When economies get trashed civil liberties/human rights are not far behind -
As reported by Chris Floyd the Obama administration has managed to have the Supreme Court accept that if he or his representatives adjudge someone to be an 'enemy combatant' then those people are denied any rights under the law:
After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.
And yet this is what Barack Obama -- who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer -- has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can't even been sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to "beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs."
Again, let's be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand -- in court -- that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What's more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing -- insisting -- that torture is an ordinary, "foreseeable consequence" of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared "suspected enemy combatants."
Yes, it is against the US constitution:
The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.
Yehh, change you can believe in eh? More troops at war and banks creaming the taxpayer. What a nice place the world is with the US/Ukanian empire descending into a moral quagmire where people have less rights than you were guaranteed 2000 years ago in ancient Rome.
Sorry but our grandfathers put their lives on the line to defend us against people who behaved like that. People, we simply have to take care of our democracies.
I think he will get away with it as long as Gitmo stays open. There was talk of transferring the Gitmo prisoners to hicksville Virginia or somewhere so his new laws might look a bit shaky if they're on mainland US soil.
ReplyDeleteIt's been disappointing seeing Obama following the same mistakes as Bush. Getting further into the quagmire of Afghanistan. An unwinnable war that will drag on longer than Vietnam. And of course he keeps printing the money with his Goldman Sachs friends.
I listened to his Nobel peace prize speech. No plausible justification of why he thought he got the prize. And a childlike view of the middle east conflict which he said was between " Arabs and Jews". Isn't the knesset full of Arab MPs'? Plus there are millions of Arabs who live peacefully in Israel. Is it not more like a fight between Palestinians (backed by Iran) and the Israelis ?
Yeh Bob,
ReplyDeleteI took this a few days to sit in my head playing with it.
I wasn't disappointed with Obama because I always knew he was the song and dance man for the military-industrial complex.
Obama mentions in his book (can't remember the title right now) that his first job after collage was with an international consultancy company. He never mentioned the name. It turns out that it was Business International - a well known CIA front organisation.
His political career was not so successful and then suddenly he rose up. Getting through the Chicago bear pit which is a continual running battle between the Italian and Irish mafia. Chicago is the most corrupt political area of the USA. Not only that but his right-hand man Emanuel Ramm is the son of an Israeli terrorist whose organisation blew up the King David Hotel and was the forerunner for setting up the Lekud Party and the Israeli secret service Mossad.
This guy is now the Whitehouse Chief of Staff and no-one gets to see Obama without going through him. He's his 'minder'.
Look up Obama's sponsors: 1st Goldman Sachs who are the big winners from all the quantative easing and bail-out scams. They are allowed to front-run the New York stock exchange creaming $100m to $200m per day from pension funds and the like. They indulge in high frequency trading and naked short-selling and all together this has turned the exchange into a casino.
The volume in the exchange is mostly quantative easing money. If it wasn't for the rigged market the S&P and the Dow would have been decimated by now.
Goldmine Sacks have 5, 000 bankers in the UK and they are threatening Brown that they'll relocate to Spain if he taxes their bonuses. Well, all they're doing is trading taxpayers money with other banks and then draining the pot through bonuses so let them go - they're parasites.
No, Washington is run by and for bankers. Taxpayers are turning into their capital just like in the feudal times. Obama would never have got a sniff if he wasn't their man!
He was left cover for the robbery. Have you noticed how many Obamanoids are still out there defending the indefensible?
As for Israel, well - they're in charge of the Whitehouse and Goldmine Sacks. That's why Americans are crawling all over the 'region'..