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 You Have No RightsPosted on Aug 14, 2007
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive and author of “You Have No Rights,” explains how our president became a “medieval king,” and why your civil liberties are in greater danger than ever. Click here to listen to this interview. Transcript:James Harris: Here again on Truthdig this is James Harris with Josh Scheer. On the phone is Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive and the author of the new book “You Have No Rights.” I feel like I have some rights left, and so do other Americans. So why did you choose this title for your book? Matthew Rothschild: I took the title of the book from a couple of brothers, Yasser and Hany Ibrahim, who were Egyptians living in the United States after 9/11 and they had the police come knock on their door, come in and drag them away and hold them in a pen for 24 hours where they weren’t allowed even to go to the bathroom. And then they dragged them through the Metropolitan Detention Center, banging their heads against the walls, especially on the wall that had an American flag on it. And then these guards played a little sadistic game, stepping on the chain between their legs, and then they’d fall down, and then the guards would say “Get up!” and then they’d step on the chain and then they’d say “Get up!” again. Ultimately, one of the brothers said to the guards, “Look, don’t we have any rights here?” And the response came back, “You have no rights.” What rights do we have, actually, if the president can say, even of U.S. citizens, that you’re enemy combatants and throw you in jail as he did, into solitary confinement, of two American citizens: Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. And the Military Commissions Act allows them to identify any of us as an enemy combatant, and if you’re not a U.S. citizen, you can be thrown into jail and never have a right to talk to a lawyer or see a courtroom again for the rest of your lives. Josh Scheer: Or they can outsource you for torture. Rothschild: They can disappear you. I mean, Bush and Cheney—they act like we’re an Argentinean junta and they’re disappearing people here, or sending them overseas to secret CIA prisons. Harris: Now, something—. Rothschild: Now, just let me go on for a second. Harris: OK. Rothschild: What Fourth Amendment rights to privacy do we have if the NSA, the National Security Agency, can spy on us without a warrant when the law says they need to have a warrant to spy on us? What First Amendment rights do we have to protest if we can’t protest in front of the president or the vice president, but if we have to go to some free-speech zone a half-mile or a mile or a mile and a half away where they can’t even see us? Harris: You’ve been called a madman. and I’m sure you’ve been called anti-American. I don’t know if you know, but an executive order was issued by the president, I believe on the 17th of July, and it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls “stabilization efforts in Iraq,” your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you aware of that? Rothschild: I have the order in my hand. I was just writing something on the computer to update our website with something on that. Yeah. If you are—in the mind of the secretary of the Treasury—posing a significant risk of committing an act of violence—you don’t have to have committed an act of violence. If he thinks you are at risk of committing an act of violence in order to protest the policies of the Iraqi government or the Bush administration’s policies to promote what it calls “economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq,” then the secretary of the Treasury can put a freeze on all your assets. This is unbelievable. What Bush is trying to achieve here, by executive order, are things that he can’t achieve legislatively. Someone’s got to put a stop to this. Congress has got to put a stop to it because he is seizing all sorts of authoritarian powers right now by executive decree. Harris: But Matthew, let’s be real for a second. Here we are, year four of this war. Given what you’ve seen so far from Congress, can they really make a change in this war? Can they really change the mind of George Bush? Rothschild: They’re going to have to step up to the plate sometime, or we can kiss our Constitution goodbye, because Bush is trampling all over it. Cheney’s trampling all over it. What needs to happen, in my mind, is impeachment proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee against Bush and against Cheney, to make them know that they are going to be held accountable or at least there’s going to be a process to try to hold them accountable, that they can’t get away scot-free with all this stuff, and to tell the next president or the one after that that they can’t get away with this stuff. Scheer: People talk about—you know, Bush has talked about this so many times—“They hate us for our freedom.” That was a line used long ago. People talk about, “Visit the free country, the free country, the free country.” Why don’t people realize that when you take away the Constitution, even the parts you dislike, you’re really hurting the freedom? Or is that just a word that’s being bantered around, like any kind of spin? Rothschild: I wish more people in this country would really revere the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. But Cheney and Bush themselves are intolerant of the freedoms that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights. In my book, “You Have No Rights,” I tell the story of a guy named Steve Howards who was walking through Beaver Creek, Colo., an open-air mall there and, of all people, Dick Cheney is there, shaking hands. And Steve Howards goes up to the vice president, about three feet away, and says, “Mr. Vice President, I think your policy in Iraq is reprehensible.” ... And then he walked away. But the Secret Service approached him 10 minutes later and said, “Did you assault the vice president of the United States?” And Steve Howards said, “No, I was just expressing my First Amendment rights.” And they responded, “No, you assaulted the vice president of the United States. You’re under arrest.” Harris: They arrested him? Rothschild: They arrested him. Scheer: Do you think Cheney was the one who said, “He was the one who assaulted me”? Rothschild: I don’t know. But the Secret Service has a policy now, not only of protecting the president and the vice president from assassination, but protecting the president and the vice president from dissent, and that’s not their job.
