Weimar America: Four Major Ways We're Following In Germany's Fascist Footsteps

What happens when a mature industrial nation turns its back on democracy and lets its right-wing elite destroy the middle class? We've seen it before.

By Robert Cruickshank, AlterNet
Posted on July 5, 2012, Printed on July 6, 2012

What happens when a nation that was once an economic powerhouse turns its back on democracy and on its middle class, as wealthy right-wingers wage austerity campaigns and enable extremist politics?

It may sound like America in 2012. But it was also Germany in 1932.

Most Americans have never heard of the Weimar Republic, Germany's democratic interlude between World War I and World War II. Those who have usually see it as a prologue to the horrors of Nazi Germany, an unstable transition between imperialism and fascism. In this view, Hitler's rise to power is treated as an inevitable outcome of the Great Depression, rather than the result of a decision by right-wing politicians to make him chancellor in early 1933.

Historians reject teleological approaches to studying the past. No outcome is inevitable, even if some are more likely than others. Rather than looking for predictable outcomes, we ought to be looking to the past to understand how systems operate, especially liberal capitalist democracies. In that sense, Weimar Germany holds many useful lessons for contemporary Americans. In particular, there are four major points of similarity between Weimar Germany and Weimar America worth examining.

1. Austerity. Today's German leaders preach the virtues of austerity. They justify their opposition to the inflationary, growth-creating policies that Europe desperately needs by pointing to the hyperinflation that occurred in 1923, and became one of the most enduring memories of the Weimar Republic. Yet the austerity policies enacted after the onset of the Depression produced the worst of Germany's economic crisis, while also destabilizing the country's politics. Cuts to wages, benefits and public programs dramatically worsened unemployment, hunger and suffering.

So far, austerity in America has largely taken place at the state and local levels. However, the federal government is now working on undemocratic national austerity plans, in the form of so-called "trigger cuts" slated to take effect at the end of 2012. In addition, there's the Bowles-Simpson austerity plan to slash Medicare and Social Security benefits along with a host of other public programs; and the Ryan Budget, a blueprint for widespread federal austerity should the Republicans win control of the Congress and the White House in November.

2. Attacks on democracy. Austerity was deeply unpopular with the German public. The Reichstag, Germany's legislature, initially rejected austerity measures in 1930. As a result, right-wing Chancellor Heinrich Brüning implemented his austerity measures by using a provision in the Weimar constitution enabling him to rule by decree. More notoriously, Hitler was selected as Chancellor despite his party never having won an election -- the ultimate slap at democracy. Both these events took place amidst a larger backdrop of anti-democratic attitudes rampant in the Weimar era. Monarchists, fascists and large businesses all resented the left-leaning politics of a newly democratic Germany, and supported politicians and intellectuals who pledged to return control to a more authoritarian government.

Democracy is far older in the United States today than it was in Germany during the early 1930s. But that doesn't mean that democracy is actually respected in practice today; it only means that attacks on it can't be as overt as they were in Weimar Germany. From the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling to Republican voter ID laws to austerity proposals that bypass the normal legislative processes (remember the Supercommission?), American democracy is under similar direct threats now.

3. Enabling of extremists. Well before Hitler was made chancellor in 1933, leading conservatives and business leaders had concluded that their interests would be better served by something other than the democratic system established in 1919. During the 1920s, they actively supported parties that promoted anti-democratic ideologies, from monarchism to authoritarianism. Nazis were just one of the many extremist groups that they supported during the Weimar era. In fact, initially, many on the German right had attempted to exclude the Nazis from their efforts; and as chancellor, Brüning had tried to marginalize the Nazi party. However, his successor, the right-wing Franz von Papen, believed he could control Hitler and needed the support of the Nazi members of the Reichstag. Conservative German leaders ultimately decided their hunger for power was more important than keeping extremists at bay -- and their support finally gave the Nazi Party control of the country.

Tea Party activists aren't Nazis. But with roots in the 20th-century radical right, the Tea Party's attack on the public sector, on labor unions, on democratic practices, and on people who aren't white mark them as the extremist wing of American politics; and they bear many of the hallmarks that characterize fascist movements around the world. In recent years, Republican leaders have been enabling these extremists in a successful bid to reclaim political power lost to Democrats in 2006 and 2008. We don't yet know where this enabling is going to lead the country, but it's hard to imagine it will be anywhere good.

4. Right-wing and corporate dominance. One of the the most prominent German media moguls in the 1920s was Alfred Hugenberg, owner of 53 newspapers that reached over a majority of German readers. The chairman of the right-wing German National People's Party, Hugenberg promoted Adolf Hitler by providing favorable coverage of him from the mid-1920s onward. Major German corporations such as Krupp, IG Farben and others spent money in the 1920s and early 1930s to support the rise of right-wing political parties, including the Nazis, as part of a strategy to undermine democracy and labor unions. Even if Hitler had never taken power, that strategy had already achieved significant returns on their substantial investment.

Here in the United States, one only needs to look at Charles and David Koch, Fox News and other right-wing funders and their media outlets to see the analogy. By funding right-wing politicians who promote austerity, undermine democracy and support extremism, they are active agents in the creation of Weimar America.

The Road Not Taken
None of this means that the United States is about to fall victim to a fascist coup d'etat as Germany did in January 1933. Remember that no outcome is inevitable. Nor would it be accurate to say that the United States is repeating the exact same events and taking the same course as Germany did during the 1930s, because many other important details are different.

For example: Germany was a nation saddled with huge debts and lacking the global political power it needed to reverse its situation; but even with today's high unemployment rates, the United States remains the globe's largest economy, and therefore doesn't face the same fiscal constraints Weimar Germany faced. In fact, a better current analogy may be Greece, which is in a far more similar predicament now.

Yet the underlying similarities ought to be troubling -- and are enough to give us pause. The combination of austerity and well-funded right-wing political movements hostile to democracy destroyed Weimar Germany. And Spain and Italy both experienced a similar situation in their slide into authoritarianism in the 1930s. In those cases -- and in ours -- as people saw their own financial position weaken, and as their democratic rights were increasingly limited in favor of giving more power to the large corporations, the future of a democratic society with a strong middle-class was increasingly jeopardized. Fascism is what happens when right-wing plutocrats weaken the middle class, and then convince it to turn its back on democracy.

Will Weimar America face the same disastrous fate Weimar Germany did? On our current path, democracy and shared prosperity are both in serious trouble. We owe it to ourselves, to our children, and to our world to look to the lessons of history, find a way to change course, and get to work building something better.

All Americans are Suspected Terrorists

WAKE UP!!!

I don't want to live here anymore. This is not freedom, it's fascism. It's tyranny.

Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?

Documents Show How White House and Democrats Worked to Protect the Banks Against Protests
by DAVE LINDORFF


A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

Nonetheless, blacked-out and limited though they are, she says they offer clues to the extent of the government’s concern about and focus on the wave of occupations that spread across the country beginning with last September’s Occupy Wall Street action in New York City.

The latest documents, reveal “intense involvement” by the DHS’s so-called National Operations Center (NOC). In its own literature, the DHS describes the NOC as “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management.”

The DHS says that the NOC is “the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room” and that it also “facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.”

A better description for a fascist police state network could not be written.

Remember, this vast yet centralized operation — what Verheyden-Hilliard describes as “a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people” — was in this case deployed not against some terrorist organization or even mob or drug cartel, but rather against a loose-knit band of protesters, all conscientiously and publicly committed to nonviolence, who were exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to gather in public places and to speak out against the crimes and abuses of the corporate elite and the politicians who are bought and paid by that elite.

