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US Totalitarianism Loses Major Battle As Judge Permanently Blocks NDAA's Military Detention Provision
Back in January, Pulitzer winning journalist Chris Hedges sued President Obama and the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, specifically challenging the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force or, the provision that authorizes military detention for people deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." Hedges called the president's action allowing indefinite detention, which was signed into law with little opposition from either party "unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous." He attacked point blank the civil rights farce that is the neverending "war on terror" conducted by both parties, targetting whom exactly is unclear, but certainly attaining ever more intense retaliation from foreigners such as the furious attacks against the US consulates in Egypt and Libya. He asked "why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens." A few months later, in May, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in favor of a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of the authorization for military detention. Today, the war againt the true totalitarian terror won a decisive battle, when in a 112-opinion, Judge Forrest turned the temporary injunction, following an appeal by the totalitarian government from August 6, into a permanent one.
From Reuters:
The permanent injunction prevents the U.S. government from enforcing a portion of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act's "Homeland Battlefield" provisions.
The opinion stems from a January lawsuit filed by former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others. The plaintiffs said they had no assurance that their writing and advocacy activities would not fall under the scope of the provision.
Government attorneys argued that the executive branch is entitled to latitude when it comes to cases of national security and that the law is neither too broad nor overly vague.
"This court does not disagree with the principle that the president has primacy in foreign affairs," the judge said, but that she was not convinced by government arguments.
"The government has not stated that such conduct - which, by analogy, covers any writing, journalistic and associational activities that involve al Qaeda, the Taliban or whomever is deemed "associated forces" - does not fall within § 1021(b)(2)."
What is ironic, is that in the ongoing absolute farce that is the theatrical presidential debate, there hasn't been one word uttered discussing precisely the kind of creeping totalitarian control, and Orwellian loss of constitutional rights, that the biparty-supported NDAA would have demanded out of the US republic. Why? Chris Hedges said it best:
The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. “The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.
But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.
He is 100% correct, and today, if it weren't for his lawsuit, the saying that someone, somewhere in the world might possibly "hate America for its liberties" would have been the biggest lie conceivable.
Also, the total fascist takeover of America would now have been a fact.
Some other insights from Hedges, who explained back in January, just why he is suing Barack Obama:
This demented “war on terror” is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word “democracy” to describe our political system.
The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida—which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East—are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled. So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight “terrorism”?
Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.
Today's full ruling presented below in its entirety:
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For the Children!!!
I can scarcely believe this degenerate state-sponsored shit ... literally.
I'm so fucking sick of these low-life democratic Govt cunts invading every aspect of our lives with their Orwellian agenda.
And it absolutely is an Orwellian agenda, there can be no doubt of it.
They are using such intrusions more for obtaining psychological effects, than any for of actual security purpose, or need.
Of that I'm quite sure.
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So this is data from only 2000 schools, and 207 of those were putting cameras in toilets?
So how many schools are in the UK?
Destroy a Govt camera ... because it's the right thing to do.
Wow. I've always known they were luciferian pedophiles, but that's...
wow. TY.
I hope they throw shit onto the camera lenses.
They should all protest by loading this site onto their icrap, cranking up the volume, and blasting it all day long--on the bus, in class, and especially in the can:
http://www.fart-sounds.net/fart_sound_board.htm
It's just f_ing evil, period. Alex Jones says the same thing, that the outrageously increased police state is in our faces for one reason only--to desensitize everyone and assert brute power, precedent-style, to get us accustomed to having no civil rights or dignity whatsoever.
They're now sticking stuff in folks' drinks, here in America, and sniffing the drinks, even after people have gone through the checkpoints, when they are buying cokes and so forth from the airport vendors.
One woman was asked for her drink, so it could be tested for explosives, so she drank it up and handed them an empty cup. They didn't like that:
http://www.infowars.com/tsa-kicks-woman-off-flight-for-bad-attitude/
But a new story on infowars says Congress is acting. Looks like too little, too late to me. I say we should stay vigilant and angry. I have refused to fly or attend sporting events since this shit started. F 'em.
But Congress did this: http://www.infowars.com/congress-smacks-down-tsa/
So do we count this as the second bit of sort-of-good-news today?
I don't generally follow Alex Jones, but that story is a good example of this same sort of thing.
