A not so veiled warning

...do what you're told or else there's no telling who the Praetorians will let through.

Next time, it's Lady GaGa.

After all, it's happened before.



I think we know the answer to Chavez's question to Obama: "Are you a prisoner?"

...It's no coincidence that as the United States loses its global preeminence, constitutional rights are under full assault. In the heart of the schoolyard bully lives the fear of a bigger, meaner bully. The bully gives no quarter, tolerates no opposition, sneers down his enemies and when necessary, goes nuclear. This is the fearful position of the United States in 2009. Obama's America is a nation adrift, without moral compass, armed to the teeth.

Over the past half century, the United States has turned its aggression outward against such counties as Vietnam, Bosnia, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This insatiable appetite for aggression ultimately turns inward, manifesting as domestic repression and the kind of violence we witnessed this month in Killeen, Texas. Surveillance of private citizens has become more comprehensive and sophisticated. The internet is more restricted with websites and blogs watched for "offensive" content. Meaningful political protest, as in Pittsburgh, is extinguished. As Naomi Wolf points out in her book The End of America (2007), "The Department of Homeland Security's surveillance apparatus is certainly aimed at prosecuting the war on terror. But it may also be aimed at us, for domestic political purposes."

So this is how "the land of the free and the home of the brave" devolves. This is how we become a neutered people, no longer holding our leaders to account, no longer seeming to care that our constitution has become just another piece of paper.

It is a betrayal that President Obama continues to "render" foreign nationals to countries where they suffer the very torture that candidate Obama railed against. In September, 2006, Sen. Obama spoke these words on the floor of the U.S. Senate,

...restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.

Now this same Barack Obama presides over indefinite detention without habeas corpus for thousands of prisoners being held by this country in Afghanistan. Most of the unspeakable policies initiated under Bush continue in the Obama administration. Where is the change we were promised?

Last April, President Obama attended the Summit of the Americas hosted by the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. At the end of what turned out to be a rather humiliating meeting for the United States, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez coyly asked Obama, "Are you a prisoner?" Chavez's words were shrugged off, but there was poignant truth in them. Latin American leaders know too well what it is to be under the control of the military. Is this the predicament in which our new president finds himself?

No more than the rest of the world, Hugo.