Among the documents obtained by the PCJF in this second batch of responses to its FOIA filing is one from the NOC Fusion Center Desk dated Nov. 5, 2011, which collects at the federal level and then distributes the names and contact information of a group of Occupy protesters who were arrested during a demonstration in Dallas, TX against Bank of America, one of the nation’s biggest predatory lenders. Although none of the seven arrested were charged with any serious crime (six were charged with “using the sidewalk!”), their names and contact information were widely disseminated by the DHS.

Fusion Centers, a post-9-11 creation, are a federally-funded joint project of the DHS and the US Justice Department which are designed to share intelligence information among such federal agencies as the DHS, the FBI, the CIA and the US Military, as well as state and local police agencies. By their nature they are designed to circumvent legal constraints on various agencies, for example the ban on CIA domestic spying, or the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars active military activity within the borders of the US. There are currently 72 Fusion Centers around the US.

Another group of documents shows that on November 9, two days after a demonstration by 1000 Occupy activists in Chicago protesting social service cuts in that city, the NOC Fusion Desk relayed a request from Chicago Police asking other local police agencies what kind of tactics they were using against Occupy activists. They specifically requested that information be sought from police departments in New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. Denver, Boston, Portland OR, and Seattle — all the scene of major Occupation actions and of violent police repression.

Realizing that it would look bad if it assisted in such coordination overtly, higher officials in the DHS ordered the recall of the request but then simply rerouted it through “law enforcement channels,” where presumably it would be harder for anyone to spot a federal role in the coordination of local police responses. In response to that order, the documents show that the duty director of the NOC wrote that he would “reach out” to “LEO LNOs (liaison officer) on the floor” to assist. Verheyden-Hilliard explains that LEO is FBI’s nationally integrated law enforcement, intelligence and military network.

On December 12, when Occupy planned anti-war protests at various US ports, Verheyden-Hilliard says the new documents show that the NOC “went into high gear” seeking information from local field offices of the Department of Homeland Security about what actions police in Houston, Portland, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles planned to deal with Occupy movement actions.

Another document shows that earlier, in advance of a planned Occupy action at the Oakland, CA port facility on Nov. 2, DHS “went so far as to keep the Pentagon’s Northcom (Northern Command) in the intelligence loop.”

Given the subterfuge revealed in these documents that went into trying to create the illusion that the DHS was and is not coordinating a national campaign of spying, disruption and repression against Occupy activists, it is almost comical to find documents that show the DHS was in “direct communication with the White House” to obtain advance approval of public statements by DHS officials denying any DHS involvement in anti-Occupy actions.

These documents show that both DHS and one of that department’s police arms, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) were in direct contact with Portland, Oregon’s police chief and mayor, discussing how to deal with protesters who were in part on federal property. The coordination between the feds and the local police and political authorities were intense. Yet the approved statement sent to DHS from the White House read:

Any decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. If a protest area is located on Federal property and has been deemed unsanitary or unsafe by the General Services Administration (GSA) or city officials, and they make a decision to evacuate participants — the Federal Protective Service (FPS) will work with those officials to develop a plan to ensure the security and safety of everyone involved.

There was, comically, also a White House-approved DHS “background” statement, too! (Typically background statements by federal officials are supposed to be used when they want to tell a journalist the true situation but don’t want to have that statement attributed to them or their department. Having it pre-approved by the White House defeats that purpose and is simply a manipulation of the media.)

The faux “background” information included the following–a flat-out lie:

DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large.

Tellingly, the documents also include a Dec. 5 copy of the “Weekly Informant, ” an intelligence report published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement. The issue includes an update from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) concerning the activities of the Occupy Movement. PERF, Verheyden-Hilliard notes, is the group that the federal government claims organized a series of multi-city law enforcement calls to coordinate the police response to Occupy, which led immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.

The overall sense from these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, was the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to cover its tracks.

The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the “We are the 99%”-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself.

To see all the new FOIA documents, go to the PJIF website.

Handy Fascism Checklist

99% Spring

Why Most People May Not Wake Up

Despair You Can Believe In

Just Do Something

by ROB URIE
In ways that will have long-term consequences for most Americans, the policies of economic and political subjugation of the last forty years, particularly of the 2000s, are being carried forward into this decade by an economic and political elite protected and supported by the Federal government. Apparent from the relative calm of the polity is that most people have no idea what the implications of current policies are.

Two examples before diving deeper: the student loan crisis and the policing tactics around the G-8 Summit, recently moved from Chicago to Camp David at Barack Obama’s request. The student loan crisis is generally framed as the case of students who graduate from four-year colleges being unable to find jobs to repay the loans they took out to attend college. The policing tactics, which according to polls are supported by a majority of Americans, are framed as tools to keep order in the face of a permanent group of malcontents intent on forcing their agendas on honest civil servants pursuing the people’s business. The facts tell a different story.

In 2008 the Federal government took over the student loan business from corrupt private lenders as a stealth stimulus that had the added benefit of creating a sub-class of permanently indentured citizens, debt slaves if you will. These loans have funded the massive expansion of for-profit schools that do little in the way of actual education because a majority of their students attend for a few semesters but never graduate. As for helping people find jobs, the U.S. is four years into the third “jobless recovery” in as many decades—there are no jobs for the class attending for-profit trade schools.

With about $1 trillion in student loans outstanding, the question is: what is the government doing? Three answers occur—the first is that the Obama administration is gutting the public education system by shifting resources away from it to the overwhelmingly corrupt for-profit education system. (This isn’t an elite conceit—the public Community College system has successfully supported the portion of the population that wouldn’t have attended four-year colleges with technically oriented education for decades). The second is that student loans, under the impossible-to-get-out-of terms that exist, create a class of people economically subjugated to the point of remaining politically complacent and compliant. The third is that it supports an economic predator class that satiates itself on the economic misery of others.

Lest these seem like empty conspiracy theories—Mr. Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cut his eyeteeth shifting resources from public education to for-profits schools in Chicago. Second, the onerous terms that force repayment of student loans under all circumstances were well known before the Obama administration chose to take over and expand the business in 2008. Third, were the bank bailouts not evidence enough, the recent 50 state Attorney’s General mortgage “settlement” formally institutionalizes economic predation without recourse (see www.nakedcapitalism.com archives for details).

And Fourth, the recently passed bill signed by Mr. Obama, H.R 347, loosens language around one of a long list of laws designed to make protest illegal in the U.S. The bill reduces the burden of proof required to prosecute protesters who knowingly or unknowingly enter an area protected by the Secret Service or areas and events designated as protected by the Federal government. The best that the ACLU and other legal liberties organizations could say about the bill is that the U.S. was already a police state before the bill was passed.

But my point is not that the U.S. is rapidly becoming (has long been) a police state. My point is that increasingly institutionalized economic predation against U.S. citizens combined with advanced police state powers will make life even more untenable for some fair number of us in coming years. Even if one bought the “law and order” rationale for expanding the police state, the institutionalization of economic predation creates a tiered society where socially destructive behavior receives support and protection from the state while all efforts to end it face the full wrath and repressive power of the state.

For a nation founded on slavery and genocide against the native population, progress is apparently now being measured in terms of how technologically sophisticated the mechanisms of predation and repression can be made. Every American should educate her/himself on the so-called mortgage settlement for insight.

Briefly, the offices of the 50 state Attorneys General who signed the settlement were individually paid large sums of money for doing so. The settlement supposed to be paid by the banks will instead be paid out of a taxpayer funded bailout fund (HAMP) and by non-bank investors (pension funds, etc.). The banks received blanket retroactive immunity for taking very large numbers of houses from people when they had no legal basis for doing so. Because there was no legal sanction for doing this, economic predators, including the banks that just “settled,” now know officially that no acts of economic predation in the future, no matter how egregious, will be prosecuted. And Obama administration officials like Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan have been sent forward to actively misrepresent the terms of the settlement.

