“A writer’s notebook is not a diary. Writers react. Writers need a place to record these reactions. That’s what a writer’s notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don’t want to forget. A writer’s notebook gives you a place to live like a writer.” - Ralph Fletcher
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
It is deeply disturbing that the Obama administration, rather than protecting our civil liberties and democracy, insists on further eroding them by expanding the power of the military to seize U.S. citizens and control our streets.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they “substantially supported” terrorist groups or “associated forces.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
As legal scholar @JonathanTurley wrote recently, when it comes to drone assassinations (or “targeted killings” as they are now more politely known), Attorney General Eric Holder has just claimed for the president the “authority to kill any American if he unilaterally determines them to be a threat to the nation.” In doing so, added Turley, “Obama has replaced the constitutional protections afforded to citizens with a ‘trust me’ pledge.” With terror in its crosshairs, war, in other words, is increasingly becoming the president’s private preserve and strikes on the enemy, however defined, a matter of his own private judgment.
Weeks after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges filed suit against President Obama in Federal District Court for egregiously violating the U.S. Constitution by signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the US military has been conducting joint exercises with city police departments. An LAPD press release states:
The Los Angeles Police Department will be providing support for a joint military training exercise in and around the great (sic) Los Angeles area. This will be routine training conducted by military personnel, designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements.
(Source: dailykos.com)
But I suspect the real purpose of this bill [#NDAA] is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.
Chris Hedges
(Source: truthdig.com)
Mother will they put me in the firing line? #NDAA #EEA #ows #poet
Phil Donahue on trusting President #Obama with the #NDAA .. #ows #occupy
Indefinite detention without trial is, of course, not a new policy for the U.S., as the involuntary residents of Guantanamo Bay could tell you. Nor is torture or summary execution. What is sinister about the turn that America has taken in the last decade is that these actions are no longer denied. They are no longer reviled as being barbaric, or “the method of the enemy.” Instead they are justified in the name of security and safety.
(Source: policymic.com)
The vague definition provided by the bill for “covered persons” includes supporters of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda or “associated forces,” as well as “any person who has committed a belligerent act.” What constitutes associated forces or belligerent acts, though, is left to the president to determine. In addition, the bill also authorizes “enhanced interrogation techniques,” i.e., torture.
(Source: policymic.com)
Look at the Freedom!! #NDAA FLASH MOB Protester Arrested - Grand Central Station, NY #ows #J3
