On New Year’s Eve, while few were paying attention, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill which authorizes the military to investigate and indefinitely detain any American citizen that the President chooses. It is now the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a Democratic president, that you can be identified as a possible terrorist and put into the hands of the military without any communication with the outside world – including attorneys, family, friends, or journalists. The military can then hold you without hearings or trials of any kind for the rest of your life if they so choose.

This is probably the single most frightening legislative act ever undertaken by an American Congress or president. The idea that a president could even remotely consider signing such a draconian and unconstitutional bill into law would never have occurred to me even during the Bush administration. The fact that the first black president in U.S. history is also the first president to turn his military against his own people should bring us all to tears of rage. I voted for this president. I donated to his campaign. For these things, I am now deeply ashamed. This is not a president that brings hope. This is not a man who represents to voters who he really is. This is not a man that I can ever vote for – no matter who the opponent is. Because ultimately, regardless of who Obama’s opponent turns out to be, that person will not have been involved with this law. That person will not have been a person who voted to turn the U.S. military against Americans. That person will not have enacted a law that would fit perfectly into the books of any tin pot dictatorship across the globe. In fact, nearly every dictatorship or authoritarian government worldwide has exactly this law on their books. All dictatorships need this law in order to pick up citizens who dissent and put them away in secret places – or kill them.

I don’t like Ron Paul because I think he’s probably a racist and a homophobe, but he’s angry about this law and he was one of the very few who voted against it. Seems reasonable to me. Let me put it this way: No president who signs a law like this should ever be reelected. Any opponent is preferable by a very wide margin. I hate myself for saying this because I have voted for Democrats all my life. But this is a presidential betrayal of the highest order. Worse, it is a governmental betrayal. Its magnitude is so great that it calls into question our ability to manage a democratic system. It weakens the very foundations of everything we have assumed and trusted about our system. It is an abysmal and terrifying start for the new year.

The ACLU says this about the law:

The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

No American citizen can allow the U.S. military to take them into custody. And therein lies the real problem. If Americans find that they have no governmental or legal recourse to prevent their arbitrary abduction, arrest or ‘detainment’ by the military, then they have only one possible option left. That would be armed resistance against the U.S. military. What would you do if your son or daughter disappeared into a military prison without any trial? What if all three branches of government agreed that it was just fine to make Americans vanish without trial? With the current climate surrounding the Supreme Court this could certainly happen. What if a president began using this power to make troublesome people or political opponents vanish? What would your option be?

Your option and the option of great numbers of other frightened Americans would be something resembling armed resistance. Eventually, Americans would start killing U.S. military personnel. Soldiers who jumped out of vans to snatch Americans off streets would be shot to death by people defending themselves. This would be justified. In any democracy it would be legal self defense. In a country where the military has been turned against the citizens it becomes justifiable and necessary to kill military personnel while still firmly supporting the nation and its Constitutional basis. This is the unthinkable potential situation created by President Obama and our Congress.

Obama has signed a law that operates outside of the Constitution which guarantees due process to all American citizens. We are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. Obama, the House of Representatives and the Senate do not want that to be the case anymore. They are eliminating that fundamental Constitutional protection. This is a violent and dangerous act against freedom and the American people.

Obama has signed a law which now makes every member of the military a potential threat to every American citizen at home and abroad. You must remember that nothing in this bill requires anyone to prove that a detainee is a terrorist. Since no lawyers or courts are involved no one actually needs to prove anything. The law will simply be used to arrest and hold anyone of the President’s choosing for any reason of the President’s choosing.

A journalist could be detained by the military because the President asserts that the journalist wrote something suspicious in a newspaper article. We may never hear from that journalist again.

Think very carefully about this the next time you watch your troops celebrating Thanksgiving during an NFL broadcast. Those smiling, turkey-eating troops now have the power to march into your house, throw you into a canvas bag and take you to a cinder block cell where no one will ever hear from you again. That’s no exaggeration. What do you think ‘indefinite detention’ means?

The President signed this bill into law with his own little attachment to it – a statement. He claims to have significant issues with the detention provisions. He promises that his administration will never use those provisions to detain Americans. He ‘promises.’ But of course he signs the law. He takes the power. But he wants us all to feel a little better about it because he promises he really won’t use it. This is one creepy little bullshitter if I ever saw one.