But again, my point here is not that institutionalized economic predation is being supported and protected by the Federal (and state) government. It is that the nexus of economic predation and police state powers has, and will increasingly, destroy the lives of a very large group of Americans. Black, brown and native Americans, along with poor whites, have long been subject to these conditions and have long seen themselves on the wrong side of police power. What has changed is the reach up the socio-economic order deep into the middle class.

Lest readers still be incredulous as to the scale of what is happening, half of the car loans made since the bailouts of the auto companies in 2008 have been sub-prime (the same proportion that led to the crisis). Briefly, Democrat Barack Obama forced tiered wages on autoworkers that has those who build the cars earning half as much as they previously would have while leaving the wages and bonuses of those who make the auto loans untouched. Subsequently, half of the loans made have been to people who are economically marginal (sub-prime) and at risk of not being able to repay them. The executives at the auto companies are once again paying themselves tens of millions of dollars in annual compensation for having rendered their workforces impoverished and their customers at risk of permanent debt servitude.

On the policing side, in anticipation of a rowdy G8 Summit in Chicago Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama’s former Chief of Staff and current Mayor of Chicago, has continued the practice of recent decades of making all effective protest illegal and subject to heavy legal sanction. Put another way, the patricians of predator capitalism (G8 attendees) are being held remote and protected from the victims of their policies with increasingly restrictive and oppressive police powers. Moving the G8 summit from Chicago to Camp David only increases the impunity that remoteness from social / political consequences brings.

To tie this together, in recent decades the Federal and state governments of the U.S. have facilitated and protected a system of institutionalized economic predation and have built out increasingly intrusive and restrictive police powers to maintain it and to crush resistance. With the economic crisis of 2008 the government at various levels took direct control of an increasing proportion of the means of economic predation and has demonstrated that it will use its power, including creating new and enhanced laws, to force compliance with the often patently illegal terms of public and private creditors under the full coercive and repressive apparatus of the state.

Last, accept this trajectory of despair or do something. A few (tens of thousands) malcontents including labor unions, Occupy Wall Street, immigrant rights groups, artists, musicians, the unemployed, the foreclosed upon etc. plan to celebrate another set of possibilities on Mayday, May 1st 2012. If no march or celebration is scheduled for your town, make one happen. In New York, we meet at Union Square at 4:00 PM and march at 5:00 PM.

Occupy Groups Target ALEC

Shut Down the Corporations!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 by Common Dreams

Over 70 cities are participating today in a national day of action called by Occupy Portland to "Shut Down the Corporations." The group calls for non-violent direct action to "target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people."

The group explains the action on its website:

Occupy Portland calls for a national day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society’s obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations. We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction.

We call on the Occupy Movement and everyone seeking freedom and justice to join us in this day of action.

There has been a theft by the 1% of our democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive pursuit of consumption, profit and greed at the expense of all else.

We call on people to target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people. They used it to create the anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona among so many others. They use ALEC to spread these corporate laws around the country.

In doing this we begin to recreate our democracy. In doing this we begin to create a society that is organized to meet human needs and sustain life.

On February 29th, we will reclaim our future from the 1%. We will shut down the corporations and recreate our democracy.

Sara Jerving further explains ALEC on the Center for Media & Democracy:

ALEC is best described as a “bill mill” for corporate special interest legislation. Through ALEC, corporations vote behind closed doors with state legislators on changes to the law they desire that often directly benefit their bottom line. Along with right-wing legislators from across the country, corporations are given “a voice and a vote” on “model” bills to change the law in almost every area affecting people’s rights. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces. They fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. They have their own corporate governing board. They vote as equals with legislators to pre-approve legislation. Participating politicians then bring these bills home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing their origins in ALEC. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. This is not what democracy is supposed to look like.

David Moberg looks at Occupy Portland's plan to target Verizon in In These Times:

In Portland, as part of the day of actions, Jobs With Justice (JWJ) is targeting Verizon, which is an ALEC board member. The company currently is demanding concessions from its unionized land-line employees in the eastern half of the country and is fighting the organization of mobile telephone workers, including those in Portland.
Meanwhile, it pushes for government subsidies and tax breaks and promotes legislation harmful to workers and consumers, says Madelyn Elder, a Communications Workers of America local president and board member of JWJ. ALEC has slowly been building a presence, but Democratic control of the Senate has constrained its influence, says Common Cause Oregon executive director Janice Thompson.
Their planned protest "is about the 1 percent being greedier than ever while the 99 percent suffer unemployment, underemployment and cutbacks," Elder says. "It's all of the same piece. Labor sees that. And Occupy is the best thing that ever happened to labor."

US entering Fascism, please fasten your seatbelts

Robert Bridge - RT
25 February, 2012

With Russian presidential elections just days away, it is hard not to notice a marked difference between the US and Russian versions of ‘democracy in action.’ While neither system has worked out all the kinks of electing their leaders, in the United States the story boils down to the latest franchise owned and operated by Corporate America, known as the Democrats and the Republicans (or why not the McDemoReps: 300 million deceived!).

Somewhere along the road to a fun-loving place known as Democracy, America took a nasty wrong turn. And like every stubborn driver, it was too proud to stop and ask for directions. So, with the pedal to the metal, America has been careening through school zones, zebra crossings and police barricades, confusing raw motion with deliberate, rational progress. Now, it’s too late to turn back. America is not heading for Fascism. We are already there.

First, what is fascism? Maybe it would be easier to ask what fascism is not, or doesn’t necessarily have to be. Fascism does not have to be jackboots goose-stepping along cobblestone streets. Fascism does not have to be an egomaniac with a bad mustache ranting from the rostrum. Fascism does not have to mean the end of fun. Indeed, the most sinister political program can easily conceal itself behind fast food, circuses and mindless amusements. Keep the masses distracted, dumb-downed and drugged-up and you can get away with whatever political system you want.

To put it briefly, fascism is a black wedding between political and corporate power. 

Perhaps the Soviets gave the best definition of this sociopolitical phenomenon: “Fascism is the open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary…forces of finance capital."

If this definition is correct, then many other countries besides the US may be heading for interesting times. But since America currently has the largest global footprint it deserves the most attention.

However one may define his terms, one thing remains undeniable: US politicians and the transnational corporations are in bed together, enjoying the ultimate orgy while We the People are forced to suck it up. Naturally, those straddling the political pyramid do not want to relinquish their death grip on Power so they monkey wrench the political system in their favor.

By comparison, in Russia, corporate power and the oligarchs saw their political free-for-all come to a screeching halt when Vladimir Putin became president in 1999. Since then, there has been a definite line drawn between Russia’s political world and the business world, indeed, as there should be. This article hopes to show what went so horribly wrong with the American political scene, and how Russia may hope to avoid a similar situation in the future. And with any luck, we Americans can save our country from a looming disaster.

Welcome to the CDP, members only

Between 1976 and 1988, the League of Women Voters (LWV) was the proud sponsor of the US presidential debates. But apparently feminine sponsorship was not venal, male and testosterone-laced enough for these modern hard times. Thus, on the eve of the 1988 election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, LWV relinquished their duties when it was discovered that the Democrats and Republicans secretly agreed to a "memorandum of understanding" that would decide which candidates could participate in the debates.

“The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organization (the Democrats and the Republicans) would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,” League President Nancy M. Neuman wrote in a statement.

According to Neumann, the Democrats and Republicans hatched a campaign scheme “behind closed doors” that put forward 16 pages of “non-negotiable self-serving demands.” These demands include “control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press.” This is not unlike two professional boxers petitioning the World Boxing Association with the demand that no other competitors are allowed in the ring besides them – even if a more eligible contender demands a match!

Although the LWV said they had “no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public,” the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) that took over the duties of the ladies league certainly had no such misgivings. During the 2000 election, the CPD said third-party candidates would only be invited to debate if they had a 15 percent support level across five national polls. Yet without the ability to debate against the Democrats and Republicans in order to pass the magic threshold, the US public never gets to hear other political voices.

