by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
December 24, 2012
Image by Shrieking Tree via Flickr
Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.
[…]
via Truthdig
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig
see
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Throw out the NDAA, End the Wars and Start Nation Building at Home by Dennis J. Kucinich
Andy Worthington and David Remes: GITMO – The Rule of Law and the NDAA
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I’m terribly sad for the American people who seem to be living under some undeclared cold war. The United States government is completing tasks, indicating they are bracing for martial law.
The USA only need a gun because they hold a gun. Need a martial state of emergency because they are nudging towards it and the people are alarmed. The government pours scorn on ‘conspiracy theories’ but a lot of these theories have been substantiated by testimony of former military and diplomatic ties to the prevailing chorus of flesh eaters in the last battalion to injure civilians who are exercising their diplomatic right to dissent.
Any manifestations of dissent towards the USA governments domestic or foreign policies earns the adjective ‘belligerence”, now defined as akin to ‘terrorist’. That is how sensitive they are. Touchy. Paranoid. Deadly.
If you are not afraid then I envy your ignorance, though that is the worst threat to your innocence
The spectre of draconian corporate rule looms large and menacing led by US dollar “interests” ~ militant opposition on the domestic front will only provoke and validate further crack downs and targeting of dissidents, probably full-on martial law. The next logical step would be a purge, or “cleansing” a China style Maoist cultural revolution executed by complicit, pharmaceutically drugged thugs and goons.
It is an awesome dilemma. South America looks a lot healthier.
I am beginning to think the only wider political option is for the shambles of Europe to disgorge itself from the NATO black hole, perhaps by shearing off the global role from its original Eurocentric purpose. Russia as always is the straw-man. Many different policing forces might work better than this single, self-appointed “wide spectrum dominance” clique of cynics and opportunists.
The EU might do well to consolidate its relations with the non-aligned countries and set up a legitimate counter-weight to US hegemony, that would also encourage China to curb its worst excesses. There is now a desperate escalation of pressures over Africa that must be alleviated. A just vision for the African continent is central to any sustainable future multi-polar strategy.
The crux of the difficulty is illustrated by the split in Europe between the conservative right-wing in the UK (Euro-sceptic or anti-) and their equivalents in the newly constituted states like Poland, who are steadfastly in favour of more European consolidation. The UK dances to the green-backed US tune, whilst pimping in scarlet for European trade favours.
The problem is the de facto consumer-leverage exerted globally by multi-nationals through their now manifestly corrupt “free market” ideologies, and fiscal instruments of control ~ banks, armaments, mining…
This must be re-invented, reformed, regulated, re-conceptualised ~ whatever it takes, but it must change! We should bring more accountability to bear upon “shareholders” who benefit without moral responsibility, other than personal financial risk ~ which is a selfish calculus (that is at best motivated by ideological theories driven by market-determined criteria, purblind investment portfolios, pension funds etc) not an ethical obligation to establish the mutually ecological benefits of right governance and proper provisioning through enlightened self-interest.
Rampant mercantilism is the real “religion” of the Western oligarchs. It is nothing but dogma ~ a media fed dictatorship.
We could learn a lot from the battered cultures of the former Yugoslavia.