Obama has lost all my admiration, my support, my money, and my vote. I will vote for anyone else. Anyone. I don’t care if it’s a Republican. I don’t care if the person can’t read, write, or do arithmetic. The bottom line is that whoever that person is, he or she won’t be Obama. Recall elections should be held to try to remove Senators and Representatives who voted for this bill. I am personally voting for a Democratic primary opponent to my current Representative who voted for this law. People who pose as liberals – like Al Franken – should be removed. The very idea of a liberal Democrat voting for this terrifies me. It really means that we are running out of options. Someone is so interested in gaining this power of indefinite detention that they are willing and able to get everyone working in concert for it. They have totally overcome the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans… liberals and conservatives.

Obama has seized the single most important legal power underlying all dictatorships and authoritarian governments: the power to make people disappear.

Here’s an interesting Russia Times America report on the bill from early December 2011:

This is the Egyptian military. This is the leadership of Egypt. The revolution of January 2011 has failed. Egypt has sunk into a brutal military dictatorship that has begun to rape, beat and kill all dissenters. I do not believe in peaceful revolution against murderous dictatorships. When confronted with barbaric monsters like the current leadership in Egypt, one must kill or be killed. My advice to Egyptians is to eliminate soldiers wherever you might find them by any means at hand – like the Libyans did. I say that because I’m an American. And nobody on the planet knows how to do a revolution like the Americans do. And the one thing we know about revolution is that when you want to win you put your gun in the other guy’s face and pull the trigger. Peaceful protests are for smirking idiots like the Dalai Lama.

But I do not think Egypt’s revolution will work. There are too many poor uneducated religious people and they will react to freedom with more brutal attacks on women. It is the nature of religious people under pressure to brutalize women. It happens in all places where you find poverty mixed with religion. In fact, it is oppression of women that fundamentally defines all religious behavior. Reading a Bible or a Koran is like reading an instruction manual for the subjugation and enslavement of women. These books are horrific works by deformed men who were terrified that they might not know for sure who really fathered their children. That is about all I have to say on the subject of the very sad and dying nation of Egypt. Arab Spring looks to me like a death march. I am also deeply ashamed of my country’s military association with Egypt. It is a profound embarrassment to all Americans to know that our military officers give advice and money to rapists. Disgusting.

Needless to say, I will not be visiting the fucking pyramids any time soon.

This news video contains disturbing images and shocking violence:

University of California at Davis students staging a sit-in have been attacked by school police with massive doses of pepper spray. The use of weapons against tuition-paying students by the university is grounds for removal of any administration officials with knowledge of these tactics. This is disgusting. Students have a long-standing tradition of free expression on their campuses. Sit-ins are a harmless and excellent way for students to express outrage. The pepper-spraying police should at the very least be discharged. There should also be legal charges brought against them.

The spectacle of the university going after its students with weaponry and armored police thugs is simply outrageous. It’s an appalling act of stupidity and cruelty. This school should be hammered with lawsuits and public outrage. While Penn State University allegedly rapes small children, University of California blasts pepper spray into the faces of its kids. What the fuck may I ask is going on in this country? Our higher education system has typically been the only thing giving our country an edge internationally. Now it would seem that even that system is cracking.

It seems clear that every single protester at every protest nationwide should be armed with a canister of pepper spray to use against police. Their faces are vulnerable under the helmet guards. Every single protester with pepper spray. It looks to me like the time for passivity might be ending. There is a tactic that I think could be used against police. It would be the singling out of an individual officer by hundreds of protesters. The surrounding of a single officer might put the police ranks into a very uncomfortable position.

Rachel Maddow does a wonderful piece on the freedom of speech aspects of Occupy Wall Street. She contrasts the police at University of California’s Berkeley campus shoving students with batons to the 1964 Mario Savio speech in support of free speech for students. The police violence against students last week happened on the very plaza that celebrates Savio’s great speech.

On the orders of New York mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD staged a brazen and unwarranted attack on the Zuccotti Park protesters of Occupy Wall Street late last night, removing and destroying the entire camp. This assault on Occupy Wall Street appears to be a coordinated nationwide effort with police departments in various cities operating in near concert.

New York has been foolish. The police should not have done this.

There are major protest activities approaching this week. The police assaults may be an effort to head things off before any more major statements can be made by the movement. However, it would be my guess that now all the gloves come off. It would not be unreasonable for massive numbers of protesters to shut down the entire Wall Street area. I think now the movement will be justified in the general public opinion when it escalates its actions. My guess is that if it wasn’t yet, Wall Street is about to become ground zero.

