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TomDispatch.com / By Karen Greenberg

5 Ways America Is Betraying Its Best Values in Conflicts With Rest of the World

In 2012 it looks like we can expect the Obama administration to continue to barrel down the path that has already taken us far from the country we used to be.

March 19, 2012 |

In 2012 it looks like we can expect the Obama administration to continue to barrel down the path that has already taken us far from the country we used to be.

The following piece is a joint TomDispatch/Nation article and will appear in print in the new issue of that magazine. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
By now, you’d think we’d be entering the end of the 9/11 era. One war over in the Greater Middle East, another hurtling disastrously to its end, and the threat of al-Qaeda so diminished that it should hardly move the needle on the national worry meter. You might think, in fact, that the moment had arrived to turn the American gaze back to first principles: the Constitution and its protections of rights and liberties.

Yet warning signs abound that 2012 will be another year in which, in the name of national security, those rights and liberties are only further Guantanamo-ized and abridged. Most notably, for example, despite the fact that genuinely dangerous enemies continue to exist abroad, there is now a new enemy in our sights: namely, American oppositional types and whistleblowers who arecharged as little short of traitors for revealing the workings of our government to journalists and others.

Here and elsewhere, it looks like we can expect the Obama administration to continue to barrel down the path that has already taken us far from the country we used to be. And by next year, if a different president is in the Oval Office, expect him to lead us even further astray. With that in mind, here are five categories in the sphere of national security where 2012 is likely to prove even grimmer than 2011.

1. Ever More Punitive (Ever Less Fair-minded)
Those who imagine the era of overreach in the name of national security coming to an end any time soon would do well to remember that some spectacular national security trials are on the horizon -- and that we may be entering a new age of governmental vindictiveness. Among the most newsworthy of those trials: the military commissions at Guantanamo that will bring to the docket Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, and his co-conspirators, as well as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged point person in the 2000 suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole in the port of Aden. These will likely include capital charges and be prosecuted in a spirit of vengeance.

But that spirit won’t stop with al-Qaeda ringleaders and operatives. A series of cases not involving attacks on or the killing of Americans will also be argued in the name of national security and in a similar spirit of vengeance. To begin with, there is the upcoming court martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of downloading classified U.S. government documents and leaking them to the website WikiLeaks. And then, of course, there is the potential prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in federal court -- a federal grand jury isnow considering his indictment -- for his alleged collaboration with Manning.
Both cases have been hailed with a righteous anger that might strike an outsider as akin to frothing at the mouth. Top officials have insisted that the WikiLeaks materials threatened American lives and left “blood” on the hands of both Assange and Manning (though no one has yet pointed to a single individual physically harmed by the release of those documents).

At the more bloodthirsty end of the American political spectrum, former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI), among others, have called for Manning’s execution. As Rogers explained, "I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here… [Manning] clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers or those cooperating. If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

A similar, if less lethal, desire for punishment lies behind the Obama administration’s determination to aggressively pursue and crack down on leaks to the media from inside the government, even when they don’t involve the actual theft of government documents. Obama, of course, entered the Oval Office proclaiming a “sunshine” policy when it came to the workings of the government, only to move beyond George W. Bush in attempts to clamp down on whistleblowers.

The pending trials of two former CIA officers exemplify this pattern. Jeffrey Sterling is charged with leaking classified documents to the New York Times’James Risen about plans to release flawed information to Iran in a potentiallycounterproductive effort to subvert its nuclear program; John Kiriakou just plednot guilty to releasing information to the media about Bush-era torture policies. All told, the administration has gone after six suspected leakers -- more than all previous administrations combined -- using the draconian Espionage Act.

In the matter of leakers, the message couldn’t be clearer or more vengeful. The government’s position has been this: expose us and we will turn on you with a fury you can’t imagine. As terrorists have been warned that new laws and legal systems can be built to deal with them, those accused of leaks to the press are being told that even the full extent of the law may not be the limit when it comes to punishment.

Witness the treatment of Bradley Manning in his first year of punitive captivity before he was charged with any crime: he was kept in a Marine brig in total isolation and forced to sleep naked. Or consider the attempt not just to prosecute but to destroy the life of former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake. He was accused of leaking classified information on what he considered to be a wildly wasteful NSA program. In the end, though charged under the Espionage Act, he pled guilty to the misdemeanor of essentially borrowing a government computer -- but not before his life had been turned upside down and his job lost.

2. Ever More Legal Limbo (Ever Less Confidence in the Constitution)

By now, it’s old hat to acknowledge that the indefinite detention of those once deemed “enemy combatants,” now termed “unprivileged enemy belligerents,” has become as American as apple pie. Like the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration insists on its commitment to holding nearly 50 Guantanamo detainees in indefinite detention without charge or trial.
In May 2009, in a speech at the National Archives, the president couldn’t have been clearer: indefinite detention, he stated, would remain an option in the national security toolbox under his administration. In this way, he guaranteed that an American version of offshore (in)justice and the essential character of Guantanamo, which he once claimed he would shut down, would continue intact.

In 2012, however, there is a worrisome new indefinite detainee category to worry about: U.S. citizens. Previously, Americans were exempt from incarceration at Guantanamo and so from its policy of detention without trial. In 2002, Yaser Hamdi, a Saudi-American citizen, when discovered at Guantanamo Bay, was hurried to a plane in the wee hours of the morning and whisked away, a sign of the rights still accorded American citizens. Similarly, the “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, apprehended on the Afghanistan battlefield, was brought into the federal court system.

Lately, however, Congress has shown less respect for the distinction between rights accorded to citizens and non-citizens. Last month, Congress passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The debates over its passage reflected a concerted effort to make American citizens as well as foreigners subject to indefinite military detention.

Ultimately, citizens supposedly remain exempt from the new law, but even so, it was a close call and a signal about where we may be headed. As a recent Congressional Research Service report on the NDAA explained, it is “not intended to affect any existing authorities relating to the detention of U.S. citizens or lawful resident aliens, or any other persons captured or arrested in the United States.”

Still, there remain many fears and much confusion about what protections are retained by U.S. citizens under the Act. Nor did President Obama’s signing statement, asserting that he would “not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” assuage those fears and confusions. If American citizens were indeed protected from indefinite detention under the new legislation, why was such a signing statement necessary?
There is yet another place where the law seems to have plunged into legal limbo without in any way abridging U.S. actions: the high seas. Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced that it was detaining 15 pirates captured off the coast of Somalia -- and that they were being held without reference to any legal status whatsoever. According to New York Timesreporter C.J. Chivers, “where interdiction ends, an enduring problem begins: what to do with the pirates that foreign ships detain?”

