You all know I am no longer a big fan of President Obama. I don't buy into the chess game anymore. You can spend all day listing the things you love he did, and I could spend all day listing the things I hate he did. I think neither of us could convince one another. But if you support him? You, in the name of "more and better Dem's" should be firmly up his keister pushing him to back off NDAA!!
You see? NDAA should be a deal-breaker. I'm a journalist of a sort, as is anyone who sets font to page on blogs everywhere. You may be. If you support Occupy, this law covers you as an enemy there too.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, made her temporary injunction permanent against enacting or enforcing NDAA. She found the whole act Unconstitutional.
Within 24 hours President Obama challenged it, seeking to overturn her ruling.
This is not what our founding fathers had in mind.
Chris Hedges, who brought the suit along with Daniel Ellsburg and my dear friend Noam Chomsky, wrote about this yesterday.
Quoting Bruce Afran, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs: (all emphasis mine)
“The administration of President Obama within the last 48 hours has decided to engage in an all-out campaign to block and overturn an order of a federal judge,” said co-lead counsel Bruce Afran. “As Judge Forrest noted in her opinion, nothing is more fundamental in American law than the possibility that journalists, activists and citizens could lose their liberty, potentially forever, and the Obama administration has now lined up squarely with the most conservative elements of the Republican Party to undermine Americans’ civil liberties."
I recall the backlash when Bush created "Free Speech Zones" - those razor wire cordoned off places where one could protest, well out of sight, of any action by his administration.
I have to ask, sincerely, had Bush created NDAA by executive order, allowing the indefinite detention of such ill-defined and arbitrary definition.
Section 1021(b)(2) authorizes the military to detain any U.S. citizen who “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces” and then hold them in military compounds until “the end of hostilities.” The vagueness of the language, and the refusal to exempt journalists, means that those of us who as part of our reporting have direct contact with individuals or groups deemed to be part of a terrorist network can find ourselves seized and detained under the provision.
“The Government was unable to offer definitions for the phrases ‘substantially support’ or ‘directly support,’ ” the judge wrote. “In particular, when the Court asked for one example of what ‘substantially support’ means, the Government stated, ‘I’m not in a position to give one specific example.’ When asked about the phrase ‘directly support,’ the Government stated, ‘I have not thought through exactly and we have not come to a position on ‘direct support’ and what that means.’ In its pre-trial memoranda, the Government also did not provide any definitional examples for those terms.”
One has to wonder if this will be used, as they speculate, as an internment of the Japanese American WWII type against people of Middle Eastern descent here.
Afran, again:
"A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the U.S. and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran said. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA—so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”
The riots in the ME are being blamed on a video, yet, like the man who burned himself alive was the spark for the Arab Spring, many have come to the conclusion it really was just a last-straw catalyst for people who are well aware of our disdain, nay demonization of them enroute to full out war.
A commenter on a RT article from Libya said:
As I write this, I am fully aware people around the world can read it. The same goes for everything put on the net. The people in the Mid East and Africa are very aware of the killing machines called drones America is sending. They are aware of families killed and maimed, friends killed and maimed. Most of all, they are aware of the plans to colonize them, mostly dreamed up in America but also from America's puppet governments. This all started in 1948 but really took hold in 1967. Most readers will know what I mean. What was done in the latter part of the 1800's and early part of the last century was somewhat corrected but now is coming back on the world. In America's case, her wealth was consumed by Americans but because of greed is now because of lust spreading to the rest of the world. The people running America don't equate other people as the same as them with families with same aspirations and proplems.(sic) They change diapers, live through the growing years of their children and all the rest of what goes on in life. One big difference. They can find contentment with what they have. Their satisfied with their borders but for the most part don't have to explore and plunder. The west, as they call it, doesn't think like that and what we're reading about is the result of that restlessness. America has a military presence in over 130 countries. If the Americans saw a foreign soldier walking their streets, what would they do about it? What goes around. Comes around.
So, if it spreads here, their friends and relatives who hate the wars we are making and are looking to create? If they speak, protest, or god forbid WRITE that what we are doing is wrong? NDAA means they can be indefintely detained until "the end of hostilities?"
What happened to Free Speech?
Sure, Republicans are purging Jefferson from History book in Texas, as "too liberal." But Democrats are allowing President Obama to shred the whole Constitution with nary a peep.
The US has its boot firmly on the throats of all who refuse to be its economic client state. We have worked hard to ensure that every uprising has been "managed" to have the most pro-western outcome. It is natural that there is backlash. We resent what our 1% has done and is doing to us; it is only natural in countries with equal or worse economic disparity between the rich and the poor do as well.
Do you want a United States that imprisons opposition Journalists, and abducts its own Citizen Protestors off the streets?
No process, no charges, no limitation on how long they can be held?
My conscience tells me to vote Green, but I am an anti-capitalist. A Socialist.
If you want to still vote for Obama as a 12 dimensional chess player, or lesser of the two evils? Then you should be barraging the man, and holding your vote hostage that he let NDAA go.
Your FREE SPEECH depends on it.