Executive Branch (Nixon-era) impeachable offenses:
Repression at
home Repression abroad
Re-reporting, editing by
Carolyn Bennett
I believe the balance between finality and justice has been properly strung.
Personal liberty is too vital a thing to be subject to deprivation except in accordance with the highest possible standards of fairness and decency.
The record of the federal judiciary in the area of criminal law enforcement both federal and state may be viewed as the most striking example of its greatest function: the protection of individual liberties against encroachments of government power.” ─ Thurgood Marshall, rights lawyer and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
U.S. democracy, a people mindlessly in agony
“There is a growing recognition,” activist Sara Flounders
said, “that the U.S. government at every level is [doing] less and less for the
people.” The government is involved in more and more cuts to domestic programs (every
social program; privatizing schools, libraries, hospitals for private profit.
“The combination of cutbacks and endless wars grows repression.”
The Congress of the United States is overwhelmingly,
Flounders says, “an extension of the lobbying industry. It salutes the lobbying
industry. [Lawmakers] know who pays the ticket, who has gotten them into office
and to whom they are answerable ─ not to the average working person in the United
States, but to big corporate power at every level: the major pharmaceutical
industries and others.”
The there is no greater or more serious indication of
growing repression in the United States than in the National Defense
Authorization Act (the NDAA): the Executive and Legislative branches’ grave violations of “civil rights and liberties.”
Regress: assault on U.S. Constitution
As a law, Daniel Ellsberg said, the Defense Authorization Act
“is unprecedented.” But in practice, he said, “It is a systematic assault on
the Constitution of the United States in every aspect—in the aspects of illegal
surveillance and in warrantless surveillance,” practices that 40 years ago, he
recounted, factored into the impeachment of former U.S. President Richard
Nixon.
“As a former civilian
official” in the 1970s, Ellsberg said, “I released 7,000 pages of top-secret
documents demonstrating lies, crimes, treaty violations by the U.S. government that had lied us into a wrongful and hopeless war; [and in the course
of that war, the government] was killing Americans and others in large numbers.”
For releasing those documents, Ellsberg “was facing 115 years in prison” (just as
Bradley Manning now faces life charges) based on “illegal surveillance,
warrantless surveillance, the use of the CIA against me ─ now legalized under
the USA PATRIOT Act; and a hit squad now allegedly legalized by the current
president but which had figured into
impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.”
Writing at al Jazeera last August one of the plaintiffs in
the case against the Obama administration said “The U.S. government seems
determined to have the power to do away with due process and Americans’ right
to a trial.”
“I am one of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against
the National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the president the power to
hold any U.S. citizen anywhere for as long as he wants, without charge or
trial,” Jennifer (Tangerine) Bolen reported. “In May, following a March hearing
in which U.S. lawyers had said the president has the power to lock up
journalists, war correspondents, peaceful activists and other plaintiffs
indefinitely under the NDAA, Judge
Katherine Forrest [U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York]
issued an injunction against the practice.”
At the time Bolen was writing, there was a final hearing in
New York City in which “U.S. government lawyers essentially asserted even more
extreme powers: the power to entirely disregard the judge and the law. Indeed,”
Bolen wrote, “[President] Obama’s lawyers filed an appeal to the injunction, a
profoundly important development” that was scarcely reported in the press.
Excessive Executive powers, unlawful, capricious action
The government also refused to define what it means to be an
‘associated force,’ and it claimed the right to refrain from offering any clear
definition of this term, or clear boundaries of power under this law.
The hearing in August, Bolen said, “was even more terrifying”
in that President Obama’s attorneys refused under questioning to assure the
court that ─ after Judge Forrest’s injunction ─ the NDAA’s provision, one
permitting detention without trial of reporters and others who have not
committed crimes, had not been applied by the U.S. government anywhere in the
world.
“In other words,” Bolen explained, the Executive Branch “was
saying to a U.S. judge that they could not or would not state whether the Obama
government had complied” with the court’s ruling. In response Judge Forrest
said if the enjoined provision had been applied, “the United States government
itself will be in contempt of court.”
