Without so much as a gasp from the mainstream media, a terrifying bill has crept into the lives of regular American people. Now, thanks to a shocking 93-7 vote in the US Senate, the US Armed Forces can legally detain, torture and assassinate US citizens on their own soil.
What the explicit?!!
The bulk of Bill S.1867: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), is to authorize a whopping $662 Billion for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – which should be enough for millions of Americans to cry out in horror. But it is a subtle rider in the bill – under the counter-terrorism section – which provides the US Government with what amounts to every aspiring tyrant’s wet dream.
So much of the US political field already caters to big business and wealthy special interests, and this is only worsening. The end result is that Americans are less and less likely to have elected officials who represent the average person’s interests.
Combine a degrading democratic system with Orwellian legislation like the NDAA, and your ripe for a fascist take over. Corrupt governments can just label any opposition – any dissent at all – as terrorism or anti-government, and then armed forces will swoop in and shut them up forever.
Why even draft this new law? If the situation was dire enough, the military would just use lethal force anyway, a la Jack Bower. Why give the war industry written permission that specifically allows it to kill Americans? It’s not like domestic terrorism has been on the rise on US soil.
More likely what we see here is the elite positioning themselves for war. They’ve smelled the winds of change, blowing from Wall Street through Oakland on to the world, and it has them quaking in their gilded Guccis.
‘Baton down the hatches. Give the police and armed forces all the tools they need to crush the rebels. We’ll try to weather the storm in our off-shore bunkers.’
Sorry, old-boys. In the world we are in the process of creating, there will be nowhere left for you and your atrocities to hide.