According to the State Department, the pirates will be tried. But where? In the words of Vice-Admiral Mark I. Fox, “We lack a practical and reliable legal finish.” In other words, the U.S. has not yet found a country under whose law it can try them. In the meantime, according to the latest reports, the U.S. Navy continues to confine them. Think of this, conceptually speaking, as a floating Guantanamo intended to hold for-profit enemies.

3. Ever More Secrecy (Ever Less Transparency)
“Necessary” secrecy has been the fallback explanation for much of the information that has been withheld from public scrutiny since 9/11. The military commissions at Guantanamo will proceed, for instance, in part on the claim that, if the accused, many of whom have already been held for a decade, were to be tried in federal court, too much would be revealed that could somehow compromise the country’s security.

To counter civil libertarian claims that secrecy is only an attempt to hide embarrassing or wrongful behavior, the current administration has promised “transparency” in the military commissions scheduled to begin later this year. Efforts at transparency, announced last fall, included a website where documents -- filled with redactions (blacked-out sections) -- could be accessed by the public, and a closed-circuit viewing, albeit with a 40-second delay, for the media and members of the victims’ families.

It has taken next to no time, though, for the government to contradict those vows of transparency, ensuring that, in the polite words of Spencer Ackerman of Wired’s Danger Room blog, Guantanamo will remain “not a place of openness.” Meanwhile, all mail between the detainees and their military defense counsels is being screened, a practice that understandably has those lawyers in an uproar.
In the category of non-transparency and the growth of secrecy as a first principle of government, there is the administration’s elaborate dance of nondisclosure over a memo produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It was evidently written to justify the assassination by drone in Yemen last September of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, alleged to have been the “bin Laden of the Internet.”

Until recently, the administration has ducked questions about al-Awlaki’s killing and that of another American citizen, Samir Khan, the editor of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire. In January, the government announced that Attorney General Eric Holder would soon make public the OLC memo that legalized the killing, but delayed the Attorney General’s explanation until early March. Meanwhile, the New York Times and the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for its release. On March 5th, Holder finally gave a detailed explanation of the tortured reasoning behind the targeted killing of al-Awlaki, but still, no memo seems to be forthcoming.

During the past year, the imposition of secrecy on government activities of all sorts has only become more pronounced. To offer just one egregious example among many, consider the government’s behavior in the case of former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling. At its request, a federal judge has now agreed to allow it to invoke the “silent witness rule.” In other words, she will let government documents be shown to the jury without being made public, on the grounds, according to prosecutors, of “national security.”

After a decade in which the customary practice in matters of “security” has been to sweep all too many government documents of significance into the shadows under that rubric of national security, this should hardly be surprising. Americans now know ever less about what the government they elected does. If it were not for the FOIA lawsuits of the ACLU and others, very little of what we do know about torture, warrantless surveillance, and other instances of government malfeasance would ever have seen the light of day. Consider the increasing number of whistleblower prosecutions as one more way to try to shut government activities off from the eyes of the citizenry.

4. Ever More Distrust (Ever Less Privacy)
For years, the prospect of warrantless wiretapping in the name of national security has had a chilling effect on Americans who have opposed government policies in the war on terror. In 2008, President Bush signed a new FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which authorized the government to snoop on citizens with minimal oversight from the already secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts. (They were set up in 1978 to oversee the granting of surveillance warrants against potential foreign intelligence agents.) The Obama administration has continually opted to uphold this power and the government’s freedom to warrantlessly tap electronic communications between people outside the United States and people inside the country in the name of national security.
Meanwhile, the latest revelations in the ever-more-distrust, ever-less-privacy sweepstakes are led by news that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has implemented surveillance programs that violate the civil liberties of that city’s Muslim-American citizens. The NYPD infiltrated mosques and universities, collecting information on individuals suspected of no crimes, in conjunction with a CIA officer (now withdrawn) using methods traditionally reserved for that agency.

This surely represents, however informally, an abrogation of the CIA’s mandate to conduct its surveillance only abroad, and it’s likely that no one involved will pay a penalty for it. In addition, in a striking combination of security overreach and police profiling, the NYPD has been investigating and surveilling Muslim-American citizens well outside the city limits -- from New Haven, Connecticut, to Newark, New Jersey.

To make matters worse, the government just approved the use of surveillance drones as part of a growing law enforcement arsenal for gathering information in the United States. On February 14th, President Obama signed a bill allowing for the use of such drones in a broad array of arenas, ranging from business activities to law enforcement.
The message is clear enough: this year (next year and the year after) will be the year of more snooping. For law enforcement, your life is apparently an open book.

5. Ever More Killing (Ever Less Peace)
Scarcely a day goes by without news of the use of Predator and Reaper drones to kill individuals in foreign countries, including in recent years Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and the Philippines. It’s as if the CIA and the military have been handed a new toy that they just can’t refrain from using, or teaching others to use. According to the Atlantic, “Conservative estimates suggest hundreds of noncombatant civilians have been killed in Pakistan alone.”
Meanwhile, the drumbeat for war with Iran continues to build. Faced with the prospect of an Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration has refused to definitively back away from the prospect of becoming part of that war.

"Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment,” the president said. “I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

In fact, the urge to stop a potentially disastrous confrontation, which could seriously affect the price of oil and the global economy, has sent high military and civilian officials winging from Washington to Israel with warnings against an attack on Iran. Still, war continues to be treated by diplomats and others almost as a fait accompli.

The news then is certainly grim, and moving in one clear direction -- the use of the law, or at least the Justice Department’s version of the law, to justify whatever acts the government feels are necessary against whomever they deem to be the enemy. Attorney General Holder summed the situation up tellingly in his defense of the al-Awlaki killing.

In significant detail, he explained that the killing of an American citizen (and terror suspect) was lawful, despite the fact that it brought into question the guarantee of due process under the Fifth Amendment, and despite the guarantees offered by the laws of war. “Due process,” he declared, “is not judicial process.” It was a startlingly honest admission of something new under the American sun: due process is now what the president and his closes advisors decide it is, a constitutional rethinking of the first order to justify the “targeted killing” of an American citizen.

