Obama Signs Police State Legislation

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Tuesday January 03, 2012 23:48

by T

USA is now officially a Police State

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law on New Year’s Eve. The bill provides a massive $662 billion for the US war machine and makes unprecedented inroads into democratic rights, authorizing the US military to seize individuals anywhere in the world and hold them in a military detention facility indefinitely, without a trial or any other legal recourse.

There was some discussion of this bill on the Internet and the consequences of it are so radical and far reaching that many thought Obama would veto it but mainly for tactial reasons. And now that he has signed it, this will send a shiver down the spine of any thinking person.

Some quotes from the report on the WSWS site are:

Congressional Democrats and Republicans ratified the NDAA in a series of House and Senate votes in November and December that beat back nearly all efforts to set limits to the presidential power to arrest and imprison without trial or charge. As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham emphasized during the congressional debate, the legislation defines the entire world to be part of the battlefield against Al Qaeda, including the territory of the United States itself, making every human being on the planet, including every American citizen, a potential prisoner of the American military.

The NDAA effectively revokes the oldest democratic right, habeas corpus, which bars arbitrary imprisonment by requiring that the government present evidence to a judge or court to justify taking a person into custody. This right was first asserted in England during the Middle Ages and finally established and codified in the course of the English Revolution of the 17th century, which shattered the arbitrary power of the monarchy and established the supremacy of parliament. Full text is at the link below: