You May Be A Terrorist

Do you suppose cows have any idea what’s coming as they’re marched down the chute? Or do they stare with bovine indifference at the tail and hind quarters in front of them, until they’re suddenly — and very briefly — startled by the man with the nail gun?

Perhaps Americans will — likewise too late — ask themselves what happened in the very near future. Perhaps just after the midnight knock comes and they are taken away into the night.

It is not an exaggeration.

America is now on the cusp of becoming a state that does exactly such things — things exactly like the things done by 20th-century horror shows such as National Socialist Germany or Stalin’s USSR. Literally. Not “this is where it might lead” or “the tendency is similar.” Exactly, literally, the same thing. The only difference is that it awaits being done on a mass scale. But the power to do it openly — brazenly — has been asserted.

And is about to be sanctified by law.

The National Defense Authorization Act will make it official. It will confer upon the executive branch and the military (increasingly, the same things) the permanent authority to snatch and grab any person, US citizens included, whom they decree to be a “terrorist” — as defined or not by the executive or the military — and imprison him indefinitely, without formal charge, presentation of evidence or judicial proceeding of any kind. These “detainees” will have neither civilian rights in the civil court system nor — crucially — even the minimal rights to due process and decent treatment conferred upon prisoners of war. (And we are allegedly “at war,” are we not?)

The language of the bill specifically includes American citizens “caught” within the borders of the United States — aka, the “battlefield.” It is claimed by sponsors that only those awful them — you know, the enemies of freedom the Chimp and his successors like to reference as they systematically gut our freedoms — need worry. But read the actual document, and be afraid.

The wording is such that any shyster lawyer for the government will be able to draw up a memorandum at some point in the near future equating, say, criticism of the federal government’s policies in the Middle East with “substantially supporting” the enemies of the United States. As defined by the United States.

That is, as defined by the government.

At its whim. At the personal discretion of whomever happens to be the Maximum Leader, or even one of the ML’s duly appointed minions.

As the always excellent Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone recently observed, what happens when some nutjob who attended a few Tea Party meetings tries to bomb a federal building? Will the Tea Party itself — and anyone who “substantially supports” it — be thus transformed into an “enemy combatant”? How about the OWS protestors? How about this newsletter or website — and this author — which have on several occasions called b******* on the federal government’s usurpations and follies? How hard will it be, really, to describe such actions — such thoughts expressed in an article or an interview — as “substantially supporting” whatever the government decides amounts to “terrorism” or the threat thereof against itself?

Surely, the door is now wide open for such an interpretation by some John Woo or Dick Cheney waiting in the wings. Prospective jefe Newtie is practically turgid at the prospect of getting his hands on such power. And there is no longer (or soon won’t be) any legal means available to contest a one-way trip to Treblinka in Topeka — or wherever it is they will send you.

Taibbi writes:

“The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law ‘basically says…for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield’ and that people can be jailed without trial, be they ‘American citizens or not.’ New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that ‘America is part of the battlefield.’”

Graham further stated:

“It is not unfair to make American citizens account for the fact that they decided to help al-Qaida to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next. And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

The key thing being…it is entirely up to the government to decide what constitutes “helping” al-Qaida. It can be nothing more than a vague assertion. Indeed, no evidence of any kind whatsoever is necessary to “hold them as long as it takes” in order to “find intelligence” (not defined, either) by any means it wishes to employ.

As Taibbi notes:

“If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest.”

The Fuhrer (oops, President Obama) is about to sign this latter-day enabling act, and when he does, it will mark the moment that America’s coffin is nailed shut. The corpse has been on view since Sept. 11. But there was always some hope that, perhaps, it might be jolted back into life. Now we know the awful truth. Death is permanent.

And it’s coming for us.

Regards,

Eric Peters,
for The Daily Reckoning
http://dailyreckoning.com/    

 

MORE: 

 

The following was written by Franklin Sanders (www.the-moneychanger.com) on 12/20/11:

I don’t like doing it, but I’m going to tell you how your government will use the National Defense Authorization Act, assuming it becomes law, which now appears virtually certain.

By secret administrative decision, a decision the victim will have no knowledge of & thus no opportunity or right to challenge, certain targeted persons will be declared “terrorists.”  Then they will be rounded up and imprisoned forever.  Probably even their location will be a well-hidden bureaucratic secret. This will be the death of perhaps the most important right guaranteed by Magna Carta, habeas corpus, or the right of personal liberty forbidding government to arrest and hold any person without showing cause. It will also seal the coffin on due process of law, or any process of law.

And although the sponsors swear to you that this will never be used against ordinary people, only against terrorists,  Obama’s signature won’t be dry before the wiretaps and arrests begin.  It may be Tea Party nuts or Occupy crazies, but they will be administratively defined as “terrorists” and they will disappear.  Vanish. And they won’t come back.

And how, O Tennessee fool, do you know this? Because the yankee government played a like trick on me.   You can read about my Fun with The Federal Government at http://www.the-moneychanger.com/dangerous.phtml . But this incident appears not there.  When I went

When I went back to jail in 1996 to flatten out my sentence rather than remain on probation (where they can pull your chain & jerk you back to prison any time they like) for 7 years and pay them  $1,000 a month for seven years and do 1,000 hours of community service, for some weird reason they gave me the full court security press.  Even though I was a measly Class E felon, one step above a jaywalker and not as dangerous or vile as a pickpocket, they put me into maximum detention, locked up 24 hours a day, except for three 15 minute spates of luxury gourmet dining.

Neither my poor wife nor I could figure what had turned me into such a dangerous character, as I have never done any violence and anyway, violence from me would be like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Didn’t matter, because unknown to me the IRS had ADMINISTRATIVELY, without any opportunity for me to know or controvert, determined that I was a “PDT,” Potentially Dangerous Taxpayer.  Somehow or other the odor of that was stinking over into my state incarceration.  I finally got to the “Red Roof Inn,” i.e., the sublime luxury of work release, but not until once again the value of due process & the perils of bureaucratic secrecy had been proven to me.

Now you all listen, as much as it pains my heart & grieves me to have to say this, due process & your rights are dead in this country, & federal courts are not to be trusted.  That’s why I am sure how  this National Defense Authorization Act will be used.  They’ll call anybody a “terrorist” whom they want to call, & if you object to anything too loudly, well, they’ll call you one, too.  Not so long after that, your wife and children will be wondering why you left them without a word.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.