MEDIA ROOTS – Support to repeal the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) is growing as the Bush-Obama administrations continue to pursue the ongoing global ‘War on Terror’ of nearly twelve years.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges is on the front lines of the battle to nullify section 1021 – the indefinite detention clause of the NDAA – along with professor Noam Chomsky, activist Daniel Ellsberg, and author Naomi Wolf. Less than one month after President Obama signed the bill into law, this astute group sued the federal government for clauses that are, at best, constitutionally vague. Consequentially, Manhattan Federal Court temporarily sided with the plaintiffs by having issued an injunction on the indefinite detention clause which has since been appealed by the Obama administration.

The call to nullify the NDAA continues to surge around the country. Last month, the Clark County Republican Party Central Committee of Nevada unanimously called for its appeal while legislators in Michigan are currently considering a bill that could virtually revoke the federal law in that state.

Additionally, Ben Swann of WXIX recently suggested the president, and some members of Congress, may be in direct violation of the very law that they created by recently supporting Al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian opposition forces. He explains that “late last year, when Sen. John McCain co-wrote the National Defense Authorization Act, and President Obama signed it into law, they crafted a law that gave the president the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and associated forces, including the power to indefinitely detain anyone caught supporting Al-Qaeda, which in this case is the president and members of Congress.”

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

***

TRUTHDIG –  [Section 1021] of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.

In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.

Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court.

Read Chris Hedges’ complete article at Truthdig.

***

Photo provided by Flickr user DonkeyHotey.

MEDIA ROOTS — Capitalism Is The Crisis: Radical Politics in the Age of Austerity is a film featuring a diverse array of thinkers offering common sense analysis of the trappings of modern life and critical perspectives on basic assumptions of capitalism and democracy.  The film presents original interviews, including Chris Hedges, David Graeber, Derrick Jensen, Michael Hardt, Leo Panitch, David McNally.

The movie is about waking up our neighbours to the glaring ills plaguing our society. It argues that capitalism is the crisis and dares us to imagine saner alternatives.

“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”  —John D. Rockefeller, American oil magnate, robber baron

“The engines of corporatists cannot be halted.  They are impervious to the will of those who they exploit, they are more powerful than the governments they control, and they have built within them an inevitable, kind of, mechanism for self-annihilation because corporations have this strange pathology where they turn everything into a commodity.  Human beings become commodities.  The natural world becomes a commodity.  And you exploit these commodities until exhaustion or collapse.  And that’s precisely what’s happening.” —Chris Hedges

Messina

***

Capitalism is the Crisis

***

CAPITALISM IS THE CRISIS — The 2008 “financial crisis” in the United States was a systemic fraud in which the wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars. No one was jailed for this crime, the largest theft of public money in history.

Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their “crisis” through punitive “austerity” programs that gutted public services and repealed workers’ rights.

Austerity was named “Word of the Year” for 2010.

This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and recommends revolutionary paths for the future.

Special attention is devoted to the crisis in Greece, the 2010 G20 Summit protest in Toronto, Canada, and the remarkable surge of solidarity in Madison, Wisconsin.

It may be their crisis, but it’s our problem.

***

Photo by flickr user JHS

VBS TV– For part one of Vice’s recent journey into Pakistan, Vice founder Suroosh Alvi travels to Bin Laden’s infamous compound, chats with Osama’s neighbors, and visits a local university to see what people really think about having lived next to America’s most vilified fugitive for the past five years. Unsurprisingly, their concern lies less with the proximity of Bin Laden than the chaos that his death has sparked.

Although the controversy over whether or not Pakistan was harboring Bin Laden and the “trust deficit” is the primary focus for the American media, Pakistani news is busy covering the onslaught of violence that has broken out since the May 2nd raid. The people have seen a marked increase in American drone attacks, while the Taliban continues its retaliation with a relentless wave of suicide bombings. Anti-American sentiment has never run higher and this turbulent nation clearly has bigger issues than Bin Laden’s death to contend with.

© 2011 VBS TV

Photo by Flickr user ssoosay

YAHOO NEWS– The latest sex abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal, who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.

Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51 year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday on pedophilia and drugs charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile phone conversations Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys, but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are OK. Look for needy boys, who have family issues,” he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is also head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy released this week on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse. 

Bagnasco said when he met the Pope this weekend he “asked for a particular blessing for my archdiocese,” in light of the accused crimes, adding that “like every father toward a son (feels) great pain in seeing a priest who is not faithful to his vocation.”

Read full article about Priest Sex Abuse Case Hits Archdiocese Powerful Cardinal.

© 2011 Yahoo News

Photo by Flickr user kevingessner

DAILY POLITICAL– When it comes to knowing where President Obama was born, 45 percent of Republicans appear to believe that he was not born in America, according to the results of a New York Times/CBS poll. About a third agreed he was born in America and 22 percent say they aren’t sure.

These results match a similar poll done in February that resulted in 51 percent of Republican’s saying Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and 28 percent saying he was born in the U.S.

In another New York Times/CBS survey, 57 percent of all adults overall say the president was born in America, while 25 percent of registered voters say he was born outside the U.S. and 18 percent weren’t sure.

Read more about Forty-five Percent of Republicans Say Obama Not Born in U.S.

© 2011 Daily Political

Photo by flickr user Criticalmoss