ThirstyFish

On February 6, 2013, plaintiffs and activists on the Stop the NDAA! Panel discussed the state of the NDAA laswuit and the broader implications of the case. Journalist Chris Hedges and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg summarized their concerns as:

Daniel Ellsberg: "We don't live in a police state now. We don't expect to leave this room and be rounded up ... And the day may come when that will be a very different matter. What we have is the complete infrastructure of a police state ... The big question is what to do about it."

Chris Hedges: "What has happened is that, we have undergone a corporate coup d'etat. And it's over; They've won. The major structural assaults carried out by the Bush Administration have been embraced by the Obama Administration. ... Whether it is the expansion of imperial war, drone attacks, the looting of the U.S. treasury by Wall Street, most importantly the assault on civil liberties: ... The radical interpretation of the AUMF to authorize the assassination of American citizens, the FISA Amendment Act, which retroactively makes legal, what under our constitution has traditionally been illegal; the warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping of American citizens, ... the use of the Espionage Act ... to shutdown whistleblowers. ... Anything that challenges the official narrative, anyone, within the system of power with a conscience, who rises up to expose warcrimes committed by our government will no longer speak. And finally, the NDAA. And you have to ask why. Why is there a steady assault, stripping away of our most cherished civil liberties? ... What's happening is that the corporate state, ... 'harvesting' the nation, stealing as much as they can on the way down, knows, that [due to] the combination of economic decline and climate change, ... they know that, eventually there will be blowback; eventually people will respond. And they want the powers to, in essence, criminalize any type of dissent. And that's what this is about."

Take action, Stop the NDAA! Videos: First Panel and Second Panel.

Song of the Day: La Llorona - Chavela Vargas (1961)