To sum up, the legal gray zone Washington has, over the course of a decade,plunged us into -- and everything that goes with it, including punitive measures, attempts to bypass constitutional guarantees, the spread of secrecy and surveillance, a growing distrust of American citizens, and straightforward killing -- isn’t something we will soon put behind us. The move away from the rights and liberties enshrined in the Constitution and the law is very clearly the way of the American future in our new age of enemies.

Karen Greenberg is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, a TomDispatch regular, and the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First One Hundred Days, as well as the editor ofThe Torture Debate in America. Adam Brody, Rebecca Kagan, and Sasha Segall contributed research to this article. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Greenberg discusses a new American state of “legal limbo,” click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Secrets of Empire And Self-Deceptions Of Partisans

Published on Thursday, January 5, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

Secrets of Empire And Self-Deceptions Of Partisans

A howling defiance into the darkness of the corporate state night

by Phil Rockstroh

It is laughable (in a weeping outright sort of way) that Obama and his fellow Democratic Party supporters and apologists can't find a more resonant campaign theme than, "We carry out the agendas of the national security/bankster/militarist state (i.e., the one percent) while appearing to be less crazy than Republicans."

The notion of even possessing a preference as to whom should be president of this crumbling, faux republic...is a bit like asking what color uniform one would prefer that the crew tasked with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic should don as they go about their duties.

In times such as these, when escaping into one's comfort zone is no longer a viable option, one is advised to evince the audacity of hopelessness, because the act leaves one desperate enough to embrace this daunting proposition:

"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

Although, for the present and foreseeable future, the propitious aspects of the sentiment will not hold true for Bradley Manning…whose plight displays the punitive, hyper-authoritarian nature of late U.S. empire. As is the case with Manning, in a national security state, few acts will cause one to lose his freedom in a more rapid manner than to reveal the secrets of lawless, ruthless power.

Apparently, Bradley Manning guarded secrets of his own…not shameful ones--but traits that would cause him to become subject to derision if revealed.

Manning desired to practice transvestism. This U.S. Army private was privy to illusion. Innately, he grasped how being coerced into suppressing one's secrets damages one's soul. Manning merely harbored the desire to practice a bit of gender bending; in contrast, the operatives of empire demand that they be allowed to bend and twist the world itself towards their exploitative ends.

To live in empire--in the service of its imperial military or in the thrall of the pursuit of careerist vanity and consumerist compulsions--is to live a selfish lie, day in and day out.

Rupaul (Andre Charles) averred, "We all came into this world naked. The rest is all drag.”

We all make choices as to what form of drag we practice. Does my lie promote the truth? Is my act educational, entertaining or edifying? Does it allow me to inhabit my true self yet transcend my narcissism? Does my act and attendant actions bring balm or does it deliver more suffering than necessary to a world where it is impossible to escape suffering?

Ask yourself and those around you these questions in regard to Private Manning and the operatives and denizens of U.S. Empire.

On the subject of identity, authentic or dubious: Even after being an almost constant public presence for more than half a decade, Barack Obama's true nature and authentic identity remains elusive. After all this time, he still seems less man than marketing rollout, less of a political leader than an object lesson in product placement. The situation is like having the role of chief executive of the nation filled with a disposable razor or a heavily hyped iPhone application.

The U.S. presidency, as is the case with almost all aspects of life in the corporate consumer state, has become increasingly dominated and defined by commercial/public relations-type legerdemain. The constant commercial come-ons of the media hologram mask its hollow core; the proliferation of weightless lies serves to overwhelm the gravity of perilous times.

Obama's nebulous nature works to ensure the continued irrational ardor of his supporters, who, against all evidence, insist on clinging to fantasy and projection regarding the president's much in evidence anti-democratic tendencies; hence, progressive types seem prone to project their own redeeming qualities on the blank slate that Obama creates and deploys as his public persona--a method similar to that used by con artists who exploit the decency of their marks to achieve their criminal ends.

Apropos, this indefensible, Bush-era type of deceit connecting 9/11 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq:

"The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.”— President Obama speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., December 14, 2011

In this instance, the shape-shifter Obama morphs from hollow man to Death's slick, narrow-ass, public relations representative.

I've noticed that debates with Obama's apologists have a very similar trajectory as those with Republican partisans. Because partisans are hard pressed to explain away the affronts to truthful discourse and good governance displayed by the politicians they support, any attempt to engage them in debate involving the merits (or lack thereof) of the policies of said politicians (e.g., their unwavering support of the 1% and U.S. militarist imperium)--quickly devolves into volleys of ad hominem attacks launched from the ranks of their supporters.

For example, from the right, OWS activists are labeled dirty, America-hatin' hippies who supports swarthy terrorists, yet from the liberal camp, OWSers who refuse cooperation with the Democratic Party are cast as purer-than-thou types--too above it all to sully themselves by an acceptance of the pragmatic nature of political reality.

What is the reason for this irrational response from liberals--from folks who scoff at teabaggers and religious fundamentalists for their less than sane and sanguine approach to political discourse? There is simply no reasonable way to defend the acts of our blood-sustained empire abroad and the machinations of a predatory economic elite at home; hence, the testiness evinced by the enablers of the duopolistic state.

Withal, when I post an article or FaceBook status critical of President Obama--the tone and tenure of the ensuing debate with his defenders takes on a Bush era aura. As a general rule, when the rationalizations of both Bush and Obama supporters are countered with facts regarding their dismal governance, the invectives fly. Granted, the grammar and syntax of Obama apologists is superior to that of Republican loyalists--but their fallacy arguments are every bit as dodgy.

Consequently, the policies of both parties (bulwarked by the concretized support of partisans) translate into unnecessary suffering and death--the calling card and ground level criteria of the oligarchic/imperialist state. And sorry, Obama loyalists--your man is not the lesser-of-two evils candidate: He is among his peers. In many ways, he has proven himself a more deceitful, ruthless crime boss than his predatory, Republican predecessors, in other words, the chief executive of a militarist empire.

The 1% and their advocates and operatives in the U.S. political class have thrown us to the wolves. How does one make an ally of uncertainty and keep close the verities of the heart while negotiating this howling political wilderness?

Even in this era of oversized fear and diminished imagination, there are some among us--nonconformists, creative thinkers, artists and occupiers--who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical image of wolves (that are recognize as fellow outcasts). Instead of being shamed by outsider status, they have been suckled and raised by wolves--i.e., by embracing their fate of having been cast-out into the wilderness.