The point is not to actually address any sort of realistic threat, or risk, or hazard. The primary point of such exceedingly dumb programs seems to be ... ... to program us. They seem to want to generate and also observe the psychological effect of it, because this garbage has nothing to do with any sort of rational or reasonable responses to airline travelling security.
It's unnecessary bullshit, anyone can objectively see that, and that is mildly to moderately counterproductive.
The TSA and UK Govt camera intrusions seem instead to simply be there to screw with us, to condition and observe the conditioned responses.
But if the response is in any way is less than passive and timid towards unreasoning and stupid authoritah excesses, i.e. "a bad attitude", then the assigned arseholes have apparently been instructed to 'punish' and discourage further reasonable or dignified responses of that sort. It's the wrong response, so you must not reward it, it must have a negative outcome. It's twisted, and idiotic, but that seems to be the whole purpose.
They are screwing with us to get a Pavlovian conditioned response. And in the process they also identify those who will not go along with their idiotic unreasonable authoritah nonsense.
The other option is more banal, some grubby little company within the industrial-security-complex, makes a useless product for DARPA that tests beverages, but is not wanted. So they conjured up some way to sell their expensive useless beverage-testing kits to the Govt. So they pay some deviant senior arsehole at homeland sickurity and TSA, to lay this insane shit on the travelling public, at their tax-paying expense.
#WINNING!
Hey, it is something like that, because there's no way this insane TSA crap and UK cameras in toilets has anything to do with security, or serving the public-interest. The key to understanding this is to follow the money, see who is making the money, and getting bribes for this idiotic despotic pile of TSA sickurity horseshit? Do that an there will be found the real enemies of the masses, the actual parasitic scumbags doing the scamming, and dramatically degrading the fabric of society in the process.
And must say, I have a pretty good idea who it will be, what specific group of the usual suspects it will turn out to be who is foisting this diabolical crap on everyone.
Pavlovian sickurity. Kudos.
More people have to stand up. The response to the potty peekers should be home schooling or rebellion via shit tossing or some other form of monkey wrenching.
This shit has gone way beyond too far. I can't believe people still vote.
Thanks for the time and info, Element.
The TSA would be shut down real quick if people would only Boycot the Airports.... It would only take a month or two....and you'd see this stopped real quick.
Just 1 or 2 months folks, and we could shut the TSA down.
Wrong...IMO.
They want you to stay at home ... cowering in front of the propaganda box ... ordering in pizza ... watching out through a crack in the curtains for terrrrrsts ... seeing something and saying something of your neighbours ... collecting and spending your payola, errr, benefits from your iCrap ... drugged and docile in your self-imposed prison....
To really fuck them up, you need to travel as often as possible and object as loudly and forcefully as possible to every sexual assault by a TSA goon, at every opportunity. Get granny to object, too. Teach your kids to object, too. Encourage your fellow travellers to object, too. Start a peaceful and pervasive revolution!
Get up off your knees, slave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"They want you to stay at home." yup, no more air travel for the little people.
Spot on i-dog!
A fearless direct and free response is what they have no viable answer to but sustained mass-violence against the population, and that will certainly fail.
And I do not think the powers that be will want to go there in the end. As with Egypt, the police are going to be come seen to be Public-Enemy #1. And yes, the police will act like utter bastards and definitely already are, going by all the clearly unconstitutional illegal and corrupt behaviour and threats we are seeing being reported. And the police will brutalise and kill more people. But in the end they will be forced to run and vacate the streets in fear of their lives.
That is the opposite outcome.
And then it'll become a series of stand-offs and violent interactions and more stand-offs with the military. And most of the military members will not actually be ok with starting a protracted civil war, and become so out numbered. As in Egypt at the point the military hesitates and says, "hang on a minute, we aren't supposed to destroy our own cites".
At that point the political old-normal is over as they won't survive the military siding with what the vast majority are demanding, that the old regime be swept away entirely and arrested.
And that means people have to be out and about and clear and fearless in demanding a complete cessation of the hopelessly perverted current political process. You either get a 100% constitutional reset or you create a better constitution.
Obviously the bank's loans get defaulted on, this is an informal Jubilee process. If the country and individuals suddenly have very low debt levels, via that process, and have a lot of gold plus natural resources access, would you not than have the ability to invest and expand production and businesses to rebuild employment, and thus get spending back in private hands, rather than pubic hands?
