Monday, January 17, 2011

If It Can Be Done To One American, It Can Be Done To Any Of Us

I'm talking about what's happening to Gulet Mohamed, an American citizen detained in Kuwait, with no due process (how common is that becoming), apparently abusively interrogated, and unable to return to America because 1) Kuwait requires deportees to be placed on a direct flight to their country of citizenship, and 2) The U.S. government has placed Mohamed on the no-fly list, refusing to provide an explanation of why. (Mohamed found out by purchasing a ticket and being denied boarding of the plane.)

Please read Greenwald's post. If this can be done to Mohamed, it can be done to any of us. Welcome to our world of executive-only rule, otherwise known as dictatorship.

UPDATE:  If you fly (I don't), and if you take your laptop and cellphone with you when you fly, please read this Greenwald post:

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it's sometimes easy to lose perspective of just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are.  One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary.  Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security's practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products -- laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like -- copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it.  Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime.  It's completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained.  There's no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing.  And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse -- not even to have their property returned to them.

...
The Bill of Rights is gone. Gone. All the fine speeches made by President Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, etc. about our being a beacon of freedom to the world are just so much crap, nothing more. Welcome to totalitarian America; enjoy your stay.

2 comments:

  1. "abusively interrogated" It's everywhere, even on the local level. Last week an armed thug broke into our tiny local bank, and held one the middle aged ladies at the teller with a gun to her head and threatened to kill the other five women who worked there. After, he fled they called the cops (county Sheriff ) who then proceeded to detain all the six women employees, marched then out with hands held above their heads---handcuffed and then frog-marched down the Main Street for interrogation. F'ing outrageous and unbelievably, all the local sheepel are nodding their heads at, Cops do what they gotta do. I say wrong. When militia and their secret cults of oath takers become local government then Fascism has fully arrived.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 'Outrageous' doesn't cover this! I guess the Constitution has been suspended and no one thought to tell us.

    ReplyDelete

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