'…where there is no law, there is no freedom' - John Locke
The news is the President of a nation has ordered the murder of one of his countrymen. And if you think this is some tin-pot dictator in a banana republic or one of those bad commie states like North Korea, you are sadly mistaken. The president is Barak Hussein Obama and you know the country he heads.
In an unprecedented move — well not so unprecedented because the CIA has been bumping off people they see as ant-American like nobody's business since its establishment — Barack Obama has ordered the assassination of Anwar Awalaki a US citizen without any recourse to matters legal, exposing once again the hollowness of US claims to 'right of law', 'civil liberties' and all that jazz.
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| Anwar Awlaki: Ordered to be killed |
The US has accused Awalaki of terrorism and of posing a threat to the security of the state. In short Awalaki is being accused of treason. Well, that's okay. But if you are to read the American constitution then you can assume -- even believe -- he would be given a 'fair trial' before he is murdered or vapourised. And it's not impossible to get a 'fair' trial in US courts.
George Bush got a 'fair' trial in the Florida Supreme Court that made him president as we all know. And the Pakistani scientist Dr. Afia Siddiqui got a 'fair' trial in the US when she got an 84 years sentence in jail for attempting to kill US agents in Afghanistan.
But the fact (or is it fiction?) is that the US constitution, established by the much revered Founding Fathers, states 'No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court'.
So being, the kind hearted constitutional expert, did Obama go to court? Yes, sir, he did. Not to fix Awalaki but to move the court to quash the lawsuit filed by his father who is seeking an order to prevent the President from killing his son without due process of the law. Obama's Ministry of Justice (sic) wants the court to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Anwar Awlaki's impending 'targeted killing' is a state secret! 'Targeted killing' is an Orwellian term for murder.
To be fair, there are the moderates in the US who do not favour Obama's presidential order to murder Anwar Awlaki, who is now believed to be in hiding somewhere in Yemen. If Awalaki was to surrender to the US regime, would he get a free and fair trial? He's been accused, among other things, of 'inspiring' two of the 9-11 hijackers. But who says so?
The disturbing trend is that some in the US, brainwashed as they are, believe it is okay to kill Anwar Awlaki because President Obama says he's a traitor and a terrorist and so deserves to die. But they don't have the foggiest of notions of whether these claims are actually true. That's why the US constitution imposed such checks and balances on its rulers. But all that is falling by the wayside in the US's insane and bloody rush to maintain its 'Sole Superpower' status, in line with the 'Project for the New American Century' (PNAC).
As if all this was not frightening enough, the US is about to bring in yet another draconian law which it usually associates with dictators and fascists. According to news filtering in, the US is to censor the internet. If the Obama regime has its way, this new law will give the Attorney General powers to compel US internet providers to block sites deemed 'unfriendly or hostile' to US interests. This will further erode the remaining civil rights that US citizens are supposed to enjoy.
The US Declaration of Independence is based on the works of John Locke, the English philosopher, and it is said that Thomas Jefferson had literally copied him when he 'authored' the document. Some call him a plagiarist. Be that as it may, there is hardly any doubt among moderate Americans that Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers will be spinning in their graves right now. And what about John Locke? Well, he won't mind a little exercise, will he?
The writer is the vice president of the Sri Lanka-Palestine Solidarity Committee |
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