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By Naomi Wolf<br><br>Excerpts: <br><br>US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern
district, found that section 1021 – <br>the key section of the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which had been rushed into <br>law amid
secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president
the power<br>to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial,
"facially unconstitutional". Forrest <br>concluded that the law does indeed
have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought<br>the lawsuit
against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact
on first<br>amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA
from becoming law.<br><br>[Plantiffs include] Chris Hedges of the Nation Institute, editor Jennifer Bolen of <a href="http://revolutiontruth.org/">RevolutionTruth</a>,<br>Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, co-founder of Occupy London Kai
Wargalla, Days of Rage editor <br>Alexa O'Brien, and the Icelandic
parliamentarian and WikiLeaks activist Birgitta Jónsdóttir.<br><br>[Judge Forrest notes that under section 1021] "An individual could run the risk of substantially <br>supporting or
directly supporting [a terrorist-] associated force without even being aware that <br>he
or she was doing so." <br><br>What truly disturbed me in that courtroom was the terrible fragility of
all the checks to power<br>that are supposed to be in place to protect us
against such assaults on democracy. Many<br>senators, including my own,
Chuck Schumer, had sent out letters to their own worried<br>constituents
flat-out denying our fears about what section 1021 does. No major news
media <br>organisations attended the original hearing (except Paul Harris of
the Guardian and Observer).<br>The trial and the NDAA itself have been so
inadequately reported by mainstream outlets that<br>I keep running into
senior editors and lawyers who <em>have never heard of it</em>. <br><br>This darkness is so dangerous not least because a new Department of
Homeland Security <br>document trove, released in response to a FOIA request
filed by Michael Moore and the <br>National Lawyers' Guild, proves in
exhaustive detail that the DHS and its "fusion centers" <br>coordinated with
local police (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy">as I argued here, to initial disbelief</a>), the violent crackdown<br>against Occupy last fall. <br><br><font style="font-size: 10pt;" face="Tahoma " size="2"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/17/ndaa-section-1021-coup-detat-foiled">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/17/ndaa-section-1021-coup-detat-foiled</a></font><br><br><br>
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