Below is today’s column in the Sunday Washington Post. The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free. If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies. Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were. [Update: in addition to the column below, a later column in the Washington Post explores more closely the loss of free speech rights in the West].
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.
Assassination of U.S. citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)
Indefinite detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While Sen. Carl Levin insisted the bill followed existing law “whatever the law is,” the Senate specifically rejected an amendment that would exempt citizens and the Administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal court. The Administration continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)
Arbitrary justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)
Warrantless searches
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)
Secret evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.
War crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)
Secret court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)
Immunity from judicial review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)
Continual monitoring of citizens
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. It is not defending the power before the Supreme Court — a power described by Justice Anthony Kennedy as “Orwellian.” (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)
Extraordinary renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.
These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.
Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”
Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”
And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.
An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.
The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.
The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.
Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Washington Post (Sunday) January 15, 2012
“I don’t know of a worse lie one could tell than a lie to take a country to war.
That’s got to be the more obscene, immoral thing to do. So this government
hasn’t earned the right to be trusted. If [the Military-Industrial complex]
says ‘Assad has chemical weapons,’ or if it says, ‘Ahmadinejad has a
nuclear weapon’…I’ll believe it when he walks in the room and
shows it to me.”
– Michael Moore on Piers Morgan Live,
Tuesday, March 19th, 2013, the 10th anniversary
of the U.S. attack on Iraq
http://youtu.be/Nms8dI-kwi8
Thought Crime
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/preemptive-prosecution-muslims-cointelpro
With graphics…
Iraq War Cost $800 Billion, And What Do We Have To Show For It?
Posted: 03/18/2013 7:32 am EDT | Updated: 03/18/2013 11:24 am EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/iraq-war-costs_n_2885071.html?ir=World&ref=topbar
——–
MI6 and CIA were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD
BBC’s Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraqi foreign minister and spy chief
by Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday 18 March 2013 02.00 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/18/panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims
Arundhati Roy on Iraq War’s 10th: Bush May Be Gone, But “Psychosis” of U.S. Foreign Policy Prevails
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th
“On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the global justice activist and author Arundhati Roy joins us to discuss the war’s legacy. Roy is the author of many books, including “The God of Small Things,” “Walking with the Comrades,” and “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.” Roy argues the imperial mentality that enabled the United States to invade Iraq continues today unabated across the world. “We are being given lessons in morality [by world leaders] while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades if not centuries,” Roy says. “And everything continues as normal.””
noe its not a devils #
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/15/headlines#3150
New Study Reveals High Toll of Decade-Long Iraq War
A decade of war in Iraq has killed roughly 134,000 Iraqi civilians and potentially contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more, according to researchers at Brown University. Their report was released ahead of the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. It says the Iraq war has cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion, including $500 billion in benefits owed to veterans. The report says the war has devastated rather than helped Iraq, spurring militant violence, setting back women’s rights and hurting the healthcare system. Most of the more than $200 billion supposedly set aside for reconstruction in Iraq was actually used for security or lost amid rampant fraud and waste. Some previous reports have put the death toll in Iraq significantly higher. A 2006 report published in The Lancet by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found 655,000 people had died in the first 40 months of the war both from violence and indirect causes related to the devastated infrastructure.
http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.html
Here’s a partial history of Obama’s dealings – listed (roughly) chronologically, most recent first:
(multiple live links go to specific article source materials for each issue or statement in the chronology. a valuable index tool and a frightening accumulation of insidious abuses of power.
This is the man that, as a small boy, spent 4 years in Indonesia just in the wake of Suharto’s slaughter of more than 1/2 million people.
What was said above is worth repeating:
The ONLY thing that trickles down in the neo-con economy is corruption!
America is burning down for a fire sale. There is only one way to save her!
Labor Economics MUST UNITE! The re-framing of issues can not be based upon an appeal to “profit as authority.” The ideology of managerialism can no longer be allowed to openly manipulate price theory as an authentic mode of production, when in fact quantitative monotheism as monetarianism is merely an algorithmic mythology; a grid metric of property rights that render and exploit real production. This exploit of greed and manipulative abuse must be carefully delineated from being called a categorical universal representation of an unqualfied “capitalism” when it reduces assets . Cost effectiveness must be prioritized over profit driven efficiency dogmas that creates a zero sum exclusionary path dependency. Externalizations must be mutually evaluated into the colon cancer of independent greed parading as leadership in a schizophrenic claim to commercial interest over the public good!
“Please note that a “Fourth Wall” is not synonymous with the more classic “Fifth Column” designation from the World Wars.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall
The globalization process has become analogous to a game pf Parker Bros. Monopoly . Finance has converted everything to a stack of worthless printed money that captures the assets of a con game called supply side economics. The only thing that trickles down from this monetary supply side economy is corruption itself. MONOPOLY lends itself to a political economy of viciously reductive scale, legitimation tactics for competitive exclusion, zero sum games and crisis driven control fraud. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The wealth trap is the compulsion, the obsession and the imperative to play Monopoly with living systems, with geopolitical liquidity and contraction, and with ecological destruction and resource depletion all under a process of building urban centers of massive sprawl to create consumer markets and market “robots” (Czechoslovakian for workers) to scale the system and skim the profits.
