Surveillance, Obama’s Guantanamo, and Political Prisoners in the U.S.

Published in Issue 524 of The Black Commentator on July 11, 2013
By Larry Pinkney

“The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba – yes Cuba too…I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
–Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
–Albert Camus

It is stunning, almost beyond belief, that the hypocrisy and brutality of the corporate-owned U.S. government have become so hideously obvious to all critically-thinking people in this year of 2013.

The recent revelations pertaining to the Obama/Biden regime’s massive NSA/CIA, spying on and invasion of, the privacy of ordinary everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout the world is now a matter of irrefutable fact. Yet, even this horror, virtually pales by comparison to this government’s ongoing internal and external hypocrisy and brutality.

As Barack Obama’s deadly predator drones have snuffed out the lives of countless children, women, and men in Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere throughout Mother Earth, this nation’s government is deeply complicit in the incremental and daily genocide being carried out by the apartheid Zionist Israeli state against the Palestinian people. The horror of this is only surpassed by its insanity, coupled with the concomitant incessant complicity, on the part of the U.S. corporate-stream media.

However, none of these despicable realities should come as a surprise, in view of the fact that they emanate from an irretrievably corrupt, corporate-owned government that imprisons myriads of political prisoners of all colors within the sadistic confines of the U.S. prison gulag system inside this nation itself.

The unspeakable psychological and physical atrocities, that have been and are being committed, by this government against the prisoners at Obama’s Guantanamo prison gulag (in Cuba), not only serves to actually reinforce hatred and a cycle of ‘terrorism’ worldwide, but are in fact a direct reflection of the daily sadism and hypocrisy, practiced by the U.S. government and its judicial system of injustice, against U.S. citizens themselves who are prisoners inside this nation’s massive prison gulag system. It is imperative to make this connection.

It would have been naive to have expected Barack Obama and his Democrat and Republican corporate/military elite minions to have honestly, expeditiously, and forthrightly corrected the outrageous debacle at Guantanamo especially when the terrible plight of political prisoners and other poor and disenfranchised prisoners right here in this nation is officially and overwhelmingly swept under the rug and ignored.

Even now, many prisoners throughout the state of California, and other parts of this nation, have been on prolonged hunger strikes in protest of the inhumane, torturous, and sadistic conditions that they are forced to endure, but of course the U.S. corporate-stream media reports virtually nothing about this. The hypocrisy of this nation’s so-called ‘democracy’ begins right here at home and stretches around the globe.

The massive spying and surveillance (so-called ‘intelligence’ gathering) by Barack Obama’s government against many millions of everyday ordinary people nationally and internationally (including supposed allied governments and diplomats) is not merely about the gathering of information and the destruction of personal privacy – it is about using the ‘private’ details of people’s lives to intimidate, coerce, and blackmail the ordinary people of this nation and world into total submission in a de facto police state. This is also about the utter destruction of the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention international law. The nightmare of the infamous COINTELPRO activities of the U.S. government have now come full circle both nationally and internationally under the auspices of Mr. ‘hope and change,’ drone man, ‘kill list’ Barack Obama and his Democrat and Republican corporate-owned minions. It must be reversed. It cannot be tolerated.

In a sense, everyday ordinary people of this nation and world have ALL been placed in a kind of Guantanamo of sorts by Barack Obama and his cohorts. The time has come for genuine systemic change. Wake up! We must collectively, say and actualize, a resounding NO to these blood suckers and their outrages – while there is yet time for humanity and our precious Mother Earth! Times are perilous and we must act!

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward…!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)