January 26, 2012
Our politicians betray us big time, and Brighter Choice marches a vision of the corporate future to my neighborhood
*Update* From Salon: "Once the President accuses you of being a Terrorist, a decision made in secret and with no checks or due process, we can do anything we want to you, including executing you."
Would Martin Luther King Jr. approve of Barack Obama? If the great man were alive today, 39 years old, just as he was when unknown forces presumed by most people to be elements of the US federal government shot him down in a motel parking lot, would he take kindly to the current President of the United States?
Most people and media organizations appear to assume that Martin would automatically approve of Barack because they both have dark skin. But Dr. King did not believe in race. In his most famous speech he declared, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin.”
Dr. King lived, fought and died to protect the Bill of Rights and demand that it be applied equally to all. What would he think of a black president who is already going down in history as the man who finally destroyed the Bill of Rights? How would Dr. King feel to learn that Obama’s corporate betrayal of all the American people is the sad culmination of his own life’s work, and of his death?
Marchers Gathering To Honor Dr. King In My Neighborhood
At the end of every year the sitting president presents a bill to the US Congress to provide funds for the military called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA.) This 49th annual budget bill, like most federal budget bills, contains “riders” or extra legislation that is irrelevant to the budget being authorized. The federal politicians do this so that the public does not notice what they’re trying to pull, to sneak their little crimes and thefts into “law.”
This year’s 2012 NDAA contains a little rider called Section 1021. This new “law” gives the US military the power to snatch people off the streets of our country and “detain them indefinitely,” that is, disappear them. No warrants are necessary, and a fair public trial to determine guilt or innocence is not required.
Under Section 1021 an anonymous government bureaucrat can “make a determination” that you, for example, are a “threat to national security.” Upon that random bureaucrat’s “determination” whim the US military is now required (not allowed, but required) to snatch you off the street and disappear you into “indefinite detention.” And like with credit reports, with which most of us are all too familiar, there is no standard procedure to erase that anonymous “determination” of guilt.
Cold Cops On Horses Leading The March
You didn’t hear about this? You say that Fox and NPR didn’t quite explain “the rider to the 2012 NDAA” so that you could understand what it was really about? You say all you’ve heard from the corporate media and the corporate elected officials is positive spin about Section 1021, how it will “protect” America?
The politicians and the media announcers have been telling us that our fears of a communist style corporate political purge are overblown, that Section 1021 only applies to “foreigners.” American citizens who are not “committing acts of terrorism” have nothing to fear, they say. The anonymous government bureaucrats won’t disappear you as long as you stay home, watch TV and voluntarily disappear yourself.
“Besides,” the corporate traitors say with a smirk, “that’s all covered in the next rider, Section 1022.” This part says that although the US military is required to snatch and disappear foreigners they are NOT required to snatch proper US citizens off the streets and drag them out of their homes. That has been reserved for future legislation.
Albany Police Honor Guard
But really, as a practical matter, suppose the military (or the secret police, the FBI) decides to snatch you off your living couch, right in front of your TV set. “But I’m a citizen!” you’ll scream. “Born and raised in America!” Doesn’t matter. The soldiers and the secret police are only doing their job. They’re simply following orders from an anonymous bureaucrat.
So next thing you know, you are housed in a secret detention center, either in the general population or, if they don’t like your attitude, in solitary confinement. You have no access to the outside world and certainly not to a lawyer. A fine pickle! How are you ever going to get out of this sticky situation and set things right?
There’s only one way out. Section 1022 allows the President of the United States to intervene and pardon you for the crime you’ve never been charged with and jailed for. Of course while you’re in the secret detention center there’s no way for you to contact the president. And of course, the president doesn’t listen to “terrorists” like you.
But don’t worry! All these things will work themselves out somehow because the President is our big brother who only wants what’s best for the fatherland.
Marchers Approaching My Neighborhood, Including Police Chiefs Krokoff And Reilly
Who is responsible for Sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA? What sort of anti-american terrorists would create and codify into law a directive that nullifies our Natural Rights, rights which we have had since the 1700s? Rights our ancestors won through violent revolution?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the two terrorists who have delivered a devastating body blow against American freedom, an attack that makes Nine Eleven look like a relatively small but spectacular sideshow. They are servants of the corporate elite. These two vicious America haters have successfully stabbed America in the guts:
Corporate Comrades Obama And McCain Are Personally Responsible For NDAA Rider 1021
That’s right folks. The Manchurian Candidate himself, Senator John McCain had Sections 1021 and 1022 written at his command, after which he introduced the budget bill riders into the Senate. Meanwhile, Barack Obama vigorously pressured the Compliant Dumbass Democrats to obey the Gop Traitors and pass the riders. And then Obama signed a piece of paper on the last day of the last year and the Bill of Rights became effectively obsolete.
Yes, we have all lived through this profound world altering event which has passed with hardly any notice. The terrorists have won, the corporations have won, China has won. America has been defeated. The quiet shut down of the Bill of Rights is a fabulous victory for the One Percent, or rather what some more accurately call the Point Oh One Percent.
Some of you may recall that about three years ago Obama and that scary bastard McCain were paired against each other in some kind of bogus sporting event, something akin to professional wrestling. The hyped up contest involved massive amounts of money and endless advertisements in the corporate media. The sporting event, you my remember, was called “presidential election.”
Most people were fooled into thinking that the two corporatist “candidates” had differences, that one contender was good for the country and the other was bad for us. Actually, both work for the same foreign corporations (Fact: all corporations are foreign, no corporation is loyal to the US Constitution.) Both McCain and Obama have revealed themselves to be conjoined twins separated at birth, brothers in arms, virtual lovers, comrades dedicated to the cause of American Dictatorship.
For example, I recently learned that during the presidential campaign both candidates worked together to create a campaign staff that either one would use if elected. Get that? The same exact people. Months before the November election Timothy Geithner of Goldman Sachs was already in position to dictate policy to either corporate tool.
Like professional wrestling the 2008 presidential “contest” was a prearranged carnival show made for TV, this time featuring the The White Knight versus The Black Avenger. Their ideological sameness was neatly obscured by their contrasting shades of skin color. At the end of the presidential wrestling broadcast the voters, sick and tired of the sheer idiocy of that elite drunken cokehead George W. Bush, chose the obviously more competent of the two competitors.
Mayor Jerry Jennings Defers
To Our Patriotic Congressman Paul Tonko
This matter of contrasting skin color deceived almost everybody, most voters assumed that surely the two candidates must be profoundly different from each other. Even the Nobel Committee gave Obama their highest award merely because of his dark skin and for no other reason. I have no doubt that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King would be very profoundly appalled by Obama’s Nobel.
Even though I knew better at the time, that once again we were being told to choose the lesser of two evils, during that 2008 election I could not help but get caught up in the excitement for Obama. So many wonderful, enthusiastic young people were successfully manipulated by the declining corporate media into thinking that Obama was going to save the country and the world from evil people like McCain. Especially from McCain, apparently still carrying out the instructions planted in his head so many decades ago by his North Korean captors.
Mayor Jennings At The Mic
But it took a lot more than race to fool the voters. There are Obama’s statements on the campaign trail. For example, early in his campaign the future president made these criticisms of the Bush Junior administration, then currently in power, these during a major speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, August 2007:
As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists. …This [Bush Jr.] Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.