At the forefront of this assault is the rounding up of more than 800 people, along with laws that allow the INS and federal and local cops to hold them indefinitely, with hearings and other proceedings in secret chambers. The government so far has been careful not to target U.S.-born citizens, instead going after immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia.

The fact that not one person has been charged in connection with the attacks on September 11 helps highlight the real aims of the U.S. rulers: to press for working people to start to accept special repressive laws targeting sections of the oppressed and exploited in this country. And now FBI officials, voicing frustration at the fact that their detainees won't "confess," are floating proposals to restrict civil liberties and begin torturing people.

As in the case of Washington's widening use of air bases in Pakistan, once the U.S. rulers get their foot in the door they don't intend to stop there. "An injury to one is an injury to all" is a hard-won political reality for working people. Letting Washington throw constitutional rights out the window for some people today only sets up wider sections of the working class for similar treatment tomorrow.

As the war deepens and Washington sends ground troops into "harm's way," the bosses will try to pressure workers into accepting more intrusive searches on and off the job; to not fight firings of those with views opposing the U.S. rulers' wars and the bosses' assaults, such as in the case of socialist candidate Michael Italie in Miami; and to refrain from striking, "given the war effort"--and, if they don't comply, pass no-strike laws. They aim to curtail the ability of working people to discuss and debate, raise different views, and organize in our own interests.

Washington is using the September 11 attacks, and now the anthrax scare, to make a case that people in the United States have to trade in some their rights in exchange for "security," and to put up with cops opening their trunks, indefinite detentions as "material witnesses," more wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, and other measures.

But there is no security for working people under capitalism, either from sudden layoffs, death and injury on the job, firings by the boss, or being sent to war against our class brothers and sisters abroad. It is capitalism that has brought social devastation and upheaval to the world, a reality that has for decades been more and more true inside the strongest imperialist powers themselves.

By fighting to defend every person from victimization by the government and employers--no matter how much they are demonized by the powers that be; to defend the right to speak out, organize, and take action in the interests of the working class; and to unite working people in the United States and across national boundaries, workers and farmers can begin to march toward a world where the assaults and degradations of capitalism are no more.
 
 
Related article:
Cops mull using torture, drugs on detainees  
 
 
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