Before we continue, it is important to keep in mind that the CDP is not only sponsored by corporations, and overseen by the Democrat and Republican parties, but it is, in fact, itself a corporation.

Media Matters for the two-party system

A handful of US media empires (the Disney-Viacom-News Corp-CBS-Time Warner anaconda viper that is sucking the American brain dry) largely determine what is heard – and therefore discussed – in living rooms across the United States.

Although such influence means relatively little when the outcome of a basketball game or Super Bowl halftime show hangs in the balance, it is a totally different story when the subject involves what course our country decides to take on the domestic and international fronts. Since these media corporations are heavily invested into the present system, it is no wonder that political “mavericks” (Nader, Perot, LaRouche) who threaten to rock the boat get treated like common lepers.

Consider the media manhandling of Ron Paul, the veteran Republican who is campaigning to represent the GOP in November’s presidential race. Practically every single US news channel betrayed their loyalty to higher masters by glaringly ignoring the 12-term Congressman from Texas, who consistently ranks in the top tier of debate straw polls.

“This pretending that Ron Paul doesn’t exist for some reason has been going on for weeks,” railed comedian/political pundit John Stewart.“He’s the one guy in the field – agree with him or don’t agree with him – who doesn’t go out of his way to regurgitate talking points.”

But that seems to be exactly the problem. Paul, whose only radical act to date is following the US Constitution, is courageous enough to take on the corporate military-industrial complex (he would bring the troops home his first day on the job), audit the Federal Reserve (or even better, shut down the unconstitutional money-making racket altogether), and terminate welfare checks for ailing banks, corporations and foreign countries. In other words, Ron Paul is the only true conservative candidate out of the entire field of wannabe Republicans.

Paul’s fierce devotion to true American ideals, which has nothing at all in common with running around the globe planting the seeds of democracy courtesy of fighter jets and drones, is why, during the one-hour CBS News/National Journal debates in November, the Texas Congressman was granted just 89 seconds to present his political views.

Paul’s campaign manager John Tate sent out an email entitled, “What a Joke,” in which he stated, “It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election….Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.”

Goldman Sachs, the bank that keeps giving

US politicians have been blabbing about the need for campaign reform since about the time of the Moon Landing. Yet not only does the situation not improve, it continues to worsen. The true depth of the situation came to light following the latest global economic implosion, courtesy of an investment banking and securities firm known as Goldman Sachs.

Most people already know the story: Back around 2005, Goldman Sachs was peddling billions of dollars of junk subprime mortgage securities to unsuspecting investors, while at the same time betting that the securities would tank. And tank they did. The elaborate scheme failed so impressively that it led to the implosion of the modern economy as we know it. Indeed, for all intent and purposes, classic capitalism as set forth by Adam Smith is dead. Now, the entire global economy – the little banks, corporations and assorted minions – depends upon the goodwill of central banks and the US Federal Reserve to lend high-interest financial lifelines to keep on paying the bills and avoid social upheaval. For all intent purposes, many modern states are being held hostage by bankers.

The once democratic, fiercely independent nation of Greece, which just approved an emergency injection of billions of euros of emergency funds, now finds itself a slave to the banking cartel. The Greek Street, however, which is furious about having to accept “austerity measures,” has not had the last word on the subject. But we are getting away from the real point of the story, which is Goldman Sachs.

How bad does the United States need campaign reform? Well, at the very same time Goldman Inc. was busy planting time bombs inside the global economy, they were also pumping millions of dollars into Barack Obama’s presidential campaign – to the tune of $994,795 – Obama’s biggest donor by far.

Is that why Goldman got away with a $60 million dollar slap-on-the-wrist fine for practically destroying the global economy – and perhaps capitalism itself?

Citizens United, but don’t get excited

It is, at the very least, diabolically strange that the banks, security firms and corporations that crashed the global economy in 2008 were rescued by a 20-trillion dollar injection of cash courtesy of the American taxpayers. Heck, the bankers and executives didn’t even miss their Christmas bonus checks following the “worst financial crash since the Great Depression.”

Meanwhile, Corporate America is reportedly sitting on $2 trillion dollars of hard cash reserves, while millions of Americans remain unemployed. But the story gets better. Not only were the criminals responsible for destroying globalization and capitalism as we knew it rewarded for their egregious activities, they have been handed unlimited power to influence the future of American politics.

Banks like Goldman Sachs no longer need to worry about public scrutiny of their campaign-giving habits thanks to the passage of a recent court ruling, dearly entitled, Citizens United. Sounds like a love story starring Keira Knightley, right? Well, it’s not. Not by a long shot.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission represents a devastating blow to American democracy by the US Supreme Court that prohibits the government from restricting political funding by corporations.

One of the four dissenting justices out of nine, John Paul Stevens, said the ruling represents “a rejection of the common sense of the American people.”

“The Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt,” Stevens wrote. “It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”


President Barack Obama condemned the decision during the 2010 State of the Union Address, stating that, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."

Yet, given the separation of powers set down by the US Constitution, there seems to be little hope that Obama, or any other future president, will be able to reverse this devastating decision that further increases corporate power’s grip on the political reigns.

Clearly, the iron roots of this hardy political weed have burrowed deep into the foundation of the American edifice, threatening to topple the entire structure if given enough time. Meanwhile, US politicians are forced to pander to corporate interests if they wish to continue their careers.

The War on Labor

Right to Work
by JACK RANDOM

“When you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others.  You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.  Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.” ~ George Orwell, Down and Out in London and Paris

As a fan of George Orwell I have grown to wonder if too many of our political geniuses misinterpreted his classic work 1984 as a how-to book on controlling the masses. Had they read his earlier autobiographical work Down and Out in London and Paris, they would have understood that Orwell was a man of the people and his sympathy was planted firmly with the poor, the outcast and the working class.

Of all the Orwellian phrases in common use these days one of the most egregious is the Right to Work. Adopted in twenty-three states, right-to-work laws effectively ban labor unions by prohibiting workers from gaining union representation by a majority vote. The Right to Work is the right of a worker to refuse to pay union dues. Because unions gain power by representing workers as a united front in negotiations with management, right-to-work laws negate that power.

As a result of these union-busting laws, unions have ceased to function and workers earn less. The average worker in a right-to-work state earns anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 less per year than workers in other states. They receive less in health benefits, less in pension benefits and less protection from unsafe conditions or unfair dismissal.

Studies have been inconclusive on the decline of union representation as a result of right-to-work laws because unions must already have declined in order for such laws to be adopted. The law therefore serves as a substantial roadblock to rebuilding a union movement.

The war on labor does not end with Right to Work. Having decimated labor in the private sector (as of January 2011, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of union workers in the private sector fell to a 100-plus-year low of 6.9 percent), anti-labor forces have taken aim at the public sector. The tactic of choice against police, firefighters, teachers and other government employees is attacking the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration.

To fully comprehend this attack, you need to understand that government employees are often prohibited by law from striking to achieve fair treatment in negotiations with their employers. In those cases where it is legal to strike, conscientious employees are loath to do so because of the harm it would do to students and communities. Binding arbitration by an impartial body is an alternative to the strike.

When you take away the right to fair arbitration, you leave workers at the mercy of their employers and you cut the union off at its knees.

These same politicians who yearn for yesteryear when the middle class was strong and the American dream of upward mobility was still alive, neglect to tell you that those were the days when unions were on the rise.

The peak rate of union workers in this nation was the mid 1950’s. After the experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War, Americans understood that if workers were to achieve financial security they needed representation to counter the power of corporations and bankers. Combined with the GI Bill, enabling veterans to gain a college education, the union movement more than any other single phenomenon created the working middle class.

The statistics are staggering. From a high of 35% of workers represented by a union to a low of 11.9 % today, if you wonder why wages have stagnated while corporate profits have exploded, look no further.

