New weapon against workers
The US government has used drones (small unmanned airplanes) against rebels in countries like Pakistan and against immigrants trying to cross the Canadian and Mexican borders into the US. Now, not only is the government beginning to use drones against American citizens, but also, Congress passed a law signed by the president, authorizing corporations to use drones domestically. Drone manufacturers claim that drones will be useful, for example, to a realtor to make a video of a property that is for sale. But while drones are often used for surveillance, they have another, much more sinister use. Their name “Predator” indicates their other use—for killing. The US has used drones in the Middle East to kill human beings.
Late year, for the first time, in the northern border state of North Dakota, a local sheriff used a Predator drone to locate and arrest US citizens. They borrowed the drone from the border patrol. As the Los Angeles Times stated, “that was just the start.” This was an expansion of drone use as previously local law enforcement in North Dakota used drones to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June 2011, but this was the first it was uses in hunting down and arresting US citizens.
This is the first time the government has admitted use of drones to arrest Americans. In North Dakota cattle allegedly wandered onto the land of those arrested, and because they kept the cattle, the sheriff saw this as a crime.
Most Americans don’t have to worry about being charged with cattle rustling, but that doesn’t mean they are safe from unmanned aircraft used by the government for spying purposes.
In February 2012, President Obama signed a new law that in a very dangerous development permits corporations and other private businesses to use drones for their purposes.
Drones are useful not only for spying. In the Middle East, the US government has widely used them for killing. One company advertises its small drones, which are readily transported in the trunk of a car, as “the ultimate assassin bug.”
It goes around corners, seeks out the victim, and kills them. The company that makes the drones says the drone are operated by a person with a computer in a safe location who is not subject to any of the physical risks of combat or pursuit of alleged criminal suspects.
All this occurs in the context of an economic disaster where corporations use robots and computers to eliminate jobs, resulting in a mass of people demanding jobs, demanding change. In such an economic situation, the capitalists who control the earth’s riches are forced to fight to retain their control, as the people fight for the means to live. The Occupy movement demanded that wealth be shared more fairly, and those who control wealth will not permit this.
They are compelled to turn to fascism, to the open use of force against the workers, to maintain their riches.
They will turn to the tactics used by oligarchs in Latin America, which include paramilitary violence against the people. In the US it will not be only armed gangs sent against the people but killer Predator drones.
Use of drones both by the US government and by corporations threatens not only Latino workers on the border, but the entire American people need to confront this high tech menace. The tactics that are first used against Latinos will end up directed at all workers in America, and all need to unite to stop the move towards fascism.
