Legislating Tyranny

Stephen Lendman

Resistance is a national imperative.
The alternative is full-blown tyranny.
No one should accept this anywhere anytime.

Police state lawlessness reflects official US policy. Numerous examples explain. Congress opposes fundamental freedoms. It terrorizes most people. So do rogue US administrations. Washington is more ruthless today than ever.

Waging war on humanity is much worse. It's ongoing globally. It's reflected in congressional legislation. Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF - September 2001) approved open-ended permanent wars. They rage out-of-control. They do so at home and abroad.

The FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) targets freedom. It prioritizes militarism and permanent wars. It authorizes over $600 billion for global belligerence, mass killing and destruction. It's a portion of what America spends overall. Around $1.5 trillion or more annually goes for domestic and foreign militarism. It's authorized when America's only enemies are ones it invents. It's on top of trillions of dollars of Pentagon waste, fraud and grand theft.

In December 2006, George Bush signed FY 2007 NDAA into law. Included were hidden sections 1076 and 333. Media scoundrels ignored them. They amended the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. They prohibited using federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement. They did so except as constitutionally allowed or expressly authorized by Congress in times of insurrection or other national emergency.

Presidents can now claim emergency powers. They can declare martial law unilaterally. They can suspend the Constitution. They can do it on alleged "national security" grounds. They can deploy federal and/or National Guard troops on US streets. They can do it to suppress whatever is called disorder. It includes lawful peaceful protests. America's First Amendment permits them. Congress and Bush acted unconstitutionally. They did numerous times throughout Bush's tenure. Things got worse under Obama.


In India, a spectre for us all, and a resistance coming

John Pilger

In five-star hotels on Mumbai's seafront, children of the rich squeal joyfully as they play hide and seek. Nearby, at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts, people arrive for the Mumbai Literary Festival: famous authors and notables drawn from India's Raj class. They step deftly over a woman lying across the pavement, her birch brooms laid out for sale, her two children silhouettes in a banyan tree that is their home.

It is Children's Day in India. On page nine of the Times of India, a study reports that every second child is malnourished. Nearly two million children under the age of five die every year from preventable illness as common as diarrhoea. Of those who survive, half are stunted due to a lack of nutrients. The national school dropout rate is 40 per cent. Statistics like these flow like a river permanently in flood. No other country comes close. The small thin legs dangling in a banyan tree are poignant evidence.

The leviathan once known as Bombay is the centre for most of India's foreign trade, global financial dealing and personal wealth. Yet at low tide on the Mithi River, in ditches, at the roadside, people are forced to defecate. Half the city's population is without sanitation and lives in slums without basic services.

This has doubled since the 1990s when "Shining India" was invented by an American advertising firm as part of the Hindu nationalist BJP party's propaganda that it was "liberating" India's economy and "way of life". Barriers protecting industry, manufacturing and agriculture were demolished. Coke, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, Monsanto and Rupert Murdoch entered what had been forbidden territory.

Limitless "growth" was now the measure of human progress, consuming both the BJP and Congress, the party of independence. Shining India would catch up China and become a superpower, a "tiger", and the middle classes would get their proper entitlement in a society where there was no middle. As for the majority in the "world's largest democracy", they would vote and remain invisible. There was no tiger economy for them.


As 2014 begins, New York City’s homeless population continues to grow

Elliott Vernon


Shanika, a mother of two children, has been homeless for
two-and-a-half years since she came to New York City from
Georgia to stay with her mother, who subsequently lost her
section 8 housing subsidy. - She's caught in a catch-22.

According to the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) presented to Congress by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in November, nearly 64,000 people, including 22,000 children, are homeless in New York City.

In 2013, the number of homeless in New York City increased by 13 percent compared to January 2012. New York State led the nation with the largest increase over 2012. These statistics, coming on top of federal cuts to unemployment benefits and food stamps, reveal the increasing misery in the city with the largest number of billionaires on the planet.

A recent report in the New York Times describes the city’s upsurge in homelessness as “occurring even as the local economy has recovered,” as though the phenomenon were paradoxical. But the exacerbation of New York’s longstanding housing and homelessness crisis is inevitable, given the policies of the Bloomberg administration and the spiraling inequality that is a feature of daily life in America’s largest city.

The economic recovery is a myth for all but the wealthiest. Ninety-five percent of income gains since the 2008 recession have gone to the top 1 percent. Over its four terms in office, the Bloomberg administration has responded to New York’s housing crisis with programs that rely on market forces and tax breaks for real estate developers to incentivize the creation of affordable housing. The failure of these programs is self-evident as the numbers of homeless people continue to break records, rising by 69 percent in 12 years.


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