted on the Chinese government to\u00a0extradite Snowden from Hong Kong, where he was reportedly in hiding with fears for his very life at the hands of U.S. operatives. The\u00a0Chinese government was in no hurry to accede to the barrage of U.S. demands, especially when it learned from Snowden\u2019s revelations\u00a0that it too had been subjected to illegal U.S. spy operations. Undaunted, the courageous Snowden continues to release swaths of\u00a0illegal and secret U.S. government spy operations, creating an unprecedented nightmare for Obama and the U.S. government.<\/p>\n It is interesting to note here that both Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden state that they took care to not release material that\u00a0might cause harm to U.S. spies or otherwise directly jeopardize their operations, a form of innocent self-censorship in this writer\u2019s\u00a0view, that they perhaps believed might limit government efforts to lock them in jail forever\u2013if not worse. This distinction was also\u00a0employed by the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0and other media who in the past, as with\u00a0The New York Times\u2019s\u00a01971 release of the Pentagon Papers\u00a0and the more recent Wikileaks material, actually submitted the materials they received for prior government perusal\u2013that is,\u00a0censorship.<\/p>\n In the case of the corporate media, it is simply a matter of doing the bidding of the U.S. ruling elite while attempting to maintain the\u00a0semblance of a \u201cfree press\u201d at the same time. A 1996\u00a0Times\u00a0article noted that the Pentagon Papers, which revealed secret U.S.\u00a0operations in Vietnam over the course of some 25 years, \u201cdemonstrated, among other things, that the\u00a0Lyndon Baines Johnson\u00a0Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest\u00a0and significance.\u201d The Pentagon Papers, were not declassified and publicly released until June 2011, that is, some 40 years after they\u00a0were first leaked by RAND Corporation top-level military analyst and former Pentagon military specialist, Daniel Ellsberg.<\/p>\n The prosecution and punishment of the leakers remains a top priority, with government officials already investigating how to inflict\u00a0the greatest harm to Glenn Greenwald, one of the country\u2019s most democratically minded bloggers and the British\u00a0Guardian\u00a0reporter\u00a0who first exposed this most recent wholesale violation of fundamental rights. Greenwald has toured the country and the world for\u00a0years warning of the dangers of today\u2019s unchecked surveillance and the resulting criminal acts perpetrated in the name of national\u00a0security. This includes a national tour last year, when Greenwald minced no words in damning the government\u2019s persecution of\u00a0700,000 members of the U.S. Muslim community since 9-11.<\/p>\n These latest revelations are but the tip of the iceberg. It is only a matter of time until the thousands and more of the\u00a0millions of U.S. spies \u201ccome in from the cold\u201d to expose the daily police-state measures, engineered wars, and mass\u00a0murders that constitute a key portion of ruling-class policy today.\u00a0What Snowden has revealed with regard to\u00a0government spying differs little from the ever-deepening coordinated military-police measures being put into place in\u00a0preparation for quelling the massive protests the ruling elite fully expect as their ongoing austerity measures inflict\u00a0deepening misery on U.S. workers.<\/p>\n Drone bombings defend \u201cnational security\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n There was little specific mention in Obama\u2019s oration on the drone bombings that have to date taken the lives of almost 5000 civilians\u00a0around the world, including a number of Americans in foreign countries deemed to be \u201cterrorist suspects\u201d and killed by some remote\u00a0satellite-guided drone operator halfway around the world. The president did suggest that perhaps the Pentagon, rather than the CIA,\u00a0might be assigned to drone warfare, thus leaving the CIA free to focus on perhaps more important objectives, including economic and\u00a0military espionage.<\/p>\n Stealing corporate secrets, patents, research, and \u201cintellectual property rights\u201d of America\u2019s corporate competitors\u2013an activity always\u00a0considered fair game in today\u2019s thus-far mostly non-military competition for global economic domination, ranks high in top corporate\u00a0circles. To be accurate, Obama did pledge that drone \u201csignature strikes\u201d would perhaps now continue with some vaguely-stated\u00a0congressional or secret \u201cpublic oversight,\u201d as opposed to the present criteria of murdering people because they live in a region alleged\u00a0to be in the vicinity of \u201cterrorist operations.\u201d The latter are defined as any that challenge the ongoing U.S. wars and interventions\u00a0against their countries.