Nourished by the spirit of defiance, some thrive when freed from the constraints of a habitual adherence to groupthink. The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural habitat: They howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their own interior darkness and, as a result, gaining understanding into the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.

The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their home: They don't clean-up nicely for the polite company demanded by political duopoly; they don't let themselves be bred down (as a few domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a few food scraps.

When you're looking at a Toy Poodle--you're looking at a former wolf, as, for example, when your looking at corporate press members, you're looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.

One moment, you're loping through the woods, snout held high, smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, but the next thing you know--you're being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted with tacky rhinestones, and you're salivating at the sound of an electric can-opener. One moment, you're a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity--next moment, you're sitting at work and your passions, hopes and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas . . . You're truckling for your boss's approval; you're counting the minutes until break time. Like domesticated livestock and unfortunate animals incarcerated in zoos, you are no longer a noble animal--you have become a Thing That Waits For Lunch.

To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast. The signs bode well for us: Over the last few months, in the company of the OWS pack, I have witnessed the awakening of many…have been graced with the privilege of being in their lupine company as we howled defiant into the darkness of the corporate state night.

One must remember this: We human beings are of nature as well. Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, our authentic nature will awaken and arise. Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and claw, to retake the lost landscape of our collective humanity, and, by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, imperium-countenancing, sick puppies.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's website or at FaceBook.

Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia

Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia

by Prof. James Petras





Global Research, December 10, 2011

Introduction

After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia .

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world’s second largest economy and the US’s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union’s principle oil and gas provider and the world’s second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime’s highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan , Iran , Libya , Venezuela , Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world ( Syria , Libya ) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China ’s access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia . Obama’s declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China , challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama’s iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

“Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region … The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay … As we end today’s wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]... I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority … As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not … come at the expense of the Asia Pacific” (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our “presence and mission” was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia ( Darwin ) directed at China . Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China . Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam , Philippines , and Brunei in the South China Sea . Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan , Taiwan , Singapore and South Korea , as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China ’s coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the “Trans-Pacific Partnership”. It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join …

Obama’s presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China .

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton’s delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China ’s economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar ( Burma ). Clinton ’s December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WilkiLeaks the “Burmese NGO’s, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government”(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton ’s speeches condemning Chinese “tied aid” pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China . China is Myanmar ’s biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton’s critique of China’s billion-dollar investments in Myanmar’s infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington’s brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China . The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime’s efforts to displace China ’s predominant role in Asia .

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China’s rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China ’s competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China ’s trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama’s prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China ’s security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to ‘junk’, and the financial system will ‘tremble onto collapse’. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its “backyard”: Quoting one Financial Times journalist, “China is the only show [in town] for Latin America” (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America’s principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China’s trade with India , Indonesia , Japan , Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US . The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia , the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China . Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian’s are simply using the Obama regime’s friendly overtures as a ‘tactical device’, a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China .

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any ‘reorientation’ of Asia, from China to the US , would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China . It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries’ economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial ‘traders’ (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers , economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to ‘balance’ a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian “comprador capitalists”, willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China’s new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama’s Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia ’s borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington , via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia ’s major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East . The NATO war against Libya , which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia ’s lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey , backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria , Russia ’s last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea . Russia ’s previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama’s imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia ’s trading partners would result in some sort of “reciprocity”: US dismantling its offensive “missile shield” on its frontiers and support for Russia ’s admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran , believing the tales of a “nuclear weapons programs”. Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of “no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives” and voted in favor, only to feebly “protest”, much too late, that NATO was “exceeding its mandate” by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia’s heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin , Paris and London .

Medvedev-Lavrov’s policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama’s rhetoric of “resetting relations” invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia .

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama’s aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia ’s status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington , under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China , in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama’s military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama’s Strategic Realignment

Obama’s recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia , was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama’s new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama’s ‘New Realism’ is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama’s effort to ‘enter’ into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from “security” and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China , who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel ’s fifth column (the Israel “lobby”). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over “indefinite detentions” and “mass immigrant expulsions”. Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China .

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China , as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It’s too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China , to even fantasize about economic “exclusion” to bring down China , is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama’s ‘crackpot realism’, his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia , has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US , as it is currently constituted. Washington ’s policies will not ‘weaken’ Russia or China , even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama’s sequential wars on behalf of Israel . Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya . China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and “exclusive” alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe .

In other words, Obama’s military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon’s “divide and conquer” strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China ’s Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US .

Obama’s “crackpot realism”, views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan , its most compliant client regime in South Asia . NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated ‘Cold War’ dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia ’s current leaders do not have permanent allies - only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a ‘permanent Pacific presence’ but until it demonstrates it can take care of its “basic business at home”, like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers.

Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Petras

Since no evidence is required in court(since there is no trial)any of us can be accused of supporting terrorism (for holding contrary opinions,sending a ten dollar check to Oxfam or on any whim),can then be arrested and imprisoned for life without charges, access to an attorney or communication with family. This is Stalin's America, and the prisons are gulags. Whatever this is,it is not a constitutional republic.

December 3, 2011 at 09:18:56

we are all terrorists now

By lila york (about the author)

any American citizen by 123rf

Constitutional attorney, Glenn Greenwald, has done a comprehensive dissection of the Defense Authorization Act, a must-read article for all American citizens. While the bill, which passed the Senate on Thursday, essentially codifies the status quo, that status quo, unbeknownst to most Americans, removes all protections under the law that the constitution has guaranteed to citizens since the nation's founding. The bill first requires that all accused terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military, not the civilian court system, allowing, though not mandating, the military to hold even U.S. citizens captured on U.S. soil without trial in military prisons. Second, it renews the Authorization to Use Military Force against any person or nation that "substantially supports" terrorist groups, an ever-expanding list, and registers the "battlefield" as the entire world, including within the United States itself. Third, it restricts the president's ability to transfer detainees from Guantanamo prison.

