NDAA: Business As USual
By Mickey Z.
23 May, 2012
World News Trust
“Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” --Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
Put a frog into a pot of boiling water, the well-known parable begins, and out that frog will jump to escape the obvious danger. Put that same frog into cool water and heat the pot slowly, and it will not react -- until it’s too late.
The survival instincts of a frog, we’re told, are better designed to discern abrupt changes. Gradual transformation -- like the measured raising of water temperature -- can sneak up on the little croaker.
I was reminded of this proverbial amphibian back on Dec. 31, 2011, when President Predator Drone signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA).
The frog fable bubbled back up to the surface in mid-May when Federal Judge Katherine B. Forrest, in the Southern District of New York, issued an injunction against the use of Section 1021 of NDAA because it was "facially unconstitutional" and could violate the 1st Amendment.
Why were activists working up a sweat about the NDAA, you wonder? Here's one explanation from the American Civil Liberties Union:
"For the first time in American history, we have a law authorizing the worldwide and indefinite military detention of people captured far from any battlefield. The NDAA has no temporal or geographic limitations. It is completely at odds with our values, violates the Constitution, and corrodes our Nation's commitment to the rule of law."
Our (sic) values? Since trampling human rights has long been a hobby for the 1%, any commitment "our Nation" may have to the rule of law has been more honored in the breach.
Mic Check: Not unlike boiling a pot of water, the repression of freedom has been a slow steady process in the Land of the Free™. You might even call it business-as-usual, for example...
President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798. Under this ugly bit of legislation, I might’ve received a fine “not exceeding $2,000” and/or “imprisonment not exceeding two years” simply for writing an article such as this.
Then there was Honest Abe Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Woodrow Wilson got his own Espionage and Sedition Acts passed in 1917. Here’s a sample of that law: “Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both.” (The Espionage Act remains on the books today.)
Japanese-Americans in the 1940s just might have something to say about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s "commitment to the rule of law." FDR signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, thus interning over 100,000 without due process. Under the pretext of taking on the architects of German prison camps, he thus became the architect of American prison camps.
The FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence Program, COINTELPRO (1956-1971), was in place through four presidential administrations -- two from each party.
Alleged liberal Bill Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into law on April 24, 1996. This unconstitutional salvo contained provisions that Clinton himself admitted "make a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism." While doing little to address so-called terrorism, the legislation did plenty to limit the civil liberties of anyone -- immigrant or resident -- who disagrees with U.S. policies: foreign or domestic.
More recently, of course, we have the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law by George W. Bush and reauthorized by George W. Obama.
Mic Check: Is it me, or is it getting awfully warm in here?
Taking into account the long history of repression, suppression, and oppression in the Home of the Brave™, the NDAA adds a few degrees on that little thermometer that's long been jammed... well, you know where.
Let's bring down the NDAA, sure, but the struggle and the occupation must continue against both wings of the U.S. Corporate Party, against the perpetual whitewashing of American history, and against tyranny in all its devious disguises.
We are the 99%. Expect us. Join us...
NYC Event News: Join us for an afternoon of solidarity at the Veggie Pride Parade event at Union Square Park on Sun., May 27, at which I'll be the keynote speaker.
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Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.
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