<\/p>\n As in the decade of the Vietnam War, where the unofficial U.S. objective was, perhaps humorously stated, to \u201cteach the Vietnamese\u00a0not to invade the land that they were born in,\u201d a war that slaughtered four million Vietnamese, terrorists are defined as anyone who\u00a0opposes U.S. occupations and the rape of their country. In decades past this included the South African forces of the African\u00a0National Congress, today the governing party of that nation.<\/p>\n To be sure, Iraq and Afghanistan were excluded from the president\u2019s new and non-specific guidelines because these\u00a0are \u201creal wars,\u201d as compared to Pakistan, where thousands of civilian drone murders have been systematically\u00a0documented even though the U.S. is not \u201cofficially\u201d at war in that country. Given this \u201cfact,\u201d the U.S. admits to no drone\u00a0killings there, a fiction necessary to maintain a semblance of credibility\u2013that is, to everyone except the Pakistani\u00a0victims.<\/p>\n The use of surveillance drones to daily spy on American citizens was excluded\u2013at least for the time being by the\u00a0\u201cdemocratic\u201d chief of state. Again, maintaining the fiction of U.S. capitalist democracy at home still concerns U.S. policy\u00a0makers, although this fiction stands exposed today more than ever as a crude fraud.\u00a0The most recent revelations include\u00a0evidence of the use of drones for U.S. domestic surveillance.<\/p>\n The FBI\u2019s subpoenaing 24 members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization to appear before a Chicago Grand\u00a0Jury investigating terrorism tells us that the now officially-admitted spying on virtually the entire nation will be\u00a0accompanied by persecution and imprisonment of social activists merely because of their political views. This attack on\u00a0a socialist organization, the first in a generation, and on a group prominently involved in the U.S. antiwar movement and\u00a0in the leadership of the broadly representative United National Antiwar Coalition, is an ominous sign that worse is to\u00a0come. The list of antiwar and social justice organizations that have reported and proven government and police\u00a0surveillance is ever increasing.<\/p>\n On the trade-union front, Obama neglected to explain why top government officials threatened to use the military to\u00a0break strikes by the Longview, Wash., longshore strikers last year and in the not-so-recent past, when the striking ILWU\u00a0was threatened with \u201cnational security\u201d injunctions and the use of Navy crane operators to break a West Coast ILWU\u00a0strike.<\/p>\n The monstrous persecution of \u201cwhistle blowers\u201d like Bradley Manning\u2013who exposed hundreds of thousands of pages of illegal\u00a0government spying around the world as well as revealing videotape proof of the conscious murder of U.S. and foreign journalists, as\u00a0well as civilians, by U.S. helicopter pilots who followed orders to gun down the innocent\u2013never made the president\u2019s list of\u00a0democratic concerns. Persecuting the truth tellers rather than the murderers is standard U.S. policy\u2013necessary, again, to defend the\u00a0\u201cnational security\u201d interests of the U.S. elite.<\/p>\n The shattering of fundamental constitutional rights is today commonplace in today\u2019s legal system. In the name of the war on terror,\u00a0attorney-client confidentiality has been eliminated via \u201clegalized\u201d electronic surveillance. In the case of Lynne Stewart her private\u00a0government-taped conversations with her client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rachman, were introduced in court as evidence against her\u2013yet\u00a0another example of trashing democratic rights in the fake war on terrorism.<\/p>\n Persecution of immigrants and Muslims<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama also declined to mention that his administration has deported more immigrants, 300,000-plus over each of the past three\u00a0years, than any administration in history\u2013criminalizing, again in the name of national security, the poorest sectors of the working\u00a0class, who labor most often at sub-minimum wages to satiate agri-business and other corporate requirements to remain competitive in\u00a0world markets.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the Obama administration is using the immigration system to expand surveillance of the entire U.S. population. A\u00a0FOIA request submitted by immigrant rights groups in 2011 revealed that Secure Communities, a program used to deport immigrants\u00a0through the jail system, is the precursor of a national biometric database called Next Generation Identification, which is currently\u00a0being developed by the FBI. And the latest immigration reform proposal expands E-verify to cover all workers in the U.S. Soon\u00a0everyone could be required to show a biometric ID when applying for any job. Its clear from these few examples that attacks on\u00a0immigrants are attacks on all workers.