If you had no debts but a lot of money, and assets were dirt cheap and labour in abundant supply and actually optimistic about the future, working and free of previous crippling debts, the FED and TBTF blood-suckers ...
Can you imagine what would happen? The economy would launch into growth like a scalded cat.
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At the moment the Govt and its thuggish agencies are actually trying to convince the public that they don't want to go there against this crooked Govt, so they release stories about how many weapons and how much ammunition they've been buying to bluff everyone into not acting like free people and actually going there.
So the real solution, as you point out, is to go all the way, not to stay at home and quiver, because that is definitely what they want us to do.
Look at Poland and East Germany in 1989. All that happened was people didn't stay home in fear any longer, they were past that, so it was the police who did not show up to work, and the army sided with the people and did not shoot, so the political systems ended and USSR was abolished soon after.
That is what must and naturally will happen in the USSA. They are just going to try every trick in the book, and several new ones, to try and halt it. It's just a matter of when it happens. But getting out and implicitly rejecting all attempts by authorities and police to lord it over us, is definitely the path to that taking place. This why Govts create laws against public-gatherings, oppress and suppress free-speech and deny opportunities for free-association.
I'm with you and Idog about speaking up, but I think a boycott would really hurt the airlines' pockets. I think that would be very effective. Don't fly at all if possible, and if you do have to fly, protest, wear creative clothing, and videotape everything.
Some people do this and they are removed from the airport!. Most people dont' have the money to "travel as often as possible". The Business people will keep going...they have money at stake, so their attitude is "bring it on, I don't care".
A boycott by average travelers, going to Grandmas, going to Hawaii, etc, would hurt the Airlines and their Fat-ass CEO's would run to congress to whine.
The idea that "they want you to stay home" is bullshit. They are sticking these things on trains and soon it will be done at random check points.
BOYCOTT THE AIRPORTS!
Seriously, though, I think the majority of people want the totalitarian system. They think their enemy will be the one rounded up and exterminated.
"They are screwing with us to get a Pavlovian conditioned response. And in the process they also identify those who will not go along with their idiotic unreasonable authoritah nonsense."
Exactly. It's clever and coordinated.
Notice how the administration is cracking down as hard as possible on whistleblowers. The adminstration is trying to train would-be whistleblowers too, not just the general public, to STFU. No wonder the Brown Clown hates Assange.
Seems to me that the administration is planning something large-scale and illegal, and needs all the "chess pieces" in position before it happens.
here's the M.O. :
push the envelope as far as possible until there's a pushback in the zeitgeist.
use Congress to walk it back to give the appearance of some sort of quid pro quo with the populace.
once everyone's eyes are off the ball and on to some other of the million distractions that exist in the matrix, start tiptoeing back way past the original line in the sand.
rinse & repeat
voila! fascist totaltarianism in 3 easy steps!
Yep, absolutely. That's what they do alright.
And when there's too much internal resistance, you setup false-flag after false-flag, until they get what they wanted.
The more chaos and insecurity they create the faster they have been making progress with their agendas.
Look at the way the TBTF crooks bought politicians and incrementally changed the Federal Reserve legislation since 1913, until they got it to where they wanted it many decades after.
Same thing has occured within the national sickurity apparatus and the MSM lie-apparatus.
Slowly, slowly, catches the monkey.
Only now they are suddenly having to act faster and faster, so you can actually see them accelerating the implementation of what they really want to get now, as their desired systemic end-point.
And that desired end-point seems to be an ultra-modern but clearly Stazi-style centralised police-state.
And I don't think they give a damn about any ideology, or capitalism, or socialism, nor present-day "economy-ism", as it is all just been a means towards the eternally same end-point. It's a distractive bunk as they only really care about power and control, how best to get it, and how best to maintain it.
Beijing does the same thing, just a different path, techniques and a different mix of lies and myths to get to the eternally same end-point.
Is there any fundamental difference between them, really?
They interviewed some of those Drone operators that kill people (NY times..). The guy was saying he watches his target sometimes for weeks; watches him do everything: "watches him eat dinner with his family, watches him work, watches him go to bed at night, and watches him get up in the morning...". With drone technology and other high tech gadgets they can watch anyone they want to at anytime.... They can watch you in your most intimate moments...and listen too.