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By John Borowski, October 4, 2007 at 5:32 am # I received an E-mail from a gentleman that was one of the male telephone operators fired back in the 1920s. He wrote I was remiss in not giving both sides of the story. #102189 He wrote how would I respond if one hundred grandpas shouted in your ear every day just because they are making a long-distance call?
By John Borowski, October 2, 2007 at 1:06 pm # I’ve been broken hearted since the mailman started making his rounds one day. He gave me a letter I thought for the better, but it didn’t turn out that way. Now all I do is march along, and all my ideas about the army are all wrong. But there’s no need to bother, no need to shout. Your in here son and you can’t get out. Well, I guess I’ll wait for that wonderful day when these old ears have heard the word. You can go now son you’re free as a bird.
By Conservative Yankee, September 27, 2007 at 12:06 pm # 102931 by John Borowski on 9/27 at 4:44 am “This is one of the myriad factors that we suffer under a bible-totting Republicans” 1.) Hill-the-business-shill is head of the India Caucus The shill was also on the Board of Directors at Walmart Just as Cheney was on the board at Halliburton. Funny the silence on the left. 2.) Democrats have been emphasizing “their faith” lately. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillar ys-prayer.html Finely John do you believe you are doing your cause some good by attempting to alienate reasonable people who disagree with you on a party of choice. I have explained using historical data with references how the Republican party is not all right-wing bible thumpers. You insist of doing your little “AKA” thing. I suppose it is your right to hold an opinion which has little merit. See that? A Republican who believes in free thought. OH BTW I’m also an athiest
By John Borowski, September 27, 2007 at 4:44 am # From the Saturday Evening Post many years ago: Oh! Hush thee babe, granny is buying new shares. While daddy is playing with the bulls and the bears, mother is buying stocks that can’t lose. So baby will have her expensive new shoes.
By John Borowski, September 25, 2007 at 10:58 am # I’m made as hell, but I’ll still have to take some more!
By John Borowski, September 23, 2007 at 10:54 am # In the old days if you wanted to call someone on the telephone you had to call the telephone operator. There was no such thing like punching in numbers. The telephone companies would only hire male telephone operators for this highly technical work. After one too many “you s - - - - - f - - - - - - a - - h - - - “ they fired the males and only had female operators do the work.
By John Borowski, September 23, 2007 at 10:01 am # The thing that confirms my belief that the British totally control our media (These are their flagship media, Fox TV, NY Times, Time magazine) is how little you get from them in the way of news. It always surprises me how much more news you get with substance from foreign TV and other foreign media. About the only outlet for news that is fit to print and not fit to print is the Internet. (The British are working on it) The British controlled media fill up their programs with puerile garbage instead of things like Jena or Blackhawk. One station that has strip news on the bottom of the screen wrote that black boys attacked a white boy but neglected to say why. I usually have the sound turned off on TV, (but not radio) so I will not put my intelligence in jeopardy.
