The United Police States of America - Part 1

I wanted to tell you a bit about my grandma, this ancient figure which has lived through the tenure of 19 U.S. presidents (and about half of the entire country's history), two World Wars and the Cold War, 8 popes, the invention of the washing machine, the television, the jet engine, the first space explorations, the moon landings. Perhaps most impressively, however, she was a Jewish woman in fascist Italy who was originally sent to concentration camps in Poland, and managed to escape and walk her way back to her homeland with her two children - my father who was a few months old when her ordeal began, and my uncle who was a child of seven or eight. She witnessed the rise and fall of the brutality of fascism and Nazism and experienced their practical application in two of the most brutal regimes in the history of mankind (those of Hitler and Mussolini). Some of the most intense and memorable of her life stories are not the ones of hope or of her ordeals in concentration camps, but the story of her life as Italy was becoming increasingly para-militarized and presided by a fascist and violent police and military force. She watched as neighbours she had known for decades became members of the fascist paramilitary surveillance groups and spied on everyone in the neighbourhoods. It wasn't long before they had to be careful of every word they would speak in public for the fear of being labelled a dissident, a baby-eating communist and, inevitably, a suspect. The constant fear of being watched, scrutinized, and being in a government's file somewhere ready to just be picked up, charged, and imprisoned without a trial at the first sign of an excuse to do so... The biggest regret my grandmother expresses is: "I didn't do anything... as all this was going on, I stood by and expected it not to affect me, and that it would be temporary, until it was ME they came for, and nobody was left to defend me."
Incredibly, many of the stories which seemed like they could never take place nowadays, in my naive childish mind as I listened to her anecdotes, they were impossible.

Not so much, as it turned out...

A few days ago, on Friday December 16th, 2011, My grandmmother´s 105th birthday, the United States´ House of Representative and Senate have passed the National Defence Appropriation Act 2012. Such act outlines all the defence authorizations for the U.S. military and related agencies, and is a behemoth of a volume (you can find the whole text of the bill here)

The Obama administration is supportive of the bill, despite having threatened to veto it on the grounds that those provisions “mandat[ing] military custody” amounted to a “restriction of the President’s authority” to choose what to do with terrorism suspects. No mention of the disintegration of the fifth amendment’s due process clause appeared in the administration’s objection. Recently, even those objections and the veto threat were withdrawn.

So... what would this new bill actually do? Amongst other things, it rescinds many of the civil rights and liberties which are legally and constitutionally the right of U.S. citizens such as the Habeas Corpus and the Fifth Amendment which states that no individual shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

When I first heard Michelle Bachmann (makes me shudder just having her name show up on my blog) mention her concerns about the removal of bestiality and sodomy from the punishable offences, I took little stock in her ramblings. However, after a couple of days (and I can't take credit for thinking this up) I saw the following comment on a news website (some of the text was in capitals, I reduced it for reading purposes):

"You guys don't know the worst of it. Remember Baghram Prison in Iraq? Remember the videos and Symour Hersh writing about the sexual torture, not only of Iraq men, but also their children being sodomized in front of their parents? Remeber also the dog and the military woman who handled the dog ended up getting arrested for breaking the law? The law she broke was "Article 125 of the UCMJ". This bill above gutts article 125 making sodomy and bestiality legal in the military, which then allows them to legally sodomize and do horrors to americans who are under this bill and arrested with no rights to a trial etc. and can be tortured in such a manner. That is the one section no one has noticed or talked about. So now that woman would not be arrested for doing that to us. Piling naked men one on top of the other etc...... Nice, huh???? Add that in when you write your letters. Its important."- Anonymous

I have done the appropriate research on the facts claimed to be true in the comment, and indeed they are. I completely agree that worrying about bestiality and sodomy within and between members of the military is a ridiculous concern, but this is different. The abolition of Article 125 would effectively make the use of perverse, degrading, cruel, unusual and humiliating sexual punishment and the use of animals to inflict punishment legal by the military, possibly towards a civilian force.
Remember the unconstitutional, unlawful and morally deplorable murder of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awaki, who was killed by a military stealth drone in Yemen in  September 2011? Well, through this bill not only the United States grants itself the power to arrest and detain ANY person of any nationality anywhere in the world with (in)sufficient justification based on "terrorism suspicions", but it grants itself the power to murder any U.S. or foreign civilian anywhere in the world, including American soil, based on such suspicions.

This bill is a curtailment of U.S. citizen's civil liberties. It revokes their right to a civilian trail by a jury of their peers, and warrants indefinite and unsubstantiated arrest "until the end of hostilities" (in the words of John Stewart "until terror surrenders and is not longer available as a human emotion?")  without charge or legal representation.

This has already happened in real terms once in the history of the United States. Not many American citizens are told, or remember of, the multiple concentration ("internment") camps used during WWII to imprison and curtail the civil liberties and rights of thousands of Japanese americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the most notorious of these camps contained over 10,000 Japanese-Americans, and was located a mere 370km from Los Angeles - its name was Manzanaar. If you look into the history of how Japanese-American citizens were treated during WWII, you will have no doubts that the U.S. government is able of atrocious acts to curtail he liberties of its own peoples.

The Mainstream Corporate Media conglomerate has attempted to ommitt this issue from public scrutiny and attention. However, enough information has come thorugh traditional and independent media outlets to cause a recognizable public outrage. Indeed, amongst increasing criticisms, the bill will amend section 4001 of title 18 of the United States Code (Limitation on detention; control of prisons") to include the following paragraph after subsection a) of the Code:

(a), “(b)(1) An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.

“(2) Paragraph (1) applies to an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority enacted before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2001.” 


However, this "concession" would only take place after the passage of an act of congress (the same congress who overwhelmingly passed this legislation) and does not effectively exclude the possible arrest and detention of American citizens if such actions are taken overseas. This measure could be effectively overturned by the passing of the proposed Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, ut forth by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. However, to quote the "End The Lie" website:


"Feinstein, who unfortunately is one of my so-called Representatives, actually voted for the NDAA as you can see in the Senate’s roll call for today’s vote...She also voted in favor of S.1867, the Senate’s version of the NDAA. Can we really expect her to pass something that will protect us after actively working against us in such a blatant manner? [...] Moreover, we are relying on what is arguably an equally nonsensical hope: that the Senate – which voted with a massive majority in favor of the NDAA both times – would actually vote for the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011."

End of Part 1....

To be continued soon!