Mr. Greenwald does a thorough job of explaining the bill in the abstract. But what does this mean for us ? Who is a terrorist supporter under this law? A Liberal journalist? Non-governmental organizations that provide food and shelter to the world's poor, regardless of the policies of their governments ? Here is an example: Oxfam provides grain and medical treatment to the poorest nations in Africa and the Middle East, including Palestine. So if the government of Gaza, now classified as a terrorist organization, benefits from Oxfam's generosity, does that make Oxfam a "substantial supporter" of terrorism? If I write a ten dollar check to Oxfam and one dollar is spent on the Palestinian people, am I a "substantial supporter" of terrorism? If Juan Cole or Noam Chomsky writes an article pointing out that the U.S. government's claims about Iran's nuclear program are essentially made- up fiction, can they be imprisoned for life for supporting a terrorist organization? The bill is so vague and without definition that it can be used to imprison anybody for anything. And anywhere. The scarier-still part is the "global battlefield" stipulation which means that Glen Greenwald, who spends most of his time in Buenos Aires and Brazil, could be arrested at his home there by American troops. As Representative Jerrold Nadler said on MSNBC this morning, "This goes against every moral premise this country has and has ever had since the founding. "

For those of us contemplating expatriation, moving to New Zealand or Iceland or any other country where the United States has neither troops nor an oil interest will not insulate us from the threat of arrest by the U.S. military. As Mr. Greenwald points out, President Obama's threatened veto may be based not on a defense of the civil liberties of American citizens, but on the question of who gets to imprison us - the military or the police. Certainly expatriation offers some protection against a rising police state, since it is doubtful that a journalist would be pursued across borders. But it is no guarantee, as the assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki and his children, both by drone attacks in Yemen, attests. (al-Awlaki was an articulate Muslim cleric who spoke out against US attacks on Muslim populations. The White House claimed that al-Awlaki was involved in three Al Qaeda attacks, but Yemeni experts found no evidence at all to support those claims. Since he was assassinated without charges or trial, we will never know.)

What can we do as concerned citizens? The White House has a comment line, where operators register opinions. I suppose that over a million demands for rule of law might register, but there is certainly no guarantee. All but six Senators voted for this bill and voted against the amendments of Rand Paul, Dianne Feinstein and Mark Udall, which would have eliminated the unconstitutional provisions from the funding bill. So you could call the offices of your senators and read the riot act. The bill has passed and is now in conference, so it won't change anything, but it will let them know that in spite of the media blackout, the voters have been paying attention and are pissed off. You could ask the unions to carry placards demanding a return to rule of law and exclusion of American citizens from the provisions of this bill when they next rally or march. Beyond that, there is little we can do, other than massively expatriate to another country - one that has a constitution protecting the rights of its people.

Lila York is a choreographer and activist. She has traded the markets since 1990.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

December 3, 2011 at 18:39:52

Are Americans in Line for Gitmo?

Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the "extraordinary measures" introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.

And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had been guaranteed by their own Constitution. As one German writer observed, "With sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater."

The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since, as he put it, the German people "collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and capitulated."

"The result of this million-fold nervous breakdown," wrote Haffner at the time, "is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world." Not a happy analogy.

The Senate bill, in effect, revokes an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which banned the Army from domestic law enforcement after the military had been used --and often abused -- in that role during Reconstruction. Ever since then, that law has been taken very seriously -- until now. Military officers have had their careers brought to an abrupt halt by involving federal military assets in purely civilian criminal matters.

But that was before 9/11 and the mantra, "9/11 changed everything." In this case of the Senate-passed NDAA -- more than a decade after the terror attacks and even as U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda is on the brink of defeat -- Congress continues to carve away constitutional and legal protections in the name of fighting "terrorism."

The Senate approved the expanded military authority despite opposition from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- and a veto threat from President Barack Obama.

The Senate voted to authorize -- and generally to require -- "the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons" indefinitely. And such "covered persons" are defined not just as someone implicated in the 9/11 attacks but anyone who "substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

Though the wording is itself torturous -- and there is a provision for a waiver from the Defense Secretary regarding mandatory military detentions -- the elasticity of words like "associated forces" and "supported" have left some civil libertarians worried that the U.S. military could be deployed domestically against people opposing future American wars against alleged "terrorists" or "terrorist states."

The Senate clearly wished for the military's "law and order" powers to extend beyond the territory of military bases on the theory that there may be "terrorsymps" (short for "terrorist sympathizers") lurking everywhere.

Is the all-consuming ten-year-old struggle against terrorism rushing headlong to consume what's left of our constitutional rights? Do I need to worry that the Army in which I was proud to serve during the 1960s may now kick down my front door and lead me off to indefinite detention -- or worse?

My neighbors have noticed, after all, that I now wear a longish beard and, sometimes, even a hat like Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And everyone knows what a terrorsymp he was. "If you see something, say something!"

Worse still, a few of my neighbors overheard me telling my grandchildren that President Obama should be ashamed to be bragging about having Awlaki, an American citizen, and later his 16 year-old son murdered without a whiff of due process. "If you hear something, say something!"

A Lost Respect

Citizens of powerful countries used to have their rights widely respected -- at home and abroad. "I am a Roman citizen" -- "Civis Romanus Sum" -- once counted for something. Even more respect tended to greet "I am an American" -- because of our power abroad and our once famous adherence to a written Constitution at home.

Adherence? Lately not so much. Not since power-hungry politicians set out to exploit 9/11 so that "everything changed," including even the rights formerly guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights and the habeas corpus protection in the Constitution itself.

Awlaki's is an interesting case in point. A Muslim whose moderating influence was sought after by the Washington Establishment in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he became "radicalized" by our warring on his fellow Muslims. By noting that little-known fact, am I showing "support" for "al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces"? Will the U.S. military be obliged to target me, too?

"Not you, Grandpa," my grandchildren reassured me at Thanksgiving. "Even with the beard and the hat, you don't really look very much like Awlaki, or like any kind of terrorsymp. You look different; and your light skin and American citizenship should suffice to keep you safe."

I agreed that I would probably be okay, even if I kept up my vocal criticism of what is happening. But, truth be told, I harbored doubts even on Thanksgiving. And that was before the Senate version of the defense appropriation bill passed last Thursday.

Civis Americanus Sum. Yes, I am. But does that really count for much today? It certainly offered no protection to Awlaki, or to his son. What's to prevent one of my former colleagues at the military or the CIA -- those I have roundly criticized for endorsing and cheering on the kidnappers, torturers and assassins in their employ -- from adding me to the "kill-or-capture-but-preferably-kill list"?

