by Mark Taylor-Canfield

As I write this in the aftermath of Senator Barak Obama’s impressive win in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, a definite theme of change is in the air. Even the manipulative corporate media is reflecting a new mood among the US population who seem to be desperate for a new politics devoid of the typical cynicism and dirty tricks that have defined past elections. For those brave souls yearning for justice and accountability, it was a long awaited breath of fresh air after eight long years of suffocation.

It remains to be seen whether this new phenomenon will turn out to be yet one more weapon of mass distraction designed to give a sense of false hope to a society already partially enslaved by the forces of corporate globalization. It is, of course an old refrain by now, but let’s hope that we “don’t get fooled again”. We can’t forget that, in the wake of two manipulated elections, the US is still using computer voting machines manufactured by Diebold and other companies which are absolutely vulnerable to hacking. Even worse, Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia refuse to allow access to their source code for counting ballots. In other words, there is still no paper trail, no verification and no accountability.

The super powered media hype machine was defeated by the voters of Iowa when they voted for Senator Obama and progressive candidate Senator John Edwards, thereby deflating Hillary Clinton’s balloon of self-proclaimed inevitability. A few days later, on January 8th in a national debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the two candidates went on the offensive again, staking out the high ground as true reformers, accusing the former “First Lady” of dynastic ambitions and aristocratic arrogance.

Surprisingly, for one brief moment in history, issues of gender and race took a backseat to policy debates. These divisive issues were largely ignored by the mainstream news media. This does not make up, however, for previous comments by journalists and political media pundits who had asked the question, “Is Barak Obama just another black candidate trying to get elected when he knows he can’t win?” Also, it does not excuse Joel Klein who wrote in the New York Times that because the Democrats oppose Bush’s war, they support the terrorists. Listening to Mr. Klein, you would think that Joseph McCarthy was back from the dead.

But for the first time in American mainstream politics, negative attack ads were overshadowed by some vital discussions about the relevance of a candidate’s political experience, their individual visions for the future, and the mistakes of the past. What people are looking for is an honest assessment of our present national predicament, no matter how ugly it may be. With the middle class dying (the jobs already having been outsourced), the national debt is currently strangling US resources and absorbing all of the proceeds from our collective labor. People recognize on a mass scale that the American Dream has slipped away. They want to know how it happened so quickly in their lifetimes, hoping to reclaim that gloriously American vision which inspired our parents and grandparents to work all their lives to own a home, a car, or a business, and to raise a family, educate their children, etc.

Unfortunately, as 2008 begins the economic outlook is downright scary considering the weakening dollar and the credit crunch. At $100 a barrel, oil is sparking rampant inflation while all over the nation folks are defaulting on home loans and credit cards in ever increasing numbers. Maybe Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was not such an economic genius, after all. Thanks to the fiscal and government policies of the Bush administration, China now owns $1,200,000,000,000 worth of our national debt – a number larger than the entire economy of Great Britain. During the first week of January 2008, in the aftermath of historic drops in the stock market, four major US banks borrowed  $40 billion from China just to keep their current operations going. A major credit crunch has dried up potential loans as a result of all the defaults. These banks are just trying to keep themselves and the national economy afloat, so to speak.

Despite this bad news, the “Anybody But Bush” bandwagon came to a screeching halt as young folks and progressives from the Midwest asserted their dominance in the face of large caches of cash and strong opposition from the media. They overcame a 40 million dollars political hype machine that, in the end, broke down and failed to deliver the candidates which had been pre-appointed by the corporate lobbyists and high powered political consultants through their major financial contributions.

There are, as always it seems, some key issues which have not been discussed openly during these well funded political campaigns. These issues can not be swept under the rug for long without dire consequences to our constitutional system of government. All of the Democrats running for president claim they will end the war in Iraq. Although Senator John Edwards has been willing to address controversial topics such as carbon gas emissions and he repeatedly proclaims that he is willing to take on the corporations, no one has been willing to confront the kidnapping, torturing and killing going on behind the scenes – the instruments of Bush and Cheney’s “war on terror”(doublespeak).

Never before have the people of the US been so willing to allow the deaths of our soldiers and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. At home they have acquiesced to the crass usurpation of the US Constitution. The Democrats vying for the presidency in 2008 have decided to ignore these obviously destructive violations of international morality. None of them have possessed the intestinal fortitude or the inner ethical character to make these scandals the centerpiece of their election campaigns. To the contrary, they all shirk from the issue just like they do the subject of the impeachment of the President and Vice-President for high crimes and misdemeanors. When our leaders refuse to speak the truth, the people often have no voice.