<\/p>\n Since 9-11 the ever-expanding Homeland Security apparatus has investigated more than 700,000 Muslims, again with the\u00a0\u201cjustification\u201d that this community represents a threat to the nation\u2019s \u201cnational security.\u201d There were no Obama apologies for these\u00a0blatantly racist persecutions, as there are none for the \u201cstop and frisk\u201d legislation wherein hundreds of thousands of Black and Brown\u00a0working people are daily harassed, persecuted, and jailed. The U.S. today imprisons the largest number and percentage of its\u00a0population than any nation on earth. It ranks first as well in the number of executions, in both cases the majority victims of Blacks,\u00a0Latinos, and Native Americans.<\/p>\n With regard to his just admitted, and still unpunished, and therefore impliedly justified, civil liberties incursions, Obama pledged\u00a0\u00a0\u201cto\u00a0strike an appropriate\u00a0balance\u00a0[sometime in the future] between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who\u00a0we are.\u201d His contemplated formation of an \u201cindependent board\u201d to preserve civil liberties, as if the myriad of Constitutional\/Bill of\u00a0Rights protections and the entire system of judges and juries sworn to defend them were no longer adequate to guarantee these rights,\u00a0is more than ironic.<\/p>\n These measures signal that the U.S. ruling class has been well aware of the massive mobilizations of workers around the world who\u00a0have gone to new lengths to challenge the austerity measures imposed on them by a failing world capitalism that has no choice but to\u00a0resolve its contradictions at the expense of the great majority. This includes the increased use of force, violence, and repression in its\u00a0multiple forms to thwart the inevitable concerted fightbacks ahead.<\/p>\n Preparation for deepening repression<\/strong><\/p>\n World capitalism faces perhaps its greatest crisis in the modern era. Its solution, with few if any exceptions, is to make\u00a0working people and the most oppressed pay the price of the system\u2019s universal economic failures. The tens of trillions of\u00a0dollars exacted through near-universal austerity measures are used to bail out a system with no recourse other than\u00a0more of the same\u2013if not famine, endless wars, and the destruction of the environment.<\/p>\n What the capitalist minority fears most is the conscious organization by dedicated, disciplined, and deeply rooted\u00a0revolutionary fighters of the vast majority, who alone can challenge its rule and replace it with an egalitarian society\u00a0where the fulfillment of human needs of the earth\u2019s people and the construction of a world free from war and\u00a0environmental destruction trumps the dictatorship of the capitalist profiteers.<\/p>\n This dictatorship reveals its sharp teeth in the threatening code words imbedded in President Obama\u2019s still guarded\u00a0rhetoric, including his promise of \u201cdemocracy\u201d for all. Behind this stilted language, always inclusive of explicit \u201cnational\u00a0security\u201d justifications for repression, murder, and war, stands a failing system preparing to use any all means necessary\u00a0to achieve its politically and morally degenerate ends.<\/p>\n Today, U.S. capitalism still rules with the relative consent of the majority, who despite their growing anger and\u00a0frustrations, retain the illusion that their lives can be improved, in time, by the operation of the system rather than through\u00a0their active intervention as revolutionary subjects.<\/p>\n But the ruling rich nevertheless constantly prepare for the time when these illusions are shattered, and mass working-class forces led by conscious revolutionary socialist fighters and parties that have earned a reputation for being the most\u00a0consistent representatives of the broad workers\u2019 movement in all its manifestations begin to call into question the system\u00a0itself.<\/p>\n We can see important institutional elements for future repression being methodically moved into place, from major\u00a0infringements of civil and democratic rights, to preparations for mass arrests, detentions, and imprisonment. A whiff of\u00a0fascist repression is in the air, awaiting the time when its real expression becomes a requirement for continued capitalist\u00a0rule. Between now and then, time remains to organize the working-class millions to defend their own interests and\u00a0thwart this onslaught with a power far beyond the control of any and all would-be tyrants.<\/p>\n Jeff Mackler<\/strong>\u00a0is National Secretary of Socialist Action.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0A longer version of this article is available at\u00a0www.socialistaction.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n