It does appear that there is a court order against New York to allow the protesters back into the park with their tents.  However, Mayor Bloomberg is ignoring the court’s order.

It is also reported that the police destroyed the protesters’ library of 5,000 books during their raid. Get it? That’s basically a book-burning.

It looks like the police also prevented press coverage of the attack. Network news helicopters were prevented from flying and journalists were roughed up and kept away.

However, it has now become clear that the Zuccotti Park protesters last week surrounded an emergency medical technician to prevent him from taking a mentally ill patient to hospital.  The EMT’s leg was broken in the scuffle.  That story fits in perfectly with the experience of a Rolling Stone reporter who was surrounded and prevented from interviewing someone.  One of those acts is a serious crime committed by the protesters against an emergency worker.  The other is an infringement of the right to freely speak with another person.  It is also an attempt to prevent a journalist from doing his or her job. I do not support such actions on the part of the protesters. But those are not reasons to destroy their encampments.

Here is Keith Olbermann excoriating mayor Bloomberg for his raging stupidity:

Here’s a television news report about the NYPD raid:

Here’s a live feed from the Zuccotti Park area:

In a deeply troubling sign of the mentality of Penn State University’s student body, mobs of students rioted yesterday in protest of the university’s firing of football coach Joe Paterno. He is the coach to whom a child rape was reported by a graduate student who witnessed the crime and allowed it to continue. That graduate student is now active receivers coach, Mike McQueary. Why this person has not also been fired is a total mystery. Paterno apparently thought his duties only required him to report the grad student’s allegation to his boss. He neglected to call the police. It would seem that he also neglected to follow up on the crime at any time during a nine-year period. The moral failure of such neglect is immense. Penn State University was certainly correct to eliminate such a person from its staff as quickly as possible. But the callous disregard for the damaged lives of the young rape victims on the part of the Penn State student body is not only revolting, it is frightening. These are young adults about to move into society and take jobs. They are supposedly educated. But they are raging in the streets and destroying journalists’ equipment over a football coach who refused to take any sort of adequate action following the brutal rape of a ten year old child.

It would amaze me if the university did not immediately act to expel every student it could identify as having engaged in violence against the journalists’ van at the very least.

These are students that I would want nothing to do with. Ever. I’m sure there are students who disagree with these rioters and those should not be lumped in with these barbaric people. This is a mob that has been fielded by this university. It simply cannot be ignored. They are a repulsive example of what Penn State University has to offer to the state it serves and to its nation. They have no apparent feeling about the rape of a child. They seem to believe that a man can ignore his duty to protect children and still maintain his status as ‘living legend.’ These people in this rioting mob should remember for the rest of their lives exactly how they behaved in the face of children who were raped and who went unaided by the heartless, reprehensible Joe Paterno and other members of the Penn State administration. Horrible. Disgusting.

Here is video of the student attack on a journalism van. It appears to have been taken by one of the rioting students. Mature content with language:

Would you hire one of these people for your company? Would you want one of these people living next to you?

Pennsylvania State University appears to have abandoned its primary duty to protect the children on its campus. The betrayal of its community and its children is shocking. Its football facilities appear to have been used for an ongoing series of child rapes by football coach Joe Paterno’s longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky. Two high-ranking university officials have been arrested for keeping the rapes unreported to law enforcement. That’s called a coverup where I come from. It would seem that a graduate student told a Grand Jury that he witnessed a 10 year old boy being raped in the football locker room. His decision at the time was to allow the rape to continue. Later on he says he went to coach Paterno’s home to discuss the episode with him. Paterno says he reported the allegations to university athletic director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, the senior vice president of finance and business.