If you have a video-cam on your computer get rid of it, because they can tune into that to see you too!
You can see why the kids are desensitized these days....their parents ALLOW IT!! Parents allowed TSA strangers fondle their kids...what fucking message does that send to kids?
Look at the message that is being sent via movies, like "the Hunger Games": human sacrifice, remote viewing, no privacy, veuyerism, and what was most noticeable about this movie was the lack of Will by the populace to stop the perpetrators.
I love you guys (Americans). You have a system that is trying to creep up on your liberties, but hell you are very rebellious. Good show. Most Europeans are sleepy and saying yes to the yoke imposed by their rulers....
Yeah, we're just a big ol' cage full of enraged primates, randomly throwing shit at each other to show how outraged and dangerous we are.
Somebody forgot to tell us we are squatting on the ruins of a once great empire (like much of the rest of the world is).
Even if the U.S. is a once-great empire, many of us don't see it that way.
This ruling helps pave the road to the MASS ARRESTS... http://tinyurl.com/cd5cyjo/
Protect the good people.
Obama was probably chosen POTUS because they thought he could boil the frogs better.
Forgiven me if I am pointing out the obvious but can’t a criminal case be brought against someone deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." ?
I think this extrajudicial
military detention of anyone for an indefinite period is an end to 800 years of habeas corpus, due process and the rule of law.
The Brown Clown promised to do just that, and then reneged.
Apparently, the CIA torture teams have a problem with this whole "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" business. Something to do with illegal methods and lack of factual evidence. Who knew?
Obama--man they really played us on that one! And they succeeded. Are we any match for them? When you see how they played us on Obama, the answer is a clear no.
OK, so you rightwingers hated Obama from the getgo. But that means squat. Looking back, one of the few that actually knew anything and had done the research was Webster Tarpley. He didn't succumb to Bush fatigue.
"Also, the total fascist takeover of America would now have been a fact." Oh, it's a fack, no would have been....
Obama has failed and I might suggest purposely has subverted the constitution to make his power greater than it should be, with the help of a complicit media and political elite. He should be removed from office.
God bless Chris Hedges, at least someone in MSM is doing their job. Standing as a tribune for us! Not protecting the elites in washington.
This is good news albeit a limited victory. We should trust the Supreme Court NOT!!!
IMPORTANT ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE LIBYA KILLINGS from an ex
vn combat vet and CIA op:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/09/12/embassy-killings-in-libya-the-st...
You will never here this on the MSM!
Hope this judge has better security than we afford to ambassadors
with all the past actions of our pols and judges..some here still see the law as honest and it gives them hope.
so be it. if it makes you less sad and hopeless. for me this is just games to give cover to that which will be done
to protect the elite reptiles. that is the only game being played.
Put Judge Katherine Forrest in the Supreme Court...NOW. She is my Presidential ballot "write in" choice at the moment.
when will Judge Forrest fall on the bathtub and unfortunately die?
One green up arrow vote to the judge and to Chris!
Actually it's sec. 1031 (a) and (b) of the NDAA that pertains to indefinite detention and torture of "whoever" with the possibility of a sealed (even to the defendant) Military Trial. Sec. 1021 has to do something with freedom of the press, which is evidently well enough managed currently, that efforts can also be focused on fucking with your heads here.
Feel free to go on the black vault dot com to read the declasified CIA report on what the exceptable standards for indefinite detention and torture are. (::Spoiler Alert:: Anything is fair game but destruction of an internal organ or burning you alive (unless you end up in another countries jurisdiction) but even if you don't no one involved in inappropriate torture will be prosecuted even if they bash your skull in).
To be clear I am not saying all CIA operatives are bad guys - this is a very important distinction. More food for thought: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0f_1331514851
I'd like to think this is where this ends, but unfortunately I see an executive order coming in 3.. 2.. 1...
Yeah would be awful and have panic filled boohoo moments to poke fun at. Only precautions taken have been spelling everything out to a bunch of Christian churches so it would be an eye opening validation to what is otherwise dutifully avoided.
Didn't get the joke until after and made it funny ;-)
(at my expense)
I was so happy to read this, Kudos to you Chris
Finally good news against tyranny.