Repression: at home, abroad
Domestic policy is foreign relations practice
Repression at home goes hand in hand with an ever-expanding
military machine, Sara Flounders said. The very policies that are implemented
around the world─
Secret prisons,
U.S. asserting 'rights' to invade, occupy other countries
To establish military bases around
the world
To fire drone attacks on any
country
To assassinate anyone [the U.S.
government considers or declares] a threat even if they know nothing about the
person or the town or the village that is being attacked.
All of that comes home, she said. “What happens
internationally gets reflected domestically. The prison system domestically is
what is carried abroad in attacks on people around the world.”
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B
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y early February, according to news sources, more than
“60,000 emails” had been sent to the U.S. Congress calling for the reversal of
section 1021 of the NDAA ─ notably its vague language that leaves many people
including journalists, war correspondents, out-spoken activists in danger of
harm, losing fundamental rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
Defend U.S. Constitution or
license chains sans Charter
“We are trying to get people across the country to stand
with us,” Tangerine Bolen said, “because this is the thin line between the last
of our most fundamental civil liberties.” The National Defense Authorization
Act “rolls back our rights” to the days before the Magna Carta. “We have had due process for 800 years. It is
fundamental,” she said. |
M
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agna Carta: Charter of English liberties granted under King
John in 1215 and reissued with changes in 1216, 1217, 1225): Early in its
history, Magna Carta became a symbol and a battle cry against oppression, each
successive generation reading into it a protection of its own threatened
liberties.
In England the Petition of Right
(1628) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) looked directly back to clause 39 of
the charter of 1215, which stated that ‘no free man shall be…imprisoned or
disseised [dispossessed]…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the
law of the land.’
In the United States, both the
national and the state constitutions show ideas and phrases directly traceable
to Magna Carta. But
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“
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O
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ur Constitution has been under assault, mostly covertly, for 10 years,”
Daniel Ellsberg said this week on the Democracy Now program.
At first, they simply lied [about
what] they were doing, said they weren’t torturing anybody, weren’t sending
anybody to rendition; now they are openly proclaiming it.
They have laid down the … challenge
to the American public as a whole
[And] the time has come to defend the
Constitution and try to restore its guarantees to the American people.
Sources and notes
“U.S. turns ‘war on terror’ on Americans: Sara Flounders,”
February 2, 2013,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/02/286864/war-on-terror-now-hits-americans/
“Lawsuit filed against Obama over controversial NDAA
program,” February 7, 2013,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/07/287702/lawsuit-filed-against-obama-over-controversial-ndaa-program/
On December 31, 2011, President
Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year
2012 (NDAA) a bill passed each year. Section 1021 of the bill provides sweeping
powers of detention through vague and undefined terms Critics say it grants the
government to arrest any American citizen (or anyone, anywhere) without warrant
and to indefinitely detain them without any charge.
On October 2, 2012, a stay against
the permanent injunction was granted by a three judge motions panel of the
Second District U.S. Court of Appeals, pending appeal on the merits.
At the time of this article,
according to reports, more than “60,000 emails” had been sent to the U.S.
Congress calling for the reversal of section 1021 of the NDAA ─ notably its
vague language that leaves many people including journalists, war
correspondents, out-spoken activists in danger of harm, losing fundamental
rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
“NY rally protests unconstitutionality of U.S. Defense
Authorization Act,” February 7, 2013,
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/07/287738/us-rally-slams-ndaa-as-unconstitutional/
“Daniel Ellsberg: NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is
Part of ‘Systematic Assault on Constitution’” Democracy Now reporting
(interview), Tuesday, February 5, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/5/daniel_ellsberg_ndaa_indefinite_detention_provision#transcript
“Justice Dept. Argues Appeal of NDAA Ruling” Democracy Now
headlines February 7, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/7/headlines#272
“The ability of the U.S. government
to jail people without charge or trial is back in court.
“A group of reporters, scholars and
activists … are suing the Obama administration over the controversial provision
in the National Defense Authorization Act, saying it could allow for the
indefinite detention of journalists and others who interact with certain
groups.
“On Wednesday, the Justice
Department asked an appeals court to reverse a judge’s earlier decision
blocking indefinite detention, saying the ruling would hamper its ability to
fight terrorism.
“The Obama administration has
already won an emergency freeze of the ruling while the case is appealed.
Plaintiffs Tangerine Bolen and Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon whistleblower,
spoke outside the courthouse on Wednesday.”
