Ralph Lopez's blog

It may have been the one and only thing which prevented an attack on Iran during the Bush years. Chairman of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers spent years fending off nationwide calls to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq, the shredding of the Constitution after 9/11, and other high crimes and misdemeanors culminating in a summer of 2008 "non-impeachment impeachment hearings," in which witnesses such as Rep. Brad Miller, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, Vincent Bugliosi and many others came together to implore the committee to bring articles of impeachment.

Well almost standing together.  The Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported that Occupy Wall Streeters in Worcester, MA "mostly occupied the north end of the small Federal Plaza Park and Tea Partiers mostly the south" last Friday on Nationwide NDAA 2012 Congressional Protest Day.  The protest has been expanded to fall on the first Friday and Saturday of every month at congressional offices across the country. They gathered to protest the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which strips US citizens of their right to a jury trial when the government asserts that they are suspected of "support" for "forces" which are "associated" with Al Qaeda.  The NDAA allows the US military to detain citizens without charges, counsel, or any contact with the outside world, for life.

Photo: Truthout.org

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:

Please share.

MP3 sound file of interview, for low bandwidth.

Breaking the major broadcast news media's blackout on the most radical elimination of American rights in U.S. history, Professor of Law Jonathan Turley speaks to BBC on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA), which allows for the indefinite military detention of US citizens without charge or trial in violation of the right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Constitution.

Much to Forgive: The Story of Bibi Sadia. 

By Kathy Kelly

At what point does "support and defend" become enforceable law? The Oath of Office of congressmen, military officers, and the president, required by Article 6 of the Constitution and, in the case of military officers, by an Act of Congress 13 May 1884, says in substance:

Buried by the television news media but visible on Youtube, at least three days in a row of protests over NDAA law allowing indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial have taken place recently, with at least 11 arrests confirmed so far.  

Fox News reported on its website:

WASHINGTON –  Several Occupy D.C. protesters will likely face charges after they were arrested in a protest outside the White House.

U.S. Park Police say 11 protesters were arrested Monday night because they ignored police orders to leave the grounds. The protesters included some Occupy D.C. participants, though it wasn't immediately clear if all those arrested were part of the Occupy movement.

Disclaimer: I am now a volunteer press contact for this campaign.

From the press release (last revised 12/28/2011):

Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86 - 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, and Congressman Denny Reberg, who all voted for the bill.

I recently engaged in a friendly but rather unsettling conversation with a man from Algeria who became visibly upset when I told him about NDAA, the new law allowing indefinite military detention of US citizens  without charge or trial.  He said he had come here to get away from  that sort of thing, which had happened in his country and was fresh in  his mind.  His description of what happened in Algeria during its  equivalent of Argentina's "Dirty War" was chilling and he kept shaking  his head about the new law here, visibly distressed.

The geeks at Anonymous probably think they are having more fun publishing the Twitter handles of the 83 senators who approved the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, last Thursday, on Bill of Rights Day, which okays indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.  But buried in the information dump is a truly amazing piece of information, which could have been put together from public records, but which Anonymous actually brought to the fore.

There has never been a better time to take a close look at how we got here, with Obama, a former Constitutional law professor,  about to sign a law which overnight turns the U.S. into a Third World country, where anyone can be swept off the streets by the military to rot forever, or even be killed.  Some people say wearily that the new powers for the indefinite military detention of Americans are not new at all.  That this is nothing the government cannot, and has not, already done.  

What this misses is that the new government powers seek to codify, "hard-wire" if you will, an area of law which is in flux, and far from settled in the courts.  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proclaimed in his momentous speech on the Senate floor that:

Please send to every veteran you know. We need them now. Please submit a call for action Thursday to your OWS General Assembly.

Wasting no opportunity to display the kind of unbridled, almost exuberant arrogance which finally got Tunesian and Egyptian juntas driven out of the country, a House and Senate conference committee, deaf to any outcry, passed the National Defense Authorization Act yesterday with the treasonous overturn of the Bill of Rights still intact.  That's not even the good part.  

AP:

The lawmakers said they hoped the House and Senate could vote on the final bill by Thursday and send it to the president.

Thursday is December 15.  Bill of Rights Day.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) on Senate floor explaining it was Obama who requested the provision for indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.     Levin is a primary co-sponsor of the bill along with Sen. John McCain, and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.   Senator Diane Feinstein recently confirmed that she was unable to excise Section 1031 in an email:

For distribution at Occupy Wall Street and other events.  There is a media blackout so the word must be spread.  Copy and paste to create your own document or use below files ready to print.

Ready to print:   .pdf       .doc (MS Word)

Occupy Wall Street is being forced to grow up.  Gone are the commenters and bloggers who are against the issuing of clear demands because this "acknowledges a thoroughly corrupt system."  Who say we must "create a participatory democracy" from scratch.  Guess what? The major spaces from which to create the "new world" which is "possible" are dwindling.  OWS is getting pushed out of park after park in a coordinated assault, and the problem is, at the end of the day, most people still don't know what we wanted.

The most little-understood fact of war, in my opinion, is the sheer, mind-boggling, nearly incomprehensible magnitude of the money which is spent on a daily basis to keep the occupation and boom-and-zoom operations going.  Former General Barry McCaffrey put the "burn rate" of US taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan at $9 billion per month, which is fully one-half the average yearly state budget for the 50 states. Two months of this kind of spending is the entire Pell Grant appropriation for 2010.  

More than one-third of that "burn rate" (and you have to hand it to McCaffrey for not caring how this sounds to the public, literally burning taxpayer money) is fuel costs, both aviation and ground.  Time reports that:

Let's break this down.  First one witness outright denies that there were any Taliban present whatsoever.

NYTimes:

Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, said that a NATO reconnaissance aircraft spotted five militants planting mines in the village of Siacha, in Zhare District on Wednesday. The plane targeted the insurgents, killing two and wounding a third, and then pursued the other two suspects as they carried their injured comrade away.

“The plane chased them, the insurgents entered a street where children were playing and as a result of its shooting, seven people have been killed, including six children, and two girls also have been injured,” Mr. Ayoubi said. The victims were members of two families.

It's as an obscene a scenario as you can imagine.  Year after year, Afghan villages to which aid can easily be delivered are faced with starvation because the regions are peaceful and there is no need for Pentagon press releases about winning "hearts and minds."  

BBC reports: