The NDAA authorizes the President to kill members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It can kill Americans only if they are providing material support to those two organizations and only if they are on foreign soil. Those (very limited) restrictions actually narrow the powers granted to the executive under the 2003 AUMF. The NDAA actually made it harder for the President to sic the death robots on people.
This isn't usually how I hear the NDAA characterized. I'd be interested if you had more I could read on this perspective.
Keep in mind that definitions of terms like "material support" give wide latitude to interpretation. Last I heard there were people in jail under such terms for donating money to what on the surface appeared to be an Islamic charity.
I never ran a mirror, but I configured DNS record for wikileaks when it was under DoS. Does this make me an "enemy of the state" too?
I think these are justified concerns and as an American it saddens me deeply that I would even think to have them.
Respectfully, Marsh (you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.
Material support has a specific definition. Your donation must be made "knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for" an actual terrorist attack. You cannot be killed by the death robots for donating to Islamic charities.
What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?
you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat
Oh absolutely. I'm in touch with with my inner tinfoil-hat-ness and am secretly less off the deep end than my tweets would make it appear. (at least that's what I tell myself :-)
and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.
No, I know you're too smart for that. This is why I'm interested in how you came to your conclusion.
What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?
This is probably what I was thinking of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relie... (note that I'm not saying this specific prosecution was just or unjust, only that it supports the theory that prosecutions are possible under a definition of "material support" which includes giving to what is ostensibly a charity).
The law requires foreknowledge of an actual terrorist action that the donation contributes to.
Moreover: I'm actually wrong here; the Obama Administration (which, recall, was pushing back on a far broader standard requested by the GOP-controlled Congress) applied a stricter standard, of "substantial support", which I understand to mean that not only do you need to have foreknowledge that your contribution applied to an actual terrorist attack, but also that your contribution actually has to have significantly enabled the attack.
A steady slide into military dictatorship orchestrated by whom? You have to invent a non-partisan conspiracy including both GW Bush and Obama... given the level of partisanship of politics over the last several years, you really expect me to believe that they managed to coordinate a slide into military dictatorship between themselves? Who is going to be the ultimate beneficiary?
I don't accept that I'm obligated to identify some specific set of consiprators in order to make observations about some outward appearances that I find concerning.
Certainly, historically the US has gone after the folks who allowed confidential or classified information to get out of their, not the people who received it.
In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which published them and embarrassed the administration, in '72 Woodward and Bernstein would get information from Mark Feldt (aka "Deep Throat") which would they go on to publish and it toppled the Nixon administration.
In both of those cases neither the New York Times or the Post, the journalists, or the editors of those papers was ever in danger of criminal proceedings, much less military action.
How Wikileaks got their information is not known, it is clear that Julian Assange was not the source of the leak, he merely benefited from it.
So the line goes like this:
1) A government that prosecutes people who leak their information.
2) ... to a Government that prosecutes people who publish the information leaked to them.
3) ... and next up ... prosecuting individuals who express influential opinions based on documented knowledge of otherwise classified material.
Do you really think this country would have tolerated President Johnson declaring the New York Times and its journalist Neil Sheehan "enemies of the US" ?
Yes, actually several if you count all the various side motions and what not. And at no time before, during, or after did the times become an 'military enemy of the US.'
