Vol. 74/No. 20      May 24, 2010

Bills now before the Senate and House of Representatives propose allowing the government to revoke citizenship of those it accuses of being affiliated with “terrorists.” This would make it easier to place them before military tribunals. Capitalist politicians are harping about the “ease” with which foreign nationals like Faisal Shahzad, who is accused of manufacturing and placing the Times Square bomb, obtain U.S. citizenship through marriage.

The attempted bombing is being used to justify more U.S. military involvement in Pakistan and to press its ally in Islamabad to expand its own war against Taliban forces in the country. Washington is aiming to put more special forces on the ground there, at the same time U.S. drone missile strikes kill civilians—“collateral damage”—along with Taliban combatants in the least developed areas of the country’s northwest.

The U.S. rulers have and will continue to use events like the attempted bombing in Times Square—actions that have nothing to do with the fight against capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression—to garner support for further restrictions on the rights of working people in preparation for class battles to come. The same methods promoted in the fight against “terrorism” will be increasingly wielded against union and working-class militants resisting the consequences of the deepening economic crisis and the accompanying multifaceted assaults on conditions of life and work.

The statement released by Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York mayor Martín Koppel on Sept. 11, 2001—the day of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon—rings true today. In part it reads: “By its systematic superexploitation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; by its never-ending insults to their national and cultural dignity; by its ceaseless, murderous violence in countless forms—U.S. imperialism is turning North America into a death trap for working people and all who live here.”

Working people “must oppose U.S. military intervention anywhere in the world. We must oppose efforts by Washington to escalate an assault on the political rights of working people and the organizations of our class and its oppressed and exploited allies.”
 
 
Related articles:
Sudanese-born Canadian fights gov’t, UN blacklist
U.S. gov’t uses Times Square bomb attempt to target rights  
 
 
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