Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

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What this country needs—and what the Occupation has made possible—is a national campaign to cancel student debt. And we can make this happen, if a million students
pledge to withhold their debt payments from the banks.

MCM

From Bertell Ollman:

This original and potentially very important action that requires your immediate action.

It involves circulating a PLEDGE to those who already owe or will soon owe student debts NOT TO PAY THEM AS SOON AS ONE MILLION PEOPLE ALSO SIGN THE SAME PLEDGE.

Please note that no one is being asked to stop paying their debt now, so no one who simply makes
the pledge is risking any punishment. What happens later… well, obviously that will all depend on many things starting with how many people sign it and how far they are willing to go in carrying it out, since individuals who sign can always opt out.

As the number of signers grow, the possible effects range from – at a minimum – making student
debt a major public issue with banks as well as politicians (esp. in this election year) mixing their threats with offers of debt refrom, to – at a maximum – …. well, given the interrelatedness of all our social and economic problems, I won’t deny you the pleasure of giving free rein to your imaginations
on this one.

Bertell

The pledge—which you can sign if you’re a student, whether debtor or non-debtor, or if you’re on a university or college faculty—is here:

http://occupystudentdebtcampaign.org

Excerpt from site:

Welcome to the Occupy Student Debt Campaign. This campaign is a response to the student debt crisis and the dependency of U.S. higher education on debt-financing from the people it is supposed to serve. There is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders. Education is a right and a public good, and it should be properly funded as such.

http://occupystudentdebtcampaign.org

Tanks in Small Towns
By James Fallows

Thanks to many, many people who have written in about the ongoing militarization of the police, and the ramifications of police over-reaction to the Occupy movement in Davis, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Will format* and share some of these tonight or tomorrow. For the moment, here is just one, from a U.S. Army veteran:

If you liked the wheeled APC in Galax Virginia, you’re gonna love the M113 with a cupola mounted .50 cal machine gun that Richland County SC picked up [ a few years ago].

Note the SWAT team posing around the vehicle with submachineguns. Lovely.

As a former US Army Cavalry soldier, I have to say I am astonished and horrified that anybody in law enforcement would think that an M2 .50 cal machine gun has any place at all in a police force. It is a weapon made to destroy vehicles (like light tanks, APC’s and helicopters) and unreinforced buildings. A single round can literally tear a person in half if hits him in the abdomen. It will go through your house and the house after that and then continue blithely along for another mile or more until it hits something else.

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For more—and to donate to this man’s defense fund—go to http://www.lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/.

MCM

The Martyrdom of Lawrence Brose
Avant-garde artist denies Homeland Security child porn charges
Published: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 6:10 PM CST
BY DOUG IRELAND

The entire weight of the US Department of Homeland Security, set up to protect us from terrorists, is being used to crush an avant-garde queer filmmaker and visual artist who has created more than 30 experimental films since 1983 that deal largely with homosexuality, homophobia, AIDS, and related topics –– yet there has been hardly a word written about this case in the LGBT press and nary a squeak of protest from treasury-rich national gay institutions.

Lawrence Brose, now 60 years old, was a well-known member of Western New York’s artistic community, the long-time executive director of Buffalo’s CEPA Gallery –– a distinguished haven for the visual arts –– and a noted advocate for public arts funding when he was arrested in November 2009 by agents of the Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) and charged with possession of what the federal government claimed was “child pornography.”

“There is no allegation of Brose creating these images, sending the images on to anyone else, or trying to make contact with minors,” Brose’s attorney, Paul Cambria, said.

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Naomi Wolf’s ‘Shocking Truth’ About the ‘Occupy Crackdowns’ Offers Anything but the Truth
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on November 26, 2011, Printed on November 27, 2011

There has been a flurry of speculation surrounding various reports suggesting that a “coordinated,” nationwide crack-down on the Occupy Movement is underway. The problem with these stories lies in the fact that the word “coordinated” is too vague to offer any analytic value.

The difference between local officials talking to each other — or federal law enforcement agencies advising them on what they see as “best practices” for evicting local occupations — and some unseen hand directing, incentivizing or coercing municipalities to do so when they would not otherwise be so inclined is not a minor one. It’s not a matter of semantics or a distinction without difference. As I wrote recently, “if federal authorities were ordering cities to crack down on their local occupations in a concerted effort to wipe out a movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, that would indeed be a huge, and hugely troubling story. In the United States, policing protests is a local matter, and law enforcement agencies must remain accountable for their actions to local officials. Local government’s autonomy in this regard is an important principle.”

But there has not been a single report offered by any media outlet suggesting that anyone – federal officials or police organizations – is directing or in any way exerting pressure on cities to crack down on their occupations. Instead, there have been a lot of dark ruminations that such an effort is underway – notably by Naomi Wolf in an error-filled blog-post and a somewhat bizarre column for The Guardian in which Wolf takes an enormous leap away from any known facts to suggest that Congress is ordering cities to smash the Occupy Movement in order to preserve their own economic privilege.

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Why Do All Election Forecasters, Political Scientists, Academics and Media Pundits Avoid the Systemic Fraud Factor?
22NOV Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll)

http://richardcharnin.com/

It is about time that the so-called experts who promote overly complex or overly simplistic pre and post election models started to apply the scientific method and utilize a robust probability and statistical analysis- and factor in the election fraud variable.

It is often stated that exit polls were very accurate in elections prior to 2004, but have deviated sharply from the vote since. The statement is a misconception; it is based on a comparison of FINAL exit polls in elections prior to 2004 and PRELIMINARY exit polls since. It’s apples and oranges. But FINAL exit polls published in the media have always been FORCED to match the RECORDED vote. That’s why they APPEAR to have been accurate.

The RECORDED vote has deviated sharply from the TRUE VOTE in EVERY election since 1968. Yes, it is true: UNADJUSTED exit polls have ALWAYS been accurate. They closely matched the True Vote in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. FINAL exit polls have exactly matched the fraudulent RECORDED vote because they have been forced to do so.

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Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance

1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

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Written by Louis Weisberg
Walker appointee says workplace harassment of gays is legal
Nov 23, 2011

A commissioner on the board that makes final decisions in cases involving workplace discrimination says Wisconsin law does not prohibit anti-gay harassment on the job.

Her two fellow commissioners strongly disagree.

Laurie McCallum, who was recently appointed by Gov. Scott Walker to a six-year term on the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission, wrote that the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act applies only to sexual harassment. That contention was the basis for her dissenting opinion in a case involving Milwaukeean Chris Bowen, a machine operator who was subjected to years of anti-gay harassment as an employee of Stroh Precision Die Casting.

In a 2-1 decision, commissioners Robert Glaser and Ann L. Crump found that Stroh was responsible for fostering a workplace environment hostile to Bowen because of his sexual orientation. Stroh did not deny that the harassment occurred; nor did the company argue that anti-gay harassment is allowed under state law during the eight years that the case bounced around the court system.

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Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?
NOV 22 2011, 8:12 AM ET
Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened

When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama’s failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn’t even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn’t yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America’s premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president’s first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait’s telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration’s excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama’s approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama “has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes — expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime.”

Isn’t that something?

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