Obama, Free Speech and The Caribbean
Just over six years ago Black
people in the Caribbean and elsewhere welcomed the elevation of Barrack Obama
to the presidency of the United States. He came in with all types of grandiose
promises of change. Expectations were high. Large numbers of misguided Blacks
generally proclaimed all manner of transformational and transcendental
narratives and imbued the social consciousness, universally, with a massive
mis-direction. Obama promised much and much more was expected. This ‘happy
talk’ was even espoused by some of the backward elites in academia in the
Caribbean and at Cave Hill. In response, we warned them that Obama came from a
CIA family. We argued that a man whose mother was a NOC (Non-Official Cover),
whose father was a NOC, whose step-father was a NOC, whose grandfather and
grandmother were NOCs; whose career was skillfully managed by his mother’s
friends in the CIA for his introduction as a Manchurian candidate, would be
largely unhelpful to any people, especially Black people. Our central critique
was well rooted in our judgment that the political system in the USA was
largely collapsed and in any event, given the unparalleled power of 'lobbies',
it was IMPOSSIBLE for any USA government or president to do anything,
exclusively, in the interests of the American people, far less - Black people
alone. All Black people have gotten from Obama is the faux ‘strict father’
nonsense that he learnt from Reagan. Obama has outdone Bush in his
contributions to the development of a most perverse and radical Neo-fascism
that surpasses anything that ever occurred in Germany after the Reichstag
fire.
Glenn Greenwald’s recent and
continuing disclosures in the Guardian Newspaper led the Washington Post to
report “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the
officer said. Greenwald’s reporting includes proof that Obama has had his
secret FISA courts issue subpoenas to collect vast amounts (terabytes) of
metadata data from 100 million Verizon customers daily. We now know that all
the other communications firms are doing likewise. He is listening to your calls to your
grandmother. He is listening to your calls to your wife. He can watch you from
the sky. He can see us typing this article on our computer right now. He can
see every fax you send. He can see all the people who are called by the people
you call.
Caribbean governments are supine
in this respect. We are willing to argue, in the absence of empirical evidence,
though we may have access to other anecdotal evidences, that the phone carriers
in the Caribbean are axiomatically part of this NSA (National Security Agency)
big brother worldwide society. Not one Caribbean politician will have the
‘balls’ to address this issue. Even if there did the USA sells them their
communication equipment and there are means to intercept all communications
within the Caribbean. The corporations in the Caribbean, like, LIME and
Digicel, have a history of active
corporation with the international security services agencies. More broadly all
of the communications of the people of the Caribbean have been for decades
monitored by external security services.
These latest revelations by
Greenwald must NOT be seen in isolation. They must be properly located within
context of 9/11 and all the measures taken by George Bush to shrink civil
liberties. Obama makes Bush look ‘quaint’ by comparison. We must extend that
thinking to the ambitious wars of aggression overseas and a war at home against
the American people, all of which have been accelerated by Obama. This is a
bi-partisan war party running the ‘American government’ for the interests of an
all powerful hidden corporate regime. Obama signed the NDAA (National Defense
Authorization Act). Obama has instituted a new kind of drone warfare that
recklessly kills innocent men, women and children in up to a dozen countries,
so far. Obama, while pretending the opposite, has illegally made huge
investments in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Obama has taken the
unprecedented steps to ‘‘openly” align the United States with groups that the
United States itself has determined to be terrorists groups. Obama has kept
Guantanamo Bay opened and is building a large network of detention centres
within the United States to hold Americans citizens when the uprising starts,
like they must. Obama has kept his secret pledges to large corporations,
pledges that complete the full integration of the political establishment and
the economic oligarchs. This represents the quintessential ingredients for
Neo-fascism. This is the world that supine Caribbean politicians are creating
for us by they willful ignorance. We are like ‘sheep’
’ going to the slaughter without
even a whimper.
Glenn Greenwald – Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/7/a_massive_surveillance_state_glenn_greenwald?autostart=true
Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35206.htm
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