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Friday, November 19, 2010

A cynical, totalitarian-bent U.S. ruling class ratchets the machinery of state tighter and tighter

From:
Guilty Until Proven Guilty

(American Conservative blog) -- by Philip Giraldi --

Is it too much to suggest that the federal government is putting all the tools in place that could one day lead to a totalitarian regime? Patriot Acts, Military Commissions, NSA domestic spying, state secrets privilege, national security letters, and now a bill moving through the Senate that will permit censorship of the internet. The constitution backed up by the judiciary should be protecting us from the invasive policies of the legislature and executive but has manifestly failed to do so.

While one does not expect much from “analysis” coming from the mainstream media, the tone of some recent press coverage has been particularly disturbing. Driving into Washington yesterday I listened to a succession of NPR news broadcasts. All reported Wednesday’s acquittal of Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani on 284 of 285 counts relating to the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Saalam. The coverage suggested that the trial was a failure from the point of view of the Obama Administration in that it did not obtain a complete conviction. The Washington Post went ever further, reporting that the outcome supported the validity of “concerns that it would be harder to win convictions in civilian court.” Proposed solutions aired by the Post include military tribunals where the rules of evidence are less stringent and also to avoid trials completely through the option “to hold others indefinitely and without trial under the laws of war.”...

Now for all we know Ghailani might be guilty, but the government was unable to make the case. The presumption by our political class that the threat of terrorism means that you need to create separate legal systems designed to convict rather than to protect constitutional rights is about as wrongheaded as can be and it is astonishing that many Americans are supporting such a disturbing concept. The right to defend oneself before a jury composed of peers is fundamental to maintain our remaining liberties. Ghailani has been held for six years at CIA prisons and at Guantanamo and will be spending 20 more years in jail, so he is hardly an imminent danger to society, but the argument that someone is a terrorist just because a CIA interrogator thinks that to be the case must be tested in our courts lest all of us someday wind up being judged as terrorists every time we oppose what the government is doing...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

This is exactly how totalitarian regimes are born. Laws, executive orders, legal rulings, an entire regiment of onerous precedents set, all ratcheting up more and more government power one after the other, and before too long a totalitarian ruling class and its police state stooges have us all in a legal, political, social, economic and governmental straight jacket.

Don’t think for a second that this isn’t entirely by design; indeed, the ruling class that cynically implements these sadistic and liberty-killing measures knows full well what it’s doing, and is engaged in a premeditated, self-serving, self-empowering and self-enriching strategy, counting on the gullibility and apathy of the masses to let it happen, and then again on the machinery of state to provide the rationale and physical mechanisms for human rights and civil rights abuses and, before too long, state kidnappings, torture, and mass murder.

The scary thing is that so many useful idiots out there actually believe in the ostensible ideological goals that are used as the Trojan horse to usher in the oppression of their own offspring -- or at least pretend to because of their own complicity.

We live in sad, sick times governed by sub-standard elders and counterfeit “elites” of low honor and even lower character.

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