Jonathan Easley: Ron Paul says Defense Bill assures Descent into Totalitarianism!i

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by Congress this month, will accelerate the country's "slip into tyranny" and virtually assures "our descent into totalitarianism." "The founders wanted to set a high bar for the government to over -come in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty," Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, said Monday in a weekly phone message to supporter. "To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured. The Patriot Act, as bad as its violations against the Fourth Amendment was, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act continues that slip into tyranny, and in fact, accelerates it significantly." The NDAA is the nearly $670 billion defense bill that covers the military budget, and funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One controversial provision  mandates the detention of terror suspects, and reaffirms the administration's authority to detain those suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. "The Fifth Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning," Paul continued. "It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about the due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason, and with no evidence presented, and without access to legal council. The danger of the NDAA is its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial."

Robert Johnson: US Civilians Decide Whom to Kill with Military Drones!

President Obama's enormous expansion of the US drone program may be pushing too fast for military staffing to keep up: David S Cloud of the Los Angeles Times reports that the military is now forced to rely on a string of civilian contractors placed at all levels along the "kill chain." These are the people who analyze incoming drone video, and decide when to fire Hellfire missiles. According to Cloud, an American civilian played a "central role" in the Predator attack that accidentally killed 15 Afghans in 2010, information that "surprised" the investigating Army officer. Manning the drone fleet is a mounting issue in the Air Force. It takes more staff to fly a drone than an F-15, and with more drones than ever in the air, non-government employees are increasingly employed to analyze video, and keep the UAVs in the air. The Air Force says it takes 168 people to fly a Predator for 24 hours, and 300 people to keep a Global Hawk aloft for the same time. The Air Force owns 230 Reapers, Predators, and Global Hawks, flying 50 of them at any given time, but the 730 more drones being added to the fleet over the next ten years explains why military personnel are now being asked to fly four drones at once! 

The Telegraph: US Eyes first BP Criminal Carges over Gulf Oil Spill!

US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, the Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday. The charges, if brought and prosecuted by the US Justice Department would be the first criminal charges over the disaster: Prosecutors are focusing on US-based BP engineers and at least one supervisor, who they say may have provided false information to regulators on the risks of deep water drilling in the Gulf. Felony charges for providing false information in federal documents may be made public early next year, said the Wall-Street Journal. A conviction on that charge would carry a fine and up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has already issued a second list of violations regarding BP's operation of the Macondo well that blew out in April 2010, causing the worst maritime environmental disaster in history. The US drilling safety agency has said it determined BP failed to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test in one area of the well. In four different sections of the well, BP failed to suspend drilling operations at the Macondo, when the safe drilling margin was not maintained, the agency said. An explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 people, and the well gushed oil into the ocean for 87 days, polluting the southern US shoreline, and crippling the local tourism and fishing sectors.

Tony Greenstein: In Israel They Shackle Palestinian Children!

Perhaps the most shocking of all things in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the way that children are treated. It is unimaginable that a Jewish Israeli child would be brought to court in shackles, or even be placed in a court of law. Beatings and abuse of children by the Israeli military is common, and judges, such as the one below, don't even blink an eye. Thus is legal racism established! Below is a paper circulated by Dr Derek Summerfield from Defense for Children International, Palestine Section, on the shooting of children working near the northern border of Gaza. True, in the military courtroom itself, Palestinians are neither shot nor beaten. They are not 'targeted for elimination' nor even sentenced to death, at least not in the courtroom. But the military court is also a place where all illusions die, and hopes! Because that is where Palestinians learn that injury caused them is no error, nor misunderstand -ing, but a matter of policy. That is where they learn that law, regarding Palestinians is nothing short of another kind of weapon, one of many. Among the tanks and planes, and cluster bombs and checkpoints and Separation Walls and white phosphorus and the IOF spokesman: The military court is the end of ends, the last judgment, the final accusation, apriori, of Palestinians only because they are Palestinians. In courtroom number 2, where children are put on trial, is the place beyond that end. Only two family members are allowed to come to the trial. This is usually the only time they can come to see their son, and they do! Time after time. They may bring cigarettes and money for the long day awaiting them. Nothing else! Not even medication, tissues, food, a book or a newspaper. Visitors are allowed to bring a notebook and a pen, but no tissues. We have no privileges concerning tissues!     

The Independent: The Battle for Israel's Soul!

If the State of Israel is threatened, the assumption has been, that threat comes from outside, from militant Palestinian groups vowing to drive it into the sea or, more recently, from Iran. It is increasingly apparent, however, that the survival of Israel as a democratic and modern state  is also threatened from within, specifically by its own ultra-Orthodox minority. Economically, a far larger proportion of ultra-Orthodox Jews rely on the state for support than do other Israelis. They represent a diplomatic and security liability, spearheading unauthorized settlements and refusing military service on conscientious grounds. In their politics and social mores, they are deeply conservative, and their big families mean that their influence is growing faster than that of any other group. This is leading to more and more conflicts within Israel itself. Scuffles in Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem this week, and a protest rally against the harassment by ultra-Orthodox men of girls on their way to school are just the latest, and most virulent instances of this culture clash spilling out on to the street. While many senior politicians, including President Shimon Peres, and the opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, have come out in spoken support of Israel's secular democracy, their efforts only illustrate how difficult it is to defend moderation against zealotry of whatever kind. This is a struggle for the soul of Israel, and it is not going away.  

Nile Bowie: Naked Neo-Imperialism for Post-Gadhafi Libya!

While the unconcealed hypocrisy that led to the emergence of a new Libya fades from the public consciousness, the governments of the West are beginning to reap the the profits of their invest -ments. Under a mandate to protect civilians, these allied forces armed radical factions of Islamist fighters, and showered white phosphorus tipped ordnance onto densely populated residential areas. While sponsoring politicians equated the Libyan rebels to "heroic" advocates of western democracy, fighting for freedom, these "men"committed racially motivated beheadings and executions of migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa, and filled mass graves with the corpses of their fellow countrymen, especially Gaddafi loyalists. Before being sodomized with a combat knife and extra judicially assassinated by foreign funded rebel fighters, Muammar Gadhafi oversaw one of Africa's most prosperous nations. With an annual economic growth of 10% and extensive programs for social welfare, public healthcare and education, Libya was viewed as a place of relative opportunity with numerous jobs for migrant workers from neighboring countries in the region. Gadhafi advocated the creation of an African Union with its own Central Bank and Monetary Fund, and a Gold Dinar currency, a move that would directly threaten the financial oligarchy of the Franco-Anglo-American powers that funded his demise.

E. J. Dionne: Obama: The Conservative In 2012!

Obama, the conservative in 2012: At a moment when the nation wonders whether politicians can agree on anything, here is something that unites the Republican presidential candidates, and all of them with President Obama: Everyone agrees that the 2012 election will be a turning point involving one of the most momentous choices in American history. True, candidates and columnists regularly cast the impending election as the most important ever. Campaigning last week in Pella, Iowa, Republican Rick Santorum acknowledged as much, but he insisted that this time, the choice really was that fundamental. "The debate," he said, "is about who we are." Speaking not far away in Mount Pleasant, Newt Gingrich went even further, and was more specific. "This is the most important election since 1860," he said, "because there's such a dramatic difference between the best food-stamp president in history, and the best paycheck candidate." Thus did Gingrich combine historic sweep with a cheap and inaccurate attack. Nonetheless, it says a great deal that Gingrich chose to reach all the way back to the election that helped spark the Civil War.