Obama: Human Rights Disaster

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3926
Date Written:  2013-08-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2013
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX19868

The presidency of Barack Obama has continued, consolidated and institutionalized the human rights catastrophe of its predecessor. It's frankly impossible to look at the string of atrocities without becoming enraged and it's also critical to understand why they're happening.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt

Right here and now, the question is what can social justice movements do? The first thing is to grasp the depth of the problem: President Obama isn't just making tactical compromises to soften the militaristic and anti-democratic offensive from the right wing. He and his administration are part and parcel of the problem, not the solution. He has made most of the Bush gang’s abuses permanent -- except for those acts of torture which, once revealed, give imperialism really bad PR -- and laid the basis for his successor, of either capitalist party, to take them to the next level. And as we’ve tried to argue here, the roots of the destruction of human rights run way deeper than Bush’s cheerful viciousness or Obama’s vacuum of principle.