By John Borowski, September 22, 2007 at 11:21 am # Manufacturing jobs, (Jobs paying livable wages) have lost 215,000 jobs over the past year. Does this mean manufacturing jobs are not manufacturing any longer? No, they have all gone to low wage countries. (In a few years the rest of the decent paying jobs will go to the slave labor countries) Health care employment continued to grow in August despite the guzzling of bottle water. Folks, there are not enough of springs in the universe to fill up one days production of bottle water. So, where do they get the water since they have stopped making land any more? They get it from the tap and charge as high as two dollars and fifty cents for it. (It cost them .2 cents for bottle water) I was at a hotel and I saw a bottle of blue label water on the desk. I thought, gee that was nice of them since they are only charging one hundred and eight dollars a day for the basic essentials. There was a tag on the bottle that said if you use the water there will be an additional charge of two dollars and fifty cents. They couldn’t pay their executives one billion for a Christmas gift and one billion for salary and one billion for a golden parachutes if they didn’t over charge Johnny Q. This is one of the myriad factors that we suffer under a bible-totting Republicans (Aka Conservatives right-wingers)
By John Borowski, September 22, 2007 at 4:01 am # Riya, I love your poetry #100811. My golden youth has flashed right by, as quick as the lightning across the sky. The final act in life’s long play, is usually the saddest I’m sorry to say. See if you can guess who wrote it.
By John Borowski, September 21, 2007 at 3:51 pm # Sharpen your pencils Johnny and Janey Q it is time for your exams. If you had a father that served honorably as an ambassador to Great Britain. Your oldest brother gave his life for our country. Your younger two brothers gave their life for our country. Your youngest brother (The only survivor) served honorably in the Senate for years. Subsequently, the youngest brother was classified as a terrorist and denied boarding an airplane would you be hoping mad? This is what the Kennedy family was exposed to. If the bible-totting right considers Kennedys as terrorists, can you imagine what they classify the rest of us as?
By John Borowski, September 16, 2007 at 11:54 am # God Bless Truthdig, (politically correct or else),
By Conservative Yankee, September 12, 2007 at 4:59 am # 99856 by Michael Shaw on 9/11 at 2:36 pm “Clinton merely caved in and signed them into law to save his seat.” With all due respect to your opinion, I must point out that Bill Clinton was supported in his run for the presidency by many business folk who benefited from NAFTA. Most notably among these was the Tyson Chicken outfit that Clinton served as a “right-to-work” governor of Arkansas. He changed Arkansas law so Tyson could dump their waste into the White water River, and allowed regular violations of Federal environmental law as it benefited these non-union folks. When Clinton signed NAFTA he did so with a Democratic majority in congress, BEFORE the Republicans took over. He also signed MFN for China breaking a long held non-partisan agreement that this country...land of the free...would never do business with manufacturers using prison labor to compete. Hillary has taken the corporate connection one step further as head of the India Caucus she regularly pushes for an expansion of the H1b visa program allowing Indian companies, based in America, to hire cheaper foreign labor. She (as a board member of Walmart) never called on that company to provide health care and a decent living wage to it’s employees. To me this means, I and others like me) must pay the cost of Walmart’s parsimonious behavior. Clintons are as greedy, and as entrenched in the “me-first” culture every bit as much as Bush and his bunch. I wouldn’t give-a-shit except it’s costing me and my family.