In our society democratization has been converted to monetarism. The price you pay at the basic supermarket includes the political cost of someone elses’ political interest. Poor or wealthy you must contribute through your purchases to corporate contributions (for issues you may actually not agree). This is not tax, this is virtual tribute. At the same time financing has become the final word for all social and political decisions and these control the directions of stability, change, and executive controls that determine outcome…regardless
of legislative authority. By pushing and pulling capital flows Finance determines the ebb and flow of political opinions. If the financial services sectors do not agree with an issue, the power of finance is going to influence not only politicians…but corporate opinions who are seeking favor. The rigging gets tighter! Capitalism has become a living historicism.
PRIVATIZING THE US Government has become the ultimate gaming of the system from what goes under the false heading of private equity (in reality a conglomerate of international sovereign and private interests seeking plunder and gains).
This represents the finalization of executive capture and the hostile takeover of the United States Domestic Society under the tools of monopoly monetarianism (which is the contemporary version of totalitarianism as the monetary capture and financial control over the factors of survival).
All other facets derive from rationalizing this neo-institutional corporatism in the service of a cross border sovereign wealth pool of political power with many moving parts. We are just learning now of at least 21 TRILLION DOLLARS hidden OFFSHORE by private interests http://drpinna.com/the-super-r…
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column
and: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/206477/fifth-column
It is the suspended disbelief of our American Culture indoctrinated by an uncritical acceptance of propaganda rhetoric and cold war ritual psychopathology…that permits this culture of predator supremacy to continue and instill its viral controls over our economy and it’s rationalistic “economics” in the name of freedom and liberty. The world looks on against cognitive dissonant rhetoric and responds with cognitive estrangement. Political reality can be likened to this cognitive estrangement in the mass market media of consensus opinion and conformity to an identity membership. Alienation and market engineering trumps eugenics in the selective process of career survival and self preservation has been degraded to an accepted “name brand” of class recognition in a profit as prophet centered sociopaths.
No better than aristocratic tyranny that enslaved centuries of Europe, but all relabeled as libertarian market realism. Pure rhetoric to hide ancient exploitations of power; an Old Snake…in New (Neo-Con) Skin.”
And in honor of sunshine week and transparency in government:
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/08/obamas-cia-pedigree.html
http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.html
“coincidentally”
Geithner was born in Brooklyn, New York, but spent most of his childhood in other countries, including present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, and Thailand where he completed high school at the International School Bangkok
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner
also see for the Ford Foundation:
© 2002 James Petras
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/FordFandCIA.html (but the following is still right on the wikipedia link continuing from above):
His father, Peter F. Geithner, was the director of the Asia program at the Ford Foundation in New York in the 1990s. During the early 1980s, Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation’s microfinance programs in Indonesia being developed by Ann Dunham Soetoro,
President Barack Obama’s mother, and they met in person at least once..
Geithner’s maternal grandfather, Charles F. Moore, was an adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served as Vice President of Public Relations from 1952-1964 for Ford Motor Company.
Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates in Washington for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attaché at the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs
(1996–1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).
He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury
Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.
See these as well:
http://www.t-room.us/2011/03/march-7-2011-stanley-ann-dunham-obama-soetoros-cia-colleagues/
http://www.alternet.org/story/154807/why_one_of_the_world%27s_leading_peace_advocates_threatened_to_punch_me_in_the_face?page=entire
@ anonymously : It is about time we heard something from the ACLU !
Where have they been all along. this is not just the normalization of militarism in the nation and society; this is para?military state coercive force far above “police” sanctioned law enforcement. The Plot thickens as we see Obama decompose the constitution one section at a time, and bring up the military segmentation of our domestic society into third world tyrant potentials. Why doe no one question Obama’s life in Indonesia with Suharto?
