Folks, in US and globally, repellent, reptilian overthrow, of ancient documents of citizen protection, has been “accomplished.” The US Congress has gutted protections against arrest, imprisonment, torture, rule of law, granting dictatorial powers to the executive branch, gutting the judicial.
It will take time to mount legal challenges. Meanwhile, anyone who offends the deranged status quo can be declared an enemy combatant, at the discretion of the president, and then, “disappeared.” This is an uncanny continuation of the state-perpetrated terrors of the 1930’s/40’s… Jackboots marching, when sadists come to fore, and the people cower. Or will they?
What to blast? What to do? Continue gifting? What else?
Opening of pertinent article follows:
In Case I Disappear
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 29 September 2006
I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. "Be careful," people always tell me. "These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed." A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.
I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff. Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought. This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn't yet been red-lined, I thought.
Matters are different now.
It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid. It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough. Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.
So much of this legislation is wretched on the surface. Habeas corpus has been suspended for detainees suspected of terrorism or of aiding terrorism, so the Magna Carta-era rule that a person can face his accusers is now gone. Once a suspect has been thrown into prison, he does not have the right to a trial by his peers. Suspects cannot even stand in representation of themselves, another ancient protection, but must accept a military lawyer as their defender.
[snip]