That far has the Obama administration gone in its liberticidal spree, that its early (broken) promises such as that of closing down Guantanamo, are now lost in the very short memory of the public opinion. Barack Obama honored his Texan predecessor by stepping up illegal foreign interventions and pulling off numbers that would have made even Ronald Reagan proud (i.e. killing Gaddafi, something the former B-list actor had unsuccessfully tried to do throughout his presidency during the 1980s). And it doesn't end on an international level. On the domestic front -- with the exception of a health reform which still qualifies as inhuman when compared to the health care system of any other developed country -- he turned out to be an even more eager killer of civil liberties.

While Bush Jr. specialized in the kind of speeches one associates with evangelical fanatics, Obama excels at the kind of progressive rhetoric that has had American voters falling for it not once, but twice. The Texan semi-illiterate cowboy did, more or less, what he said he would do, as almost a million dead Iraqis would tell you were they still alive. By artfully navigating a political landscape where emotions and the need to identify with anyone other than the dispossessed are all that counts, Obama manages to say one thing and do the exact opposite with hardly anyone noticing.

While his speeches are filled with kind words about world peace, helping those in need and so on, his actual deeds are of a far darker nature. Since settling down in the White House in 2009, the Obama administration has orchestrated a crackdown on domestic dissent of the kind only Edgar J. Hoover seemed capable of. The World War I-era Espionage Act -- whose very name clearly indicates the kind of emergency its use would call for -- has been used to persecute, pardon and prosecute government officials. But whereas during WWI the officials that America would prosecute belonged to enemy countries, the ones Obama is jailing are, well technically at least, on his side. John Kiriakou, a former CIA employee, is in fact serving thirty months in federal prison for having identified in public an intelligence officer who had indulged in a bit (too much?) in the practice of torture. If you torture someone, no problem, but if you try to denounce such crimes then yes, you might get in trouble with the authorities.

Not a single day passes by without the American press reporting on heartbreaking stories of the suppressed freedom of speech in countries such as China, Iran and basically any other one that does kneel down in front of the Washington masters. If, on the contrary, you're a friend of the White House, you can indulge in as much anti-democratic behaviour as you want. Some of the U.S.' most trusted allies are in fact countries where there has never been a democratic election (Saudia Arabia, UAE, etc.) and where peaceful pro-democracy protests are being violently repressed (think Bahrain). Get the pattern? Get the message? Be on our side and the violation of human rights won't be our concern, after all, we're quite good at that on our home turf!

A hunger strike has been going on at Guantanamo for months now, with prisoners protesting the inhuman conditions they're kept in -- most of whom, let's not forget, without actual charges! The prison's guards, so as to keep the prisoners alive and avoid further scandals, are said to have deployed force-feeding techniques, which easily qualify as inhuman treatment. Yet none of this is making headlines in the free press of the free world.

The Obama administration seems to have a soft spot for secrecy and covert operations after all. In fact one of its most successful and illegal endeavours is the drone programme. Under his presidency, the number of drones deployed has skyrocketed. The thing is that, as a recent article in The Nation points out, drone warfare is neither cheap nor surgical nor decisive. So not only is sending drones into Pakistan and Yemen illegal, but is also proving not very beneficial for either innocent civilians or the American taxpayer. Nevertheless, and in line with the very essence of drones, the criticism against them is similarly "unmanned." Opposing the state and its, often illegitimate, choices in America, though vocally encouraged in other countries, is not a much welcomed option. If you're a fan of civil liberties you'd better focus your energies elsewhere, especially toward those places that refuse to succumb to the American hegemony.

The recent monitoring of AP phones by the U.S. Department of Justice is just one in a long list of liberticidal practises the Obama administration seems to be specializing in. All this, and much omitted more, goes to show that Obama is not the likeable "black guy" American voters thought he was, but a corporate pawn in the hands of a country held at ransom by its interests, greed and paranoia. Nonetheless, in the end, even all of the aforementioned won't be enough for Barack Obama not to be remembered solely as "the first afro-American U.S. president." A rather reductive title considering his many infamous achievements so far.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/giovannivimercati.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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