July 19, 2013 at 3:41 P.M. Continuing cybercrime and censorship may prevent me from writing at any time. I will continue to struggle to write on-line from some location. Corrections were made at NYPL, Inwood branch.
Monica Davey & Mary Williams Walsh, "Billions in Debt, Detroit Tumbles Into Insolvency," The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A1. (Detroit's dilemma symbolizes, for many racists, the plight of America under President Obama: If African-Americans come to power, according to Right-wingers, then you can be sure that the result will be bankruptcy for your state or the nation.)
Kate Zernike, "Court Restricts Police Searches of Phone Data," The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A1. (Hypocrisy and lies continue to characterize the N.J. court authorizing violations of privacy, censorship and cybercrime. What they say, publicly, is different from what they authorize, privately: "Peter G. Verniero and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
Elizabeth Malkin, "Ex-Employee of C.I.A. Held In Abduction," The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A4. (C.I.A. operative wanted in Italy for kidnapping and torture, possible murders, arrested in Panama after the seizure of a Cuban vessel. Did Fidel say "hello"? Or is this only a coincidence?)
Erin Banco, "Judge Upholds Charge Against Manning," The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A16. (Bradley Manning's whistle-blowing is held to constitute "aiding the enemy." Private Manning is seen as a hero in many countries, including parts of the United States.)
David E. Sanger & Eric Schmidt, "N.S.A. Imposes Rules to Protect Secret Data Stored on its Networks," The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A16. (N.S.A. "agents" have your life on file. Feel safer?)
Nasser al-Awlaki, "The Drone That Killed My Grandson," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, July 19, 2013, p. A23.
If someone had suggested during the eighties and nineties when I was a law student and graduate student, or during my years of law practice, that the United States government would condone and practice torture; claim the right to assassinate Americans and anyone from any country who happens to be near the secretly targeted person who may be located anywhere in the world; or that the government would monitor, secretly, and intercept the communications and records of persons from all over the world, without warrant or notice, I would have regarded such claims as absurd and impossible.
These claims of absolutist or totalitarian power for American governments (from both parties now) make a mockery of the nation's Constitutional system of checks and balances with limited powers for government, where concern for human dignity requires recognition of zones of entitlement to "life, liberty, property" and "privacy" and/or the "pursuit of happiness" that may not be encroached by the state -- except under provisions of law that are highly specific and detailed, also subject to judicial review.
The Obama Administration's basic response is "don't worry, be happy." Mr. Holder's Justice Department and White House staff lawyers assure us that, as they are not Mr. Cheney or President George W. Bush, their violations of human rights -- that include killing people -- are nothing to worry about.
Last time I heard something similar was when Bill Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Act that was recently struck down, in part, by the Supreme Court because it is "offensive" to the human dignity protected under privacy doctrine, due process, and equal protection principles.
It seems to me that killing people outside the boundaries of law, without notice or explanation, may be unconstitutional. Is the difference that, for the most part, persons killed by drones are brown-skinned Muslims -- even when they are Americans -- who are seen as subhuman in America?
It could be that good-old racism is rearing its ugly head again, but this time under the administration of America's first African-American president: Guantanamo is still open for business; we still kill our people, illegally, and are killing innocents from many countries with drones; and the government is spying on you, illegally.
Nasser al-Awlaki, who earned his doctorte in America, comments that his 16-year-old grandson and Amerian citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed by a drone missile on October 14, 2011:
"The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians ... while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen."
It is important to remember that Trayvon Martin is not the only dark-skinned child murdered in our world. Each of these "little brown" lives, in accordance with the moral and legal tradition I celebrate, is entitled to respect and the concern of fellow citizens as well as legal institutions before it can be taken by state action. ("Little Brown Men Are Only Objects For Us" and "John Rawls and Justice.")
To target a person without informing him or her of the reason for the use of state power to harm or kill that person; and without allowing the victim to explain or defend him- or herself is dictatorship. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Such criminal use of state power is deeply offensive to the Constitution's guarantee of liberty and equality for ALL persons. This contradiction and paradox in America's practice (as opposed to its rhetoric) is greeted with apathy and inaction by public officials, lawyers, judges, academics as well as ordinary citizens:
"The Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was 'not specifically targeted,' raising more questions than he answered.' ..."
No apologies were offered to the boy's family, nor to the other deceased innocent persons' families, nor to the Yemeni government for the violation of its territorial integrity.
Murdered human beings were relegated to the status of "road kill" on the highway. If the lives of U.S. citizens and other persons do not merit any recognition from public officials taking those lives, for unstated reasons, then it is simply impossible to believe that the U.S. government adheres to the fundamental jurisprudential commitment that defines this society: the inviolability of rights to liberty and equality of persons before the law and against the power of the state.
"A country that believes it does not even need to answer for KILLING its own people is not the America I once knew." (emphasis added!)
These words were written by the victim's grandfather -- who has now lost a son and grandson to drone murders -- and who was denied standing to argue his case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The same Supreme Court, correctly, found standing in the gay marriage case for the begrieved living spouse of a woman denied equal dignity at her death. Mr. al-Awlaki must resort to expressing his outrage and pain before the court of public opinion.
Like me, Mr. al-Awlaki is denied the dignity of recognition for heinous injuries done by government. We are non-persons; we do not matter; no one cares about us. We are told that we are nothing. "We" now includes billions of persons who do not count; they may be injured by the U.S. government without redress.
"The very idea of a fundamental right of personhood rests on the conviction that, even though one's identity is constantly and profoundly shaped by the rewards and penalties, the exhortations and scarcities and constraints of one's social environment, the 'personhood' resulting from the process is sufficiently 'one's own' to be deemed fundamental in confrontation with the one entity that retains a monopoly over legitimate violence -- the government. Thus active coercion by government" -- or killing persons! -- "to alter a person's being, or deliberate neglect by government which permits a being to SUFFER, [Marilyn Straus?] are conceived as qualitatively different from the passive, incremental coercion that shapes all of life and for which no one bears responsibility."
Laurence Tribe, American Constitutional Law (New York: The Foundation Press, 1988), pp. 1305-1306 and all subsequent editions (emphasis added).
