[Peace-discuss] Preventive detention?!

[unionyes]

" It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless 
behavior, to
have to still have to explain these things."

That is because the SAME people are in control. Just a new face in the oval 
office.
I thought we had an election in November ?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 3:25 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Preventive detention?!


> Mr Obama: Resign Now
> With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?
> By Ted Rall
> June 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House"
>
> MIAMI--We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring 
> expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched 
> performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This 
> guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and 
> follow-through.
>
> From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on 
> pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in 
> fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has 
> officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian 
> genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why 
> does he bother to show up for work in the morning?
>
> Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has 
> any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through 
> with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt 
> politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into 
> the abyss.
>
> I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or 
> other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, 
> you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. 
> state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only 
> apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, 
> and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that 
> made it OK.
>
> In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone 
> else they deem annoying off the street.
>
> Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military 
> dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than 
> consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their 
> people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't 
> control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might 
> someday translate to direct action.
>
> Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than 
> un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western 
> jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human 
> decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is 
> an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an 
> election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, 
> would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of 
> civilization itself.
>
> Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. 
> Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader 
> just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, 
> and he should remove himself from power.
>
> "Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted 
> upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
>
> "Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
>
> Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged 
> with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this 
> writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with 
> piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can 
> be tried.
> Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
>
> The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in 
> American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump 
> and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what 
> to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who 
> pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack 
> of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
>
> In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people 
> against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. 
> In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of 
> fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" 
> is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a 
> crime--an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release 
> him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.
>
> It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless 
> behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason 
> alone, Obama should resign.
> http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22762.htm
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