What can I do but quote Glenn Greenwald?It's important to be clear about what "preventive detention" authorizes. It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding. That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, "preventive detention" allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally "dangerous" by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they "expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden" or "otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans").So if someone says that he got an email from you containing the words "Osama is just so AWESUM," then off you go to the pokey.
Yes, some (not all) of the folks on the prog-blogs are defending Obama's atrocious scheme. As Greenwald point out, these defenders neglect to consider the consequences of giving these expanded powers to the ultra-conservative president who will probably take the oath in January of 2013. You'd think that most progs would want to prevent that possibility.
Hey -- that's it! This move is simply a subtle, canny piece of political jiu-jitsu. Obama wants to maneuver Congress into passing legislation which will prevent the very thing he now claims to espouse. Yeah. That must be it.
Boy, that Barry. He sure is one helluva 11-dimensional chess player, isn't he?
5 comments:
IT's weird that threatening to kill family members or the like, will only net you a weekend in a psychiatric facility but wanting to kill Americans makes you eligible for lifelong "preventive detention". I wonder if it worse being a family that dies because of Al Qaeda or being a family that eies because dad got laid off and went batshit. Since Reagan's governorship, Dad probably couldn't get arrested for threatening his family if he tried.
BTW, it's making think of James Hubberty (or some name like that) - the guy who killed all those people at a McDonalds in San Diego. He spent the day calling psychiatric facilities, telling them he was gonna kill a bunch of people and needed help, but no one could help him. I wonder how people like that will be impacted by this.
Also, what about the flat out mentally ill who are homeless and threatening to kill people? Willl we finally have a way, once again, to put them in facilities?
All these questions...
I'm as worried of the consequences under Barry as under an "ultra-conservative president." Actually more worried, since at least more social forces would line up against a Republican who undermined the rule of law and ruled by imperial powers.
alice, that is why many of us voted for mccain. As CODEPINK noted, the dems can't stand up to the Brand Zero white house.
great post, joseph! Loved the link to Salon:
"The first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law" is how Obama's own White House Counsel described him. Technically speaking, that is a form of change, but probably not the type that many Obama voters expected.
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hahaha! Yeah...not the change the Hopium Huffers were high on. Most of them haven't even noticed yet. omfg, the Brand O team sent around a notice for more "home parties" where the Dear Leader would appear ... I dunno on their twitters or whatever moronic tool they favor this nanosecond.
The topic will be health care and they've morphed the Pepsi-Nike-Obama logo with the health staff doctors use for a nifty 1984 brave new backdrop image.
The first thing I saw was that cartoon and I thought this post was about health care...getting back to the subject, Digby compares this policy to the dystopian story by P.K. Dick where 'future crime' is monitored and prevented by a police force tapping into the minds of clairvoyants.
She also says that when apologists for this policy say that the 'terrorists' can be locked away for their own good and the safety of the general population, they're channeling the old Soviet regimes that imprisoned dissentients in psychiatric hospitals in lieu of the gulags.
"And a few still continue their rationalizing and defense (of Obama), with illogical excuses such as 'He's been in office for only 20 days, give the man a break!' and 'He's had only 50 days in office, give him a chance!' and currently, 'be reasonable - how much can a man do in 120 days?!' I am going to give this logic, or lack of, a slight spicing of reason, then, turn it around, and present it as: If 'the man' can do this much astounding damage, whether to our civil liberties, or to our notion of democracy, or to government integrity, in 'only' 120 days, may God help us with the next [(4 X 365) - 120] days." -- Sibel Edmonds at OpEdNews
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