What has been happening in this continuation of a seemingly endless "war on terror" -- amid widespread public indifference -- makes Richard Nixon's "Enemies List" look like a board game. At least, the Nixon White House had a modicum of good sense not to flaunt its skirting the law and violating constitutional rights.

It is a safe bet that functionaries at the National Security Council are updating the kill-or-capture list even now, confident that President Obama will sign the Senate version of the bill into law once it gets predictably endorsed by the Republican-controlled House.

Then, what is to prevent NSC "counter-terrorist" functionaries from summoning the go-to lawyers still ensconced in the Justice Department and asking them for help in navigating what appear to be deliberate ambiguities in the new bill's language.

Backed by a John Yoo-style "legal justification," an order could be issued to "terminate" me, while reassuring my neighbors that, yes, just as you suspected, he was a terrorsymp. Or maybe they'll simply order some troops from the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, where I was stationed a half-century ago, to apprehend me and give me a free one-way ticket to Guantanamo.

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2002

After all, how bad could that be? Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained to CNN's Wolf Blitzer in June 2005 that the detainees at Guantanamo were "living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want." And would Rumsfeld lie?

Early Obfuscation

From my erstwhile colleagues at CIA, there has been more mumbo-jumbo aimed at disguising what is really afoot. According to press reports, the CIA general counsel has already said, disingenuously: "American citizens are not immune from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United States."

But one does not need to "take up arms" in order to be labeled a "combatant," as the government is defining such terms. Awlaki didn't take up arms; he was said to have provided "material support to terrorism" by his alleged -- but unproven -- encouragement of terrorist attacks on the United States. (Under the new NDAA, a similar fate could befall someone who advocates resistance to "coalition partners," like NATO countries or some corrupt governments that are U.S. allies, such as the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the terror-linked government of Pakistan).

In the broad strokes of defining American "partners" and al-Qaeda/Taliban "associated forces," will Israel fall into the first group and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah get lumped into the second?

Could material support be nothing more than providing financial support for the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which challenged the Israeli embargo of Hamas-ruled Gaza? If creative lawyers for this or some future administration get busy, would the new NDAA provide authority for the military to detain such a U.S. citizen under the Law of War and transfer him or her to Guantanamo or elsewhere?

Conflicting legal interpretations of the bill are now more about whether military detentions would be mandatory or would the president still retain some discretion.

In sum, the wording appears to create a parallel military justice system that, theoretically, we are all subject to. All that would be needed is an allegation by someone that we assisted someone who in some way assisted someone else in some way. An actual terrorist act would not be needed -- and neither would a trial by one's peers as guaranteed by the Constitution to determine actual "guilt."

Should you be tempted to dismiss this as "liberal fear-mongering," take a look at this item from FoxNews.com with its gleeful headline: "Democrat-Controlled Senate Passes Constitution-Shredding Defense Authorization Bill":

"The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of Al Qaeda or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. ... The legislation also would give the government the authority to have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial.

"'Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law,' said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union."

A key element in the Senate bill, like the House version, is to expand the original Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) of September 2001 so it no longer links exclusively to 9/11. This creates the kind of ambiguity that allows Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, to claim that the bill's stringent provisions do apply to U.S. citizens, as well as non-citizens.

In addition, the new wording adds "associated forces" (whatever that means) to the previous AUMF's list of targets. The language of the AUMF of September 2001 was limited to "those nations, organizations, or persons he [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons."

Burning the Midnight Oil

It is a safe guess that the legal pharisees were burning the midnight oil, dissecting how the draft bill can say, on the one hand, that this or that provision does not apply to American citizens -- but, oops, this other provision seems to allow them to be shipped off to Guantanamo, too.

Not being expert enough to do so, I happily leave it to them to parse the language, diagram the sentences, and do surgery on each jot and tittle. There will be a veritable feast for the legal beagles.

What speaks loudest to me is the fact that two key amendments did not pass. Senate Amendment 1125 would have limited the mandatory detention provision to persons captured abroad. And Amendment 1126 would have provided that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities would not apply to American citizens. Both amendments were voted down 45 to 55.

Though President Obama has objected to the Senate bill as going too far even by his "death-to-Awlaki" standard, a more troubling question is what might these new powers mean if, say, another terrorist attack hits the United States or if a more hard-line president comes to power.

Take, for example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls. Before a stump speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Perry gave us a hint of what his policies, and maybe even his Cabinet, would look like.

Perry flew in none other than racial profiler par excellence, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. No, I'm not kidding; Perry apparently saw this as a way to strengthen his "law and order" credentials (accent, of course, on "order").

As I sat in the audience, Arpaio's arrival took me by surprise, so perhaps I can be forgiven for reflexively bellowing a prolonged boo, as Arpaio made his way slowly and carefully up to the lectern to warm up the crowd. Later it occurred to me that booing may be something that gets you on the chain gang in Maricopa County; Arpaio did not seem at all used to it, and he did not take it well.

Reaching the podium, he turned and demanded to know who was booing, so I stood up from my second-row-center seat and raised my hand high. Fortunately for me, he had none of his deputies along, and booing is apparently not yet banned at Town Hall meetings in New Hampshire. Only Arpaio seemed to pay much heed.

Although I knew enough about Arpaio to consider him fully deserving of a loud boo or two, I did not know the half of it. Let me treat you to some encomia from the sheriff's own official Web site:

"Arpaio knows what the public wants, [and] has served them well by establishing several unique programs. Arpaio ... started the nation's largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story. ...

"Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world's first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.

"Also impressive are the Sheriff's get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

"Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. ... Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of Maricopa County."

Again, I am not making this up. You can check out the sheriff's Web site for yourself for still more.

I have to concede that I find the last sentence about Arpaio's future plans somewhat reassuring because if he plans to stay in Maricopa County, it means his policing policies would stay limited to a fairly small geographic area (although perhaps that's not good news for the people of Maricopa County).

But things could be worse if a President Perry picked Arpaio to take over the Department of Justice and Attorney General Arpaio had a chance to incarcerate more of us in tent prisons. But Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't exactly shown himself to be a great defender of constitutional rights either.

Perry Strutting His Stuff

Back in New Hampshire, after Arpaio provided a lackluster introduction, Perry took the stage, offering unctuous thank yous to Sheriff Joe. Perry then reminded us forcefully that he is a "law and order guy."

