Sherwood Ross - America's "Democratic Dictatorship": The Defense Authorization Act will Destroy The Bill of Rights

By Sherwood Ross

Global Research, December 11, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28158 The grim face of totalitarianism is emerging in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) now before Congress This bill is the last mile post on America’s sad, well-traveled road to the butcher shop of dictatorship. We have been headed that way for some time and, with a little help from Congress, we’ll arrive there shortly, putting an ugly end to the American experiment. The Senate December 1st passed the bill by a vote of 93-7. In the name of “defense,” NDAA underwrites $662-billion for continued U.S. aggression in our many foreign wars while, on the domestic front, it incinerates the last surviving shreds of the Bill of Rights. According to the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), it authorizes presidents “to order the military to pick up and imprison people, including U.S. citizens, without charging them or putting them on trial.” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) So much for Amendment VI to our Constitution that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.” Just destroying your protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment means the bill’s authors Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona don’t have to bother with junking anything else. Once you’re imprisoned you won’t need any other “stinkin’ rights.” The ACLU charges the provisions of NDAA “were negotiated by a small group of members of Congress, in secret, and without proper congressional review (and), are inconsistent with fundamental American values embodied in the Constitution....(our) fundamental freedoms are on the line.”

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Statement from Office of Senator Bernie Sanders - Sanders Files ‘Saving American Democracy Amendment’

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/08-6

Vermont Senator Calls for Constitutional Amendment to Protect Democracy from Citizens United

Statement from Office of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

WASHINGTON – Warning that “American democracy in endangered,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations on U.S. elections.

Warning that “American democracy in endangered,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations on U.S. elections. The first constitutional amendment ever proposed by Sanders during his two decades in Congress would reverse the narrow 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission. In that controversial decision almost two years ago, justices gave corporations the same First Amendment free-speech rights as people.

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Michael Hudson - Debt and Democracy -- Has the Link been Broken?

By Prof. Michael Hudson 

Global Research, December 6, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28076

*This article was first published in German in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, December 2, 2011.

Book V of Aristotle’s Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies – which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to “take the multitude into their camp” and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.

Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts – always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders (“tyrants” to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state.

Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts.[1] For a sovereign’s debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges.

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Cesar Chelala - How to Own a Congressman

Published on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/22-1 

by César Chelala

A widespread perception that Congress people respond increasingly to special interests has received additional support from a person who knows something about it. In a cynical interview with Lesley Stahl, from “60 minutes” Jack Abramoff, one of the most notorious lobbyists in recent times, explains the tactics that he used in dealing with people in Congress. In addition, he gives a chilling assessment of recent reforms intended to change this situation.

Infamous Washington D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff reveals how he kept hundreds of Bush-era congressional staffers in his pocket. In 2011, it was estimated that there were over 13,000 registered federal lobbyists based in Washington, DC. They spend huge amounts of money on their work, up to $3.5 billion in 2010 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Their competence as individuals, groups or corporations to lobby the government is protected by the right to petition clause in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

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Les Leopold - Five Ways that Financial Elites are Destroying Democracy

By Les Leopold, AlterNet

Posted on November 21, 2011, Printed on November 22, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153169/five_ways_that_financial_elites_are_destroying_democracy

Is democracy compatible with a financial system run by billionaires? Maybe not. Here are five ways that high finance is undermining democracy: 

1. Billionaires replace one person, one vote.

Ask any American what’s wrong with our country and they will say that money rules politics. And they are correct. It’s obvious that major political donors and lobbyists for the super-rich have more political influence than we do. As the top 1 percent gains more and more of the nation’s income, the 99 percent effectively become disenfranchised. And of course, the Citizens United Supreme Court decision makes it even easier for the rich to buy political power. Lopsided campaign contributions by and for the super-rich are making a mockery out of elections. In 2010, for example, business outspent labor by a factor of 14 to 1. 

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Robert Reich - The Corporate Pledge of Allegiance

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock'

Posted: 11/8/11

Despite what the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney say, corporations aren't people. (I'll believe they are when Georgia and Texas start executing them.)

The Court thinks corporations have First Amendment rights to spend as much as they want on politics, and Romney (and most of his fellow Regressives) think they need lower taxes and fewer regulations in order to be competitive.

These positions are absurd on their face. By flooding our democracy with their shareholders' money, big corporations are violating their shareholders' First Amendment rights because shareholders aren't consulted. They're simultaneously suppressing the First Amendment rights of the rest of us because, given how much money they're throwing around, we don't have enough money to be heard.

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Paul Craig Roberts: Western Democracy: A Farce And A Sham

November 3, 2011

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Western-Democracy-A-Farce-by-paul-craig-roberts-111103-702.html

By paul craig roberts In America the people have no voice whatsoever. The sheeple are content to be protected by "security," porno-scanners, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, and sexual groping. To carry on the hoax "war on terror," the US government has elevated itself above the law. Every day that passes adds to the fraudulent image of what is called Western democracy.   Consider that the entire Western world is outraged that the Greek prime minister announced that he is going to permit the Greek people to decide their own fate instead of having it decided for them by a handful of banksters, politicians, and bureaucrats living it up at taxpayer expense at "talks" in the French resort of Cannes on the Mediterranean.  The Greek economy is facing its fourth year of decline and lacks the revenues to service its national debt held by private European banks. The banks don't want to lose any money, so a handful of power brokers reached an agreement with representatives of the Greek government to write off some of the debt in exchange for EU capital subsidies to be financed by inflicting severe austerity on the Greek population. Wages, salaries, pensions and medical care are being cut while the rate of unemployment rises to depression levels. Government employees are laid off. Valuable public properties are to be sold to private parties for pennies on the dollar. In short, Greece is to be looted.

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"Paul Joseph Watson" - Occupy Wall Street Protesters suckered into a trap

Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very “solutions” that are part of the financial elite’s agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government.

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"Danny Schechter" - Unions Promise Support As #OccupyWallStreet Enters Third Week

#OccupyWallStreet has yet to attract the 20,000 militants they had hoped for but its growing and, more importantly retaining its sense of community, non-violence, and sense of a tolerant community. Most important is that similar actions are already taking place in other cities like a March on Friday in Boston against the Bank of America. An even bigger one is being planned for Washington in October. Other organizations are supporting this emerging movement. Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union say they “applaud the courage of the young people on Wall Street,” and are planning to turn out their members next week. I saw T Shirts of UAW members and met some activists from the Salvadorian community. Already #OccupyWallStreet sent over a hundred people to back a protest by postal workers trying to save their jobs and the Post Office. The longer this lasts, and is allowed to last, the more it is likely to grow.

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Chris Hedges: #OccupyTogether -- The Best Among Us

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

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