The American spirit suffers a slow death each time these atrocities are allowed to continue without debate. I can only imagine what a strong courageous moral leader like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have to say if he were here today to see this shameful example of authoritarian excess. I’m sure he would be leading hundreds of thousands of marchers on Washington, DC to confront and reform the government. Our reputation in the world community has been damaged almost beyond repair. The US is close to becoming a nation without hope of rehabilitation. If reparations to the rest of humanity are not secured quickly, our place in the history of the human species may be supplanted by all the records of greed, hypocrisy, empire building and oppression. Once admired for its enlightened vision of independence (and even some of its somewhat clumsy attempts to secure liberty for all), the United States is now in danger of being remembered as a great tyrannical war machine that succeeded in introducing Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a super technological Big Brother into the world. 

So, as is my inimical duty as a journalist, I must point out a few undisputed facts about the current state of the nation. Consider the following when you make your resolutions for the new year.
 
The US Shadow Army-

There are over 100,000 private mercenaries deployed by US corporations (including Blackwater) in Iraq. Tens of thousands of them carry deadly weapons with no accountability for their actions since they have been granted immunity from prosecution by the US government. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there have been no prosecutions of any of the members of these private armies for actions taken against civilians (including murders). Only two private security agents have been fired, after it was discovered that they had been confiscating supplies and selling them on the black market.

More information on these outlaw private armies can be found in the recent Nation magazine article, “Shadow Army, Shadow War”. No military draft is necessary when you have corporations willing to train ex-Navy seals and mercenaries to do the dirty work.

Instead of mass riots on college campuses at home where students converge to burn their draft cards, the war is delivered up quite sanitized and privatized for the mass consumption of the people in the US, avoiding any inconvenient domestic social unrest.

In any case, it allows the US to save a lot of money it would otherwise be forced to spend on tear gas and rubber bullets, as they did in Seattle in 1999.
 
Big Brother Is Watching You –

Through various executive orders and under provisions of the Homeland Security Act, the US government continues to have the ability to track all of your banking transactions, tap your phones and computers, arrest US residents and detain them indefinitely with no access to due process or a trial. If you end up on the “no-fly” list because of your peace activism and previous acts of civil disobedience, or because you happen to share the same name as someone else or even just because the Homeland Security and Interpol agents made a huge mistake, you are not allowed to correct the error or remove your name from the list. Welcome to America in the 21st century!

As of 2009, the government wants all citizens to carry national ID cards with RFD chips implanted in them so it can track the movements of everyone. Please refer to the Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR) and director Michael Ratner’s articles on these violations of our civil liberties. Do you really want a national ID card? Might as well attach a GPS system to yourself and send the coordinates to the government…  

Where Are The Iranians? –

According to the Center For American Progress, a recent study released by the West Point Military Academy found that of all the “insurgents” fighting in Iraq, there are few if any Iranians. This information is counter to the Bush administration’s boisterous claims that most of the insurrection is being organized by the Iranian Republican Guard and their allies. The West Point study shows that of all the insurgents identified by nation of origin, 40% come from Saudi Arabia; 19% are from Syria or Yemen; 7% are Algerians; and 6% are Moroccans.
 
IMF Warns Investors of US Economic Crisis -
 
According to BBC correspondent Andrew Walker, economic problems in the US, including inflation, recession, loan defaults, import/export imbalances and the insurmountable debt to the international community will “give a giant headache to the rest of the world” in 2008. He claims that the crash in sub-prime rate mortgages will have a severe effect on world markets. The US dollar has dropped 20% in real value and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is warning of a serious recession in the US.

The only question is, is this crash a result of official incompetence, natural economic forces, or is it purely by design? History shows that once the IMF steps in all bets are off. The international loan sharks take over at that point, resulting in severe “austerity measures” forced on the people whose public educations, government healthcare and  pensions are all privatized and given over to the control of profit motivated corporate interests.  