That resonated with me in an unusually personal way -- so much so, that I missed some of his other by now notorious remarks, like his appeal for all those 21 or over (sic) to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary and those from 18 to 21 to work hard and look toward the day when they too can vote. (sic)

Still, the words "law and order" stuck in my mind. I thought under what law did Perry several months ago call on Attorney General Holder to prosecute me and the other passengers on the Audacity of Hope, the U.S. Boat to Gaza, as it challenged Israel's blockade?

Because Perry had been busy glad-handing folks off to the side when I rose to plead guilty to booing Arpaio, the governor didn't see who it was. And, as luck would have it, he called on me for the first question of the Q & A:

"I'm Ray McGovern, and I thank you for coming here, Governor Perry. My question pertains to a letter that you wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on the 28th of June of this year, and I quote: 'As governor of one of the largest states, I write to encourage you to aggressively prosecute those on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, who plan to interfere with Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza.'

"You may not have been aware that, three days previous, the State Department spokeswoman was asked three times whether Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza was legal and she refused to say the blockade was legal. I was one of those passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, and with my co-passengers we were wondering what you, as the governor of Texas, a 'law and order' person ... under what law did you wish to prosecute my co-passengers and me?"

Perry turned his response into a commentary on how much he supports Israel -- no matter what. Like all of his rivals for the Republican nomination (except Ron Paul, who generally refuses to play this craven game), Perry is not about to let anyone outdistance him in expressing unqualified support for Israel. And so, he began:

"The issue was that ... a ... I am a very strong supporter of Israel. ... I've made my point; I must stand with Israel. ... I'm going to stand with Israel. ... And you're free to go stand with who you want to, Sir, ... but I will be standing with Israel."

"No matter what?" I asked. "No matter what" was his emphatic response that can be heard beneath a crescendo of applause from Perry supporters. [To watch the video of this encounter, click here.]

How Far Will It Go?

With the new language in the NDAA, it would appear that Gov. Perry and others might soon have all the law they need to stifle acts or words that give support to Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other perceived threat to Israel, at least after Obama signs the legislation and some smart lawyers get to work on the definition of "associated forces."

Then, will the 82nd Airborne be sent to fetch me if I continue to write and speak what I believe to be the truth on issues like these? What will I be risking if I keep hammering home little-known facts like the following, which seldom, if ever, find their way into the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM)?

--Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divide-and-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

--The bulk of Hamas's popular appeal -- like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon -- stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the tangible help Hamas provides to oppressed Palestinians.

Is James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, now treading on thin ice? This is what Clapper included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34-page "Worldwide Threat Assessment" before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 10, 2011. (You guessed right; the FCM, for some reason, missed it):

"We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. ... In some cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.

"In last year's threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that extremists may take advantage of a government's inability to meet the health needs of its population, highlighting that HAMAS's and Hizballah's provision of health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to legitimize those organizations as a political force. This also has been the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt."

This, most assuredly, is not the Official Washington party line. Could the Director of National Intelligence himself be prosecuted by those who believe that any good word for those that Israel considers enemies -- like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran -- is tantamount to "material support" for terrorism?

(I do hope readers were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these "terrorist" movements garner public support -- by providing life-saving medical care, for example.)

--It was on that public-service record (and also because of wide awareness of flagrant corruption in the PLO), that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel and Europe wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.

--Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that thereupon the White House had the CIA try in 2007, with the help of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. [See "The Gaza Bombshell" by David Rose, in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad story.]

--Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing virtually all Gazans to a bare subsistence level, with 45 percent unemployment.

--From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame duck, Israel launched an armed attack on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel's stated aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza.

President-elect Barack Obama said nothing. His unconscionable silence at the slaughter should have told us at that early juncture that he, too, would feel so politically intimidated that he would mute any objections to Israeli behavior. Since then, he has retreated from even his mild objections to Israel's expanded settlements on Palestinian lands.

Guilt by Association

The United States is widely seen as responsible for Israel's aggressive behavior, which is hardly surprising. It is no secret that Israel enjoys financial assistance ($3 billion per year), military backing, and virtually unquestioned political support from Washington.

What is surprising, in the words of Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, is "how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.," and how it is taboo to point this out.

Take for example former CIA specialist on al-Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, who had the audacity to state on C-SPAN: "For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world ... is to just defy reality."

The Likud Lobby got Scheuer fired from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for his forthrightness, and the Israeli media condemned his C-SPAN remarks as "blatantly anti-Semitic." There can be a high price to pay for candor on this issue.

That is what those behind the noxious language in the NDAA seem to intend. Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain are said to be the driving force behind the new language. No one in the Senate or House has received more funding from donor institutions related to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

For his part, McCain loves to demonstrate his unquestioning support for Israel -- no matter what. He has even called for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is currently serving a life sentence for passing highly sensitive, highly damaging U.S. secrets to Israel.

A few weeks ago, McCain parroted Tel Aviv's line on Iran's alleged drive to acquire a nuclear weapon (for which U.S. intelligence sees no concrete evidence) and how that creates a "direct existential threat to the state of Israel." McCain added that Israel "may feel compelled to neutralize this threat."

Would it be risking running afoul of the language in the defense authorization bill to expose this rhetoric for what it is -- rubbish -- noxious rubbish that makes it easier for Israel to believe it will enjoy full U.S. support, no matter what, should Israeli leaders decide to attack Iran?

The supreme irony is that such an attack would probably bring on a major war, global economic collapse, and possibly the destruction of Israel itself. Oops, what was that sound at the door? What do you mean -- the 82nd is on the front porch?

Sorry; gotta go. Send cards and letters. My wife will probably be told, in due course, where they've put me. My only hope now is that Rumsfeld, for once, was telling the truth about detainees having "everything they could possibly want" in that tropical resort named Guantanamo?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

America Lurches Toward Full-Blown Tryanny

December 3, 2011 at 02:37:01


America Lurches Toward Full-Blown Tryanny

By Stephen Lendman (about the author)

Measures in FY 2012 National Defense act promise tryanny.

Post-9/11, America's moved steadily toward eroding democracy entirely. Justification given is war on terror hokum. Incrementally, international, constitutional and statute laws have been trashed.

Equity, justice and other democratic values long ago were abandoned to advance America's imperium. On May 26, the House voted to abolish freedom entirely - HR 1540, 322 - 96.

On December 1, the Senate did likewise - S. 1867, 93 to 7. Both versions assure no one anywhere is now safe, including law-abiding US citizens.

