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We Stand For Nothing

By Alexa

As a nation, as a people, what exactly do we stand for now? I'm not talking about the very commendable work done every day by individuals, activists, groups working for change as opposed to waiting for change.

Let's be honest. If Obama is elected and inaugurated, change won't happen on "day one." I have personally lost confidence in him after the FISA betrayal and although I'll vote for him, I'm not the enthusiastic volunteer I was earlier this summer.

As a nation, we are known as tyrants and cowards before the world. Avoided by most for our aggressive impulses and pre-emptive conflicts, we are alone on a precipice. Let's take a look at some of what we've lost.

The FISA Amendments Act:

• Gives the president broad new powers to spy on innocent Americans' phone calls and emails - even when they have no connection to terrorism. It legalizes mass, untargeted and unwarranted spying on our international phone calls and emails.
• Restricts judicial oversight of the surveillance program. The FISA court will not know who, what or where will actually be monitored, and the government can continue a spying program even after it has been denied by the court.
• Provides retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies for their role in the president's domestic spying program. The test in the bill is not whether government certifications sent to the companies were actually legal - only whether they were issued.

Freedom in a country of immigrants doesn't mean the colorblind cruelty of ICE. Most Americans cannot imagine being corralled at the workplace or woken up in the middle of the night by strangers and forced to supply proof of citizenship. Yet that's exactly what happens to many Latinos in this country whether they are here legally or not despite the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of warrantless intrusions into private homes, which apply to all persons, regardless of immigration status.

Ana Romero, 44 years old, died in ICE detention under extremely suspicious circumstances and her unnecessary death is only the most recent we know of. How can one be said to stand for "sanctity of life" while refusing medical care to a completely helpless woman whose "crime" was being undocumented and cleaning houses to help support her elderly mother?

There was no sanctity in Ana Romera's life or death. There was a complete disregard for her most basic human rights, a bizarre account of strange smell and taste of food, which made her ill before her death, and then a second autopsy finding of "asphyxiation" by hanging. This from the mercenaries of the desperate, the destitute, the disappeared, in whose custody 276,912 individuals were detained last year.

It is purely myth that President Bush or the Republican administration "keeps us safe."

But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths. They see some conservatives blaming the poor for not saving themselves. So much for W.'s "culture of life."

Let's play the blame game: the man who benefited more than anyone in history from safety nets set up by family did not bother to provide one for those who lost their families.

Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Let's play the blame game: the man who benefited more than anyone in history from safety nets set up by family did not bother to provide one for those who lost their families.

There are only 37 signatories to International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All
Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on September 19, 2008 (boomark / email).