U.S.—The most recent version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) created a nightmare scenario for many last year when it was signed into law—against the promises of our “president,” B. Hussein Obama—on December 31, 2011.
The NDAA is passed every year; it contains changes to the military, budget, etc. And every year, there seem to be more provisions in it that are of increasing concern for those of us in the civilian world, as our police and “policing” entities (government-supported agencies that are given police powers under certain conditions, like emergency management agencies, which are allowed to take over for police in the event of a declared disaster/emergency) become paramilitarized.
Closing that ever-encircling gap, therefore, would be to ensure that under certain circumstances, America’s military could be used against civilians (something that’s prohibited by the Constitution…for now, anyway). And the latest NDAA ensures that that is exactly what’s going to happen….if, somehow, the government can define YOU as a ‘terrorist.’
What IS a “terrorist”? Is it the Towel-head-iban? is it Syrian suicide bombers? Is it Somalian rebels? How many of those do you see on our shores? Not many. When they are, they make big news. Except for a military officer at Ft. Hood shouting “Allah Akhbar!” or whatever the hell he says as he’s shooting our men and women in uniform….THAT’S not a “terrorist.” So, what IS?
Let me tell you something: If we don’t fight this recent NDAA, and work to get it changed, I am. You are. Your kids might be, whether they’re Occupy Wall Street-tards or Ron Paul-bots. Why?
Because we don’t like the state that things are in…and we’re active in trying to effect change. We encourage people to find new candidates for local offices. We go to rallies that are off the beaten path, like “For the Good of Illinois.” We actively help campaign for candidates of our choice. We….run newspapers that express dissent with clarity when we see wrongs being done by our government and its agents (employees, appointees, etc). Because that’s our right. So far.
Lately, that right has been challenged on a small scale in our area alone. My own OP case in Richland County, while it started out as a way for a devious attorney to try to gain unfair advantage in an unrelated probate case (that of my granddaughter’s), soon became a situation of so much time passing and ideas popping up. One of those occurred to the petitioner, my own stepfather, who saw an opportunity to jab back at me for uncovering his infidelity to my mother. He turned it into a situation where he—a public entity still on the government teat with multiple retirements—wanted to use the situation to “shut me down” from writing about him. Ever. “Unless it was something newsworthy.” What’s NOT newsworthy about someone receiving federal funding to make a living, going after his own step kid whom he helped raise, trying to keep him from doing his job to the fullest capacity? You’re damn straight it’s newsworthy, because if you’re ordered by a judge to not write about ONE, you’re going to be ordered by a judge not to write about THE NEXT ONE, and on and on until suddenly, you can’t write about anybody because “it might hurt their feelings.”
waaaaah. Mah butt hurts.
Sorry, pard. Butt-hurts come with the government paycheck when journalists and newspapers are doing their jobs. Butt-hurts come when you’re an Earp and you consistently violate the law and the prosecutor won’t do anything with your sorry ass, even after one of you gets gut-shot and killed. Butt-hurts come when you’re a lazy, good-for-nothing former state’s attorney who’s running the local Republican Party into the ground and is dragging cases of accused sex offenders you’re pretending to represent into their fourth year without anything meaningful happening to them. BUTT-HURTS HAPPEN.
My advice: Get off the teat, or don’t do anything wrong. Simple as that. Right? Good advice, yes?
But if the government has its way with the NDAA, that’s not going to be simple, or good. That’s going to be outlawed, for me to say anything like that. To print it. To promote it. Ultimately, to voice it. Because that’s where this country is headed—headlong into the abyss that is what our former enemy, the former Soviet Union, or our current enemy (flippin pick one: North Korea, Iran, whatever) does: stifles the peoples’ ability to voice dissent, enact movement to effect change, and finally, get that change that makes it easier for all of us to live in this country.
I came across this woman’s story on a Facebook feed: Amber Lyon. She has a site that explains, contrary to the platitudes of dweebs like John Shimkus, what this year’s NDAA is all about:
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We are all ‘terrorists’
Another disturbing aspect of the NDAA is that it allows the government to imprison anyone suspected of or even associated with ‘terrorism’. This power is open to wide interpretation under the law and can and will be abused.
Who in the heck is a terrorist anymore? We’ve witnessed the U.S. government and Military-industrial complex mold the term ‘terrorist’ to their subjective and financial goals too many times to trust any use of that word. Even Nobel Peace Prize-winner Nelson Mandela was once considered a terrorist by governments worldwide and put on U.S. terrorist watch lists.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges told Democracy Now, the term ‘terrorist’ is too loose so what the NDAA is really doing is setting up a legal mechanism to criminalize dissent.