Senate no votes were cast by Thomas Harkin (D. IA), Rand Paul (R. KY), Thomas Coburn (R. OK), Jeff Merkley (D. OR), Ron Wyden (D. OR), Mike Lee (R. UT), and Bernie Sanders (I. VT).

Of the Senate's 51 Democrats, only one voted no.

At issue are Sections 1031 and 1032 of the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act - NDAA (S. 1867).

Section 1031 authorizes indefinitely detaining US citizens without charge or trial. It exceeds previous police state laws. The provision refers to US citizens or lawful resident aliens even though the Constitution protects them. No longer.

Enactment means anyone anywhere, including US citizens, may be indefinitely held without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all.

No reasonable proof is required, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Under subsection (b)(1), indefinite detentions can follow mere membership (past or present) or support for suspect organizations.

Presidents would have unchecked authority to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.

Constitutional, statute and international laws won't apply. Martial law will replace them.

Like the companion House bill (HR 1540), detention would be authorized based on alleged prior associations with suspect groups.

US military personnel anywhere in the world would be authorized to seize US citizens and others.

Section 1032 requires suspects held in military custody, outside constitutionally mandated civil protections, including habeas rights, due process, and other judicial procedures.

Presidents could order anyone arrested and imprisoned for life without charge or trial.

Abuse of power would replace rule of law protections.

Even someone erroneously arrested and cleared of wrongdoing could be held indefinitely without charge, given non-civil trials, none at all, or sent abroad to torture prison hellholes.

On November 29, the Senate voted 60 - 38 against Mark Udall's (D. CO) amendment. If adopted, it would have prohibited the military from arresting and imprisoning anyone anywhere without charge or trial, including US citizens.

An orderly review of presidential and congressional detention power would have been authorized. Before adjourning, House and Senate conferees will resolve the issue one way or other. Removing harmful provisions is doubtful.

If not, Obama promised a veto. So far, he's broken EVERY major promise made. Given enough congressional votes to override him, it hardly matters what he does.

December 8 is the House's targeted adjournment date. The Senate date is yet to be announced. Key legislation must be completed before leaving, including resolving language in FY 2012 NDAA.

Obama must then sign or veto it. Congress returns on January 5. Will he keep his promise or sign the bill to assure defense funding continuity? Electoral politics suggests the latter.

Moreover, S. 1867 sponsor Carl Levin said Obama officials were involved in drafting the bill. Both sides apparently agreed on final language.

Some Post-9/11 Background

On September 18, 2001, a joint House-Senate Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) approved permanent war on humanity. Thereafter, America's lurched from one to another. Expect more ahead.

On November 13, 2001, George Bush issued Military Order Number 1. It was a watershed coup d'etat action.

It authorized presidents to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest non-citizens (citizens were later included) anywhere in the world based on unproved allegations of involvement in international terrorism. Moreover, it approved holding them indefinitely without charge, evidence or due process rights.

It stipulated that trials, if held, will be in secret military commissions, not civil courts. Torture obtained evidence is allowed, and appeal rights are denied those convicted.

Capitalizing on a window of hysteria, numerous laws, Executive Orders, findings, memoranda, and memos, as well as National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives followed (NSPDs and HSPDs). Constitutional rights eroded. Unchecked police state powers hardened.

On October 26, 2001, 45 days post-9/11, Congress overwhelmingly passed the USA Patriot Act. Civil liberties were eroded, including Fifth and Fourteen Amendment due process rights by permitting indefinite detentions of undocumented immigrants that now apply to anyone anywhere.

First Amendment freedom of association was compromised. Now anyone may be prosecuted for their alleged association with "undesirable groups."

Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches and seizures are gone, including personal privacy rights.

Unchecked government surveillance powers were authorized to access personal records, monitor financial transactions, as well as student, medical and other records.

Secret evidence may be obtained lawlessly and withheld from defense lawyers.

For the first time, "domestic terrorism" was criminalized. It applies to US citizens and aliens. It states criminal law violations are considered domestic terrorist acts if they aim to "influence (government policy) by intimidation, coercion (or) intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

In other words, anti-war, global justice, environmental and animal rights activism, as well as Occupy Wall Street activism may be designated "domestic terrorism." So may civil disobedience and dissent of any kind to prevent it entirely.

On October 1, 2002, USNORTHCOM's establishment was step one to militarizing America.

The November 25, 2002 Homeland Security Act (HSA) centralized unprecedented executive branch military and law enforcement powers.

The October 17, 2006 Military Commissions Act scrapped habeas protections for domestic and foreign enemies alike, citizens and non-citizens, stating:

"Any person is punishable... who....aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures" and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provides "material support" to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts.

It also authorized torture and empowered presidents to convene military commissions to try anyone called "unlawful enemy combatants." They now designated "unprivileged enemy belligerents."

On the same date, little know FY 2007 NDAA provisions (Sections 1076 and 333) amended the Insurrection Act of 1807 and Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

They prohibit using federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement domestically except as constitutionally allowed or expressly authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an insurrection.

Presidents may now claim public emergency powers, effectively declare martial law, suspend the Constitution for "national security" reasons, and deploy federal and National Guard troops on America's streets to suppress whatever he calls disorder.

The key April 4, 2007 NSPD-51/HSPD-20 combined directive established "Continuity of Government (COG)" procedures under Catastrophic Emergency conditions, defined as:

"any incident (such as a terrorist attack), regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

COG is then defined as:

"a coordinated effort within the Federal Government's executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency."

The combined directive gave the president and DHS unprecedented police state powers to declare martial law without congressional approval, and be able to rule extrajudicially, free from constitutional constrains. It also let the vice-president assume dictatorial powers. Clever wording marginalized Bush, saying:

NSPD 51 "shall be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 U.S.C. 19), with consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved."

"Heads of executive departments and agencies shall ensure that appropriate support is available to the Vice President and others involved as necessary to be prepared at all times to implement those provisions."

Civil liberties were further eroded by institutionalized spying, other forms of surveillance, waging war on Islam, criminalizing dissent, creating a culture of secrecy, militarizing police, punishing whistleblowers, using courts as persecution instruments, and governing extrajudicially overall.

If FY 2012 NDAA includes Sections 1031 and 1032, America more than ever will be repressive and unfit live in.

How can it be if constitutional, statute and international law protections no longer apply.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/ .

I was born in 1934, am a retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.