Tomorrow, Saturday November 5, 2011, is Bank Transfer Day. That means that Americans everywhere are moving their money out of big banks and putting them into smaller local banks and credit unions that are FDIC insured. The Occupy Wall Street movement is having serious consequences and is beginning to wake people up to how easy it is to change things when millions decide to act. The big banks have been making life very difficult for many people through absurd fees, rates and indecipherable rules meant to empty pockets. But the problem is actually much more serious than that. Big banks are actually putting lives at risk through illegal foreclosures all across the United States. Masses of people are boiling with anger that is going to reach a critical overload. Moving money out of these banks into credit unions is a common sense approach to smacking big banks. But this event is just a warm-up. What we are practicing for is the eventual ability of the population to move almost overnight to totally destroy a chosen corporation. The ability to do so is almost here and will make itself apparent in very short order. I’m talking about a population that will be able to pick a corporation – say a major auto manufacturer for instance – and totally liquidate that corporation. This will be a weaponized and highly focused form of boycott, but it will be characterized by extremely sudden mass decision-making unlike anything ever seen in history. Get ready for it. Start your warmup tomorrow by moving to a credit union or small local bank.

The Bank Transfer Day Facebook page.

A Salon article about why Bank Transfer Day is only the beginning and the power of social media.

Who are the one percent?

Does anyone pay attention to what is being said when this ’1%’ thing is thrown around?

Here’s a direct quote from the OccupyWallSt.org About page and must therefore be the definitive statement of the movement’s intentions:

‘The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.’

If you replace ‘richest 1% of people’ with different words like ‘Muslims’ or ‘Jews’ or ‘Whites’ or ‘Blacks’ or ‘Poor People,’ wouldn’t you have a serious problem?

Why is it that Occupy Wall Street can define a 1% minority out of a population and engage in open hostility and bigotry toward them? Bigotry against a part of a population is bigotry no matter what the rationale for it happens to be. Occupy Wall Street is not talking about corrupt rich people. It is not talking about criminals. It is talking about ALL rich people. It is equating wealth with villainy.

It should be obvious that not all of the richest people are in fact helping to write unfair rules. Michael Moore is rich. Is he writing some of the unfair rules?

Why is Occupy Wall Street unable to confine its hostility to actual policy?

In Germany, during the buildup of Nazism, people grew increasingly angry toward the wealthy and then turned that anger toward Jewish people.  Angry crowds, encouraged to chant mantras and direct hostility toward groups that they define as evil become extremely dangerous when exposed to a charismatic leader who is willing to exploit them.

I do not oppose constructive change of policy to make the economic situation more fair and to prevent the corporate control of government.  But I do oppose the fundamental and defining aspect of Occupy Wall Street which is to associate a particular group of people with a generic and unspecified evil.

In what I consider the most important recent news event, the Federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that citizens have the legal right to film police while they are performing their public duties.

The case involved attorney Simon Glik in Boston who observed an arrest in the Boston Common that he thought was abusive.  So he flipped out his cellphone camera and filmed the cops.  They arrested him.

The Court has responded to this – one of the increasing number of cases nationwide in which cops try to take cameras from or arrest citizens who try to record them during arrests – by affirming a lower court ruling in Glik’s favor.  In this case, as in most similar cases, the police attempted to charge someone with ‘wiretapping’ because the video cameras are ‘secretly’ recording audio.  Of course any court recognizes that only a simpleton would associate using a video camera with wiretapping.

The Court stated:

The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity]. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs.

Episodes of police misconduct, brutality and murder are increasing nationwide. Police powers are growing, government agencies are eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, personal data is being pulled into government databases, and security paranoia is reaching nearly hysterical levels. The fact is that the police are committing crimes – including murder – at an alarming rate. Cops are using violence against innocent demonstrators. They are killing helpless people in the subways of Oakland. They are beating homeless people to death in Fullerton, California. They are raiding political activist groups before and during public events on the chance that these groups might be planning something illegal. Filming these cops is absolutely the least that citizens should be doing.

The Court has made it abundantly clear that citizens have always had the legal right to use video cameras on the police and that arrests of citizens in these circumstances is illegal.  That is why all cases nationwide that police forces have brought against people with video cameras have been thrown out of court.

It should now be clear that police departments arresting people for filming are liable in civil courts.

The Court went further than its decision on filming police activities. It also stated that citizens recording police or government officials have the same legal protections afforded to the press. In other words: citizens are journalists.

The Court said:

Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

There is no legal definition of or requirement for being a journalist.  In fact, much of CNN’s video coverage comes from ‘iReporters’ who are citizen journalists filming events around the world and sending in their footage via the CNN web site.  Those people are fully protected by all the same laws that protect journalists and their sources.

I think this is a long-overdue and definitive ruling that clarifies legally what has been obvious all along.  People always have the right to film their police officers doing the public duties that public monies pay for.

Finally, and most important: People Are the Press.