Obama further weakens civil liberties with attack on Miranda rights.

Fresh on the heels of “formalizing procedures” for indefinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo Bay and anyone else the US government deems a threat, the Obama administration is moving pretty quickly to curb Miranda rights. Miranda is the 1966 decision that obligates law enforcement to notify suspects of their rights, namely, the right to remain silent and to have an attorney present. Miranda is a very important legal protection that all workers should support.

The administration tried to weaken the Miranda law last year but it is a very sensitive issue. Before he got elected, Obama harshly criticized the Bush regime for its attacks on civil liberties but has “embraced many of the same policies while devising additional one” says the Wall Street Journal.

Conservatives have long tried to weaken or eliminate Miranda, a very powerful legal right that we should defend. The changes will allow law enforcement to hold suspects longer and question them before reading them their Miranda rights. As usual, the argument they use is that reading Miranda rights hinders their ability to protect the public and the mass media will often pulicise a minority of cases where criminals are allowed to go free because they were denied their Miranda rights.

Watching US television you would think that we were a nation of cops. No one really works and we have very spacious homes with picket fences or apartments in the city were young men and women romp and play enjoying the myriad of freedoms we have and are trying to spread to others around the world. Most of us are detectives protecting the public from all the nasty people. The suspects in these shows rarely demand their Miranda rights or ask for a lawyer before they blab it all out; to show savvy suspects that use laws that offer us some level of protection would send out the wrong message.

The new policy only applies to “exceptional cases” says an FBI memo and investigators have to “conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat”. We are supposed to feel safer with the knowledge that such actions cannot be taken without prior approval from an FBI supervisor and “Justice Department lawyers”. Well, that makes me feel safe. The two million people we have in the American gulag should be warning enough not to put our faith in FBI officials and the class and race prejudiced US justice system.

Bit by bit they are whittling away at our rights. The advantage that acts of individual and indiscriminate terrorism give the authorities is that the killing of innocent people, especially children, is so repulsive to working class people that when laws that protect individual and civil rights are weakened and draconian measures taken under the guise of fighting terrorism are introduced, people acquiesce or meekly accept the words of the police. This happened in England where I spent my youth. Readers might remember the film, In the Name of the Father, about the Irish Catholics wrongly imprisoned for years by the state; the father died there. They were known as the Guildford Four and another falsely imprisoned group as the Maguire Seven This happened due to IRA bombings, particularly the bombing of a pub in Guildford that killed a lot of people. The population wanted the culprits caught and the state went after the first Irish Catholics they could.

But the other side of these laws is though they say that they are to be used against terrorists, who is deciding what a terrorist is? The FBI and Judges are apparently. In other words, trusted and loyal representatives of US capitalism. Are striking workers terrorists? Here’s a bit of information for you. If the strike is effective it will be found to be an act of terrorism and its leaders terrorists you can bet on it. The strikes called by the present leadership of organized Labor are nothing but 24-hour protests designed to lose and strengthen the incorrect view among workers that we can’t win. Seriously threaten their interests and we’ll see a different face. The US capitalist class is a ruthless, murderous bunch. In the last analysis only a united mass movement can defend us against them, we can’t rely on the courts, but that doesn’t mean we should vigorously defend laws that benefit us.

After 911 there were some public sector strikes in the Midwest where the workers were accused of heading in the “terrorist” direction. The same during the ILWU struggles here in California where the threat of the terrorism label hung in the air. Believe me, students, workers, organized or not, will be subject to anti-terrorism laws when we engage in activity that threatens the economy and profit taking.

All workers must not be fooled by claims from the Obama administration and law enforcement that these laws are there to protect us and will only be used against so-called terrorists. US capitalism is imposing some of its harshest measures on workers and the middle class in decades. The wars and terror inflicted by the US military machine have to be paid for. The building of bases in hundreds of countries to protect the interests of US corporations has to be paid for. The crisis of capitalism has to be paid for. The US capitalist class is putting US workers and the middle class on rations and at some point what we have seen in the Arab world will be happening here and the strategists of capital know it and they also know that the Labor leaders and their allies in the Democratic Party will not be able to channel these movements in to ineffective and “legitimate” protests as they have in Wisconsin forever.

Terrorism has its roots in US foreign policy. At this moment, an elite US trained and armed Republican Guard is keeping a ruthless dictator in Yemen in power. The same set up that the US’s other friend, Sadaam Hussein had. Mubarak, the Zionist regime in Israel, supporting these elements is what leads people to what are acts of demoralized individuals, indiscriminate individual violence. Workers are not attracted to such methods, methods that have been undermined by mass insurrection.

If we want eliminate acts of individual terror directed at US civilians here or abroad it is our responsibility to change the foreign policy of US capitalism, which, like the history of the British in Northern Ireland, is based on terrorism. We should put ourselves in a Pakistani or Afghani’s shoes for a moment and we’ll get a feel of what sort of anger arises when your kids get blown to bits playing in the street, and how much angrier you get at the culprits who offer you $100 bucks apiece and an apology.

And when are those Obama supporters going to take those bumper stickers off their cars?