[GPSCC-chat] The NDAA's section 1021 coup d'etat foiled

[Brian Good]

By Naomi Wolf

Excerpts: 

US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern 
district, found that section 1021 – 
the key section of the National 
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which had been rushed into 
law amid 
secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president 
the power
to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, 
"facially unconstitutional". Forrest 
concluded that the law does indeed 
have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought
the lawsuit 
against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact 
on first
amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA 
from becoming law.

[Plantiffs include]  Chris Hedges of the Nation Institute, editor Jennifer Bolen of RevolutionTruth,
Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, co-founder of Occupy London Kai 
Wargalla, Days of Rage editor 
Alexa O'Brien, and the Icelandic 
parliamentarian and WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir.

[Judge Forrest notes that under section 1021]  "An individual could run the risk of substantially 
supporting or 
directly supporting [a terrorist-] associated force without even being aware that 
he
 or she was doing so." 

What truly disturbed me in that courtroom was the terrible fragility of 
all the checks to power
that are supposed to be in place to protect us 
against such assaults on democracy. Many
senators, including my own, 
Chuck Schumer, had sent out letters to their own worried
constituents 
flat-out denying our fears about what section 1021 does. No major news 
media 
organisations attended the original hearing (except Paul Harris of
 the Guardian and Observer).
The trial and the NDAA itself have been so 
inadequately reported by mainstream outlets that
I keep running into 
senior editors and lawyers who have never heard of it. 

This darkness is so dangerous not least because a new Department of 
Homeland Security 
document trove, released in response to a FOIA request
 filed by Michael Moore and the 
National Lawyers' Guild, proves in 
exhaustive detail that the DHS and its "fusion centers" 
coordinated with
 local police (as I argued here, to initial disbelief), the violent crackdown
against Occupy last fall. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/17/ndaa-section-1021-coup-detat-foiled



 		 	   		  
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