On Friday May 7, Matthis Chiroux and I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, a campus in a gorgeous setting a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean.
Student members of sponsoring organizations attending included; Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for a Voluntary Society, and SB Anti-War. KCSB 91.9FM broadcast the program live.
I have appended two news stories, the first from The Hill, "The Police prepare for unrest," and the other from the Washington Post, "On Al-Qaeda Websites, Joy Over U.S. Crisis and Support for McCain."
The GOP ticket's in a heap of trouble, with Palin hurting the ticket, and McCain appearing increasingly desperate and being forced to try to defend traditionally rock-solid GOP states in the face of a surge of support for Obama after the Wall Street crisis struck.
Revulsion for the Bush regime and for McCarthyist baiting by the GOP is evident everywhere.
At the same time, the reactionary and fascist wind being whipped up by the GOP and its supporters is intensifying. At Western Carolina University in North Carolina on Monday, for example, a murdered bear cub wrapped in Obama posters was discovered.
Some people are exultant that Obama's going to win. He's clearly got a lead that, barring a dramatic event, should, if the votes are even mostly counted, give him the presidency.
However, as the two following stories underscore, a November surprise is going to happen, one way or the other, whether Obama wins or he doesn't. Even though he is clearly backed by very powerful ruling class interests and even though his politics are solidly and entirely in the service of their interests, the fact remains that in the minds of the most backward sectors of the society, he's still a black man.
The people who stole the last two elections are still around and are still hellbent to take permanent control over the society and the world. They believe that they have God on their side. They have demonstrated time and time again that they regard no trick, no stratagem, and no action beneath them, including torture, assassination and murder.
These are a few words to describe the way tens of millions of Americans felt on November 3, 2004.
Beneath all of those words was a basic question: How?How?!Throughout the United States and the world, that question kept echoing as an angry, desperate, demoralized scream.How, after Bush stole the 2000 election in broad daylight" after it had long been blatantly obvious there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" after the Patriot Act " after Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 became the highest-grossing documentary of all time"and only months after the release of the Abu Ghraib torture photos, which shocked the conscience of people throughout the globe"
Your government is openly torturing
people... and justifying it.
Will the election of a new president
stop this?
YOUR GOVERNMENT ADMITS TORTURING
PEOPLE:
On February 5, 2008 CIA Director
Michael Hayden stood before Congress and admitted CIA officers aterboarded
three detainees. Two days after Hayden's admission, U.N. High Commissioner For
Human Rights Louise Arbour classified waterboarding as torture.
On April 9, 2008 ABC News reported
that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, John shcroft, Colin Powell,
and George Tenet met regularly in the White House to discuss and approve arious
forms of torture-including waterboarding-for use on detainees. On April 11,
President eorge W. Bush himself admitted approving these meetings, saying: "And
yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
As of December 2007, according to
Amnesty International, the U.S. was known to be holding 275 etainees in
Guantanamo Bay, ("Gitmo") Cuba. All but a handful of these detainees have never
been charged, and have never received a trial. The vast majority of these
detainees were turned over to the U.S. by warlords; they were not captured on the battlefield. Even the
U.S. military only haracterizes only 8% of these detainees as Al-Qaeda
fighters.
Will this election result in significant change?Don't count on it!
Obama has won the election and tens of millions of people in the U.S. now expect significant change in the political trajectory initiated by George W. Bush. But the reality is that they will be deeply disappointed if they expect Obama and the Democrats to deliver on the promise of change.
By Emma Kaplan