Both of the key strategies in the war on labor operate on the same principle: divide and conquer.

The right-to-work laws divide the workforce into those who support the union, who feel a sense of responsibility to fellow workers, who recognize the need for unity in representation against the powerful, against those who will not sacrifice a red penny of their paycheck for the common good.

The assault on collective bargaining is an attempt to divide private workers, who have already lost their union rights, against public workers, who earn more and claim greater benefits because they have retained union representation.

We are all in this fight together. If we wish to push back the most powerful force the world has ever encountered, corporate greed, we must unite against the tide. The right to organize the workplace, the right to unionize, must be fought for and defended.

We are under siege. We are the victims of a devastating fifty-year war against workers that is relentless and without mercy. The corporations have taken control of our government with unlimited sponsorship of elected officials. They have moved our industries to China, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere, without any concern for the welfare of our nation or its people. They have outsourced our technology service, drafting and infrastructure planning jobs to India. They have reduced their share of tax responsibility to a minimum with offshore accounts and favorable legislation, forcing a beleaguered workforce to pick up the tab. And they have done all this with a sense of entitlement.

We are just beginning to fight back. We are beginning to understand that if we speak out in one voice, the 99 against the one, our politicians will begin to listen. We are beginning to understand that fighting for labor rights overseas will bring the jobs that are rightfully ours back home.

China does not own America.

The low point in this war on labor was in 2010 when the anti-labor forces took control of our legislatures but they overplayed their hand. In 2012 we must take back control and reverse the course of the nation.

The corporations do not own us.

The first part of the labor agenda must be to strike down right-to-work laws in the 23 states that now embrace them. The most efficient means is a federal law affirming the principle of majority rule as fundamental to the rights of labor. Barring that, states that uphold the rights of labor should establish a policy of preference to those states that do the same. Right-to-work states should be held to account. States that fail to acknowledge the basic right to organize the workplace should pay a price.

The second part of the labor agenda should be an affirmation of the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration as an alternative to the general strike. Again, federal law is the most efficient means to this end but state alternatives should serve to provide motivation should the federal government fail.

The corporations that have taken control of our government will cry foul. They will accuse us of class warfare to which we will reply: yes, but now we are fighting back.

US ‘slipping into a fascist system’

Ron Paul warns U.S. ‘slipping into a fascist system’

By Eric W. Dolan - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - RAW Story

During a campaign speech at Kansas City’s Union Station on Saturday, Texas Rep. Ron Paul warned that the United States was “slipping into a fascist system,” according to the Associated Press.


The White House hopeful said the country had been on the wrong course ever since President Woodrow Wilson, who helped establish the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1913.

Paul often laments the increased size of the government over the last 100 years and the move away from the gold standard. He has also voiced concerns about American’s civil liberties.

“We’ve slipped away from a true Republic,” Paul said. “Now we’re slipping into a fascist system where it’s a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen.”

He repeatedly denounced President Barack Obama’s recent enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Provisions within the $662 billion defense spending bill contained a controversial section that required terrorism suspects to be detained by the military without trial, regardless of where they were captured.

While signing the bill on December 31, Obama issued a statement in which he pledged that the new laws would not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. But human rights advocates said Obama’s signing statement did not prevent future administrations from abusing the law.

Enemies Of The State: The Kochs

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Never before in American history have we seen a pair of people more determined to take America backwards. Never before have we seen two people more determined to buy elections and seize control of government in an effort to control United States policy and turn the country into a corporate state. The Koch family has been trying to do this since the 1950′s and their plans are on the verge of being realized.

The year was 1958. America was in the middle of the Red Scare and the Cold War was in full swing. A man named Robert Welch, Jr. founded a new conservative group dedicated to accusing liberals of communism in an effort to use fear to convert people to conservatism, and seize control of the United States government. The John Birch Society began with 12 founding members. One of these members, Fred Koch, is the founder of Koch Industries, an oil refinery firm which is the second largest privately owned company in the United States.

The Kochs may be looked upon by conservatives as a normal wealthy American family but they have ties to one of the most evil regimes in world history. Fred Koch created his company, Winkler-Koch, here in America, and was sued for patent infringement because of his process for turning crude oil into gasoline. Litigation put Winkler-Koch out of business in the U.S. for several years. In other words, Koch was banned. Koch then turned his focus to foreign markets, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany with the help of Erich Koch. A high level Nazi official in charge of Prussia, Erich Koch invited Fred Koch to sell his oil in Nazi Germany after he was banned from doing business in the US. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Erich Koch and Fred expanded the oil empire to the Soviet Union. A few years later, the Soviets took Fred Koch’s oil and prosecuted Erich for war crimes. Fred Koch returned to the US as an anti-communist, and was allowed to do business in America once again. In 1963, Fred Koch gave a speech warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us”. Koch also “wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement.” Fred Koch was a crazy right wing entrepreneur that was relegated to the extreme fringe of the Republican Party and as such, he had no real power. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of his sons.

Since the 1980′s, the Koch brothers, David and Charles Koch, have made it their mission to assault all of the aspects of American life and history that they hate or disagree with. To that end they have created a number of conservative think tanks and organizations dedicated to eliminating these aspects. Liberalism and virtually anything that has to do with government is their number one target. For example, when David Koch ran for the presidency on the Libertarian ticket in 1984 he was pretty blunt about his goals. According to David Koch, they would “like to abolish the Federal Elections Commission and all the limits on campaign spending.” The Koch ticket promised to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE.

Since this failed attempt, the Koch brothers have abandoned trying to control government through legal elections, and have instead opted to gain power through buying elections and the Republican politicians that run in them. As part of the strategy, the Kochs and their groups are using an old fear tactic. Scaring the voters into electing conservatives by accusing liberals of being secret communists. The Kochs should know all about that tactic. Their father helped invent it. And through their groups, the Kochs remain in the shadows of this movement all while still pulling the strings and providing the cash. The names of the various groups that the Koch brothers fund include Americans for Prosperity Foundation, FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and have membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, which allows them to actually write the legislation that they want to be enacted. The Koch brothers funnel millions of dollars into each of these groups for the purpose of buying elections and paying politicians to do what the Koch brothers want them to do.

After the Citizens United decision destroyed campaign finance laws, the Koch brothers unleashed millions upon millions of dollars and spent the great majority of that money buying elections for their Republican lackeys. For example, Koch groups were the largest oil and gas industry donors to Congressmen on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for legislation affecting the industry. Koch-backed groups donated $279,500 to 22 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats, including $20,000 to committee chairman Fred Upton. The Kochs have spent a lot on lobbying in Washington in recent years, from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008. The Kochs then spent another $20.5 million over the next two years to influence federal policy, as the company’s lobbyists and officials sought to mold, gut or kill more than 100 prospective bills or regulations.

With the backing of the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation recently provided Republican Darryl Issa a wish list of regulations they want to see repealed, including environmental regulations, consumer protections, and worker protections. Without these important protections and regulations, the Koch brothers would be free to screw over consumers, treat their workforce like slaves, and pollute the environment as much as they want. And we are seeing these attempts to eliminate protective policies play out in the halls of Congress as we speak. But it is just not in Congress, its in individual states as well.

Over the course of the 2010 elections, the Kochs poured hundreds of millions of dollars into elections around the country. Many Republicans that were swept into office are beholden to the Koch brothers. One of these Governors, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, has slammed a bill through the state legislature that effectively destroys unions in the state. The Kochs are all for this maneuver. They hate organized labor, and have a strong belief that workers have no rights and have no purpose other than to work at whatever price an owner wants them to work for. Koch Industries does not employ union workers for this reason. This anti-labor belief stems directly from the Koch familial ties in Nazi Germany. Erich Koch was a high ranking Nazi official in the Ukraine, who, in addition to having control of the Gestapo and the police, worked together with the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, to provide the Reich with forced labor. Erich Koch faced charges of war crimes for the extermination of 400,000 Poles.

