(For Junior)
Outrage at this bill/law? (Obama has threatened to veto) should be our reaction, especially as Americans take to the streets in the Occupy Movement.
The National Defense Authorization Act would expand Presidential powers to imprison, without due process, Americans all over the world, including us ‘terrorists’ here at home. It calls for extending the ‘battlefield’ against terrorism to American soil; our own backyards. (Watch out for loudmouths at your summer barbecues.) Even worse, it authorizes the President to use the American military to help round up American citizens of suspect political views across this new American ‘battlefield’–our own (we thought) country. No doubt the same way the U.S. military does it when they break down doors in Afghanistan.
So, we are now not only going to be at war with the World, Congress has declared war on the American people.
And guess what? Our beloved Senator Pat Leahy was one of the legion of Dems (along with good old Al Franken) voting FOR this atrocity. Bernie voted AGAINST. (Only 3 Dems and 3 Republicans voted with him, against it) To his credit, Peter Welch voted AGAINST this bill in the House vote.
Look back to 1933 and ’34 when the German Reichstag started giving Hitler and his band of perverts sweeping powers to put people in CONCENTRATION CAMPS, using the military as part of the police force. Well…Here we are. How did we get here? And what are we going to do about it?
Right now, it seems like the Liberal/Progressive/Left is responding the same old way–light a candle and write long essays about it. I’m really impressed. Candles and long essays worked really good in 1932.
The MSM will not air out the smell of this bill. Most Americans probably don’t even know what’s at stake here. We’re talking, basically, our own little Third Reich here at home. How Retro.
(And don’t equivocate. Don’t say bringing up Nazi Germany is a cliche, or that…what?…The Alternative is so much worse? Gee, lucky for us they didn’t write the use of Zyklon B Gas into the bill. Think of how you’d react if this bill came under Bush/Cheney.)
The Occupy Wall Street Movement needs our aggressive support because it is apparent that Wall St. has its own Movement–right in our own Congress. Under NDAA, I would imagine some of these folks supporting unions, workers, and the 99% will become POWs (Prisoners of War on America). Think of you or me or our loved ones and friends being grabbed off the street and hustled off to an ‘unknown’ detention facility. For what? Writing a Letter To The Editor? (Boy, A Building Boom, they’ll call these Concentration Camps–good for the economy.)
Occupy Wall Street should include outrage at this bill, outrage at War For Capitalism itself, outrage at turning America into the kind of nation that was responsible for the most horrendous acts of War and Injustice in modern times. And outrage that our children will have, as their future, the ‘privilege’ of ‘serving’ the Fatherland of Capitalism as it goosesteps the World into oblivion. (Perhaps, since America is now the Battlefield, they’ll give our kiddies knock-off Hitler Youth uniforms–Give? Shit. Make them buy them at WalMart.)
Outrageous! Science Fiction? New Order. The Dirty Bastards!
Sieg Heil. And all this because we’ve grown so attached to our little gadgets and products. Lifestyle verses Freedom. Verses Justice, Peace, Human Decency, and, yes, knowledge and curiosity about what The Almighty Spirit has given us out there in the expanding universe. Just one big ugly Cabaret, old chum.
A Big Harry Dean Stanton “SHIT” on this bill, and those who conceived it, and those who voted for it.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE???!
Peter Buknatski
Montpelier, Vt.
(So pissed-off