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

[John Thielking]

Well this is good as far as it goes.  Unfortunately the House just now passed NDAA 2013 that includes indefinite detention provisions. So the question is, if this new bill becomes law, will Hedges et al have to start from scratch?
 
John Thielking

--- On Sat, 5/19/12, Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Brian Good <snug.bug at hotmail.com>
Subject: [GPSCC-chat] The NDAA's section 1021 coup d'etat foiled
To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
Date: Saturday, May 19, 2012, 3:01 PM






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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