Another family member, Karl Koch, was a colonel in the German SS and the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald.

The Koch brothers have taken it upon themselves to make sure that our government is their puppet. They have bought and paid for many Republican politicians and since they created the Tea Party, they have sent a message, that if they can’t take the government legally, they are willing to buy it and overthrow it and take control that way. This family is dangerous. They have a deep hatred of the United States government because the United States government makes them act responsible for the environment and makes them treat their workers and consumers fairly. They absolutely hate unions as well, being a big contributor to and supporter of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The Kochs refuse to hire any worker that is in a union and are now in the process of telling their workers who to vote for. This kind of tactic is spreading as well. Employers across the country are now beginning to tell their workers how they should vote.

The Kochs assault on the United States must be stopped. They are nothing more than treasonous enemies of the state that stand in the shadows, pulling the strings of the people they help elect to power. Corporations were never supposed to get involved in the political process for this very reason. We must rise up as Americans and forever ban corporate involvement in politics. The Kochs never gained political power for a reason. People rejected their platform because it was too extreme. The American people didn’t like it then, they don’t like it now. But the Kochs are more dangerous now than ever before, because they have chosen to buy politicians as a way to control government. Democracy doesn’t work that way. But when a corporation like Koch Industries can dictate policy, that is called fascism, something the Nazi Kochs knew all about. And we can either stand by and let them get away with it. Or we can cut the roots of this conservative extremist movement by hunting down these enemies of the state and sending them to a country where their style of government is accepted. I suggest China, Venezuela, or Iran.

Defense Act Affirms Indefinite Detention of US Citizens

Friday, December 30, 2011 by Inter Press Service

by Matthew Cardinale 

 

ATLANTA, Georgia - Civil liberties groups and many citizen activists are outraged over language in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) that appears to lay the legal groundwork for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

David Gespass, president of the National Lawyers Guild, called it an "enormous attack on the U.S. and our heritage" and a "significant step" towards fascism, in an interview with IPS.

"For a very long time the U.S. has been moving towards what I personally think of as fascist - the integration of monopoly capital with state power, that's combined with an increased repression at home and greater aggression around the world. I don't think we're there yet, but I do see that we're going in that direction," Gespass said. "I think the... act is a significant step in that direction."

"It's quite severe. If this continues, people will not be able to count on constitutional protections at all," Debra Sweet, national director of the group World Can't Wait, told IPS.

Subtitle D of the act contains several controversial provisions on indefinite detention of terrorism suspects.

The executive branch - starting with the George W. Bush administration shortly after Sept. 11, 2001 - began indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
When those detentions were challenged in the courts, the federal government argued that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by the U.S. Congress on Sep. 18, 2001, allowed for the detentions to occur. In 2004, the Supreme Court agreed in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

"I know a lot of people who voted in favour of it (AUMF) back then didn't think they voted in favor of what ended up happening, but what it said is the president is authorized (to do) whatever is necessary," Gespass said. "The language as I recall it is not at all restrictive."

The current language in the NDAA seeks to legislatively affirm that the U.S. has the right to detain people, even though the courts already ruled, at least in the case of Hamdi, a prisoner captured during armed conflict in Afghanistan, that it already has that power.

Section 1021 defines who can be detained by the military.

The definition of "covered persons" under the provision includes not only those who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, but also "a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including anyone who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

Critics say problems with this language include the vagueness of the terms "substantial support", "belligerent act", or "directly supported".

Moreover, because the act allows for individuals suspected of support or belligerence to be held indefinitely without trial - until the end of the "war on terror", which could be never - there could be no opportunities for these individuals to challenge the vagueness of the charges against them.

Section 1021(e) says the act does not alter any rights of U.S. citizens, meaning that the Bill of Rights of the Constitution remains "intact." It might be up to the courts, however, to eventually determine whether the application of these NDAA provisions to a U.S. citizen would be constitutional.

However, if they are being detained indefinitely with no lawyer, then how does anyone know they are there, to appeal to the civilian courts on their behalf?

Another section says "the requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States". It does not say military custody is not an option; merely that it is not required.

The NDAA, as negotiated between the U.S. House and Senate, passed the U.S. House 283-136 on Dec. 14. It passed the U.S. Senate, in a vote of 86 to 13, on Dec. 15, with both Democrats and Republicans among those opposing it.

The bill was presented to President Barack Obama on Dec. 21 and signed Dec. 31, 2011.

However, numerous members of Congress have raised concerns.

Prior to its passage, on Dec. 12, Representatives Hank Johnson, Martin Heinrich and 30 others sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate's respective Armed Services Committees.

They expressed their opposition to "an expansive authorization for detention of and use of military force against broadly defined adversaries substantially exceeding the scope of such authorizations already in law."

"The expanded authority has no geographical limits, provides authority for open-ended armed conflict, and is unacceptably broad," they wrote.

The NDAA "authorizes indefinite military detention of suspected terrorists without protecting U.S. citizens' right to trial," they wrote.
"We are deeply concerned that this provision could undermine the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth amendment rights of U.S. citizens who might be subjects of detention or prosecution by the military," they wrote.

On Dec. 15, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011 (DPGA), with 15 co-sponsors.

This legislation states, "An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention."

A companion piece was introduced in the U.S. House on Dec. 16; it has 29 co-sponsors.

Meanwhile, in Montana, activists have begun an effort to recall their entire Congressional delegation for supporting the NDAA.

VIPR: America's new federal goon squad?

Garry Reed, Libertarian News Examiner

The 20th Century socialist thugocracies of Europe were infested with the likes of vicious Gestapo, Stasi and KGB secret police organs. (Yes, they were all de facto variations of socialism no matter that they called themselves Nazi, communist, fascist, or Glorious People's Republic.)

The Transportation Security Administration has taken a giant step towards mutating itself into America's first truly statist/socialist/fascist federal goon squad: VIPR.

Stupid even by acronym-obsessed federalcrat standards, the Fifties-motorcycle-gang-sounding VIPR stands for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, something only a career bureau slug could dream up.

It's no longer enough for TSA agents to stand in airports and simply grope and irradiate women with breast cancer, children in strollers and old men in wheelchairs. Now they have to take their fake "security" act on the road to bus stations and railroad depots and truck weigh stations and…

…and an interstate off ramp roadblock near you?

Why not? Who's going to stop them from treating every motorist in the privacy of their own vehicles as potential terror perps?

What's next, bashing down our doors so they can cop a feel?

One person who isn't playing sitting duck for these Intermodal Mobsters is James Wilson, Policy Research Director at DownsizeDC.org.

"As illustrated in Tennessee this week," Wilson writes in the organization's emailed Downsizer Dispatch Newsletter, "VIPR deploys TSA agents and works with local law enforcement to stop and search people who are doing nothing suspicious."

Wilson is asking everyone to do what he has already done: "I told Congress to get the TSA out of our lives by abolishing it."

He wants everyone to swamp their "representatives" in DC with angry emails.

You can begin with his hardwired message that reads, "Please abolish the TSA, and permit airlines to provide their own security plans," continue writing your own message, and then send it to your congresscrat right from the DownsizeDC website using their "Educate the Powerful System."

After showing up at the Super Bowl, searching students going to their prom, arresting a man for a small amount of marijuana, deporting three teenagers at a trolley stop after apprehending them on their way to school, Wilson accuses the TSA-turned-VIPR with an ugly, ulterior motive: "This tells me the TSA's purpose is not to protect us from terrorism, but to be deployed as a national police force to enforce federal laws."

VIPR: Vulgar Imperial Police Rabble.