“We saw an attempt to link the U.S. Day of Rage with Al Qaeda. Once they link you with a terrorist group, then these draconian forms of control can be used against legitimate forms of protest, in particularly the Occupy Movement,” Hedges said. Corrupt corporations can use the NDAA to pressure the government to crush banking protests, environmental protests, strikes… it’s a slippery slope.
BloJo, the town idiot.
Oh. There’s that term, “slippery slope.” That’s why I don’t have a FOID card until April 27, 2014. Because I refused to forfeit my right to publish what I, and several tens of thousands of readers, consider news and opinion. I told both judges in my case I would give up my FOID before I would give up my ability to publish, and I told both judges—who both suggested, “Well why don’t you just not write about them; they’re willing to let it all just go away if you won’t write about them” REPEATEDLY, SIX TIMES from Kim Harrell and THREE from Tom Sutton—that my decision was based on a “slippery slope” of “who’s going to ask for what NEXT?”
There’s also the much-obsessed-over-by-Brian-James-O’Neill court-ordered psych eval, which I’m not taking. THAT is a “slippery slope” too…because if you can get one journalist to consent to a psych eval after there is no violence, no aberrant behavior, no cause for question except somebody’s feelings got butt-hurt over a TRUTHFUL article, ”who’s going to ask for what NEXT?”
SLIP. ER. RY. SLOPE.
We can’t have it. I won’t let it start with me; not on my watch. Not while there’s shit like THIS out there:
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Investigative Journalists could start being ‘disappeared’ under the NDAA
The NDAA frightens journalists because it turns us into criminals. There are no provisions within the law to protect journalists. As journalists, we take a vow to never reveal our confidential sources. If the U.S. government, or corrupt corporations pressuring authorities, want information on our confidential sources, the NDAA gives them the power to indefinitely detain us by saying the refusal to reveal sources is an act that is “aiding terrorists.”
The NDAA doesn’t “frighten” me. Not because I’m like this:
“I’m not doing anything wrong, I don’t need to worry about the NDAA”
“Wrong” is totally subjective in this day and age. I DIDN’T do anything “wrong” to get an OP slapped against me; and yet here we are, because enough people got together and concocted such a fabrication—then told it without a court reporter present so that they’d be caught in their lies when it came back on them—that the truth didn’t matter. I had the truth on my side: photos, videos, 911 recordings. Didn’t help. When a judge is swayed by political pressure (or in this case, her arrogant husband), the truth DOESN’T MATTER.
Read what Amber writes on her blog:
You do need to worry. The NDAA directly affects your everyday life because it is another violation of your rights to free speech, a fair trial. The NDAA also suffocates information that could expose the corruption that’s rapidly destroying this country and affecting you financially.
The NDAA will prevent some whistleblowers from coming forward with information and documents vital to the public good in fear the corrupt will pressure authorities to use the NDAA to detain the whistleblower indefinitely.
We need to reward, not instill fear in our whistleblowers. They are vital to the survival of this nation. If we don’t know what’s broke, how can we fix it? What if a government whistleblower had come forward before the start of the war to let the public know Saddam Hussein really didn’t have weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Folks, listen to me, I beg of you:
This is where it’s going. This is where it’s headed. We are the enemy now: You, I, our children, our grandchildren, our parents and siblings.
Because this is what a tyrannical government wants. We had it with Bush, we had it with Obama, we’ll have it with whatever zombie, Obamazombie or Romneyzombie, our fellow zombies pick on November 6. We are sunk. It’s over.
What I’m asking you for is this: watch out for us, we, the journalists, the ones who, as we were told in Edgar County today, “put our lives on the line” to bring you the news. It’s not that severe in Edgar County, not like those people are saying; we’ve been through this before right in our own backyards, and I’m here to tell you, people like Paris mayor Craig Smith and his “engineer” buddy Bob Colvin are pussies; people like crazy Jan Burno are, well, crazy, like Brian James O’Neill crazy. They’re nothings. They can’t do anything to me that I can’t do back to them a thousand times over.
But the big government, the people who are really running the show, can. If journalists are getting “disappeared,” you know they can. And if we’re the ones that go first—and we will—who’s going to be there to tell you that you’re NEXT?
Be careful. Support Amber Lyons. Support Ademo. Support Disclosure. Because there may come a day when the bad guys will ultimately win, and there won’t be any way for you to learn that they have…you’ll be going along thinking all is well until your 80-year-old mom calls Obama a horse’s ass and the next thing you know, you can’t find her. Think it doesn’t happen?
Think again.