My phone rang at 4am. I didn't pick up then, but when I returned the call, the voice on the other end said “Homeland Security, how can I help you?”
By Luke Rudkowski
I got that call days before President Barack Obama extended the authority of that very organization to spy on American citizens and breach due process of law. The Patriot Act was reauthorized by a president who, as a senator, had promised to repeal it.
Barack Obama may have renamed the Global War on Terror the “Overseas Contingency Operation”, but the war of terror the American government is waging on its citizens continues.
Last week, inside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA, a global consolidation of power was taking place. Outside, those trying to oppose it faced the very technological weapons that were made to combat terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In addition, they faced Northcom, FEMA, the FBI, and the US Army all working in tandem to suppress the freedom of American citizens to express their grievances on the streets, clearly violating the sacred right of posse comitatus and the freedom to assemble, for which American men and women have fought and died for.
The presumption of innocence is now lost in America. Men and women not even engaging in the protest were rounded up, beaten, tear-gassed, arrested and sent to detention centers where they were processed and fingerprinted by the FBI as the National Guard kept watch.
As has been clearly documented before, during protests at the DNC, RNC and in Canada during the SPP meeting, police officers were caught dressing up as anarchists, creating a riot in order for the police and military to move in violently to squash what was initially peaceful dissent.
The leaders of the Bush administration predicted that the War on Terror would last for 100 years. The terminology may have changed, but the battle hasn't. And today the war machine has a slick, highly effective propaganda arm in the Obama administration that is more efficient against dissenters than anything created in the previous one.
From Clinton to Bush to Obama, the policy of dehumanization and destruction of civil liberties continues under both the Republican and Democratic parties.
The same night I received the 4 am phone call I got a notice from the Clinton Global Initiative informing me that my press credentials to attend an upcoming event featuring both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were invalid now because of my political beliefs.
I don't know why Homeland Security called me that night, but the mysterious phone calls kept coming even after I left Pittsburgh, now calling and hanging up without saying a single word.