Unconstitutional National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Pisses All Over the Bill of Rights (5 articles)

(Where to begin with covering this ridiculous fiasco...how about the facts first?--jef)

Senate passes National Defense Authorization Act
Thursday, December 15, 2011

WASHINGTON — The US Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill Thursday that also freezes some Pakistan aid, imposes sanctions on Iran’s central bank, and approves the indefinite imprisonment of suspected terrorists.

The Democrat-led Senate voted 86-13 for the Defense Authorization bill, which was passed Wednesday by the House. President Barack Obama was expected to sign it as early as this weekend after dropping a veto threat.

The measure, which also sets high hurdles for closing Guantanamo Bay, had drawn fire from civil liberties groups that strongly criticized its de facto embrace of holding alleged extremists without charge until the end of the “war on terrorism,” which was declared after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama, who had threatened to veto earlier versions of the yearly measure, will sign it despite lingering misgivings, his spokesman Jay Carney said before the House vote on Wednesday.

The legislation, a compromise blend of rival House and Senate versions, requires that Al-Qaeda fighters who plot or carry out attacks on US targets be held in military, not civilian, custody, subject to a presidential waiver.

The bill exempts US citizens from that fate, but leaves it to the US Supreme Court or future presidents to decide whether US nationals who sign on with Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups may be held indefinitely without trial.

The bill also freezes roughly $700 million in aid to Pakistan, pending assurances that Islamabad has taken steps to thwart militants who use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Earlier Thursday, Pakistan angrily criticized US moves to freeze the aid money — the latest rifts in a fraying alliance that has been in deep crisis since air strikes by US-led forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last month.

“We believe that the move in the US Congress is not based on facts and takes a narrow vision of the overall situation; hence, wrong conclusions are unavoidable,” said foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit.

The legislation also brings tough new sanctions to Iran, with the aim to cut off Tehran’s central bank from the global financial system in a bid to force the Islamic republic to freeze its suspect nuclear program.

The goal is to force financial institutions to choose between doing business with the central bank — Iran’s conduit for selling its oil to earn much-needed foreign cash — or doing business with US banks.

The legislation meanwhile calls for closer military ties with Georgia, including the sale of weapons that supporters say would help the country, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, defend itself.

It also included an amendment ensuring the United States would not hand over sensitive information to Moscow on the US missile defense system, a measure to win over hold-out senators who have been blocking the pending nomination Michael McFaul as US ambassador to Russia.

After Obama lifted his veto threat, rights groups chastised the US leader for his changing stance on holding prisoners without trial.

“It is a sad moment when a president who has prided himself on his knowledge of and belief in constitutional principles succumbs to the politics of the moment to sign a bill that poses so great a threat to basic constitutional rights,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

“In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side,” Roth said.

Obama had warned he could reject the original proposal over the military custody issue, as well as provisions he charged would short-circuit civilian trials for alleged terrorists.

The lawmakers crafting the compromise measure strengthened Obama’s ability to waive parts of the detainee provisions, and reaffirmed that the custody rules would not hamper ongoing criminal investigations by the FBI or other agencies.

The measure meanwhile forbids the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to US soil and sharply restricts moving such prisoners to third countries — steps that critics of the facility say will make it much harder to close down.

The bill passed by a wide margin, with only six Democrats and six Republicans voting against the legislation, along with the lone Independent of the chamber, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday, December 15, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English

US House Passes 'Indefinite Detention' Bill
House of Representatives approves defense bill including moves to allow terror suspects to be detained indefinitely.

WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives has voted in favor of controversial proposed legislation that would deny terror suspects, including US citizens, the right to trial and permit authorities to detain them indefinitely.

The bill, said Christopher Anders of the ACLU, "Would authorize the president to order the military to capture civilians and put them in indefinite detention without charge or trial, with no limitation based on either geography or citizenship.". The proposed changes were included in a $662bn defence bill passed on Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House after White House officials withdrew a threat to block the bill over concerns it would undermine the US president's authority over counterterrorism activities.

In a statement, Jay Carney, a White House spokesman said "several important changes" had been made, which meant that presidential advisers would not recommend Barack Obama veto the bill.

The bill, which also endorsed tougher sanctions against Iran's central bank and freezing $700 million in aid to Pakistan, must still pass through the Senate, which is expected to vote on Thursday.

If approved, the bill would require the US military to take custody of terror suspects accused of involvement in plotting or committing attacks against the United States.

But in changes introduced under pressure from the White House, the bill was amended to say that the military cannot interfere with FBI and other civilian investigations and interrogations. The revisions also allow the president to sign a waiver moving a terror suspect from military to civilian prison.

Carney said the new bill "does not challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people."


'Lack of clarity'But some officials had some objections to the clause. FBI Director Robert Mueller criticized the provision for its lack of clarity on how the changes would be implemented at the time of arrest.

The White House said that some of those concerns remained.

"While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counter-terrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented," added Carney.

But the bill has also attracted criticism from civil rights campaigners.

Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the bill was a "big deal".

"It would authorize the president to order the military to capture civilians and put them in indefinite detention without charge or trial, with no limitation based on either geography or citizenship," he told Al Jazeera.

"The military would have the authority to imprison persons far from any battlefield, including American citizens and including people picked up in the US."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Obama Reverses Himself: Administration Won't Veto 'Global Battlefield' Indefinite Detentions Measure
President Obama is expected to sign a defense policy bill allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely hold terrorism suspects -- even Americans arrested on U.S. soil. 
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on December 14, 2011

The Obama administration Tuesday reversed itself and said it would not veto a major 2012 defense bill that expands the American military’s authority to arrest suspected terrorists anywhere in the world—including Americans on U.S. soil—and hold them indefinitely without charge or the right to a civilian trial.

“We have concluded that the [defense bill’s] language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a written statement. “The President’s senior advisers will not recommend a veto.”

Only two weeks ago Carney told reporters that Obama stood by his veto threat. The reversal by the White House will now subject the president to an unprecedented lobbying campaign by retired generals, intelligence officers, and myriad civil rights organizations to reject the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

The 1,844-page conference committee report was passed by the House 283-136 on Wednesday night and now goes to the Senate where an earlier version passed 93-7. While dealing with innumerable aspects of military policy, its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

“This is a worldwide authority provision,” said Christopher Anders, the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel. “No corner of the world is off limits… With United States citizens, the hope would be that there would be constitutional protections that would apply. But that kind of challenge is still very uncertain under U.S. law, and it would take years [for such litigation] to work its way through the courts.

In a press briefing earlier this week, Anders and top attorneys from Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the National Security Network explained the implications of the defense policy bill heading toward President Obama’s desk. The legislation does not fund troops fighting in America's overseas conflicts; that is another bill also heading to his desk.
In sum, the very policies that candidate Obama pledged to end by closing the military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he is now not only supporting, but expanding onto U.S. soil, the civil rights lawyers said. Besides giving the military authority for indefinite detention without trying suspects, the bill would require military detention for many terrorism suspects. And it would all but ban transferring any exonerated prisoners from Guantanamo, where 88 of the 171 prisoners held there have been cleared of terrorist involvement.

“It would, if enacted into law, significantly change the way the U.S. approaches detentions in a so-called ‘law of war’ context,” Andrea Parsow of Human Rights Watch said, concluding it would lead to the expansion of Guantanamo, not its closure. The legislation envisions the military’s role in current and future conflicts.

Other experts, such as Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network executive director, said no one in senior national security or domestic law enforcement positions—including the FBI director, CIA director, National Intelligence director, and Secretary of Defense—wanted the military detention authority in the bill, and national security officials repeatedly told Senate and House Armed Services Committee members that the provisions were unworkable.
“The national security establishment comprehensively rejects these provisions as representing the militarization of our justice system,” she said, noting that on Monday the New York Times had an unprecedented op-ed co-written by Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, both retired four-star Marine generals, calling for a presidential veto. They said that inserting military forces into domestic anti-terror operations would vastly complicate law enforcement, undermine constitutional rights and boost Al Qaeda’s recruiting.

