Obama’s War: Criminalize the Left | Black Agenda Report

Obama’s War: Criminalize the Left

23 May 2012

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Like no other president in modern times, Barack Obama is determined to criminalize the Left opposition through relentless reshaping of Constitutional notions of law. Whistleblowers are domestic public enemy number one. “Having knowledge of government wrongdoing is criminal, in the eyes of this administration.”

Obama’s War: Criminalize the Left

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The Obama legal team has been single-minded in its determination to make political dissent a crime.”

The Obama administration is methodically erecting the legal structures of a police state. The president late last year smoothed the way for bipartisan passage through Congress of a preventive detention bill that is so vaguely worded, a federal judge in New York last week ruled that it is likely to be successfully challenged on Constitutional grounds. And in Richmond, Virginia, a three-judge appeals court heard Justice Department lawyers argue that reporters can be compelled to reveal the identities of whistleblowers in so-called national security cases.

The government is prosecuting a former CIA officer, Jeffrey Sterling, for allegedly leaking secret documents to New York Times investigative reporter James Risen. The ex-spy is accused of showing the reporter documents on the agency’s campaign of sabotage against Iran’s nuclear research program, information the reporter later used to write a book.

In both cases, the Obama legal team has been single-minded in its determination to make political dissent a crime. The judge in the preventive detention proceeding repeatedly asked the government to explain, specifically, how or if the seven plaintiffs might be detained under the wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, which makes it a crime to provide “substantial support” to groups “associated” with Al Qaida. The plaintiffs, including former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges, academic activist Noam Chomsky, and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, wanted to know exactly what the terms “substantial support” and “associated groups” meant, and if their actions as journalists, authors, activists and just plain citizens made them vulnerable to detention without trial. Obama’s lawyers refused to explain, as if the vague and highly interpretable language spoke for itself. What they were trying to create is a legal trap so vague and amorphous that it can ensnare almost anyone opposed to Washington’s foreign policies. The New York federal judge refused to accommodate the government’s lawyers, and allowed the plaintiffs legal standing to sue.

“The Obama legal doctrine seems to be that whatever the government does not want the public to see, is criminal.”

The Richmond federal appeals court is being asked to recognize the government’s contention that reporters who receive secret government documents are not protected as journalists because they are witnesses to a crime. One of the judges pressed the prosecutor to explain how the public’s interest in the maintenance of a free press might be outweighed by the specific circumstances of the case. Obama’s lawyers refused to explain, claiming there was no need to balance Constitutional issues, because the reporter was the only witness to a crime. Receiving secret government documents, he said, is the same as receiving illegal drugs.

The Obama legal doctrine seems to be that whatever the government does not want the public to see, is criminal. Having knowledge of government wrongdoing is criminal, in the eyes of this administration.

President George Bush may have felt that way, too, but Obama will go down in history as the major architect to date of the evolving American police state. He has already prosecuted more whistleblowers than all his presidential predecessors, combined, and is the first chief executive to arm himself with a preventive detention law. And to think, Angela Davis says Obama identifies with the historical Black radical tradition. In reality, he has much more in common with the traditions of fascism.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120523_gf_ObamaPoliceState.mp3

More Stories

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez
Cuba will not surrender! Cuba persists and resists! And that persistence is intolerable to the empire!
10 Jun 2026
Speech delivered by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and president of the Republic, at the commemoration of the 95th birthday…
Socialist Movement of Ghana
Statement of Condemnation of the Plan to Have Emmanuel Macron Deliver a Keynote Address on Reparation in Ghana
10 Jun 2026
Africans cannot negotiate with Europeans as if they need them, require their input, or even conduct serious unilateral agreements with them - they are not doing anything other than keeping Africa in…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report June 5, 2026
05 Jun 2026
In this week’s segment, we discuss the US effort to control the world’s oil and gas supplies in Venezuela, Iran, and other nations, and to disrupt and steal supplies going to and from Russia and Ch
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley , Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
"Move the Games": Take the FIFA World Cup Out of the U.S. and Boycott the Host Country Itself
05 Jun 2026
Ajamu Baraka is a Black Agenda Report contributing editor and Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. The North-South Project is among the organizations calling for…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley , Richard Medhurst
Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine, Greenland, and the U.S. Heist of the World's Oil and Gas Supply
05 Jun 2026
Richard Medhurst discusses his latest investigative reporting, “The Petrogas-Dollar: The Secret US Strategy Behind the Iran War," an analysis of the latest iteration of U.S. hegemony. The U.S. is…