'Obama depletes rights of US citizens'
Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:43PM
Interview with, Gordon Duff, Senior editor, Veterans Today, Ohio.
President Obama's State of the Union address makes a lot of promises, but why hasn't he delivered on them in the past four years?
Press TV talks with Gordon Duff, Senior editor, Veterans Today, Ohio discusses this problem further in the context of laws that President Obama and the US Congress have passed during his tenure that have depleted the US constitution and the rights of Americans. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Talking about the police conduct during the Occupy Wall Street protests there's been 6,000 arrests including journalist arrests. Looking at what happened in Brooklyn at an auction house that auctioned foreclosed homes - that included 35 arrests by the way.
For the year 2011, 2500 homes were foreclosed each day. What has the US president done in that regards? If you calculate it that's 875,000 for the year - I want this to be a debate about the US President Barak Obama and what he hasn't done, but the Occupy movements, for example, this is what is highlighting. Are we to see the effects of the Occupy in this arena?
Duff: One of the key issues… is that while Obama has been talking about controlling Wall Street… I'm a Democrat, I had been an Obama supporter, but Obama has been supporting stealth legislation, in this case, de-criminalizing the illegal repossession of homes. Much of the mortgage industry in the US has been operating in an extra-legal fashion.
I go further than most to some extent. The last ten years of my life living herein the US, I'm one of the editors of a veteran's publication - Stephen Lendman is a columnist with us - We are the largest independent news source right now in the US and I'm beginning to look on our government and our police as mid-level organized crime.
I have no idea who they're answerable to whether it's Wall Street or some imaginary conspiracy, but it is nothing like a government. During the State of the Union address, of course, the president ignored Occupy Wall Street entirely, but he did mention much of the rhetoric that we wanted to hear.
The problem is that the promises that he was making during his State of the Union, he's had four years to deliver on these promises and he's done the opposite.
Several weeks ago he signed our National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. Components within that Act utterly abrogate the US constitution and set up an official permanent state of martial law in the US.
Why is this being done specifically? It's my belief that President Obama has put into action the mechanism necessary should Occupy Wall Street grow as we expect it to in the spring, to turn it into what's going to be the equivalent of civil war. He's going to unleash the police using a legal system well beyond our constitution to shut this country down.
The US has been moving increasingly toward a police state, not just management of the press, but legalization of crime. Our own government; our own Congress has passed laws that have put themselves above the law in the US.
Not only do we have billions of dollars coming into our electoral system, we have no idea - because this is corporate money; much of it from overseas, at least 400 billion dollars of drug money came in last year to be used in elections - We have no idea who's buying our government anymore or who our leaders are answerable to.
Press TV: Is the US a police state? Can we compare it to what happened in Egypt with police brutality? One of our other guests doesn't think the US is a police state by definition.
Duff: You mentioned Egypt, Veteran's Today has a bureau in Egypt and we were deeply involved from day number one there. We have followed this very closely and we have certainly followed the parallels here (in the US). I listened to you point out what had happened in New York; it happens across the US and it isn't just that we have police that are out of control, we have a court system that doesn't act.
In this case… we passed a law in the US, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Specific areas of this law are directly in violation of the US constitution and yet not a single Federal judge; not a single US attorney; not a single state attorney general has challenged language that no one can argue isn't in total violation of American law.
We have passed laws that violate our freedom of speech; we have passed laws that have eliminated due process; we have suspended habeas corpus in the US since 2005; and we have a legal system that doesn't respond to violations.
Essentially we no longer have a constitution - and we have no constitution - Since we no longer even function under the most basic aspects of Magna Carta, calling this a police state… yeah… I guess if you don't call it a police state what are you going to call it, feudalism? That's probably a better description.
SC/JR
