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Death squads and US democracy

Death squads and US democracy
14 July 2009/ WSWS

The revelation that the CIA initiated a covert program, apparently involving assassinations, and kept it secret from the US Congress on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney marks a deepening of the crisis in the American state apparatus and an indication of the degeneration of democratic processes within the US.

Last April, under the pressure of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama was compelled to make public a series of previously classified memos issued by the Bush Justice Department which authorized acts of torture in chilling detail. The administration attempted to portray the public airing of these documents exposing crimes of the Bush administration as a signal of the new “openness” and “transparency” of the Obama White House.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j14.shtml


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  • Ivan

    There is more than Death squads to the threat to US democracy. How much can a new president change? Example: Could Barack Obama (let) initiate a new investigation into the 9/11, even if he wanted to?
    Just for a beginning two points towards “who participated in the conspiracy theories”:
    Point 1: Do you know what the FBI codeword for the attacks of 9/11? It is PENTTBOM – an abbreviation of Pentagon Twin Towers Bombing (ask Google PENTTBOM, if you do not believe). When the FBI experts saw the buildings fall, it was clear to them that they were destroyed by explosives. You cannot change a codeword later on; the resulting mess would be irreversible.
    Point 2: In spite of what is said in the point 1, the NIST report shows that NIST have not done any analysis of the WTC dust to check whether it contains traces of explosives. It just freely states, that the fall of the buildings does not suggest a controlled demolition, which is contrary to statements of most experts (and amateur pictures of quantities of molten steel). Moreover, not having done something so simple and conclusive suggests that they were forbidden to do so (by someone who knew what the result would be and was powerful enough). In the meantime two scientists from Denmark have done the analysis and have found the traces of thermo-explosives in the WTC dust, which they also presented in two short shows on the Danish TV.
    Let us look at the necessary consequences of a new and real investigation into the 9/11.
    Many of us are sure that explosives were expertly used to demolish three WTC buildings, and this was also supported by the above mentioned analysis (and by absence of an official one). The analysis was unofficial, and the media ignore it. But an official result of this kind would automatically lead to the following questions:
    - Who could (expertly) install the necessary explosives including the timing detonating fuses into those buildings without raising suspicion – not likely the terrorists to whom this is attributed?
    - Who are the people held and tortured at Guantánamo then? People caught arbitrarily in Afghanistan, who, after years of solitary confinement and periodical simulation of drowning and other sophisticated torture, would probably confess „to anything“, as proved of late?
    - What is the real background of the whole „operation“ in case that the WTC buildings were destroyed by explosives, not laid out by terrorists – who were they laid out by? This, however, is not just a question, this would indicate that those who laid out the explosives were the real organizers and coordinated their action with the „terrorists“ highjacking the planes.
    Some lies preceding the war in Iraq are listed in various sources, almost thousand of them (935 in two years, says a study of two nonprofit journalism organizations), so I would just like to stress: If someone sometimes finds traces of the use of explosives at the WTC site (I mean officially, they were already found), that would not be just another lie to include in the list; that would constitute the proof of the biggest lie in the history of mankind. But it would also pop up another question on us, this time a really heavy one:
    - Is the US run by its constitutional institutions, including the president, or by a mafia of rich citizens who own all the media and use all the resources of the State, including FBI, CIA and US Army for their private purposes?
    And:
    - Implication 1: If yes, is it possible to change this, considering the combined power of those institutions? Is the US constitution, with the existing violations of human rights which were set up after the WTC destruction (and a lot of unofficial ones), still useable for the purpose? I believe the first positive signs are popping up.
    - Implication 2: If yes, the above institutions, whose original purpose is to protect the citizens and the property of the US, were turned into a tool whose activities have lead to creating danger for the US in general. They in fact created terrorism which has not existed before in any comparable scale, thus scaring the US citizens into approving the present wars (which under this assumption of demolition by explosives are entirely unjustified aggressive wars).
    - Implication 3: And it would also rather dramatically redefine the “Axis of Evil”.
    Are the Americans ready to digest this while dealing with the mafia? Most of them respect the mafia and call it Patriotism. But without a kind of transformation which would include down-to-the-roots investigation (which might end in a kind of Nuremberg process) and also creation of assurance against rise of any such future mafia, they will never be free people again, and they will remain a mob manipulated by this sophisticated mafia. But – can anyone start up a process like that? Is it possible at all?

  • Bill

    That was a thoughtful and thorough comment Ivan; it deserves a response. Here is my opinion:

    What is the Path to Power?

    Marx once noted that “Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with the new.” The old ruling classes have never voluntarily stepped down from power. They will clutch their butcher knives until they are taken out.

    The proletariat cannot use the bourgeois state to remake society, or even to bring into being a single one of the great changes necessary. Whether ­“democratic” or openly terroristic, the bourgeois state is a machinery of repression. It is an expression of the basic capitalist relations it serves and enforces. It has been developed and refined over centuries. Fascism or bourgeois democracy are both dictatorships, the dictatorship of the rich.

    A revolutionary war should only be launched when the proletariat has a real chance of winning. This requires three basic factors: first, a serious crisis in society and in government; second, mass upheaval and rebellion among the proletariat and other sections of the people; and third, a vanguard party capable of turning the mass upheaval and rebellion into an organized insurrection and giving it overall leadership and direction.

    The United States is entering into serious crisis; millions of people know that highest levels of government blew up the WTC, and Pentagon with explosives. There is constitutional crisis concerning past stolen elections which has led to unitary power in the hands of the executive branch, unending wars of aggression, the widespread use of torture by the US Empire worldwide and an economic collapse that the system may not recover from.

    Why would you want to argue for crumbs through reform of Capitalism, when the people of the world could have the planet and without masters?

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