Forum Post: The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago

The administration imposed the most draconian police state legal structures in U.S. history before summoning the heads of NATO to Chicago. NATO accounts for 70 percent of military spending on the planet – combining the capacities of yesterday’s imperialists and the current superpower. “The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital.”  

The Empire Holds Its War Council in Chicago

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.”

If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress. With dignitaries on hand from the more than 50 countries that have done Washington’s bidding in Afghanistan, there will be lots of opportunities for the feds to invoke their new powers to put demonstrators in prison for up to ten years if they set foot on property containing any person under the protection of the Secret Service. That could include huge chunks of the city. And, of course, who knows what kinds of plots the FBI is conjuring up through its squads of agent provocateurs embedded in the ranks of demonstrators. Thanks to the preventive detention without trial legislation signed into law by President Obama this past New Year’s Eve, every American has lost her Constitutional right to due process of law. Which means that a reconfigured and far more principled U.S. anti-war movement now confronts a growing fascist infrastructure here at home, as it opposes imperial crimes, abroad.

The Chicago police claim they don’t plan to turn the eardrum-busting sound cannons on full volume against the demonstrators – just loud enough to convey “messages” to the crowd. The protesters are sending their own message, one that has become far more popular and general than could have been imagined, a year ago. Since the emergence of the Occupy movement, last October, millions of Americans have come to understand what Latin American peasants have always known: that the nexus of war in the world is Wall Street, and the Pentagon is its servant – as is the White House and most of the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. War is waged for the purpose of global economic subjugation and, therefore, peace can only be won by dethroning the financial bad guys: the Lords of Capital. So, much of the peace movement now sees itself as an expression of the 99 Percent, against the warlike and greedy 1 Percent. Once that lesson is learned, it cannot be shouted out by police sound-blasters. President Obama has made skillful use of NATO, to make it appear that he is not a go-it-alone cowboy, like George Bush. Obama has drawn closely to his side the old imperialists of Europe, who looted and pillaged the earth for five hundred years, establishing the planetary racial hierarchy that has only recently begun to crumble. The Black man in the White House is seen, ironically, as the last best hope of the old colonial racial order and the rule of capital. The Global One Percent can only be maintained in power by the U.S. war machine. Ultimately, the world needs only one thing from the American people: that they dismantle the machine. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

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