Hurlburt pointed out that the Senate and House Armed Service Committee chairs could not even agree on what the military detention provisions would mean, with the House chair saying it was a dramatic expansion of domestic military authority, and the Senate chair saying it was not. That scenario would lead to the Supreme Court having to clarify the legislation’s intent and defense policy sometime in the future, she said.

Consider the case of a Nigerian man, the so-called underwear bomber, arrested last Christmas Eve in Michigan after he failed to detonate a bomb on an airline flight from Amsterdam. Under the law, Hurlburt said, the FBI or local law enforcement would have to turn him over to the military, even though there is no military prison in Michigan. The White House would have to approve a waiver in order for a terror suspect not to be held by the military, which is an unduly complicated procedure. Interrogation time would be lost, Hurlburt said, explaining why so many senior law enforcement and military officials oppose the provision.

None of those arguments, however, are new to Senate or House members who support the expanded military detention powers. After intense debate in the Senate, where all amendments to remove or change the detention provisions failed, the House did not change a single word, the ACLU’s Anders said. Instead it added murky language saying that nothing in the law was intended to interfere with domestic law enforcement.

The White House’s statement saying it would not veto the law ignored these concerns, even as the FBI director again warned senators on Wednesday about the military detention provisions.

“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals,” Carney’s statement said, “the most recent changes give the President additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”

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The Indefinite Detention Bill DOES Apply to American Citizens on U.S. Soil 

Source: Washington’s Blog
December 14, 2011

Even at this 11th hour – when all of our liberties and freedom are about to go down the drain – many people still don’t understand that the indefinite detention bill passed by Congress allows indefinite detention of Americans on American soil.
The bill is confusing. As Wired noted on December 1st:

It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”

A retired admiral, Judge Advocate General and Dean Emeritus of the University of New Hampshire School of Law also says that it applies to American citizens on American soil.
The ACLU notes:

Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.
But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

Another sponsor of the bill – Senator Levin – has also repeatedly said that the bill applies to American citizens on American soil, citing the Supreme Court case of Hamdi which ruled that American citizens can be treated as enemy combatants:

“The Supreme Court has recently ruled there is no bar to the United States holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant,” said Levin. “This is the Supreme Court speaking.“

Levin again stressed recently that the bill applies to American citizens, and said that it was president Obama who requested that it do so.

Under questioning from Rand Paul, another co-sponsor – John McCain – said that Americans suspected of terrorism could not only be indefinitely detained, but could be sent to Guantanamo:


U.S. Congressman Justin Amash states in a letter to Congress:

The Senate’s [bill] does not even distinguish between American citizens and non-citizens, or between persons caught domestically and abroad. The President’s power, in his discretion, to detain persons he determines have supported associated forces applies just as strongly to Americans seized on U.S. soil as it does to foreigners captured on a far away battlefield.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – General Colin Powell’s chief of staff – says that the bill is a big step towards tyranny at home.  Congressman Ron Paul says that it will establish martial law in America.

Indeed, Amash accuses lawmakers of attempting to intentionally mislead the American people by writing a bill which appears at first glance to exclude U.S. citizens, when it actually includes us:

Pres. Obama and many Members of Congress believe the President ALREADY has the authority the bill grants him. Legally, of course, he does not. This language was inserted to keep proponents and opponents of the bill appeased, while permitting the President to assert that the improper power he has claimed all along is now in statute.

***

They will say that American citizens are specifically exempted under the following language in Sec. 1032: “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.” Don’t be fooled. All this says is that the President is not REQUIRED to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial. It still PERMITS him to do so.

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Obama Reverses Himself: Administration Won't Veto 'Global Battlefield' Indefinite Detentions Measure

President Obama is expected to sign a defense policy bill allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely hold terrorism suspects -- even Americans arrested on U.S. soil.

December 14, 2011  |  

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The Obama administration Tuesday reversed itself and said it would not veto a major 2012 defense bill that expands the American military’s authority to arrest suspected terrorists anywhere in the world—including Americans on U.S. soil—and hold them indefinitely without charge or the right to a civilian trial.

“We have concluded that the [defense bill’s] language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a written statement. “The President’s senior advisers will not recommend a veto.”

Only two weeks ago Carney told reporters that Obama stood by his veto threat. The reversal by the White House will now subject the president to an unprecedented lobbying campaign by retired generals, intelligence officers, and myriad civil rights organizations to reject the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

The 1,844-page conference committee report was passed by the House 283-136 on Wednesday night and now goes to the Senate where an earlier version passed 93-7. While dealing with innumerable aspects of military policy, its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

“This is a worldwide authority provision,” said Christopher Anders, the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel. “No corner of the world is off limits… With United States citizens, the hope would be that there would be constitutional protections that would apply. But that kind of challenge is still very uncertain under U.S. law, and it would take years [for such litigation] to work its way through the courts.

In a press briefing earlier this week, Anders and top attorneys from Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the National Security Network explained the implications of the defense policy bill heading toward President Obama’s desk. The legislation does not fund troops fighting in America's overseas conflicts; that is another bill also heading to his desk.

In sum, the very policies that candidate Obama pledged to end by closing the military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he is now not only supporting, but expanding onto U.S. soil, the civil rights lawyers said. Besides giving the military authority for indefinite detention without trying suspects, the bill would require military detention for many terrorism suspects. And it would all but ban transferring any exonerated prisoners from Guantanamo, where 88 of the 171 prisoners held there have been cleared of terrorist involvement.

“It would, if enacted into law, significantly change the way the U.S. approaches detentions in a so-called ‘law of war’ context,” Andrea Parsow of Human Rights Watch said, concluding it would lead to the expansion of Guantanamo, not its closure. The legislation envisions the military’s role in current and future conflicts.

Other experts, such as Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network executive director, said no one in senior national security or domestic law enforcement positions—including the FBI director, CIA director, National Intelligence director, and Secretary of Defense—wanted the military detention authority in the bill, and national security officials repeatedly told Senate and House Armed Services Committee members that the provisions were unworkable.

 ontinued from previous page

“The national security establishment comprehensively rejects these provisions as representing the militarization of our justice system,” she said, noting that on Monday the New York Times had an unprecedented op-ed co-written by Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, both retired four-star Marine generals, calling for a presidential veto. They said that inserting military forces into domestic anti-terror operations would vastly complicate law enforcement, undermine constitutional rights and boost Al Qaeda’s recruiting.

Hurlburt pointed out that the Senate and House Armed Service Committee chairs could not even agree on what the military detention provisions would mean, with the House chair saying it was a dramatic expansion of domestic military authority, and the Senate chair saying it was not. That scenario would lead to the Supreme Court having to clarify the legislation’s intent and defense policy sometime in the future, she said.

Consider the case of a Nigerian man, the so-called underwear bomber, arrested last Christmas Eve in Michigan after he failed to detonate a bomb on an airline flight from Amsterdam. Under the law, Hurlburt said, the FBI or local law enforcement would have to turn him over to the military, even though there is no military prison in Michigan. The White House would have to approve a waiver in order for a terror suspect not to be held by the military, which is an unduly complicated procedure. Interrogation time would be lost, Hurlburt said, explaining why so many senior law enforcement and military officials oppose the provision.

None of those arguments, however, are new to Senate or House members who support the expanded military detention powers. After intense debate in the Senate, where all amendments to remove or change the detention provisions failed, the House did not change a single word, the ACLU’s Anders said. Instead it added murky language saying that nothing in the law was intended to interfere with domestic law enforcement.

The White House’s statement saying it would not veto the law ignored these concerns, even as the FBI director again warned senators on Wednesday about the military detention provisions.

“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals,” Carney’s statement said, “the most recent changes give the President additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”