US citizen loses Constitutional Rights

[carincross]

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists By Chris Hedges
"Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. …

"As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. …

"Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. …

"Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/one_day_well_all_be_terrorists_20091228/

[barbtries]

1. scary times we live in

thanks for sharing

[hobbit709]

2. First they came for the ...

[Laelth]

3. The Justice Department under Obama has been deeply disappointing.

It seems nothing has changed on this front.

:dem:

-Laelth

[jgraz]

6. "Deeply disappointing" doesn't begin to cover it

They are solidifying Bush's police state and getting so-called "liberals" to support it.

[ixion]

4. that is, of course, the Paradox of Terrorism

a "terrorist" is anyone whom any given government does not care for.

Which can be anyone, quite literally.

[Goldstein1984]

12. Terrorism is what "They" do to us

it's getting easier to be labeled as one of "Them."

[ima_sinnic]

5. Obama is a fierce advocate of war crimes and lied about restoring habeas corpus

This article by Glenn Greenwald is important and sums up what has REALLY been going on as early as April 09:

"Obama and habeas corpus--then and now"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/

Even after a judge rejected the Bush/Obama position "that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there" (including detainees not captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan but carried there from elsewhere--Yemen and Tunisia--and then imprisoned in Baghram without charge for as long as 6 years), the Obama administration went to the extraordinary trouble to challenge that ruling.

The Obama administration said Friday that it would appeal a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release. The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight. . . .

The entire piece is worth reading, but only if you have a strong stomach. Too much in there to choose any few points to extract.

This administration is nothing but a fraud, a fake, a front for the globalist war-mongers to continue their unimpeded stomping and looting of the world's resources with no regard whatsoever for the cost in human lives and suffering.

I will never vote for that fucking phony again, and I don't know anybody else who will either.

[CrispyQ]

7. A depressing article.

Thanks for posting.

Candidate Obama vs President Obama, a new chapter of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

There will never be someone on the top of the ticket who doesn't support the globalist war-mongers. That's the sad truth that too many still don't see. Amazingly, the repubs are actually less of a fraud, as they tell us up front that they support & will continue to support these horrid policies.

[Jim Lane]

9. I agree with your post, but the issue of people taken prisoner in Afghanistan doesn't apply here.

Hashimi was arrested at Heathrow Airport. I don't know if he's so much as set foot in Afghanistan. I reject the Bush/Obama position even when the rationale is that the captive was shooting at U.S. soldiers, but the incarceration of Hashimi is even more indefensible.

[ima_sinnic]

11. thanks for the clarification

the Greenwald piece was written back in April and is evidence of a continuum of not only actively working AGAINST restoring habeas corpus but also further strengthening and entrenching lawlessness as an "official position."

[clear eye]

8. This is what progressives are upset about

for those of you who think we've just "gone off the reservation" en masse for no reason.

[bertman]

10. This is what Presidents call "looking forward, not back". REC.

[Goldstein1984]

13. Habeas corpus and civil liberties are such huge issues

that I don't understand why more people professing to be democratically minded don't recognize them as such.