By Conservative Yankee, September 11, 2007 at 4:18 am # 99690 by Gary Vincent on 9/10 at 6:02 pm “The other got a BJ. Guess who got impeached.” With all due respect the only thing wrong with Clinton’s impeachment was the partisanship and the trumped up reasons. Clinton was a treasonous retch just like Bush. two sides of the same money grubbing careless coin. Clinton didn’t give a shit about working Americans, and presided over the outsourcing of jobs just as did the two Bushes. He signed NAFTA, gave China MFN status (in spite of their prison labor force) and egan dismantling the social fabric of the USA. Clinton masqueraded as a good-ole-boy from the Joe Lunch-box crowd while enriching his friends and planning for the Clinton Dynasty. pardoning Marc Rich and the FALN terrorists on behalf of his wifes Senate campaign. Beating up on Bush isn’t gonna change the path we are on. Elect Hill-the-Business-shill Obama, John (big hair) Edwards and we’ll just get more of the same sell-out we have received under, at least, the last six administrations. I hate Bush, but in 18 months he’ll be outta here. We must begin to focus on the next front man (or woman)
By Gary Vincent, September 10, 2007 at 6:02 pm # More than 20% more people want Bush impeached than wanted Clinton impeached. One destroyed a country, ruined US foreign relations, crippled our economy, crapped on the constitution, and refuses to govern more than 30% of the people. The other got a BJ. Guess who got impeached.
By John Borowski, September 8, 2007 at 12:58 pm # This is a statement by one of our great leaders that warned the people of our country and virtually all countries around the world. Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. In addition, when we realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way, or another, by a few very powerful European men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation, depression and twenty-first century colonies originate.
By John Borowski, September 8, 2007 at 11:15 am # NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING What was accomplished when the right wing killed the Kennedys? Nothing, only fulmination by the intelligent people in this country. What was done when robotic planes crashed into the World Trade Center piloted by a pilot (Most likely from building 7?) Nothing, only fulmination by the intelligent people in this country. Do you really believe that the Allah boys ready to meet their maker would fornicate, drink alcohol, stuff money in the panties of strippers on the eve of their martyrdom? (Would they do this and suffer the loss of their seventy virgins?) What was done when Bush went to war on lies and chicanery? Nothing, only fulminations by the intelligent people in this country. What is done when Bush and company are taking down the Bill of Rights and Constitution of the US? Nothing, only fulmination from the intelligent people of this country. What will be done when the two evils in the Washington kitchen go at each other’s throat? Nothing, except the annihilation of this earth.
By Harry, August 30, 2007 at 10:15 am # It may not be correct to use “fascism” or “dictatorship” yet but what about Oligarchy? The big money persons and corporations, the oligarchs, determine who will have enough money to run for office and after the elections their lobbyists determine what the elected officials are for or against. So I think we do have an oligarchy.
By kikz, August 30, 2007 at 4:22 am # the theme song Bad Boys just keeps getting louder… WHAT’CHA GONNA DO WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU?
By John Borowski, August 29, 2007 at 11:42 am # My dearest people, if you can’t see the destuction of the country of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson you are blind,deaf,and dumb.
By cyrena, August 27, 2007 at 2:24 pm # Michael, I shouldn’t have said “we” because I meant “me”. I’m the one restricted. And, that’s OK. I’m just down the coast from you, not far at all. And, I was right there in your area until a bit over 3 years ago. So, I suspect we’re enjoying the same weather. (though we do have this Zaca fire still proving so dastardly). As as aside, I too, had read the article on the whistleblowers in the frauding of Iraq. T/O has been covering these stories for quite a while, when we weren’t otherwise hearing them. I’ve suffered a similar fate, but I’ve taken no comfort in knowing how many others have suffered these past several years. And, I’m convinced that there are thousands we still don’t know about. In short, it has been brutal. Congrats to the survivors!!
By cyrena, August 27, 2007 at 1:07 pm # #97130 Michael, Notice how we’re restricted to just this thread? (or so it seems, since I am prevented from posting on any of the other stories...this has been for a couple of weeks at least). Anyway, I did come across a mention of Chertoff as a replacement, and it created an extra severe flash of sharp pain though my GI system. It may LOOK like a nice idyllic day, (at least it does here) but man oh man, this is all just giving me a real fit of the heebie jeebies. Ya know, that last “Emergency Plan Organization” they came up with a few months back, already had Chertoff and Townsend “in charge”. I just don’t know what the hell to think. Anyway, I’ll swing over to Democracy Now! so I can see what’s happening. All this drama is just too much for me!! Add Your Comment |
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Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post
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