printIn apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.
Via the Tenth Amendment Center:
Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …
The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.
* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.
* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.
SECTION 1021
Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”
* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.
These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.
Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.
UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”
These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.
EVERYONE…PLEASE Call, Write, or Email your Reps about this situation. Ask just two questions:
1. Where does this power to enact such a process come from?
2. Ask them how soon you should have your “Guest Room(s)” ready to quarter the troops assigned to your district so they may more expediently round-up the miscreants going to Gitmo?
THINK: GOD. Does it really mean: GOLD ORDAINED DOLLARS? Get ready. The paper ones will be your future toilet paper and we’ll become the North Korea of North America lead by a group of Czars appointed by a Divine King of Kings.
The Patriot Act. Homeland Security. TSA. New Homeland Security Headquarters. NDAA.
Slowly slowly, cathchy monkey.
I find this bill disturbing as well. Especially since it is totally unnecessary to fight the “War on Terror”(TM). The Geneva Convention allows for detainment of enemy soldiers as POW’s for the duration of the conflict. The only reason why the Bush and Obama administrations don’t like this is because they don’t want to treat the detainees as POW’s and thereby legitimizing the “War on Terror” as a legitimate military conflict (which it should be if the threat is real).
45 years of watching Republican “compassionate conservatives” Welfare Statists battling Democratic “humanitarian interventionists” Warfare Statists have left me quite disgusted with the entire “mainstream”.
I highly recommend Glenn Grennwald’s January 5th post on “Democratic Party Priorities” on how Barack CHENEY Obama has become the enthusiastic destroyer of Civil Liberties and the expander of War Powers:
http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
Sadly, MOST DEMOCRATS COULD CARE LESS. And the Republicans just egg him on.
Diana West writes how the Republicans are basically now following Obama’s foreign policy lead:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0112/west010612.php3
Ironically, I see some merit in her criticism of Paul there as well. Non-interventionism is definitely in America’s interest but I don’t feel it is necessary to give credence to any claims that Islam is very “peaceful”. At the risk of excommunication (from the Ron Paul movement), I feel it is feckless to think that Moslem kooks are ONLY violent because of our foreign policy – and I think Paul undercuts his own support by failing to acknowledge this explicitly (I think he believes too much of some of the extreme anti-Israel authors on Lew Rockwell). Still, Ron Paul is currently the only sensible alternative to the Warfare Inteventionist state – not Romney or Obama or Santorum.
I went to a gun show in Tulsa today, Saturday, lots of nice people of all races represented and a booth for Ron Paul. The lady manning the booth was kept busy with visitors. He does well at gun shows.