Look at some FACTS:
[Excerpt]
http://www.therightsideoflife.com/top-sites/obama-timeline/ ; (excerpt for childhood)
Indonesia
In 1966 or 1967 Ann Dunham married Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo (1936-1987), who she had met at the University of Hawaii. By birth, Soetoro was Malaysian, but he had lived in Indonesia most of his life. Soon after his marriage to Dunham, Soetoro returned, alone, to Indonesia. Obama and Dunham later moved to Indonesia to join Soetoro, probably in 1967. Soetoro then adopted Obama, whose name was changed to Barry Soetoro. Elementary school records in Indonesia list Obama’s name as Barry Soetoro, his religion as Islam, and his citizenship as Indonesian. While in Jakarta, Obama attended Franciscus Primary School (1967-1969) and Besuki State Elementary School Menteng 01 (1969-1971). [6,14,172,289,324,329,801]
Interestingly, while in the third grade in Indonesia, Obama wrote an essay saying he wanted to become president. Perhaps as a foreshadowing of future questions about his status as a natural born citizen of the United States and the constitutionally relevant issue of divided loyalties, Obama included in his essay the remark that he was not sure of “what country” he would like to be President. [842, p. 30]
Lolo Soetoro had been an official of the Director General’s office in the TNI Topograohy division of the Indonesian Army. He later became an executive with American Mobil corporation, where he was a key liaison between the oil company and the Suharto regime. Suharto had been “installed” as the American friendly Indonesian President in 1967, after a CIA-engineered 1965-1967 coup that deposed President Sukarno – who was considered soft on communism and a threat to American oil interests. Strangely, the leftist Ann Dunham, who would have been more politically sympathetic to the deposed Sukarno, married Soetoro, a man with ties to the bloodthirsty dictator Suharto.
(END OF EXCERPT)
AP Analysis Finds U.S. Tightening Grip On Information
March 13, 2013 4:00 AM
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/13/174174579/ap-analysis-finds-u-s-tightening-grip-on-information
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/14/obama-transparency-podesta-sunshine-week
Glenn Greenwald’s words:
Rule of Law
Last week at Yale Law School, I spoke about America’s two-tiered justice system and the perversion of the rule of law, all of which relates to the issues raised here. Those interested can watch the 40-minute speech and the Q-and-A that follows here:
http://youtu.be/MRiQ0SGJ_98
At least some of you get it. I was amazed when I watched the police of Henderson, NV stop a man walking down the street, minding his business, doing nothing aganist the law. The police were “looking for someone trying door handles” although the man was on a sidewalk, no houses or cars near, no door handles to be trying?? Now, that was as close to illegal stop as possible. But then, with this illegal stop, they find something, whatever, and then the man is arrested, all from a stop that was referenced as looking for someone trying door handles. This reference was for a White Male, 20s wearing all black clothing. The man they stopped? 54 years old, limping, white hair, wearing dark jacket and light blue jeans. How in Gods name dose this old man, fit the description of a 20 year old????? But the police of Henderson, NV, are out of control, and the DA office is agreeing with them, on every turn. How do you stop this when the entire city is behind this? Oh, what ever they conviscate from whoever they arrest, yes, it is sold to help the police fight crime. Is that not simular to comingling of funds type thing???? There is an incentive to conviscate anything and everything they can, sell these things and hey they get new equiptment, even though they have state of the art equiptment now, and we pay for that, they have developed a way to make it better for themselves, and no one even cares. Except the Police of Henderson, NV. They are laughing it up, day in, day out, because it is legal or so they say. Just as legal as the terrorist saying the Koran says to commit holy war.
Things are in pretty poor shape.
It’s gotten so bad that the police can not afford to buy camoflage uniforms that would be appropriate for an urban environment.
This is an image from a wect.com story about the hunt for a ‘postal’ killer.
Cops kill suspect in deadly NY shooting rampage
http://apmobile.images.worldnow.com/images/2320949_G.jpg
This is not two marines on patrol in Iraq.
This is two cops walking down Main Street in Herkimer, NY.
The cop on the right is either very short and portly or is weighed down by a significant amount of body armor.
Either way, one might assume that the camoflage uniform had to be tailored significantly in order to accomodate what lies beneath.
If that was so, why did they not opt at the same time for a cloth that blended into buildings? Yes, the streets are a jungle, but not that type of jungle.
Is this fetish-wear?
In the circumstances, does it indicate fetish-think?
Or, as my sweet granny used to say..”WTF?”
When total surveillance of one population becomes normalized, we are all at a greater risk of being illegally spied on. -John Knefel
Police Spying on American Muslims Is a Pointless National Shame
New report details the damaging effects of the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance regime
By John Knefel
March 11, 2013 12:00 PM ET
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/police-spying-on-american-muslims-is-a-pointless-national-shame-20130311
Excerpt:
So what has all this surveillance, this so-called “intelligence gathering,” gotten us? A terrorized local Muslim population, a police department that grossly exaggerates the terror plots it has disrupted and a crown jewel investigation of a troubled man named Ahmed Ferhani that was so problematic even the FBI – recently dubbed “the terror factory” by one author because of its role in manufacturing plots that its own agents then disrupt – wanted nothing to do with it. And as the report reminds us, Thomas Galati, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, “admitted during sworn testimony that in the six years of his tenure, the unit tasked with monitoring American Muslim life had not yielded a single criminal lead.”
While Muslims in the Northeast are the people most directly affected by this surveillance, it is a national problem – both in the sense that all of our rights are infringed if anyone’s are, but also in a more concrete way. The state’s capacity for surveillance is already enormous, and will only expand as technologies, including domestic drones, continue to increase in sophistication. When total surveillance of one population becomes normalized, we are all at a greater risk of being illegally spied on. This report is an important document that illustrates just how damaging that can be.