Some anti-corporate globalization experts, including Indian activist Vandana Shiva say that an economic crash in the US would serve the interests of multi-national corporations and international bankers who would benefit from lower wages and the devaluation of the US dollar. She claims it is part of a global scheme to destroy the middle class through international trade agreements like NAFTA, GATT and the new Partnership For Security and Prosperity economically linking the US, Canada and Mexico. The goal of the new partnership, she says, is the formation of the North American Union and the introduction of the “Amero” as the North American standard currency. Most observers expect the value of this new money to be set far below the current value of the US dollar, lowering the standard of living for residents of Canada and the United States.  
 
The Forgotten War –
 
According to various media reports, 30% to 50% of Afghanistan is now controlled once again by factions of the Taliban. This is not an indication of the great success of Bush’s “war on terror”. Violence is increasing and the opium trade is enjoying a great resurgence. Meanwhile, as the US military industrial complex focuses on Iran and Pakistan, the original home of the terrorist training camps threatens to spin out of control. 
 
The Missing Tapes –
 
The White House admits that video tapes of “interrogation sessions” (torture) with detainees accused of terrorist links were destroyed, circumventing the demands of a Congressional committee to turn over the tapes. Even Bush’s own Department of Justice is investigating the case as a potential “obstruction of justice”.

These are unmistakable signs of another potential Watergate perhaps, but the situation is much more serious in many ways. “Two-bit burglars” have been replaced with CIA torture specialists who violate the US Constitution and international human rights law with authorization from the US Attorney General and the White House. (Incidentally, there was a mysterious “fire” at the Vice President’s office during the last week of December. Conflicting reports of exactly how the conflagration started or where it was located leaves many observers with suspicions concerning some kind of underhanded obfuscation and subterfuge. They pose the question, “What evidence were you trying to destroy this time, Mr. Cheney?”)

As the new year dawns, our government still advocates extreme interrogation techniques including the use of water boarding, a medieval instrument of torture banned by international treaties and the US Army field manual. In response to direct questions during a nationally televised debate in December 2007, the majority of Republican candidates for US president refused to state any opposition to these torture techniques. The exceptions were Ron Paul and John Mcain (a former prisoner of war in Vietnam), both of whom have at least a trifle portion of their souls left intact after dancing with the outlaw gang in the White House and their dark empire.
 
Supreme Court To Rule On Habeas Corpus (Again) –
 
Michael Ratner, Director of the Center For Constitutional Rights located at Rutgers University, has been litigating in US courts for six years on behalf of detainees held at secret CIA prisons and the US military base at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. Twice the US Supreme Court ruled in Ratner’s favor, stating that detainees have the right of habeas corpus. In other words, the court said the detainees have the right to face their accusers in a US court of law.

In both cases, after the highest court in the land had ruled that the detainees must be allowed due process, the US Congress subsequently passed laws denying those rights.

Ratner complains that even some Democrats in the Congress voted along with the Republicans to take away the right of habeas corpus, one of the basic fundamental rights recognized since the Magna Charta was adopted in England in 1215. Now director of CCR is scheduled to argue the case before the Supreme Court for a third time, hoping that this time Congress will not act to pass another law countering the court ruling.

According to Michael Ratner, “For the last six years, many of our clients have been tortured and cruelly abused both at Guantanamo Bay and around the world.”

“Sadly, the partners of this administration have been many members in Congress. They are really the handmaidens of what I would call the ‘secret detention and torture program’ of the Bush administration.”

“Somehow the Democrats think that to say ‘We’re not going to torture people’, or say ‘We are going to shut down Guantanamo and stop kidnapping people and sending them to secret sites’, they somehow think that this would be showing weakness in terms of national security.”

“The US government can take you away, and they take you to a secret site and you don’t get an attorney. They don’t have to take you before any court. This can happen to anyone – US citizen or non-citizen. People are being ‘disappeared’”.
 “It’s really scary stuff - the idea that you could be taken off an airplane or taken out of the airport and never be heard from again. I never thought we as a country would ever sink so low. But it’s true and it’s not something you ever hear coming from the mouths of the presidential candidates or the mainstream media.”

So, once more, the real pertinent issues of life and death, which should be the national topics of discussion, are continually varnished over with cowardly acts of political expediency and selfish power brokering by our elected representatives in Washington, DC.

In summary, the year 2008 begins with a US government that illegally spies on its citizens, defies international law, invades other nations who have not attacked us, and refuses to take responsibility for polluting and destabilizing the world.
We have a lot of work. Happy New Year!