“Due process under duress: Detaining citizens under NDAA ─
Activists retaliate against the U.S. government by suing them for signing a
bill they say goes against the Constitution,
Jennifer (Tangerine) Bolen at, Al Jazeera August 23, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/profile/tangerine-bolen.html
Tangerine Bolen
Jennifer (Tangerine) Bolen is the founder and Executive
Director of RevolutionTruth, an organization dedicated to restoring legitimate
democracies in part through increasing access to accurate information. Bolen
has background in integrative medicine and holds a Master’s degree in Public
Health and Policy. She has also completed core coursework for a doctorate in
public affairs and governance.
Sara Flounders
Co-Director of the International Action Center, an
organization opposing U.S. militarism, corporate globalization, racism and war,
Sara Flounders currently works with the Troops Out Now Coalition.
The IAC helped to form the broad-based U.S. anti-war
coalitions that coordinated the major anti-war demonstrations that drew
hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in 2003 before the U.S.
invasion of Iraq and in the years of occupation.
Flounders has represented the IAC while speaking on numerous
campus and community forums in the United States, Canada, England, Japan,
Greece, Cuba, Egypt, Jordan and other countries; and has been interviewed by
many national and international print and broadcast media outlets.
She has traveled to Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan and Colombia
when these countries were under U.S. attack and to Palestine twice during the
current Intifada. In 1992, Flounders coordinated the International War Crimes
Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Iraq, which held mass hearings in 30 U.S. cities
and 20 countries. She coordinated research and helped to edit Ramsey Clark’s
groundbreaking 1992 book, The Fire This
Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf.
To expose the use of sanctions as a weapon of mass
destruction, Sara Flounders edited and co-authored two books: The Children Are Dying - The Impact of
Sanctions on Iraq (1996, Second Edition, 1998) and Challenge to Genocide: Let Iraq Live (1998). She helped produce the
videos: “Blockade - The Silent War against Iraq” (1994), “Genocide by
Sanctions” (1998, award winner) and “Let Iraq Live” (1998). As a coordinator of
the Iraq Sanctions Challenge, she organized large delegations of activists to
visit Iraq each year in a challenge to the U.S. sanctions laws and has brought
tons of medicine to the Iraqi people on each of these trips.
The International Action Center (IAC), initiated by former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, combines grassroots activism with mass
mobilizations and protest activities. Its educational work includes producing
fact sheets and press releases, publishing books, producing documentary videos
and maintaining a website. http://www.iacenter.org/flounders.htm
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg (b. April 7, 1931) is a former United States
military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a
national political controversy in 1971 when he released to The New York Times
and other newspapers the “Pentagon Papers,” a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S.
government decision-making related to the Vietnam War.
RAND Corporation (Research ANd
Development) is a nonprofit global policy think tank originally formed by
Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States
armed forces. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private
endowment, corporations, including the healthcare industry, universities and
private individuals.
This organization’s work reaches
farther in working with other governments, private foundations, international
organizations, and commercial organizations on a variety of non-defense issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
Since the end of the Vietnam War, “Ellsberg has been a
lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S.
interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.”
Ellsberg’s latest books are Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002) and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In
2006 recognized “for putting peace and truth first at considerable personal
risk and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example,” he was
awarded a Right Livelihood Award.
See Ellsberg’s bio continued at Today’s Insight News, Tuesday,
August 7, 2012
Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
http://www.ellsberg.net/bio
http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/hiroshima-day-america-has-been-asleep-at-the-wheel-for-64-years
Magna Carta
Charter of English liberties granted under King John in 1215
and reissued with changes in 1216, 1217, 1225): Early in its history, Magna
Carta became a symbol and a battle cry against oppression, each successive
generation reading into it a protection of its own threatened liberties.
In England the Petition of Right (1628) and the Habeas
Corpus Act (1679) looked directly back to clause 39 of the charter of 1215,
which stated that ‘no free man shall be…imprisoned or disseised
[dispossessed]…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the
land.’
In the United States, both the national and the state
constitutions show ideas and phrases directly traceable to Magna Carta. [Britannica note]
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993), Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court (October 1967 - October 1991. The High
Court’s 96th justice, its first African-American justice. (Wikipedia note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall)
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